Brands like Asian Paints, Dabur, Tata, Maruti, Bajaj, Himalaya, Britannia, Parle, Saffola or Set Wet, in recent times, have become household names in Nepal. Consumers started trusting Indian brands more also because of the advertising spillover that they got from Indian GEC channels like Star, Zee, Sony, Colors and others that are being beamed into the country over the period of time. For the last few decades, these channels beamed the same India feed to all its immediate neighboring countries, including Nepal, which meant that advertising content which was meant and produced for the Indian market was also being viewed in our part of the world. 

That, to a certain extent, unknowingly worked in favor of many Indian brands as many large format GEC shows like Big Boss, KBC and Indian Idol, to name a few, became quite popular. A few of these reality TV shows also had participants of a Nepalese origin which became big news back home, giving an extra mileage to those programs and driving their viewership in the region.

Even relatively new brands that have been launched in these media started to gain their primary demand amongst the Nepalese consumers at least in the beginning and our traders were quite smart to encash on their popularity immediately by importing and making them available in local markets. Many of these Indian brands got an advantage over others, mostly if they were targeting urban housewives who have access to those channels and also could relate to the content. 

Few of these brands lived on without even being present in Nepalese media for many years while smart brand marketers for the larger brands started to do media planning taking consideration of India spillovers to meet their objectives to reach far and wider audiences beyond larger urban centers.

And of course, there are other brand marketers who understood the consumer sentiments and made it a point to invest in strategy which incorporates Nepalese values to grow much larger over a period of time, taking advantage of both spillover media and scheduling done with local media channels with adaptation of creatives taking into consideration, local culture and insights. Those brands became much larger over a period of time, faster than their category counterparts. These are the brands that are now ready to face the new advertising policy which will come to effect very soon in the Nepal market.

The article was published in Economic Times Brand Equity. To understand the clean feed policy and you can read the complete version at: https://brandequity.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/advertising/a-new-improved-advertising-dawn-in-nepal/74665639