'Coke' Side of Life

These colourful bottles are tellling stories about Coca- Cola brand. A brand which lives! and stays No.1 couldn't lag behind others. Will the new packaging tricks work?







Haven't we ever thought of 'Coke' being just another cola drink? if there are plenty of substitutes in the market, can this cola brand become inconspicuous, being one among the crowd?.. These were the questions which the marketing team of Coca Cola had been pondering over the years. The poster on the left was one made by me, using the coca-cola aids at cocacola.com site. The interactive website carries a lot of tools and games along with information about how the coca cola brand came into life.

But wasn't it losing its personality lately, when lot of blunt ads were shown in televison, with pretty young things flaunting Coke in their hands. But the team realised that somehow the essence had disappeared from the brand.

This is an art of 'Peter Blake' identifying pop icons with Coca Cola. The "Happiness Factory" advertisement of Coke, represented 'Coke' side of life as positive and optimistic. The agency Wieden + Kennedy, Amsterdam have done their due, under Executive Creative Directors-Al Mosley and John Norman!

The polar bear commercial was more encompassing and shown Coke as a token for acceptance and joy. They haven't missed the identity now! The brand is a stand alone hit!

What an idea?

Idea had been saying " an idea can change your life" for quite some time now........
For 12 years they have resisted the 'celebrity route' and yet remained good and got noticed. The jingle and the tagline contributed but Lowe Lintas has finally dragged them into the clutter and din where already there are too many players, all looking the same with celebrities vying and vouching and vomiting for the brands....Idea somehow remained away but alas, now they too have jumped into this grinding machine....

I hate this ad, inspite of its seemingly good ideation which may look creative on the surface but will not do anything much for the brand.

Abhishek is over used and has himself become a brand who stands for everything and thus has got diluted.. No..... he may not create any vampire effect per se but he may not sell the brand either...Like father like son, how good it was if we could associate him with only a couple of brands.. but then who am I to decide how much money he should make?

But Lowe..? have they all gone bonkers? what is all this hype about"leveraging the actor’s cool quotient" when there isnt any existing in the first place and even if some is left to be extracted, does the brand require this U turn now?

Idea’s brand qualities – youthfulness, spunk, energy, irreverence, smartness and intelligence – were found to be the same as those espoused in Bachchan’s screen persona. The brief from the client was rather open-ended. Lowe was encouraged to reinvent the brand, taking off from the last thematic campaign in 2006, ‘Monkey’, which leveraged significantly on the Idea tune.....reports the media... From Monkey to Mr Bachan........Three cheers to the brains behind this....

Its a creative blunder with 8 digit mobile numbers paraded and to ask a very simple question which the creative honchos in Lowe and the Brand wizards in Idea never seems to have asked themselves before getting their one ass lift up, for this not so pleasant idea to spread its foul smell.....

What is more easier to remember ..?..A name or the phone number ..?..and that too not of one person but of the whole village....?

And sitting in Kerala, Manipur or Kutch, poor Indians get to see pathetic and pitiably dubbed versions of the ad which stares at us, makes fun of us ... scoff and scorn at us with impudence...

An idea can change your life... even bad ideas can.. for the worse , but.....

Invading the content (Part 4)

Continued from part 3 ..........

Measuring product placements

Measuring product placements in TV is like chasing a mirage. In cinema the effect is more outstanding as reported by the western media that when Tom Cruise wore a Ray ban aviator the sales went up by 40 % and when he wore an Oakleys in MI 2 the sales shot up by 80% ,as per Time magazine.... This is because, cinema gets audiences who are there having made a voluntary choice of exposure, and having spent money for entertainment, unlike television audiences whose involvement and degree of attention is questionable. Moreover, research has revealed that moviegoers, regardless of age or movie going frequency, actively participated in viewing experience and actively interpreted brands that they encounter there . But a time tested, believable mechanism to measure the effects in quantitative terms is yet to evolve. Buyers of such slots will have to succumb to the prices fixed by the seller, many times with no measurable justification. Many such buyers depend on the reputation and past success of the programme producer, the extent to which he allows placements and their own bargaining skills.

The basic premise that the ratings of a programme in TV need not be applicable for commercial breaks in that programme is the reason why product placements have come into prominence. It has been suggested by researchers, that even in programmes with high
Television Rating Points (TRP), the recall of commercials happening during the commercial breaks aren’t very promising, and some times even dismal You and I have experienced that very often .Havent we? When that is the case, will the fame of a popular programme be carried over in full glory, to the products placed in such programmes? It is a question yet to be answered.

Most of the researchers who have worked with Cinema product placements in focus, seem to have emphasized on the power of recall value as effectiveness of product placements and not much emphasis on the power of interpretation and the resultant attitude except a few works . Does recall contribute to attitude change? Those who have gone inside the topic have left it open for future research with the emphasis that, both recall and attitude effects after product placements should be studied . Industry practitioners like Zergio Zyman, also have often commended that “eyeballs don’t equal sales".Considering the fact that TV viewing is more casual and grazing takes place, more research in this area is necessary before any reliable measuring format can be accepted.
Some attempts like comparing the amount of time a product is exposed in the programme with the cost of an equivalent ad slot in the same programme and charging the same money from the client were done. But the authenticity and believability of such measures are disputable. Very often advertisers wonder why they have to spend so much of money for a not very apparent appearance of the product during a programme. Some attempts are made by television audience agencies like TAM(Television Audience Measurement) in this direction. ‘TAM received International Recognition & Appreciation when its Paper on “Evaluating Soft Brand Advertising on Television" (from an advertiser’s point of view) was announced as the Best Paper amongst 22 other strategy papers from various parts of the globe in European Society for Opinion and Marketing Research (ESOMAR) 2004. This paper was a path-breaking analysis on Product Placements within TV Programs which already is a multi-million dollar industry in the West and worth a few hundred crores in India already. During Mid-2004, the concept of In-programme Product Placement was researched upon from a consumer point of view and presented at the World Audience Measurement (WAM) Conference in Geneva’.

