Adfunda - Hyperbole..!

For my class where the ad funda's are being taught NOW......!

What is a Hyperbole?

Hyperbole as per wikipedia comes from ancient Greek "ὑπερβολή" (meaning excess or exaggeration) and is a figure of speech in which statements are exaggerated. It may be used to evoke strong feelings or to create a strong impression, but is rarely meant to be taken literally.

Hyperbole is used to create emphasis. It is a literary device often used in poetry, and is frequently encountered in casual speech. It is also a visual technique in which a deliberate exaggeration of a particular part of an image is employed. An example is the exaggeration of a person's facial feature in a political cartoon.
 

Needless to say ,in Advertising hyperbole galore. Adguys are the masters in exaggeration- some time justified but most of the times totally unjustified and out of the world.... BUT it sells...may be I sound like a moron here but it really does ! Being Hyperbolic aint a crime ,at least in Marketing and Advertising it is'nt... It helps to be different, to be seen, to be heard , to stand out in the crowd... but some times it is like farting in public, the moment you do it you are different, heard and seen but that is not what you had wanted ,,,right?

It is not that the Crime is done by Ad guys only....The movie industry also bangs on heavily on the power of hyperbole. Whenever a film or television program is released, the guys behind will use selected quotes to hype their products: "Mel Gibson gives the performance of a lifetime!" They may shout from the roof top.... It really doesn't matter if Mel Gibson gave 'the performance of a lifetime' three times last year.

Without hyperbole, advertisers, storytellers and publicists would probably be looking for other lines of work. People but generally know that Hyperbole or HYPE in a common man's parlance is part of Marketing and its communication...

Hype is a short sighted business choice.....

It makes a dangerous assumption that the fool who buys what he buys would not if he is aware of the truth - in which case the sellers should not be selling the product in the first place!

It also assumes that customers are there to be exploited , and not your partners in business.For all the great theories on customer centric marketing, it is disrespectful by meaning and implication, and bestows lower on your customers in comparison to your acumen, when defacto the truth may be the other way round.

                                                            

Tail piece:-

"Ladies and gentlemen, I've been to Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and I can say without hyperbole that this is a million times worse than all of them put together."

Adfunda... Tease and Reveal !!!

Tease and reveal campaigns are nothing fresh. Traditional marketers have been implementing this type of campaign since the dawn of time, particularly in outdoor media and often in print….

The concept is a simple one: (For those who haven’t done it or experienced it before)

The tease phase raises the attention of an audience to a particular brand, service or product. Primarily this is achieved by giving away a little, but not too much about the product or brand… The imagery is often unbranded as it makes the consumer question what it is for and what brand it represents… the consumer curiosity is taken to a level where the consumer can no longer wait… Teasers comprises of a series of intriguing and some times confusing ads that are supposed to make people wriggle in inquisitiveness….

The reveal phase presents the product to the already raised wave of interest. This will theoretically result in an unrelenting and longer lasting importance and murmur around the product or service.

Teaser campaign works better in outdoor, as the number of registrations (or visibility) is more due to many touch points across outdoor formats; hence, it creating impact in consumers minds. Outdoor uses consumers’ dead time or free time, like while they are on the move, when their mind is free, and hence the relevance. A couple of registrations on the way to office or to shopping create curiosity, if the content is attention grabbing

This is a concept that is now applied to online marketing as well with people implementing it via Facebook and Twitter. In particular the Twitter platform allows clever marketers to drip small messages in only 140 characters and make people follow you for more..

Stolichnaya vodka case and the LG case can be taken as good cases for students of Marketing communication while to my mind the best Indian case is that of the Hutch ‘HI’ campaign when Hutch launched in Chennai … For me it was mind boggling and the tension that many people I knew went through those days of teasing was just awesome.. Hutch to Vodafone and years later this remains fresh still in my mind…

Union Bank of India’s brand transformation also employed an outdoor teaser campaign. (not every old one but really gold ) The teaser consisted of a three-step process, where the first ad displayed the old logo with a bird peeling off the top right corner of a hoarding just slightly…….. The second one was the same, but the top layer was peeled off a little more, revealing a portion of the new logo; while the third step showed the complete new logo…..

Idea cellular when in launched in Mumbai during August 2008, came up with an exciting outdoor teaser campaign, which showed people from different backgrounds and cities like a Bengali woman, a Canadian man, a Delhiite, etc all with corresponding lines on the creatives, like ‘Yeh Bengal ki hai, Mumbai ki nahin’, or ‘Yeh Canada ka hai, Mumbai ka nahin’. The reveal and launch campaign showed the same people with their Idea Cellular connections, smiling and saying, ‘Mera number Mumbai ka, toh main Mumbai ki’, and so on… I remember going around the city looking for more of such teasers when I saw one or two and wanted more…

Once upon a time, the entire city of Mumbai was plastered with the ‘V’ symbol. Now, at that time, a movie called Vijaypath was to hit the theaters, which starred Ajay Devgan and Tabu. Many thought it was promotions for that; but turned out it was for the launch of Channel [V] in India!.. Brilliant it was and still quoted in the ad circles…

I am not forgetting the Balbir Pasha ads or the Digen Varma (Frooti) ads..

