The umbrella-idea of ‘Grow Young’ could be the key for many brands in Nepal today. Let’s take the time to explore if it is just another jargon in an industry already full of branded synonyms or is there more to it?
According to the statistics, Nepal is a youth dominant country with 72 per cent of its population below the age of 35 years. That makes Nepal a market for the youth, so to speak. In order to stay relevant in this youthdominant market, brands have to remain youthful and contemporary all the time. With the passage of time, even the most successful brands become outdated or old-fashioned if they cannot keep up with the changing mindsets of the consumers.
Look around yourself and you will find many brands getting trapped in a time warp – Bata shoes or Bombay Dyeing could be the examples from the sub-continent and Brighter toothpaste, Rara noodles, Gogo detergent from Nepal. This clearly leaves the marketers and the advertising agencies with a challenging job at their hands – to make the brands look, feel and sense young at all times so that they don’t get lost into the oblivion. This means regenerating the Product Life Cycle graph with the changing demographic status of the country.
The importance and challenge for a brand to stay young and fresh is further compounded by the unique demographics of this country. Since marketers from sectors as diverse as automobiles to apparels to mobile phones have young audience at the heart of their campaigns, the importance of staying contemporary is the need of the hour.

What do young people mean to the business world today? They are always open to new ideas, have the spending power, and are the key influencers even for decisions where they aren’t the ultimate buyers. They are willing to experiment and proving to be trendsetters in the process. To connect with the youth and their minds, it is important for brands to stay young and desirable. Therefore the only way forward for brands today is to constantly remain young in order to have a lasting effect.
Catch-them-young is turning out to be a ‘big idea’ the world over. And Nepal is no exception where organised categories are first tried by the youth. To comply with this trend, and implement the ‘big idea’ to create a platform for brands to stay fresh and young, there is a new process called ‘unboxing’. This approach could prove to be quite handy where the creative and client servicing units of an advertising agency join hands to use five Knowledge Blocks (5KBs) to generate ideas. These 5KBs originate from field study and research conducted by the client servicing team along with the client’s marketing or brand team. The 5KBs consist of a) consumer understanding b) category opportunities c) competitive gaps d) brand advantage and e) brand personality. Each 5KB gives clues to ideas that brands can own.
The strategic and the creative units collaborate to explore the findings, which leads to brand ideas. The ideas are then filtered to retain only the ones that keep the brand ‘fresh and young’.
(Shakya is associated with Outreach Nepal Pvt Ltd. This article has been acquired from AAN website and edited by Nubiz for clarity. - Ed.)