Cricket World Cup in Bangladesh - 8 ideas for your business!

How is your business gearing up for the greatest cricketing event of the world when it kicks off in Dhaka on February 17^th? As the cricket lovers from all around the world will either get glued to their TVs, computers and phones to get latest updates from the grounds of the sub-continent and while many of them will arrive in person to root for their favourite teams – how as a Bangladeshi business, you are preparing yourself not only to cash in on the opportunity but also to play some role whatsoever in upholding the local norms, cultures and traditions to the world media, to visitors in Bangladesh and to viewers abroad?

Might be a good idea to steer clear of the controversies and chaos ahead of the big event next month. Already quite a lot of chaos has been reported in relation to clashes for tickets, regarding the event managers of the opening ceremony and their involving Indian celebrities and the more serious concerns about adequate accommodation facilities for the foreign visitors. We can’t talk about all these in this post and neither we are in any position to provide solutions for them. Rather lets stay focused on opportunities. Not in any particular order or preference, some thoughts are as following –

1. Reengineer, rename and revamp your menu

If you are in the business of food, takeaways, fast-food or restaurants, how about renaming some key popular dishes in your menu according to the cricketing themes, teams or even players? We already have seen our love for opponent-named dish items when we had beaten Australia and New Zealand in form of kangaroo curry and kiwi bhorta special! So be innovative and go ahead rename your cocktails as ‘Captain Courageous-Shakib Special’, burgers as ‘Tornado Tamim’ or spicy items as ‘Mashrafee Masala’. Possibilities are endless.

2. Eat, sip and cheer

Again this goes out to those in food businesses, make sure you have TV screens, large and small, installed and supported by UPS to show matches as they are being played. Quite a great opportunity to lock in your customers to enjoy the match in your restaurants with specially discounted food prices for the duration of the match may be, or for an innings only or even for the first fifteen overs only!

3. A win for Bangladesh, a win for the food-lovers, shoppers and mobile users

Don’t wait for the politicians and governments to flood our players with accolades and awards incase we steal some thunder during this world cup, you can do it yourself from your business perspective, you can do it early on and by rewarding not the players but their numerous supporters and fan from around the country. Announce early on through your websites, social media pages, or put up a banner and print in your menus that you will offer free meals or free drinks all throughout the following day of a historic home win! This might be your gesture to show gratitude to Tamims and Shakibs incase they bring some much needed glory for the nation form the cricket war fields.

In the same tune, if you are a retailer, the world cup offers you a great external hook to offer discounts for a day, week or based on a match by match basis to your customers. Its just a matter of how you show your brand to be completely drenched in the world cup rain and how passionately you want to share this spirit with your customers.

Finally, the mobile phone companies can always offer their subscribers free minutes or free SMSes incase Bangladesh wins, so that the good news can be shared faster and wider among friends and families at home and abroad.

4. Freebies with every wicket, freebies with every six

Again this idea might work on a match by match basis and can be limited to the day of the match only. You can announce beforehand that every time Bangladesh is playing a match, every time an opponent wicket falls or everytime a Bangladeshi batsman scores a six, you offer a free coke to all who are present in your restaurant at that moment.

5. The glorious cricketing moments in DVD

We’ve talked about this before in an earlier post. No occasion will be as great as this to finally showcase in the form of a DVD/CD the historic winning moments of Bangladeshi cricket and make them available for purchase or as prize items competitions in your points of sales, business premises.

6. Patriotic marketing and patriotism merchandising

A great occasion yet again to print out t-shirts, mugs, key-rings, wrist-bands, stickers, photoframes etc. with the Bengal tigers on it. Even better that if you are a charity or as part of your corporate generosity towards the development of the sport in Bangladesh, you can decide to donate either the full or a certain percentage of sales to skills searching, developing initiatives for Bangladesh cricket.

7. Tourism and sightseeing – if a festival doesn’t exist – invent it and have fun!

There is no doubt that travel agencies and the tourism board of Bangladesh are gearing up to woo the foreign sports tourists to various scenic locations of Bangladesh. Many among this group might actually arrive in the sub-continent with a view to not only enjoy great games of cricket but also to make a touristic discovery of India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka in the same breathe, which is certainly a good idea. It might not be the best idea to compare tourist attractions of Bangladesh with other countries as we have what we have and we can change things overnights, merely can try to improve them over time. Something we can certainly do is to innovate rituals or activities at or surrounding our tourist locations and relate them to cricket in such a way that even after the world cup finishes, we can continue with the trend and festivities years after years.

