Jamal Mir - What are Your Views on the Advertising Industry in Pakistan‪?‬

"The advertising industry in Pakistan is going through a very interesting phase. We recently got the license for a new association, namely the Advertising Association of Pakistan (AAP), and over 90% of the members of the previous association (Pakistan Advertisers Society, or PAS) are part of it. The idea for a new association came about around 15 years ago when about eight of the major agencies of Pakistan decided that we need a serious change. We realised this when the Pakistani delegation went to Jaipur for an ad congress and saw that in Asia, and especially India, advertising had developed so much and although there's a lot of talent in this market, we are not able to channelise it properly. From this perspective, people felt that as a body we were not working for the betterment of this profession and we were only using it to be seen at a PCCI or government function and nothing beyond that. So, we took that as a challenge and started working on it and it finally materialised last year. Shahnoor Ahmed, Khalid Rauf, Ahmed Kapadia, Maqsood Ansari and I drove this initiative and started off with a small group - now, we have over 120 members. We recently got inducted into the Asian Federation of Advertising Associations (AFAA) as all advertising associations in Asia are represented there. Previously, PAS was a member but they cancelled PAS's membership and gave us membership about a month ago.