A Brief Overview of The Industry and The Future From An Individual Perspective.

Generating idea, Formulating Results

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Are Agencies all the same? They say the offer different things, give different insights,

focus on the customer, yet they all have access to the same sources information. So, in

this industry it is not what you know but what you take from it, how you interpret it

to deliverer a successful campaign. It’s not the size of the agency, its the way they

utilise the knowledge – Patrick Zinga (2012)

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We no longer do the things we use to, we no longer believe what we use

to. Since people have changed, so must we.’

- Greg Hahn, Executive Creative Director, BBDO

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Introduction

The best way to describe the change in the advertising industry is to denote this change as growth. As for any biological growth over a long period of time, there needs to be the capability of adapting to the surrounding environment in order to survive. Advertising has done this and despite obstacles such as economic growth, we have seen a move away from dictating to consumers, to actually trying to have ongoing conversations with them, listening to their wants and needs, in order to excel the brand experience. ‘Advertising in some cases has been businesses worst friend’, Wright (2000) declaring that there needs to be more focus on this relationship between the two, primarily on solving business problems and how it affects the relationship in the business building block shown below.

Business

Branding Advertising

Customer

‘A good basic selling idea, involvement and relevancy, of course, are as important as ever, but in the advertising rumpus of today, unless you make yourself noticed and believed, you are nothing'. Leo Burnett (2012). This quote from the brand consultancy agency declares the basis of the movement of advertising, moving into the role of brand consultancy as it striving to get away from the word itself and the negative associations of the lack of trust role it currently has, declared as ‘make believe advertising’, Baskin & Unerman (2012). A industry entity that strives to move away from aiding in just selling items to becoming more of a sustainable way of aiding in the delivering of brand promises.

This report is a brief review of advertising as an industry. It details the importance of innovation and the reasoning behind careful planning in creative work that not only educates and entertains the public, but also creates brand personalities through establishing relationships. Nigel Robinson from MediaCom stated that advertising, merely giving advice is uninteresting dull and a certain way for failure and ‘Advice is a device that isn't strong enough to change people. What people need is impartation? Impartation is the combination of advice, knowledge with proof, experience and insight’, this is what the industry tries to incorporate, discovering insight to deliverer return on investment for the client.

This report is also alongside the posting placed on http://manvsads.blogspot.co.uk/. A blog which looks at different campaigns and issues surround implications of advertising.

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Contents

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‘I could say the future is about fashiontainment. I know it’s a dreadful word but

I'm only using it to capture what's going on in our world .’

- Hegarty (2011 pg.50)

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...Pest

Advertising and...

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Political

Economical

Social

Technological

Rather than politics having an impact on advertising, advertising has always had an influence on politics. The relationship between the two has led to controversy and an effect on beliefs which relate back to changing consumer attitude . By trying to change attitude there is the underlying factor of trying to change perception , which is difficult

Aside from the distrust factor which has led to consumers wanting more from mere promises, advertising has always tried to connect with postmodern consumers, taking signs and images from cultural references in accordance to the surrounding context at the time. This shows that advertising has to be relevant to the culture and beliefs at the

Who can deny the move towards smaller devices. As technology develops, the need to get into personal devices also grows. It makes the brand appear more personal and this has led to an increase in location based advertising, SMS marketing, social network marketing and even in game advertising has seen an

when it comes to political campaigns. This has been the main driver of these type of adverts as the one shown below. The problem with advertising is that it incorporates the same problems with politics and this this association with politics is that it has the same correlating themes. People do not trust politics as much as they do not trust advertising. Mark Braun, creative director of 360 Inspire, said, ‘It's getting harder to market politicians nowadays, as there doesn't seem to be much differentiation between them. That's why political adverts now so often attack their opposition rather than sell their own party.’ There needs to be more advertising that actually matches what the nation as a whole wants that impacts them.

The most influential thing that has happened in terms of economical is the recession of 2007. Advertising of course as an industry does get affected by these changes as it affects businesses’ ad spend. Usually the first budget that gets axed or cut is the marketing budget. In times of asperity, this is when there needs to actually be an

increase, here is when the right kind of advertising can be used more effectively to give the business a competitive edge. An increased share of voice, could be exactly what the company needs in order to create awareness and maintain awareness. It is also about the fact that consumers don't like it when a brand just disappears, the equivalent of a friend that suddenly stops talking to you, you soon lose interest or feel disheartened.

period in time. This has led to the usage of celebrity endorsements, popular music and images from songs and films. There has been a push towards understanding semiotics and memory beyond the cognitive. This is to establish reasons why people do what they do and what exactly grabs there attention. This is where the brand wants to be, in the consumers memory. But making a memorable ad, doesn't necessarily mean a rise in sales.

increase. NFC is popular and augmented reality applications such as Blippar have been on the rise. This increase in digital activity has paved the way for innovating and better ways to communicate, which adheres to the change in consumer. The problem here is incorporate a digital strategy that sticks to brand values and relevant to the consumer, in a channel where the consumer harbours more power to build, interpret messages, influence others, access information and destroy a brand.

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Advertising and...

...Marketing

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Sometimes marketing needs marketing. The importance of such a entity from the client side sometimes is not stressed enough. It is unfortunate when campaigns do not work out because of the wrong objectives being pushed through from an inexperienced or uncertain marketer. Knowing the business is good, but for a campaign to be really successful the marketer has to be aware of what is wrong with the business from an external and internal point of view. There needs to be deliberation over which is the most important factor to try and fix and how it can be fixed. It is deemed that ‘marketing and communications through innovation produces results, all the rest are costs’, Sue Unerman, Mediacom. This shows the importance of careful planning beforehand in order to ensure effectiveness of campaigns. Advertising has always walked hand in hand with marketing and is sometimes seen as the thing that solves marketing problems. In most consumers’ minds it is the exact same thing and is difficult to differentiate exactly where marketing ends and advertising begins.. Advertising although effective, does not cure the business problem; this should be something that the client does themselves. What advertising does is bring these issues to light. It makes the business transparent and could in fact hinder the brand, if promises made are not met through actual consumer experiences with the brand. Osgood and Schramm model (1954) depicts feedback and interpretation by association. It means that consumers were then associating their own interpretations of what a brand said to how a brand actually acted. This is where the trust issue comes from, businesses using advertising to over promise things they under deliver. Marketers should look to address business problems first by establishing objectives which can aid in the succession of a marketing campaign through advertising, only if advertising is needed to help reach those objectives. Advertisers also need to stop pretending that it can solve any problem, instead since the industry is heading towards brand consultancy as well as experiential propositions, it should not fear to be constructive in detailing to the client exactly what they think about them. This will help build a layer of understanding of each of the participants role. By scrutinising the most effective way to fix these problems a better strategy can be put in place in order to resolve the business problem. This means that there will be a better relationship with advertisers and marketers if the correct plan is already assessed before the implementation of the brief.

Advertising and...

...Branding

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‘The theory of brand building is couched within marketing theory. A new dominant

logic has emerged , shifting from tangible to intangible resources, frozen value to

created value and from transactions to relationships.’

- De Chernatony (2010 pg.6)

‘Not everything that counts can be counted and not everything that can be counted

counts’.

- Edge & Milligan (2009 pg.150)

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Brand – what was a brand is now being redefined every day, Rapp (2012), meaning that the need to adapt to the changes in the consumer is essential now in order to maintain the strength a brand has on maintaining and retaining costumers. Brand communicators shown in De Chernatony (2010) describe how each sense that the consumer harbours has the capability to be touched by a brand. These can also be called touchpoints and the importance of understanding these is exasperated with the move to online as the online presence despite not having physical attributes can still impact on the intangible aspects of a brand. This is important in the establishing of relationships. Branding is important as it builds the personality of the brand and It is the integration of marketing communications that enables a brand to express itself in the form of a declaration of its values. This is shown below in the brand model from Edge & Milligan (2009 pg.16) Essence x Expression x Experience = Brand The essence here is derived from the brand itself, this is the values and promises it wants to implicate means of communication. Experiences are the thing here that is most importance as they aid in forging the final interpretation of the brand, leaving it under speculation. It generate interests, but it can be argued that advertising degrades the people it appeals to by depriving them of their will to choose. After all it is primarily the big brands that enable a push toward experiential marketing, because they can afford to do so. For smaller brands however, to generate such appeal is a costly venture. So is there a unfair advantage? It is no longer the brand that defines what they want to be perceived as instead it is the customer. The disconnect of brand to consumer happens through cognitive dissonance, this occurs when two opposing ideas are put forward that have contrasting results for example when brands do not deliver on their promises depicted in their integrated marketing communications strategy. It then later leads to distrust of a brand and it’s associations. The drive to forming relationships ,as the realisation of the importance of the consumer is established ,can be seen in the JIC ThinkBox recent television ad, depicting the wonders of television advertising. If we look beyond the cognitive and asses the suggested associations with the brand and the consumer, we can see the importance that advertising in this sense believes it plays a part in

We can see the relationship between the three images in the opposite picture of the advert. Harvey (the dog) is TV advertising, clever, intuitive and observing. The toy rabbit is the brand, fragile, cuddly and in the hands of the consumer who is of course depicted as the man. The consumer, easily influenced, persuadable and open to reasoning. What we see here is the association of the metaphorical relationship that advertising has with the brand and the consumer. It labels itself here as something that will convince the consumer not to discard a brand but feed into the brand proposition bad added values

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‘If you peel off the skin, you get

a real sense of what the brand

essence if. Only when you know

and assess your brand essence,

will you establish your brands

purpose’. De Chernatony (2010)

Advertising and...

...The Truth

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What needs to be established here is, whether advertising is in the communications or the entertainment business. It has given itself many names and jargons in order to differentiate from each other but still all do the same thing, moving away from creating awareness to creating experiences. It has been said that the lack of trust in advertising from the perspective of consumers due to past let downs, has made advertising have the sense of make believe. The concept of make believe advertising has led to a need for truth to be incorporated in the industry and this is due to the transparency which digital enables. The print ad opposite is from Dixons, this is an obvious attempt to connect with what they believe consumers believe of them by understanding their perception of the brand and incorporating this as not a negative but as something that can aid in driving in store traffic. The mock effect brings to light how truthful advertising of recognising the limitations of the brand can aid in creating a purpose for the consumer, generating a added value. Transparency enables truth and therefore aids in changing behaviours and beliefs of a consumer as there is more trust established in the relationship. This then helps push through the brand promise and makes it easier for the brand promise to actually be reached, by offering exactly what you say you offer. Helping people act on what the brand is selling. The best way to tell truth would of course be by showing truth. This is why there has been look into experiential marketing with the aim of selling experience rather than using experience to sell. For experiential marketing to work, you have to have an experiential business, this in turn helps to move away from brand promises to brand truths. So, the brand give clear cut proof that they are seen delivering on promises, delivering a service as a brand, beyond the functional value. Means of communications have to reflect the brand, showcase what is actually happening and what the brand is doing through transparent actions. By depicting activity and aiding in the community, the brand gets a purpose in consumers lives, this then drives word of mouth and advocacy through consumer journeys, forming stronger relationships with the brand.

There has been a move away from these old models of communications that have been prevalent in the industry for so long. Agencies and the industry have realised the importance of emotive means of communications, leading to a focus on more emotive forms of communications that harbour associations through the usage of imagery and popular culture. A symbolic reference is more important and substance is more relevant to the interpretation of the message, deploying the importance of meaning. Does sex even sell anymore? APA (2009) doesn’t seem to think so. The problem with truth is how far do you take it. Is honesty the same as being truthful?

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Would Advertising

Like These

Create Trust?

Advertising and...

...The Future

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‘Ideas are the currency of the modern economy. The people that thrive in todays world,

are those that excel at generating, refining and implementing new ideas’.

- The Economist (2010)

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So how can advertising do better at creating campaigns? There have been declarations from different agencies into how knowledge is essential, and being current, assessing current and upcoming trends in order to ensure success, Zenithoptimedia (2012). Therefore, the design of a more effective media plan that targets the proper demographics for an advertising campaign, that is relevant through the use of specific media outlets. Use intelligence to reduce the risk in decision making, this is where research plays a big part in the justification of advertising campaigns. You cant control entirely what consumers think about you, what you can do is improve brand experience and listening to consumers more. This is where the brand has most control, in the experiences the consumers face and this is what consumers base the brand perception on. After all advertising can only be effective if the brand promises expressed are actually delivered. There is not only a push towards relevance of message to a target audience, but relevance to the individual. The move into individualisation may not even deem to be successful, let alone costly. By seeking to speak to individuals, is there a risk of talking to the groups or the mass, as relationships, especially those of people are usually between more than one person. Social identities are just as important as single identities and they play a role in the way we act and interpret brand messages. It needs to look into the trust issue and address it by being more open. No more blocking comments online, or making flashy adverts that don’t give the consumer meaning. Advertisers are great at advertising to the industry as though, they always want to outclass each other, this means sometimes the most important stakeholder in any business, the customer, gets overlooked. The skills that need to be affluent in the industry is empathy for the consumer, a better understanding of their actual wants and needs and also a better understand of the businesses they are representing, this will lead to better strategies that can aid in building and sustaining relationships that influence not only brand loyalty but also brand advocacy. The look into behavioural marketing and experiential will prove to be influential to the next stages of maintaining brand conversations with consumers. The relationships that can be grown and influenced depends on how the brand wants to be perceived and how they maintain this view. Advertising needs to be more appetising to the consumer, educate and entertain, excel in delivering brand experiences, be more focus on establishing an added value to a brand through relationship building. This is all good but will be difficult to assess in effectiveness and it all depends on the brief and the objectives, it aims to achieve. Relationships are good but relate to the intangibles of a business and operate on a more emotive basis but ‘intangibles are difficult to pin down’, Vic Davies (2012) and the need for a better understanding of value beyond monetary is essential for growth of a business.

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Insight

‘Everything is not digital but digital is everything.’, Initials (2012) Despite this the physical touch is essential and still what makes us human, as much as we are involved heavily in digital. There is still a drive towards the high street because of the added value of human interaction given so there should be a push towards staff delivering brand experience to enable retention of customers. After all they are the best form of communication. All aspects of the brand have to incorporate value especially in service brands which have to enabling staff to appreciate the brand values which then ‘should increase the likelihood of them better delivering the brand’, De Chernatony (2010). Advertising, through should help brands realise the importance of understanding how matching consumer and staff needs impact on the brandspere and the personality of the brand. Technology and digital will always play a part in advertising. It is great but not the answer to all questions, especially if it doesn’t solve the business problem. Something new, induces new ways of approaching marketing problems and new ways of talking with consumer. