Porter’s Five Forces of Media Industry in Pakistan

Media industry in Pakistan earned a revenue of Rupees 32.06 billion in 2011. There are approximately 250 active newspapers, 90 TV and 100 FM radio channels (including 25 campus radio stations) and 17,000 journalists in the industry (there were only 2,000 in 2001).

I have tried to analyse the industry through Porter’s Five Forces. The results are given below. Please feel free to share your feedback.

Threat of New Competition

• Entry barriers (medium)
• Exit barriers (low)
• Capital requirement (high)
• Switching or sunk costs (high)
• Access to distribution (high)
• Customer loyalty (low)
• Industry profitability (high)

Threat of Substitutes

• Internet (medium)
• Mobile (low)

Bargaining Power of Customers

• Customers can easily switch (high)
• Customers have easy access to the world media (low)
• Substitutes, like, internet and mobile, are available (medium)

Bargaining Power of Suppliers

• Power of suppliers (low)
• Power of content providers (low)

Competitive Rivalry

• Costly and perishable products (high)
• Diversified and influential rivals (high)

Conclusion
Porter’s Five Forces analysis reveals:

• Threat of new competition is medium to high
• Threat of substitutes is low to medium
• Power of customers is medium to high
• Power of suppliers is low
• Competition in the industry is high

Overall, profitability of media industry in Pakistan lies between medium and high.

Clipping Service Database Template

After more than two years of experimentation, an MS Access media clipping service database template, Clipping Service Database Template (CSDT), is ready to be shared with you. Using this basic concept, advanced MS Access users can improve it further by adding new features. Considering the 2GB size limit of an MS Access database file, the major advantage of the template is the insertion of clipping images as paths, enabling users to have a very low-size database file, and also allowing them to save even high-resolution clippings. Step-by-step instructions on how to use the template are given below. Users may also like to watch the video tutorial.

1. Download the template file and double click to save it as an ‘.accdb’ file (please use Access 2010). Firstly, go to the Media page and insert a media organisation. Here, we insert daily Dawn.

2. Now go to the Clippings Entry page and fill in the information. You will notice when you select Dawn under Media Org field, related fields are auto filled. Duration field is for the audio and video clips only. Event and release titles can also be entered. You can also edit list items in different fields, e.g., Source, Entity or department, Initiated by, Updated by, etc. Paths of clipping images should be saved as per the column size. Use Right to Left text field for languages written right to left, e.g., Urdu, Sindhi, Balochi, Seraiki, Punjabi, Kashmiri, Persian, Arabic, etc.

3. Now go to the Circulation page and filter the query. Suppose, you want to circulate clip ID no. 1. Open the query in design mode and type ‘In (1)’ in the criteria:

4. Open the Clippings Circulation form to see the clip or print as a pdf file.

5. Go to the Reports page to see different types of auto generated reports in pivot chart view.

Auto filling or auto populating MS Access fields in a form

Download sample database

Required: MS Access 2010

1. Create the required fields in your main table (tblTable2) similar to the data type of other table (tblTable1), where from you want to extract data for auto filling (text fields, numbers fields, etc). You may also keep the field names similar.

2. In tblTable2 design mood, click the tab ‘Lookup’ and select ‘Combo Box’. Go to ‘Row Source’ and click the three eclipses to switch to query mood. Select tblTable1 and double click the matching field; save and close. Repeat the same procedure for all the other fields.

3. Prepare a form based on tblTable2. Among the auto filling fields, select the main field (e.g., MediaOrganisation). Go to the tab ‘Design’ > ‘Properties’ > Data > open ‘Row Source’ and select all the fields in the query that you want to auto fill. Close and go to ‘Properties’ > ‘Format’ and fill in ‘Column Count’ and ‘Column Widths’ (e.g. Column Count: 3; Column Width: 1”,1”,1”).

4. Go to the tab ‘Event’, ‘After Update’, open ‘code builder’ and type the following code:

Option Compare Database
Private Sub [combo box name with the prefix cbo]_AfterUpdate()
End Sub

Private Sub [main filed name]_AfterUpdate() [this is column 0]
Me.[field 1 of tblTable2] = Me.[ main filed name].Column(1)
Me. [field 2 of tblTable2] = Me. [main filed name].Column(2)
End Sub

Or copy the following code:

Option Compare Database
Private Sub cboMediaOrganisation_AfterUpdate()
End Sub

Private Sub MediaOrganisation_AfterUpdate()
Me.Medium = Me.MediaOrganisation.Column(1)
Me.Language = Me.MediaOrganisation.Column(2)
End Sub

5. Now try the form by selecting a name in the field MediaOrganisation. You will notice that ‘Medium’ and ‘Language’ fields are auto filled.

