Is there a growing trend among Pakistani advertisers to talk to their audiences more informally? Yes, but… (more on this later). More importantly, how are they doing it?

Well, if you will allow me, I’m about to tell you some of the ways. It all starts with ‘The three levels’. (Fair warning: I’m about to call you a moron, but in a polite way.)

Aap, Tum and Tu

‘Usted es un idiota.’

‘Tu eres un idiota.’

They both mean the same thing – ‘You are a moron’. One is simply more polite.

Spanish and Urdu may not have much in common, but they are two of several languages that have both formal and informal ways of address. All the ‘romance languages’ (French, Italian, Spanish etc.) share this distinction and although Urdu isn’t one of them, it has three levels of formality or familiarity when it comes to addressing someone; from polite, to informal to familiar.

So, at what level do most advertisers operate? Before we answer this question, I want you to think about something.

Imagine I have sent you into a room full of strangers and asked you to make as many friends as possible. How would you introduce yourself? How would you talk to them? How familiar would you be? I would venture a guess that most of us would find our comfort zone between levels one and two. After all, politeness is part of our culture. We were taught to address people we don’t know well in a certain manner.

I don’t think, then, it will surprise anyone to know that the vast majority of advertisers have yet to make it past level one. That is not to say there hasn’t been any progress in the last decade or two.

As a co-worker often puts it… “They used to say ‘Rooh Afza pijiye’, now they say ‘Rooh Afza piyo’.”

Well, I don’t know about Rooh Afza, but Jam-e-Shirin is certainly saying ‘piyo’ in their current campaign. It may not be a huge step, but it does show the brand’s willingness to venture into level two with their audience.

Even more laudable is 7UP, which has put itself squarely on level three with its recent campaign ‘Simple ji, 7UP pi’. The brand could have easily said ‘Simple jiyo, 7UP piyo’, but it made a concerted move to talk to its young audience in a more familiar tone.

####It’s time to get familiar, says Qasim Makkani.

A similar level three move has been made by Bata’s youth brand B First, which is currently telling kids ‘10 lakh ke mazay uraley’.

So does being a ‘youth brand’ automatically entitle you to go level three with your audience? Well… yes and no. It certainly makes it easier to adopt a more familiar tone, but there are other paths to the Promised Land.

From spectacular to vernacular

Let’s talk about word choice. Here again, most brands tend to stay within their comfort zone and use, what I like to call, ‘wonderfully acceptable’ words to reach their audience. These are elegant and flowery words, exciting and mazaydar words, caring and loving words, spectacular and amazing words, etc., etc. Advertisers use such words because they consider them to be ‘tried and tested’, whereas consumers probably consider them to be background noise.

Yet, there are brands that try (instead) to use words from within the audience’s own language and vernacular to make a deeper connection. A recent example is Omoré Buzz’s ‘No shashka, just chaska’. Many people either loved or hated this campaign (I was in the ‘hated’ column), but no one can deny that by using words and phrases like ‘shashka’, ‘Excitement ki height’, ‘Sahir Lodhi’ and ‘Sheela ki jawani’, the brand was trying to show its familiarity with its audience.

Now some of you might be saying, “C’mon now Qasim, that’s another youth brand!”

Alright then. Let’s look at something else. Let’s look at a mass market product aimed at the old and young, rich and poor, bachelors and families and which was still be able to go all out ‘level three’. I am talking about none other than Omung Lassi’s (or as most people refer to it, ‘Omunggggg Lassi!’) launch campaign, ‘Guru, ho ja shuru!

Opinions on this campaign are incredibly mixed (I think it will do wonders for the brand), but it shows that the brand clearly wanted to be at level three from the get-go. This is evident not only from the familiarity of the tone, but also in the choice of words. Like Omoré Buzz, these are not ‘wonderfully acceptable’ words, but informal and colloquial. Combine these with a cheeky, high-budget song-and-dance, and you have a brand that has a high-end image with a low-end twist; something that might well be a formula for success for this lassi brand.

Final thoughts

If advertising and art have one thing in common, it is that throughout history, both have gained notoriety by reflecting culture. Some of the most memorable ad campaigns have been a reflection of the culture and the people of the time – from Apple’s revolutionary ‘1984’ commercial aired on TV only twice, yet remembered to this day), to Kit Kat Japan’s 2010 ‘Kittu Katsu’ campaign (that turned a chocolate bar into a good luck wish for millions of Japanese students), to pretty much any Nando’s campaign.

Notoriety swings both ways, though. Many of the local examples I mentioned earlier have been met with some level of controversy. They might come across as too irrelevant or just too informal. As I said earlier, politeness is part of our culture.

So, is there a growing trend of Pakistani advertisers talking more informally with their audience? Yes… but it’s growing at a snail’s pace. And until our culture really rewards brands that make an effort to be more familiar, this is the way it’s going to be.

Qasim Makkani is Director of Creative and Strategy, Spectrum Y&R. qasim@spectrumyr.com