‘HUL losing market share as rivals gain’ is what Mint reported on its cover page on 7th May’2009. Why was I not surprised?
Like most of you, I have been watching the IPL matches and the ads that come with it. My favorite is the Max New York life pension plan ad in which an old gentleman returns late at night and gets lambasted from his wife. The punch line is so well written, “Na jeb mein paison ki kami ho na samay ki…” Why I like this one is because the humorous creative delivers the message crisply. Zoozoos are good too but not all of them. For example the crocodile one on ‘set a busy message’ goes overboard to my mind. Also the one on voice message could have been thought better. However zoozoos, in totality, are very creatively done. But this article is not about the good ads. It’s actually about the bad ones…
Take the HUL’s commercials during IPL. They make me wonder how the creatives are thought and executed. Remember the Rin ad in which a boy playing cricket hits two sixes in which the ball lands on the score board displaying 50? Message: Rin now sold at Rs.50 with double power. The problem with the ad is given that it uses cricket to hammer the Rs.50 price point message, why did they not sponsor all half-century scorers on IPL? Linking real cricket to the brand. Somewhat like Parle did years ago with 50:50 when the decision goes to the third umpire. Execution could have been more like each time a 50 was scored, you see a message with that Rin lightning “Rin kadakedaar, damakedaar pachas”. During the extraa innings highlights, the 50 is shown like the super sixes or wickets as sponsored by Rin.
Next look at the recent Priyanka Chopra Lux commercial. Lux has always used film stars but those were the days when few brands used celebrities and Lux was a premium soap hence a top female actor endorsing made sense on aspirational grounds. How does the scheme fit if Priyanka, generally known to be very sophisticated and classy*, says Lux sirf 10 rupaye meni!, Not very well I guess. To top that in the next commercial break you see the same Priyanka endorsing Nokia’s 7610 and 3600 series or theHero Honda ad with Hrithik, brands that are clearly not of the popular type but more on the premium side. Is Priyanka the right celeb to promote a Rs.10 pack?
Check the Ponds Skin Cream painter ad. Seems like the painter on day one of the painting had the model’s face done and on day 7 when he realized that she does not have pimples, paints the area white where there were pimples initially. Does a painter complete the face on day one and even if he is good enough for that, does he then correct his painting by painting those areas white? Ad men?
HUL is not alone. Take the Airtel’s Madhavan, Vidya camping ad. These people are supposed to be camping in a cold remote place (search lights, quilts, tons of ropes etc in the setting). And the next thing you see is Madhavan getting a newspaper! A newspaper early in the morning in a camp? Certainly not impossible but does it not seem odd to use it to show the service offer?
Then you have these Godrej eon AC commercials. A series of settings where AC is not used due to high power consumption. The fact that Godrej ACs in fact consume less power is shown in such a dull way, it takes a lot of relooking and intent listening to the voiceover to get that message. That they have a five star rating is conveyed in a passing reference which should ideally be the central theme of the ad given the message.
Not all ads are great. We know. But given that the event is IPL and one is paying more than the deserved rates# with multiple reruns the investment is quite high. It therefore seems odd that these big companies and their ad men are paying little attention to the detail.
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* Priyanka Chopra is rated as the 4th most sophisticated/classy female celebrity by CelebTrack, India’s largest celebrity study done jointly by Percept Talent Management and Hansa Research.
# “MSM plans to hike IPL ad rates”, 2nd May Economic Times. According to TAM Media Research data, the average viewership rating for IPL matches so far this year is 15-20% less than last year. Media planners say they will oppose any move to jack up ad rates. Advertisers are already paying almost double of Rs 2-2.5 lakh they paid for a 10-second spot in last year’s edition of IPL, even though TV ratings have slipped this year, they say.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Monday, May 4, 2009
Break the clutter
Ever wondered why you see the same celebrities endorsing multiple brands? When we were last counting1 national brands spanning categories as diverse as infrastructure to cosmetics, we came across the following piece of statistic:
• Around 60%of these brands were endorsed by just 12 (25%) celebrities.
