Cut to the television spot for Sunsilk’s Lively Clean & Fresh shampoo. Another young, smiling woman is the star, but there is not a strand of hair in sight. Her tresses are completely covered by a tudung, the head scarf worn by many Muslim women in Malaysia.
The pitch? Lively Clean & Fresh helps remove excess oil from the scalp and hair - a common problem among wearers of tudungs, according to Unilever, the manufacturer. The company says the product is the first shampoo to speak directly to the “lifestyle of a tudung wearer.”
Potential customers
For decades, many western company failed to appreciate the unique needs of Muslim consumers, marketing experts say. Worse, some companies offended potential customers by not understanding religious sensitivities. But as the Islamic population has grown in size and affluence — there are now 1.57 billion Muslims worldwide — more multinationals are seeking to tap into the market.
Instead of simply importing products and advertising from the West, companies are increasingly developing marketing campaigns with Muslims firmly in sight.
“Islamic marketing,” some experts say, is the next wave in branding, and now, as the holy month of Ramadan begins, activity is surging.
“For the last few years, it’s been China and India,” said Paul Temporal, an associate fellow at the Said Business School at the University of Oxford. “The next big market is the Muslim market. There’s this huge group of people who have been relatively untapped in terms of what they want and need, and they represent a tremendous opportunity.”
With Muslim-majority countries spread from Southeast Asia to Africa, and Muslims speaking numerous languages and adhering to varying standards of dress and other customs, approaching the group as consumers can be complex. But as with all marketing exercises, experts say, rule No.1 is to avoid causing offense.
Nike committed a legendary error when it released a pair of athletic shoes in 1996 with a logo on the sole that some Muslims believed resembled the Arabic lettering for Allah. Given that Muslims consider the feet unclean, “producing shoes with the name of God on the soles of the feet is not a good idea,” said Goodman, who converted to Islam in 1999. “They recalled 800,000 pairs of shoes globally.”
Describing the Nike episode as a ‘wake-up call’ for companies, Goodman said it had also been a turning point for Muslim advocates, who realized that “if they make a noise, companies would listen and change, that they had economic and social influence.”
Unilever says the Sunsilk Lively Clean & Fresh shampoo, which is sold in Malaysia and Singapore, was created for people who suffer from oily scalps after wearing any head covering, be it a baseball hat or head scarf. After company research showed that many women who wear the tudung complained of oily scalps, it introduced the television commercial aimed at them.
Nokia made a concerted effort to appeal to Muslims starting in 2007, when it introduced a phone for the Middle East and North Africa markets that came loaded with a number of applications, including an Islamic Organizer with alarms for the five daily prayers, two Islamic e-books and an e-card application that lets people send SMS greeting cards for Ramadan. Starting this year, the company has been giving customers the choice of which applications they want, rather than loading them all on the phone.