The Hindu Business Line : The difference between zapping and zipping

IF you think you know advertising, answer the following questions: What's BOGOF? Name the French law, passed in 1991, imposing restrictions on alcohol advertising and a total ban on tobacco advertising (clue: the law was named after a French health minister). How is zapping different from zipping? Has RAJAR got something to do with our maharajahs? "Advertising isn't a science, it's persuasion. And persuasion is an art" — whose quote?

Well, it's easy to ask questions when I have in my hands Pocket Advertising by Caroline Marshall, from The Economist Books and distributed in India by Viva (viva@vivagroupindia.net). Though highly visible, advertising, as a sector, is criticised for two things, notes the author in the intro: "for its lack of real accountability and for the hype and jargon that are often used to strike awe into the clients who pay for advertising services." One of the major problems that advertising faces, therefore, is the need to justify its existence.

Are you aware that a new breed of agencies is challenging the traditional giants in the business? These are "small, flashy and often a touch anarchic in their positioning," and they work on the premise that clients "want to get straight to the creative ideas and do not have the time or patience to deal with the surrounding paraphernalia."

The `A-Z' section of the book has dictionary-type entries. Resuming my quizzing, therefore, see if you can come up with a name for half advertisement, half concept board. Answer: Adcept. "It is a good way of checking that the agency is thinking along the right lines." Adpeople have their own adspeak; so, what accountants call estimates, become `ballpark figures' here. "A complete rewrite is, in adspeak, a minor tweak." Moving on to `b', know `bastard' to be "an awkward print advertisement or publication size." And a `burst strategy' is "an intense phase of advertising within a concentrated time period." Opposite is `drip strategy.' And `pulse strategy' comes somewhere in between.

An insightful anon poem is given under `client': "When the client moans and sighs/Make his logo twice the size. If he still should prove refractory, Show a picture of his factory. Only in the gravest cases/Should you show the clients' faces."

Let me skip the `folder test' and move to `gardening leave,' the time during which executives who have left or been sacked but still being paid are prohibited from working in another agency. When an agency stipulates conditions such as minimum length of service at the time of employment, what you have are `golden handcuffs,' though to make it golden there has to be "a generous amount of money offered." You may feel bad to be called a grazer, but "grazing is a kind of TV viewing where people switch through channels in an attempt to find something of interest," when we are talking of HUT, that is, `homes using television.'

Have you come across `luvvies'? A UK term, explains the book, "to refer to pretentious actors" and also "advertising creatives who believe their work is art." For them, creativity is important, not whether the ads work. "Marketing is everything, and everything is marketing," is a Regis McKenna quote in `m.'

Returning to the questions at the start, BOGOF is short for `Buy One Get One Free.' Loi Evin was the French law that caused a loss of about Fr 225 million in tobacco and ad revenue, "in the middle of a recession." Zapping is to use the TV remote to surf channels during commercial break, while zipping is to fast-forward a commercial break when playing back a programme recorded on video. RAJAR is short for Radio Joint Audience Research, "a research system based on a sample of people providing information in the form of a radio listening diary." And the quote is of Bill Bernbach, who founded the agency `Doyle Dane Bernbach' in 1949.

Here is the tagline ("words at the end of an advertisement designed to summarise what is being advertised memorably"). Add this to your pocket.

BookValue@thehindu.co.in

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