Promotion

“Promotion compasses all the tools in the marketing mix whose major role is persuasive
communications.”
There are three goals of promotion; to inform, to persuade and to remind the target audience.
According to Stanton, “Promotion includes advertising, personal selling, public relations, sales
promotion and other selling tools.” (Kotler, 2010)
Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC):
The coordination and integration of all marketing communication tools avenues, functions, and sources
within a company into a seamless program that maximize the impact on consumers. (Kotler) Brands like
Starbucks, Vodafone and Louis Vuitton have used IMC in the best possible way. IMC is when the same
message is put forward with a single positioning idea/theme, across all mediums of promotions. Ways
of promoting a product or a brand are:
i) Advertising (above the line and below the line),
ii) Sales promotion,
iii) Direct Marketing,
iv) Digital Marketing,
v) Personal Relations and
vi) Personal Selling.
Advertising in Pakistan
Advertising is any paid form of non-personal, presentation and promotion of ideas, goods, or services by
an identified sponsor. (Kotler, 2010) In general, advertising is a form of communication intended to
persuade an audience (viewers, readers, or listeners) to take some action. It usually includes the name of
a product or service and how that product or service could benefit the consumer, to persuade potential
customers to purchase or to consume that particular brand. Modern advertising developed with the rise
of mass production in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

“We want the consumers to say “that is a hell of a product” instead of “that is a hell of an ad”
Leo Burnett

