Recently, Nationalism has become a new popular theme for many brands specially in India. The reasons could be the political environment/direction and extreme media focus and coverage on such issues. Brands are trying to ride the emotions of consumers. The ad appeals are on the emotion (vs. rational) aspect.
A real bad execution was by Pan Bahar.
In marketing, the concepts of consumer ethnocentrism and country-of-origin effects are practices since ages. Both the concepts talk about affection and affinity toward the country and feeling of superiority.
In advertising, Nationalism is widely used in cricket-based ads where advertisers used T-shirt color to represent opposite team (started with Pakistan and later shifted to Australia). The recent entrant is Nirma advance detergent which uses Akshay Kumar (associated with Bharat Ke Veer ) in its ad. Interestingly, its about Kung Fu with actors giving impressions of Chinese people and our “Made in India” Akshay Kumar teaches them few lessons of Kung Fu via washing clothes. India vs. China has become a new advertising battleground.
An interesting take of using implicit nationalism. Nationalism is widely used in cricket based ads where advertisers used T-shirt color to represent opposite team (started with Pakistan and later shifted to Australia). Nirma advance detergent uses Akshay Kumar (associated with Bharat Ke Veer ) in its ad. Interestingly, its about Kung Fu with actors giving impressions of Chinese people and our “Made in India” Akshay Kumar teaches them few lessons of Kung Fu via washing clothes. India vs. China has become a new advertising battleground.
In another social media incident, MR. Anand Mahindra, chairman of Mahindra group has been very active on twitter and been in limelight for expressing his views on the PM Imran Khan. Its upto readers to decide their support 🙂 Whether individual views can be separated from the brand image?