For example, how about a beach cricket tournament in Cox’s Bazar? The format of the game, rules, prizes etc. might require a whole different post but the key idea here is to innovate something unique which doesn’t exist as a tourist attraction related to cricket anywhere in the world- or certainly not in the Indian sub-continent. We have the longest unbroken sea beach in the whole world stretching 120 kilometres. A fun to watch 20-20 cricket match at every 5 kilometer of the stretch over a period of 2-3 days might draw enough participants and tourists alike to visit each location for the fun of it, and thus discover the unique beauties of the coastal Bangladesh in a different sporting way.

8. The cricket bat of best wishes

Although a bit late for this may or I am not entirely aware if anything similar have already taken place- but it would be nice if a massive cricket bat could have travelled to all district towns of Bangladesh where the fans could have signed in their support for the home team. If travelling to each corner of the country sounds improbable within a month then atleast visiting the divisional headquarters would be nice. In the end of the day, the world cup in Bangladesh will be more about the fans and lovers of cricket than about the players themselves. So the common public have every right to be a part of this festivity from outside the stadiums too.

So just some random thoughts here, let me know how you are preparing for the fun with the bat and ball next month.

Bangladesh seals historic win against England - now what?

Now that we have finally secured wins against all leading cricketing nations, its worth thinking if there are any opportunities to seal this occasion with items to promote and preserve before we plunge into yet another long gap before we taste the winning wines in future. Even at the time of this writing, England, the only country left to be beaten by the cricketing minnows (that is us), has already secured the Natwest Series with a resounding 144 win over the audacious Bangladeshi Tigers. No wonder the three lions were really embarrassed and waken up by the 5 run victory by Bangladesh in Bristol on 10 July.

This might be an opportunity for those who sponsor the Bangladesh cricket team to come up with say a DVD of all major matches which we consider as the milestones in the cricket history of Bangladesh. We can include brief interviews of players on their reactions and aspirations on how they felt when they won and how they want to keep winning in near future in all major cricket tournaments. Such a DVD may be a considered as something to keep for collection for numerous cricket lovers in Bangladesh as our team is yet to convert winning against major opponents a regular phenomenon. So as we wait for who knows 20 more matches before we seal a victory in the cricket pitch, we can package our short-lived ecstasies of winning and preserve it for long rainy days ahead. Also, such materials can be used to inspire nevertheless the future cricket enthusiasts and new talents that on our day, when all our batting, bowling and fielding departments click together, no force can stop us to win and we really can win, whoever the opponent is. After all, cricket - to a great extent, is a mind game, other than being a game played only by a bat and a ball. And the greatest player in the cricket pitch is your mind, which is your strength and control over your temperament is the final and most important skill required along with techniques to spot the odd balls and hit a cover drive for four.


We hope to see the day when winning becomes regular and natural to us, and other than celebrating irregular fireworks against other teams, we can start aiming for winning a series or a major tournament trophy. As Jamie Siddons continues to do his best, we can always relish our great matches when we rose to the occasion and made the red and green wave with pride. Lets get the winning Tigers DVD and watch it again and again until it becomes obsolete and irrelevant, when these wins will not be called 'historic' anymore and become day to day events.

With love from St. Valentine

Dear Lovesumers in Bangladesh,

Hope you are all set to celebrate the global day of love. The more you share it, the more it grows, the more I become richer. Call it globalisation, call it cultural invasion, call it simple expression of love...Bangladesh is just one of the markets where I have successfully managed to own the day and date by branding it to be mine.

Although moral polices and CCTV parents, neighbours and big brothers are a threat to the spreading of love on this day and beyond, I really don't see any problem if some money is made in the process of expressing, sharing and preaching love with your beloved ones especially today. Other than making sure that some flowers are sold today, ensuring that restaurants do good business on this date, pushing up the sales of greeting cards and related merchandize, more importantly I make sure that you don't fall short of saying 'I love you'. There was a time when I wanted you to say it to your lover only, but now I would like you to say this magic three words to your parents, siblings, friends too. That way love will go in different directions, and sales related to my stuff will go only in one direction - up. There is no denying of the fact that festival marketing is nothing new and many non-sales events are also arranged around university campuses like debates on love-before-marriage or love-after-marriage etc. I appreciate all this you do to celebrate the spirit of pure love.

