APR CONNECT, the digital division of leading PR agency, Asiatic Public Relations Network, is set to hold digi connect, Pakistan's first ever influencer marketing conference on Saturday Coca-Cola as the title sponsor and CEJ-IBA (Centre for Excellence in Journalism -Institute of Business Administration, Karachi) and Pakistan Advertisers Society (PAS) as event partners.
The event will bring together local and international digital and communication experts, industry heads, professionals from PR and digital agencies, influencers, bloggers, and students to share knowledge, new ideas and best practices in digital content creation. Keynote speakers include Elias Markopoulos (Regional Director, Digital + Content at Hill + Knowlton Strategies), Kathryn Casson (Director for Public Affairs and Communications, MENAat Coca-Cola) and Adeel Farhan (Head of Strategic Partnerships at Google).
With an increasing number of brands using social media celebrities and influencers for wider dissemination of their messaging, Pakistan is also experiencing a consistent growth in influencer marketing, which is being globally favoured as an integral part of the communication strategy.
With huge fan-followings, these influencers are followed and trusted by millions of social media users who are also consumers of these brands. At the same time there is a need to understand the impact of influencer marketing in the local context and how both brands and influencers themselves can gauge outcomes by measuring beyond metrics like 'the number of likes on a Facebook post'.
Talking about the event, Zohare Ali Shariff, CEO of APR stated, "Influencer marketing is not a new phenomenon, but the rapidly evolving digital platforms are creating totally new opportunities and challenges all the time, for both the brands and for the influencers themselves. It is therefore vitally important for the emerging trends to be examined and debated, especially in terms of the impact of influencer marketing beyond metrics or numbers, and this is exactly what this conference will attempt to do.
Such dialogue promotes generation of new ideas, thought-sharing and healthy debate that in turn establishes ethical rules of engagement." The conference will feature lively panel discussions with panellists from a wide range of organizations, including Patari, Careem, K-Electric, Mangobaaz, Parhlo, Bolo Bhi, Coca-Cola, Food Fusion, MHL Global, Group M Digital, Google, pro-Pakistani and Augmentify. With the participation of leading digital experts, audiences are sure to leave the conference equipped with actionable ideas and new connections to enable them to grow and thrive in the digital economy.-PR