Advertising Again in Covid

In mid-September, the Pakistan Chapter of the International Advertising Association (IAA) launched a campaign called 'Let’s Advertise Again' to counter the negative economic impact on Pakistan’s advertising industry arising from the Covid-19 pandemic. According to Sarmad Ali, MD, Jang Group, and President Pakistan Chapter, IAA, the idea was to encourage advertisers to start investing in advertising again and create positivity in the advertising industry.

The primary target audience for this campaign was advertisers and the secondary audience advertising and media agencies. Ali suggests that one of the main ways to get the economy back on track is if advertising kickstarts again. He says: “advertising has been sluggish since Covid-19, but now that we are (hopefully) slowly coming out of the pandemic, we need to encourage organisations to start advertising again. According to Pakistan Today, advertisers are expected to spend $440 million on ATL, BTL and digital mediums in 2020-2021, rather than the initially expected $495 million.

To reach the target audiences, the campaign was run on print (such as Business Recorder, Dawn, Jang, Pakistan Today and a host of other newspapers and their websites) and digital media using the same slogan 'Let’s Advertise Again' but with six different secondary slogans and messages. Ali further explains that what is interesting about the campaign is that the secondary slogans (which change with each image) were inspired by the popular slogans of a number of local and global brands such as Coca Cola, Ariel and Ufone.

For example, in the ‘Lets Advertise Again. Share the Load.’ image, the ‘Share the Load’ line is Ariel’s. “We borrowed the line to emphasise the fact that we have to work together as an industry to rebuild the economy. Meanwhile, ‘Duniya Ko Bata Do’ was saying ‘Duniya ko bata do ke hum advertising karna shuroo kar rahay hain.’“

The main theme was coined by Fatima Zakir, Senior Manager Corporate Communications, Jang Group. Speaking about the design elements, Ali says the design is based on the IAA logo. “If you observe, each of the six promos depict an image within a letter, the letter ‘A’ from IAA’s own logo.”

IAA is a global alliance of advertisers, agencies and media organisations which is more than 80 years old and has chapters in over 50 countries, including Pakistan. It is “the world’s most influential network of marketing and marketing communications professionals and represents all spheres of the marketing and marketing communications industry. It has played a strong role in supporting key industry issues such as freedom of commercial speech, self-regulation, responsible advertising, education and professional development."

The IAA also ran a TVC in May/June 2020 (separate to this campaign) which aimed to spread positivity during Covid-19. The TVC asked various leaders of the advertising industry (including Jamal Mir, CEO, Prestige Communications, Seema Jaffer, CEO, Bond Advertising and Shahnoor Ahmed, CEO, Spectrum VLMY&R), to encourage advertisers to start advertising again.

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