LAHORE – POLO Electric, a company that sells high quality electrical accessories and LED lights, launched an interesting advertisement campaign for its products this past Saturday, which seeks to highlight the advertisement industry’s use of attractive models in modern (Western) clothes as “immoral”.
The campaign, which was launched through Facebook on July 27, features the image of a burka-clad model whose facial features have been blackened out. The image bears the tagline, “Looking at my face will not make this product more attractive than it already is.”
The post on Facebook, which is captioned in Urdu, also carries a strong indictment of the media and advertisement industry, based on a quotation from the Quran.
“Allah the Almighty has said: ‘People who seek to spread immorality among the believers shall receive a painful fate in this life and the next,” the post reads.
Bearing the hashtag, “#BegeratMedia” – which literally translates to the expression ‘shameless media’ – the post has been circulating widely on Facebook, with over 2100 shares, 19000 likes and reactions, and over 300 comments.
The majority of comments seemed to be in support of the campaign, with many commenters believing that support of the campaign equals being a good Muslim.
It is still unclear whether POLO Electric’s campaign intends merely to create buzz on social media, or whether it actually seeks to make a larger point about the media and advertising.
If the campaign intended only on creating a buzz, it seems to have been successful.
In the past, a number of successful advertisement campaigns in the country have seemed to rely on the mounting reaction against ideas and practices perceived as Western or modern.
Moreover, in 2014, a campaign similar to POLO Electric’s (pictured below) was launched in Karachi by the Working Women Society. Under the campaign, the society placed a billboard sign on a major road, which bore the message, “Kaprey Becho, Ghairat Nahin” – which literally translates in English to: “Sell Clothes, not Honor.”
