Category: Promotion

According to Al Ries, the use of sex in advertising is more a question of fashion. As fashion, it rises and falls. Advertisers want to be new and different. If during a period, there is little sexual symbolism, there is an incentive to use it. But an excess of sexual ads make advertisers look elsewhere to arrest attention. To be effective, sex works when the product as such involves sexual attraction, e.g. perfume and clothing. Successful advertising is about the power of ideas.

Sexuality can brand a moment. Haagen Dazs is an adult ice-cream with sensual ads like body and texture, feel me, intense fresh, lose control and dedicated to pleasure. Sex is here an analogy to sexual indulgence. It is the best selling premium ice-cream in Britain.

Many companies splash their ads on front pages of the print media. It is a big bang approach. During a down-turn actually small size ads are expected. However, many think that the company should curtail the frequency and duration of the campaigns and instead should run big ads for select periods. Some of these ads can be attributed to private treaty agreements. A publisher under such a treaty picks up equity stake in companies in return for romoting these partners through ad deals. Another reason for such big ads is the price discounts being offered by the media to the tune of 30-50 per cent. Some media houses also offer frrbies and value add-ons.

Many ads used animals in yester years. With rise of animal rights groups and concern for ethical treatment to animals, India has set up Animal Welfare Board of India ( AWBI )  which prescribes a procedure for filming with live animals. Their permission is necessary to shoot with a live animal. Vodafone ad featuring a pug took Nirvana more than six weeks to secure the permission. SBI’s ad of a hen laying golden eggs was objected to by PETA India ( People for Ethical Treatment to Animals ). Johnson’s commercial for Savlon used a dog, sparrows and cockatoos, and faced problem with the Board. Hutch Essar’s fortune teller bird, a parakeet was withdrawn. Animations films now create animals to avoid such problems, e.g. Alpenliebe candy with Kajol and crocodile has an animated crocodile. Animation, though expensive, gives a lot of creative freedom. The cow used in Orbit White commercial is an animated cow. Film makers sometimes prefer to shoot abroad where there are animation protection rules but the whole thing is time bound. Alternatively, footage from stock libraries can be used. Tata Safari ad with several wild animals popping out eyes when it drove by had stock shots. Pepsi’s cricketers morphed into tigers using stock footage. Stock footage is cheaper as compared to animation or shooting abroad. Some film makers edit out animals totally.

He is a UK-born person in a Jewish family. He runs the world’s largest communication network WPP Plc, operating in 107 countries with a revenue of 9.3 billion pounds. His network has taken over JWT, O&M, Young and Rubicam and Grey Worldwide under its fold. He also owns media buying agencies such as Mindshare, Maxus, Mediaedge and Mediacom. He also owns several PR agencies, digital promotion companies and branding agencies. In India, WPP accounts for 40 per cent of the total revenue generated by the ad industry.

Amritanjan balm is perceived as out-dated grandma’s therapy for pain relief. It was to be connected to youth. The love and affection route was used. A young man and his companion board a train, and he complains of a head-ache. A young woman follows him in the corridor, and offers to apply balm. As they retire for the night, the man assures that his wife is asleep on the upper berth while he reaches out to the young woman across the berth.The Agency is Shining Consulting.And the creative director Shombit Sengupta.

In Mirinda ad, a chief guest arrives at a college function. He notices people panting and breathless. The next day’s newspapers feature him and a teacher heaving and panting.The headline is ‘caught in the act.’ Created by Swati Bhattacharya of JWT. It is a tasteful but provocative ad. It has naughty tonality but it highlights the breathlessness concept of the campaign.

Lowe Lintas Aru Iyer Fasttrack ad shows an air-hostess entering cock-pit. As the pilot puts the plane on auto-pilot, the hands can be free for other activities — rather pleasurable activities. It was a little funny ad with innuendo, although in a classy manner. According to Piyush Pandey, innuendo is creativity, provided that it is culturally accepted.

As we know, unique selling proposition was relevant when a product could be differentiated on the basis of some technological advantage. Since then we have an era of product parity on account of shortening of time between the introduction of an innovation and a me -too copycat product. Consequently, USP does not work. In the absence of meaningful differences, all brands tend to get commoditised, and the only differentiator the marketer uses is the price. The lower the prices, the greater are the chances of being preferred by the consumer. This affects profitability and long term prospects of the business.

Instead of USP, we now talk in terms of UBP — Unique Benefit Proposition. USP was the marketer’s say about the the product. UBP is what the consumer wants to hear from the marketers. In this approach, the consumer research is carried out to get insight — what the consumer really want and how our product can be connected to that primal need. A luxury car as an asset may be bought to flaunt wealth. But explicitly, the consumer may not say so. If safety is emphasised, it becomes more acceptable. It gives the consumer a permission to buy the luxury product. Later, the asset becomes an object of envy for the neighbours. Of course, even the competitors may try to find out what the consumers actually need. If our understanding of the consumers is better than that of the competitors, we shall win, and vice versa. This understanding is the basis for Unique Buying Proposition.

This concept is the brain child of Rosser Reeves who popularised it in the 1950s, and codified it if a 1961 Random House book Reality in Advertising.

Reeves defined USP as a proposition to the consumers which is so strong that it can move the mass of millions, i.e. pull  them over to our product. He contends that the consumer tends to remember just one thing from an ad — one strong claim or concept. Each ad must make a proposition to the consumer.

A crucial part of Reeves’ theory is that the proposition or promise made by the ad must be one which the competition has not so far made. It is unique He also expected the marketer to give reasons  for the effectiveness of the unique proposition. At its face value, this concept is alright . Technological capability was so unique in his days that others took years to catch up with it. But these days benefits and capabilities no longer remain unique for a long time. In his days, Reeves strategy of product diffentiation was viable, but is no longer valid today. A technological or functional advantage cannot sustain a product/brand for long. We are in an age of parity.

Revees doctrine suggests that consumer behaves rationally. Research and common sense suggest that this is not so.

To a media planner, two indices are important –BDI and CDI. BDI indicates sales of a brand as a percentage of population.

BDI= Percentage of brand’s total all India sales/ Percentage of total population x 100

This index enables a media planner to allocate the media budget by setting his priorities.

CDI measures the sales potential of a product category. It takes into account the potential of all competitors selling the same category.

CDI= Percentage of product category total all India sales / Percentage of total population x 100

When both the BDI and CDI are high, we have to spend more on media to maintain them. If there is low BDI and CDI, we have to see why our brand fares poor and devise competitive strategies.If BDI is high, but CDI is low, we have to examine advertising initially, and question whether it will do any good.

Advertising industry no longer casts just pretty faces who exist only between ‘ action ‘ and ‘ cut ‘ , but are now relying more on real faces with character, with whom the audience can relate. That enhances the appeal of the story. In a sense, the story telling becomes democratic by such casting. Maybe, these real people are less than perfect, but they are appealing. Gone are the days when people were cast just on the basis of looks, irrespective of the fact whether they fit in or not. Theatre artists are in demand in performance-based roles in such films. The closer the characters are to reality, the better the people relate. A mother being shown on screen must be a reflection of the real life mother. SBI’s – ‘ heere ko kya pata tumhari umar ‘ had shown an ordinary couple celebrating love in a novel way. To do such casting, you have to source from streets, railway platforms, schools. You have to assign roles to ordinary folks such as dabbawallas and tattoo artists. A person cast must not be too addy. Only those ads become memorable whose characters touch an emotional cord, and make us either smile or cry. It should be a great story well-told by good actors. This is true for a full-length feature film, or a 10-second TV commercial.