However the problems associated with Teaser ads are not simple..

The plan is to cause intrigue plus the relevance that the teaser has in the context of the brand is very vital.. if you get it wrong it can be fatal….. In other words it can’t just be a gimmick that can boomerang….

When it is revealed it should be finally worth it.. the disclosure should not let people down, because after all, they have put in time and energy looking, investigating these teasers and trying to guess what it is. This is a huge risk and if the audience feels like some one who got a cheap , also ran treasure at the end of a one day treasure hunt, they may start hating you !!!

Timing is important for the launch of the TEASE and the launch of the REVEAL .. if you drag too much in hope of building up the intrigue, you may end up no where as the famous case of the DNA teaser campaign that ended up in courts of law.. DNA’s for its Mumbai launch in 2005 put up hoardings in Mumbai showing faces of people with their mouths pasted over by grey tape and the tagline, ‘Speak up: It’s in your DNA’… the tease went on when a series of advertisements appeared in all the Times group publications. These showed people peeling grey tapes off their mouths, with the tagline, ‘Speak up, it’s in your DNA - Maharashtra Times’.

Dirty ? I felt its smart hijack and it happens when you drag your feet with a teaser…

Bingo masala remix - awesome !!!

Now that is an ad... I would call it tangy and tasty to the core and serves all that an ad is supposed to be... no rocket science here but this guys have made me ( I am sure everyone of the TG) get stunned for a moment, then awed by the gun men, the kidnap ,the gun fight and the police and then shocked by the sudden breaking and then laugh when the whole MASALA drama starts again with the Bachaooooo sound reverberating .... No logic here and thankfully the makers of this ad hasnt analysed the idea and killed it... Ideas like this are funny, or it's not.... As Mark Twain said, "Trying to figure out why something is funny is like dissecting a frog. You'll come up with answers, but the frog always dies."... I loved this ad for the same reason and more...

Bingo and O&M team believes in entertaining and here again they have done that .. who does not love to be entertained? And that too, thought provokingly and without being offensive to any one ... This ad respects the imagination of the viewer and the fact that their imagination may be bigger and better than the ad makers... Even when one laughs , the fact that is clear is that- the business of snacking thrives on constant insertion of excitement and thrill on the image value of the brand. . I love this ad for all this, plus still managing to stay in track ( with all the guns, thieves and bachaooo)and sell the product idea.. at the end of all the laughing if the brand and its images are not staying in the mind of the TG , what is the great fun in making ads?

Finally this ad , as many of the previous Bingo ads, breaks the limit... they know for sure that the best of humour comes from the edge,where simply there is no limits...

Kudos BINGO and O&M....

Ad Speak - Big Idea !!!

An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.- Victor Hugo

Much is being talked about the BIG IDEA.. every ad man says this… every ad lecture touts it… what is it in actual?

The big idea is one which makes the BRAND or product PROPOSITION relevant, clear, distinct and memorable. Agencies strive to merge their strategic analysis, their MEDIA choices and gut feelings into an elusive big idea, combining the place a product occupies in a Consumer’s mind, the appearance of the advertisement and the SLOGAN that encapsulates it............ the crux is that the big idea should be big and stand much above the rest in cluttered markets.. The Vodafone Zoo Zoo is an example in the last year of Indian Advertising ..it was relevant, clear, simple, distinct , memorable and hence BIG…. They didn’t take it to where they should have but that is an entirely different thing ….

One classical example from UK is from a 1980s ad for the Volkswagen Golf. They could have relied on the usual checklist of performance criteria, quoting magazines or touting boring fuel economy statistics. Instead, it featured an charming Paula Hamilton storm out of a house after a lovers’ quarrel, throwing away her fur coat and pearls and then, after a masterfully measured pause, holding on to her keys to sweep off in her beloved Golf. The message was that all other pleasures are transient, momentary, superfluous and dispensable, but a VW is a lasting pleasure; if only every-thing in life was as reliable.

An American example of the big idea is Snapple, a non-carbonated soft drink that began life as a niche brand. Its strategy was expressed as “100% natural marketing” which originated from the company appreciating that consumers loved their product. Consumers were encouraged to write in, send photos of them, and tell the company how much they loved Snapple. The agency, Kirshenbaum Bond in New York, answered these letters via TV, magazine and outdoor advertising. One campaign became known as the “love letters” campaign and drew acres of free PR in the national media. It launched Snapple into competition with leading brands such as Coca-Cola. The ads always featured real employees and consumers…..

