Category: Promotion

People keep on posting images on Instagram, and these need classification. There is a method of nomenclature and and taxanomy for the the photographs on social media. If the Gateway of India photo is reflected in the rainwater, it is a #puddlegram. A shadow of yourself in a garden is #shadowselfie. Airplanes flying across the skies are #planespotting. There are #travelgrams, #hotelview, #airportlife hashtags. Porn is used in the classification as a ubiquitons suffix, e.g. #foodporn, #natureporn, #cloudporn. A city can be photographed, e.g. #Paris but if you want to see illuminated Paris at night, you can go to #Parisbynight.

There is a new found love for hashtags, not only in social media but in advertising too. Copywriters use their creative faculties to write good baselines and slogans. The hashtags seems to be replacing this. #ProgressIs ( Audi ), OpenHappiness ( Coke ), #RealStrength ( Dove Men ), #youdrive ( Mercedez-Benz), #makeitcount ( Nike ) are some of the hashtags that communicate the essence of the brand and its promise. Hashtags have become mainstream, are active and powerful. It’s a year of #newbeginnings.

Roser Reeves talked about the Unique Selling Proposition ( USP ). Ogilvy talked about the brand image. Bill Bernarch talked about advertising with a lighter touch. Jack Trout put forward  a brand in the minds of the customers and prospects. All this has changed in the competitive and digital environment of the 21st century.

By definition, advertising tom tommed the advantages of a product so as to increase the sales. As we watch the videos today on our mobiles, do they satisfy the criteria laid down by the definition? Very few do. Mostly, we have to figure out what is being advertised. Advertising has to entertain so as to keep the audience engaged. Instead of product qualities and advantages, the content is full of smiles and music, and resemble movies, rather than traditional advertising.

Social media have made things more complicated. On TV the programmes were interupted by the ad breaks. People do not like their phones and computer screen messed up by advertising. After all ads will have to go beyond entertaining people. They will have to boost up sales.

Advertising as a word is being replaced by storytelling. Marketing is now geared to storytelling. A product must have a good story, as compared to its competitors. Drama to some extent is necessary to make the story memorable. Creativity has come to mean dramatization.

And all this must be integrated — both the traditional and social media. A story has to be integrated across the media, which is not an easy task. Thus integrated storytelling should be used to improve the sales.

With a TV set on, the housewife keeps doing the household chores. These distractions always affect TV viewing. Ultimately when she settles down to see her favourite show, and the ads come on the TV, she starts using her smart phone either to catch up the news feed on Facebook or see the ads. Advertisers see this as an opportunity to be on the smart phone. Multiscreening is a trend. TV has a great reach, but what if you miss the right people? Facebook provides an opportunity to reach the precise audience. Several campaigns these days are running as mobile-first-campaign. Platforms such as Facebook and Instagram are used by business to reach out to their audiences. Using video advertising on multiple platforms has emerged as a highly effective and successful approach in recent times.

Most large agencies have started digital divisions. These are, however, compartmentalised. There is no cross fertilisation of ideas. Most creative work on brands happen outside the digital division, and the digital specialists are then expected to take it forward digitally. Digital division is considered to be a place where long TV commercials are made. Conventional agency may not be the right place for a person who wants to work in digital space. Creatives should make a switch to a pure digital world advertising firm. A digital creative person thinks of a brand and video simultaneously. He may have to work on films with a shoe-string budget. However, his competence in this field can be leveraged in future. This is the place where the future is. It is full of opportunities. TV stories are linear and predictable. Digital is idea-centred. You have to bring this idea to life, all in unexpected ways. Smart phones enable one to engage with video anytime. Video consumption is growing. There are not enough people who can write quality video content. This content must be engaging enough, must be entertaining enough and must be moving enough.

Videos are made easier by technology. Even smart phones can shoot HD videos. It is not necessary to shoot on films — in fact films will be a quaint word in a couple of years.

On TV, a creative has to consider the dictates of the client. TRPs and GRPs also influence the creatives. On digital side, the consumer is the king. There are no viewers. There are only only people who prefer and choose to view what stuff you have produced. The idea that you have nurtured finds audience if it is worth seeing. Maybe, it is horrendous to some, and exhilarating to others.

In order to get business, an agency pitches before a client. When this is done free it is called speculative pitch. This is an industry practice. The client chooses an agency after seeing what they bring on the table. There is a possibility that the client rejects your speculative pitch or spec, but uses your ideas, thus violating your IPR ( intellectual property rights ). The client thinks that the past work of an agency is not enough to arrive at the judgement. Maybe, it is an altogether a different product category and the client is entitled to know your thinking, say you are shifting from FMCG to tech. To ensure that the ideas are not stolen, an agency can get an agreement in place ( NDA ). Agencies give away their ideas at no cost and clients have great time at their cost. An agency should also enquire as to why the client parted with the previous agency. Speculative pitchimg does require an  industry policy. Pitches must fetch fee, and specs which are free should have certain conditions attached. Maybe , the clients have to pay rejection fees. Even agencies accept spec work and finish it in a short time of a few weeks, and present it in such a way that what annoyed the client previously is done away. The whole spirit of partnering with a brand is lost. A client must get a real team to work on his brand, rather than a few freelancers who are hired to do the work.

There are three major factors in this digital age. Youngsters and other users are connected by mobiles.  Most services are accessed on mobiles through apps, and fast consumers have shifted from the web, there is an era of mobile experience which is new. Mobile is thus at the cusp of this change. Billions of dollars worth sales is conducted on mobiles. Mobile has emerged as an advertising medium. Its power cannot be underestimated. Mobile commerce is the future. Still shopping apps usage is low, still the time spent on shopping apps is low. Just apps are not enough to leverage mobiles for e-commerce. Marketers think in terms of online-offline and mobile shopping. To a consumer it is not different. To him, what matters is shopping. There are impulse driven purchases and intent driven purchases. Mobile apps do not encourage impulse driven purchases. And who searches a large array of products to discover the right product on the mobile ?

Global m-commerce is growing by leaps and bounds. As majority of parchases are impulse driven or discovery, the potential is huge.

Mobiles must carry shoppable ads. It is going to be retail driven. M-commerce can be advertising driven by apps like Miib. These platforms can be made human by adding a discovery. Miip reads consumer emotions and curates selection.

By and large, shopping on mobile is intent driven. Adding the element of  discovery makes it widely acceptable. It defines the very nature of advertising on digital platforms.

Many from the creative agencies shifted to marketing. It was understood as a shift for green pastures. However, a shift to a media agency was never appreciated. A media agency did number crunching, used Excel and were not glamorous. Previously, creative agencies were considered to be the Brahmins of the marketing scene. However, the things are changing. Creative agencies are not associated exclusively with the stewardship of the brand. It is beneficial to focus on media business and grow it. Media agencies are now popular career choices, and more profitable than their creative counter parts. Clients now would like to interact both with the traditional and new age  mediums. Media agencies are in touch with tech companies, start ups, social media to keep pace with the changing times. It is better to explore this than to be obsessed just with the big idea. It does not mean that creative agencies can be dismissed lightly. They are islands of excellence for account management. They are essential for day-to-day business. They are better at collection from clients. They learn the lessons of story telling in a creative agency. The focus, however, is shifting to the media agencies.

A typical agency had planning, servicing, media and creative departments. Agencies worked on a brief –a creative idea was developed into a campaign. The role was clear-cut for the agency. Develop a communication idea, and get it developed through its creative department. It was later realised by the media people that the department can attract lot of money. They splintered from the creative agencies. With the exit of the media, creative agencies finances came under stress. Another development is the rise of the digital media. This made it necessary for the creative agencies to change.

Clients spend on advertising and the budgets have not shrunk. But their budgets for traditional agencies have shrunk.

To attract more money, agencies can resort to mergers and acquisitions. Another approach is to reorganise –clients are offered services, under one single leader and there are no fences and no administrative divisions. Rebundling of services may solve the problem to some extent. However, if an integrated team works on a brand, their working capacity can be stretched to a few brands only. There are problems of ego clashes in the team, and a larger team may have co-ordination problems. Even the response times may be slow. Traditional advertising agencies were structured around the media platforms, but with the advent of TV, the first disruption came in. There were specialised set ups to begin with to offer better value to clients, and then integration takes over to exercise greater control over the results. The issue is whether to bundle or unbundle the services.

Media agencies bought media in bulk. They then sell off. However,to maximise revenues they need great ideas. Media agencies thus have started hiring creative people. Media is also splintering more and more. Clients too want all solutions under one roof. They are tired of fractured solutions.

Clients can approach a single agency for the communication package. Multiply agency system becomes inefficient. The agency must understand the new media context. The agency could have the freedom to outsource the expertise it itself does not have.

Traditional silks have to break down. There would be a shift towards craft agnostic think tanks. These will produce pure communication strategy. It will be devoid of execution. Craft execution, if necessary, can be outsourced.

In its early days, online advertising was just restricted to flashing banner ads and static pop-up windows. These days, the ads have become more creative and interactive. They pop-up and play automatically — as if viewers are challenged to shut down. They command the screen, either contracting or expanding. They move and dance across the screens. Ads are more pervasive and not easy to get past. The X- button is so tiny, and clicking it is a matter of luck. Sometimes, on purpose, X buttons are placed in the top left instead of the usual top right. Pop up ads were invented by Ethan Zuckerman  in the 1990s. These were intended to give advertisers a way to separate their message from the web page. Later, advertisers started tracking web users and served them targeted ads. Rocket Fuel and Rubicon project, autommated this process. This brought down the price of online ads. As the prices went down, the publishers squeezed more ad formats on their sites to maintain sufficient revenues to keep alive.

On desktop computers, the web pages have turned into a maze The problem is more acute on tablets and smart phones. Many publishers have shifted to HTMLS which  helps them create new ad formats.