Advertising has come a long way in our part of the world. From just two television channels (PTV/
STN) and one radio channel (Radio Pakistan) to myriad of television (satellite and cable) and radio
channels, not to forget the numerous digital communication methods available, Pakistani media
landscape is thoroughly fragmented. For advertisers/clients, the evolution has certainly brought not only
opportunities, but a lot of challenges as well, that need to be addressed in order to effectively
communicate with the target audience, to have satisfactory Profit and loss accounts and also to make the
presence felt in the international advertising/brand world.
According to the American Marketing Association, advertising is “the placement of announcements and
persuasive messages in time or space purchased in any of the mass media by business firms, nonprofit
organizations, government agencies, and individuals who seek to inform and/ or persuade members of a
particular target market or audience about their products, services, organizations, or ideas.”
According to TV monthly industry report of December 2016:
1. Compared to the last year’s trend for the same period, there has been an increase of 9.5% in the total
minutes of advertising.
2. (Beverages, detergents, and personal products remain the top three categories enjoying the highest
share of advertising minutes on TV.
3. Unilever tops the list of most advertised company on TV. Alone, it enjoys a share of 31% which is a
cumulative of the other three (P&G, Nestle and Coca Cola).
4. The top three brands that advertised the most on TV are Surf Excel, New Ariel Blue, and Coca Cola.
5. Ab Takk tops the list of top TV channels getting the most advertising. This also applies to prime-
time slot of 7pm to 11pm.
6. News and entertainment remain the most preferred segments for advertising with music, movies,
sports, and kids’ programs attracting the least advertising.
7. The top three time slots for advertising include Prime time (7 pm- 11 pm), Afternoon and Morning
time band. (Pakistan Advertiser's Society, n.d.)
Changing face of advertising: Has it really come a long way in Pakistan?
The answer to this will be discussed by taking into consideration the following perspectives:
1. Changing consumers
2. Advertising Agencies
3. Advertising content-relevance, simplicity, and unexpectedness.
4. Emerging vs. Traditional media
Changing Consumers
Increasing Consumer base
Over the next few years, emerging market economies are expected to grow three times faster than
developed ones. Alongside this growth comes the emergence of the so-called “Rising Billion,” as
technological and economic changes increase the power of bottom-of-the-pyramid consumers
worldwide. (Eric Turkington)
These consumers are already beginning to influence the global marketplace in great numbers, enabled
by widespread mobile connectivity that provides access to the world’s wealth of information and the
digitized global marketplace. Indeed, the juxtaposition of advanced technological enablement alongside
a paucity of other essentials can be quite jarring (there are more mobile phone subscriptions globally
than toothbrush owners).
Many consumers are driven by an aspirational desire to experience the brands and lifestyles they’ve
seen streaming through their TVs and smartphones. This ambition for more and better, paired with
improving economic and technological circumstances, renders the Rising Billion a powerful force to
impact the behavior of the world’s most influential companies – many of which have previously ignored
or underserved developing markets. (Eric Turkington). Many companies have now created brands that
cater solely to the bottom of the pyramid in Pakistan e.g., Sunlight, and introduced Lower Unit Packs
(LUPs) of brands such as Sunsilk, Lifebuoy Shampoo, Lipton, Supreme, Colgate, Tapal, Surf Excel, Ariel, Fair
& Lovely, and Rin.
Informed Consumers
With the rise of internet and its killer search engine ‘Google’, searching for and finding the information
is at the click of a mouse. For those in the ‘researching’ mode, things become quicker and easier in the
form of official brand websites, downloadable brochures, and price comparison websites. Every stage of
purchase decision is online, and the beginning is now probably a search on Google and a gander at a
film on YouTube. Smartphones have collapsed the division between digital and real worlds. People
roam at will – looking at pictures and videos, sharing links on social media and finding information. The
digital and physical worlds are now one. A buyer may be in a dealership with a smartphone in hand
(using the free Wi-Fi of course) looking at a YouTube product demo film about and checking prices.
And that smartphone in the buyer’s pocket is as powerful as that laptop he or she first owned 10 years
ago. (Saunders, 2014)
Consumers have become smarter and more discerning. The notion that consumers are gullible no longer
holds true, courtesy of the information revolution. Especially, at this time of downturn the consumers
have become more suspicious of what is being offered to them. In fact, because of the rising inflation
they have become more price and value conscious. "It's more important than ever that you get closer to
your consumers and how they are thinking at this moment in time, and, even more importantly, where
you think they are heading." Brands must adapt to people's new consumer mantra of "stop, look, listen",
in order to reconnect. (Cleft, 2010)
Moreover, consumers have the knowledge, power and authority to challenge the present advertising.
Consumers decide how they want to see, relate, network, interact, sift and shield themselves from the
advertising bombarded at them. (Lucas, 2009).
More choices
A few decades ago, there were only one or two choices in each product category for the consumer to
choose from. Now, there are unlimited brands available and some of them even provided to us at our
doorsteps. This situation has put the marketers in a predicament, making them muse over and over and
come up with the right mix for their target market. The risk of an unsatisfied consumer shifting to other
brands has increased drastically with the increasing choices.
Millennials or Alpha Teens
The sharp, smart and tech savvy young consumer which makes up more than fifty percent of our market
presents an enormous opportunity for the marketer. Without having any doubts in mind, marketers do
realize this colossal market. They are using two methods of encashing this opportunity:
1. Marketing to Kids: Making brands catering especially to this kids/tweens segment. Example:
chocolates, candies, biscuits etc. One particular example can be Gluco biscuit which advertises
solely to children.
2. Marketing through Kids: Considering the level of influence (Pester Power) kids exert on the
family decision-making process, from toothpastes to cars, we see almost every category
advertisement with kids singing, dancing, and smiling in them. Apart from the pester power factor,
another major reason that marketers give for using kids in their ads is that the present influencers
will be the future consumers and it is better to remain in their awareness set from the earliest part
of their life. Surf Excel largely markets through kids.
For marketers, the key to winning the hearts of these alpha teens or any age group is experiential
marketing i.e., making them experience your brand. Today, it's a two-way conversational world.
Effective marketing means participation and interaction of the consumer with the brand. (Precourt,
2009)
Shopping smarter
The new consumer mantra is "look, stop and listen" before buying. People's habits have been modified
in terms of both frequency and quantity of purchases (Warc). Because of the escalating inflation rates
people have become more price conscious and value conscious than ever before. The challenge here for
the advertisers is to create a fine balance between the emotional and rational elements that they use in
advertising in order to get the right level of consumer response.