UNB, Dhaka :
After a couple of decades, Biman Bangladesh Airlines has decided to produce television commercials for airing on local and international media, aiming to attract more passengers.
“Biman’s TV commercial was last aired in the late 1980s,” a former board director of Biman told UNB.
The national flag carrier has recently invited Request for Proposal (RFP) and sealed bids for making two television commercials for running them on local and international media, and the last date for submission of tender documents is July 31. Talking to UNB over telephone, a Biman pilot, who was involved in its fleet planning in the recent past, said this proves how much callous is the Biman management about wooing passengers.
“When other commercial airliners around the world publishing ads in newspapers and airing TV commercials frequently, Biman has been without commercials for over two decades,” he said.
He said Biman is also very much week in its marketing as it is in its branding.”There’s no planning for branding and marketing for the national flag carrier,” he said.
In this connection, the Biman pilot also mentioned the names of Emirates, Etihad, Thai, Qatar Airways, British Airways, Lufthansa which put immense importance on the branding and marketing to grab more and more passengers.
“In this region, Emirates is the most well-known airliner. But, they’re investing a good amount of money in TV commercial and newspaper advertisements. They’re not sitting idle,” he added.
Despite having six 777 aircraft, Biman is still a losing concern, he said. “Lack of proper branding and marketing policy is one of the reasons for the losses. The present Biman Board has no idea about branding and marketing as they were not involved in any commercial organization before.”
Currently, Air Marshal (retd) Jamal Uddin Ahmed is the chairman of the Board of Directors of Biman.
The other members of the Board are Prime Minister’s Office secretary Md. Abul Kalam Azad, Finance Division secretary Fazle Kabir, Civil Aviation & Tourism secretary Khurshed Alam Chowdhury, former judge and senior advocate of the Supreme Court AFM Mesbahuddin, Assistant Chief of Air Staff (Operation & Training) Air Vice Marshal Abu Esrar, Engineer-in-Chief of Bangladesh Army Maj Gen Abdul Quadir, Civil Aviation Authority of Bangladesh (CAAB) chairman AVM Mahmud Hussain, Treasure of Dhaka University Prof Dr Md. Kamal Uddin, and Shah Md. Zakaria Bhuiyan, FCA, Principal M/S S.M. Zakaria & Co., Chartered Accountants. The Biman MD is also an ex-officio member of the Board.
