There are few people, online or otherwise, who would have not heard about Sabeen Mahmud and The Second Floor. And the reason I can say that so confidently is because Sabeen not only preached New Media and online promotional marketing, but practiced it. Probably the person to have had the longest, most prolific career in New Media, well before the concept even existed, she came across the Apple computer and it hasn’t stopped making her heart go bump.
Here’s an amazing story of how Sabeen powers T2F, the brick and mortar café, through the power of the click. “The idea had been brewing in my mind for a while,” starts off Sabeen as I eagerly grab onto my cup of hot cappuccino. Sabeen’s involvement with technology started off when she was very young. “When I went to study at Kinnaird College, and everyone else was socializing or studying over the weekends, I was out looking for a printer who would print the college newspaper I had designed.”
When she came back to Karachi, it was off to Enabling Technologies, one of Pakistan’s pioneer software development companies who worked on multimedia projects. “ZAK (Zaheer Kidvai) was just an amazing person to work with. Going to work was a lot of fun, which translated to a lot of creative ideas that nobody else was working on. It was that learning, inspiring, enabling environment that makes the difference in what kind of work you can produce.” The company was doing so much work which others weren’t even thinking about – they produced the very well known Faiz Ahmed Faiz multimedia CD which still gets raving reviews.
By the time Sabeen reached BITS, the year was already 2000 and she was getting restless. “We had named the company ‘BITS’ because it stood for what we believed technology’s role should be: ‘Beyond Information Technology Solutions’. I was getting so frustrated with how much of an impact dotcom companies were having in the West, yet we were feeling none of it from there. Businesses were not leveraging what the internet had to offer despite it being such an exciting time.
BITS was all about using technology to solve problems and through strategy, technology and design, we were able to give customers a unique experience. “Development companies produce products that fail because they don’t put themselves in the customer’s shoes. That’s what we started doing way back then. We looked beyond the code and focused on leading companies to use solutions which would enable their customers to keep coming back to them. Not the other way around.”
Fitting a square peg in a round hole
Sabeen was doing things which few others were, and that only fueled her ideology. “We wanted to businesses to be responsible and when our portfolio became such that companies would invite us to pitch for more work, we’d try and exert our influence on them.” Suffice to say that Sabeen has a strong activism streak in her. Her ability to communicate, network and get the message out to a large population with her knowledge of the Web, enabled her to not just demand change, but create a lifestyle out of it.
“I always knew that there were certain companies who we would never work for. Big Tobacco or companies whose profits would fund war raging campaigns, and this became an intellectual struggle for all of us.” And why shouldn’t it? After all, aren’t companies established with some long term financial sustainability in mind? BITS or anything else surely couldn’t be exempt from that thinking? “Of course, but businesses also have an obligation to the community that buys their products and uses their services. That’s all we wanted companies to realize.”
Sabeen had always wanted to do get into the development sector but couldn’t find anyone flexible enough to accommodate her or her vision. She looked at NGO’s and institutions and didn’t find the spark. And then the ‘café-domino effect’ took over Karachi and it stopped her in her tracks. . “When coffee shops started opening, they were being taken over by teenagers. No place where a slightly older age group could go. While all these places were just great, but I felt there was room for an alternate space for all age groups.” And with an idea in her heart, a laptop on her desk and all the knowledge she had in her head about how Web 2.0 should really be used, she set off to try and setup The Second Floor, a project of PeaceNiche.
Step one: the concept.
“I felt we needed a place where my mother, for example, could come and play Ludo, or where students could just come and hang out without a waiter lurking over their heads and a place that couldn’t be bought by a big business which would slap it’s brand where it was aesthetically not welcome.”
Contrary to everything you may have read in the Marketing books, Sabeen initiated her idea on belief. She had no money to invest in it, conducted no focus group and no model to really replicate of follow. “I ended up using the 10 lakh rupees which my uncle had sent as an emergency fund for my Grandmother!”
Step two: putting up the virtual foundations.
Sabeen put her design skills to work. Oozing with creativity, she developed a template, a style sheet and a really aesthetically pleasing, open design website on a blog platform. “This was what the companies we worked with had difficulty in understanding. I knew the product I was setting up this website for and I knew what its purpose would be. I also knew that I needed a design which would not only reflect the café’s actual personality but also be as open and inviting as T2F was.” Perhaps not serving Java [applets] to people, but t2f.biz was meant to be a place which would support the community space. “A place for intellectual discussion and letting people know what was being planned in terms of our events.”
