Internship Report

BANGLADESH UNIVERSITY OF PROFESSIONALS
An internship report on
“Transitioning Strategies to Effectively Combat Digitalization for Print Publication:
A Study on Bangladesh Brand Forum”
Prepared by
Rakin Hasan
ID: B18231036
Session: 2017 – 18
Supervised by
S.M. Sayem
Lecturer, Department of Business Administration – General
Faculty of Business Studies
Bangladesh University of Professionals
Date of Submission: 10th April, 2022

Transitioning Strategies to Effectively Combat Digitalization
for Print Publication: A Study on Bangladesh Brand Forum
Letter of Transmittal
To
S.M. Sayem
Lecturer,
Department of Business Administration-General,
Faculty of Business Studies (FBS),
Bangladesh University of Professionals.
Subject: Submission of internship report on “Transitioning Strategies to Effectively

Combat Digitalization for Print Publication: A Study on Bangladesh Brand
Forum”.
Dear Sir,
It’s my pleasure to submit the internship report on “Transitioning Strategies to

Effectively Combat Digitalization for Print Publication: A Study on Bangladesh
Brand Forum”, after successful completion of my 3 months’ internship at Bangladesh
Brand Forum.
I consider myself very auspicious to prepare this report under your guidance. I have tried
my best to follow your guidelines in every aspect of preparing this report.
I request you modestly to accept my internship report. But I believe that this report will
help us to understand the “Transitioning Strategies to Effectively Combat Digitalization
for Print Publication: A Study on Bangladesh Brand Forum”.
Therefore, I hope that this will meet the standard of your judgment. Thank you.
Sincerely,
Name: Rakin Hasan

ID: B18231036
BBA (18 Batch)
th
Department of Business Administration-General

Bangladesh University of Professional
Declaration
I hereby declare that the internship report titled “Transitioning Strategies to Effectively
Combat Digitalization for Print Publication: A Study on Bangladesh Brand Forum” is the
self-developed work that is prepared solely on the comparative study of the current print
media industry transitioning to the digital media. This internship report has been carried
out solely by me, a student of BBA in the Department of Business Administration-General
at Bangladesh University of Professionals for the completion of my internship.
I hereby also declare that the work is sole research work carried out and the work has not
been copied from any dissertation, research work or any other papers submitted for
academic purpose.
The materials and data used in the research work for the development of literature review
and framework development have been duly acknowledged. The hypothesis and
methodology have been produced completely on primary data sources through the
questionnaire and analysis are done completely on the perspective of organization’s
performing their activities in Bangladesh.
The report on Transitioning Strategies to Combat Digitalization has been conducted only
for the academic purpose and no one harmed or fraudulently led to take part in the analysis.
I take myself fully responsible and accountable for the detection of any plagiarism and
fraudulent activities and will be liable for any further punishments.
____________________
Date: 10th April, 2022. Signature of the Student
iv
Acknowledgement
At first, I would like to thank my honorable teacher S.M. Sayem for giving me doing a
research work on Human Resource Information System and its impact on the
organization’s performance which has given me a pure learning experience on how the
activities of HRIS influences the activities of organizations and enlightened my knowledge
and skill level on the comparative situation of publication industries and its practice on the
Bangladeshi Companies.
I would like to thank again my honorable teacher S.M. Sayem for giving his important
guidance to me for doing my research and thesis. I am also grateful to him for his immense
patience, enthusiastic behavior, motivation and most importantly advising on content and
digital marketing as a field of study. Without such support I never could have imagined
preparing an internship report in content and digital marketing strategies in our own
country, Bangladesh.
Finally, I would like to thank all of my colleagues who gave me enormous support while
doing the research work, my fellow members for responding to my work rendering their
valuable opinion by answering the questionnaire for the work and most family members.
It would be a sign of unfaithfulness if I don’t acknowledge them and show my gratitude
for their endless support.
v
Supervisor’s Certification
This is to certify that Rakin Hasan, student ID B18231036, has done his internship under
my supervision. It is a part of the fulfillment of the BBA program in the Department of
Business Administration-General. The internship report titled “Transitioning Strategies to
Effectively Combat Digitalization for Print Publication: A Study on Bangladesh Brand
Forum” may be submitted for the defense.
_________________________________
S.M. Sayem
Lecturer,
Department of Business Administration-General,
Faculty of Business Studies (FBS),
Bangladesh University of Professional
vi
Letter of Acceptance
vii
Executive Summary
This internship report encompasses my experience as a Content Executive in the Marketing
department of Bangladesh Brand Forum from 6th February 2022 till 30th March 2022. The
report features the experiences I have gathered as a content executive for 3 months which
includes my daily workflow, responsibilities, market analysis, content execution process
and a detailed analysis of the challenges and prospects of print publication in Bangladesh
which is based on my experience working at Bangladesh Brand Forum.
Digital media and its consumption are at its peak, and due to our daily life’s integration
with global connectivity, the print media industry and its demand are drastically declining
in the same the way adaptions towards digital media are exponentially increasing. With
this quite recent shift of consumers towards this digital universe, it bugged my curiosity to
know how a print media heavy company like Bangladesh Brand Forum was combating
digitalization in a post-covid era. For which I have selected the topic “Transitioning
Strategies to Effectively Combat Digitalization for Print Publication: A Study on
Bangladesh Brand Forum” to understand the business, analyze their core values and
identify problems, and finally develop a strategic solution to transition Bangladesh Brand
Forum’s print media publication model to a digital ecosystem.
The report dives in the background, objectives and scope of the study in the first chapter.
After that it defines the organization’s overall general history and business initiatives with
a brief organizational structure overview. In the third chapter it describes my duties and
responsibilities of my internship period and followed by my learning and experience in the
overall time at Bangladesh Brand Forum. In the analysis part, we dissect the company by
going into a deep-dive industry, competitive and market analysis with a survey analysis.
And finally, we use our analysis to figure out the key findings, use the finding to develop
a recommendation plan, identity the limitation and conclude the paper.
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Table of Content
Declaration........................................................................................................................ iv
Acknowledgement ............................................................................................................. v
Supervisor’s Certification ............................................................................................... vi
Letter of Acceptance ....................................................................................................... vii
Executive Summary ....................................................................................................... viii
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................... 16
1.1 Background of the Report ........................................................................................... 16
1.2 Purpose of the Report.................................................................................................. 16
1.2.1 Broad Objective.................................................................................................... 16
1.2.2 Specific Objectives ............................................................................................... 16
1.3 Sources of Data ........................................................................................................... 16
1.4 Scope ........................................................................................................................... 17
CHAPTER 2: OVERVIEW OF THE ORGANIZATION................................................ 18
2.1 An Overview of the Organization ............................................................................... 18
2.1.1 Brief History ......................................................................................................... 18
2.1.2 Initiatives of the Organization .............................................................................. 19
2.1.3 Competitors .......................................................................................................... 25
2.1.4 Target Market ....................................................................................................... 26
2.1.5 Distribution Channels........................................................................................... 26
2.1.6 Publication Sources .............................................................................................. 27
2.1.7 Industries .............................................................................................................. 27
2.1.8 Ad Revenue Model............................................................................................... 28
2.2 Organizational Structure ............................................................................................. 28
2.2.1 Organizational Hierarchy Chart ........................................................................... 29
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CHAPTER 3: INTERNSHIP DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES ............................... 30
3.1 Managing the Publication ........................................................................................... 30
3.2 Content Planning and Support for Other Initiatives ................................................... 31
3.3 Content Strategizing.................................................................................................... 32
CHAPTER 4: LEARNING/EXPERIENCES FROM INTERNSHIP PROGRAM.......... 33
4.1 Teamwork ................................................................................................................... 33
4.2 Leadership ................................................................................................................... 33
4.3 Communication ........................................................................................................... 33
CHAPTER 5: METHODOLOGIES ................................................................................. 35
5.1 Primary Data Source ................................................................................................... 36
5.2 Secondary Data Source ............................................................................................... 36
CHAPTER 6: ANALYSIS ............................................................................................... 37
6.1 Industry Analysis ........................................................................................................ 37
6.1.1 Porter’s 5 Forces Model ....................................................................................... 38
6.2 Competitor Analysis ................................................................................................... 39
6.2.1. Print Media .......................................................................................................... 40
6.2.2. Website ................................................................................................................ 40
6.2.3. Social Media ........................................................................................................ 41
6.3 Market Analysis .......................................................................................................... 41
6.3.1 STP ....................................................................................................................... 41
6.3.2 Brand Persona ...................................................................................................... 42
6.3.3 Marketing Mix...................................................................................................... 42
6.3.4 SWOT................................................................................................................... 42
6.4 Business Model Canvas .............................................................................................. 43
6.5 Survey Analysis .......................................................................................................... 44
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6.5.1 General Demographics ......................................................................................... 44
6.5.2 Preference Media.................................................................................................. 46
6.5.3 Linear Scale Questions ......................................................................................... 49
CHAPTER 7: FINDINGS, RECOMMENDATIONS, LIMITATIONS AND

CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................. 53
7.1 Findings....................................................................................................................... 53
7.2 Recommendations ....................................................................................................... 54
7.2.1 Digital Media Emphasis ....................................................................................... 55
7.2.2 Engagement via Effective Digital Marketing....................................................... 57
7.2.3 Developing Brand Persona according to Audience’s Needs ................................ 58
7.2.4 Modernizing Design Language ............................................................................ 59
7.2.5 Repurposing Content Across Multiple Medias .................................................... 59
7.2.6 Generating Revenue Online ................................................................................. 60
7.2.7 Website Optimization and Better UI/UX Experience .......................................... 61
7.2.8 Targeting Youths Effectively ............................................................................... 61
7.3 Limitations .................................................................................................................. 62
7.4 Conclusions ................................................................................................................. 62
REFERENCES ................................................................................................................. 63
APPENDIX ....................................................................................................................... 64
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Table of Figures
Figure 1 - Glimpses of BBF Monthly
Figure 2 - Superbrands Bangladesh Logo
Figure 4 - Commwards Logo
Figure 5 - Brand Forum Seminar’s Logo
Figure 6 - Digital Summit & Digital Marketing Award Announcement
Figure 7- Leadership Summit’s Logo
Figure 8- Inspiring Women Awards’ Logo
Figure 9 - Bangladesh Innovation Conclave Logo
Figure 10- YouthEd Logo
Figure 11 - Ad Revenue Model of BBF Publications
Figure 12- Organogram of Bangladesh Brand Forum
Figure 13 - Business Model Canvas of BBF
Figure 14 – Gender Group
Figure 15- Age Groups
Figure 16 - Occupational Group
Figure 17 - Average Time of Social Media Consumption
Figure 18 - News Media Platform
Figure 19 - News Media Local Web Portals
Figure 20 - News Media International Web Portals
Figure 21 - News Social Media Preference
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Figure 22 - News Delivery Format Preference
Figure 23 - Authenticity vs Convenience
Figure 24 - Brand News Interest
Figure 25- Questionnaire 1
xiii
List of Tables
Table 1 – Print Media Competitor Analysis
Table 2 – Website Competitor Analysis
Table 3 – Social Media Competitor Analysis
xiv
List of Acronyms
BBF - Bangladesh Brand Forum

Commwards - Communication Awards
WIL - Women in Leadership
MICE - Meetings, Incentives, Conferences & Exhibitions
TBS - The Business Standard
BPB - Brand Practitioners Bangladesh
BI - Business Inspection
STP - Segmentation Targeting and Positioning
SWOT - Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threa
xv
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the Report

The report titled “Transitioning Strategies to Effectively Combat Digitalization for
Print Publication: A Study on Bangladesh Brand Forum” has been assigned and
completed as partial fulfillment of the eight-week internship period of the BBA
program at Bangladesh University of Professionals. The internship had been conducted
at Bangladesh Brand Forum. During my internship project, I was assigned as the
Content Executive in the marketing department of Bangladesh Brand Forum. This
report had been prepared under the supervision of my faculty advisor, S.M. Sayem.
1.2 Purpose of the Report

The purpose can be considered as the broad objective relating to the report topic, and
specific objectives making up components of the broad objective.
1.2.1 Broad Objective
The broad objective of the study is to present a comparative analysis of print

publications and digital content of Bangladesh Brand Forum and develop an effective
transitioning strategy for Bangladesh Brand Forum to build a strong digital presence in
terms of content marketing and audience engagement.
1.2.2 Specific Objectives
The broad objective can be broken down further into three specific objectives:
i. To analyze and contrast the marketing dimension of print publications and

digital publications
ii. To compare the back-end operations of publishing on print media vs
creating and promoting content on digital media
iii. To come up with effective strategies to optimize audience engagement on
digital platforms from a marketing perspective.
1.3 Sources of Data

This report has been prepared utilizing both primary and secondary sources. The
details will be discussed in chapter 6.
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1.4 Scope
For the first two objectives, information was collected through utilizing company data
and personnel interviews, whilst for the third objective, market analysis on the overall
publication industry and potential competitors’ analysis has been conducted to analyze
and come up with strategic action plans to achieve the desired output. Therefore, this
report brings into its purview all publications, content, events, seminars, festivals, and
accolades that have been organized by Bangladesh Brand Forum since its inception; as
the same time develops a strategy to conduct digital activities effectively to achieve
optimal efficiency.
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CHAPTER 2: OVERVIEW OF THE ORGANIZATION
2.1 An Overview of the Organization

Bangladesh Brand Forum is a brand communications organization under the parent
company Brandzeal Consultancy Ltd., which focuses on corporations with a view to
educate and build awareness around branding and build sustainable brands. Established
in April 2007 inaugurated through seminar by Founder and Managing Director, Shariful
Islam, the company’s initial goals were to help corporates to build lasting brands and
at the same time, strategically promoting the idea of responsible businesses. The
mission of the company is “To inspire professionals, youth, women, & business
leaders” and the vision is to “transform Bangladesh through knowledge, innovation, &
branding ethos”.
2.1.1 Brief History
Bangladesh Brand Forum is the major wing of the mother brand, Brandzeal, which is a
consultancy and supervisory firm with an aim to aid the local industries in developing
stronger and more sustainable brands. Brandzeal’s inception dates back to 30 July,
2008.
Bangladesh Brand Forum on the other hand started its journey back in 2007 through its
first seminar endorsed by Professor Philip Kotler himself. Initially Bangladesh Brand
Forum expanded in seminars and events surrounding branding and brand building,
however it branched out into different initiatives spanning communication, innovation,
retail, nation branding and publications.
Throughout its existence, Bangladesh Brand Forum pivoted on the power of

collaboration. This has allowed Bangladesh Brand Forum and its mother company,
Brandzeal, to derive credibility, growth, and scale. BBF over the years has collaborated
with multiple national and international organizations and initiatives. These are:
Marketing Society of Bangladesh (MSB), Bangladesh Media Forum (BMF), Financial
Forum Bangladesh (FFB), Asian Marketing Federation (AMF), World Marketing
Community (WMC), Kantar Millward Brown, Superbrands Worldwide, Cannes Lions,
Spikes Asia, and many other organizations.
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2.1.2 Initiatives of the Organization
With the tagline “Inspiring the Nation”, Bangladesh Brand Forum had brought to its
scope all the firms in the various industries, local and national governments, and
business professionals. The company has even increased its scope to cater to the youth.
a. Publications
Publications make up a critical part of all of BBF’s initiatives. BBF even has a monthly
publication, which is the flagship publication of the company aimed at disseminating
knowledge to the target audience of business professionals and students.
Other notable publications from BBF are the Best Brand Award Souvenir, SuperBrands
Souvenir and Commward Souvenir.
i. Bangladesh Brand Forum Monthly: The organization first delved into

editorial and business journalism through the publication of a monthly
magazine called BBF Monthly; with content focusing on both local and
global businesses, economic and political conditions surrounding industries
and markets, case studies, and experts’ opinions on certain head-scratching
issues. Due to the lack of interest towards buying magazines in our local
culture, the publication was later made free and distributed amongst local
corporate offices at managerial and executive levels; as distributing at
publication point did not garner much interest amongst the general reader.
70% of the magazine content was initially sourced from foreign business
writers, but later the focus was switched towards generating content from
local writers, with the goal of showing local business owners the benefit of
conducting business in a more sustainable way.
Currently, BBF Monthly is the market-leading pioneer of being the first

magazine in Bangladesh that inspires corporate and business people about
branding and world class business, with over 10,000 complimentary copies
distributed and 150,000 monthly E-Magazine readers on Issuu.com and
BBF Blog combined.
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Figure 1 - Glimpses of BBF Monthly
ii. Best Brand Award Souvenir: The Best Brand Award is a critically
acclaimed accolade conducted annually. The accolades are given to the
deserving brands that meet the criteria based on research and analysis
carried out. The entire Best Brand Award is carried out in partnership with
Nielsen, with the company providing the framework and research needed to
identify the best brands in various categories.
BBF awards 15 overall brands as the best brands of that particular year and
to commemorate their journey towards becoming the best brand, BBF
illustrates an annual publication after the event with content highlighting
the Best Brand Award winners’ brand journey. The key points focused on
each article are:
• The brand’s history.

