Where is advertising going today? Are we in an era where advertising can be termed as being haphazard? What happened to the structure that would result in very impactful adverts? Where is the problem and at what point are the wheels coming off?
By PAMELA GWANZURA
Back in the day, advertising agencies were militant about brands and there was a very clear modus operandi in terms of how things were done. Take me back to the days where agencies owned brands and were vicious about the 360-degree elements of communication around the brands they handled. The agency function was tantamount to being an extension of the client’s marketing team. The agency’s job was to make the marketing team shine through brilliant ideas and amazing executions that would give the brands life.
An encounter with an advertising agency would leave the client more educated on the key elements of brand communication while at the same time the competent marketing teams would leave the agency equipped and spoilt for choice with indepth information about the brands which would in turn make their jobs easier and give them more precision in their execution.
We are in an era where the marketers themselves, in a lot of instances, are not completely clear on what their brands stand for and they are not sold out on what it is that differentiates them from competitor brands.
This in itself is a root cause of some of the problematic adverts we see being flighted both in electronic media, print media and various other media channels. If the marketing manager is not clear on key elements of the brand, what can we expect when it comes to how that marketer will brief the advertising agency on a desired campaign.
It is the quality and depth of briefing that determines the quality and excellence of execution on any advertising campaign. Great briefing will result in a great campaign that will highlight essential products or service benefits. Poor briefing will reflect in the final adverts which will usually be scanty in the information, controversial in the messaging and often they achieve the opposite of the desired effect. One would look at the advert and ask the questions, what is the key message in this advert, who is this advert targeting and, is this the most appropriate channel to reach the targeted market?
Too often nowadays, corporates are leaving the advertising agency with the task of figuring out what their brand is all about, who the targeted market is and therefore the type of messaging that should be developed around it. What most corporates don’t realise is that the advertising campaigns are a reflection of both the marketing team and the advertising agency. Competences or lack thereof on both sides will be judged based on the campaigns that are rolled out.
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More and more campaigns are killing brands instead of building them and generating interest that results in profits.
For example, the recent H&M campaign that was trending on social media which featured two white boys and one black boy. The black boy had an inscription on his sweater that read: “coolest monkey in the jungle” while the two white boys had the inscriptions: “Mangrove jungle, survival expert” while the other had images of turtles and giraffes respectively. What was the thought process behind it, from a client’s perspective and from the advertising agency’s perspective? What was the desired outcome of the campaign? What was the idea behind the messaging and who was it targeted at? Did it achieve the desired outcome?
It received very wide negative publicity from the black community, especially with many criticising the racial slur in the advert. Many also accused H&M of being backward, citing the fact that racism is very backward and not in sync with the 21st century trends. The question is, was the negative reaction from the black community big enough to negatively impact the H&M sales? Will H&M recover from the negative publicity it has received? Another school of thought says that H&M may have deliberately flighted the campaign as it was with the intention of getting the high level of publicity that they did get.
As the old adage says, “bad publicity is still publicity”. Those that did not know about H&M now know about them. Some past trends in purported racist advertising, for example Nivea and Dove adverts, have shown that although people may react very negatively towards the purported racist adverts, they somehow still continue to buy the products. So it could be that H&M were deliberate about the campaign and that they do not fear any boycott of their products. So it will be interesting to track the briefing process between H&M and their advertising agency, as the brief from H&M would have been signed off and the final execution in terms of the advertising campaign would also have been signed off by the client.
In a nutshell, there is still a great need for advertising briefing to be more detailed. There is a growing need for both corporates and advertising agencies to be structured in terms of the briefing process. There should be understanding on both sides in terms of the targeted market, the desired outcome and the preferred channels. That way, expectations can be managed and deliverables can be measured. In our next article, we look at the key elements and essentials of an advertising brief.
Pamela Gwanzura is a communication specialist and a seasoned marketer. She is currently running her own consultancy called Tangible Communications. She can be reached on [email protected]
*This article was contributed on behalf of the Marketers Association of Zimbabwe, a leading body of marketing professionals promoting professionalism to the highest standards for the benefit of the industry and the economy at large. For any further information, kindly contact [email protected] or visit the website on www.maz.co.zw
