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-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

It’s time to brush off your best tuxedo and take those Manolos out of their protective glass case! It’s award night for all advertisers across the country, the third annual event held by the Pakistan Advertiser’s Society.

If communication is the one word that can defines advertising, then Pring, being this event’s official social media platform, is the mouthpiece. Pring has been building up the thrill to the awards by connecting the advertisers’ circle of Pakistan, and the networking is set to continue throughout the big night. At the red carpet tomorrow evening, the Pring Wall will be your shout out to the entire industry. Guests can declare their picks and pans, who’ll go home with an award, and what they thought of the overall set up. Anyone arriving at the event will be able to see who’s already present and get connected with them right there and then. You will also be able to find out your exact table through your Pring mobile app.

The Pring Wall will be streaming a live feed of the goings-on. Reporters and journalists outside the main hall will be getting updates on what’s happening inside.

Pakistan Advertisers Society has been continuously recognizing the industry’s achievements and setting standards. The awards celebrate and pay tribute to the most effective communications ad campaigns in Pakistan and reiterate ‘creativity, idea and strategy that works’. We’re proud to be associated with PAS and their efforts and we’re supporting them through what we do best.

It happens on Friday, April 26, 2013, at 8 PM. And, need we remind you to bring your mobile phone with you?

Posted by Ghalia Baig Mirza

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 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

Event + Pring = Overnight Talk of Town

As a citizen of Pakistan, you would be overwhelmed to learn that the ratio of patients to doctors in this country is 1,681 patients to one doctor. Throw in the sky-high consultation fees, lack of qualified doctors, and exorbitant prices of medicines, and it’s no surprise that healthcare usually takes a backseat.

But what if a qualified doctor could give you one-on-one private medical consultation, free of cost, and sitting thousands of miles away? Pring is leading a breakthrough in the healthcare industry. The way doctors approach the thousands of patients they are responsible for is getting more personal because of Pring.

Chughtai’s Lab has always gone one step further than just being a lab testing facility. The team at CLL works hard to be trusted as a source of knowledge to its hundreds of thousands of followers on Pring. Using this social platform, CLL held a live question and answer session with its followers. Pringers were invited to text in their health queries and uncertainties to be answered by Dr. A.S. Chughtai himself, CEO of Chughtai’s Lahore Lab. People inquired about minor troubles of the body such as stress aches, to serious issues such as the symptoms of cancer. Mobile users sent in their questions from wherever they were, not hindered by the need to find internet access, while their questions remained private.

The team will refine the sessions to be more focused, with specialists answering Pringers’ questions on a particular subject.

It’s time people’s health came first and not just brushed under the carpet because of lack of facilities. Pring is on its way to getting the best healthcare to every citizen of Pakistan.

Posted by Ghalia Baig Mirza

Startup Weekend is a worldwide event that celebrates innovation, solves real world problems and brings together the best tech minds in the community. By the end of the event, every team launches a new startup in just 54 hours. At this year’s Startup Weekend Lahore, we made available our super simple SMS API that empowered developers to create apps for anyone with a simple mobile phone that had just SMS capabilities.

From the outset, we wanted our API to be dead-simple and understandable to developers with a minimum learning curve. The best way to do this would be through using technologies that developers are already familiar with. So, we’ve taken the radical notion that in order to make SMS applications, you simply design your app in HTML and Raven automatically converts this into an SMS experience. This makes use of your already existing knowledge of how to build web apps and takes away the hassle of figuring out how to integrate SMS and focus on what makes your app unique.

The best part? Raven API is free to use. We’re a strong believer in empowering builders and innovators and this is our contribution to the fledgling mobile economy.

In the 54-hour Startup event, teams of entrepreneurs, designers, marketers, technologists and programmers, worked to build technological solutions to existing problems.  Projects centered on healthcare, social accountability, charity, business-to-business contacts and the agricultural sector. Many teams were enthusiastic about incorporating this API as part of their projects, since the majority of the population does not have smartphones or internet access.

Throughout the event, we had an on-site team that coached startups on using our API, tutoring teams and in general helping them create powerful mobile applications for the public.

We’re very proud of the outcome: more than a third of the 22 teams used Raven including the winner of P@SHA’s Social Innovation Award:  Short Answering Machine. Many of the participating teams will be developing their product further, keeping Raven API as their core SMS connectivity module.  It will be up to the ingenuity of students or entrepreneurs to use Raven and change the way we live and work.