• The brand’s positioning.
• things you didn't know about the brand.
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• Key facts about the brand.
iii. Superbrands Bangladesh Souvenir: BBF represents SuperBrands Global

in Bangladesh, awarding the accolades to companies operating in
Bangladesh under various categories. The SuperBrands award is brought
about through collaboration with SuperBrands and a rigorous system
patented and carried out by SuperBrands. The award is supplemented by the
SuperBrands publication.
The Superbrands publication explores the history, development and

achievements of many of the strongest brands in the world, and reveals
extraordinary findings along the way. It commences with the members of
the ‘Superbrands Council’, some of the most respected figures within the
world of communication and experts from the world of branding,
advertising, marketing, design, product management, public relations and
business.
The content focuses on the Superbrands awarded companies and highlights
the following factors of the companies:
• The Market
• Achievements
• History
• The Product/Service
• Recent Development
• Promotion
• Brand Values
• Things You Didn’t Know About
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iv. Commwards Souvenir: Commward or the Communication Award
celebrates the creative works carried out by agencies, brands, and firms in
various categories. The award aims to bolster the level of creativity and
expertise found within local communication works and is seen as one of the
most prestigious awards in marketing and creativity in Bangladesh. Over the
years, the accolade has evolved its rigorous jury system to include
internationally acclaimed jury presidents to preside over the jury process
and bring out the best works from the country.
The Communication Summit which precedes the accolade is a day-long
summit held to bring out conversations surrounding creative
communications, disseminate industry best practices regarding creativity
and more. The Summit brings international and national guest keynote
speakers to spread their knowledge.
Figure 4 - Commwards Logo
Like over major events, BBF illustrates an annual publication after the
Commward Summit to highlight the day-long summit to highlight the
winners and some exclusive contents to add extra value to the publication.
The winning category’s awards are divided into Grand Prix, Gold, Silver
and Bronze awards and the winning stories focus on the following factors:
• Background
• Objectives
• Core Idea
• Execution
• Result
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b. Communication Events and Awards
Bangladesh Brand Forum also focuses on hosting various awards and seminars to
emphasize on marketing communications and push forward the agenda of ‘Nation
Branding’. BFF has narrowed their focus onto three specific subject matters; Corporate,
Women and Youth. Some of the annual noteworthy initiatives taken by BBF to serve
the agenda are as follows:
i. Brand Forum Seminar: The Brand Forum Seminar is designed with the
aim of providing inspiration to the Bangladeshi marketing community in
order to build powerful brands that excel beyond local markets.
Figure 5 - Brand Forum Seminar’ s Logo
ii. Digital Summit and Digital Marketing Awards: The Digital Summit,
originally termed the ‘Digital Marketing Summit’, aims to foster
improvement and creativity in digital marketing. As digital marketing and
communications have taken the forefront of communications over the years,
the Digital Summit aims to foster conversation surrounding digital media,
communication, and works. The Digital Marketing Awards follow the
Digital Summit, where the accolade identifies the best digital marketing
works by brands and is chosen through a rigorous jury process.
Figure 6 - Digital Summit & Digital Marketing Award Announcement
iii. Leadership Summit: The Leadership summit focuses on Business Leaders

across all industries and sectors. The summit focuses on addressing dynamic
leadership, tackling issues in growing organizations, and disseminating
information relevant for business leaders to ensure that they can lead the
business with competitive advantage and longevity.
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Figure 7- Leadership Summit’s Logo
iv. Inspiring Women Award: The Inspiring Women Award was first given in
the year 2014 and since then the underlying message of the Inspiring
Women’s Award is to officially recognize women’s efforts in the growth of
the country; to empower women professionals and create role models in
society (at both individual and the organizational levels). The Inspiring
Women Award recognizes the leaders of tomorrow, inspiring female
professionals, and changemakers of Bangladesh. In doing so, the accolade
seeks to inspire women of Bangladesh to take charge and unlock their
potential.
Figure 8- Inspiring Women Award’s Logo
v. Bangladesh Innovation Conclave: The Bangladesh Innovation Conclave

is quickly expanding into a strong arm of Bangladesh Brand Forum. The
conclave’s inception was borne from a need to foster innovation in
Bangladesh in various fields and not just for businesses. Innovation for the
consumers and for the people of Bangladesh is also essential. As a result,
The Bangladesh Innovation Conclave is currently operating with a growing
number of initiatives and expanding from the country’s capital to all parts
of the country.
Currently, Bangladesh Innovation Conclave has brought into its purview the
following:
• Bangladesh Business Innovation Summit
• Bangladesh Business Innovation Award
• Student Innovation Competition
• Regional Innovation Dialogue
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vi. YouthEd: Starting off as YouthHub, the initiative was originally a

standalone product of Bangladesh Brand Forum before being brought under
the scope of Bangladesh Innovation Conclave. YouthEd’s first launch was
in 2017 with the aim of connecting with the country’s youth who are the
future of the nation. The initiative was designed to arrange knowledge
dissemination sessions as well as track progress. The format also contained
case competitions to identify aspiring talents. YouthEd is seeing a
reemergence after a hiatus due to its importance in the role played by
Bangladesh Brand Forum. YouthEd is currently developing a wide-reaching
platform which seeks to build an ecosystem to train and develop skills for
students in order to equip them for the future ahead and is planned to
relaunch by the end of 2022.
2.1.3 Competitors
The unique selling point of Bangladesh Brand Forum is the exclusive business content
they provide on both local and global business content which can be digested by any
business enthusiast. On that USP, we can find some probable direct competitors.
1. The Business Standard (TBS) a news platform that operates in both online and
print versions.
2. Brand Practitioners Bangladesh (BPB) a focused group for discussing brand
related topics, issues, theories, promotions, media, research, digital, jobs and
many more.
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3. Markedium a daily must-read content platform that covers the latest news on
Marketing, Branding, Technology, Agency and Start Up ecosystem of
Bangladesh.
4. Nutshell Today Provides current eventful news in a ‘nutshell’
5. Cablgram Curated content of contemporary culture, through the lens of
Bangladesh
6. Business Inspection (BI) A digital business media platform and a brand by
Inspection that aims at creating content based on research, analysis & facts on
Bangladesh’s economy, industry, business, & startup.
2.1.4 Target Market
Their main target audience group are divided into four segments:
1. Corporate Professionals: Mid-level management and executives to CXO level
officers
2. Business Community: Entrepreneurial startup enthusiasts
3. Academic Professionals: Vice Chancellors, Professors, Business Faculties,
Economists
4. Government Officials: Government Officers, Policy Makers Ambassadors,
Diplomat Officials.
2.1.5 Distribution Channels
Bangladesh Brand Forum focuses on an omni-channel publication route, providing

special mileage to the esteemed brands with a goal to reach the target market in an
effective and efficient way. The primary channels are as follows:
1. Print Media Considered the primary distribution channel of almost all
publications, print media is distributed amongst the target audience explained
above.
2. E-Magazine via Issuu.com An ebook version of BBF Monthly can be found
on Issuu.com which can be accessed free of cost for everyone.
3. BBF Website the BBF official website contains fresh news and write-ups with
a separate section to read all the magazine publication of each month
4. Email Subscriber of BBF’s email list are notified about new blogs and updates
via email
26
5. Social Media BBF’s Facebook page contains over 68k followers and with an
active Facebook group over 23k members. Other social media channels include
LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and currently working on launching
TikTok.
6. Messaging App Integration (Whatsapp, Viber) Updates are sent to
subscriber’s phone number via whatsapp and viber in a similar manner as email
notification.
2.1.6 Publication Sources
Bangladesh Brand Forum has been publishing their business publication for the last 12
years in pursuit to “Transform Bangladesh”. The magazine has been at the forefront of
BBF with its rich editorial panel and advisor board provides local and global insights.
It is the only publication in Bangladesh which provides exclusive content from:
• Harvard Business Review Articles
• Nielsen Articles
• Kantar Articles
• Quantum Articles
• Insead Articles
• Landor Articles
• Complimentary Tracker Info
• Ryans Media Report
• Adasia
Other content includes local news updates, analysis, case studies, campaign reviews
and many more third-party sourced articles are published; with a goal-oriented mind to
inspire local professionals in building a great Bangladesh.
2.1.7 Industries
Bangladesh Brand Forum is a diversified company that can be defined into three
categories
In terms of product/service:
1. Publication Industry: Monthly and annual magazines, digital contents,
blogpost, write-ups, news, etc.
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2. MICE Industry (meetings, incentives, conferencing, exhibitions): Award
ceremonies, summits, festivals, congress, etc
3. Professional Training Programs: BBF Academy, daylong training sessions,
monthly course program, etc.
In terms of business model
1. Advertising (Publications)
2. Nomination Fees and Sponsorships (MICE Industry)
2.1.8 Ad Revenue Model
The bread and butter of the company’s revenue source is the advertisement space they
sell on their magazines and other publications. The following is the advertising rate
based on placement and size:
Figure 11 - Ad Revenue Model of BBF Publications
2.2 Organizational Structure

