I'm the founder of CTL360. Design superheroes - We, build brands, design for social impact & are committed to eliminating ugly designs & bland concepts.
If you live on the planet earth, by now you should’ve heard about the 4 Game of Thrones episodes leaking hours before the First episode was said to debut.
The entire world including myself, went CRAZY at the thought of not one but FOUR episodes of the most anticipated show on the planet being right there for us to watch, so I did what any normal human being with questionable will power would do.... Downloaded torrents. Obviously.
Of course, binge-watching all four episodes in 4 hours was absolutely the best birthday present I could ask for, but it does not come without its downfall - the fact that I have to wait 4 weeks to see Episode 5.
A few people and myself do have this theory, that HBO intended to “leak” these 4 episodes for the pure simple reason it would create shock value, instant buzz and drive die-hard GoT fans CRAZY with joy, and intentional or not, this was pure evil genius.
The question remains, why? What do they have planned if anything at all?
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“Tragedy in life normally comes with betrayal and compromise, and trading on your integrity and not having dignity in life. That’s really where failure comes.”
Earlier this year, around February, I got an email from a, (let's just call her "woman" for lack of a better more colourful word), named Sideeqah Brown regarding her business, Beauty is Couture and how she wanted a fabulous website to accompany her vision.
I made the proposal, she accepted, paid her deposit and the work began on the 1st of March, 2014. During that time, we become sort of friendly, talking about our lives and what's going on, I heard her heartfelt story of how life had been so cruel to her on every account and I wanted to go the extra mile to help her business become a success.
I worked day and night on her Shopify website, making sure every bit was done to the T.
Graphics et al.
Upload over 1300 products? sure why not. I complied with all her demands, her calls in the middle of my night, changes to the website structure which were completed initially and every bit of the requests made, no matter how bizarre and haphazard.
I love my work, I take pride in it. When I work on anyone's website I always think whether I'd want to showcase the work in my portfolio, whether the work I do will bring me new leads. Needless to say, I put my heart and soul into each project I do and til now, touch wood I haven't had any complaints.
Who wanted me to jump through hoops, do free design posts for Facebook and Instagram that were NOT part of the website project. I complied, because I wanted nothing but success for her.
There are several more where these came from and then some.
When most of the project was over, as per standard protocol I always take the balance payment, to avoid any delays or misunderstandings. So on 29th of May she paid the balance! All was well, as she was thrilled about her website, I was thrilled that SHE was thrilled and vowed to keep helping her until her launch, which was scheduled for the 24th of April.
She had some final tasks for me to complete before the 24th, all of which were done including spending 5 hours on Skype, training her. Making her add products and navigation over and over and over and over again until I thought she got the hang of it. Which she did!
Then she wanted gift cards as well. So I complied, for I felt like I'm helping a friend out.
That's my problem, I get so involved in my work that I forget the line between sticking to the project and going over and above what I should be doing. Usually it pays off! But some people are never satisfied. Ever.
All was done
it was time for me to move on to the new projects I had signed up for. I felt satisfied that she had her website launched and ready to go! I intended on keeping on as an advisor and helping her whenever possible whether it was related to marketing, packaging or just being there as a friend for support.
It was 60 days well spent, or so I thought.
In any world, there are rules. Weekends are not work days, calling someone at 4 am is not appropriate. Knowing the time difference you cannot hound someone middle of the night as to "why I didn't answer an email immediately"
Or wait, maybe Rules is not the word. Etiquette. Basic bloody etiquettes.
So I get a call sometime first week of May, middle of the night - countless emails and messages on how "I'm such a big game player" that I handed her website over to her and wouldn't be available 24/7
In no country or industry, is it ok to assume that a project will remain forever open. Once a website is handed over, if you go in and mess it up several days later, it's your mess to fix or pay for me to fix it. But Miss Siddeeqah Brown refused to accept project closure, even after confirming on several accounts that she loved the website, had launched and was running it and promoting it.
The last thing I said to her that night was a checklist of all that had been completed, to which she had no reply. Prior to that she was abusive and accusatory and just plain unprofessional.
I was taken aback at the way she conducted business, and it all made sense to me now. All those weeks she would tell me how she's the victim of different people reporting her on Facebook, or how brands didn't want to work with her etc - it made me realise, the problem was HER! picking fights and causing unpleasantries was her forte!
