The Hindu Business Line : New sense, not nuisance

THERE'S just an over to go and the Indian cricket team has to score 20 runs to beat Pakistan. You are glued to your television set, hoping that the Indians can turn the match around in their favour, when you are suddenly interrupted by a cola commercial which offers you a chance to win a holiday to Europe. For a second, you are tempted to break the TV as a holiday abroad is the last thing you want to think about at that moment.

Indian consumers could well be looking at advertising as an intrusion and are increasingly moving away from them, admits Raja Ganpathy, Vice-President, RMG David. "The Indian advertising industry has a big challenge at hand, and that is to make advertising interesting enough to draw the consumer's attention."

The actual challenge is to make advertising realistic and believable, says U. Jayraj Rau, Client Services Director and Vice-President, JWT. "Today, the gap between brands is virtually negligible — one apparel brand is as good as the other or, for that matter, a mobile phone brand has all the features its competitor has. Therefore, when a brand screams about a particular feature, the consumer tends to become cynical and prefers to switch from it."

Pranesh Misra, President and COO, Lowe India, says that consumers would be interested in watching ads if they receive information or knowledge that is relevant and if the style and manner is enjoyable. "You will notice a trend towards a more genial tone of voice in ads, use of humour and a soft-sell approach."

"If you are a microwave brand, it would be worthwhile to talk about recipes, while for a soap brand, talking about hygiene would make more sense," says Rau.

He says brands need to soften and market themselves silently. "A small logo on the television screen during a cricket match for instance, would be more appreciated rather than a blasting commercial. The brands which scream sound desperate."

Making it relevant

Ad gurus are also looking at making it more relevant by being able to convey their brand message without being loud. "It is all about making your message relevant without sticking out as a sore thumb," says R. Krishna Mohan, President (General Management), Ogilvy & Mather, Chennai.

He says agencies do need to reach their target audience at various `moments of truth,' when the brand is relevant to them, but at the same time they should ensure that they don't encroach upon their `moments of peace.' "If the advertiser tries to reach his target audience at a time when he doesn't want to be disturbed, it can create more damage for the brand."

The biggest challenge today for the advertising fraternity, says Ganapathy of RMG-David, is to get people's time. "The messages should stand out and should be designed to surprise the target audience without being obtrusive."

And, to do this, advertisers have to look beyond the conventional media. "We have to understand our consumers' environment," says Ganapathy.

When does advertising become intrusive?

Harish Bijoor, CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults, says, that when media such as press, television and radio are overused by advertisers, clutter is bound to set in. "Traditional media are meant to be pure content media. They cannot sustain themselves on the pure revenue of subscription and stand sales or network fees. The revenue model of a content medium builds in advertising to a large extent. In the beginning, the skew could be 90:10 in favour of content versus advertising. In extreme cases, as we see today, this ratio tilts to 50:50 as well. At this stage, advertisers need to wake up. Consumers are irritated and advertisers need to create covert pieces of advertising that may not look like advertising at all."

Branded content

Advertising today is all about branded content. Mohan of O&M refers to an exercise the agency is doing for TI Cycles in Bangalore through its PR division. "Our goal was to rekindle interest in cycling, which we did by features in newspapers about the joy of cycling without referring to the TI brand."

"Brands have to intelligently place themselves so that each of them adds value to the brand," says S. Prabhakar of Brand Box Office, a Chennai-based agency which specialises in branding content.

In-film advertising is one such popular medium. Prabhakar says it would actually make sense to understand the characters in the film and weave brands around them rather than just put the brands into the film.

Though Prabhakar feels that branding content is still at a nascent stage, marketing gurus feel that the future will see more of it, with advertisers trying to brand television programme content also.

"Brands will use complete story plots and lines within television serials and soaps; the use of PR will grow as well - to the extent that media owners may rightly want to be paid to carry PR in their publication and channels. Marketers will therefore channelise their advertising spends into PR in a reasonable manner. In addition, non-conventional media of permission advertising, permission marketing and permission selling will emerge," says Bijoor.

"You will have a free shoe-shine service at a supermarket if you browse through the catalogue of the product as your shoes are shined. The marketer will pay the consumer to watch his ads. SMS will emerge as another medium — intrusive, but permission-oriented again," adds Bijoor.

But does this mean that conventional advertising would die a slow death? Would television channels and the newspapers which survive on advertising revenue have to review their strategies? Tarun Katial, Executive Vice-President and Business Head, Sony Entertainment Television, says, "Advertisements have been part of the television industry for years now and I do not see that changing. However, advertisers are looking at breaking through the clutter. We at Sony will not do anything that will not seamlessly fit into the content of the channel."

Vijay Subramaniam, General Manager, Henkel Spic India, says that while brands have to ensure that they don't cross the thin line between `in-your-face advertising' and intrusive advertising, "there can be no substitute to the plain vanilla television commercials, and would continue to be an effective media to reach masses."

"I don't believe this will impact the traditional media too much in terms of revenue," says Bijoor. "Only the look and feel of publications and television channels and radio stations will change. Marketers and their advertisers will get creative and create vehicles that resemble vox pop advertising. Many readers and viewers will stop recognising the difference between a paid-for feature and a pure content page even in print, and many viewers on television will not understand the difference between the paid-for ad and the real solid content they love so much."

Prabhakar of Brand Box also feels that commercials will not vanish just because they are irritating. "The future will see a 30-second commercial getting compressed into a 10-second one." Do we hear viewers thanking God for small mercies?

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