BBF has a flat organizational structure and activities are executed on a team basis. The
Managing Director directly supervises all the activities with and by the Chief
Operations Officer and the Financial Administrator. The whole team is divided into the
following departments: Finance & Admin, Operations, Events, Research & Content,
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Design & Magazine. A single employee is at times part of two or more departments,
for example Executive, Brands & Events.
2.2.1 Organizational Hierarchy Chart
Figure 12 - Organogram of Bangladesh Brand Forum
The organizational structure follows a linier chain of order where the Managing
Director is in charge of overlooking every activity of BBF through the Chief Operating
Officer and the Financial Coordinator & Administrator. The Chief Operating Officer
overlooks all the operational activities of BBF and is the primary reporting official of
every manager and executive officer. While the Financial Coordinator & Administrator
looks after the internal administration of BBF.
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CHAPTER 3: INTERNSHIP DUTIES AND
RESPONSIBILITIES
The BBF Monthly is a monthly publication containing content related to various

industries and business topics, ranging from branding, marketing, technology, supply
chain, industry insights, and more. The publication also contains case studies and trend
analyses from partner organizations, as well as in-depth interviews carried out by
Bangladesh Brand Forum of various decorated industry professionals both local and
global. Additionally, the magazine also contains reprints of the latest Harvard Business
Review articles and Nielsen Insight articles – both of which BBF partners with in the
making of the publication. The Publication had long been the major cash cow for the
organization, ensuring a steady flow of revenue from the advertisements within the
magazine. However, due to the ensuing pandemic, the magazine operated via digital
publications, but have since returned to physical and digital formats.
As part of my responsibilities to the magazine, every month I laid out a content plan
and theme for the magazine. Based on the plan, I commissioned the writer pool to
produce the content with guidance. For high priority content as well as in-depth
interviews, they were completed in-house. The interviews were planned and conducted
by me during my tenure, as is traditionally the case. Once the articles are ready, they
are sent to the team of designers, who are given the brief about the contents of the article
and would design the pages for the magazine. During this time, I would also
communicate with correspondents from Harvard Business Review, Nielsen
Bangladesh, and a few other partners to receive the content and permissions for reprint.
The entire cycle of this operation would repeat monthly.
3.1 Managing the Publication

The BBF Monthly is a monthly publication containing content related to various
industries and business topics, ranging from branding, marketing, technology, supply
chain, industry insights, and more. The publication also contains case studies and trend
analyses from partner organizations, as well as in-depth interviews carried out by
Bangladesh Brand Forum of various decorated industry professionals both local and
global. Additionally, the magazine also contains reprints of the latest Harvard Business
Review articles and Nielsen Insight articles – both of which BBF partners with in the
30
making of the publication. The Publication had long been the major cash cow for the
organization, ensuring a steady flow of revenue from the advertisements within the
magazine. However, due to the ensuing pandemic, the magazine operated via digital
publications, but have since returned to physical and digital formats.
As part of my responsibilities to the magazine, every month I laid out a content plan
and theme for the magazine. Based on the plan, I commissioned the writer pool to
produce the content with guidance. For high priority content as well as in-depth
interviews, they were completed in-house. The interviews were planned and conducted
by me during my tenure, as is traditionally the case. Once the articles are ready, they
are sent to the team of designers, who are given the brief about the contents of the article
and would design the pages for the magazine. During this time, I would also
communicate with correspondents from Harvard Business Review, Nielsen
Bangladesh, and a few other partners to receive the content and permissions for reprint.
The entire cycle of this operation would repeat monthly.
3.2 Content Planning and Support for Other Initiatives

During my internship period, I also took part in developing the content strategy for
marketing campaigns as well as other content support related to events. Two of the
events that I partially worked on were the ‘Bangladesh Business Innovation Summit
2022’ and ‘WIL Fest 2022’. For clarity of explanation, I shall break events down into
pre-event, during event, and post-event activities.
The ‘Bangladesh Business Innovation Summit 2022’ was a 3-day long festival taking
place from 4th-6th March and comprising a 3-day summit and ensuing award ceremony
for the 3rd Bangladesh Innovation Award. The event centered on inspiring Bangladeshi
stakeholders (entrepreneurs, individuals, businesses, and government organizations) to
bring about innovation in order to develop the country further. The festival’s first
component was directed towards inspiring the youth with ‘Innovate for Bangladesh –
Youth in Innovation’ summit, followed by ‘3rd Bangladesh Business Innovation
Summit’ which has been the flagship summit of Bangladesh Innovation Conclave – a
sister concern of Bangladesh Brand Forum. The festival ended with the award
ceremony, the much anticipated ‘3rd Bangladesh Innovation Award’. During the event,
I provided content for social media posts as part of social media campaigns as well as
PR communication material. During the post event phase, I covered the entire event
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through the cover story for BBF Monthly and use the interviews I have conducted
during Bangladesh Innovation Award as post-promotional content for social medias.
The 7th Inspiring Women Awards would be a festival by WIL celebrating women
leadership and awarding their accolade in 31st March. During the event season, I helped
to arrange the overall promotional content planning from Mid-February, collect
potential winners’ nomination forms to write a bio for promotion, create promotional
digital content from previous year’s summits and conduct interview session with the
winners during the 7th Inspiring Women Awards for post-event promotional content.
3.3 Content Strategizing

One of the major roles that was given to me to lead in Bangladesh Brand Forum was to
formulate an effective strategy to drive digital engagement in social media through
repurposing old content from BBF’s archives and turning it into consumer-friendly
content. During my training period, I was given the task to conduct a marketing analysis
on the BBF’s positioning in the publication industry and use it to build a content
marketing strategy that will ensure long-term sustainability and engagement amongst
our key stakeholders.
As an execution trail, I was able to make a new video template to make use of the
YouTube Shorts/TikTok/Facebook Stories as a medium to engage more audience. We
had a recorded archive of all the famous and well renowned keynote speakers from our
various seminars conducted throughout the years that were very insightful regarding
concerned industries; but were too long to effectively engage audiences. Therefore, I’ve
gone through some of them and pointed out the key highlights and impactful moments
and edited them into a 60-seconds vertical short video with transitioning texts and
subtitles with an epic background music to keep the whole clip energetic from start to
finish. This new format resulted in an engagement boost in our social media pages by
up to 50-60% during the first week and we got very good positive feedback for the
videos. The initial plan was to drive audience engagement with the video shorts and
make them anticipate the whole session video, when it will be posted.
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CHAPTER 4: LEARNING/EXPERIENCES FROM
INTERNSHIP PROGRAM
During my internship period, I have learned the importance of working as a team,

leading a team, and communication. I will briefly highlight the three core learnings
below:
4.1 Teamwork
Every initiative is the culmination of multiple individuals working together with
different responsibilities to make one ‘whole’. As a result, if each individual does not
complete their responsibility properly and in time, the whole process breaks down. I
learnt the importance of teamwork as I worked on these initiatives and witnessed first-
hand how my contribution was plugged into the overall puzzle piece to complete the
magazine, the souvenirs, the events themselves, etc. I realized it would not have been
possible had I not received the support from my colleagues who would help me out if I
faced issues, and I would do the same in order to finish our KPIs on time.
4.2 Leadership
Whilst initially the Content team consisted of myself and colleagues from other
departments assisting in my work, I was able to recruit an executive to work under me.
This was a new challenge and learning experience for me, as it allowed me to supervise
and direct my team to ensure that our objectives were met properly. It was my
responsibility to train the individual and ensure that the learning had properly been
translated, to inspire and motivate the individual to complete tasks on time and
understand the importance of the work at hand, and to provide feedback in order to aid
in the growth of the individual.
4.3 Communication
Perhaps the most important learning for me was communication. Proper and clear
communication was essential to ensure that the writers and the team I supervised carried
out their work according to the brief. It was even more essential for coordinating with
external individuals and organizations for conducting interviews and requests for
information and reprints. I was able to learn the professional way to communicate to
ensure that my message went across and no confusion would occur and that I would be
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professionally courteous as I was representing my organization when talking to external
stakeholders.
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CHAPTER 5: METHODOLOGIES
This report considered the findings qualitative and from the review of relevant literature
as well as initial consultations from Bangladesh Brand Forum’s employees and my
faculty advisor, to draw up questionnaires to address the three objectives.
For the objectives (i) and (ii), the management of Bangladesh Brand Forum were
interviewed one-to-one and secondary data from within the company gathered. For
objective iii, a survey questionnaire was designed and administered on the target
market. The former and current participants of Bangladesh Brand Forum events were
contacted via email and social media to administer surveys. Google forms were used to
administer the survey.
The target market of BBF comprises primarily business professionals, graduates, and
students who partake in the events. Therefore, the survey was administered via Google
Forms through business focused social media groups, BUP Alumni, and Bangladesh
Brand Forum’s own administered group, as well as through reaching out to previous
attendees.
The survey questionnaire had been developed to identify the news media consumption
and preference amongst an overall 67 sample size from a set of 200 population that has
been reach out via email.
For the overall analysis part, it was broken down to mostly analyzing the publication
aspect of the company to keep the research concise. It was divided into industry
analysis, competitive analysis, market analysis and the business model analysis; that
was heavily based on literature and secondary data. For the survey analysis, the primary
data of the above mention 67 sample size was used to represent the overall market
segment of the company.
After completing the various analysis, the results were compiled together to chalk down
the key findings, that was an intersection of theoretical analysis and real-time testing.
The findings were used as the problem identifications and opportunities to formulate a
recommendation that acts as a strategic action plan to help the organization combat
modern digitalization.
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5.1 Primary Data Source
The primary sources of information were collected via interviews and surveys. For the
first objective to analyze and contrast marketing activities and back-end operations, the
management team who were responsible for the activities and oversaw the activities.
For the second objective of analyzing and comparing the back-end operations of print
publication and digital content creation & promotion, the senior management were
consulted. The following people were interviewed:
1 Sajid Mahbub, Chief Operating Officer, Bangladesh Brand Forum.