Now the BIG IDEA need not be an out of the world IDEA… it could be simple and existing.. it could be the daily seen dogs and boys.. it is how the ad man gets to connect them to the brand and its problems in the market place…

There are many examples where such big ideas have been discarded by brand managers and advertising agencies some times without realising that in many ways they are actually tearing out the heart of the advertising communication and some times for availability of better choices and some times due to extraneous factors like fashion and generation changes,,,Some Big ideas start great and get funny later making the viewer feel like why don’t they stop it..? Surf “Daag Ache Hai” and its recent ads are an example…,,

Some Big Idea’s made strong come back after testing other waters, like the Mint with a hole and the Onida Devil.. but gone forever are the Liril Girl, Wah Ustad! Wah Taj !, and the definitely male ……The list is long but I am sure the enlightened reader is aware.. The fact is that our agencies are brilliant in that they come up with wonderful ideas that are big, but they don’t sustain them… the sad fact is that agencies and brand owners fall into boredom with their Big Ideas even before the Target audience does…

Any rejoinders?

Dead End :-
It takes a big idea to attract the attention of consumers and get them to buy your product. Unless your advertising contains a big idea, it will pass like a ship in the night. I doubt if more than one campaign in a hundred contains a big idea.
-DavidOgilvy

Adfunda --- Adcept!

Adcept is the halfway house in the CREATIVE process of producing an advertisement. As the name suggests, it is half advertisement, half CONCEPT BOARD. (it is another fact that most of the so called finished ads are the same as well) … An adcept is to show the possible, but stripped down and miniature version of the proposed ad theme. This stage could be used for audience research to test its likeability and hence the “saleability” . It could also be used to get the Client to be in the loop and reassure him of the idea.

However a high acceptance of the Adcept does not mean that the finished ad also would be successful (as it depends on various other factors) but an Adcept is a good way of checking that the agency thinking is going in the right direction and there is no dramatic changes in mind in the clients side and agency side after having agreed the strategy and idea in the first place.

In short, Adcepts can bring territories to life, better than verbal concepts can.

Ad Funda --- Hyperbole ?

This section is new in Adformula and is here from a class room question I faced.

What is a Hyperbole?

I will explain it but before that let me say that this will be a permament feature in Adformula hereafter....

The AdFunda series.....

Hyperbole as per wikipedia comes from ancient Greek "ὑπερβολή" (meaning excess or exaggeration) and is a figure of speech in which statements are exaggerated. It may be used to evoke strong feelings or to create a strong impression, but is rarely meant to be taken literally.

Hyperbole is used to create emphasis. It is a literary device often used in poetry, and is frequently encountered in casual speech. It is also a visual technique in which a deliberate exaggeration of a particular part of an image is employed. An example is the exaggeration of a person's facial feature in a political cartoon.













Needless to say ,in Advertising hyperbole galore. Adguys are the masters in exaggeration- some time justified but most of the times totally unjustified and out of the world.... BUT it sells...may be I sound like a moron here but it really does ! Being Hyperbolic aint a crime ,at least in Marketing and Advertising it is'nt... It helps to be different, to be seen, to be heard , to stand out in the crowd... but some times it is like farting in public, the moment you do it you are different, heard and seen but that is not what you had wanted ,,,right?

It is not that the Crime is done by Ad guys only....The movie industry also bangs on heavily on the power of hyperbole. Whenever a film or television program is released, the guys behind will use selected quotes to hype their products: "Mel Gibson gives the performance of a lifetime!" They may shout from the roof top.... It really doesn't matter if Mel Gibson gave 'the performance of a lifetime' three times last year.

Without hyperbole, advertisers, storytellers and publicists would probably be looking for other lines of work. People but generally know that Hyperbole or HYPE in a common man's parlance is part of Marketing and its communication...

Hype is a short sighted business choice.

It makes a dangerous assumption that the fool who buys what he buys would not if he is aware of the truth - in which case the sellers should not be selling the product in the first place!

It also assumes that customers are there to be exploited , and not your partners in business.For all the great theories on customer centric marketing, it is disrespectful by meaning and implication, and bestows lower on your customers in comparison to your acumen, when defacto the truth may be the other way round.














It is fun in some products and categories (condoms for instance) but when for more complex products where the buyer is in higher involvement and there is a significant competition between brands for the consumer mind space, HYPE may be counterproductive and lead to a calamity...

Enough of funda, now with a simple example let me wind up... here we go ...



If you are done with it, read my previous posts about the same topic here.....

Tail piece:-
"Ladies and gentlemen, I've been to Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and I can say without hyperbole that this is a million times worse than all of them put together."