Alamy via Reuters Connect
At Ramadan, maybe the only thing more cliched than the crescent moons, lanterns and dates in corporate email and television commercials are the articles written about them.
The marketing trade media is riddled with columns penned by middle-aged white men [author’s note: don’t look at me like that] explaining that consumers don’t want the same thing year after year. Rather, they want authenticity, nuance, people, family, personalisation… and storytelling. Always storytelling.
Advertisers love talking about storytelling. Especially around regularly occurring occasions such as Ramadan, Christmas, National Day or the Olympics.
You can be pretty sure of the kind of stories you will see in ads when big occasions come around. The tales are full of cliches, of course, but stories rely on cliches. Cliches are shorthand for emotions, tradition and more. This contributes to making festive occasions of any faith prime times for advertising.
To that end, the advertising we see during Ramadan remains the same. The media may change – from print to TV to digital – but the tropes are consistent.
This year, AI is the big story in media. So we can expect to see lots of AI-generated and AI-adjacent Ramadan advertising, just as we have over the last year. And it will be cliched.
AI learns from material that is already out there. It can’t have a new idea, as it feeds off existing cliches, which is what seasonal advertising has done for decades, reproducing itself year after year.
After all, if you saw a Christmas ad from Europe set on a sunny beach, it wouldn’t feel like a Christmas ad at all.
Let us let AI run rampant. In the meantime, the humans can work on new stuff
Similarly, if you see a Ramadan ad without gentle oud music and dusk-blue lighting, without a skipping child excited by her first fast, and her smiling grandfather welcoming her to the heaped iftar table, one can ask: is this a Ramadan ad?
Perhaps because the familiar imagery is comforting, ads remain the same year after year, just as family traditions remain the same.
Let us, therefore, let AI run rampant. It will churn out the same familiar fare as human marketers, but without wasting sleep-starved and hungry man-hours to do so.
In the meantime, the humans can work on new stuff. Don’t get too excited; this will not be revolutionary new stuff, but evolutionary.
For example, they may gently ease more humour and irreverence into Ramadan advertising.
Brands act as though they are afraid to poke fun at Ramadan, as though the values of giving and caring and togetherness are incompatible with laughing and a little light self-deprecation.
It’s been 18 years since Dubai’s Tonic advertising produced an ad for Nando’s in which a man holds a succulent chicken leg in front of his face for an agonisingly long time as the sun sets oh so slowly.
That ad told a story – the story of how time slows down when you are hungry. It’s about restraint and appreciation of what we have, but it’s also funny because it’s true – without being cliched.
Even so, the ad caused some controversy when it was released. There have been similar ads since, but not enough. Surely there is room for humour in Ramadan advertising today.
Like it or not, traditions and traditional occasions morph and evolve over time. Santa Claus had suits that weren’t red a century ago, and elves weren’t on shelves when I was a boy.
So it is with Ramadan. There was a time before Vimto and Patchi gift boxes, and it will adapt and grow with new generations.
Traditions shift slowly, but they do shift. And the focus of those observing the Holy Month is bound to vary as well. For example, healthy eating and mindful consumption are moving to the fore.
Any experienced faster will tell you how good for you restraint can be. But Gen Z and millennials have been taking more of an interest in healthy eating as well as healthy fasting. According to research from digital marketing firm Adjust, last Ramadan UAE residents installed 50 percent more health and fitness apps than the year before. This trend will continue.
The way we see Ramadan is evolving, but much of what makes it Ramadan remains the same. So, let’s quit the cliche of calling out the cliches. Are they really that bad? They are as traditional as lanterns, crescent moons and Vimto. The story of Ramadan wouldn’t be the same without them.
Austyn Allison is an editorial consultant and journalist who has covered Middle East advertising since 2007
