Religious values denotes a big challenge to market brands

Developing and marketing a successful brand is an absolute challenge for any business in the world. At most instances, why products do fail in certain markets is due to that they are not accepted by people whom are supposed to belong to the target market of that particular brand. In other words, some brands are not even bothered in certain countries though they worth some billion dollars and the reasoning denotes the inability of fulfilling the facts such as legal, religious, cultural, geographical and generic requirements that push a brand towards a need of customization. As just because a brand is selling well in the US market, it doesn’t mean that the same would happen in Middle East or Asia.

Here is the best example. When Pizza Hut was introduced in the Indian market, it ended up with a huge market failure as no one even dreamed before. Later, the market study revealed two main facts as the reasons, which leaded the product to such a market failure. First reason was Beef and the second reason was very unbelievably the name Pizza Hut itself. Since India is a Hindu- dominated country, most of the people didn’t accept the beef in Pizza, which is believed to be a religious harm for Hindus and they didn’t like the name Pizza Hut as that was very unfamiliar to them. Nevertheless, after studying customers’ minds, Pizza came up with a brilliant strategy by customizing the name as ‘Maharajah Buns’ and removed the beef from Burger and introduced chicken and Vegetarian Burgers. Yes, they got it right and captured the market. Pizza Hut’s success over the Cultural and religious reluctance can be considered as an inspiring real life example for anyone who is about to develop a successful brand.

When dealing with cultural and religious value systems, marketers do practice two ways of approaches.
1. Promoting a brand against to any secluded areas of religions or societies and proving what they are doing is right (though the approach is ethical, it still drawbacks in the point where flouting the emotional conceptions of specific people)
2. Promoting and developing a brand that adds values and respect to religions, cultures and individual value systems (Example: animal friendly concept)

Let’s discuss these two approaches with the real examples of how swim-shoot & bikini companies do market their products in Muslim countries. Muslim societies had been remained as far-off and untouched markets for the swim-shoot and the bikini manufactures several years ago. However, some leading companies realized the serious need of reaching these markets providing that these companies had been losing quiet a lot, from what they could have earned from the significant amount of population lived in Middle East with some big bucks to spend. This is the point where Bikini companies started importing some Muslim models from countries such as Indonesia, Pakistan, and Maldives, paid them high amounts for their poses, and promoted those pictures in expensive Medias. This approach did work well with some high-end affluent and fashionable Muslim girls who lived in Non-Islamic countries. Though this approach brought some profits significantly from some segments, it still didn’t convince conservative Muslim societies, and it created a war with those societies and yes, this is what going on everyday in Tele-channels (You can see a Muslim model wearing a bikini and the news about the warnings she received).

Let’s look at the other approach, this is more like not damaging values of any society and accompanying these values with some novel ideas. Very recently, I came across an advertisement that promised ‘the very conservative way of wearing a swim-shoot (the heading), the only brand that respects Islamic values and beliefs. Now you can be fashionable and at the same time conservative (body). In addition, the Advertisement was outlined with a photograph of a woman who was wearing a swim-shoot, which covered her full-body, had a skinny material both in her swim-shoot body as well as in her hat. Therefore, it seemed adding a much Islamic value to the brand and however, here is the questioning on this approach. The fundamental concept behind a swim-shoot is expressing glamour and whoever willing wear it in public (wearing alone is a different story) would bother glamour. So, here do the religious values really matter?

I appreciate your views and you are more than welcome to comment in this blog. You can also send personal suggestions to nichecrunch@hotmail.com
By
Mathangie

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Posted in: branding strategy,brands,religious values