Written By Farhan Fuad Orzin

For Bangladeshis, Ramadan is said to be the most engaging time for the customers with the brands, as we prepare ourselves for the festival, with necessities ranging from clothes, gadgets to even automobiles. That’s why this time is crucial for brands to grab our attention from chunk of promotions and advertisements we see around. At the same time, it’s also crucial that we get the condign information required to initiate our purchase decision. Top brands in the race start to plan, design, modify and test Ramadan or Eid campaigns even months before to attract and retain customers. It takes profound thoughts, long working hours and tremendous efforts to execute in real world. Let’s rewind time to look at what our popular brands were up to during this Ramadan.

RESTAURANTS BATTLE FOR GLORY

Ramadan is a month of restraining from food for a specific period of time in a day – and we love to share our food and fun together with our closer ones. That’s the part when restaurant comes as the better dine out options. Top restaurants prepare themselves with engaging campaigns, menus and offers months before Ramadan. When we pick our favorite dining place, factors such as accommodation, available offers, quality and variety are vital. Top performing restaurants align their menu and offers based on consumer’s dining preference.

Nando’s, a South Africa based renowned global food chain, was probably the most buzzing restaurant during this Ramadan because of their ‘Buy one get one free’ offer. Who doesn’t love to taste the same savor at half the price? Another international franchise, BBQ Bangladesh also tops the list with their similar offer for the Sehri time. This fantastic dining place was always seen crowded with variety of options on their chart.

Apart from all the franchises, our local restaurants business also seemed booming during Ramadan. Some customized their menu for the month, while others clung to their regular menu on the board. The demand for juicy burgers in places like Takeout, Chillox, Madchef, Preetom, and Burger Lab remained just the same. Yum Cha, Little Korea, Tarka was other noteworthy popular choices during Ramadan. The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf offered an Iftar platter costing around 600 Taka was another hit of the month.

Unlimited offers at fixed price was an effective and engaging campaign from different restaurants that offers pizza, burgers and shakes. Sbarro, Pizza Inn, Pizza Hut, Pizza Guy, Pizza Roma offered unlimited pizza and bottomless drinks within 1000 taka. These places were so popular among the young generation that they had to take pre-booking prior to one or two days. Competing with the top brands, small scale restaurants gained their fair share of popularity for delicious food at a cheaper price with more breathe easy environment. Places like Mr. Manik and Chillers got their attention for their unlimited burgers at a much lower price tag. Even some places took the snaps of the winners at ‘Hall of fame’ for finishing highest amount within specific time period.

RESTAURANTS THAT HAD OFF THE SYLLABUS MENU

Fasting time demands food out of our regular ho-hum menu. From that perspective, seafood restaurant’s demand seemed lofty on such occasions. Fish and Co. Bangladesh, one of the leading seafood restaurants operating in the country, offered from 10% to 20% discount on their variety of Iftar and Sehri platter for the whole month of Ramadan. Other renowned seafood restaurants like Manhattan Fish Market and Holy Crab Bangladesh had customized Iftar and Sehri platter along with discounted price.

If you were out of fluid after fasting, coffee and juice shops were always there to meet your thirst even at late night. One of the top global franchise, Gloria Jean’s, offered regular drinks along with customized platters for Iftar. Whereas, top coffee shops in the city like Crimson Cup, North End, White Canary Cafe, Barista Lavazza, Kiva Han, George’s Café, Tabaq, Second Cup pushed their service hour late at night for the customer’s demand.

Lastly comes the grandeur, luxurious, aesthetic dine places for top quality food. Yes, we’re talking of top tier dine places to meet and greet. Lakeshore was a popular choice for the trendy class as hangout place. This place had tons of items to choose from as their buffet menu for Iftar and Sehri. They also had other fixed popular platters available. Close competitor Amari Dhaka had similar offers to choose from.  Other popular places like Shonargaon, Radisson Blu Dhaka, The Westin, Le Meridien lived up to customer expectations with their Ramadan offers.

