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Of War, Love and Marketing

War, Love and Marketing is how I have summarized the concept that I will elaborate shortly. Ghalib has done the same through a shair.

HAM NAE MAA-NAA KEH TAGAFUL NA KARO GAE LIKIN
KHAK HO JA-AIN GAE TUM KO KHABAR HONAE TAK

TAGAFUL comes from GAFLAT and GAFIL and it means ’to ignore’. So the shair goes on to say that

I know you will not ignore me and my presence but before you ever find out how much I love you I will have turned to dust.

Now a marketer faces the same problem when he wants to market his product to his customers. He has something to sell and the customers might not really know how good the product is. There is value in it for both parties. But the marketer doesn’t have the luxury of turning to dust – neither does a serious romantic I would think. So what does a marketer do?

A marketer has to launch his product in the midst of other big players and if he does so in a half baked way he won’t survive.

It is very much like a war for the marketer.

When Rexona launched their deodorant product earlier in Pakistan it was not successful. A market research they did later revealed that a lot of people don’t use deodorant. In fact among the group of people who use a product for the purpose 80% or so use powder and only about 5% use deodorants.

So they made an add campaign in which a person suggests using the Rexona deodorant to the other. The other says ‘but I bathe why do I need to use the deodorant?’ And the first responds by saying: “you need to use a deodorant nevertheless because you still sweat and that brings in germs so using this deodorant is very important for your hygiene.’

To re-enforce this concept and to target the early adopters of the product-teenagers, the marketers coined a slogan “Cool ya fazool”.

So not only is it like a war but you have to fight this war very strategically. This is also true of communicating your feelings across to the ones you love.

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