Archive for the ‘Indian Advertising’ Tag

Despite robust growth, the market share of internet advertising in both Hong Kong and Japan is about 10 percent. Singapore’s internet advertising market share, as a portion of its total advertising market, is 6 to 7 per cent. China’s market share has grown to 9% of its total advertising spend while Korea’s is about 12%.

But even at these low percentages, the importance of the Internet is still seriously underestimated. Or is it?

Research conducted by Professor Eric Clemons at Wharton University in the USA indicates that many advertisements in traditional media are failing. “The problem,” he says, “is not the medium, the problem is the message, and the fact that it is not trusted, not wanted, and not needed.”

One newspaper after another is going out of business across the United States. The same is happening in other markets as more and more people migrate to the web.  Although newspaper ad spending was still 51% larger than Internet ad expenditure in 2010, newspaper spending is shrinking 1.4% annually.

Ad revenues of traditional print media, even of highly respected magazines, is declining. The ultimate failure of broadcast media advertising is likewise becoming clear. Meanwhile, Internet advertising is forecast to grow at an average annual rate of 14.4% between 2010 and 2013 overtaking newspapers.

A decline in Internet advertising?

The Internet in Asia is still nowhere near the potential that marketers are hoping for. Media time spent by consumers vs. Internet ad spend is still out of whack. With the economy in serious decline in many parts of the world, there has also been a drop in Internet advertising revenues.

Yet Internet advertising’s decline wasn’t caused by the general recession nor the decline in retail sales. Clemons argues that Internet advertising has the potential to lose its value and its impact due to the simple fact that advertisers continue to use traditional advertising formats, and these fail on the web. They simply cannot be carried over to the Internet, replacing full-page ads in newspapers or magazines. By traditional advertising formats I mean display ads, video ads, and any other ad whose format and value proposition approximates or imitates that of an offline advertising format.

Google is the only company that has succeeded in web advertising, having perfected search advertising whose value proposition is perfect for the web. Google’s share of the Internet ad market has risen almost 10 percent in the last five years, from 34.9 percent in 2006 to 44.1 percent in 2010, making it the undisputed Goliath in online advertising. Google also dominates global search, accounting for 85 percent of all searches.

The reason traditional ad formats fail on the web is because people have no patience for them, as they did in traditional media. People want sites to get to the point; their attention span is diminished. An ad message that is pushed at a potential customer without their approval to view it,  or when the consumer is in the midst of something else on the net, is a recipe sure to fail as a major revenue source for most Internet sites.

If, as research reveals, only the top 0.01% of websites can generate sufficient revenues from advertising, advertising is almost irrelevant for the success of the Web.

Web advertising should be valued in terms of the value of the business it creates from the new users it attracts to your site. This value is usually very small, which is why Web advertising works poorly and (while not completely useless) will be one of the smallest contributors to the future of the Web.

The problems with advertising

Clemons predicts that online advertising is going to be smaller, not larger, than it is today.  He thinks that it cannot support all the applications and all the content we want on the Internet. Online, he says, is not the answer. There are three problems with advertising in any form, whether broadcast or online:

1. People don’t trust advertising. They are distrustful of ads and messages attributed to a commercial source. A Forrester Research study also concludes that advertising and company/brand sponsored blogs are the least-trusted source of information on products and services, while recommendations from friends and online reviews from customers are the highest.
2. People don’t want to view advertising. Think about your own behaviour when you watch TV. Most of us channel surf or fast forward to bypass commercials. We even leave the TV to get a snack when the commercials come on.
3. People don’t need advertising. There is a vast amount of trusted content on the net.  Most of us now form our opinion of a product from online reviews and independent rating sites.

Marketers and their ad agencies are realising that we are not watching traditional ads as much as we used to. They attribute this to the fact that we have moved beyond newspapers, magazines, outdoor, and television, to the likes of video games, Smart Phones and the Internet.

A survey of people who had actually bought things on the Web revealed that only 12% of buying customers had arrived at the website from an advertisement.  88% of the shoppers had navigated there in other ways—via search engines and links. Proof, that if you offer content-rich pages, other sites will link to you.

