RamKKasturi's Some Advertsing Follies,Ignorance or Arrogance

Firms spend milions on advertsing. Advertsing we know is a powerful tool of communication. Put in simple langauge it is an attempt to make generally or publicly known about something. Advertsing may be done to make the public aware of an organization's name and its activities, an event, a service / or product a firm is offering to the public, or reminding the public about. Advertsing may also be done to educate public on some critical areas like public health, conservation of resources, seeking donations - the social advertising as it is commonly known.

There is what is known as medium, a vehicle chosen to carry the message to the public. Thus it is through the medium that the target consumer hears about the advertised matter. The choice of media depends on many criteria, the main consideration being whether it heard/or read by the persons who you think should hear about the matter. The chosen media often contain a mix and not one since the consumer may  read or hear or see any one of them or a combination of them. The reach and the frequency are some important criteria, reach is the number of persons that the medium reaches and frequency is the number of times they are exposed to the matter.

Since millions are spent on advertising it is very important that high consideration should be given to the choice of media, the message and the effectiveness of the message to make sure that all the resources spent on it are not wasted. A failure of advertsing may be due to many reasons like the choice of the wrong media, failure to reach the appropriate target (the group for whom it is intended) the failure to convey the message and conveying a wrong message. Of all the last, conveying the wrong message can be quite damaging and may need lot more resources spent on recovery from the damage. An ad failure has many indirect effects like the loss of time which can be an advantage to the competitor, the loss of executive time, the lack of support to the sales persons and a demoralising affect on the sales persons.

Therefore, as a part of the process in advertsing the product/brand managers handling the specfic product or a communication manager (which varies depending on the type of ad) should make sure that the right media are chosen by the agency and the right message is conveyed to the public. This would require, as is commonly done, first to isolate the most important components of the message, prepare various combinations of the message and visuals (the photos) short list some and test them on the public in a limited way. It is important that it is tested on the same type of consumers who are expected to buy the product. If for example you expect that the youth will buy the it is best to test on them, if you expect a married middle aged lady would be the person to buy it needs to be tested on them. Testing on the wrong group may make it look like that the message is understood but when the ad actually goes public it may not be understood at all. Such ads fail to generate any enthusiasm about the product in the minds of the consumer.

Many multinationals are aware of the problems of failure of an ad and often use very elaborate process of testing at various stages to avoid failures. But quite often even big companies take things for granted and ignore the testing part as they are in hurry to let the product go into the market. Sometimes these attempts backfire, more so in international advertising. In international advertsing many factors like, cultural differences and the differences in meaning of words , symbols, personalities and contexts and cultural differences in consumer habits can convey a totally different, irrelevant or even offensive message.

In international advertsing it is also critical to be aware what is permissible by law and some revealing ads may be totally banned.In Muslim countries many ads permitted in other countries including the attires of the visuals are scrutinized. Therefore, if multinational commits mistakes in other countries one can't help but consider it an act of ignorance or arrogance. Often ads made by parent companies are borrowed by their divisions or subsidiaries or sister companies and used to save money and time. Such ads may not fit into the culture of the foreign market. Sometimes the ads are translated(dubbed) from the original language into the language of the market in which the consumer is located and lose their meaning or convey a totally different meaning.This is often the case because of the regional media that are more popular than the national networks.

I am giving here some examples of copy lines, symbols and visuals in the ads of very large organizations.

1. A well known Airline flying to Japan wanted to claim that they are better than others to fly to Japan, because ,they knew the route (the country) better than others , they published a map of Japan but left out one of it's islands in the map.

2. A reputed magazine used spanish ads in Brazil.

3.A reputed company used "deer" as sign of masculinity in a country where it conveyed a different meaning.

4.Owl is not an auspicious symbol in India but some ads have used it.

5. Soiled cloaths were shown to get cleaner after passing through a tub of detergent in a detergent ad, the dirty cloaths were in the left , the detergent in the middle and the clean cloaths came out in the right in the visual. The same ad was used in countries where people read from right to left , instead of our usual left to right reading habits,thus showing cleaner cloaths getting dirty after going through the detegent !!

6. An Airline claiming that they know the orient matched wrong coins/flags with the country maps..

The above are just few examples of ad flops. Numerous such ads are there which can be an insult to the public in general and cultures.Just as Products need to be tested based on consumer habits in the target market, the ads also need to be thoroughly tested before release to prevent damage to the brand, damage to corporate image and the hallow effect , prevent relaunch cost , demoralising the sales persons and strengthening the competition.