Marketing and branding have evolved a lot in Bangladesh over the years. Most of the large companies have started to evolve from being a product centric organizations to a more customer centric organizations. Branding has evolved from being promoting a logo, color or symbol to promoting promise and trust around the brands and service excellence. Corporates have started to understand that only producing good products will not be enough. One also needs to be consistent in delivering its promise and needs to be a good corporate citizen to be able to get consumers’ favor.
With our lives now being largely digitalized and engulfed in social media platforms, we have experienced the need for content marketing by the leading brands to stay relevant and visible to the target consumer group. The evolution of technology has changed the entire ball game in the area of Marketing and Branding. The industry is in dire need of developing a new set of capabilities for the organizations to keep up with the pace of this changing media scenario. MSB, along with its partner organizations will bring necessary training and learnings for the industry to keep us updated with the outside world.
Marketing has to evolve now from 3.0 to 4.0 to keep up with the rapid digitalization of society. The fundamentals of Marketing 3.0 will not change while transiting to Marketing 4.0. It is like the Human Values. Regardless of which stage of development you are in, the fundamental values remain the same. So will be the case for Marketing. Brands will still have to connect to the Mind, Heart, and Spirit of the consumers to be able to deliver business objectives, which are the core of Marketing 3.0. The change will come in how brands will communicate effectively to establish engagement with the consumers in the era of digital and social media where attention span is very low. Designing the right content will be the key for the brands to ensure effective communication and stay relevant in the lives of the consumers. Organizations will have lesser and lesser control over media. On one hand, positive and engaging works complimented by a good user experience will generate individual brand advocates; at the same time, any negative brand experience will have the potential danger to generate uncontrollable negative PR. Ensuring transparency for the brands will no longer be a choice, but a fact that organizations will have to live with. Organizations will need to build the digital capability within the Marketing function to stay in tune with the digital consumers. In my opinion, these are the key points for consideration in the transition towards Marketing 4.0.
Marketing Society of Bangladesh (MSB) has a strong role to play in the evolving time. MSB is a non-profit, non-government and non-political organization that was established on 3rd January 2013 to be the strongest platform for Marketing and Sales professionals in the country. It was founded by our respected teacher of the Institute of Business Administration, Dhaka University Prof. Syed Ferhat Anwar. Currently, the Board of MSB has renowned personalities like Prof. Dr. Mijanur Rahman, Prof. Dr. A. K. Enamul Huq, Mr. Asif Iqbal among other renowned academicians, professionals, and entrepreneurs.
MSB is a member of the Asia Marketing Federation (AMF), the apex networking body of all the marketing associations in Asia. There are 17 member countries in AMF, which include Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam, and Macau.
MSB actively promotes Bangladesh to the world through the network of AMF. It showcases the good works of our local companies, brands and talented individuals in the field of business, marketing and entrepreneurship to the entire Asian Marketing Fraternity by participating in different competitions, which resulted in winning awards. Nowadays we get a lot of queries from different countries to learn more about Bangladeshi companies and about their businesses and marketing practices, which is a big achievement for MSB.
Besides AMF, MSB also works as the strategic partner of Bangladesh Brand Forum (BBF) where it actively provides thought leadership in many of BBF’s projects and events at the local and international levels. MSB had also been an active partner to BMD since the beginning.
The idea of MSB is to be the platform to play the role of catalyst in the industry for enhancing the latest knowledge on Marketing, Branding, Entrepreneurship and promote the application of responsible Marketing practices which can transform society, country, and the world at large.
