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Afghanistan is not exactly holiday brochure material. It’s a country is best-known for its opium poppy seed trade, its ruthless five-year Taliban rule, its current American-led military occupation, and for being Osama bin Laden’s hideaway of choice. With a rugged and inhospitable terrain, it has long been a notorious battleground, and a pretty huge one at that.

Boasting nearly 700,000 square kilometers of landlocked mountains and caves, Afghanistan is a vast place where life expectancy is pegged at just 44 years for both men and women, and the illiteracy rate is between 70 and 75 percent. With all the bad press it receives, the country is widely considered a minefield, both literally and figuratively. But for advertisers, it’s shaping up to be a goldmine.
 
“Afghanistan is a very interesting place, with a lot of challenges,” says Rodolphe Baudeau, partner at Altai Consulting, a Dubai-based boutique consultancy which focuses on strategic consulting, market research and branding in emerging markets in central Asia, Africa and the Middle East. “It’s really a place where you can make a difference. What’s interesting is that you can build strong brands very quickly in Afghanistan without too much of an investment today, but it’s not going to be the same in 10 years. With the economic growth, and the cost of advertising, to make a brand stand out will be much more than it is today. So it is really the time to invest in Afghanistan.”
 
And for those advertisers and industry specialists who have caught on to the potential of this war-torn country early, the rewards seemingly outweigh what can be a major effort; Afghanistan not only suffers from a markedly low literacy rate, but there are also various ethnic divisions and two official languages.
 
TALKING THE TALK. Thirty five percent of Afghans speak Pashto while 50 percent speak Dari, and bilingualism is quite common. Additionally the country is made up of seven ethnic groups: Pashtun, Tajik, Hazara, Uzbek, Aimak, Turkmen, and Baloch. Renata Flatt, communication director at Roshan, Afghanistan’s leading cellular service provider, explains how the telecom operator worked with its advertising agency (JWT at the time) to develop the Roshan identity, keeping the various ethnic groups and tribes in mind. “We asked ourselves, how could we create an identity which would speak to every Afghan? What was quite challenging was that the meaning of ‘brand’ or ‘branding’ was completely unknown in Afghanistan; it didn’t exist.”
 
“We conducted market research to know how to talk to people, and what to call the company, with more than 30 focus groups nationwide,” continues Flatt. “What was interesting was how we explained what a brand is. We took a bottle of Coca Cola and we spent more than an hour explaining how it works, what the brand is and what the Coca Cola brand means all over the world. And then we asked them, if Afghanistan had a telecom company, what should be its name? We came up with Roshan, which means light in both languages, Dari and Pashto. The focus groups also helped us select our slogan, ‘Nadzik Roshan,’ which means ‘Bringing you closer.’ This phrase somehow resonates with the Afghans. You have to remember that telephony practically didn’t exist in the past, so it was something very new and awaited by everyone.”
 
International advertising agency Grey has been working with Roshan since last June, with an interesting set up. The creative development and thinking is done out of the Beirut office, with a small Dubai-based team of coordinators and seniors, and partners at Mediacom in Pakistan, explains Karim Mansour, business director at Grey Beirut. “The telecom sector in Afghanistan, just like in all emerging markets, is very fierce,” he says. “There’s a huge competition between the major players.” With four different telecoms providers currently vying for market it share, that’s no surprise.
 
Mansour says the road to advertising success in Afghanistan hasn’t been without obstacles, but that, almost a year on, the agency has developed automatic and instinctive responses to its clients needs, in spite the language and geographical barriers. “Afghanistan has a population of almost 30 million people,” says Mansour, “and unfortunately, because of the war and because of the way the country is made up, there are a lot of different regions. Also, the country has a very harsh and difficult climate, and geography. You have very high mountains, so it’s very hard for people to move around. The physical aspect of being able to manage things is the most challenging.”
 
“The other biggest challenge is probably the illiteracy rate,” he continues. “It’s very difficult to really develop a message and make it understandable. All of the work we develop is done in English and then it’s sent to a team in Kabul to translate into two languages. It’s challenging not to be able to check the final material before it goes on air or to print. We trust that our team in Kabul and the marketing department within Roshan will validate our message. But in reality, if we come up with a fantastic message in English, we don’t know if it will be lost in translation. It was more challenging at the beginning, but thanks to the results we’re getting from the campaigns, it seems we are managing this rather well.”
 
THE MEASURE OF SUCCESS. According to both Mansour and Flatt, results are what is missing in the Afghan media and marketing landscape. “We don’t have the tools for analysis, monitoring and research,” says Flatt. “So it’s really difficult to evaluate the effectiveness of campaigns, but we really need this on the ground.”
 
The business of results is where Altai Consulting is specializing. Baudeau explains that the issue most advertisers face at the moment is that there is very little research done for calculating Gross Rating Point, and that the consultancy wants to ensure clients have all the metrics they need when planning media campaigns.
 
Altai conducted a survey in 2008 with 280 interviewees in each of Afghanistan’s eight most populated provinces (Kabul, Kandahar, Heart, Balkh, Nangahar, Baghlan, Kunduz, and Khost). And the results came in showing that television penetration had seen a tremendous increase, and is now becoming a mainstream medium, overtaking radio in audience numbers.
 
In those provinces, samples recorded as many as 70 percent of Afghans interviewed had watched television during a one-week period, says Baudeau. “Radio is still the medium that everyone in Afghanistan has access to, but television is really the mainstream medium now. The peak for radio is in the morning, and television peaks in the evening, when you will see Afghan families gathering around Indian soap operas. This is when advertising is the most powerful.”
 
Baudeau adds that outdoor is a powerful medium in Afghanistan, but that print is utilized much less, as newspaper circulation is very low. Those are used for very targeted consumers, such as public servants. Even more targeted is digital. Baudeau believes – surprisingly perhaps – digital could have excellent future in Afghanistan. “It’s interesting to see young Afghans going to Internet cafes in the cities, as it’s one of the few areas where young people have freedom,” he explains. “Digital is a good idea, but only for a very targeted niche. But it’s very important because they will become opinion leaders eventually.”
 

HEY, BIG SPENDERS. And who are the biggest spenders on advertising and marketing in Afghanistan? According to Mansour, in the private sector the telecom operators are investing the most in advertising, followed by banks and airlines. However, Baudeau says that the public sector is where the bigger proportion of cash is being spent. “If you look at the advertising pie, a lot of it is aid and development driven,” he says. “The US Army and the US Department of Defence are spending a lot of money in the media, for anti-IED (Improvised Explosive Device) campaigns for instance. There’s also a lot of media spend on promoting the Afghan national police and army.”
 

Inevitably, though, that won’t be where long-term investment comes from, according to Baudeau. While Afghanistan’s emerging market is primed to build brands, all parties agree more research and professionalism is needed to solidify the industry. And advertisers should look beyond public sector clients to remain relevant in the longer term. “I anticipate that just a few of the TV and radio stations will remain sustainable in the long run,” says Baudeau. “Mainly those who have been wise enough to attract private sector clients, and not only focused on aid and development clients, because this money will eventually be gone.”
 

Because the hope is that, one day, the Taliban will be consigned to history, and the US and UK armed forces will be able to pack up and go home, taking their marketing spend with them. And once the rebuilding of Afghanistan is commenced in earnest, it will be the agencies and brands already established there who will be able to make the most of that new market.

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