I bid her farewell, stating my job was done and she can further hire someone to fix what she made a mess of and that was it.
a week later, she pulled a chargeback via her credit card company for both her advance and balance payments, which Paypal took out of my money for new projects. It's on hold at the moment as they are investigating this fraudulent claim of hers. Regardless, all proof has been submitted including PSD files and other artwork done for her - NONE of which she has nor can claim she had it done from someone else.
Funny thing is, this delusional person thinks she can get away with taking the money back AND keeping the website.
I mean it's ok, it's only money - there's plenty more to be made, but this experience really did teach me not to underestimate anyone. I didn't know such levels of unethical existed until I met her.
But you know what they say
"Welcome to the Karma Cafe, there are no menus, you get served what you deserve"
Let me start by saying Standard Chartered Bank Pakistan's latest "Think Outside the Bank" TVC for Breeze totally blew me away.
If you haven't watched it, watch it here
I loved it for the simple fact that they've merged mediums like Guerrilla, Digital and TV all into one successful campaign. It effortlessly gets the message across and is even more fun to watch.
Then I found out it's "loosely inspired" by the Virgin Atlantic "No Ordinary park bench" from some 10 months ago in Manhattan, NY.
(for those of you who cannot access youtube, follow this link to view the Virgin Atlantic TVC > watch
It left me a little disappointed because while watching the SCB ad I was pretty sure this was Cannes Lions worthy.
Now usually I have pretty harsh opinions on ripoffs and "inspired by" ads but the fact that SCB took the risk of doing something totally different, makes me want to not judge them for total lack of originality and instead hope that they too in the future come up with their own ideas along the same lines.
Another point to be noted, though the SCB ad looks really really awesome, there are bits and pieces of it that look staged. For example the women featured, the man featured - all dressed to the T, hair and makeup did and though we'd all like to believe it to be totally "random" - it really is not.
In comparison you see the Virgin Atlantic ad the people who sit on the park benches are dressed super casually, slightly messy hair - which is the way most people are on a daily basis. No where do I believe everyone is dressed to impress with not a hair out of place. Maybe SCB should've paid more attention to making it look more realistic and random, or maybe this is just a good learning experience for them.
Either way, I enjoyed the commercial so props to them.
Finally 3G and 4G has bestowed its long-awaited presence upon Pakistan. We're finally joining the rest of the world and soon saying goodbye to the bane of my existence aka EDGE.
I would imagine this opportunity to be golden for our telco ad campaigns, however what I've seen is nothing short of meh.
I really did expect better, I expected more excitement but all I really get from each campaign is "look how well we ripped off an international campaign"
Let's start with Zong, as they've won the license for 4G, one would only imagine the kind of awesome campaigns you could launch with being the first in the country. But no. Zong decided it's much easier to just take "inspiration" from an Audi Ad. and by Inspiration I mean, completely and totally 100% rip off their concept, their communication without so much as an alteration to at least attempt to make it look original.
Voila
Look familiar?
Audi vs BMW in the ad wars has been nothing short of spectacular, it's completely entertaining, out of the box and ORIGINAL!
Now I'm sure prior to their ad wars, others probably thought about it but passed on the idea, thinking it won't work. It takes guts to take a risk, and usually if the idea is intelligent enough, it works.
It's sad that Zong didn't feel confident enough to actually come up with something from scratch.
If that wasn't enough, they went on ahead to make even less of an effort in their other ad
The other telcos have launched their campaigns too for the measly 3G, and there's really not much I can say since they bore me to my very core.
Telenor - simple, unimaginative, but probably the least of all evils, they clearly say - look we have 3G but zero imagination. That's ok. Good job for not ripping off another campaign Telenor. Bravo
Mobilink - the English 3 and the Urdu G (jeem) though a clever concoction, I find pretty blah, sometimes something can be sooo creative that it just does not work. Sorry Mobilink, really you can do better.
UFone - I suppose this is my favourite, considering there's slim pickins all around. It doesn't seem ripped off (I could be wrong) it's a little messy, but it gets the message of "speed" across pretty clearly.
Overall I'm pretty darn disappointed with what they'd all done. Let's hope when Warid jumps aboard the bandwagon they really put more thought into their campaign.