• On an average, each of these celebrities was endorsing more than 7 brands.
Studies have revealed that using celebrity helps the brand break the clutter; reach out to more audience, build aspiration, help increase ad recall and so on. So what is wrong here?
Well nothing except that, and this is true for most brands that use the top celebrities, the primary purpose of mass reach and breaking clutter is defeated when you use an over-used2 celebrity. This is because, and we will see with a few examples, they hardly have any information on the other traits of a celebrity to match brand values. How can you otherwise explain a Dish TV being endorsed by Shah Rukh Khan and a Tata Sky by Aamir Khan. What led to the choice of these two celebrities? Not celeb-brand image match for sure. With hardly any difference in their positioning and offering, they are using two popular celebrities, who incidentally have inverse images3. So whereas SRK is considered family oriented, Aamir is not. Aamir is considered innovative, SRK fares poorly there. SRK scores well on ‘self-made’ whereas Aamir does far better on ‘trustworthy’. One would guess, and this may sound preposterous, that Aamir was chosen since he endorses other TATA brand, Titan? Bulk deal? Or was he chosen as an answer to Dish TV’s choice of taking SRK, an arch rival of Aamir?
Few more examples:
• How can you have Amitab Bachchan endorse Navratna Hair Oil as well as Reid and Taylor? Aren’t the brand values and image starkly different?
• How is Diya Mirza adding to Sun Feast biscuits ad with SRK? As far as I know, they don’t have any real life affair. (Kareena and Saif may make sense on that account). Nor do they have any reel life chemistry? (Google and I don’t remember if they ever worked opposite each other in a movie. Akshay and Kartina may make sense there). Was it then for reach or likability? Can Diya add to SRK’s reach or likability? I doubt. The only thing she probably adds to is cost. A decent looking model coming at a fraction of the cost would probably have been good enough.
• What is Katrina Kaif doing in a Fevicol commercial? If one needed a sexy lass to show those never ending legs, Malaika would have done the job in probably half the cost? How is Katrina helping the brand?
Why then do brands repeatedly take top celebrities irrespective of the category they fall in? Perhaps because they think that these popular celebs will add to appeal. Let’s check whether this hypothesis is true.
According to the latest reports by CelebTrack, a study conducted jointly by Percept Talent Management and Hansa Research, there is marginal difference in recognition and likability among the top 30 celebrities.
The top 10 celebrities (as per recognition) had an average recognition of 96%. Next 10 were at 91% and the 10 after were at 88%. In other words if you were to take a celebrity ranked 4th as opposed to someone who was ranked 22nd, in all probability you may lose out on around 8% of recognition. How much do you save on cost? A lot I suppose. Further chances are high that the brand recall will be higher for a brand using a celebrity who appears in fewer ads as opposed to several.
Next, take a look at likability. Here there is hardly any difference. The difference among the top 10 celebrities on likability to the next 10 is zilch and to the 10 after is a mere 2%. So whereas you may lose a few percentage points on recognition, you lose almost nothing on likability. A 25th ranked celebrity is almost as liked as a 5th ranked one.
Brands may argue that these 8% and 2% are huge differences and one may ignore them to their own peril. My argument is that what you think you are gaining by taking a well known celeb, you are more than losing owing to the celebrity’s clutter since he is endorsing multiple brands and audience mixes up on which ad they saw the celebrity for. Spend wisely.
1 We analyzed 138 brands. These are endorsed by 49 celebrities. Though this is a loosely derived list, it is reasonably representative. Sources have been TV commercials, print ads, company websites etc. Hence the list is not full-proof since sources such as websites are not always updated by all companies.
2 What is over-used is quite relative. In this case the average brand endorsement per celeb comes to 2.8. So one might argue that anything above this is over-used however this may be incorrect since a few celebrities can easily skew this average.
3According to the CelebTrack data, SRK and Aamir have contrary images. What one does well on, the other performs poorly and vice-versa
• Around 60%of these brands were endorsed by just 12 (25%) celebrities.
