Is Pakistan a difficult market to develop Brand Loyalty or Are we missing a Point?

I was commenting on one of a local telecom blog on the current advertising onslaught by our local telco’s & there, I saw a comment on the very common notion of “Pakistan an extremely difficult market to establish any brand loyalty”. As being part of the same industry, I asked myself that does this impression hold true or is this just a result of marketer’s myopic view towards their customers.

Every country & each culture has its own unique set of traits but a consumer is after all a consumer (Since every human in this world is looking for a better solution to make their life better or move one step further in the rat race called life).

Brand loyalty is not an isolated panacea; it comes through the right use of segmentation, innovation, pricing, product management, distribution & promotion but than again these strstegies have been adopted by marketers from ages but brand loyalty has been remained illusive so far.

Mobilink, Pakistan’s No. 1 cellular operator has always taken pride in having the most loyal subscriber base in Pakistan, but at present the same company is loosing more customers compare to any other operator along with the lowest growth rate registered by any other operator in the month of July, 2008.

In the year 2005, Mr. Chekitan Dev and Mr. Don Schultz proposed a model called SIVA (Solution, Information, Value & Access). This model was part of a broader marketing concept called Customer centric approach. This marketing model depicted demand side of marketing in contrast to the widely popular supply side marketing model 4 P’s (Product, Price, Place & Promotion).

What our telecom industry is suffering in particular & other sectors in general is too much emphasis on supply side of marketing with majority of planning weight placed upon promotional side. Think, what if you are bombarded with a solution you don’t required, you would get annoyed right… 

A Customer - In midst of Brand Jungle

To further highlight this particular point, I will give you my personal example. Some days back I came across a TV commercial of an orange Juice by Sun Sip, initially I started to like that TVC due to its catchy jingle & vibrant art direction, what happened next is that the brand gone so over bored with the TV commercial that (you can watch this ad being played thousand times covering almost all cable networks) I started to being irritated not just by the commercial but by the brand itself. So what’s the point on burning so much marketing $ if you are ended up with a very discontent customer.

In the new age marketing, your customer is literally a King & your brand is your baby. Being the brand custodian the marketer objective would be to create an environment where the king start to like the baby (or ideally start to love the baby).

As Love is an emotional feeling & you can’t love somone if you don’t have an emotional bonding to that person. Therefore to persuade the customer to love your brand you need to develop a relationship based upon emotional bonding between your brand & the customer (which must be in personally relevant way) & this is eaxctly where we are missing the point. Hence what I realized is that there is nothing wrong in the mindset of Pakistani customer’s for not being generally loyal to any particular brand rather it’s a case of short-sighted strategies of our marketers.

Experiential Marketing – An avenue ready to unfold…

Nespresso coffee-classy example of what it means to be “experiential"

 Cut 1:

You entered into one of city’s high traffic mall & saw lot of stalls of leading brands. You visited couple of stalls of your interest & listened to the brand promoters briefing long list of brand’s features & benefits, you listened for a while than moved around did your stuff & went home without even remembering a single brand message the brand marketers ought to achieve.

Cut 2:

A family is glued in-front of their TV screen & is deeply indulged in watching their favorite daily soap suddenly a commercial break comes up… press of a remote button, they are now enjoying one of their favorite reality show.
These above scenarios should look familiar aren’t they? As the world of marketing has changed so are our enlightened and empowered consumers – the new prosumer – who no longer responds to being assaulted by one-thing-fits-all, branded media messages.

The Dilemma:

As a marketing practitioner, I always felt that the traditional “features-and-benefits” based marketing generally result in people avoiding messages wherever possible & by any means possible. The current obsessive uses of mass media without connecting the brand message to intending audience have led marketers to a large pool of switchers rather a group of loyal customers. This phenomenon is particularly inflicted upon our highly advertised local telecom industry with every player wanting to out done each other with heavy usage of mass media with out trying to establish messages which are personally relevant, memorable, sensory, emotional and meaningful to their target audience.
In today’s market place where consumers have changed dramatically, and are over exposed with all kind of brand messages, the new age marketers now need to look at how to reach these customers & how best to win their loyalty.

The savior:

This new challenge faced by brand marketers through out the world have paved ways from traditional product centric marketing to an alternative marketing methodology widely referred to as “Experiential Marketing”.

There are around 100 plus different definitions of experiential marketing available & as like the concept of experiential marketing itself, here I will not try to limit this boundless marketing methodology to any one particular definition. To simply put, experiential marketing is a more holistic approach to the customer/ brand relationship through opening up new points of connection with customers – their senses, hearts and if you do it just right, their souls.

Experiential marketing defines the future of marketing since we now live in an increasingly consumer controlled market place, from the way people personalize their music they will listen to the type of TV program they want to see & the delivery system that bring them that program.

E.M in Practice:

Now if you take a look at our local banking sector. Each bank offers similar products & services. How can these brands connect with customers, and ensure they understand what makes one company better than another.
One of the leading bank have chosen to simply say “Caring Bank”, as from experiential marketing perspective the better choice was to show that they care by allowing customers to experience it for themselves by appealing both their rational & emotional side so the customer would be able to relate the experience with the brand message hence a personalize brand relation could develop.

Many marketers believed that experiential marketing can only be used in live marketing scenario. But such is the beauty of this methodology that even a highly static medium such as print can be highly experiential if done strategically.

The Footnote:

As experiential marketing name suggest the possibilities are limitless. This beautiful world of philosophy, artistry & psychology is ready to transform the world of marketing in years to come. Interesting times indeed….