Category Archives: Insights

AdStand: Women as consumers and advertising’s disconnect with them

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Last week was dominated by women-centric stories in advertising and content. Both in India and globally. All the stories do raise a pertinent point: do we in advertising have any clue of the changing women consumers or are we still seeing them with the narrow perspective of past? Just sample what happened last week. Audi in China missed the mark with a TVC. In India, we are doing one strange TV show about a 10-year-old boy getting married to a grown up woman. An RJ in Mumbai brought BMC to its knees, and she is a spunky lady. A movie with liberating theme about women tied the Censor Board in a tangle that the best Yoga guru couldn’t fathom. The women cricket team reached the final of the world cup. Meanwhile, advertising in India continues to make skin fairer, weddings grander, mom-in-laws angrier, shirts whiter and utensils shinier.

Audi in China is a very powerful brand. It has ruled the market in China for a very long period and is a part of pop culture. The market’s reaction to the ultra-insensitive Audi Used Car ad was understandable. The market reacted with horror, there were calls to ban the commercial. Weibo (China’s equivalent of Twitter) was unforgiving. Audi’s global brand managers apologised. The commercial compared a new bride to a used car and the analogy made a big dent into the reputation of the brand. In every such case, we must remember that there was a brief, there was an approval to a concept, there was the process of creation, post-shoot approvals and may be many rounds of market research in between. If the ad made it to screens than it begs the question, are they in touch with their consumers? Or they are completely oblivious to the realities of the market.

Meanwhile back home Mumbai is witnessing a bizarre sequence of events. An RJ created a song about potholes in Mumbai and the whole BMC was up in arms. They slapped a case of mosquito breeding. Mumbai rose in unity and sided with the RJ. Across social media, the outpouring of support was massive. What possibly added to the whole movement was the fact that the RJ was a lady. What may have proved the authorities was possibly her gender. The city did not let her gender come by way of the support.

The outpouring of pride and support for the women’s cricket team who reached the final was also massive. Women’s cricket has not been a popular sport in India, despite the popular sport it is. The journey of the team from being a qualifier to almost champion fired up the imagination of the country.

After a protracted battle with the censor board, Lipstick Under My Burka was received with open admiration. The movie does talk about themes that have not been a part of the popular narrative in either movies or advertising. A pleasure-seeking old woman is not the theme that has ever been portrayed. The good thing to watch was not that the theme was touched upon; it was that the audience accepted the narrative.

The week also saw the release of a bizarre show on TV where a 10-year-old boy marries a lady more than twice his age. Everything about the show is wrong. However, despite the protests, the show is on screens, beamed regularly to our homes.

The wider issue is the lack of women centricity in most of commercials that are being beamed on TV. The insights and the propositions are a bit dated. Life on TV for brands is still about shinier, fairer, brighter and grander. The new emerging women consumers are not the same as what they used to be. Ten years back they were saying that it’s okay to not get married, today the signs of successful marriage are not how the husband-wife portrayal is in many mainstream brand ads.

Brands need to rethink the emotional contract they have with the consumers. They are moving at alarming speed. Brands need to be ahead, drive the change, be engaged. Maybe the next set of commercial from jewellery as category is not about a grand wedding, but about many more emerging themes.

Remember the girl’s story who does not call off her honeymoon even after her wedding broke, became an iconic movie. And the lead actor became a strong voice.

Original published here: http://bestmediainfo.com/2017/07/ad-stand-women-as-consumers-and-advertising-s-disconnect-with-them/

AdStand: Coke, Oppo, GoIbibo, Kellogs and Deepika

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There is an easy way to get eyeballs, that is to sign up the current superstar and watch the brand soar. Coke, Kellogs, GoIbibo and Gionee have all got the advantage of having possibly the hottest celebrity as the endorser. All the brands have released the ads at the same time, giving the brands a certain topicality.

 

The Coke Elevator Campaign

While Pepsi faltered in its campaign, Coke has kept the narrative simple and created a very Coke kind of spot. The story of a star bumping into a commoner, connecting with each other and the star leaving the common stranger with a goofy grin makes for super viewing.

