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The Task Master
Razeeb Hasan Chowdhury, Director of Cogito, a small time marketing solution company is the newest kid in the block. In a meeting with Narmin Tartila Banu, Rajeeb speaks about the making of his company Cogito.
Razeeb had pursued science throughout his school and college. It was no wonder that when he made it past the DU admission test, he gladly sailed into the Applied Physics and Electronics department. But during his second year at university, he discovered that his passion was not for solving complex Physics equations. Rather, he felt more at home in his uncle's ad firm, where he worked part time as an animator. Afterwards, he moved to Bitopi and then there was no looking back. 'In fact the only good that my science background did to me was making my path cross with Poonam's,' says Razeeb, who subsequently married his batchmate and now the two have a little daughter named Joyeeta!
In 2003 Razeeb joined Grameen Phone (GP) as its Creative Head. Initial ideas of the touching ad 'All gave some, some gave all' started forming with Asif and Tanvir who were,
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are and will forever be his friends and critics. Later, with Amitabh Reza as the film director, the advertisement was filmed in the TSC area. Over the months following the airing of the ad, GP enjoyed high brand recall rate, not to mention a feel-good association for articulating something close to people's hearts.
Razeeb soon got a promotion at GP and took over as Marketing Manager. He was excited, but the excitement didn't last long. 'I was getting into meetings every morning and getting out of them every evening,' says Razeeb. All I had to do was attend meetings, take decisions and delegate work. I hated it.' He approached Mehboob Chowdhry, who had by then left GP for Banglalink, the (then) newest telecom company in the country. 'I want your advice,' he said to his guru.
Mehboob Chowdhury advised him to open a firm of his own where he could work as independently as he wished. The odds were against him, but he decided to give it a shot. And that is why he formed Cogito. In a nutshell it's an FnF (friends and family) company, consisting mostly of Razeeb's friends and family members.'
And what a smart group they are! It is Cogito that produced the emotional 'Fisherman' ad for banglalink that has worked the same wonder for the company as the 'Liberation War' ad, for GP. During the first year of operation Cogito bagged a handful of bronze trophies in the 'Srijon Shomaj Award' in Kolkata. Recently, an ad from Cogito was nominated as the best TV ad in the prestigious World GSM Award. Here's hoping that Cogito keeps up the good work and catapults Bangladesh's ad industry to new heights!
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