Dhaka to host World Marketing Summit in March

FE Report The leading practitioners on brand strategy have laid stress on building a single mind, thought and unique identity of Bangladesh to brand the country brightening its image abroad. At a 'Communication Summit' held in the city recently, they also told the FE that the country has firstly to be clear that what it wanted to send to the audiences' minds. Bangladesh Brand Forum (BBF) and City Bank Ltd in association with Cannes Lions organised the "Communication Summit-2011" in a city hotel ahead of the 'World Marketing Summit (WMS)', to be held in Dhaka in March next year, to focus on the growing importance of communication irrespective of the nature of business. The branding experts found huge opportunity for Bangladesh to present itself to other countries through the ensuing WMS and are seeing the summit as a platform of the country's public and private sectors to start an action plan to promote education and health agenda. The day-long communication summit was participated by top Management, Head of Marketing, Account Management Personnel, Media Planners and Creative Heads from corporate, advertising, PR and media agencies. Manfred Abraham, Head of Brands of Interbrand Global, UK, Charu Aggarwal Harish, Regional Planning Director, Grey Group Asia Pacific, delivered lectures at the summit. The foreign branding experts, K Mahmood Sattar, Managing Director & CEO of the City Bank Ltd and Syed Ferhat Anwar and Professor of IBA and chief adviser of BBF, took part in a panel discussion at the summit. Charu Aggarwal Harish in an interview told the FE that a country needs to have a unique identity, which would really connect the population at some points for presenting its image and branding it outside the country. About the 'World Marketing Summit' going to be hosted by Bangladesh in March next year, she said the summit was a great initiative, a big opportunity for Bangladesh to make a platform, where country's public and private sectors could come together and move ahead. "It (summit) is a starting point," she said, adding that the public and private sectors could start a real action plan at the programme. "Branding a nation is very much like branding any other product. If you don't brand, nobody will look in you," she added. Manfred Abraham said that, "It (branding a country) is not easy. You have to be really clear that what you want to send to the audiences' minds. A country needs to have a single mind and thoughts, where there are so many opinions." Shariful Islam, editor and founder of BBF, said "World Marketing Summit (WMS)" was a global initiative of the world's most influential marketer Professor Philip Kotler, co-hosted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs with the mission of creating a better world through marketing. BBF is a partner of the WMS. The first WMS event will be held on March 1, 2 and 3 of 2012 at the Bangabandhu International Conference Centre, he said, adding that the summit would be a platform for the brightest minds in marketing to share their views on developing marketing practices. Being inspired by the country's promising human energy in his visit in Dhaka this year, Kotler, who has been thinking for long to arrange such a summit, decided to hold WMS's first event in Dhaka, Mr Shariful Islam said. He further said that Kotler's idea was to work with marketing principles backed by business models to reduce poverty and attain MDGs. According to the model, behavioral change was the key for attainment of MDGs focusing on needs and wants of the stakeholders that included customers, he added. The summit's objective is to bring together global leaders of marketing and branding to discuss how marketing philosophies, ethos and insights could work to fund innovative solutions to some challenges of the world on education, health, food security, human resources development and environment and climate change. During the three-day long summit, the experts will work to find out creative solutions of the challenges and the solutions found will be piloted in seven incubators (countries) through academic institutions before implementation for general public. The incubators are: Bangladesh (education and health), India (education), China (health), Brazil & UK (green clean economy) and USA & Australia (food security). Shariful Islam said, "The BBF's Communication Summit will help us to find out solutions of those challenges."