• On an average, each of these celebrities was endorsing more than 7 brands.
Studies have revealed that using celebrity helps the brand break the clutter; reach out to more audience, build aspiration, help increase ad recall and so on. So what is wrong here?
Well nothing except that, and this is true for most brands that use the top celebrities, the primary purpose of mass reach and breaking clutter is defeated when you use an over-used2 celebrity. This is because, and we will see with a few examples, they hardly have any information on the other traits of a celebrity to match brand values. How can you otherwise explain a Dish TV being endorsed by Shah Rukh Khan and a Tata Sky by Aamir Khan. What led to the choice of these two celebrities? Not celeb-brand image match for sure. With hardly any difference in their positioning and offering, they are using two popular celebrities, who incidentally have inverse images3. So whereas SRK is considered family oriented, Aamir is not. Aamir is considered innovative, SRK fares poorly there. SRK scores well on ‘self-made’ whereas Aamir does far better on ‘trustworthy’. One would guess, and this may sound preposterous, that Aamir was chosen since he endorses other TATA brand, Titan? Bulk deal? Or was he chosen as an answer to Dish TV’s choice of taking SRK, an arch rival of Aamir?
Few more examples:
• How can you have Amitab Bachchan endorse Navratna Hair Oil as well as Reid and Taylor? Aren’t the brand values and image starkly different?
• How is Diya Mirza adding to Sun Feast biscuits ad with SRK? As far as I know, they don’t have any real life affair. (Kareena and Saif may make sense on that account). Nor do they have any reel life chemistry? (Google and I don’t remember if they ever worked opposite each other in a movie. Akshay and Kartina may make sense there). Was it then for reach or likability? Can Diya add to SRK’s reach or likability? I doubt. The only thing she probably adds to is cost. A decent looking model coming at a fraction of the cost would probably have been good enough.
• What is Katrina Kaif doing in a Fevicol commercial? If one needed a sexy lass to show those never ending legs, Malaika would have done the job in probably half the cost? How is Katrina helping the brand?
Why then do brands repeatedly take top celebrities irrespective of the category they fall in? Perhaps because they think that these popular celebs will add to appeal. Let’s check whether this hypothesis is true.
According to the latest reports by CelebTrack, a study conducted jointly by Percept Talent Management and Hansa Research, there is marginal difference in recognition and likability among the top 30 celebrities.
The top 10 celebrities (as per recognition) had an average recognition of 96%. Next 10 were at 91% and the 10 after were at 88%. In other words if you were to take a celebrity ranked 4th as opposed to someone who was ranked 22nd, in all probability you may lose out on around 8% of recognition. How much do you save on cost? A lot I suppose. Further chances are high that the brand recall will be higher for a brand using a celebrity who appears in fewer ads as opposed to several.
Next, take a look at likability. Here there is hardly any difference. The difference among the top 10 celebrities on likability to the next 10 is zilch and to the 10 after is a mere 2%. So whereas you may lose a few percentage points on recognition, you lose almost nothing on likability. A 25th ranked celebrity is almost as liked as a 5th ranked one.
Brands may argue that these 8% and 2% are huge differences and one may ignore them to their own peril. My argument is that what you think you are gaining by taking a well known celeb, you are more than losing owing to the celebrity’s clutter since he is endorsing multiple brands and audience mixes up on which ad they saw the celebrity for. Spend wisely.
1 We analyzed 138 brands. These are endorsed by 49 celebrities. Though this is a loosely derived list, it is reasonably representative. Sources have been TV commercials, print ads, company websites etc. Hence the list is not full-proof since sources such as websites are not always updated by all companies.
2 What is over-used is quite relative. In this case the average brand endorsement per celeb comes to 2.8. So one might argue that anything above this is over-used however this may be incorrect since a few celebrities can easily skew this average.
3According to the CelebTrack data, SRK and Aamir have contrary images. What one does well on, the other performs poorly and vice-versa
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