Solid in success

Mamun M. Adil profiles Ali A. Rizvi.

Ten years in advertising and Ali A. Rizvi, COO, Interflow Communications has done almost all there is to do in the profession, whether as part of a creative, client service, PR, media planning or brand activation team. And that too at major agencies and high level positions.

Needless to say, Rizvi is a success. But thankfully, he is not full of himself. In fact, he is secure enough to attribute his success to being in the right place at the right time.

“You can call me lucky – wherever I go, people go missing or they move to other companies.” However, he also adds that “opportunities have come my way and I have been smart enough to capitalise on them and work very hard.”

Rizvi also has no qualms about changing jobs every two years on average.

“If I feel I am stagnating, or that I have learnt everything I want to in a job, I move on.”

But when I prod him further, asking him the secret to his success, he says that it is simply a lot of hard work. I counter this by saying that there are plenty of people who work hard, but who aren’t necessarily successful. He then, almost grudgingly attributes his success to a combination of hard work, dedication, discipline and passion.

“You have to be passionate about what you do, especially in advertising, so you can give it your 110%. Only then can you succeed.”

And what about money?

“Money never motivated me, but I always wanted to be one of the best in my profession.”

Ah, so the driving force is to be recognised as a true professional?

“Yes,” he agrees somewhat hesitatingly. “And I love what I do.”

It’s clear that he is extremely passionate about his work, and continues to be excited by it every day.

“I love going to work, and I still get goose bumps when a TVC I have worked on airs for the first time,” he admits a tad sheepishly.

Like many advertising professionals in Pakistan, Rizvi did not plan on a career in advertising.

Instead it was to be a career in civil engineering, a subject he studied at Kansas State University. After graduating, he joined Kruger Technologies, an engineering company in Kansas City, but finding the rigours of engineering a little too limiting, and because he always yearned “to do something creative” he ended up setting up the company’s marketing department.

“As there was no competition, I was made marketing director,” he says modestly.

Four years later, a little weary of a post 9/11 America, Rizvi returned to his hometown Karachi “to test the waters” and joined CMC as an account manager in 2002. As it turned out, several members of higher management were leaving when Rizvi joined and within six months he was promoted to account director.

He worked there for nearly two years, after which he moved to Islamabad to join Orient McCann Erickson as account manager for Jazz. That was in 2004 when the competition between the telecoms was at its peak. Rizvi worked on several campaigns for Mobilink, collaborating with film and art directors, acquiring new skills along the way. It was, in his own words, “a different ballgame altogether” and he was soon promoted to account director, partly due to his hard work and the fact that several senior executives left the agency.

After two years at Orient, Rizvi moved to Adcom as head of creative operations, where he worked on the Telenor relaunch, and launch campaigns for Djuice and Telenor Talkshawk.

Wasn’t the Telenor relaunch campaign the one that was rumoured to be ‘inspired’ by an international brand, I ask.

To which Rizvi replies swiftly:

“For three days we worked on concepts with no success. Then one morning as I was driving home at about four, I noticed the telephone lines and a random thought crossed my mind: if we were to brand the airwaves which allow people to use their cell phones, what colour would they be? I shared this with my colleague and we started developing situations people could relate to with this idea in mind…”

The campaign eventually won Adcom an Aurora Award for best campaign.

Predictably, Rizvi began to get restless and two years later he moved to head the media planning wing of Adcom’s Islamabad office. A few months later he was made head of media for Adcom for all three regional offices, after the previous head left.

The next unexplored territory on Rizvi’s résumé was brand activation; the lure of “getting to know brands from a different perspective” saw him join Contact Plus (a sister concern of Interflow Communications) as COO, where he brought an “element of creativity to the table”.

In June, Rizvi joined Interflow Communications as the COO, describing it as a “fun ride so far”. Although essentially a management position, he is determined to bring an element of creativity to his work, by “finding more innovative ways of delivering communication solutions to our clients… we have a lot of creative muscle that we haven’t flexed properly yet.”

What strikes me most about Rizvi is that he is devoid of any airs and graces and a know-it-all attitude. He says that this is something he has learned along the way.

“I have learnt to grow in stature, but keep my feet firmly planted on the ground. It’s very easy to get carried away by success in advertising, especially because of the glitz and glamour of the profession. What matters most is what you have accomplished, and you should let your work speak for you.”

Contrary to what one may assume, Rizvi says that he is ‘not’ a complete workaholic. Instead, although he will work late or on weekends when required, he spends most weekends with his family. No matter what time he goes to sleep at night, he will drop his two children to school every morning and have dinner with his wife every night when in town. He is also a big cricket fan and follows the game religiously.

I also discover that Rizvi is extremely patriotic.

“Pakistani advertising has come a long way,” he says. “The problem is that we have no idea of how to showcase our work to the rest of the world. We don’t take pride in our work; instead we are happy to gush at the work done by other people.”

He also complains about the lack of an advertising fraternity and dialogue between agencies.

“We don’t interact with each other and/or share our learning. Yet given the chance we would be more than happy to share our case studies abroad.”

And it is then that Rizvi lets on about his next real goal in life:

“I want to speak about Pakistani advertising on a global forum. We have a lot of work of an international standard that we should showcase to the world.”

And given Rizvi’s knack of getting what he wants, perhaps it is safe to say that he will do just that. 

Mamun M. Adil is Assistant Manager, BD&R, The Dawn Media Group. mamun@dawn.com