Generating brand conversations

A story of how advertising has changed from when Chairman and CEO of Bates Strategic Alliance Nimal Gunewardena first started to work in the industry over 35 years ago, and what those changes mean for advertisers today – both marketers and agencies.

Gunewardena affirms that we need to move from pure broadcast advertising to looking at engaging consumers with our brands and generating interesting conversations among them that would get our brands considered, recommended and adopted, and recommended yet again

Once upon a time when advertising was young, and I was just out of school working at the feet of an advertising guru of the day, I would put my music and composition skills to work to make up jingles that we would broadcast to sell brands such as White Wizard that magically turned ‘tennis shoes’ white, or Rebecca Lee Wildflower talc that would keep you dry and fragrant all day long!

I remember writing a lengthy defence of a lilting ¾ time piece of music I had created for that brand to convince the client to break the rules and change his mind from the catchy upbeat jingle he was demanding.

That was a few years before TV came to Sri Lanka in 1979. In the early days of TV, with a choice of two stations, the five-member family and the next-door neighbour faithfully gathered every evening to watch the prime time tele-drama, and made up the living room audience with their eyes glued to the TV. My former ad agency colleague had now become a hot tele-drama star, and commanded a ratings as high as 65 when he acted in the most popular soap of the day.

Those were days when broadcast advertising brought great returns! The world has changed since, and now we have more of everything. More brands, more competitors, more choice, more channels – both radio and TV.

Audiences have got fragmented with channel proliferation. Each channel draws a much smaller audience except when we are playing cricket or watching the next superstar. Of course the prime time tele-dramas are still a sell, but with a third of the previous audience at best.

Sri Lankan marketing managers and agencies still believe in the power and value broadcast advertising and so we continue to make TV commercials and write those jingles and those irritating radio spots that drive you up the wall during drive time.

Can your TVC generate a conversation about your brand? If so, you are doing well. Is it so cool that a fan pinches it and puts it on YouTube and does it then generate many more views than broadcast advertising ever could? Then you have moved from engaging mode to sharing mode. Does it become an ad that people ‘Google’ to see? Then you’ve moved to the search mode, when people are stalking you. Ideally, this is where we want to go today.

Why are we slowly getting disenchanted with broadcast advertising? The reasons are many. Audience fragmentation is one. Smaller audiences mean that marketers have to spend more money across multiple channels and programmes to reach their markets. But if only those audiences would be attentive! Today’s multitasking and remote empowered audiences are simply not! They are now doing their own thing and watching TV when they want to and not necessarily together with their families. They may be downloading the movies they want to watch from the internet, or watching a movie from a multi-channel cable TV or DTH operator.

So what happens to your commercial? How do we move from broadcast commercials to commercials that engage and get talked about and shared and go viral? How do we beat the diminishing returns of broadcast TV? How can engage our audiences rather that shout at them and hope we are making headway? How can we create conversations about our brands?

Conversations you say? Now, why are conversations so important? What have conversations got to do with people buying your brand? Quite a lot, when you come to think of it. Think of it, when did you last rush to the store after seeing a commercial to buy something? Think of it, we can no longer bombard people into becoming consumers. Think of it, what did research say was the most powerful form of communication? Advertising? Try again. Yes, WOM it is. Word of Mouth!

We buy stuff when our friends and peers recommend them. We stay away from brands that our friends say didn’t match up to advertising claims. So wither advertising? Advertising can still work for us and it does in many ways. Ads create imagery and perceptions about our brands. Ads that are likeable make us like the brands they advertise.

Advertising is still “the most fun you can have with your clothes on”. But today ads have to do more. They have to engage. They have to be interesting enough to generate interesting conversations. It’s only when people are interested and engaged with your brand that they talk about and recommend it to their friends.

So, it’s time to start thinking beyond that 30 second commercial. It’s time to combine the power of TV with the connectivity and engagement power of digital and social media. It’s time to explore new formats. Two-way conversations, rather than one-way broadcasts. It’s time to talk to communities who have common interests. It’s time to relate our brand to those interests.

For instance, there’s a whole lot of people out there “going natural” with products that are natural, herbal, good to eat, or good to put on yourself. So if your brand can relate to that community and generate positive conversations among these communities then we are on our way to getting adopted.

If this is to happen we need to talk broader than our usual sales talk. Broader than our features and benefits spiel. We need to cater to the broader information and entertainment needs of our audiences and keep them engaged on an on-going basis with our brands. We need to give them a platform or place where they can share their thoughts and experiences with others with similar interests. Repetitive commercials do not do this. Interest-based blogs do.

So, if we can start from scratch and see how we can keep our audiences engaged with our brands and conversing among themselves about our brands, then that’s the way to go. TV is not out, but we need to find new ways to use TV. And radio. And print. To combine them with the vast possibilities that exist in the digital and social media that people are using as channels of conversation today. We need to recognise Facebook as a WOM delivery channel. We need to recognise its power to move people as it did in the Arab Spring or Wall Street protests. We need to ferret out and generate interesting stories about our brands and their fans.

The times they are a changing. And most rapidly. It’s time for our thinking also to change. To see the reality of life today of those who would be our consumers. Those who would be our fans. Our brand ambassadors. Those who would listen to our stories and tell their friends their own stories about their experiences with our brands.

Because it’s only when these conversations happen, that our brand stands to become interesting, liked and adopted. And then, even loved and recommended in turn. (Courtesy “The Chartered Marketer” Centenary Issue)

Nimal Gunewardena – FCIM MCIPR Chartered Marketer – is the Chairman and CEO of Bates Strategic Alliance. His thought leaders could be accessed on his blog www.nimalgunewardena.com. His agency is helping their clients to find new ways to engage audiences using a mix of communication tools from advertising and PR to BTL activity and digital and social media.