The Hindu Business Line : The invisible audience

THE Abbies, the Bombay Ad Club's awards event for the best of Indian advertising, was held recently. On display were some outstanding campaigns that were a glowing testament to originality and creativity in advertising: the Tortoise campaign, the Deccan Air TV commercial, the Sri Lankan Blind man TVC as well as plenty from O&M, whose `patented' genre of desi humour was at its best.

A keen follower of the event would have been struck by an observation: Not one of the awarded ads was for products or brands that targeted women as its main target audience. Be they personal care, beauty, household care, jewellery, clothing, shoes, food.

There were ads for chewing gums, mobile phones, mobile services, paints and adhesives, all of which target men or youth primarily. If women are considered part of this audience, they are assumed to share the same mindset as men or youth vis-à-vis the advertising.

The same phenomenon is visible in the international awards scene as well. The most awarded categories are cars, beer, mobile phones, sports channels, gaming devices and so on. And the most awarded brands — the global greats are brands such as Nike, Volkswagen and Smirnoff — are once again brands that target men. Even though Nike makes ads that target women, those never make it to the award's entries.

Why is it that while marketers consider women a critical target market, the advertising industry does not consider them a worthwhile audience? The evidence being that the advertising industry makes hundreds of ads in a year targeting women, on behalf of their clients, but in the work that the industry is proud to present as its best, there are no ads that target women.

<167,0.2m,1>Several explanations come to mind; perhaps the truth lies in a combination of all these factors and not just one reason.

Most personal care, household care and foods advertising around the world is created by the big global companies. These marketing giants have their own, tested approaches to `successful' advertising, and pretty much dictate the terms of advertising discourse on their brands. As their approaches are mostly led by considerations of sales effectiveness and brand building, they are inherently skewed against creativity. Further, the local competitors in their industry also tend to follow the leader and only `buy' similar work from their agencies.

While it is always tempting to blame the client, could there be other advertising industry-led reasons as well?

It seems that the unwritten, unspoken measure of great advertising is humour. The best ads for any product or category leave the viewer with a smile or a chuckle. Secondly, the product or brand name is brought in at the end, unless the ad itself is a vivid demonstration.

When one looks at ads that target women and seek to engage with them, connect emotionally with them, most don't use humour. And most mention something more about the product than just the brand name. This then begs the question whether women can ever become a serious target audience for `great' advertising, unless they start responding like men - conforming to the `unwritten, yet accepted' codes of great advertising.

And, this also leads to a bit of soul searching: are women a `serious' audience? Or do they take brands and products more seriously than men? Or that they find different things funny than men do and creative leaders, who are mostly men, haven't figured out how to do this well enough?

There is a great deal of subjectivity in judging what is great, a subjectivity that comes from the emotional response of the judges, what turns them on. Most awards juries are dominated by men who are more likely to be turned on by creativity about cars, beer, gaming and cell phones than about dish wash liquids, make-up and diamond jewellery.

Even if there are women in the juries, they are more likely to judge by the standards of men than follow their own heart. This is a result of an invidious process that happens to all minority groups when acting within a majority. Thinking of male-female biases may seem far-fetched, but an analogy will show that it is not as far-fetched as it seems.

When the best Indian advertising is viewed in an international context, as for example, at Cannes, it doesn't win. Is it because our advertising is inferior? Some people might think so. And yet, we must acknowledge the unconscious cultural bias at play among the panel of judges.

There is an unconscious cultural bias implicit in what an individual finds exciting, involving and rewarding. It is much harder to award something that one needs to work harder to appreciate. And that can work against the best of Indian advertising that is built on and celebrates Indianness. Otherwise, our great ads need to conform to the unstated standards of greatness that international judges would find easier to appreciate and connect with, in order to win. Having an Indian or two in the panel of judges will not correct the bias. Because the Indian, in an international context, will feel the pressure to conform to the international view and this will reflect in his scoring.

So, returning to the original question: is there hope that advertising that targets women will find its place in the industry's roster of great advertising? What would it take for women to cease to be an invisible audience? Will things change in the future? Or will they stay the same?

(The author is Vice-President and Strategic Planning Director, JWT.)

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page

Stories in this Section
Beating back price warriors

Budget express in the air

Happy Birthday!

The invisible audience

`Pure sweetness'

This one's for the consumers!

Thinking big is important