Online advertising must create value for users or it will create little or no value for the marketer/advertiser’s bottom line. This would seem self-evident, but it has not been the case with traditional advertising, which was developed for captive audiences, and web users are increasingly anything but captive.

Personally, I think the future of online advertising will involve the old school method of clever product placement. The “editorial” won’t be about the product, but the product will exist within the editorial. The future of modern online advertising is integrating product placement with high quality content.

Porting traditional style ads to a medium like the Internet will not solve the three problems noted above.  The problem is not the medium, the problem is the message, and the fact that it is not trusted, not wanted, and not needed.

Mike Fromowitz

OCTANE

Benetton has, once again, thrust themselves into the spotlight with controversial ads of world leaders locking lips. As part of their “UnHate” campaign, they’re urging leaders and citizens of the world to combat “culture of hatred.’

Most advertising is devoid of risk taking. Either no one dares to try to do something new and different or they’re waiting for someone else to do something different so they can copy it. When we should be applying wings to brands to let them soar, we’re instead applying bullet-proof vests. Perhaps our industry thinks the consumer is more interested in comfort and in concepts that are predictable and palatable.

Benetton is one of those companies that has a history of creating controversial campaigns. In the past, Benetton claimed a territory that they could own—a “cause” clearly related to their brand purpose: bringing people together—the United Colors of Benetton.

In the United Colours campaign of the late 80’s and early 90’s, the photographs and the stories they told were edgy, contentious, and a bit too shocking for some. For me, many of the images had something endearing about them, something that I could understand as a consumer. There was a rebelliousness about them that I found easily acceptable.

United Colours took great acts of courage to promote. It helped break stereotypes and encourage many of the positive humanitarian sentiments we have today. When Benetton hired and gave carte blanche to Italian photographer Oliviero Toscani, they probably had no idea what genius and ground breaking work would take place. What followed were years of advertising that pushed social limits and brought to the lime light issues that many wanted to sweep under the rug. They did what was right in their eyes despite alienating some potential customers.

In 1990 Benetton produced posters of a priest kissing a nun; a bloody newborn baby; and a black stallion mounting a white mare. Other controversial ads featured a black woman breast feeding a white baby and an image of a real AIDS patient on his deathbed surrounded by a grieving family.

Since that time, Italy’s largest clothing maker, with some 6,400 franchised stores in 120 countries, went through a period of sluggish sales, closed a number of their stores and struggled to remain relevant in the market.  They were urgently in need of being reinvigorated.

A few weeks ago, Benetton launched their new campaign “UnHate” and has once again thrown everything in the face of conventional wisdom. In it, Benetton has found something they believe will have enough impact to restore their fading image amongst consumers and be a stand-out in the fashion clutter.

Have they gone overboard this time, as many critics are saying? Are they confusing their new objectives with their historical brand story?  Though the UnHate campaign has its naysayers, I see powerful statements in the advertising fueled by truth and by reality—the realities of life.

The campaign is causing controversy and is upsetting countless thousands. Shock value? For sure. But they’re being noticed once again, which proves that:

• People are hopelessly conservative.
• Benetton is miles ahead of most of us.
• Advertising in 2011 is still not a socially-acceptable outlet for wild imagination. Such imagination only inhabits the world of Fine Art.
• Fantasy remains more popular than reality.

Nevertheless, I find the outrage against the UnHate campaign as amazingly ironic. At a time when social media is making everyone more aware of the issues of the day, you would think such commitment would be welcomed. Think again.

Benetton’s ads have reached beyond traditional media with people commenting and sometimes, vehemently criticising the campaign in podcasts, discussion groups, blogs, websites, video on demand, magazine, newspaper and web articles. It’s all over Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.

The company says all the images are meant to combat hatred.  It’s Benetton’s hope that the controversial images will help create tolerance around the world.

Yet, their print campaign is creating a furor. In the campaign of digitally mocked-up portraits, we see U.S. President Obama kissing Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez; the Pope embracing Ahmed Mohamed el-Tayeb; Germany’s chancellor Angela Merkel kissing French president Nicolas Sarkozy; Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas kissing Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu; China’s leader Hu Jintao kissing Barack Obama, and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il kissing Lee Myung-bak, President of South Korea.