2 Iftikhar Ratul, Head of Projects and Events, Bangladesh Brand Forum.
3 Sajib Bhattechajee, Head of Innovations, Bangladesh Brand Forum.
4 Tawseef Hasan, Digital and YouthEd Lead, Bangladesh Brand Forum.
5 Md Eusuf Miah, Sr. Visualizer, Bangladesh Brand Forum.
6 Safwan Ahmed, Executive, Digital, Bangladesh Brand Forum.
For the third objective, a survey questionnaire was designed and administered on the
target market. The former and current participants of Bangladesh Brand Forum events
were contacted via email and social media to administer surveys. Google forms were
used to administer the survey.
5.2 Secondary Data Source

Secondary data sources including competitors’ publicly available domains, news
articles, online resources and published research were analyzed during market analysis.
The secondary sources that were consulted were the relevant literature from prestigious
online research sources such as Researchgate, ProQuest, and Google Scholar. Other
reports from globally renowned auditing, market research, and consultancy firms were
also consulted, such as Mckinsey, KPMG, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, etc.
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CHAPTER 6: ANALYSIS
6.1 Industry Analysis

For this analysis, we will focus on the publication industry. Print subscription
circulations have fallen by 7% over the past two years, from 125 million overall to 116
million, while single-copy sales are down 11%, from 3.2 million in the first half of 2019
to 2.8 million in the first half of 2021. Country's publishing industry is in dire straits
due to the prolonged closure of educational institutions in the aftermath of the Covid-
19 pandemic. The closure has cut down the sales of publishing houses by over 70 per
cent, the industry people have claimed. Although many educational institutions
continued their classes using the digital platforms, it did not help the publishing industry
much. The sale of all categories of books declined to less than one-third of the usual
one. The downturn also affected the allied businesses such as printing, binding and
other relevant logistics, insiders have said. At the same time, due to the massive
adoption of smartphones and social media over the last few years (especially during
COVID-19 pandemic, the target consumers have shifted their channel medium of
current news from print media to digital media. Other reasons for this industry’s
inevitable downfall are as follows:
• Changing Reading Habits The daily time spent reading magazines in the U.S.
dropped from 20.9 minutes in 2008 to 15.5 minutes in 2013 and may slide to
only 10 minutes by 2018. The amount of time spent with online media continues
to grow and lockdown not only intensified the accessibility of print media, but
also increased the adoption rate of online platforms.
• Falling Print Ad Revenue As the shift of readers grows towards digital
platforms, the demand for ad space online increases and print media demand
decreases. According to Pew’s annual State of the Media report, newspaper ad
revenues are down 4 percent, while digital ads are up 18 percent.
• Buying the Required Ad Coverage One reason print companies were so
profitable is that they were similar to old-fashioned CDs. If you wanted one
song, you had to buy the whole album through forced bundling. Similarly, if
you wanted one part of a print publication’s audience, you had to pay for the
whole block. When separate regional editions existed, an advertiser might have
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been able to select a specific area, although at a higher price per reader. Digital
is far more flexible in targeting.
• Automation A growing trend online is called programmatic advertising. It’s a
way of automating much of the process of placing ads and also includes the
capability of tightly targeting specific individuals that data suggest might be
interested in a company’s messages. Doing something like that in print requires
direct mail, which is vastly more expensive. Advertisers opt for faster, cheaper
and better, and investors follow the money.
• Spotting the Winner Investors are always looking for winners. Which
companies will ultimately be the digital victors and become the online
equivalent of old print giants? Although total digital ad spending is up,
individual ads are incredibly cheap. So, making real money online takes a lot of
work. Reduce the number of publishers, and the ones left standing will have
more leverage in negotiations and can perhaps drive-up ad rates and profitability
over time.
6.1.1 Porter’s 5 Forces Model
1. Power of Suppliers; Low to Moderate

• Suppliers are pivoting to digital medium due business downfall.
• Increased cost of materials causing rise of price.
• Declining demand gives room to negotiate price.
2. Power of Customers; High

• Rise of demand in modular content.
• Customers shifting to digital medium.
• Decreasing attention span for reading longform content and rise of
interest in short content.
3. Competitive Rivalry; Moderate to Low

• Competitors pivoting to digital medium.
• Declining interest in the industry.
• Declining target consumers and sales in the industry.
• Competitors with major market share are the only ones surviving.
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4. Threat of New Entry; Low
• Lack of interest.
• Declining reader.
• Declining business prospects.
• Higher initial investment cost compared to digital medium.
5. Threat of Substitution; High

• Rise of digital media adoption.
• Lack of modularity.
• Lack of accessibility compared to instant search online.
• Priced higher than its digital counterpart.
In conclusion, the publications industry is not completely at a halt, but declining interest
in this medium is causing the major competitors to shift towards digital medium and
develop a hybrid operations model.
6.2 Competitor Analysis

The unique selling point of Bangladesh Brand Forum is the exclusive business content
they provide on both local and global business content which can be digested by any
business enthusiast. On that USP, we can find some probable direct competitors.
In the case of communication channels, we can narrow them down into print, website
and social media.
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6.2.1. Print Media
BBF TBS BPB Markedium Nutshell Cablgram BI

Today
Market High Mid - - - - -

Share
Market Low High - - - - -

Growth
Content Business Business - - - - -

Focus
Time Monthly Daily - - - - -

Period
Revenue Subscription, Subscription, - - - - -

Source Ads Ads
Visuals High Mid - - - - -
Table 1 – Print Media Competitor Analysis
6.2.2. Website
BBF TBS BPB Markedium Nutshell Cablgram BI

Today
Load Time Low Mid Low Low - - Low
Landing Page Mid Mid Low Mid - - Mid

Quality
Regular Updates Mid Very Very High - - Very

High Low High
Mobile Mid Mid Mid High - - Mid

Optimization
UI/UX Mid Mid Low High - - High
Content Exclusivity Mid High Low Low - - Mid
Content Bloat High High Low Mid - - Mid
SEO High High High High - - High
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6.2.3. Social Media
BBF TBS BPB Markedium Nutshell Cabl BI

Today gram
Channels Facebook, Facebook, Facebook, Facebook, Facebook, Facebook, Facebook,

Instagram, Instagram, Instagram, Instagram, Instagram, Instagram, Instagram,
LinkedIn, LinkedIn, LinkedIn, LinkedIn, LinkedIn, LinkedIn, LinkedIn
Twitter, Twitter, Twitter, Twitter Twitter Twitter
YouTube YouTube YouTube
Most Active Facebook Facebook Facebook Facebook Facebook Facebook Facebook
Average 65-70k 355k 22-25k 36-40k 78-80k 91-95k 42-45k
Followers
Engagement Low Low Low Mid Mid High High High
Primary Static Weblink Static Dynamic Static Dynamic Dynamic
Content
Cross Channel Low Mid Low Mid Mid High High Mid
Integration
Posting High Very High Mid High High High High
Consistency
6.3 Market Analysis

6.3.1 STP
Segmentation: Working Class Professionals and Business Enthusiasts.

Targeting: Corporate Professionals, Business Community, Academic Professionals,
Government Officials.
Positioning: Providing premium quality multi-channel business communication with
a goal to educate and build awareness towards the masses to conduct business in a
sustainable and impactful way.
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6.3.2 Brand Persona
Age: 30-year-old.
Gender: Male/Female.
Class: Upper Middle Class.
Occupation: Business Executive.
Personality: Ambitious, Educated, Well-Informed, Hard Working, Passionate.
Life Goals: Create value for himself/herself and his/her organization through
knowledge and experience; and bring sustainable impact to the society.
6.3.3 Marketing Mix
Product: Multi-platform business content and news.

