Nasrullah

Mobile marketing in Pakistan has taken off, and Pring is at the controls. The team has held three Pring 101 Classroom sessions in Lahore, with agencies as well as corporate bigwigs attending these Classrooms to learn how to do mobile marketing right. Digital agency Bramerz, Team Aventures, and Leisure Club, on the first day, while Coca Cola’s marketing team attended on the second day, and Nestle on the third. The sessions are being conducted by Pring’s Junaid Malik, Customer Development Manager, and Faisal Jamshed, Customer Development Executive.

We’ve learned too, while carrying out these sessions, what businesses think of mobile marketing right now. As the marketing team from Bramerz put it, “Until Pring came in the picture, mobile marketing in Pakistan, has been more of the common man’s medium of communication. Brands are likely to stay on the so-called ‘cool’ side of things. The term ‘mobile marketing’ summons the thought of annoying push messages. But clients are yet to be introduced to an interactive experience with mobiles, one that excites the consumer and makes them feel like their involved, like Pring does.” By the end of the session, the team from Bramerz was eager to incorporate Pring into their digital strategy.

Marketers and brand managers are well aware of the rise of mobile as the most effective tool for advertising yet. Even as they find mobile marketing complicated, they know that it cannot be ignored.The session helped put the pieces together and gave marketers an overall picture of Pring’s strengths and features. Coca Cola’s marketing team realized there is great potential in mobile marketing as a tool to connect with consumers. The team was ready to learn even more about Pring after seeing how it could help them gain from this social network. Nestle’s team had gotten a taste of Pring earlier this year during their sponsor of the theatrical play Aangan Terha, and especially after the Pring 101 session, they were convinced that mobile marketing was the way forward.

We’re hitting the city by the sea, Karachi next, so get ready for the business world to make a 360 degree turn and go mobile. To schedule a session with us or just get in touch, shoot us an email at custdev@pringit.com.

Posted by Ghalia Baig Mirza

Between your nine to five job, travelling, chores and those dreaded power outages, do you really get to satisfy the sports buff in you? Well, we’ve got news that’s going to make your summer a super cool one! Ten Sports has joined hands with Pring to bring you the biggest games of the season right in your hands. You’re looking at match schedules, updates, live scores, voting, and a whole lot of one-on-one connectivity with the sports channel, no matter where you are!

The ICC Champions Trophy is kicking off today. By texting TSCT to 9900, you will instantly get connected and will receive the latest happenings in the cricket world through SMS or your Pring mobile app. With Ten Sports on Pring, you won’t just be getting dead-end text messages of scores. Pringers are able to have real-time conversations, ask about the schedule and put in their two cents about the game. Sports fans can get even more interactive and take part in the quizzes and polls to really feel like part of the game.

If you’re worried about missing a beat of the game thanks to the insufferable load shedding, we’ve got you covered. You will be getting every update on text message, from the beginning to the end of the game. And we know how each moment counts because, like the famed baseball player Yogi Berra once said, ‘It ain’t over till it’s over’!

To follow Ten Sports on Pring, SMS TENSPORTS to 9900.

Posted by Ghalia Baig Mirza

Getting the attention of the customer and stand out from the crowd is what every brand out there is aiming for. The million dollar question is how exactly does one define effective marketing? Is it about making a sale? Catching the interest of prospective customers? Communicating the brand’s personality? For TCS Connect, effective marketing is much more than just making a sale. It wants to create a long standing relationship with the customer and give them a user-experience so rich, they’ll be ready to state their loyalty by the end of the day.

TCS Connect used Pring to get customers’ attention on the devices they spend most of their time on. Pring created the keyword TIPS to give their followers first hand information, instantly on their mobile phones on how they can use their favorite products more effectively. That means they don’t have to wade through thick, dryly written high tech manuals for electronics or waste time on fancy magazines on lifestyles and fashion to know what’s trending. All they have to do is SMS TTIPS to 9900 and the information they want is a text message away. TCS Connect has provided an unforgettable user experience using Pring. TTIPS received 286 hits in just three days, while keyword hits increased by 200%.

It is important to understand that in today’s cut throat competition, a demanding customer has to be every brand’s first priority and Pring is helping brands go beyond just buying and selling!