Sabeen turned to Facebook and set up a group (which ultimately was converted to a page) and spread the word about the PeaceNiche project. Through her own network and groups that she was a part of on the social networking site, the word spread. “People began landing on the T2F website even before the actual launch and I had a little information about what I was working on and an email opt-in subscription which would allow people to plug in their email address, so they would know what our updates were.” The pre-launch hype was pretty amazing. I mean, this was Pakistan! All the things that BITS would try and get through to corporations about using the power of the Web effectively, was finally being tested by Sabeen. “I didn’t want to get into printing promotional flyers on paper. Call it part of my activism but I don’t believe in wasting precious resources. Besides, how many people actually pay attention to the text on the flyer? Companies spend millions on printing things which nobody cares to read. There is just too much distraction!”
According to Sabeen, an ‘under construction page’ is one of the big no-no’s you simply shouldn’t be having. “You should have your timelines in place. People need to be able to land on your page to believe you know what you’re doing. It’s okay to have only a little information there, but whatever it is, make sure it is complete.” Online viral marketing is contagious. If you can manage to use it to your advantage and get people to “stick” to your concept through your online presence, you’ll be able to reap a lot of benefits.
T2F quickly caught on. It serves more than just coffee and sandwiches. It provides you a place to think and share and gather. Things that this entrepreneur has learned over her years in creative, cutting edge development, she has managed to put to use in managing this unique, open space. “And people keep coming to us with ideas on how things can work even better. The guys from amaana were sitting here and offered to write up an application for us so we could send SMS text alerts to people, which was great!” So you can follow T2F on Twitter, Facebook,
Google Calendar, through Email Opt-ins, RSS feed that comes off the site and through the site itself. “Word of mouth marketing is also very powerful, and that’s something you can never underestimate. It’s not new and it’s not digital, but it works.”
Visit the t2f.biz website today and you’ll find events, workshops and gigs lined up for the next several weeks. “I’m still selective with who can use the T2F platform. I have turned down companies who are willing to pay good money for using ‘T2F’s traffic’ by plastering their banners across here. Unless it fits the theme of what we’re doing here, I don’t even consider it. Youngsters come and use the WiFi here to carry out college project discussions or hold study sessions – we invite people who have stood up for themselves and what they believe in so that others can learn from them.” And these are usually people who others wouldn’t even give a second look. Take the example of the young man from Indus Valley who engaged in activism against the rising fee structure he was invited to T2F to share his story. “I saw his posters and called him up and thought it was important for him to share his story. How did he come up with the campaign? How did he get started? These are important lessons to share with people.” And it was a great story indeed considering he actually got the idea after attending a social activism session at T2F earlier. “I can’t explain how deeply gratifying it was to see the impact.”
The kind of tools that The PeaceNiche, an NGO, is employing is a lesson a lot of other NGOs can learn from. There is always a budget crunch and the majority of Not-For-Profits struggle to get the word out. Considering the T2F had no money and makes no money, the fact that they don’t splurge on their own marketing or promotion is commendable. “People write in from places near and far to let us know that they ‘heard’ of one of our events, or they ‘saw’ an event through someone’s blog. When the daily Dawn picks up our event calendar, that also helps get the word out. Once again, none of this is something we spend on.” But what is important to note is that T2F enjoys so much popularity and success because it continues to stand for something. “We are very conscious of having fresh content and since I wanted to have T2F as a platform, it has to be able to attract people who are willing to share.” And that becomes the reservoir of content generation. As long as T2F cares about what its own contribution to the community, the community will continue to participate. “Running an organization is very similar to running a website. People lose interest in it because the company behind the idea lost it’s interest much earlier.”
You can sense the organization’s interest because simple messages are tweaked for each medium. “Twitter messaging has to be more succinct. There is actually a whole behavioral science involved in how you map out an email message or phrase an SMS message. You have to be sure your message suits the platform. Simple copy-paste doesn’t interest people.
The technology is there. It always has been. After speaking with Sabeen and a few other like-minded individuals the only problem seems to be in the mindset. You can have all the money in the word to develop the best website or marketing campaign on the planet, but if you don’t have a strong product, none of the effort is worth it.
Developing strategy that uses multiple media is tricky and complex. Everyone talks about New Media strategies, but if you want to meet someone who taken the click of faith, stop by T2F.biz. And if you’re in the mood for free high speed connectivity and a great cup of java, come by The Second Floor for coffee, books and conversation…. just be sure and bring your brain.
For more details, please visit t2f.biz•
