Brands shorten commercials, increase frequency to beat economic slowdown
Monday, 19 August 2013 00:00
-
- {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
Economic Times: Advertisers are shortening their commercials while maintaining or increasing the number of times they are aired to ensure maximum bang for their ad spends in the middle of a prolonged economic slowdown that has impacted consumer demand.
The Axe Blast advertisement where actor Ranbir Kapoor keeps a count of the number of women he has befriended with a meter device, for example, has now been shortened to around 10 seconds from the earlier 60 seconds. Ditto in the cases of Godrej commercial featuring Aamir Khan as ‘Sassy Sonia’ and Idea’s mother and son telephone exchange ad.
Creative agencies, media agencies and TV channels say that this is the effect of the tightening marketing budgets and ad spends in the last few months due to the economic slowdown.
“With the economy slowing down, there are two things happening: advertisers are either staying with their existing advertising and promotional budget or reducing them; and, with constraint on media spend, long duration ads are gradually disappearing and shorter duration ads are run more often,” Vandana Das, president at DDB Mudra Group’s Delhi branch, says. “So the money that they have has to work harder.”
She says that a shorter TV commercial gives brands the same frequency and reach as a longer one. “The implication of this is that creative agencies have to work harder in order to be able to break the clutter,” adds Das.
Experts say it makes more sense for an advertiser to buy a certain number of seconds on TV and expose the audience to its advertisements 20 times or 30 times rather than just 10 times for a longer duration. A recent report by market researcher Nielsen, ‘Evolution of marketing expenses’, suggests that a 10-second ad earns more return on investment than a 30-second ad when used as a reminder.
Raghu Bhat, founder director of Scarecrow Communications, says shorter commercials are in line with short attention span of modern day consumers. “Advertisement, these days, has shorter shelf life and have become like disposable tissue papers. So rather than telling a long story, some advertisers prefer to focus on one or two distinct images to stay with the residual memory of the audiences,” he says.
Such a preference for shorterduration commercials was observed in 2009 as well when the economic slowdown had hit many marketers. Today, media people are advising marketers to look at smaller durations to manage the situation cleverly.
Dnyanada Chaudhari, COO at Madison Media, says advertisers mostly prefer shorter commercials with the big-ticket properties such as reality shows and sports events where there is less inventory to buy in the budget. She, however, adds that the days of storytelling are not over “The digital media gives that opportunity to tell a story,” Chaudhari says. “On TV one can get a certain number of exposures to establish the brand and then move to other media,” she adds.
Rahul Johri, senior vice-president and general manager, South Asia, at Discovery Networks Asia-Pacific, says short commercials reflect innovation and improved efficiency in the industry. “Advertisers will continue to innovate to reach consumers through most effective planning and enhanced creativity,” he says.
