Al-Jalil Garden Housing Scheme: the campaign goes wrong
BY ALI NAQVI – What is good creative advertising? Something that sells. Something that is relevant to the right audience. You cannot apply the strategy of a lollypop to sell computers just as you cannot sell ice to the Eskimos. That is the reason why advertising has become the science of marketing. The recent Al-Jalil Garden Housing Scheme campaign teaches us many things at the cost of its brand image.
Unlike the recent campaign of Al-Raziq Garden, Al-Jalil Garden Housing Scheme has done several things wrong. From the strategy perspective, the ad does not even aim at its core target audience. And as far as the creative side is concerned, it takes too long to establish the idea of ‘Nai Kahani (new story)’.
In advertising, you make full use of an audience’s attention span which is measured in seconds not minutes. The melodramatic 70s romance sequence lasts around 1 minute and 30 seconds without mentioning the brand.
Housing Schemes yearn for credibility and trust, and these are the two things that are never easy to gain from others especially your customers. The couple of Urwa Hocane and Farhan Saeed struggles to lend credibility to the project of Al-Jalil Garden Housing Scheme. The acts they are made to put up go against the brand’s grand image. The idea is non-serious to begin with, and the execution does the same.
When you run a campaign on mainstream media, every second counts. Companies as big as Unilever, P&G, and beverage brands like Coca-Cola and Pepsi do not make TVCs of over 60 seconds. Al-Jalil Garden Housing Scheme has set a new precedent of wasting the first 1 and a half minutes before actually getting to the point.
The long duration commercials are called DVCs (Digital Video Commercial). DVCs are meant for digital and social media platforms. Al-Jalil, being one of the biggest real estate players in the country, should have shown more maturity and seriousness while making this campaign.
Buying a property is a decision very few people take twice in their lifetime. Some spend their entire life dreaming of having a house of their own. Imagine a person who has saved money by working hard all his life; will he be attracted by the dancing around Farhan Saeed and Urwa Hocane? Will he opt for Al-Jalil Garden Housing Scheme?