Posted by Farwa Bhatti

Advertise smartly with Pring

How can you tell which advertising medium is most effective in getting a reaction from consumers? For the first time, you can measure exactly which medium catches the most attention. Whether it’s print, television, billboards, on- ground activation, or roadside streamers, Pring can tell you where you should allocate your ad spending more than others.

Marketing can, at times, be a ‘monkey-see-monkey-do’ practice. Come up with an innovative idea and the industry is ready to follow suit. But if the success of an ad campaign or a marketing shenanigan can apply to one product from the other then dangers and warnings apply too, and so do the law suits. Back in April 2010,  famous pizza chain Papa John’s, allegedly sent out around 500,000 unwanted messages to an unsuspecting audience. The messages offered pizza deals and promotions for the brand. This resulted in a class-action action law suit which is now expected to set the US food chain back by $250 million. Papa John’s quickly ended involvement with its provider ONTIME4U text program when the incident occurred back in 2010. The plaintiffs now seek up to $500 for each SMS sent but could be awarded up to $1500 if jury rules that Papa John’s willfully broke the law. ONTIME4U, the SMS provider stands as a co-defendant in this case. The Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 bars companies from sending advertisements via text messages without a consumer first opting into the service. This means bulk messaging is a big no-no unless the customers are willing participants. Now on to Exhibit Pakistan. At the end of last year, the Pakistan Telecom Association banned all masking services in Pakistan. In fact, any shortcodes that will be allowed to continue operations require two functionalities:

1. The option for the recipient to reply back
2. The ability to opt out from these messages at any given time

At Pring, privacy of the user is our top priority. Using various checks and protocols we ensure that no subscriber on the Pring community is spammed or bombarded with unnecessary messages. In fact we can proudly state that from our user-base of over 5 million, not a single individual is a spamming victim but a willful participant. Unless a consumer willingly opts in for updates from a brand’s various check-in points he does not receive any messages from our social media platform. The checks do not end there. We limit our clients from making more than 3 updates in a week and more than one update in a day. So even if a consumer has opted in to talk to a brand, his experience is still ensured to be anything but noisy. However there still maybe some time before the brands catch up to the finesse of using the enigma that is mobile marketing.   Posted by Sheikh Omer Zaheer

With the elections right around the corner, passions are at an all-time high and we believe that these elections will be historic for their significance and impact. For the first time a democratic government will be handing over the reins to the next government.

We’ve seen lots of opinion polls done by research organizations and on various social media sites. In our opinion they all fall short, either because the sample size is too small or because the people responding to the polls online represent the top 1% of Pakistan and not the common man. How do we get a feel for what’s happening on the streets? What does the average Pakistani think about the elections?

On Friday evening, 3rd of May Nasrullah (our CTO) and Bilal (our CMO) brainstormed a way for us to show what is happening at the ground-level in Pakistan. A crack team was assembled and we decided to create a dashboard on Pring that would illustrate in real-time what political conversations were happening on Pring. This would be hard job because Pring has thousands of messages following through in more than six languages, in eleven scripts.

Not only did we need to understand what was being said in those languages, we needed to classify them into political categories. Our data analyst wrote the algorithm for identifying and categorizing updates into various political parties. We chose to limit the parties to a few, for now. Anytime someone would text their opinion to 9900, our algorithm would mine it for political content and display it on our dashboard.

The result is a moment by moment, real-time political pulse of Pakistan. The team launched the working prototype in two days, a remarkable feat considering how little work has been done on regional languages. Check it out for yourself; see the Pring Election Watch page.

Also, go ahead and send in VOTE to 9900 to see how popular your preferred political party is. You’ll get to know immediately what fellow citizens are thinking.

We recently did a few surveys on Pring, and gathered some interesting statistics. Thought we’d share with you. Let us know what you think.

Ariel Maa on Pring from Pring on Vimeo.

Ariel was welcomed into the homes of tens of thousands of people, as they opened their heart out in response to the ‘Maa’ campaign. With Pring, the brand had a chance to get closer to fans and television audience than ever before, interacting with them one-on-one and creating a strong and lasting relationship.

In a survey taken on Pring, about 75% of the respondents said that, if given a chance, they would choose to study in Pakistan, instead of overseas for further education.  It is also interesting to note that 38.5% of the people who answered the survey were not from major cities such as Lahore, Karachi, Islamabad, Peshawar or Quetta, but from other smaller cities. Pring’s accessibility and broad reach made it possible to get prompt answers from these respondents.

‘Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.’