Much of the world seems to view the campaign as “exploitive” and “offensive”. Critics charge that it profits from the misfortunes of hatred and war.  But will it help to sell more of Benetton’s clothing? I am not certain. However, one thing I am certain of, is that the Benetton brand is suddenly an overnight  sensation. They know that great advertising disrupts, and they’ve run with it.

Early on, Benetton realized that assessing creative ideas is mostly about balancing risk: the risk of uncertainty and the risk of consequence. As a purveyor of rather inoffensive, if not overpriced clothes, Benetton has not forgotten how to get people to pay attention to their ads, and the ads have nothing to do with the stuff they sell.

The job of advertising is to get notice. For Benetton to spend all their advertising budget on typical fashion-style advertising, or explaining why their product is better than the competition, would be like throwing their money away. The route they’ve chosen quite smartly, is to make the UnHate ads look ‘Unadvertising’.

On the other hand, if you were to walk into any Benetton store, you won’t find clothing that is representational of their new UnHate campaign. Their clothing is mainstream and by no means remarkable. It’s not rebellious stuff, nothing controversial, that’s for certain.

I also like Benetton’s UnHate video on YouTube. Though it pales when compared to the controversial images used in the print/posters, the video aims to “bring people together.” The film by French director Laurent Chavez, tells of the precarious balance and complex interweaving between the drive to hate and the reasons to love.

Benetton has chosen what I believe to be a noble cause. Given the present worldwide moral crisis where hate, violence, crime, wars, conflict of ideologies, political or religious, are the rule of the day, UnHate makes us question seriously the progress of our modern world.

Benetton’s YouTube video shows people hugging and kissing. It’s about people opening their hearts. It’s about love and the acceptance of others, and the acceptance of our differences. It’s about human awakening. The video, as I noted earlier, pales in controversy when compared to the print/poster campaign, that’s for certain. For us ad folks, it serves well as an example of the real power of print.

You can view the video at:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qImJFg5dgTE

For Benetton, print has always been a powerhouse medium. For the company, awareness of the brand name is simply not enough. They want people to connect with the brand,  recognize themselves in it, and see it as aspirational.

Critics and marketers call the print campaign, which uses leaders-of-the-world-kissing, “a mismatch and a mistake” when compared to the video execution. Overall, they “hate” the campaign. They think that when the campaign has hit its peak and the wave is over, consumers will once again drop Benetton out-of-sight-out-of-mind. Time will tell.

Is UnHate a calculated risk? Will more people hate the campaign than UnHate it?

I have no problem with edgy communications. To quote Oscar Wilde: “The only thing worse than being talked about, was not being talked about”.  I have no issue if a campaign is shocking, or if it ruffles feathers and starts new conversation. Benetton is not pretending that the horrors of life do not exist. Each kiss we see reminds us of the
difficulties of war, of hatred, of the downgrade in peace and democracy, and that most of the world population still lives in misery, suffers from starvation, and absolutist regimes.

How then do the critics of the UnHate campaign mark Benetton as a company of “heretics”? Is it because Benetton dared to show the Pope, or President Obama, or Mahmoud Abbas kissing? Or are they being more visionary and hopeful than the rest of us? Benetton has smartly tapped into a strategic sweet-spot with the understanding that provocative advertising and social media can be powerful tools in connecting with consumers.

I also think Benetton has made a point to respect the consumers’ intelligence with an intelligent vision of peace for the world. Their approach has nothing to do with style or product—and everything to do with attitude and experience. They are expressing a sense of concern and the desire to connect—to be part of the world, good or bad, and to play a role in it.

UnHate puts them directly in opposition to the competition whose modus operandi is to create consumer needs that can only be satisfied when you buy their products and whose claims often have little to do with truth and authenticity. Benetton has once again, transformed themselves from a clothing manufacturer into a social force. Visionary? Bold? Brave? I think so.