Price: Providing ad seekers with optimal ad space.
Place: Print media, website and social media.
Promotion: Sending free copies to executive offices and cross promoting through
communication events and channels.
People: Executives, C-Corp Officials, Business Enthusiasts, Business Academia,
Government Officials.
Process: Subscribing to email listing, following social media pages.
Physical Evidence: Leaving a positive sustainable footprint in the local corporate
world.
6.3.4 SWOT
Strengths:
• Excellent quality content.

• Great illustration.
• Strong sponsorship revenue.
• Repurposable modular content from print media.
• Strong active social media followers.
• Strong brand awareness.
• Industry-known communication events.
Weaknesses:
• Mid-Level UI/UX.
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• Content bloating.
• Website optimization.
• Outdated design language.
• Declining social media engagement.
Opportunities:
• Repurposing print media content into digestible modular social media content.
• Generating video content from print media to increase social media
engagement.
• Leveraging brand awareness and brand value to successfully into digital media.
Threats:
• High risk of irrelevancy.

• Declining ad sales and sponsorships.
• Risk of competition from publication brands with strong digital presence.
• Shift of major target audience from print media to digital media.
6.4 Business Model Canvas

The business model canvas illustrates the entire summary of how Bangladesh Brand
Forum operates from a business perspective.
Figure 13 - Business Model Canvas of BBF
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6.5 Survey Analysis
A survey was conducted amongst the prime target group of BBF’s consumers via
Google Forms and was distributed to over a hundred targeted emails. A total of 67
responses were gathered during the session. The survey was mainly conducted to focus
the consumption and preference of news media amongst local consumers. These were
the results.
6.5.1 General Demographics
The following are the general demographics that were interested in partaking our
survey.
a. Gender Group
Figure 14 - Count of Gender
Here, 77% of our target audience are male, while only 23% were female.
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b. Age Group
Figure 15- Age Groups
And 22-28 year old segment was the highest at 62%, followed by 29-35 year old, and
36–45-year-old.
c. Occupational Group
Figure 16 - Occupational Group
Interestingly, even though our target group has corporate professionals as the greatest
majority (59.1%), the second largest occupational group were students (15.2%) and
unemployed (13.6%).
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d. Average time of daily social media consumption
Figure 17 - Average Time of Social Media Consumption
Here we can see more than half (53%) of our target group spends 1-2 hours on average
on social media daily. Followed by 3-6 hours (28.8%) and less than an hour (13.6%).
6.5.2 Preference Media
In this segment, we determined our target group’s preference on consuming daily

news update.
a. Which platform do you get your daily news from?
Figure 18 - News Media Platform
We can see over 90% prefers getting their news update from social media as their
primary media channel, while only 21.2% prefers newspaper and 19.7% prefers
television.
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b. Which local news web portal do you prefer to get your news from?
Figure 19 - News Media Local Web Portals
We can see over 90% prefers getting their news update from social media as their
primary media channel, while only 21.2% prefers newspaper and 19.7% prefers
television.
c. Which international news web portal do you prefer to get your

global news from?
Figure 20 - News Media International Web Portals
On the international news side, BBC News wins the consumer preference by a landslide
with 81.8% preference, while Al Jazeera (40.9%) and CNN News (comes second and
third respectively.
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d. Which social media platform do you rely on to get your news
from?
Figure 21 - News Social Media Preference
In terms of social media, our target groups prefer Facebook the most to rely on to get
their news update (87.9%). Followed by YouTube (43.9%), LinkedIn (37.9%) and
Instagram (18.2%).
e. In which format do you like to get your news delivered?
Figure 22 - News Delivery Format Preference
In this interesting question, 48.5% of our target group prefers their news being delivered
on a hyperlink to a web portal article shared via social media. While 42.4% prefer it
being illustrated as a social media graphics with the news update written on the caption.
And 40.9% prefer it as a short-form video content under 60 seconds which is easily
digestible. Only 28.8% prefer reading their news on paper and 21.2% prefer watching
news updates on television. 24.2% prefer watching their news update online as a long-
form video content such on media channels such as YouTube or Facebook.
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f. Which one do you prefer more; authenticity of a news or
convenience of how that news is delivered to you?
Figure 23 - Authenticity vs Convenience
As expected, over 95.5% prefers having the authenticity of the news the consumers are
getting over the convenience of how the news is delivered.
g. Are you interested to follow a dedicated platform for Local and

Global news related to Brands?
Figure 24 - Brand News Interest
71.2% of our target group was interested on having a dedicated platform where local
and international news related to organizations and brands will be delivered. 25.6%
were not and the rest were maybe.
6.5.3 Linear Scale Questions
Some open-ended questions were asked to our target group where the answers were
determined from a range of 1-5; where 1 being strongly disagree, 2 being somewhat
disagree, 3 being neutral, 4 being somewhat agree and 5 being strongly agree.
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a. Newpapers/Magazines are becoming an inconvenient way to access
news in the modern era.
In the first question, the opinion of our target group was taken regarding the
inconvenience of newspapers or magazines in the modern era. Surprisingly, the answers
were polarizing as majority was neutral (34.8%) and was not sure if print media is
becoming inconvenient or not.
b. Digital media is more convenient for getting authentic news than

print media.
Figure 26 - Questionnaire 2
Surprisingly, majority (32.8%) is unsure about digital media being more convenient
for getting authentic news than print media.
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c. Social Media is a great media for getting news update.
After which we tested their opinions on social media being a great media channel for
getting news updates. Majority strongly agreed (37.9%)
d. I prefer watching my news in an audio visual format rather than

