This post has no specific message – I am not trying to say something very deep or meaningful. Just some random thoughts – the sort of things you might put up as a facebook post; except this is perhaps a bit too long for that.
Some days ago I saw the new Airtel ad on ndtv – there was in fact a 20 min programme discussing the merits and demerits of the ad with some of the usual suspects in tow. Setting aside the quality of the ad, I started thinking of the different ways in which brands are advertised in India and the UK.
I studied the theory of marketing more than 15 years ago, so I might be getting things very wrong here…but my memory of marketing 101 seems to suggest that as the market evolves and as brands evolve, communication moves from focusing on the functional connect to the emotional connect. A mature market therefore would have brands selling almost purely on the relationship with the brand; especially as functional differences between brands would be minimal. So, in theory a detergent would not be just saying that it washes whitest but that it makes your family feel better, etc, etc.
What interested me was that advertising in India does indeed seem to have gone that way. Brands like Airtel, surf, google and so on have made very emotional ads where the functional aspect of the product is often minimal. And this has been the case for many years now …think of the original Hutch ads, the Titan ads for so many years, the Raymond advertising. Emotional connect has always been strong.
But advertising in the UK – arguably a much more mature market – does not seem to be so strongly emotional. In many categories one sees very functional “scheme” advertising rather than emotional “theme” advertising. A mobile phone company would talk about how many minutes it gives and what the latest iphone deal is- there is no brand differentiation. Telecom providers talk of how easy it is to switch service providers and how much download they are offering for such a low price. Banks keep on selling on the basis of low mortgage rates and the hard-nosed benefits of switching accounts to them (2% off on direct debits or 100 pounds into your account if you deposit 1000 pounds a month). Supermarkets almost exclusively play up short term deals; even though some of their by lines can be decently emotional, such as “every little helps.” And then there are the aggregators whose advertising ranges from the sublime (comparethemarket, which I guess is more emotional than functional…even though the take away is that for best car insurance one should visit comparethemarket.com) to the ridiculous (go compare); but the game there seems to be only top-of-mind awareness with brand connect not really a part of the marketing brief (my view, at least).
Of course, as a person who has not grown up in the UK, perhaps I do not always get the emotional connect. But when I see some of the earlier advertising in this country – some of it certainly was quite “theme based” rather than “scheme based”. The JR Hartley ad from the early 80’s, for example, is genius. But then again, perhaps, it is only those which remain in memory and the vast majority were always “scheme based”. I don’t know.
So, the final point is that I am still intrigued at this relative difference in communication strategies in these markets. Is it different in other mature markets? Or am I just getting my marketing 101 very, very wrong?
No comments:
Post a Comment