Marketing

I have spent a lot of my early years in market development for Unilever products into the Myanmar market. It was one of the most exciting times of my career and the learning curve was really really steep.
Unilever knew what it was doing and many years of marketing in India, Indonesia and Thailand had honed its strategies to be razor sharp. They had brands recognized worldwide.
The advantage of these these products were that they have been packaged to sizes and price positioned so that also anyone could afford them with exception of the extremely destitute. The shampoo sachets would sell for something like 1cent so you could imagine the demand vacuum it filled.
The brands were Sunsilk, Dimension, Close Up, OMO, to name a few.
Below the line marketing was very innovative, at the time, as TV ownership was not widespread, and everyone loved TV and especially the cheesy movies churned out to satisfy the seemingly insatiable demand (some of these movies were made in a week). The demand was met by entrepreneurial individuals opening 'video parlors' and charging admission for a cheesy Myanmar movie. These outlets were well frequented by our target market, 15 to 30 year olds. So it was just a simple activity of us, showing a commercial video at these locations combined with a sampling activity. The owners loved it as it filled their venues to the limit, and we also got a assembly of the right demographics, a win-win at its best.
Couple with a full fledged marketing campaigns, the brands took off like rockets within a few months. I once asked a lorry driver to go directly to the wholesale market from the port. And then my supervisor delivered stock directly to mainstream consumer products dealers.
At least 2 roving 'video parlour' teams could be at work at any time throughout the country.
Although the 'video parlour' has ceased to be of great popularity in the cities it does still thrive in smaller communities and villages. And sampling at these locations has become the somewhat must-do activity for rural marketing in Myanmar. Its now standard practise.