Converge Weekly

Interesting news item showed up on daily Urdu Azkaar of 23^rd Oct ‘09, which is currently being regulated via email. The story is about a Christian named Nasir Naz Masih, who confessed that he has done an Umrah ad for Telenor. The daily then goes on counting many baseless news items regarding Telenor that they have been defaulting and in general are not following corporate social responsibility as a foreign company.

Whatever the case maybe, this Urdu daily is an evening tabloid, with a few thousand SEC C readership. Still, just because it was printed, its’ scans are now being circulated throughout condemning this whole activity. Complimentary news items include:

• Thousands of SIMs have been returned in protest to boycott such activity (no indication of who are these people, how did they even find about this news, etc.)
• Telenor is a defaulter of 66.625M rupees (This is a very menial amount if compared to the total subscribers of Telenor, which is around 21.29 million)
• PTA has not received dues from Telenor for some time (No solid proof of this as well)
• Refer to the below attachments for the complete story (No official statement from Telenor brass accompanies the piece)

Few translated pointers from the news item include:

• Yes, I am a Christian and I was paid a handsome amount by a Telenor officer for the Umrah TVC
• I was paid in advance for the TVC, Telenor Director insisted me to do the TVC
• Nasir Naz Masih confessed that he is a Christian and he was contacted by Telenor to do the Telenor Umrah TVC
• A lot of people have protested against this act of Telenor where a Christian guy was hired to do an Umrah TVC
• People are demanding a strict action against Telenor Pakistan and asking government to take notice of such acts
• Nasir Maish has filed an application in the local police station for his protection and has said in application that he acted in the TVC only as a model and he did not know ahead of time that what was the TVC for and blamed Telenor Director for the mishap

Conclusion of the above is that this is a big PR Fiasco in the making. Word of mouth can spread through SMS, Email, Social Media like wild fire. However, blame should be put on when it’s due. The ad agency (Adcom in this case) is responsible for hiring models for various Telenor brand commercials. The selection is not racially partial; therefore, anyone can get a chance to act in any ad that is lined up. TVCs have a good pay attached to it and its basically acting – not actually enacting Hajj in this case. If this was so then all the actors from the 10 Commandments, Message or even the Passion of the Christ should be persecuted on the basis of them not being Muslims. At such a point, Telenor should make an official announcement to cater to all the negative commenting, staying silent would increasingly fuel the arguments.