Persil (featuring Nancy Ajram) vs. Nescafe - Compare and Contrast

So this is super interesting. Remember how I already spoke how Persil and Nancy Ajram are match made in branding heaven (here). Well, after a single one-off in Lebanon in January, now the gates of the campaign have been wide open (were are in August mind you!). So apart from the late catch-up, there's also a very strange element: For their comeback Persil decided to reuse the very famous Nescafe line.

Wait, what? Yes, Persil eventually used "sa7se7" - wake up - which has long been the domain of Nescafe. And no, I am not imagining it, the internet is full of images with the famous line. So how come the mix up? Beats me. Honest, they could have used any line (or no line damn it when you use someone as famous as Ajram). But nope, they had to to do a major misstep. Which honestly makes no sense.

Nancy Ajram now a Persil spokesperson - a masterstroke!

Nancy Ajram. Yes, her. I already spoke about her as a "brand" (here). So let's go back to the very beginning, in the mid-aughts when Miss Ajram as she was back then was fronting Coca-Cola. Full of innocence, exuberance, and displaying her infectious giggle - she was the perfect representative of that young, feminine, cool and fresh brand. I truly think at the time they were a perfect match - and to be honest the brand milked their linkage to the extreme.

Hop to 2011, suddenly Ajram - still an incredibly popular singer - was doing an ad for... Nissan Micra? Yes, because by then in 2008 she got married to Dr. Fadi El-Hachem and was already a mother (her eldest daughter Mila was born in 2009, her second Ella in 2011). Micra was a car aimed for a female audience, you know: women who had to drop their kids to daycare or school, who had to do supermarket runs, who had to park easily and so on and so forth. Again, despite the difference with the original Coca-Cola tie-up Ajram was still a good match - a young mother of two, a busy person, a very aspirational character that other women would emulate.

And now? Persil. The clothing detergent. So once more, we are very far off from the Coca-Cola brand. But not far at all from Nancy Ajram herself. She now has three daughters - Lya being born in 2019 - and well like any other mother, she must have a very busy laundry day with a family of five. Which makes Ajram, with her age, daily life, marital status and family life, once more a perfect tie with Persil.

It is interesting that as Ajram ages, brands still find her profile to match different angles. And all of them work.

In Lebanon, brand loyalty is out the window

Artwork by Tarek Chemaly

Do the Lebanese like to brag? Do they like to show off? Do they like to live above their means? Oh, is the pope Catholic? If I ask these questions if is because there is a palpable shift somewhere in the Lebanese consumption pattern in Lebanon (see here). Maybe one of the first signs that Lebanese use to mark how they went to an upper socio-economic class is the "signé" attitude (or the branded - naturally, it could be a knock off or a counterfeit, and only logoed garments are used - hence no discrete Hermes but more like a stamped Louis Vuitton all over, in the end, if it is not visible, why bother get it?). "Ana ma bechtere ella min 3and..." - I only buy from (under brand name, fancy store), used to be a catchphrase so overused and abused. But again, the parameters are shifting. 

When I asked students to give me a luxury brand in class (back when I used to teach), several thought Zara was one. When estimating the price of a Louis Vuitton bag, a girl thought that 100 Dollars was a good guess. Paul, the French brasserie one finds in metro stations in Paris is marketed here as a high end brunching destination, same applies to Gap (which shuttered its store in late 2019) and Benetton.

But again, the financial squeeze hit Lebanon incredibly hard. I said it before, brand loyalty is now out the window. "Did you know that between 1968 to 1990 Coca-Cola was boycotted in the Arab world by order of the League of Arab Nations since it provided "financial help for Israel" in the 1967 six day war?" Well, we were a household that exclusively bought Pepsi. Sometime in 2001 I went back home with a bottle of Coca-Cola, my mother looked at it with amazement and asked what it was, and if it was available everywhere?

As long as I can remember since the mid 90s we have used Persil washing detergent (why we made the switch from Ariel is beyond me!). Then a few months back, the washing machine got clogged. The repairman said the washing powder was stuck in the tube, so we switched to Persil gel. Last time I went to the supermarket though, I went back with a Lebanese made Sanita washing gel, which was so much cheaper, and it had 30% free. Oh and I also bought a large size frying oil gallon from a brand I had never heard of, which was (again) substantially cheaper than the one we were accustomed to. Our house-help said that both, the Sanita and the frying oil, washed and fried just as well as the ones we usually bought.

It is said that the pandemic has taught us that we have already enough as it is in our closets. How correct and true this is for the average Lebanese is still a debate. Though shops are closing like crazy in nearby areas, there were still very few people who shopped. How this is representative of the population is not something I can answer (due to COVID-19 self-imposed restrictions I have not been to many malls as of late and even that (malls) might not be indicative to the general population movements).

But am still sticking to my guns. I still believe people are now buying more budget friendly than the brands they used to know or believe in (because brand loyalty is about allegiance above all). The other interesting aspect is that, it is known that in time of crisis, brands are encouraged to advertise, so as to remain top-of-mind in the consumer's mind. This, however, is not something am seeing in the local market.