Today, we are proud to launch the new iMedia website and introduce the new brand identity to our clients and to you, our existing and potential clients, as part of a major creative shift in our team structure.

When Khalid Muhammad, emagine’s Group Managing Director, was asked about the new site and logo, he said -

iMedia has been a cornerstone to the growth of the emagine group, along with emagine consulting and tesla communications. While the team at iMedia does a great deal of work outside the emagine framework, we are especially pleased with the new dynamic that is being created between the emagine group and iMedia. They will no longer be a secondary part of the emagine family, but one of the shining stars that we push forward for everyone to take in and work with.

iMedia’s Principal Sabahat Muhammad’s comment on the new logo and dynamic -

For several years, iMedia has hovered between the definition of a full-fledged design house, and a freelancer working with other freelancers. The transient and constantly fluttering image of a butterfly, therefore, was both appropriate and, well, really pretty to look at. With a slight adjustment in philosophy, though, we feel the need to change the company’s window display. We are more streamlined, more minimalistic, more engaged in the gestalt of design, and working much closer with the emagine group. We think the new logo covers all of that.

While emagine will continue to provide marketing and brand strategic support to the iMedia team for it’s clients, today we are proud to release the butterfly that iMedia has been.

From 1980–2005, firms less than five years old accounted for all net job growth in the United States. Entrepreneurship is the vision for the future – an emagine contest for students of Pakistani universities – Get Your Business Funded & Help Pakistan to recover!

We have always believed that helping motivated individuals launch their start-ups is the best way to help any economy grow and prosper. New businesses bring new revenue, capital expenditures and new employment opportunities – they are, have been and always will be the backbone of any economy’s ability to grow, develop and expand.

The problem that most entrepreneurs have is that they don’t receive the proper guidance while formulating their ideas and concepts, developing their business models, writing their business plans or building their operational strategy, which leads them to exit the market just as quick as they entered.

We want to stop this from happening!

In the past, the emagine group has sponsored and overseen many business plans that were limited to specific markets, industries or locations. Our process required entrepreneurs to send executive summaries, business plans and other materials as part of an evaluation process on the road to getting their businesses incubated or launched by the emagine group. Not this time.

For the 2011 National Business Plan Competition, we are changing our model and process. It starts with becoming a fan of the emagine group page on Facebook so that we can regularly update you about what is happening and progress with the competition. The second reason that we want you to follow the emagine group fan page is because this time our competition will be crowdsourced!

What is crowdsourcing?

Crowdsourcing lets the market decide which business idea is most needed in the market today, rather than our stuffy consultants reading business plans and trying to understand which would cater to market demands better. What does that mean? You help us decide which business ideas, concepts and business plans make it through the process and why. The voting will be done both on Facebook and on the emagine group website so you have to make sure that you are a follower of our fan page and a registered user on the website.

So how does it all work?

First, the competition is only open to students of Pakistanis universities. We will be running another competition later in the year for working professionals that have visions of entrepreneurship, but this round is for university students only.

The competition runs in 2 rounds:

• Round One – Initial Business Ideas (1 month)
• Round Two – Business Plan Preparation (1 month)

Round One – Initial Business Ideas

For the first 3 weeks of the competition, entrepreneurs will post their business ideas in 100 words or less on this page of the emagine group website. These ideas will be cross posted on the emagine group Facebook page so that people can comment and vote there as well as on the company website.

Entrepreneurs will also be required to send an Executive Summary (no more than 4 pages) to nbp@emagine-group.com so that we have a better idea of the business concept, operational model and capital requirements.

After the first 3 weeks, all the business ideas, with comments will be compiled and sorted out into individual pages on the emagine website, where people will be able to vote for their favorite ideas. We will take your 100 word introduction, information from the executive summary and comments from visitors for the content for each page, but if you would like us to add any more information, please let us know and we will consider adding it.

Voting will be open for 1 week where the entrepreneurs themselves must be involved in the discussions. Entrepreneurs will need to answer questions, clarify information and help people better understand why their business idea/concept would be the best for the market today. If you are not involved in the discussions, you will be disqualified from the competition.

The business idea/concepts getting the most votes will be moved to the next round.

Round Two – Business Plans

In round two, you will need to send a formal business plan. When we reach round two, we will offer a template that details the information we are looking for and give you guidance on how to bring it all together. At this point, emagine will become part of the process helping you to develop your business plan, understand requirements and assure the inclusion of all the required information.

You will have 3 weeks to prepare and send your business plans to the emagine group. We will take 3 weeks to review and assess the plans sending you questions that we have for clarification.

The top 10 business plans will be asked to develop a PowerPoint presentation that will be crowdsourced to the public for voting again. The top 5 will be considered for funding and incubation.

How long will the competition run for?

We expect to announce the winners of the competition by the end of October.

The Rules

1. The crowd decides who the winners are at each stage, but them deciding depends on how well you present your concepts, models and capital requirements.
2. the emagine group will not override the crowd decision unless we feel that the business, in the form presented, can not be successful. In these cases, we will work with the entrepreneurs to bring their business into the best format for the market prior to finalizing them as a winner.
3. Some business plans will be pulled from the competition if we feel that the ideas presented are outstanding and can be made successful immediately. These special business plans will not be put to a crowd vote, but will be assigned to a consultant at emagine that will work with the entrepreneurs to bring it to market.
4. At every stage, the entrepreneurs will be required to take part in the discussions about their business ideas. If you are not part of the discussion, your business plan will be dropped from the competition and not considered any further.

You can post questions on either the Facebook page or this page.

Over the last 8 years, the emagine group has grown and diversified at a very quick pace allowing us to offer tailored services to our domestic and international clientele, but now we are looking to streamline and package our services to assure better service delivery.

