ADVERTISING EVOLUTION IN PAKISTAN

 

In 1947, the advertising industry was in a very miserable condition in Pakistan. Calcutta, Bombay, Madras and Delhi were centers of advertising in the sub-continent, but all these cities became part of India. Before independence British and American advertising agencies had hold over the business. Malani and Co. was one of these advertising agencies working in Pakistan but the owner of this agency was also a Hindu. The first advertising agency in Pakistan was Wilintas International Karachi. After some times, a number of international advertising agencies opened their offices in different cities of Pakistan. These agencies promoted the business of their international clients in Pakistan. The international advertising agencies dominated the local agencies because the local advertising agencies were suffering from shortage of resources and well skilled staff was not available to them.

The position of helping departments of advertising was also very miserable at the time of independence. At that time industrial production was almost nil. Therefore, there were not advertisers. Advertising depends on media but the media was very limited at that time. There was no TV centre. Only two radio stations were working. A few newspapers and magazines were being printed but their circulation was very little. The advertising rates were too little. There were about 400 cinema halls in both parts of Pakistan and these cinema hall were also the media of advertising. After 1950, many new advertising agencies came into existence. In 1955, a number of international advertising agencies closed down their business due to governmental policies. This was a point of benefit for local advertising agencies. These agencies have well established with the passage of time and now these are recognized throughout the world.   There is also an association of all the advertising agencies of the country which is balled Pakistan Advertising Association (PAA).

Advertising in Pakistan can be akin to walking through a minefield. Recently, a billboard advertising Jazz phone on one of Karachi’s main thoroughfares was burnt down by an enraged mob apparently protesting against the model’s sleeveless outfit. Late last year, the Habib Oil press ad depicting a mother and child kissing, aroused the indignation of several viewers who wrote to the advertisers as well as the publications that printed it. However, telephones and cooking oils are innocuous products. The advertisers’ task, one can imagine, is twice as difficult in the case of products like contraceptives, undergarments and sanitary napkins or issues such as AIDS.

The advertisement, the first for such a product, ran for about seven weeks and was screened once or twice on an almost daily basis on PTV when, following several hundred angry letters of protest from some sections of the public to the PTV headquarters, it was taken off the air. Negotiations are reportedly underway with the government, specifically the ministry of religious affairs, so that the advertisement, after some modifications, can be aired once again.

Incidentally, the advertisement, as per PTV rules, had been certified fit for viewing by the Pakistan Censor Board. Procter and Gamble, the manufacturers of Always sanitary napkins, have commissioned local versions of the ad in different countries, keeping their individual cultural norms in view. A P&G representative points out that other Muslim countries such as Morocco, Egypt and even Saudi Arabia have also advertised the product. “Whenever you talk about change, you face resistance. Even in Egypt, the local version of the Always ad was taken off the air, but was put back on after slight modifications,” he says. Maintaining “there was nothing unIslamic about the ad,” he explains that P&G had, prior to advertising the product in Pakistan, obtained decrees from local religious institutes as well as global ones such as Al-Azhar, endorsing the advertisement of the product “while remaining within the limits of decency.” According to him, “The masses appreciated it as did several NGOs. The resistance came from conservative elements.”

Attempting to identify the progression of advertising through the ages is not an easy task. Although it is interesting discuss the fact that advertising messages have been discovered on ancient pieces of papyrus or on cave walls, this has little relevance to our understanding or appreciation of advertising. Clearly, ever since individuals have attempted to sell goods or services they have engaged in various types of persuasive communications Because of the extremely high rate of illiteracy, almost all early advertising was oral Thus; the major media employed was the barker or town crier. Probably the next most common advertising medium was the sign. Again, because of the high illiteracy rate, most signs included both the name of the company and the product sold as well as picture representing the product. In many societies, an elaborate system of codes was developed that told the consumer what was inside. Eventually, individual businesses began to customize their signs in order to differentiate themselves from other similar business. Soon, the customized signs were printed on the product itself and served as the basis for the trademark of today.

Perhaps the event that provided the greatest push for advertising as we understand it was the invention of the newspaper in the early seventeenth century. It was in conjunction with the newspaper that the word advertisement first came into use. It was used as a heading for the commercial announcements section of the news.