Islam and Public Relations/Advertising

Islam and Public Relations/Advertising
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Abstract
In the contemporary business environment, public relations and advertising has taken the centre stage. This sounds a brilliant idea, given that the advances in ICT have made advertising much easier. However, there is the challenge of cultural differences. People all over the world differ in their beliefs, ideologies and traditions. Religious inclinations also have a hand in the complications in the advertising and public relations arena. Islam, specifically, dictates how some of these messages are designed, as indicated in the essay below.
Islam and Public Relations/Advertising
Advertising is a key aspect in businesses, as it comes in handy in the boosting of sales and improving the profit margins. Therefore, it is worth noting that it requires a good advertising strategy to win the trust of the customers. This can lead to brand preference by the consumers which ultimately leads to boosted profits for the company. In order to have such an effective advertising message, there needs to be good public relations. That is, an effective, efficient PR department that can take in the interests of all the customers and therefore produce messages that befit the entire clientele base. A clear understanding of the different cultural and religious beliefs are essential in coming up with such a desired message. As such, there are considerations of religious groups such as Hindu, Buddhism, Christianity and Islam (Akhter, Abassi and Umar, 2011). All these groups have specific aspects of faith tat they ascribe to, and these do play a key role in the manner in which the followers of the groups receive some adverts and public relations messages.
Islam messages can be incorporated into advertisements in different ways. For instance, adverts can be specifically tailored such that they depict the absence of explicit material. Furthermore, adverts for food products targeting Islam should indicate that the product is free of pork products. In that manner, the product is bound to generate more sales as the people feel that it is safe for Islam consumers. Other adverts and public relations messages should not contain messages of vanity, or messages that use underage girls or nude women. This goes against the Sharia law that the Islam community holds to dearly. Therefore, avoiding such scenes would go well with the Islam community, which spells profits to the advertising company (Dar and Mogul, 2002). This clearly shows the importance of religious considerations in advertising.
Before designing of any advertising message, it is worth having an objective as to why it is necessary. Therefore, there is need for having a rational behind having an Islam message in advertising. The key factor in this would be so as to win favor with the Islam faithful and have them consume the said products. For instance, in Kuwait, the advertising agents are wary of any message that involves sexual scenes, pork, alcohol, tobacco or any other item that is prohibited by the Shariah law. These restrictions are so elaborate that even in the stock market, anything related to the aforementioned aspects is not listed for trading (Dar and Mogul, 2002).
The major reason behind these restrictions is to avoid offending the consumers for whom the advert is intended. Simple business logic has it that if the consumers are offended, then they won`t be enthusiastic about the product and in effect will not buy it. This spells doom for the advertising company. Therefore the need for the consideration of religious facts in advertising is to avoid pushing away prospective clients.
An illustration of this aspect is well illustrated by Sriramesh (2005), who presents an argument about the soft drink industry in Egypt. According to this argument, Egypt is by far an Islamic state. The two major soft drinks in the country are Coca cola and Pepsi cola. Given that the Islam religion discourages the taking of alcoholic beverages, the soft drinks are taken as the major beverages in major social gatherings in the country. Pepsi cola is the most famous soft drink in Egypt ahead of Coca cola for one major reason: in 2000, there was a rumor spreading that the company`s logo had a non-Islamic meaning. The claim went that if the logo was held upside down in front of a mirror, then it read ‘No Mohammed, No Mecca.` Since most of the activities in the count...