As of June 1st, tesla communications will be absorbed into the main emagine group along with its services. As you can see, tesla communications is no longer listed on the emagine website and over the next month the services will be integrated into emagine’s core platform. While tesla communications will continue to offer customized technology solutions to our clients, it will cease to exist as an independent brand within the emagine portfolio of companies.

Additionally, and the most major change at emagine, the venture capital division will be spun off into a separate entity that will focus purely on the entrepreneurs and developing their business ventures.While we have greatly enjoyed our interactions and engagement with entrepreneurs, it is time to cater to their service requirements in a more detailed and interactive manner facilitating stronger venture development and a better resource group to develop and build the organizations.

We believe that these changes will allow the team at emagine to focus more on its core service platform with research, consulting, marketing, branding and graphic design services, and allow the new venture to cater more specifically to the entrepreneurial market and their demands. Keep watching this space for updates on the launch of the new venture.

Scott and the readers at Internet Evolution provided some great encouragement and insight into how we can make our site better for you, as a visitor, so that information is more easily accessible and the focus is more on you, rather than us!

The updated design doesn’t just look better than the original design. The ability to add and update content at the drop of a hat will significantly ease the burden on emagine’s staff and keep the overall content fresh and relevant for site visitors and customers.

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My only suggestion would be to eliminate the third section because it doesn’t contain any particularly compelling, high-impact content, which is a must for any homepage. If that section was removed, the social media links would be more visible to site visitors, and a feed from the company’s social media stream could be added. This would further boost the currency of the site and show visitors that emagine is actively participating in its social forums.

We greatly appreciate the review and feedback that we are getting from the readers at Internet Evolution and will be looking at incorporating their insights into the site over the next few weeks. If you take the time to visit the site, you will see that our Group Managing Director, Khalid Muhammad, is taking an active part in the discussions to better understand how to incorporate the ideas and insights fluidly into the emagine site.

Cheers to Scott and the readers at Internet Evolution for helping us make this a better experience for you!

At emagine, our industry experience spans across multiple disciplines including marketing, branding, venture capital and technology. While most of our knowledge is shared at corporate offices and college campuses, now we are making the same knowledge available to visitors of the emagine website to help you make better decisions to deliver better results.

We have always taken pride in the return we give to the communities that we are involved in and it was only natural that we extend that value to those of you who visit our website, whether it be to hire a marketing and branding agency, a graphic design team, a web development team or a technology specialist. We firmly believe that you will be able to gain a great deal of information and knowledge from the numerous presentations and we invite you to share you thoughts and questions to make the conversations better.

You can visit the Thought Leadership section here.

Using either a browser add-on–for Firefox, Chrome, or Safari–or a native application on sites whose publishers have opted-in (like emagine), Web surfers can now see what other people are saying and share their own thoughts in real-time 0n services like Twitter, Facebook, and Google Buzz–about the pages and the topics they’re exploring.

How Does It Work?

After you have installed the add-on for your browser, you can login via any of the social networks and start reading and sharing. For sites like emagine’s, a simple window that pops up when you click on the little Marginize tab that sits on the side of the page shows the real time discussion around the topic, and gives users the ability to easily jump into that conversation by tweeting or posting to Facebook or by responding to what others have already said.

While we know it will take some time for things to get running strong, we invite you to join in the conversation here at emagine!

Have you wondered how you can use interactive media and social networks to better build your brand and reach more potential customers? Have you been thinking about how to better brand your Facebook page to get more interactions with your fans? Do you get confused when people talk about user-generated content, video streaming and podcasts? Or maybe you have wondered what the difference between interactive and traditional marketing are and how they can help your business?

Well wonder no more!

The emagine group will be offering its Interactive Marketing 101 course online starting from the 1st March. Every Tuesday and Thursday, we will post a new lecture for your consumption and discussion. Each lecture will cover different facets of interactive marketing from:

• The differences between traditional and interactive marketing
• The various platforms that are part of the interactive marketing industry
• Developing your online strategy in conjunction with your traditional marketing
• Building a budget that assures results, not just spending
• The essentials of search engine optimization (SEO) and how to do it correctly
• How to leverage each platform depending on your organizational goals and objectives
• How to monitor and analyze traffic across your marketing communications
• Learning how to target customers based on context, behavior and buying habits
• Calculating the ROI of your interactive marketing investment
• And much more…

To sign up for the course and participate, please fill out the comment form below and you will be updated when the first lecture is posted on March 1st. This course is free of charge.

UPDATE – The course start date has been rescheduled due to the high number of registrants that we have for the course. We are working on testing new technology to be able to support the high number of registrants effectively.

Khalid Muhammad presented a guideline for working with online and digital media to build brand value and interact with consumers called “Getting Right With Your Community.” The presentation provided an overview of social media, platforms, and a clear process for taking a brand digital.

If your interested in downloading a copy of the presentation for your own review, access it from issuu or this link.

If you would like to have a copy, you can download it here.

Originally, Cotton & Silk only offered its diversified line of men’s kurtas for every occasion from casual to formal wear from its flagship outlet on Zamzama Road in Karachi, but after achieving a strong market position the team at Cotton & Silk chose to expand its Karachi footprint with a new outlet. The new Dolmen Mall outlet provides the residents of the Tariq Road and Gulshan areas with a more affordable, modern brand for their traditional apparel needs.

Working with iMedia, the team at Cotton & Silk crafted a series of outdoor advertisements that are strategically placed in the various areas of the Karachi skyline to draw its target market to its new outlet. Additionally, to bring more attention to the flagship store on Zamzama, a secondary set of outdoor advertisements were designed to highlight not only the site but also the quality of the designs and materials. All the advertisements feature photographs of some of the best designs in the apparel line that would appeal to the discerning Karachi customer base.

To view the designs done for Cotton & Silk, visit our portfolio.