Etisalat Misr never fail to amaze us in Ramadan. This year Etisalat head-start the holy month advertising campaigns featuring the Syrian super star Asala Nasri.
Very colorful beauty shoots to deploy [#تخيل_بكرة /Imagine Tomorrow] campaign and send a message for 30M customers to imagine better tomorrow.
The advert launched few hrs before Millions of Muslims around the world will mark the start of the holy month of Ramadan on Monday 6th of June 2016!
Ramadan Marketing:
Ramadan acts as ‘Super Bowl for adverts’ in the Middle East. Marketers totally understands the advantage of Ramadan marketing season and the opportunities offered for 30 days. Brands tend to create special themes for the holy month to make use of the higher viewership rate on TV channels and exemplified engagement rate on Social Media.
Successful marketers know their target audience, respect their beliefs, and work to develop creative campaigns that align with the theme of Ramadan while driving new interest in their offerings.
Ramadan most successful marketing campaigns utilize the seasonal marketing to link consumers to brands. It’s not a secret that a big portion of Ramadan commercials are common clichés summering on nostalgia or, family themes.
Sense of humor is always king and marketers keep seeking for creative ideas to create advert that will go viral online and avoid Ramadan marketing mistakes that could fire-back.
The basics around Ramadan:
The period of Ramadan is both spiritual and celebratory, Muslims around the world are preparing to abstain from eating and drinking during daylight for a month.
During Ramadan 2015, official FC Bayern München account on Twitter in English published a post that shows FC Bayern players drinking water in training while in the Arab countries it’s 40°C and people do ” The Ramadan Fasting” and do not drink water til night!
It's another scorching day in Munich. Anyone else feeling this #FCBsummer, be sure to drink plenty of water! 💦😎 pic.twitter.com/oZ7R5c4sH0
— FC Bayern Munich (@FCBayernEN) July 3, 2015
After 17 min, a quick response with decent apology come from official FC Bayern München Twitter account for fasting Muslim fans around the world.
And to those of you fasting, sorry for all the pics of water! Sunset will come around soon – keep at it! #FCBsummer pic.twitter.com/H03Q5edMXB
— FC Bayern Munich (@FCBayernEN) July 3, 2015
Respect other cultures is the key message here and no-wonder the apology tweet got more than 2K re-tweets and 1.5 favorites/likes!
Ramadan Campaign or, Summer Campaign?
Seasonal marketing is a powerful way to leverage some of the biggest spending and engagement times of the year. Merging summer campaign and Ramadan campaign into one is such hilarious, irrelevant idea!
Watch the video below and let us know if it deliver any of Ramadan vibes?!
Conclusion
Etisalat adopted a new approach to early start Ramadan 2016 campaigns. Celebrating 30M subscriber is a big announcement but yet not the hero message in the advert.
Note to Etisalat:
Families get together each evening when the sun sets to break the fast together and they often stay up to the early hours of the morning enjoying time with family and friends. Egyptians do not celebrate birthday parties during Ramadan day and it’s very rare to witness wedding parties during the holy-month!
