Advertising – a melange of creativity and ingenuity

The advertising industry has flourished massively over the years in Pakistan. Like every year, last year also proved to be another feather in the cap for the industry. According to popular surveys undertaken for the year 2010-11, the overall advertising spend of companies considerably increased in comparison to last years. A number of companies spent a lot of money on advertising through TV, radio, print, outdoor and direct marketing/brand activation.

Finding the target market

The best advertising campaigns were also awarded at the Pakistan Advertising Society (PAS) Awards. The awards aimed to promote the value of advertising and ensured the recipients realise the importance of advertising in economic development. Advertising is a form of used to encourage or an audience (viewers, readers or listeners) to continue or take some action with respect to the product/service being advertised. Most commonly, the desired results of advertisements are to drive consumer behaviour with respect to a commercial offering, but the advertisement campaigns in the year 2011 took a step higher by inculcating inspiration through a series of advertisement, better known as advertising campaigns. Advertising campaigns are a series of advertisements that share a single idea and theme which make up an (IMC). The campaign themes are usually developed with the intention of being used for a substantial period, but many of them are short lived due to factors such as being ineffective or market conditions and/or competition in the marketplace and .

The humour element

Last year, humour was a key element that organisations attempted to exploit in the advertising campaigns and youth became the main target in most of these cases of concern, as the insightful campaigns aimed to address most of their problems by injecting a sense of inspiration and power to be responsive and proactive. Humour seemed impeccably woven in the brands’ USPs and comedy took a step further in fusing creativity in the brand marketing. Humour does increase the brand recall for sure, but companies look for more than just brand recall because of which the campaigns in the year 2011 focused more on driving the audience through humour in a constructive way. An advertising campaign that creates humour is mostly looking forward to the ability of the advertisement to be shared in the form of videos on the internet, text messages, etc. Humour was something that came out to be truly viral last year as different advertising campaigns were very well received by the target audience, particularly youth. I have a list of the few advertising campaigns that were the most talked about in the year 2011. There were a number of similarities in all the campaigns that became popular. Comedy and humour were majorly used to engage the audience and youth was the target audience for most of these advertising campaigns.

And the Oscar goes to … yes you guessed it, Ufone!

Dear Ufone, when it comes to humour in advertisements, you always top the list. Just like 2010, in the year 2011 as well, Ufone made its mark by having the courage to keep coming up with more humorous ads every now and then. Humour appeals are surely the trickiest to work with in the advertisement industry. Ufone bagged the Best Advertising Campaign of the year award at the PAS awards. Ufone has given humour a whole new meaning, unique yet highly amusing advertising with concepts never seen before. The campaign won hearts of the nation making most of the videos go viral on the internet. Most importantly the viewers can relate to these campaigns in many ways, Chief Marketing Officer Ufone, Akbar Khan says, “It is indeed a milestone for Ufone to be recognised for coming up with the best advertising campaign of the year. Pakistan is a country with a growing and diverse advertising sector and we get to experience a number of challenging and unique advertising practices on a daily basis. The team at Ufone strives to always bring a smile to the people of Pakistan.”

Sprite- University of Freshology

In March 2011, Sprite came up with a really innovative advertising campaign with the name of ‘University of Freshology’ (UoF) that aimed at inspiring and teaching young people to think in and out of the box. Bassam Qureshi, Assistant Brand Manager, Sprite says, ‘Fresh thinking is rooted in humour. Comedians always take a fresh perspective.’ This campaign instantly grabbed my attention because it was a cut above the rest and broke the ‘Fido Dido’ norm of the previous Sprite campaigns. For that matter, UoF deserves a pat on the back for changing their advertising approach, with humour introduced for the first time as means to encourage youth to solve their everyday problems with a fresh perspective. This was also a simple way of attaining a freshology degree and most importantly highlighted most of the concerns of the youth accompanied by fresh and humorous solutions; as Qureshi puts it, ‘We managed to put together a list of 100,000 concerns. It was most informative in terms of the way people think about their issues.’ Furthermore, UoF also started sponsoring stand up comedy shows as part of their campaign.

Lipton- Sip of Inspiration

Lipton’s campaign for the year 2011 captures the moments of inspiration that a cup of Lipton Yellow Label Tea can stimulate through clarity of mind. The brief was to communicate that drinking tea helps you think more clearly due to Theanine inside the tea. The Sip of Inspiration idea takes the argument to its logical conclusion and suggests that if you think and therefore work better when drinking tea, it can be a part of getting to much greater thoughts and work. Ali Zafar features with a cup of tea in his hand in most of the commercials. The celebrity endorsement further appealed the viewers, or say the target audience of the campaign, particularly people with the age group of 18-32 or so on. Afshin Majeed, an Ali Zafar fan says, ‘A cup of tea in Ali Zafar’s hand was truly something that drove me and further helped me validate the buying decision. There has to be something about Lipton and its sip of inspiration which is why Ali chose to endorse it.’ The slogan, Lipton tea can do that, was also very catchy and further authenticated the argument of drinking tea as a means to get inspiration. Like Sprite’s idea of sponsoring a comedy show as part of their UoF campaign, Lipton also somewhat followed their lead and launched their own stand up comedy TV show called, Lipton Light On Hai (LLOH), as part of their ‘A Sip of Inspiration’ campaign.

Djuice- Khamoshi ka Boycott

Telenor (djuice) also came up with a new philosophy in 2011 under the title, ‘Khamoshi ka Boycott’. It was a campaign that became a source of inspiration for a lot of its viewers, who got encouraged to make a difference by speaking out. The uniqueness and insight in the advertisements reminded me of Tata Tea’s ‘Jaago Re India’ campaign though. This campaign also clearly targeted the youth, although it did not have humour as a driving element, but it did aim to empower the youth with some ‘serious fun’ as highlighted by Usman Javaid, Director Marketing, Telenor Pakistan. The campaign did more than just brand recall by combining both commercial and social responsibilities. Usman Javaid says the campaign hoped to act as an enabler for the young people to speak out against social vices and injustices. The first phase of the campaign focused on cheating, bribery, nepotism and harassment, each one of which was addressed in separate ads. The poll followed by at the end of each ad, further helped to gauge the youth’s reaction to these issues. Similarly, the campaign was also endorsed Shahzad Roy and Mahira Khan as their brand ambassadors.

HBL- Mr Bean

In the banking sector, HBL (Habib Bank Limited) took a very bold step by coming up with a highly attention grabbing campaign for HBL Internet and Phone Banking. The message that the campaign gave across was ‘Har aik kay liye aasan’. The notion behind the advertisement campaign was to make the customer believe that the services of HBL are so simple, user friendly and easy to use that a person like Mr Bean can also effortlessly use them. I’d say that even though, the message did not go across the right audience, but nobody can deny the fact that it was surely, one of the most talked about advertisements of the year 2011. It was indeed something that interested me more than a lot of other advertisements or campaigns in the year 2011 for HBL took a Mr Bean look alike to represent the ease in banking. It is also interesting to know that HBL even paid royalty to use Mr Bean as a character, but humour does not work well for every ad. Truly, the Mr Bean campaign had been quite a hit with the viewing public, but I am not sure of the response of the target audience that they wanted to attract for internet and phone banking. I assume that the target market was youth, compromising on the fact that generally, the target market of phone banking has to be employed personal, SMEs and retired people. A very large percentage of potential banking sector customers are certainly beyond their teens.

UBL- the blue bean bag

UBL (United Bank Limited) also followed the lead and grabbed attention with just a bean bag. UBL campaign was rather taken as a rivalry campaign in response to the Mr Bean campaign of HBL. We can give some due respect to the bean bag by attaching Mr with ‘a bean bag’. Even though, it was an advertisement campaign that was one of the most talked about in the year 2011, but I did not like the idea of people walking around in the advertisement with a stuffed bean bag that seemed to be able to solve all the banking problems. It rather appeared more like a pillow and reminded me of the missing bed element every time I saw those series of ads in the campaign.

The views expressed by the author are her own and do not reflect the official policy of Profit. Comments and queries: [email protected]