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.

Additionally, you will notice in the presentation that there are some slides that I did not cover. The slides relate to market segmentation, which I am assuming that you have done in your marketing and consumer behavior courses.

In this lecture, we also introduce you to a process we use at emagine called Idea Proofing, which allows us to break business ideas down into relevant components to determine how viable they are and whether we want to be involved. Idea proofing is a simple concept to grasp but very difficult to implement and use because it requires objective understanding, industry knowledge and market research. All things that the entrepreneur should include in their business plan, but as an evaluator, you must also have the knowledge to know what is correct and what is colored with emotion.

The Business Plan Canvas is a 1 page document that maps all the necessary information that you need to write a winning business plan without the fluff of emotion and passion. In this lecture, we talk about the first 2 parts of the 9 pieces that make up the business plan – Customer Segmentation and the Value Proposition.

The first lecture – New Venture Creation – An Overview – gives you an understanding of the problems that entrepreneurs must struggle with in Pakistan, ranging from support networks and financing to getting the business idea right. I have left some information out of the slides, because we will be covering it in other lectures so there is no need for repetition.

This lecture also sets the understanding of the state of entrepreneurship in Pakistan and its reasons for not being as successful domestically. Successful entrepreneurship requires a number of factors ranging from government support, active financial opportunities and new client availability. Without these things, entrepreneurship will not succeed in an economy or nation.

Lastly, we move forward into understanding how to move beyond these barriers and build successful ventures setting the foundations for future lectures.

In the modern age of marketing, too many marketers build very general profiles for their target markets in the hope that they will get a higher return on their marketing message. Sadly, this is not the case and most messages end up being wasted on people that are either not able to afford the offering or not interested in it at all. When your marketing is untargeted, you may as well just light your marketing budget on fire because it has the same result.

In the next two presentations, we will help you to understand your customers and learn how to properly profile and segment them so that your marketing message and activities deliver results for the brand, both in the mind and at the bottomline. In the this presentation, we will discuss the different types of customers and their characteristics, along with building an understanding of how to segment our market for more effective results. In the second lecture, we will learn how to build a proper customer profile based on demographics, psychographics, habits, interests and behaviors. These are both a lead up to the Customer Lifetime Value discussion that will be the third presentation of the series.

As always, feel free to post any questions or comments below. We are here to help you understand this material better and implement it in your organizations.

With this presentation, we start moving towards the financial metrics, which will be covered in the following weeks. In this presentation, we cover take rates, acquisition costs, demand generation marketing and the marketing scorecard. Each of these help you to understand that success of the marketing campaigns for costs and returns.

In the next presentation, we will delve into understanding the customer over a series of 2 presentations, which will move into the discussion about calculating Customer Lifetime Value.

If you have any comments or queries, please post them below.

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.