The Talent Centric Industry !

Scene setting – A local Ad club’s annual meet

Participants- a host of them.. the ad guys, big names, media barons etc

The star- the big name of the Ad Industry who’s name seemed to have driven the entire crowd…

Posh conference hall of the best Hotel in town, AC, soft music, the camaraderie, fellowship waiting, hugs and taps in cheeks, brand talk and so on…

I am just an Ex Ad man, now an academic and hence kind of lesser mortal and was attended less to.

The programme as usual got delayed ( the ad man is perpetually busy and hence never arrives on time..) and no one seemed to regret, they have in course of time learned to take it in a stride.

I sat there thinking of the pitches that agencies would have lost and accounts that would have walked out of their lethargic offices that pretended to be full of activity even when a paper refused to move from here to there. Perhaps for the one classical exemption of Peter Marsh and his team at ABM (Allen Brady Marsh) winning an account (of the British Railways) for being appallingly bad behaved with the client, all the rest have been losses and yet very few lessons learnt…

At last the programme began.. The ad speak, mutual admiration societies, you scratch mine and I will do yours- gleefully… !

The star rose to speak, he dealt with the fact that Advertising is a talent centric Industry or rather IT IS THE TALENT CENTRIC INDUSTY and why and how it should encourage ART and NOT mere CRAFT! He spoke and I sat to attend (for a change) on the profusion of trash, pretending to be talent and why talent is needed in abundance to take the Indian Ad industry to where it belongs. He left in me a ray of hope that very few speakers who were practicing ad professionals could leave. The tiny burst of brilliance that fresh blood throws in- he said is needed and I applauded for the very simple reason that I know how hard it’s for a fresher (with passion and devotion) to get in and survive in the ad industry. As an academic teaching advertising, I have seen the entry barriers that the talent centric industry keeps with impunity on approaching talent ….

Fellow ship time, when others indulged in the pleasure of wine and froth, I thought of engaging him and getting to hear more.. He seemed to be speaking from his heart, and he meant it.. He told me how hard it is to get the right people for the right job and those people who can do it their way and not waiting for some one to tell them.. the DOERS.. The undying doers who will defy rules and create new ones.. Only to defy them and thus go on from excellence to more excellence..

I had met the right man to send the list of talents I have in mind.. the guys and gals who sat in my classes with Ad ambitions, and (in spite of my teaching ) hang on to the ardor and wanted to be in the Ad mad world.. The list of young men and women who would fit into his list of DOERS would for him look like a treasure cove, I was sure.

Call me…… he said as he left with a deep impact on my mind… I have saved your number…

After a long time I had met an Ad guy who was so pragmatic and addressing the Human issue of Advertising …

I tried calling him many times but no response.. In fact for the last 547 times I had called him I got to hear some 2 different Hindi songs ( Rukh jaa oh dil diwaneeee and Hum tum ek kamare mein bandh ho ) and a dozen times it got busy..

Surely and Ad man of his stature will be busy but when you need talent, you cannot be so busy that you cannot even meet them?

I am now sure, he had saved my number ..

Oops !

Adspeak- BOGOF..!!!

"Buy one, get one free", or "Buy one, get one" is probably one of the most common forms of sales promotion… If out of 10 ads, today 7 are of sales promotion type( three of the brand building type), atleast 5 would be of the buy one get one type… Customers may not know this acronym but every where and in every shoping situation, they come across this format of sales promotion….. It is regarded as one of the most effective forms of special offers for goods but only as long as your competetors don’t copy you ( which they often do) ...

It would have started off as an abrupt end of the season stock clearance method used by shops and merchants who were still with a large quantity of stock that they were looking to sell quicklyfor want of stocking space and changing season… But as in various practices in Marketing, later on it become a popular, planned and considered marketing method...

I think the pioneers had been the gramaphone record companies right from the older days to the DVD/CD guys of today. Last day I was buying a DVD and it said free DVD inside.. When I asked the shop sales man can I know which is that INSIDE DVD , he stared at me as if I had asked him something quite strange..

Why should you know.. It is anyway free.. You are buying one and you are getting one free…

The success of this promotion lies in the fact that for the price of one, two items are being sold. The price of "one" is somewhat nominal and is typically raised when used as part of a buy one get one free deal. Whilst the cost per item is proportionately cheaper than if bought on its own, it is not actually half price…. But who cares.. I guess people fall easily into the trap… My friend who is a Market research analyst was telling me that most people buy things that they don’t want just because they think they are getting it free….

Buy one get one free is neverthless a popular sales technique because it can be used legally at any time, unlike many other offers…. It is a great tool to attract new users but to retain them , this may not be enough ….

Tail piece: BOGOF sounds so very similar to BOGUS as in fake… Now , is that just a coincidence?

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A salesman was demonstrating unbreakable comb combo sets in a department store. He was impressing the people who stopped by to look by putting the comb through all sorts of torture and stress.... HE held both (BOGOF) combs and did all the tricks... Some protested and said when two combs are held together, it will not break in any case.. so to impress the skeptics in the crowd, he took one comb out, bent the comb completely in half, and it snapped with a loud crack. Without missing a beat, he bravely held up both halves of the 'unbreakable' comb for everyone to see and said, "And this, ladies and gentlemen, is what an unbreakable comb looks like on the inside."

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