30 August 2004	Monday	13 Rajab 1425

By now advertising has become a very expensive game, mostly being played by firms in competition against each other. The reasons for tremendous rise in its expensiveness are the rates of TV commercials, newspaper ads , as well the OOH rates, all of which have gone up very high.

All this is in spite of the fact that there has been immense proliferation of ads in media- both print and electronic. Satellite has come in a big way to dominate the scene soon after the dish.

Internet has provided an alternative and rather much cheaper way. However, it will take a long time for the Internet to challenge the conventional media in a very significant manner.

Under the circumstances, business firms need to have a fresh look at advertising and its effectiveness as an alternative in promotion strategy. The ratio of advertising to sales promotion which hitherto was 7:3 has reversed in favour of sales promotion.

Consumerism has made modern buyer smart and he wants 'more on the table' rather than look at fancy ads which often make dubious promises. This gives an edge to sales promotion over advertising.

Fifty per cent of advertising is wasted any way and we were to know which 50 per cent, it would be no more there and we would bring down wastefulness. We have to make advertising more meaningful and cost effective.

Increased competition, fast changing technologies and extreme pressure on prices demand that advertising be asked to play a more cost-effective role in the promotion mix. This can be done in various ways:

*Reduce the level of advertising, do more publicity; Reduce the size and duration of ads for the print and electronic media respectively; Go for more 'bang' which means more punch in terms of creativity, audience research, and understanding of consumer psychology.

Creativity vs. effectiveness: The debate about creativity and effectiveness is an old one. Many creative people in advertising emphasize too much on creativity and do not worry about the way advertising works.

Creativity is often merely a front for self-indulgent artistic attempts. Some creative advertising is effective and some effective advertising is creative and some of it neither.

Take for instance a cigarette ad which was evaluated as very 'creative' and became so popular that the PTV bought it from the company and has since then been showing it on special occasions. But the ad failed to generate sales, and rather the sales went down by 25 per cent.

So what is the lesson? Keep trying to change the attitude of the audience while selling your product and avoid, at all costs, 'humbug'. And what is humbug by the way? -all the silly attempts to impress the customer.

Camera shots commercials: In an effort to make it look like an action movie with fast changing scenes and cuts to create an excitement, advertiser ignores the audience.

Most of the fast moving commercials of cold drinks and other products for youths suffer from this defect. Advertisers should try to keep the number of shots low to improve persuasion and recall.

Frequency: Ad planners often do not have a clue as to what effective frequency means or what is the effective frequency for their product. They go on advertising way past the saturation point.

And sometime they stop way short of it. There are two schools of thought on this. One is the minimalists who say that one frequency is enough. If the ad has to make an impact and if the product has value then one exposure should be enough.

The other school of thought is that of the repetitionists who say repetition is necessary. Effective frequency depends on three factors. These three factors are brand familiarity, message content, and message novelty.

Brand familiarity is the extent to which audience of an ad is familiar with a brand. This familiarity is indicated by consumer's knowledge of, experience with or loyalty to the brand.

Consumers attend to ads selectively. Also to maintain consistency with their actions and beliefs they may interpret ads of familiar brands more favourable. But if ads of familiar brands are repeated beyond the point of saturation tedium and boredom sets in.

The second factor is message complexity. Repetition enhances persuasive effect of complex messages. Each repetition enables receiver to understand message better and gain new insight into the message.

A complex argument, or one with several sides to it, is better understood with repetition. The third factor of message novelty is crucial to the success of ad campaigns. In the beginning most ads/products may appear to be novel but novelty may fade quickly.

Use of rhetoric: Another important element in stretching advertiser's rupee-- are the rhetorical devices in an ad. These devices are the artful deviations that put a twist on the familiar and are frequently found in advertisements.

Ad men will be well advised to think of rhetorical devices wherever possible. In Pakistan we do not see much use of such devices. This is almost the same as we see in the area of creativity. It will be much more productive to advertise intelligently rather than just heavily.

Humour: Humour is one area in which we in Pakistan are pathetic. If you talk to various ad men you will get different explanations. Most favourite one being 'Pakistanis cannot appreciate humour and therefore it is counter productive to use it.'

However some experts say, advertising should never seek to amuse. Even Ogilvy said, copywriters should avoid the temptation to entertain. In spite of the above, research on humour in advertising has increased in recent years (Weinberger and Gulas, 1992). A survey with 150 US agencies found that TV and radio were best suited to humour with print vehicles receiving much less support.

Fast food outlets do not seem to understand this for our local market and are not using humour on radio or TV and even in magazine ads. They can stretch their advertising rupee by doing this.

Duration or size of ads: A lot of good money of the advertiser is wasted in ads that are too long. So the question arises how long should an ad be? John L. Stanton and Jeffrey Burke study effectiveness of executional alternatives in 15 versus 30 second commercials using two measures of effectiveness: persuasion and recall using 24 executional elements.

They found that average persuasion of the 15-second spots was 4.39 versus 5.67 for the 30-second spots. So there was a 77 per cent reduction in persuasion using the 15-second spot.

But if the cost of 15-second spot was less than 77 per cent it would have potentially more impact to run a 15-second spot for the same fixed advertising budget. Same is true for recall with the same ratio of 77 per cent.

The most striking result of this study was the wide variation in how effective some elements were and how they varied across commercial lengths. It was found that for a 15-second commercial most effective element was the New/Improved Features.

But in the absence of that if the product is neither new nor improved, putting the product on screen as long as possible and telling the audience why it is better than competition is effective.

With the increase of ad rates exponentially in Pakistan, it has become extremely important to realize optimum length of TV commercials especially in the light of what is to be said in the ads. Additionally, aspect of boredom is also to be considered while deciding about lengths of ads.

Celebrity spokesperson: A lot of good money is thrown away by advertisers on celebrities without knowing fully well whether they are getting their money's worth. In one study respondents evaluated celebrities differently on three counts as far as intention to purchase was concerned.

Attractiveness and trustworthiness of celebrity had no significant effect on the intention to purchase. Only the perceived expertise of the celebrity had a significant impact on respondents' intention to purchase. Results were consistent whether the product was being purchased for personal use or for gift giving.

An encouraging finding is that both male and female respondents across different age categories have similar perceptions of what comprises expertise, trustworthiness and attractiveness.

Thus regardless of subject gender and age, these constructs can be measured with equal precision. As most celebrities in ads are attractive, therefore attractiveness does not remain a determining factor in decision to purchase.

Secondly as celebrity use is very common in commercials there is a perception that celebrities would say anything as long as they are paid to say it. Lesson to be learnt here is that tough we may decide to drop the ad on the basis of wear-out we should be clear whether it is wear-out in the long run or the short run that we are talking about. And we should modify our decisions accordingly.

Conclusion: By doing more clever advertising rather than a lot of advertising, firms can be more cost effective. Concepts discussed here can save valuable resources for firms who are into advertising and bring down what is often referred to as wasteful advertising.

Valuable resources can thus either be passed on to the consumer or retained by companies to invest in research and development, or alternatively, and perhaps better still, used for societal benefit in fulfilling corporate social responsibility.