reading it.
Even though majority (27.3%) is not sure if watching their news is better than reading,
a lot of people strongly prefer an audio-visual format over reading the full coverage
(22.7%)
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e. Watching a 60-second video is more convinient for me to get a
news rather than watching a long video
Shockingly, whose who actually prefer watching an audio-visual format of their news
update, majority strongly agrees (47%) a 60-second short form video content is more
convenient than watching a long form and detailed dive of it.
f. It is becoming hard to justify the authenticity of a news with the
rise of fake news on social medias
And finally, majority do strongly agree (54.6%) due to rise of social media and user-
generated content online, it is getting harder and harder to authenticate the credibility
of a news, and differentiate between authentic and fake news.
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CHAPTER 7: FINDINGS, RECOMMENDATIONS,
LIMITATIONS AND CONCLUSION
7.1 Findings
Analyzing the industry, market & company’s overview while also analyzing the
conducted survey’s results; we can chalk down the following interesting finding that
can be used as reference points to strategizing.
• Even though the demographic of print media consumers is not complete extinct
yet, the shift to digital media due to it convenience and relevance in modern
lives is drastically increasing.
• If any digital media is on the verge of making print media extinct, it would be
social media.
• With the rise of smartphones, social media and 24/7 digital integration in our
lives with seamless connectivity with every aspect; people’s attention span is
decreasing drastically and they want their information to be served instantly in
the quickest time, in the most convenient way.
• As user-generated content increase in the digital space, the more consumers are
skeptical about the authenticity of a news update and it is getting harder and
harder for them to distinguish real news from fake news.
• The credibility and success of a news portal or page is highly depended on how
it serves the audience’s expected needs and how much they have a one-on-one
relation with the consumers.
• A balance between authentic accuracy and convenience of the content needs to
be struck to optimize digital reach. If the news is convenient but does not have
enough credibility to authenticate the source of the news, it is seemed as a
clickbait content that is not helpful for a journalism brand in the long-run. At
the same time, if the news is so authentic that it cites every detail on their
content, it becomes inconvenient for casual readers to be an active user.
• Even though the market for reading blogs and articles will never go away, there
is a huge need in the market for short-form 60 seconds video content and well-
illustrated visual news in social media; which is only exponentially rising as
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international content creators are already gaining huge success in the local
market with a similar content.
• Design aesthetics and user experience plays a huge role for gaining reach and
having high retention rate for journalism brands in the modern era. Bloating
unnecessary content and putting design aesthetics as an afterthought can do
more harm than benefit in the long-run.
• Due to the declining users in print media and everyday increasing users in digital
media, ad buyers are investing more on buying digital ads rather than print ads.
• Even though our brand’s prime target is 34 – 45 year old corporate executives,
managers and CXOs; in the survey it is seen that the majority portion of our true
target consumers are 22-28 year old entry level corporate officials.
7.2 Recommendations
After critically analyzing the above findings, the following areas were chosen to be
focused upon to optimize Bangladesh Brand Forum’s potentials:
1. Digital Media Emphasis Equal importance, if not more, should be given
towards effective communication on digital media as print media.
2. Engagement via Effective Digital Marketing Due to the uncertainty of the
publication industry, the company should slowly pivot from print and put their
primary focus on digital communication and engaging audiences on social
media channels.
3. Developing Brand Persona according to Audience’s Needs From the above
competitive analysis, we can see that every major publication delivers content
according to the target audience’s demand and puts emphasis on the overall
digital industry’s modern user experience standards; by developing the brand’s
marketing communication around their readers expectations of what a premium
publication brand’s persona should be.
4. Modernizing Design Language From the company’s SWOT analysis we can
notice that BBF achieved design excellency in magazines and other illustrative
publications, but did not translate equally in digital platforms. This proves that
the company has distinctive capabilities to offer modernized design language
but due to the lack of market data analysis, the company cannot effectively
translate the similar level of design in this ever-changing user-focused media.
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5. Repurposing Content Across Multiple Medias News publications that
successfully pivoted to digital communications can be seen repurposing their
write ups in form of long and short easily digestible video content, that is not
only used to generate engagement amongst target audience; but also generate
traffic towards the parent website for detailed overview.
6. Generating Revenue Online Due to the declining demand of adspace buyers
on print media and increasing interest towards modern data-driven, effective
targeting advertisements provided by Google and Meta; the current business
model of BBF’s ad sells on traditional publication is not going to be able to
sustain in the long-terms if a new modernized business model is not developed
around digital advertisement, monetization, affiliated marketing and third-party
sponsorship placements.
7. Website Optimization and Better UI/UX Experience In the competitive
analysis, we have also found out that BBF’s website does not translate the
brand’s premium positioning online as their major competitors (some of which
are not premium) do. BBF’s premium brand positioning is unlike any other
publication brands we have seen in the local market and therefore should
heavily focus on getting inspiration from global brands of similar kinds.
8. Targeting Youths Effectively Due to the unique niche positioning of the
company in terms of publications, the reach of BBF’s publications is not fully
optimized. And due to the lack of ignorance towards focusing on the aspiring
business enthusiast youths of the new generation in terms of effective
communications, the whole segment of a potential market is not capitalized.
7.2.1 Digital Media Emphasis
It is no doubt by now that our main focus is developing and building a sustainable
digital media presence for Bangladesh Brand Forum, which is an ambitious and
overwhelming long-term goal due to being the parent organization for multiple sub-
brands including Bangladesh Innovation Conclave, Women in Leadership, Superbrands
Bangladesh, etc. Therefore, our primary focus will be to concentrate on BBF’s digital
presence and slowly branch out to other sub-brands from analyzing BBF’s digital
growth.
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Bangladesh Brand Forum has been conceived through magazine publications and
therefore has already gained excellence in that sector with design, relevance and long-
term experience in terms of operations, workflow, execution, monetization and
promotion. Our goal is to translate the same, if not better, success and excellence in our
digital platform.
The following are some implementation strategies to focus on:
• Analyze BBF’s publications, especially BBF Monthly, to understand what

makes it unique and what its core offering brings to its consumers. After having
an understanding, we can strategize on how to bring its core value offering and
experience online. The goal will be to bring the core experience of our
publication online via,
• Summary of star articles into a social media friendly post
• Sharing interesting market findings
• Building alternative content for digital use during publication content
development
• Sponsored or collaborative article/content for synergic benefits
• Sharing award souvenirs’ content like Brand Information from
Superbrands and Best Brand Awards, Commward and Digital
Marketing Summit Winner’s Campaign Highlights, etc. and turn them
into promotional/engagement tools.
• Analyze BBF’s past events and understand how digital platforms can be
integrated to improve the audience’s experience. Past event’s experience and
knowledge can also be used as promotional tools to build awareness and interest
towards newcomers, ie,
• Posting highlight clips on social medias,
• Making 60-second shorts from impactful highlights,
• Repurposing the core learning highlight into a digestible format (graphic
illustration), etc.
• Develop a separate digital content calendar that aligns with the publication’s
development work so that both the publication and the digital content can be
cross promoted simultaneously. This might also help to promote our digital
publication subscription.
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• Analyze industry leading and globally trending digital news portal and social
media pages to simultaneously innovate our content format and maintain
engagement through freshness and uniqueness.
7.2.2 Engagement via Effective Digital Marketing
In today’s age of information, Digital Marketing cannot be only centered around SEO,
paid advertisement, boosting and other artificial digital marketing tools and strategies.
With the rise of social media and giving consumers the power to judge collectively,
organic digital marketing strategies is the bridge that connects a brand to the consumers.
Customers want to build a personal relationship with brands through hyper-
personalized experiences. If the core offering does not connect with the needs and
expectations of the target audience; it will be very difficult to create engagement, not
only organically, but also waste a lot of money on unoptimized media buying revenues.
Affiliated and influencer marketing have been on the rise as an effective medium for
cross channel engagement due to their organic authenticity and credible reliability.
Personal Branding of influences has also been a key factor towards building this niche
digital economy. Bangladesh Brand Forum can capitalize on this opportunity to create
and sustain organic audience engagement. The following should be the key focus on
this area:
• BBF can position itself as a bridge between well-known local brands and its
customers towards providing hyper-personalized experience through generating
brand exclusive contents that only we can provide through our corporate
networks
• Influencer marketing can be executed through collaborating with corporate
level personal branding figures with great social media presence like Dom
Sumdany, Solaiman Shukhon, Ayman Sadik, Khalid Farhan, etc.in term of
making exclusive content; which can be effective towards cross channel
promotion.
• More emphasis on improving the employee experience should be given to
deliver better results and make their personality a core brand asset for the
company; which can be later utilized to generate hyper-personalized content to
effectively bring a human touch to our audience online.
57
• Sponsorship should be given to local business influencers to build brand
awareness.
• Content should be strategized and planned in such a way that it influences the
audience to engage on the platform through commenting and sharing personal
opinion.
• A centralized social media manager should be enrolled who is young,
passionate, experienced and has a personality that resonates with our brand and
our target audience effectively. Having more than one executive figures on
social media can cause identity confusion amongst the brand and the audience
7.2.3 Developing Brand Persona according to Audience’s Needs
Our current Brand Persona is as follows:

Age: 30-year-old
Gender: Male/Female
Class: Upper Middle Class
Occupation: Business Executive
Personality: Ambitious, Educated, Well-Informed, Hard Working, Passionate.
Life Goals: Create value for himself/herself and his/her organization through
knowledge and experience; and bring sustainable impact to the society.
The problem with this brand persona is that, this is greatly represented on events and
print press as that media is old and driven by a middle-aged consumer base. But the
digital space is dynamic and ever-changing. And the forefront of innovation is driven
by the young generation z who grew up or are still growing up under the influence of
the internet. They are the ones who create and drive digital trends in terms of marketing,
content, promotion and design. If we specifically build a brand persona centered around
the 35-45 year old target group, it’s going to be hard to stay relevant and keep
innovating; as the digital marketing strategies required to acquire that target group can
generally be archaic. As the new generation creates a digital revolution with user
generated content and personalized micro influencing via various social media
channels, the older target group is also slowly influenced by their trends as brands and
corporate picks it up and utilizes it under their marketing mix. Therefore, their
expectations of our brand also exceeds and if we can’t innovate accordingly, our brand
58
will slowly become irrelevant and unattractive to our core audience. For which, our
digital brand persona should be centered around the youth and driven by the youth, to
stay in the forefront of the digital and cultural revolution.
Therefore, our proposed Brand Persona for a digital presence should be as follows:
Age: 25 year old