PILING UP ECOMMERCE BRANDS IN CUSTOMER’S MIND

With burgeoning number of ecommerce business springing around like mushrooms, trust and quality has become the vital factor for the consumers to decide from where to purchase. A good number of ecommerce brands maintaining adequate quality, tried to showcase their products via different exhibitions for consumer’s benefits during Ramadan. Dhaka boot barn is one such hyped footwear brand in the city who had their exhibition at Banani 11, with over 100 new shoe designs as Eid collection. Other footwear brands like Arfani, Muchi had product exhibitions at different corners of the city during the month of Ramadan.

Largest online shops of the country put tremendous thought in designing Ramadan campaigns because of their diversified product line and customer base. Popular online shop Daraz provided coupon codes based on the total amount paid for the purchase. Customers could redeem this coupon to get a huge chunk of discount on the net payable. Pickaboo offered discounted price in almost every items as their Eid promotional offer. Other online marketplace like Bagddom, Shadmart, Ajkerdeal also had similar promotional prices for the whole month.

CLOTHING TREND SETTERS’ GAME PLAN FOR EID

Aarong seemed like the most crowded place and people champions when it comes to Eid shopping. Their campaign included posting every single clothing photoshoot of Eid collection on social media platforms. Popular brands like Ecstasy, Noir, Yellow, Cats Eye, Richman, Sailor and Vogue prepared their Eid collection photo shoot prior to Ramadan. Only heartsick from customer’s point of view, might be not getting discounts. Clothing is a necessary item for your Eid shopping and brands don’t really need to provide incentives to bolster our purchase sadly.

PLACES TO UNLOAD YOUR BONUS MONEY

Eid sometimes deserve more than just wardrobe items if you have some extra cash from your savings or bonus to buy something desideratum like automobiles or home appliances. Top dealer brands like Auto Museum, Car House Ltd and Car Selection provided handsome discount on selected items on purchase. Same goes for the top Motorcycle brands as well. Hero offered flat up to 16,000 discount on every motorcycles. Whereas brands like Yamaha, TVS, Bajaj also offered discounts of different range. Home appliances could be other possible choices to invest on your bonus. Singer Bangladesh had certain discounts on scratch cards up to absolutely free items. Yes, you heard it right, you could get your item for free if your scratch card said so. Renowned dealer brands like Best Electronics, Esquire, and Transcom Digitals provided stunning discounts as their Eid offer.

SAVING MONEY ON PAYING

Ramadan is the month when majority of the transactions occur compared to any other month and is fair shake for the Banks and other financial transaction platforms. Bkash, largest mobile transaction platform, offered a whopping 10%-25% discount for its payment from different showrooms of recognized clothing and retail brands of the country. Similarly, American Express, Visa, MasterCard issued by different private and national banks, offered discounts for restaurants, hotels, clothing stores and flight tickets as well.

RIDE SHARING INDUSTRY STEPPING UP WITH INCENTIVES

Ride sharing apps like Pathao and Uber in Bangladesh established themselves as giants of this industry within a short tenure. Both of this ride sharing companies had been offering customized promo codes for the month of Ramadan. They customized the promo code availability with the office time so that customers can have a hassle free journey to home to sit for Iftar together. Pathao also put a daily notification through their app which informed the users about daily iftar time. Biggest PR event for the month came from Pathao with their ‘Uthao’ campaign. This ride sharing company declared to provide helicopter escort service for the lucky lottery winners for the whole month. They’ve put tremendous effort on different social media platforms to reach and encourage customers in using more of their services. Before Eid, they declared all the lucky winners and convoyed them to their desired destination via helicopter justifying their campaign name ‘Uthao’.

This is immensely laudable how top brands put such efforts during Ramadan for their customers to remain top at the race. Most importantly, this is a good sign of an ideal progressive and competitive market, as it should be. From a customer’s point of view we would love to see more of this actions in future and need to wait just another year for that.