Monday, January 2, 2023

Balkis... Goes for the word play.


 Balkis... A national brand of juice has always relied on word play. Pity I do not have their first ad - which is not present in my archive - which simply said "3a fekra" which translates as "by the way" or "here's a thought" and it was simply introducing pure natural juice. So here's Balkis today with 2 ads (on the 2 sides of a mupi in downtown Beirut). 

In one of the ads - the orange flavor (which is their first and their flagship one) - they go "it's not natural how fresh it is". OK this hits two nots the "not natural" is because it is a "natural" juice, and "fresh" as a wink to the "fresh Dollars" as opposed to the "Lebanese Dollars" sitting rotting in accounts at the banks. In the second as - the mandarine flavor - they go "charraf el afandi" (Afandi is a title fromt he Ottoman era which means "Gentleman" or "sir" and still used in Lebanon as a valuable way of addressing someone, the word also means "mandarine") and "charraf" means "he is here" (do note in my archive I have and ad for Balkis Afandi flavor since 2004 so I guess this is a reissue of an old flavor.

3a fekra indeed.