May I also take this opportunity to remind you that this very month also hosts two of your own festivals about which I am very curious about. One is the first day of spring, pahela falgun as you say, and the other is the 21 February, Shaheed Dibosh, also celebrated as the International Mother Language day, supposed to be celebrated all around the world...but I have my doubts. Just wondering if you ever thought of any things special or global related to festivals or days which are truly yours. Have you ever thought if anything exists in these festivals which you can claim to be so truly unique and so viral that you can export this across your borders too? Can you brand the principles of 21 February, the day we celebrate what we speak, how we speak...our language...so that foreigners all around the world also find a good enough reason to have fun on this day? Can you make businesses in Jordan showcase and sell merchandize related to Arabic alphabets, literature, calligraphy, language on this day so that Arabs rejoice the fact that their mother-tongue is Arabic? You atleast need language to express love...I have no problem accepting that from a business sense, your 21 February holds more appeal than the day I own..14 February. Also, I am told that you are the only nation that has laid down supreme sacrifices for your language, I doubt how many outside your small borders know this fact. May be your brand ambassadors and businesses have a responsibility to uphold your heritage. I argue that there is no harm if they make some money out of the process, as long as they are doing it in the spirit of 'accessorizing Bangladeshi patriotism'.

I tell you what...don't listen to what Imam Shaheb is saying, there is nothing Christian about me anymore...I am everybody's. Last time I went to Malaysia and Indonesia during this time of the year and found out that I am everywhere there...from Kuala Lumpur to Jakarta...I could see signs of my love and colors of my spirit..red everywhere. I don't think their Muslim-ness was so weak that it would be challenged by this one day. Actually they were doing it strictly from a business sales and social festival perspective, rather than any religious one. Businesses were happy, so were the lovers of Indonesia. So you better not worry. But just imagine, your 21 February doesn't carry any background which can be solely tagged to any religion or any controversy. So may be if you put your heads together, you can make non-Bangla speakers around the world celebrate this day, exchange expressions (in writing, saying..through languages) of gratitude, love, thanks etc. So go ahead, brand the day, own the day, accessorize the day. Globalization is supposed to be from your end too, but you need to target the globe for that. Love.

St. Valentine.

Victory for Red and Green!

I am not sure if you have come across the Shada Kalo boutique at Rifles Square and also in Banani No. 11 Road in Dhaka. I don't know if they have branches elsewhere but they were first of its kind to try produce fashion clothes, accessories, materials as long as they were either white (shada) or black (kalo). Pretty innovative nonetheless and we can discuss about their business strategy next time. But their idea has been the inspiration to me to see outlets around Bangladesh producing, promoting and selling merchandize only based on the two colors very close to our heart--red and green--The main two colors of the national flag of Bangladesh.

Pretty much like the month of Ramadan, when you see an uprise in the number of 'seasonal practitioners', the month of December also sees an inundation of nationalism. Ofcourse this is good but why limit this great sense of belonging and pride to one month only and why limit this expression of solidarity to the flag only and why limit the selling of national flags to the hands of floating traders only in busy traffic intersections in cities? The idea is to have more than one outlets across cities and district towns who would sell more than flags, it could be banners, stickers, mugs, pen drives, t-shirts, ear-rings, desk flags, key rings, coat pins, bag pins, simple pens, card holders, head bandanas, wrist bands, umbrellas, dining sets, cushion covers and perhaps many more....only and only as long as they are either red or green or both.


Please note that accessorising patriotism is a topic we have discussed before where this act of doing business works towards promoting sense of nationalism (atleast in December and in March perhaps) and can even be great source of basic education as well which could be provided right at the points of purchase. For example, how many of us or of the younger generation know who designed the flag of Bangladesh? So an element of nationalistic education could be embedded in any product which uses national events as a hook and can serve as learning tools not only for us but for foreigners too. For example, couple of months ago, I asked Shabana apa to get me some tiny Bangladeshi flag coatpins (yes, like Obamama and Bush) from Amecon Ltd. in Chairman Bari in Mohakhali, Dhaka, as she was travelling from Dhaka to London. I had been donning them since to work from time to time and to external events where my national identity could be 'worn' as an ornament. Many has since asked me which country's flag that was (!) and what does it signify, so the job of the Bangla brand ambassador is a full time one here.


No doubt bits and pieces of patriotic merchandizing already exist in the form of wrist bands, t-shirts, mugs etc. But have a look here what the opportunities are and how we can help spread it not only in December but all the year round! Ofcourse true progess as a nation will not be achieved by wearing red and green lungis or gamchhas or grameen check only, we need to unite, do, act and work harder for that. But there is certainly no harm in showing off our true blood colors, which is not red...its red and green, especially on the eve of the great victory day! Just to remember that 'victory' these days is achieved and need to be sustained not anymore at war fronts but in business boardrooms, TV and computer screens in urban and rural households and more importantly in the mindspace of consumers, citizens etc.