Gender: Male/Female
Class: Middle Class
Occupation: Corporate Executive and Aspiring Entrepreneur
Personality: Ambitious, Fresh Graduate, Willingness to Bring Change, Socially
Aware, Activist Mind.
Life Goals: Create personal value for sustainable growth and bring innovative
changes in corporate and society around them.
7.2.4 Modernizing Design Language
The design language of Bangladesh Brand Forum should focus on the following factors
• Integrating minimalism design theory and bold colors
• User friendly design that is both aesthetic and pleasing to the eye
• Blends well with the channel environment
• Easy to navigate
• Incorporating dynamic imagery with minimal bold colors and font
• Have some relevance with modern pop design
7.2.5 Repurposing Content Across Multiple Medias
The biggest strength of Bangladesh Brand Forum is their abundance of content

available on both print media and event/seminar archives. Usually with new
organizations, they have to generate new content daily to keep their audience engaged;
which can be tedious for employees and also drop quality due to streamlining. Luckily
for BBF’s 15 years of event and journalism archive, we have excellent quality content
that does not reach its optimal engagement because of the way they are served to the
audience or the channel medium it uses that might be inconvenient for modern times.
59
Some content repurposing strategies have been discussed in the previous section. Other
than that, some other strategies can be as follows:
• Creating new video form content where teaching of keynote speakers from
different seminars and events will be indoctrinated through a social friendly
manner.
• Blogs can be promoted through making a summarized visual form on social
media posts and/or stories. Video content can also be used for the same purpose.
• BBF Brand News can be turned into a short daily video segment.
• A podcast can be introduced where we discuss and debate on trending issues in
the corporate world, bringing industry leading thought leaders to give their
insights on the topic. This will not only help to capture a bigger target segment
and develop a brand presence in a new channel medium; but also, the podcast
clips can be used to generate more promotional posts on social media to help us
cross-promote channels.
• The event souvenirs’ content on print can be utilized as scripts to develop
promotional AVs and video content during event month; ie Commard’s
Communication Campaigns, Best Brand Award’s winner’s accomplishments,
Inspiring Women Award’s winner’s contribution and impact, etc.
• Interesting statistics data from BBF Monthly and other annual publications and
blog posts that are relevant to a trending event can be used to generate relevant
content on the event.
• Superbrands can have their own weekly/monthly segment where we showcase
what makes the particular certified brand a Superbrand through informative
curation and insiders’ information.
7.2.6 Generating Revenue Online
Since the goal is to pivot BBF from print to digital as their primary channel of
communication, it will also contradict with the company’s primary source of revenue;
the ads from publication. Therefore, a new business model needs to be developed for
digital monetization that is superior to the current model on print to fully transition into
an online journalism and communications brand. Even though it is almost impossible
to fully dissolve the print media in the short run, our long-term goal should be to
60
develop a multi-sourced revenue model online that will generate more revenue per unit
taka invested (higher ROI) vs that of publications’.
7.2.7 Website Optimization and Better UI/UX Experience
To build a good website, the following factors needs to be considered

• Strong Main Content
• Good Design
• Proper Maintenance
• Positive Reputation
• Strong Secondary Content
We need to remember, in terms of web development and maintenance, “No One Factor
Can Make Your Site, But One Factor Can Break It”
7.2.8 Targeting Youths Effectively
As talked about in the previous section, youths are at the forefront of revolution in
culture and social moments. Therefore, they are a crucial target market to specifically
focus on to not only capture the major chunk of the market, but also make the BBF
brand ever youthful and relevant. For which, the following actions can be taken.
• Making a separate sub-brand under BBF’s umbrella (Youth Ed can be

incorporate as well) to generate and promote youthful content aligned with the
teen and young-adult demographic. The content should have relevance and
collaboration between the same age group to keep a human touch, and should
focus on youth and pop culture for promoting youth entrepreneurs, leaders and
creators (artists, musicians, content creators, etc.) through fun and
entertainment.
• The brand can also affiliate itself with universities and educational institutions
to encourage innovative culture and youth empowerment through promoting
events, competitions, seminars, online challenges, etc.
61
7.3 Limitations
The biggest limitation of the report would be time. As the report’s result is a long-term
continuous process of strategizing and improving along market response, the theoretical
market output of implementing the strategies cannot be determined under the short 3
months duration of my internship.
At the same time, the proposed strategies are based on market research, user standards
and strategies that might’ve worked for other companies in the past. Due to the dynamic
nature of the target market, the results might not be as accurate as forecasted.
7.4 Conclusions
Bangladesh Brand Forum does not only have the potential to be one of the biggest
brand-new publications in the country, they already are one; and with their potential to
have a great online digital presence they can be the industry leaders in their
segmentation with opportunities to grab new market share. With the rise of interest of
young entrepreneurs and business enthusiasts amongst generation z and young
millennials, there is a huge segment of customers that are not being capitalized upon.
And the proper digitalization of a prestigious publication online can help to not only
grab that target group, but also make them stay relevant in the modern age of
digitalization in the new ‘Digital Bangladesh’.
62
REFERENCES
1. Life's work: An interview with Shariful Islam, Founder, Bangladesh Brand

Forum. Future Startup. (2017, August 6). Retrieved February 27, 2022, from
https://futurestartup.com/2017/08/06/lifes-work-interview-shariful-islam-
founder-bangladesh-brand-forum/
2. Hasan, J., & Uddin, S. (2021, February 21). Bangladesh's publishing industry
hit hard by pandemic. The Financial Express. Retrieved February 27, 2022,
from https://thefinancialexpress.com.bd/economy/bangladeshs-publishing-
industry-hit-hard-by-pandemic-1613873213
3. 5 factors fueling the shift in value of print vs Digital. Realview. (2021, August
12). Retrieved February 27, 2022, from https://www.realviewdigital.com/5-
factors-fueling-shift-value-print-vs-digital/
4. Houston, P. (2021, December 20). 2021 in print: Newspapers' decline
continues, but for magazines ... it's complicated: What's new in publishing:
Digital Publishing News. What's New in Publishing | Digital Publishing News.
Retrieved February 27, 2022, from https://whatsnewinpublishing.com/2021-in-
print-newspapers-decline-continues-but-for-magazines-its-complicated/
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APPENDIX
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BANGLADESH UNIVERSITY OF PROFESSIONALS

“Transitioning Strategies to Effectively Combat Digitalization for Print Publication:

A Study on Bangladesh Brand Forum”

Lecturer, Department of Business Administration – General

Faculty of Business Studies

Bangladesh University of Professionals

Date of Submission: 10th April, 2022

Subject: Submission of internship report on “Transitioning Strategies to Effectively

It’s my pleasure to submit the internship report on “Transitioning Strategies to

Name: Rakin Hasan

Department of Business Administration-General

Supervisor’s Certification ............................................................................................... vi

Letter of Acceptance ....................................................................................................... vii

Executive Summary ....................................................................................................... viii

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................... 16

1.1 Background of the Report ........................................................................................... 16

1.2 Purpose of the Report.................................................................................................. 16

1.2.1 Broad Objective.................................................................................................... 16

1.2.2 Specific Objectives ............................................................................................... 16

1.3 Sources of Data ........................................................................................................... 16

1.4 Scope ........................................................................................................................... 17

CHAPTER 2: OVERVIEW OF THE ORGANIZATION................................................ 18

2.1 An Overview of the Organization ............................................................................... 18

2.1.1 Brief History ......................................................................................................... 18

2.1.2 Initiatives of the Organization .............................................................................. 19

2.1.3 Competitors .......................................................................................................... 25

2.1.4 Target Market ....................................................................................................... 26

2.1.5 Distribution Channels........................................................................................... 26

2.1.6 Publication Sources .............................................................................................. 27

2.1.7 Industries .............................................................................................................. 27

2.1.8 Ad Revenue Model............................................................................................... 28

2.2 Organizational Structure ............................................................................................. 28

2.2.1 Organizational Hierarchy Chart ........................................................................... 29

3.1 Managing the Publication ........................................................................................... 30

3.2 Content Planning and Support for Other Initiatives ................................................... 31

3.3 Content Strategizing.................................................................................................... 32

CHAPTER 4: LEARNING/EXPERIENCES FROM INTERNSHIP PROGRAM.......... 33

4.1 Teamwork ................................................................................................................... 33

4.2 Leadership ................................................................................................................... 33

4.3 Communication ........................................................................................................... 33

CHAPTER 5: METHODOLOGIES ................................................................................. 35

5.1 Primary Data Source ................................................................................................... 36

5.2 Secondary Data Source ............................................................................................... 36

CHAPTER 6: ANALYSIS ............................................................................................... 37

6.1 Industry Analysis ........................................................................................................ 37

6.1.1 Porter’s 5 Forces Model ....................................................................................... 38

6.2 Competitor Analysis ................................................................................................... 39

6.2.1. Print Media .......................................................................................................... 40

6.2.2. Website ................................................................................................................ 40

6.2.3. Social Media ........................................................................................................ 41

6.3 Market Analysis .......................................................................................................... 41

6.3.1 STP ....................................................................................................................... 41

6.3.2 Brand Persona ...................................................................................................... 42

6.3.3 Marketing Mix...................................................................................................... 42

6.4 Business Model Canvas .............................................................................................. 43

6.5 Survey Analysis .......................................................................................................... 44

6.5.2 Preference Media.................................................................................................. 46

6.5.3 Linear Scale Questions ......................................................................................... 49

CHAPTER 7: FINDINGS, RECOMMENDATIONS, LIMITATIONS AND

7.2 Recommendations ....................................................................................................... 54

7.2.1 Digital Media Emphasis ....................................................................................... 55

7.2.2 Engagement via Effective Digital Marketing....................................................... 57

7.2.3 Developing Brand Persona according to Audience’s Needs ................................ 58

7.2.4 Modernizing Design Language ............................................................................ 59