Tuesday, January 08, 2013

The new rules of 2012: Engage, Empower, Entertain, Educate, Enrich.

How advertisers are redefining the 5Es of advertising

“Brand advertising seems to be on its way out.” Al Ries, Chairman, Ries & Ries

“Advertising’s role in this new world becomes not just a demand driver but also a counterbalancing force to price as the main determinant of consumer choice.” Gian Fulgoni, Executive chairman and co-founder, comScore, Inc.

When it comes to building and leveraging brand equity, the advertising discipline itself has come into serious question in recent years. While Ries argues that brands cannot be advertised as before, Fulgoni talks about the new role of advertising. And these are not isolated instances. Advertisers in India and globally are well aware of how debated this domain is today. The reasons range from rising clutter to evolved consumers to the proliferation of consumer touch points, particularly the rise of internet and social media.

The relative importance of advertising can be gauged if one looks at how one wrong move affects brands in this networked age. Take for example, an ad released by group discount website Groupon last year. In February 2011, Groupon broadcast its first ever TV commercial during the Super Bowl. On the same day, CEO Andrew Mason wrote a blog stating that they had trouble figuring out who to work with as an advertising partner. “Our peculiar taste in humour made it really hard for outside agencies to come up with concepts we liked. This time around, we had better luck with ad firm Crispin Porter + Bogusky,” wrote Mason. One of the ads in the series opens up in what seems to be a restaurant based in Tibet. Academy award winning actor Timothy Hutton is sitting on a table. When the waiter arrives with the food, Hutton says, “The people of Tibet are in trouble. Their very culture is in jeopardy. But they still whip up an amazing fish curry. And since 200 of us bought at Groupon.com, we’re each getting $30 worth of Tibetan food for just $15 at Himalayan Restaurant in Chicago.” A voiceover ends the ad stating: Save the money. A lot of great deals in your town. Groupon.com. Now the creative was humorous, but it rubbed many netizens the wrong way. Add to that the reaction from the Chinese, who are a key market for Groupon and the fact that the restaurant owner himself went on to criticise the ad and you had a sure shot recipe for disaster! Mason, who was very upbeat about CP+B, soon fired the agency and went on to publicly berate them in a Bloomberg Businessweek profile where he said that he had put too much trust in the agency. “We turned off the part of our brain where we should have made our own decisions. We learned that you can’t rely on anyone else to control and maintain your own brand,” said Mason. Clearly, differentiation has become a tricky terrain.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
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