A tool now in discussion is the Q-Ratio or the Quality Ratio from iTVX which delves into the quality of the placement, the visuals, how well it has been integrated into the story, based on which they arrive on the value it deserves .The quality of exposure of the brand is assessed frame by frame and how such exposure helps the brand, and around 50 characteristics of the placement is taken to arrive at the right value. This is an attempt to understand how these placements score in terms of quality and what valuations one can do in monetary terms for these placements....

Invading the content (Part 3)

Continued from part 2..........

The reasons for the rising level of TV product placements

1. In markets such as the UK, product placements are completely banned, while in Canada, one can do placements only in the general entertainment genre and not in the kids' sphere. In USA it is free and the trend is visible. In 1984 the total TV product placements in the USA was to the tune of 188 million dollars while by 1994 it became 464 million dollars and in 2004 it rose to a staggering 1878 million dollars. If in film and other media placement is also included the figure reached almost 3500 million dollars in 20042. Television product placement in the USA is growing at a faster rate than any other media but still only represents just over 1% of advertising spend.
In India there is virtually no legal restriction over the use of product placements in TV programming and it is in the rise.

2. One of the key principles which govern European advertising is the ‘separation principle’. This is designed to ensure audiences are not misled about the nature of the content – advertising or programming – they are watching. The Ofcom Broadcasting Code, published in May 2005, includes at Section 10 a specific requirement for commercial broadcasters to maintain appropriate separation between programme and advertising content. The principle of separation between advertising and editorial material has been an integral part of regulation since the first commercial appeared on the UK’s television screens in 1955. Indian cinema have had product placements from 1940’s since Coca Cola appeared in the classic ‘Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi’ but it was an exception rather than a rule. Since it was not a widely used tool India don’t have any key regulations in place .It is one of the reasons for the current increase in product placements in TV.

3. TV advertisements during commercial breaks arent considered fully trustworthy by the target audience. Most ads are not taken in face value or are seen as onesided. Most ot the TG does not absorb ads as a fish would absorb water but instead, they are made to adsorb. Hence products seen or mentioned as part of the content and not part of commercial breaks are taken in more as passive learning. Eva Steortz reported that viewers had an average recall for placements of 38% . The Indian success stories of P&G and the likes with the careful in programme product placement in ‘Khul Ja Sim Sim’ ,those tales of Nokia,Airtel, and ICICI bank rising to fame when they got associated with ‘Indian Idol’ and the case of Amitabh Bachan signing a Kotak Bank cheque, with a Parker pen and the famous Airtel jingle going on air during “phone a friend” in ‘KBC’ are all testimony to this phenomenon.

4. Increasing pressures on traditional broadcast advertising revenues makes it imperative for broad cast houses to think in favour of new avenues of money.Potential new contributors to the commercial broadcasting funding mix needs to be given due consideration. Product placement is one potential revenue source that has long been prohibited in television programmes by virtue of the separation principle in the west and by virtue of the controlled economy , anti multi national policies and the media monopoly, particularly in TV, that we had in India till the advent of 1990’s.
From when product placements accounted for just three per cent of the overall ad spends of brands in 2004, it went up to six per cent last year and analysts predict that by 2007, product placements would include almost 12-15 per cent of the total advertising spends of brands4. Clearly the broadcasters and producers are making hay while the sun is out- blaring.Greed as some quarters may accuse it, but the media house’s desire to make more profits is one reason for product placements in TV growing at this rate.

5. There are more than 80 television channels in India, reaching more than 24 million cable and satellite homes and with over 150 million viewers with varying and vivid tastes5. This is described by the familiar terms ‘Clutter’ and ‘audience fragmentation’ which according to researchers are driving product placements, through out the world . Yet advertising budgets climb up every year giving headache to advertisers and ad agencies. Consumer goods companies spend anything between 5 to 15% of their turnover on brand building and advertising. The largest consumer goods behemoth in India, HLL spent Rs 759 crores on advertising in 2003 and others aren’t quite different either. The results however aren’t quite promising. Message A Day index (MAD index) in Indian cities competently equal western cities and registering a products name and features in the TG have become a Herculean task.
In film and in programme featuring of brands and their usage works well than traditional advertising, and studies in the west have supported this finding. Researchers have recorded “strong recall” for product placements. Audience beliefs about product placement and their purchase intention after getting exposed to such placements and their correlation have been researched, even cross culturally and found to be existing by many .
Practicing Media planners have observed that brand recall through advertising is 18 per cent, but it is three times more – 53 per cent – through product placements in films. Also that if the in programme product placement is followed by the product ad in the next commercial break, the chances of brand recall is dramatically higher than simple ‘commercial break advertising’. This phenomenon, however needs more empherical research to be substantiated.........

To be continued >>>>>>>