The advertising industry and the advertisers are facing some significant problems, which are evolving into bigger challenges. The advertisers are facing the biggest ever challenges today like exponential growth of media cluttering and spiraling cost of media spot with downtrend AOI (attention on advertising investment). As Alvin Toffler states the winner would be the player, who has the greatest control on the information, and in this info war media control and media attention, are lethal weapons.

Advertisement as trouble:

Every body wants to pass on bundles of messages to customers in order to capture the biggest territory between the two ears of the human beings. The net result is a confused target audience who is now running away from this information web. It is no surprise that the advertising has become a menace for the viewers. It dampens entertainment. Given the choice they would make their entertaining medium ad-proof. The barrier between advertisers and the target has never been so distinct. The "We" and "they" feeling are intensifying every passing day. The challenge before the advertiser is to reduce the barrier otherwise the advertising won't be effective at all. Hence making the minds of target audience receptive to advertisement is the most important task. The task of catching attention comes next.

Grabbing attention:

If ad is viewed with irritation, advertisers should forget about attention. Attention in the advertisement parlance does not refer to mere glimpse or exposure rather it decides the quality and quantity of information received by the individual. Grabbing the attention of viewer has been the challenge before the advertising professionals; in fact this is one of the key parameters of success of an advertisement. But given the bombardment of information on consumers, the consumer has shut down their mind. Unless the customer is in active search of information nothing would influence the mind of the customers. The attention catching is burdened more with the problem of zapping and zipping. The television viewers are getting adept at channel switching to avoid the advertisement breaks. This is further worsened with the plethora of channels available before the consumers. With the present situation, during prime time if an advertiser chooses to advertise in a single programme in a single channel, the probability that viewer would catch a glimpse (attention is far!) of the ad is very low, which is absolutely disheartening for the advertiser. The challenge before media buying person is to purchase commercial time during numerous shows across a portfolio of channels so that the specialist channel surfer can't avoid watching at least one ad. What would be the cost? The advertisement has been perceived as money down the drain and now the present situation only reinforces the perception.

The Sopranos problem:

Stuart Elliott put up the question in the article "Married to the mob" (Brand Equity, The Economic times, 20th Nov. 2002) that "How do you solve a problem like The sopranos?" He was referring to the TV series "The sopranos" which is being aired in HBO. As it is a pay channel there is no advertising as subscribers pay an additional fee. Of course in India the pay channels do advertise taking advantage of the loopholes in the media regulation and helpless consumers who are little aware of their consumer rights. But this is anyway a blessing for the advertisers as well as agencies in India, as the problem of the Sopranos has not raised its head in India. But this does not discard the threat forever as it may happen anytime in India too. Anyway it is a genuine problem for the advertising industry. Pay channels in India like ESPN, Star Movies, HBO, Zee cinema, Discovery, National geographic etc are pay channels, hence in a scenario of "No ad in pay channel" would be a serious problem for media planner. Above all pay channels are already popular and with out ad they would become more popular. Hence something is to be done to find a solution to such problem.

Dare To Think Beyond Advertising….

In present situation to address the "The soprano problem", advertisers resort to shadow advertisement where the products become endemic to the setting of the show. Where the products are shown being consumed or brand name is exhibited in the background.

In India, the first shadow advertisement was used in movie "Bobby" where motorcycle "Rajdoot" was advertised. Recently, there was shadow advertisement of Coca-Cola in Hindi blockbuster "Kaho Na pyar hai". But the problem with shadow advertisement is that positioning message of the product can't be conveyed to consumers. Hence, the concept of shadow advertisement can be extended further so that the theme of the advertising would become endemic to entertaining show. This would be no more exclusive advertising. Rather, advertising will be a part of the entertainment. But this has to be done in a delicate manner so that the information about the product is passed on to the viewers without disturbing the entertaining element of the show. If this succeeds, that would be a great break-through for advertisement. Even this should not be called advertising anymore, as that has become an irritating word in the mind of the audience. Even though advertainment seems quite close to it, but it would be more evolved. Since in advertainment we try to advertise and entertainment comes with it. But in the recommended solution we want to entertain the audience only and advertisement is an integral part of the show. The major question would be, whether the audience would be able to comprehend the hidden positioning message? Here are few examples on how to make the positioning message integral part of the show. We have programmes like "Antakshari" in which participants take part in groups. The groups can be named after some brands and the participants would be projected as such that they would be personification of brands. Suppose one group is named Lux, the participants are expected to be beautiful women who stand for Lux. So this can be done for many programmes, which has format like this. Suppose HLL produced a soap opera and the dialogue of the characters at some point would be focussed on the products of HLL. Of course the context has to be right and should be very much along the script not that it would destroy the element of entertainment. Hence the major challenge would lie before scriptwriter and director. Even a particular character of an opera becomes very popular as the opera becomes very popular. Hence building such character, which would personify the brand and both the character as well as the brand would grow in due course of time. However even if time constraint is removed, course content constraint comes in. But the scope of story telling is far greater. Attention grabbing will be replaced with attract attention and no zipping/zapping problem. Audience will be more receptive and comprehension of course would be dependent upon how it is executed. Practicability of the idea would be tested when it will be implemented. Hence unless it is tried and tested it can be concluded that whether it will click or not. Let's take the example of Coca-Cola, the scriptwriter would be creating situation in each episode of a family soap where there would be opportunity to celebrate and drink coke! To give another example, a multi utility vehicle with safe driving positioning plank could have exploited the plot of the recent movie "Road".

If this concept clicks, there would be nothing like it for advertisers. If it happens, in future big advertisers like HLL would be diversifying to entertainment business! Of course the ad budget of HLL is far bigger than the total budget of many entertainment houses.

Irrespective of whatever positive points or negative points it has, this concept can be tried for programmes aired in pay channels simply because there is no other alternative to advertise during the programme. Besides it is expected to solve the other problems those are discussed above. Advertisement would be no more the troublemaker and irritating. Hence catching attention would be much easier. Only testing of this idea could help us to conclude whether to roll out from the concept from programmes of pay channels to programmes of free channels.

* Contributed by -
Tanmaya Mohan Panda, MDI, Gurgaon,
Biswajeet Adhikari, XIM, Bhubaneswar.