There is a certain charm that Deepika brings to the commercial and despite a very tight story line and little space to improvise makes the commercial memorable. The hotel room service steward is also perfectly cast.

The spot though is adapted from the international commercial of Coke. The international commercial is a modern day Cinderella story where an ordinary girl bumps into a celebrity DJ and ends up having her own starry moment and a selfie that didn’t work out as well as she thought it would. The winner this the interactive digital content which takes you floor by floor giving you a taste of candid moments.

The digital campaign has far more interesting take on the modern Cinderella story than just a selfie that is dominated by a bottle of Coke. This is a winner from Coke

 

Selfie and Oppo

Oppo was about the love story between two stars. These two stars haven’t been cast together in a movie, so by a phone brand that was a brave move. The brand has now moved beyond love story, into Selfie. The emotion of finding long lost love has been replaced by narcissistic feel of looking at your face with a weird pout. Deepika is fighting the pout war with Alia and Ranveer. This is an interesting war out there, pouts, pouts and pouts and three hottest celebrities.

 

GoIbibo and Deepika

At 8.5 million views in YouTube alone GoIbibo is doing very well to help Deepika make money by using her contacts on her phone book. This is a simple tale that is enlivened by Deepika, but more by the technologically challenged aunt. The aunt plays the old-world-old–idiom driven lady with extreme pizzazz. It’s the casting that is inspired, the rest of the ad is usual.

 

Kellogs and Deepika

 

Kellogs and Deepika were into selfies last year. Deepika was showing off her weight loss post two week challenge last year. This year Kellogs Special K Protein is more about maintaining your weight by eating the most tempting Cranberry flavoured cereal. There are many cranberries in the commercial, almost from frame one to frame hundred. Its just in final frame you discover that Kellogs has two more flavours. This is a classical packaged food commercial, and does the job of selling the breakfast well. Kellogs will benefit from having a supremely fit and attractive Deepika as its ambassador

 

Deepika and new ASCI Guidelines

ASCI’s new guidelines for brand endorsers and will the guideline have an impact on Deepika’s brands? The bubbly drink is about making friends, that should be safe. The dual lens cell phone is about selfies, you can’t debate that. The travel brand is about making money from friends, that’s a matter between friends. The breakfast cereal is about maintain weight. May be Deepika now needs to hire a nutritionist and a food scientist. Or may be Kellogs can explore selfies again.

They are in fashion.

Original published here: http://bestmediainfo.com/2017/04/ad-stand-coke-oppo-goibibo-kellogg-s-and-deepika/

 

AdStand: The Newspaper advertising crisis

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Can you quickly recall the ads you read in newspapers today morning? Ok can you trace back and recall what you read a week back? Is there a newspaper ad that made you stop at it last week and made you say: this is nice, or this is clever or this is too good?

There is a crisis that newspaper ads are struggling with. The one single reason why brands create advertising is memorability. If the advertising does not create memorability than it is an expensive indulgence that the brand can avoid.

 

Crisis of memorability

The three of the largest category that uses newspapers extensively are real estate, retail and ecommerce. May be the three categories are responsible for the crisis of memorability that newspaper advertising faces today. Real Estate advertising is transactional, the builders are not looking at long-term traction, they look at quick transaction. This makes the real estate newspaper advertising low on idea and high on details. The belief that prospective buyers are looking for details and the ad needs to say everything that can be said has turned real estate ads into catalogue listings. Ecommerce websites too look at newspaper advertising as catalogues to announce sale, there is rarely an attempt to build an idea in those ads. The entire retail sector has taken newspaper advertising back to the days of origination. In the earliest days newspaper ads were catalogue listing. Today, newspaper ads are back to being catalogue listing. There in lies the biggest crisis newspaper advertising faces today

 

Crisis of craft

Last week Snapdeal released expensive jackets across the country, announcing the new identity and its new consumer-facing proposition. Unbox Zindagi is an ambitious brand building exercise that the brand undertook. A key element of the campaign is an anthem that tells the story of the brand. Snapdeal turned the song into the body copy for the launch ads in newspaper. The Hindi lyrics if the sing were written in Roman script and became the body copy for the ad. The Roman Script Hindi was used in English newspaper ads that were released across the country, including in areas where Hindi is not the primary language. Brands invest in newspaper advertising to connect with its consumers, to tell the story of brand in the language if consumers. Snapdeal missed an opportunity to really connect and narrate the story of its brand. By being poor in craft the brand did not create the edge it could have by being true to craft. May be memorability of the individual newspaper ad was never considered and it was only used as a tactical weapon to make some noise.

Last week was also an expensive indulgence from Louis Philippe Shirts across the country with a gatefold that opened into a look at how they have changed the shirt forever. The hyperbolic ad was more a self-indulgence from the brand and less of a promise to the consumer. Did the brand need really expensive real estate to tell the consumer that Louis Philippe shirts have changed forever? Incidentally of you do end up visiting the website of the brand, then none of the tonality of the press ad exists on the web. Is the brand then suffering from an identity crisis?
Crisis of context

Like Snapdeal, Uber too launched a new campaign to announce its new consumer promise. Uber is no longer everyone’s private driver, Uber makes you move forward. To launch the new campaign the brand has released large format expensive newspaper ads across the country looking for people who can be Uber drivers. The press campaign supplements the web campaign that is the story of Shankar the driver. The newspaper ad is the story of another driver whose daughter is a chess champions. The campaign works till this extent. Does the campaign though need English newspapers to advertise or should it move to language newspapers? For both: the relevance and reach language newspapers will deliver far better impact. By being in English newspaper has Uber has lost the wider narrative. Language newspapers do deliver better reach and equally good quality of audience to the advertiser. The potential Uber partners are more likely to read the language newspapers than the English ones.

Uber may have missed the context of audiences’ lives completely.

 

Does newspaper advertising need reinvention?

Newspaper advertising is expensive. Brands invest a large part of their marketing budget in newspapers to build immediacy in brand advertising. Enhanced transaction or greater traffic on site or greater number of calls on the toll free number cannot be the way to measure the impact of newspaper adverts. Memorability has to be the key. Especially now when we are burdened with information overload and have shorter attention span.

I have just picked four random examples from brands that have over invested in newspapers. For brands that are not over invested, memorability becomes even more important. That is the only currency hundreds of brands should live by. It’s time newspaper ads stepped out of the shadow of TV ads.

Original published here: http://bestmediainfo.com/2016/09/ad-stand-the-newspaper-advertising-crisis/

 

 

 

 

Brand Wagon: Sports is the new context

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Every 4 years we as a country ask this question:

Why can’t we win medals in Olympics?

Why as country we do well only in cricket, is cricket the reason that we don’t do well in Olympics?

Why cant corporates put in money as they put in Cricket?

Eventually the clamour dies down and we carry on enjoying cricket and now a variety of sports that are beyond cricket. Hockey has seen a revival, Kabbadi is being watched, and Badminton gets people to stadiums, even Formula 1 got people excited and drove them to racetrack.

The fact is India loves sports more than cricket. Cricket drives people, and is the most popular sport. Cricketers are used by the brands because they are recognized. Constant TV coverage makes them well known and that makes it easy for brands to use them.

No corporate participation?

But the corporates and brands are investing in sportsperson beyond cricket, and that is a wonderful thing. Take Olympic Gold Quest, the not for profit organization that has been working with some of the most promising athletes of India, giving them support, training, nutrition and kits. PV Sindhu, the Rio Olympic Gold Medalist is a part of Olympic Gold Quest. OGQ is the power behind 5 Olympic Gold Medals, 2 Silver and 3 Bronze.

Jindals have invested big in sports with JSW Sports, this year at Rio they scored a Bronze with Sakshi Malik in wrestling.

There are more corporates including the biggest names like Tata are involved with athletes beyond cricket.

This is an interesting conundrum. The corporates have opened up their purse for athletes other than cricket. Indians, on occasions when the athletes have competed have cheered them, rooted for them, and made them a part of their lives. Yet the broader marketing communication has not seen too many non-cricket celebrities being used as face of brands.

 

Brands have not been indulgent

There has been an Abhinav Bindra that was signed on by Samsung after his Gold Medal in 2008. Saina Nehwal is the face of Savlon, Iodex and Fortune Cooking Oil, but this is where it stops. Un each of the three brands she is the super performing athlete and each ad makes a strong impact for the brand.

Why is it that the brands have shied away from using the non-cricket athletes as brand endorsers? The simplistic answer may lie in the fact that these players are still high performing athletes and are not stars that public wants to mimic. The other reason may be that these athletes are backed by organizations and brands that are not in consumer spaces. OGQ has no products to sell. Mittal Champions Trust had no battle of market share to fight, JSW Sports works towards making the corporate a better neighbour.

Its easy to rope in a film star

The mainstream brands in India are too focused on either the film stars or the cricket personalities. Even Nike, the partner of OGQ, when it did communication to celebrate the athletes of India, it used Dipika Padukone as the lead and not the 6 athletes who should have been the face of the brand. Celebrities are used by the brands to gain quick awareness, but Nike as a brand has been all about sports and the brand would have done better showcasing the women athletes and letting Dipika be a part of the mix.

BMW signs up Sachin as the face of the brand, and then gifts the BMW to medal winners at Rio. Clearly in BMWs scheme of things Sachin is a better salesperson for a marquee car and that BMW is better off gaining some fame by just gifting the cars to the winners. What if BMW had signed up either of the three or all three as the faces that drive the brand in India?

Brands take easy way out

The Nike Da Ding is just a small part of the problem. Brands believe that the easiest way to gain a million plus views on a video is by using a celebrity. In India there are only two kind of celebrities: Film Actors and Cricket Players. Sachin sells BMW, Kareena sells Jaguar. May be both have limited impact on final purchase decision.

Sports Authorities need to look beyond

This year we had a film star and a cricketer as the brand ambassador for Rio Olympic. The public hue and cry and rejection of the two choices is a clear indicator that consumers want to look beyond the conventional stars. Its time the sports authorities broke the mould. Abhinav Bindra, Gagan Narang, Saina Nehwal, Vijender Singh, Yogeshwar Dutt, Karnam Malleshwari are perfectly capable of firing public imagination.

Its time we as the country started to celebrate our heroes. Its time our brands looked beyond the usual celebrities.

The consumers are ready, its time the brands shed their resistance.

Original Published Here: http://www.financialexpress.com/industry/olympics-and-the-next-wave-of-sporty-endorsers/382497/

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AdStand: The Campaign that People Own

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Olympics at Rio is over, India won two medals, both by women, two athletes finished fourth, one of them is a woman.
The nation erupted in joy w hen an unheralded virtually unknown Gymnast, Dipa Karmakar became the first woman Gymnast ever from India to represent India in the sport and marched into final. She missed Bronze by a whisker and we all know the emotional support the nation gave her
This was topped by Sakshi Malik who won a bronze in Wrestling. PV Sindhu then made it an Olympic to remember by winning Silver in Badminton. Sakshi became the first woman wrestler to win bronze and PV Sindhu became the first Woman Shuttler to win Silver. History was made at Rio. History was made by three women.

The spark of campaign
It is difficult to pinpoint where and when the campaign started. It definitely started on Whatsapp as countless forwards that people get. The ‘forwarding economy’ was at it very quickly and in no time there were forwards about how the unwanted girl child have saved the blushes for the nation.
This quickly became a firestorm across social media with memes, status messages and tweets, all about how it time for India to pay attention to its daughters.
The messages have not stopped even now with more and more people sharing the messages

The first publicly owned campaign of India
The brilliance of this campaign is that it is not even a campaign. No one owns it, no one is creating it, and no one is propagating it. The public outpouring of the sentiment seems to suggest a overwhelming change in the attitude of the country on girl child. The absolute voluntary nature of the campaign seems to be an indicator that there may be small, but there is an aperture of change that exists in the society about the attitude towards the gild child.

