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.