The assumption that risk-taking is itself a selling tool is a disruption and departure from most marketing methods of the day. Just a few days ago, Benetton made the news again when the company was forced to pull one of its images featuring Pope Benedict XVI kissing a senior Egyptian imam on the lips after the Vatican denounced it as a “totally unacceptable” provocation.

Benetton claims the campaign of digitally-altered photos is aimed at fostering tolerance and ‘global love’. Political and religious leaders kissing is ‘symbolic of reconciliation – with a touch of ironic hope and constructive provocation. The photos are meant to stimulate reflection on how politics, faith and ideas, no matter how divergent, must still lead to dialogue and mediation.’

Pulling the controversial ad has only created more buzz for Benetton. It follows the self-evident truth that advertising that is ‘talked-about’ in the marketplace is exponentially more effective than that which is not.

Alessandro Benetton, deputy chairman of Benetton Group SpA and son of the founder of the family-controlled company, said of the campaign: ‘It means not hating. In a moment of darkness, with the financial crisis, what’s going on in North African countries, in Athens, this is an attitude we can all embrace that can have positive energy.’

The company has also set up the UnHate Foundation, which seeks to contribute to the creation of a new culture of tolerance to combat hatred, building on Benetton’s underpinning values. It is a contribution the company sees as having a real impact on the international community, especially through social media. The Foundation will organise initiatives involving different stakeholders, from the new generations to the institutions, international organisations and NGOs, through to civil society. The Foundation also aims to be a think tank, attracting personalities and talents from the fields of culture, economy, law and politics, and people who have gone from simple citizens to leaders of movements, distinguishing themselves through their ideas and actions against the causes and effects of hatred.

Benetton has put itself right down on the street with the rest of us in the real world.

Their truth is our truth. And Benetton is pushing all the psychological buttons, allowing us to reconsider our hang-ups, our patterns of prejudice and hate, our belief systems and the rules by which we live. Should we not applaud Benetton and give them kudos for stepping out on the edge and causing us to take a harder look at ourselves and our world?

If the goal of an advertising campaign is get people to notice and talk about the company, then Benetton has surely succeeded. From Benetton’s perspective, ‘UnHate’ may lead to some well needed global warming.

For me, the only question that remains is how much ‘truth’ can we stand?

Mike Fromowitz
OCTANE

As the world still reels from the shock and recognizes the lacuna left behind by the loss of Steve, it will take us a while to understand the legacy he left behind. It spans from silicon valley to your pocket and quite a few things in between. He’s had, and will continue to have for a while, a profound impact on everyday lives of millions of people around the world.

But among all his illustrious achievements, there’s one that gets talked about less than others. And at the face of it, it’s probably not the biggest thing he did. In fact it wasn’t something he did at all, it’s who he was.

In a corporate America where best-practices and proven track records were the holy grail of organizational leaders, along came a rebel who wanted to change the world. With ideas bordering on crazy and self-belief that was outright insane, he stood in a crowd of corporate leaders. Looking different. Looking aloof. At times, looking alone.

In the Silicon Valley as well, you were (and perhaps still are) considered leader material if you’re a technocrat par excellence. Or you had to be someone who possessed the organizational skills to turn a new technology into a business empire. Steve was a bit of both, but neither of them enough to describe him.

He created his own new class. A class I call a Creative CEO. He came to fore in a world where innovation was everyone’s favourite corridor conversation, and yet when it came to picking CEOs, it was a completely different story. The ranks were reserved for thoroughbred pin-striped corporate-ish clan of investment bankers, fund managers, operation specialists, supply chain experts and so on. Their strengths were different. Their success came from talking about innovation, ideas and technology; rarely from making them.

At his core, Steve was a creator. He understood technology. He understood business. But most of all, he understood Ideas. The technology for a personal computer was built by the likes of Xerox and IBM, but the idea of creating a computer that will find a way into everyday households was a Mac. The MP3 market was built by Napster and the portable music device by Sony. But a when a creative mind turns it into an idea that allows people to carry their entire music library in their pocket, you get an iPod. The simplicity of a ONE button phone, a tablet-sized screen could all become a reality because there was an idea driving technology developers mad to achieve that simplicity. And behind the ideas, a creative mind that wanted to turn complex technologies into simple human utilities.