No brand could have done this
I haven’t seen a brand capture popular sentiment like this campaign has done. No brand could have delivered this message, not with this compounding power, not with this intensity. This is the power of forwarding economy. People joined hands, found interesting things to share, joined the conversation and sent a message for change.
Is there a chance of change?
If the power of sharing economy is on display with this campaign, so is the weakness. There is a good chance that people actually buy into the cause, but there is a good chance that they move on to a new issue and forget about this issue. This is what happens in true mass participative events.
Yet there is a good chance that this campaign will spark off some change in a few people’s mindset. For a issue that is deeply rooted in our psyche, the desire for change is not externally manifested. It has not been pushed as sermon from the authorities; it has not been pushed as a tearjerker from a socially responsible brand.

In future we will see far more such publicly created and fuelled campaigns. Campaigns that will have far greater power to change the contours if the society.
We as a country have not won many medals at Rio, but the two that we have, can change some deep-rooted societal issues in India.
That is a far bigger victory

Original published here: http://bestmediainfo.com/2016/08/adstand-the-campaign-that-no-agency-created/

AdStand: The Cry for Freedom on Independence Day

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How did the business of advertising start? There is very little that is known about it.

True the merchants worked hard to attract potential customers to their wares. There was no branding, the merchant was the brand and the merchant didn’t operate from a fixed location. The initial business was about those who created flyers on behalf of large shops. These people were more of printers (publishers in today’s parlance) and not really creators.

Then sometimes in 60’s one visionary Copywriter teamed up with an Art Director and new foundation of today’s advertising business as we know was laid. This partnership became very successful and a soon a business manager got attached to them. Then a media person got attached to this team. Eventually a media planner and business manager got together and a function called planner was born. This system of advertising has been in vogue since and advertising agencies have run for a long time on this basis.

The business of advertising became fat, complex and unwieldy.

The holding companies in their greed to make the most of growing industry bundled many agencies to play on size. As the size became a deterrent they tried to unbundle and broke them into smaller sizes.

Agencies are at war today; they are in a war of survival. The old creative duo combination, which was the foundation of agencies, is under attack from generalists. The Digital technologist, the CRM specialist, the event marketers, the media agencies are all running after the same pie and are all wanting to be full service. Add the consulting companies to the mix and you get a scenario where the entire business is under severe pressure.

Is there a way out?

May be this Independence Day, we can look at the way out. There are independent agencies across the globe that have started to redefine the way brands engage with clients.

Freedom from Silos

There are too many silos in advertising business today. There are the traditional copy-art duo, add to this mix the technologist, the media blokes, the event marketers, the PR professionals and many more.

Agencies are not about creative; the fundamental foundation of agencies is ideation. The entire creative process needs to be re-crafted. The traditional copy art duo needs to become better integrated with new age creators like publishers, the bloggers, and the technology solution providers. Increasingly the new breed of independent agencies are breaking the walls and opening the process of creation to become idea centric.

 

Freedom from Mass Media thinking

For way too long the communication business has been about ‘creating’ TV commercials. This model worked because the brands were about driving awareness and penetration. Broadcast was the easiest way to create traction for the brand. The new media explosion has meant that brands need to add a new layer to broadcast. This layer is to ensure that the communication becomes sharper, more contextualized and more engaging. The new communication is all about relooking the engagement between consumers and brands. Despite the entire conversation about brands wanting to be on two-way communication with consumers, I don’t believe it is necessarily true. Brands still need to be intrusive, just that intrusion is nor driven by a big mass media broadcast solution alone.