RS Multilingual Keyboard Layout (RSMKL)

RSMKL is a single phonetic keyboard for typing Urdu, Balochi, Seraiki, Punjabi, Kashmiri, Persian and Arabic in Windows. If you use standard English or MBSindhi keyboard, this is the right layout for you as you can find English character equivalents easily, e.g., a ا, A آ, b ب, B ٻ, d د, D ڈ, h ہ, H ح, n ن, N ں, r ر, R ڑ, s س, S ش, t ت, T ٹ, z ز, Z ذ, etc.

You may use either ن or ڻ for Punjabi Shahmukhi or Seraiki letter rnoon. Another shape in use for this letter, tta over noon, is not supported by Unicode at this moment.

How to install the keyboard layout

Download the zip file, unzip it and click on the setup.exe to install the keyboard.

If Urdu language is not installed (Windows XP), open Regional and Language Options in Control Panel. On the Languages tab, under Supplemental language support, select the Install files for complex script and right-to-left languages check box. Click OK or Apply. After the files are installed, you must restart your computer.

If Urdu is installed, then on the Languages tab, under Text services and input languages, click Details. Under Installed services, click Add. In the Input language list, click on Urdu to add. Now, in the Keyboard layout/IME list, click on RS or RSMLK to add. Click OK on all opened Windows to close.

Now you can select UR from the language bar on the taskbar and type in Urdu, Balochi, Seraiki, Punjabi, Kashmiri, Persian and Arabic.

Follow @RasoolSarang

Managing Press Releases

Managing post-event press releases

What could be the best way to manage post-event press releases? Options could be: (1) collect content, including speakers’ quotes in advance, prepare a draft, get it reviewed and release it timely on the event day; or (2) take notes during the sessions on the event day and then incorporate changes into the draft. If we follow the latter procedure, we may not be able to meet our deadlines (editing, review, approval, translating into local language(s) and releasing to media). Usually, late releases do not get a good coverage.

I posed these questions to PR experts on Linkedin:

Cristina Falcão, Creative Problem Solver – I DO IT – Pharmaceutical Manager – Change Management:

“Option one is the only possible one (of the two) if you want to have an event; all the people will be expecting it, it is standard procedure.”

Maria Marsala, CEO/Strategic Planning Business Coach; Building 6 & 7-figure financial sector businesses; Int’l Speaker:

“Before creating a PR, I would add:
Determine the best pitch and story to weave through the PR
Make sure that you’re not creating an ad in disguise.

But if instead you’re creating an event’s announcement, that’s not a PR.”

Faculty and staff articles for media

A few basic questions arise here:

How an organisation’s PR department should manage faculty and staff articles for media, if organisation is acknowledged? If they need to review them, what should be the criteria: just check (i) if anything against organisational policies; and (ii) typing and grammatical mistakes? Does reviewing an article require rewriting, if needed? Should the PR accept a badly written piece for a review? Should the faculty and staff release their articles to media directly or through the PR department?

I posed above questions to the PR experts available on Linkedin:

Sally Hems, Managing Director at Oakleaf Communications:

“Given the amount of articles and IP now required from the HE sector, I suggest empowering them to take responsibility for their articles. Otherwise this will add an extra layer of bureaucracy.

The PR dept would be best used focusing on reputation management and identifying influencers to seed articles to – rather than spending time writing articles.

To nip any problems in the bud, you could provide explicit (but not overly wordy) guidelines for articles. This could cover suggested structure, tone of voice and of course, spell check! And if there is still concern, writing training may help.”

Andy M Turner, Founder, Six Sigma Public Relations Ltd, expert B2B communications consultant:

“Anything badly written will be rejected by the destination, which will not reflect well on the author. So you should find writers are only too willing to take up a review and sense check offer from your team – provided you are adding value.”

Related Links:
Op-Ed Articles: How to Write and Place Them

Using social media as a PR tool

No doubt, Public Relations (PR) is not a direct selling or marketing. But when it comes to media relations, PR is a very low-cost and effective tool. Most of the media personnel are connected through social media. They prefer visiting Facebook, Twitter or Linkedin, rather then opening hundreds of their emails.

PR may trigger a campaign/service or keep it alive in public and media even after a marketing campaign/budget is over.

Marketing is not just selling. A negative news in media could spoil everything. I remember Lays chips had to run a huge campaign to counteract a news published in some low circulated newspapers in Pakistan that it was using a haram (not eatable as per the Islamic law) ingredient.

Let me share with you, nowadays, some media personnel even don’t like an association with a direct selling/marketing person.

Leaders of a company have every right to make a policy as per their professional judgment, but I would humbly advise them to spend some time reading about Marketing and PR to understand the new trends.

Related links:
http://www.voices.umich.edu/docs/Social-Media-Guidelines.pdf
http://www.sfu.ca/clf/Social_Media/index.html