Branding on Pakistan

"No matter what brand image its competitor carries," said a friend who is a reputed marketer himself. "Because this is a local brand and is known to masses, it can easily cash in the current consumer preference, that is for Pakistani brands and outdo the MNC competition." I couldn’t agree anymore with it.

A study was carried out by AC Nielsen in Australia emphasizing brand quality and patriotism as the two most important factors in determining purchase decisions, ahead to price. This research result unveiled that customers are preferably loyal to local brands even if they perceive price value to be somewhat similar to multinational products. And Pakistani customer was on the same line, while most of us still don’t realize the quality (actual quality I’m referring to) difference in MNC products and their local counterparts in many market categories.

After the US armed adventure in Afghanistan & Iraq, a number of brochures/pamphlets were distributed at public spots like Mosques, parks, schools, universities, roads and markets distinguishing ’local and foreign products’ with ’same level of quality’. It was amazing to see names of totally unfamiliar brands (at least to me) presented on the same quality standards as of giant market leader brands. The pity is, this quality perception was driven by ‘mere’ emotional appeal and not any real benefit.

While the time was difficult for few MNCs that marketed US-brands or were perceived to be US-branded (including Shell & Nestle) to manage and sustain the brand image, local competitors emerged aggressively and tried to capture a major target market that was against all western brands, specifically USA (here, these boycott supporters tended to forget the Country-of-brand of our computers, software and email accounts). The approach was pretty tactical, but the extended Anti-US environment supported the local companies to convert the general customer into ’Be Pakistani- Buy Pakistani’. Just before the Iraq war, the local market noticed brands’ tendencies towards localized marketing and preferred to work on ’Pakistani Brand’ campaigns. This situation affected most of the brands’ communication strategy and the BMs had to sit with board to react in order to protect their market share and brand image. While the locals opted for a patriotic approach-scenting it with the word Pakistani original, MNCs sought a different path. Some of them preferred to remain low-profile and stopped/reduced media advertising, others changed the overall communication strategy. The ‘Pakistani’ theme was incorporated into their product marketing. KFC a prime example of this is followed by other MNCs including Nestle’s Polo, Lifebuoy and McDonalds.

When asked, what was the objective of this campaign, Rafiq Rangoonwala, Chief Executive Officer at KFC Pakistan (owned by the Cupola Group, a high-profile UAE-based conglomerate) explains, "The objective was to clearly establish the truth about multinationals and their contribution in Pakistan. We wanted to portray the bigger picture and not fold to slanted propaganda of certain vested interests". Obviously, locals had a different point to prove. According to Hatim Fakhruddin, Brand Manager at Igloo "The planned objective was to counter the competition and strategically brand Igloo as the only national ice cream company in Pakistan”. Muhammad Amjad, Group Brand Manager at Young’s Food Products in agreement to this statement, adds ’Our objective is to identify the corporate brand Young’s and its sub-brands as Pakistani with pride and contributory to the country’.

An interesting element of this communication path is using the National flag as a base. Emblazoned everywhere, local as well as wannabe local products now showcase the green flag. Latest in the series is the advertisement of Speedex- PIA’s courier service. This method is correctly being applied in provoking the emotional sentiments of the customers by letting them identify the brand attached to the country. Fakhruddin comments on this, "We used national flag because this is the sign of our unity and it symbolizes out true expression of love and belonging to our homeland. The main advantage Igloo anticipated from it was to identify it with the country and its people and their emotions regarding their homeland".

As observed, playing on patriotism emotion was a deliberate cosmetic effort for short-term sales boost and prolonged brand imagery, but companies like KFC and Young’s Food tried to clarify their marketing messages and included this element in their communications plan. Both are indeed interested more to enhance their respective corporate brands and use the patriotism path for this strategic intent. In the time being, many other sales-oriented concerns started using the same path and pitch in their waves on the emotional drive against US-branded companies. The observed results of such fuzzy arguments are rather not up to the expectations.

On the question of achievement of objectives, Rangoonwala is cheerful "The market feedback was astounding, when people realized the implications of their actions against MNCs’ positions. We believe we had significantly accomplished what we had set out to achieve". Aly Mustansir, Marketing Manager of Lifebuoy seems happy as well, "We are pleased to see that our efforts were met with genuine appreciation that exceeded our expectations". While brand owners from companies including KFC, Igloo, Unilever and YFP were able to express that their respective communication style delivered them the desired results, but that’s not the case with every brand that started venturing in a pretty me-too approach. Inevitably I think in the long run, patriotism brings out the best and the worst in the nation’s psyche. The point is that indeed patriotism stirs the soul, inflames passion and generates a platform for arguments. By its very visceral nature and call-to-emotion, it has the fearsome ability to influence behavior and motivate action, not all of which is rational and considerable. Can this be an appropriate territory into which smart brands should venture with long term consumer-pull intents? Well, perhaps we have to wait for the next anti-US social campaign to put patriotism again in our messages.

The best course to me would be for brands to rather "localize" than merely speaking beneath the ‘green shades’. When ’being foreign’ is not in fashion, a brand should have the best tools in place to design and carry out marketing programs on local levels. Its sure that with time, the consumers will ultimately forsake the emotion of patriotism for the reality of other brand attributes, such as value and performance, that address a pressing consumer need. So the brands fulfilling those needs will be the brands out of clutter and not those that merely use the revered green color and symbols of the national standard.