The fact that one company chooses to target the individuals market for its products rather than go after the more attractive corporate segment was another example of counter-intuitive creativity. Steve’s logic, The corporates will come.

The class he created is something entrepreneurs, corporate leaders of today and future will benefit from for decades, perhaps centuries to come.

In his second coming as Apple CEO, when he dropped the ‘interim’ from his title after 2.5 years, he chose to retain the ‘i’. His light-hearted explanation to iCEO was to serve as a reminder of the importance of the internet. But if you really think about it, it’s probably more than that. In everything Apple created, there was an ‘idea’ above all else.

iPod, iPhone, iPad were beautifully designed recreations of products that already existed. All Steve did was to add an idea. A legacy that’s worth continuing in Apple and way-way beyond. If corporations want to go beyond doing lip-service to innovation, the most creative brains of the world need to be at their helm. May the future belong to the Creative CEO. The Chief Ideas Officer

Being a student of Economics, I often tend to draw learnings from some of the theories. And why not? After all, we are in the business of brand management which is all about creating demand amongst a set of consumers who are a part of society at large.

Chanced upon a conversation last evening about Social Costs and Social Benefits and connected the dots to the creative product we work on day and night to create brands that make a difference to people.

For the uninitiated, very briefly, Social Cost is when there is a cost to the society which is not borne by the manufacturer and therefore has a negative impact. Eg. Environment pollution, harmful products. Social Benefit is when the benefit to the society at large is far greater than the actual transaction. eg Educational services.

Enough of Economics for now- let’s jump back to what we do best- creative ideas.

Creative ideas that create a crusade or almost a movement seem to have a huge carpet bombing impact on consumers at large, going beyond the actual bull’s eye. Ideas that are inclusive, create conversation, create communities also resonate far more and outlive their designated campaign period.

That is because these ideas hit a nerve , a sensitivity that is close to the consumer’s heart.
They emanate from a strong consumer life insight that also connects the brand seamlessly.
eg Lead India, Jaago Re, Idea Cellular, Youngistaan and I am sure many more noteworthy campaigns of recent times.

The argument against this could be that such ideas cannot be the norm, but are often a fallout.
The argument could also be that clutter breaking creative needs to be whacky, different, evolved.
Life Insights mean emotions which can be a constraint.
Real life makes it boring.
Advertising is not about social good, it is about creativity.
And many more.

There is truth in these arguments as well- we are not into social crusades, we are about creating brands that resonate.

However, if we look at pop culture, from leaders to iconic music, films, books, sports, even religious leaders…. the big successes are those that have impacted society at large – either through a provoke or a challenge, or through a different point of view , or through resolving a larger conflict, or even by answering the pure aspirational needs of millions, who look up at a poster in their small rooms every morning and weave their dreams.

Somewhere, I strongly feel, we have been empowered as an industry to create that difference that few others can make.
We have the power of expression.
We give voice to brands.
We rule channels and every touch point of the consumer’s lives.
We bombard senses with messages every second.
We have little children jigging to our jingles and mouthing our slogans.

Can we inject some social benefit into our work?
Sometimes at least.
What if our briefs had a social benefit line ?
Or a life insight as a mandate?

Will it take away from creativity?
I don’t think so. Creativity is the means to an end and not and end by itself.
Will it take away from the brand?
It will infact, enhance the relevance.
Will it mean more budgets, more activation?
Yes it does. But then, we are anyways in the world of Integrated Communications and Life beyond the 30 second tvc.
Does every piece of work need this?
No. We all know the realities of brief objectives, timelines, expectations.

But if , overall, we had some work every year on big brands which truly lead the masses to rethink, recalibrate, reconsider lives and beliefs, we would have gone beyond the brief and created that social benefit that only we are empowered to do.

And, yes, have very successful award winning effective creative ideas as well.

The views expressed are the author’s independent views as an ad professional and do not reflect the organisation’s viewpoint.