We’ve all heard this saying and we love to quote it, but how many of us can actually walk the talk? The Civic Hackathon, held in Karachi, gave an invaluable opportunity to citizens to use their skills and make their city a better, more efficient place to live. Organized by Pring, P@SHA and The Second Floor, the Hackathon pulled together developers, students and other professionals to create apps to solve civic problems. The two-day event was inspired by Code for America, a non-profit organization that gets city leaders and web enthusiasts to come up with innovative solutions to promote public services.

Sheba Najmi, a fellow of Code for America, initiated this project to encourage citizens to take matters into their own hands.  Speeches and tutorial sessions were held on the first day of the event and eleven teams were formed. We introduced Raven API, our ground breaking API that lets anyone create SMS apps using simple HTML. The judges themselves suggested the use of Pring as an SMS interface, so that the maximum number of people could access services, without the internet.

A number of incredible apps were created. There was an app that tackled one of the biggest evils in Karachi: muggings and target killings. It allowed citizens to report the crime, along with precise location and time where it occurred. Another great app enabled people to get authentic information on government procedures, such as obtaining a driver’s license or getting an application processed. It gave direct facts and consequences of failing to go through the legitimate procedure. Along with empowering citizens, this method would do away with illegal mafias that exploit the ordinary man’s helplessness, while eliminating bribery.

One team was of the idea that corruption is so ingrained in society because citizens are not always aware that an honest transaction can take place. Their app allowed people to submit details of the bribe, i.e. the amount, the name of the officer, location, etc., to the relevant government department. And it would all be anonymous.

There weren’t just people from an IT background, but healthcare professionals, NGO representatives, and graphic designers. The response was so overwhelming that you couldn’t help but think that we could rid all of society’s ills if we just take into account what the educated youth has to suggest.

The actual development of the applications kicked off on the second day. Seven out of ten teams used Raven API to make their apps, because anyone with any kind of mobile phone can use SMS to communicate. Pring’s developer tools, the Raven Simulator, and the Raven Sandbox assisted developers speed up the development time. Judging criteria included ease of access, mechanics, simplicity, how well defined the problem was, success in resolving the issue and adaptation on Pring as an SMS interface.

“We’re very proud of what was attempted and accomplished in less than 48 hours. If we can sustain the same zeal, our civic problems will disappear.” said one of the speakers, Jawwad Farid.

P@SHA’s Innovation Fund announced it would be investing Rs. 850,000 for any team that has a workable idea and wants to go ahead with it. Plug & Play is keen on providing business incubation space for those who want to further develop their application. Participants were so enthusiastic about Raven API that they pledge to carry on with their projects and meet up every month at T2F to share progress and new ideas.

Thanks to the judges Farzal Dojki, Shahjahan Chaudhry, Imran Mohiuddin and Sabeen Mahmud. It was a noteworthy initiative taken by Sheba Najmi, Jehan Ara, Sabeen Mahmud and the volunteers who made this event happen.

If you think this is the end of it, think again. Lahore, we’re coming your way next, so get the geek out in you and gear up to do some good!

Posted by Haseeb Tariq and Hiba Moeen

In social media, what is the worth of any follower? Is it measured by the buzz he generates for your brand amongst friends? Is it the perception he creates as a brand advocate? Or is he valued for the sales he generates between himself and his peers? If your business has a presence on social media, you probably struggle to assign weight to each of these qualities. But what if you can get the best of both worlds?

With Pring, a follower is not just a fan but an actual customer. With up to 80% of follower acquisition happening in stores in real time, you are not just connecting with random individuals but with people who actually walked into your stores at some point and very likely bought something. So you know they are an indispensable asset. By using Pring’s location driven check-in points, you can tag each outlet separately. Then with just a simple SMS, the follower can connect with you right there and then. Not only is your fan base growing, but you know exactly how well each store is doing.

Warda took this task quite seriously. By setting daily goals for its sales staff, the brand used Pring to acquire over a 150 new followers on the platform in a week. Is that really a large number, you might ask? It really is. These are 150 real customers in just one week that you are now in constant contact over a touch of a button. They are now ready for hands on updates and promotions from the brand. Warda now has 9,769 followers on Pring.  Since these are your actual customers, you know for sure they cannot wait to hear from you till their next visit. So the next time you’re counting followers, just remember that it’s more than just a numbers game.

Posted by Sheikh Omer Zaheer