 

Freedom from cheaper and faster

The single biggest disservice the holding companies did to the business was to make everything either cheaper or faster. Because they could not create the differentiation through ‘creative product’ they created the new evaluation metric of cost and time. This has been the biggest failure of advertising industry. Simply put, this has meant that clients drove a hard bargain by pitting multiple agencies of same holding company in a mad reverse bidding war where the lowest cost won. Then they went out to specialized shops to hire top talent and pay top dollar. The advertising industry in mad scramble to win business chopped the very branch it sat on.

Advertising is supposed to build brands; the advertising agencies never built their own legend.

 

Freedom from complexity

Creation and ideation are always risky. New ideas are created when old idioms are challenged, when old rules are broken. The ideation process has been made complex with too many people having a stake in it. Societies collapse when they become complex. Complexities make them inflexible. Being inflexible makes it difficult for them to respond to change. The agencies stopped taking risk to break the idioms. If the business has to flourish, the agencies have to reduce complexities, become simpler to respond to the new challenges.

The original was published here: http://static.bestmediainfo.com/2016/08/adstand-the-cry-for-freedom/

 

This Independence Day, the spirit of independence can recharge the communication business.

 

 

 

 

AdStand: When Sale is a strategy

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There is a lot happening in the consumer space. More brands are on sale then ever. Homes are on sale, cars are on sale, phones are on sale, even brands are on sale. If you are a consumer, then this is the time to go shopping.

Conventional marketing theories have been about building strong pull for the brand by building on core values. Brands should demand a price premium and consumers should seek them out. Price offs are tactical ways to expand the franchise and bring more people in. Marketing managers in past have spared no effort to study the impact of price drop on overall profitability of the brand.

All this is now history. Now sale is the dominant consumer strategy. And if the brand is not on sale, it might have a deal being offered by some deal app.

With opening of ecommerce brands and the race to acquire customers, the money they spend on sale far exceeds the money they spend on brand building. Today Amazon is on sale, Myntra is on sale, Jabong is on sale (and is up for sale).

Meanwhile a brand in US has just introduced drinkable Marijuana Tonics.

 

Myntra is on sale

 

Its not just a sale, its India’s largest fashion sale. Heck, they even have Hritik Roshan getting ready to shop on Myntra. Asking people to create a wish list is simple, that’s what people do before a sale. Myntra even created a behind the scene video of how they are getting ready for the increased demand. There is nothing unusual about the video, just a brand telling its own story.

The big take out from the campaign is simple, you need a big superstar to build traction for sale, that will last two days.

 

Amazon is on Sale

Amazon’s latest fashion campaign has a bus, has a few youngsters who are on a road trip, while on the trip they showcase fashion styles from global ramps. Interestingly, there is another brand that a year ago was doing the same. A bus, a road trip, a bunch of youngsters celebrating life, but not from Amazon, from Jabong.

They called this the Citizen of Fashion campaign, and did a sale extension of the same campaign. Even before Citizen of Fashion could be established, the brand moved on to sale. Clearly offering fashion cheaper is more important that offering fashion.

Clearly, price is a strategy and not a tactic

 

Jabong is on sale

Jabong created a completely different persona for the brand. They went younger and rebellious. This was Jabong’s way of building credential as high fashion brand. They too are on sale. The big brand sale has number of people jumping all over the screen to create high energy impact.

Jabong too has used the sale strategically. Its not a build on the brand tonality they had. They even dropped the brand signature. For the ecom brand, sale is the strategy

 

Sale is the dominant tactic

For most ecom brands, and not just the three fashion brands, sale has become the dominant strategy. Sale has been topped by cashbacks, deals and more tactics that tell consumers ‘we are cheap’. Brands today spend a huge marketing money to ‘announce’ price deals. This is not the conventional branding logic. There are two issues at play here.

One, the ecom brands are actually retailers who leverage the brands they sell. Are they harming the brands by being on sale?

Two, will the consumer go back to these ‘brands’ if they stopped the discounts?

 

Meanwhile there is a store in US has launched a brand called Legal. Here’s the video

Now this may be really differentiated brand thinking