“Bus Driver with an MP3 Player … Marketers wake up!!!” (Safar Badnaamah Season 2, Episode 2)

Friday, March 11, 2011 Heba Moeen 2 Comments

Nature, situations, circumstances and moments … at times all of them combined have a unique way of showing how marketers can benefit from the opportunity.  It’s amazing how much the flood of lawn billboards would want to make you throw up indigested advertising after being disgusted every day. While it’s a test of your sanity and you maintaining your clam, these lawn brands are making sure you lose enough mind to buy into their rip off deals … hey look at those Indian models … sorry about your vehicle becoming a by product then.

There’s a lawn billboard at you left, your right, in front and a dozen others that you left behind … and now even in your nightmares, they won’t stop following you! ‘Fatigue’ is the term to describe us as consumers while lets not get started from marketers point of view …

So this isn’t what really was different today, something else was. When I left school after my class tonight and was on my way home, I noticed something different with the Pathan bus driver. As interesting as it may sound it was an MP3 player, in front of him was a Rs. 2 note pasted onto the windshield though now obsolete … He was a collector, the target customer for present day marketers!

Therefore, his target profiling would be:

•     Someone not to be mistaken as being part of the niche segment
•    In a range of 25 to 35, either Generation X or Generation Y
•  Victim of bribe consuming police (despite vehicle upgrade, their acceptable, standard market rate is still Rs. 40)
• Activities include niswar consumption and flying the bus when being short of time (yes they do have deadlines to meet, else they get fined)
• The potential customer that Apple is letting go off
• Can Google find him? No of course not! I think you have gone too far! J

So marketers wake up!!!

 Don’t only target higher SEC’s, look towards the downward stretch moments or opportunities rather. Steve Jobs can have a great deal of market development especially if he capitalizes through targeting them and areas where they come from … rural areas can promise you what even urban areas can’t … Looking towards a Pushto speaking brand endorser for iPod and iTunes  might not be a bad idea …Hmmm…

That small, light green gadget got my eyes glued to find out what brand it was amidst the dim bus lights … no, it wasn’t Apple but a cost effective brand most probably, that might as well fulfill the purpose of Indian and Pushto songs. It was difficult to stand those Indian songs that one would only have allowed ear drum penetration to in buses only but the Pushto songs sounded different, may be with the thought of him serving to be a potential customer as perceived by the marketer got to the observer …

Though I don’t understand Pushto, I do remember a few lines that might have sounded completely different from the receiver’s filter point of view:

“Chipazaan kohay day, sozg zalzalay banay”

Wait, did I mention ‘Cup of Life’ by Ricky Martin being played in the public bus ???

The same old beggars tonight in that very bus were in need of new lines, they weren’t marketing themselves well … One of them has an insulting way of mumbling when not given money, that’s his usual way, he got off at the Sailaani Welfare corner which I believe is facilitating more beggary and getting these people fish rather than teaching them how to go fishing … If the low wage workers join them for lunch and dinner, then they apparently are deserving people but what about beggars who don’t earn by the sweat of their brow and continue with this act?