TeachBrands

GlaxoSmith Kline has been operating in Pakistan  since quite sometime now and have always adopted a very low keyed marketing strategy as far as mass marketing techniques are concerned.This all, however has dramatically changed with the launch of Physiogel-A hypoallergenic range of skin products. I am yet to use the product but its marketing efforts really make it sound promising. The use of celebrity endorsers such as Ayesha Khan and heavy media coverage on online and offline marketing channels stand unparalleled. It was also new for any brand to bring forth the team behind the product as we saw  the brand manager,Aiza Sumsum come up on all launch events and was talking about the product as it was her own baby..and sure it was !!...Cheers for the physiogel team...may this be the start of carefully crafted and engineered beauty products putting and end to the harmful locally manufactured beauty creams that our youth sometimes opt for.

So it was last week when my husband decided to change the address on  his National  Identity Card as he had some other official work to be dealt with which required this procedure. Deep in my heart I was dreading this entire episode as I knew how a day at the Nadra office was never less than a nightmare the wrath of which I as wife had to face later....little did I know that things had changed at our very own laggard brand Nadra... We visited the branch located in the Blue Area District of the Federal Capital Islamabad...I was first taken aback by the news that now Nadra never sleeps...(eheh...can be the new tagline)..its ready to serve you 24x7!!!  (I couldn't believe  my ears when my husband broke this news to me,...but well i was still quite doubtful of the claims that Nadra makes and decided to believe the opposite...) I kept whining as to how our trip will be put to waste visiting the office at 5...(come to think of it the people who didn't work durin...

Following the ramazan bandwagon and the much hyped recent advertisement of Shan the creative minds at National could not sit tight and got to their feet. Their recent advertisement depicts a mini bait bazi contest where the actors try to connect the dots to National's portfolio of products. In all honesty it was a good but a poorly executed effort. In times like these when people switch TV channels or drift off to their cell phones the minute they get the slight feeling of being bored, no one would sit and watch a 3 minute 50 second long ad. I somehow failed to connect with it,maybe it was because of the actors not fully engaging me in their experience, or the fact that the tradition of bait bazi stands dead in today's digitized era or maybe  the  fact that this very theme of celebrating Eid and Ramazan with pardesis  has been explored and exploited by our very dear competitor,Shan. Shan did a wonderful job of communicating the Eid in Pardes feeling last year when...

The very sight of Sana Bucha advocating Olpers for being as pure as milk makes me gag at times. When the advert hit the TV screens initially it seemed to me like an honest move towards re building consumer trust towards the tetra packed milk products. It also made a lot of sense to get a strong personality like Sana to advocate the brand and refute all the claims made against it. However, slowly and gradually the entire campaign seemed to fall down on its knees as it looked as if the brand was unable to draw a line between making consumers to trust their favorite milk brand again and begging them to pay it the much needed heed, Telling the consumers that Olpers can stay good  for upto 3 months as it goes through some super sci fi UHT process and then the very next second covering this whole sci fi gibberish up by saying that it does rot like our good old cow milk...Oxymoronic much! Even in this age and time...some advertisers believe that the consumer will be sawyed by ou...

The other day I was teaching my brand management students a chapter on cultural marketing when suddenly the image of a Chinese clad in a traditional duppata, serving a local delicacy popped in my head. I had questions..I wanted answers and that was when I asked my youth what they make out of this change in our marketing dynamics. I am a big fan of the finger licking good masalas that Shan makes..no doubt they are the best in the business...however, this time Shan left a bad after taste in my mouth when I saw their latest advert depicting us Pakistanis welcoming our neighbors with arms wide open. Yes, we are very hospitable at heart. Yes, we love food. Yes,we make one feel at home...but we should make sure that our Home..stays Ours....and we remain the Hosts...hospitable, yet wise. CPEC has brought forward a wide array of drawing room discussions in my country. While my students believe this to be the way forward, their naive minds are blinded by the superficial success that ...