Has social media overshadowed traditional marketing?

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Arecent advertising assignment at my university entailed that I locate as many ads of certain products as I could in my city. Out driving with my siblings I realised that while I was deliberately scanning the billboards at every traffic light, they were both busy texting. At home, during ‘humsafar’s interval, my mother switched the channel, my father shut down all pop up advertisements on any website he opened without even registering its an ad and when I had to locate the number of the local vet, I gave up looking for the newspaper ten minutes into my search to go to yellow pages online. It suddenly hit me how all traditional advertising techniques, all techniques that I am studying presently at school are somehow getting lost in modern day noise because the audience they are supposed to cater to are oblivious to the ad presence. Even if a brand is lucky enough to establish recall within its target audience, the assurity that their product offering will be recalled too has become greatly dependant on the ‘need’ of the product, rather than the want of it.

Are marketers evolving?

With the traditional advertising touch points changing drastically within Pakistani society, the question arises if Pakistani marketers and advertisers are evolving at the same pace as the modes of advertising are. A recent facebook observation noted that during the two hours of the PTI rally in Lahore, there was an increase of 20,000 fans on the page. At the same time, the MQM rally commanded 0.03% of the total twitter population globally. Whether this was the result of pre planned televised campaigns or print promotions, the question of advertising pace of ‘official’ marketers does get answered with a big negative. According to PTA numbers, nearly 22 per cent of Pakistan’s population is online. Given the fact that we rank 25th in global facebook presence, generating online promotion and advertising through word of mouth seems to be the safest bet for improved advertising of companies, and the government.

The Jang group website attracts nearly 1.8 million eyeballs from within Pakistan, monthly. This is more readership than their print newspaper. This raises a fundamental question, especially for the Pakistani government, if investing in TVC’s or print ads is a wise option especially if they want to capture the massive urbanised student population that is very actively engaged on social media. The only time working individuals or students pause all activities to sit in front of the television is during a Pakistan cricket match, at that time too GPRS services go on an all time high for telecom companies because the audience wants to sync its cyber presence with its physical one. The odds make us realise that even in difficult or trying situations, a majority of the population would prefer to get news updates online or through their telecom services rather than sitting in front of news channels for countless hours.

With 72 million active sim users in Pakistan, and 130 per cent growth rate in the telecom industry, the 3rd largest in the world, it comes as no surprise that telecom companies would market their offerings through text services and gain an edge over traditional modes. They do this mainly by offering their massive clientele services to subscribe to news updates, cricket info, weather reports, and even entertainment all in their pockets. Even though heavy tablet penetration still seems a long way even in official situations, the cell phones have with due respect taken over the paperback market. Does that mean then that instead of sitting and designing a print ad, we need to email that to our client, where it may very easily get filtered to their junk mail labeled as spam?

Not quite. Though the modes of advertising are changing, and the sensible thing for advertisers to do is to adapt to the trends accordingly a huge question of the quality of ads also needs to be addressed. Pakistan’s most successful brand in terms of global marketing is Coke Studio with Ufone ranking second. Why is it that people who do not watch the television have all seen Ufone ads, and they have not you-tubed them like coke studio either? Quality of advertisements in Pakistan either lacks sustainable themes or fails to effectively ally with the moods of the Nation, leading them to fall from memory without a lot of difficulty. What Engro Foods managed during ramazan, year after year is a success story of aligning the most surface emotive side of Pakistan with their products, and Surf Excel’s ability to change the image of stains from bad to good can also be credited to effectively wheedling out emotions during their television commercials.
Understanding the target audience as well as the dynamic and almost explosive market changes are the challenges that Pakistani advertisers and marketers face today. With the ability to change a want into a need, and more modes of communication open to them than ever before, it would be a shame if they are unable to exploit the opportunity both in terms of commercial selling and national brand building.

The writer is an undergraduate student at the Nust Business School.

18 COMMENTS

  1. The channels of communication have changed. Hopefully academia will realise it soon and incorporate it curriculum. Good work Haya!

  2. Dear Saadia I am a under training officer at National Institute of management. My name is Qamar Bashir, Deputy Director at ministry of information and broadcasting. I took the topic of social media as research topic for my individual research paper and in this back drop find your article extremely interesting. This is good piece and indeed we need to research in depth regarding impact of social media on our society. My email is [email protected] please keep sharing your good work. thanks

    • Thanks for the appreciation, and keeping in mind the interest generated by the article I will follow this up with the success of companies in commercial selling and national brand building. For feedback, suggestions, you could mail the Profit team and I will be duly updated.

  3. nice and deep research. Mediem of comunication is changing day by day. Change is nessary for servival in market.

  4. Qamar, the article is written by Haya, not Sadia. The author raises some interesting issues regarding the increased role of social media in modern day marketing. Facebook is becoming a great tool for marketeers and the impact, penetration of social media has become too great for the companies to ignore. Great article.

  5. After a long time I have read an article that has engaged the reader despite it being written on a boring topic. Kudo’s to the author for raising such valid points with regards to the continuous evolution of social media and it’s impact on our lives. Moreover, she has raised a very intriguing point about online readership. Companies now need to invest in their online marketing strategies in order to survive, those that fail to do so will struggle.

  6. While the article is great I don’t understand the recent fixation of everyone about the Humsafar drama? What is so great about it? Just a thought.

  7. Thank you for the appreciation everyone.
    Mr. Saleem frankly i dont get it either. Lol. I mostly rely on facebook status updates on saturday night to find out whats happening in it.

    • Humsafar is apparently so deeply embedded in the minds of so many people that even you couldn’t resist mentioning it, at the beginning of the article since it was embedded in your subconscious. Do you think that’s good marketing on their part?

      • I have never seen any 'official' marketing of humsafar and yet the word of mouth and buzz it has generated is by far the most compared to any other television drama right now. This brings us back to the question mentioned in the article, that word of mouth today is the strongest marketer there is. And that is normally an unofficial marketer. Imagine if the power could be harnessed.

        • If we could harness electricity from the power of word of mouth, Pakistan would be an energy surplus country. On a personal note, if there hasn’t been any ‘official’ marketing of humsafar, don’t you think the success is more dependant on the pretty faces they picked for the drama. My sources have told me that EP’s Fawad and the hot girl from Bol are starring in it. Hence bringing us to the fundamental question, celebrity status sells. Therefore Sahir Lodhi in a tv commercial will be more succesful than one without him, since there are greater chances that his admirers are going to spread the love associated with Lodhi. Personally I hate him. This is quite a dichotomy.

          • Celebrity endorsement helps but thats not the secret to a successful campaign. Ali Zafar hopped from telenor to jazz. Azfar and Mani were kicked off Jazz. Incidently, the Tariq Aziz commercials have been more successful than the Sahir Lodhi ones. Celebrity endorsement has to be done the right way. Just using a famous face isn't really the answer. For proof, we could see most of Coke's success in Pakistan.

  8. Intresting Article

    Wonderful Input.

    Being a businessman, my question is how many companies you have come accross who are professionally smart enough to handle the upcoming trend of advertisment in Pakistan.

    Secondly, how many companies are realizing this upcoming trend and shifting to the social media.

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