How Philips Changed the Advertisement Landscape of Bangladesh

Introduction

Advertisement is a means of communicating a company and its products to the consumers. This integrated marketing communication tool is largely used by the companies across the globe. Phillips, for example, has positioned its electric bulb through a popular advertisement, i.e. “Truly, Hilsa is the king of fish…and Phillips is the king of bulb.” in Bangladesh. Their positioning strategy , i.e.” Let’s make things better,” is fascinatingly intertwined with their advertisement. Ostensibly, this advertisement attracts consumers’ minds and thus Phillips got huge consumers’ responses.

Product Structure of Phillips: Phillips is basically organized into two main divisions: Phillips consumer electronics and Phillips professional healthcare. Phillips claims that their aim is to fulfill their customers’ and consumers’ needs. They put greater importance on innovation and they have also updated positioning strategy from “Let’s make things better” to “Sense and Simplicity” and lately to “Innovation and you” across the time.

The aforementioned advertisement mainly focuses on the Phillips consumer electronics: Phillips electric bulb.

Advertisement appeals:

Marketers may use rational and emotional appeals in their advertisements. Rational appeals are based on facts, logic and reasoning. Rational appeals are typically more authentic and can create a sense of authority around a brand. Rational appeals include pain solution, scarcity appeal, statistics appeal, testimonial appeal, contrasting appeal, status appeal etc. Whereas emotional appeals strive to attract the consumers’ emotions through strong imagery, impactful text or powerful music. An emotional advertising appeal depends on feelings and perceptions than logic or reason to provoke action. Emotional appeals involve personal appeal, social appeal, fear appeal, humor appeal, sexual appeal, romantic appeal etc.

The advertisement of Phillips, “Truly, Hilsa is the king of fish….and Phillips is the king of bulb,” sounds that Phillips is the best of all electric bulbs. This ad basically resonates to consumers’ feelings and perceptions towards Phillips. And they actually used emotional appeals to capture consumers’ mind shares.

Emotional appeals are highly effective in getting consumers’ attention to the products and influencing consumers’ behaviors. As Douglas Van Praet, author of Unconscious Branding: How Neuroscience Can Empower Marketing wrote in Fast Company,” The most startling truth is we don’t even think our way to logical solutions. We feel our way to reason. Emotions are the substrate, the base layer of neural circuitry underpinning even rational deliberation. Emotions don’t hinder decisions. They constitute the foundation on which they’re made.”^[1]

Background

Jean-Nesar Osman is pioneer of Television Advertisements in Bangladesh. "Macher Raja Ilish R Battir Raja Philips" is his one of the best creations. The advertisement was created for Transcom Electronics Ltd in 1987.

Why have you chosen this advertisement?

In the 1980s, when there was only one state-run television channel in Bangladesh, a Philips advertisement became very popular. In the advertisement, a family is eating dinner, but the light in the room is so dim they can’t pick out the bones in their fish. The mother asks her son to go and take another bulb. Suddenly, kitchen is enlightened in a bright yellow glow. The man smiles widely and says, “Macher raja ilish, ar battir raja Philips!” Which means, the king of fish is the ilish, and the king of light is Philips. So, the causes of choosing this advertisement are discussing below:

• The advertisement reflects our cultural heritage, family bonding and happiness. Countries like- Bangladesh where collective culture exists, have great influence of family members in decision making. So, it's rational to adopt an Ad that highlights family ties.
• It contains enough emotional cues that motivated customers to purchase products. People do not buy for logical reasons but for emotional reasons. It may seem strange to use fish to sell light bulbs, but one can never underestimate a Bengali’s love of the ilish is considered as a treasured delicacy.
• It promotes exclusivity by comparing its lights with ilish fish which is considered as the king of fishes. The company wants people to feel them important and enhancing self-respect by using their products.
• It shows creativity in terms of the interaction of sight and sound that offer splendid creative flexibility and makes dramatic, lifelike representation of product. The blending of emotion and Cultural heritage with boring electric products in promotion was indisputably distinctive in early 80's.

• The advertisement created the buzz which gave the chance to a straggled company to become one of the market leaders. Market share grew from 8% to 72% over a period of two years in the rural areas as a result of this advertisement.

The Philips light bulb is a private good because of its rival and excludable nature.

Now, To elaborate, let’s look at the definition of Private goods;

A private good is a product that must be purchased to be consumed, and consumption by one individual prevents another individual from consuming it. In other words, a good is considered to be a private good if there is competition between individuals to obtain the good and if consuming the good prevents someone else from consuming it.

Economists refer to private goods as rivalries and excludable.

The majority of private goods must be purchased for a cost. This cost offsets the fact that the use of the good by one prevents the use of the good by another. Purchasing the item secures the right to consume it.

Now, the light bulb may be open for all to buy but the usage and benefit is exclusive to the people who have access to it in a household or any other setting thus it is clear that the bulb is a private good.

Group Influence: The ad influences the potential buyers in their informational and normative level. The time when the ad was aired i used the most popular and informative way of communicating he massage thus giving the informative influence vibe and as the bulb was a necessity among the time it also influenced in the normative level

Jingle And Music: The most revolutionary setup of tagline and creative advertisement. This is the aspect where this ad really shines.  The jingle,  music and tagline should have a very clear massage which goes with the core value of the certain product and the brand in the question. Philips is really successful in this aspect.

If you look at the society and livelihood back then, electricity was unstable and bulbs were prone to be fused which was the easy of saying being destroyed not being able to take the electrical surge. So the consumers were really in need of a bulb that is strong enough to survive that.