Interested in using Raven? Drop us an email at raven@pringit.com

Posted by Mohammad Ali

You’ve got to hand it to our cricket team. The boys in green know how to keep audience at the edge of their seat. When Pakistan’s playing, you can expect pundits to give up trying to forecast the outcome of a game. But if you think your powers of observation on this sport are better than most, then Clear has a challenge right up your alley!

Clear Shampoo has got its rock-solid ‘daava’ on being the most effective anti-dandruff shampoo. Now it wants to see if you’ve got your ‘daava’ on the ongoing Pakistan vs India series. Clear’s 360 degree campaign, led by Walnut Media and the media activation agency J.B. & Jaws, has been implemented on all touch-points, including television, billboards, and on-ground activation.

Clear is using Pring to get its nearly 13,000 followers actively involved in the matches. They are asked for their predictions on parts of the match and participants are to give their answers with full certainty. Questions such as which team will win the toss, who’ll be the top scorer, the man of the match, and so on are part of the challenge. An active audience of 97.7% means nearly all followers are readily viewing these updates to stay in touch with the brand. Clear’s Pring audience aren’t just watching the series, they’re actively connected with the matches. Pringers will be narrowed down with each question until Clear has a pool of finalists. Along with prizes of several cell phone sets, the grand prize will be trip to Dubai, UAE.

No other social platform is as easily accessible as Pring. And this is why Clear is able to stay in touch with its followers throughout the series and during every minute of the game. That’s a great advantage because we, as a cricket-obsessed nation, won’t want to concentrate on anything else during a match as crucial as Pakistan vs. India!

So, SMS Clear to 9900 and get ready to cast your vote of confidence!

Posted by Ghalia Mirza

(Editor’s note: This post has been written by the CMO of this project, Farwa S. Bhatti, a fourth year student at LSE. Ms. Bhatti is also a Management Trainee at Pring.)

The Entrepreneurial Business Activity is the most anticipated event of the semester at the Lahore School of Economics, giving graduating students a snapshot of the cut-throat competition in the corporate world.  Five sections competed against each other and were to be judged over idea, strategy, execution, crisis management, profit and organizational skills.

Our project, called the J-eography Enterprises gained an edge over our competitors by harnessing the power of social media, although not in the way others were. With the SMS-based social platform Pring, we connected instantly with our target customers and notified them of event updates, right in their pockets! In just three days, approximately 800 students opted to join us on Pring, and absolutely zero people have unfollowed the account.

J-eography’s ideas included a flashmob, a human domino effect, and the character of General Aladeen from ‘The Dictator’. We didn’t have to worry about the student turnout, because the pocket network took care of that. A revenue of more than Rs. 30,000 was generated, even before the final event took place! On the last day, sales of halwa puri and other goodies seemed to stand still. That is, until an SMS was sent out through Pring to the students. Like bees to honey, students flocked to our stalls and the food trays were wiped clean within an hour.

Our competitors had been using social platforms Facebook and Twitter, which were only accessible through the internet or smartphones that had GPRS activated. Students proved to be much more accessible via SMS, while the option of opting out at any time helped retain followers.

As the Chief Marketing Officer of J-eography enterprises, I could clearly see how Pring was giving us an advantage none of the other sections had. The medium was just perfect for instant one-on-one communication on a large scale, helping us emerge as top scorers out of the whole batch.

Posted by Farwa S. Bhatti

More and more Pakistanis now support the use of credit cards, but e-commerce in Pakistan has yet to adapt to local realities. With that in mind, a brand name with a lot of pedigree jumped into the mix. TCS has been on the delivery scene for about 30 years now and their latest brain child TCS Connect is offering Pakistan a convenient online shopping option. Dealing in smart phones to kitchen blenders, TCS Connect offers almost everything.  Using their comprehensive online website, you can now have anything of your choosing delivered right to your doorstep.

TCS offers multiple payment options like credit cards, cash on delivery and very soon will be adopting Easy Paisa, relieving the average Pakistani consumer of any misgivings about online shopping.

TCS needed to stay in touch with its customers to send them friendly reminders on the latest products and deals. Through Pring, TCS built trust and established a healthy relationship with shoppers. TCS Pringers also receive confirmation messages on successful booking of orders and delivery, creating confidence between the brand and the customer. With TCS and its remarkable reputation for timely deliveries, and Pring as the perfect conduit between the brand and its clients, there’s no reason why this mix won’t be a leading force in the Pakistani online market.

Posted by Sheikh Omer Zaheer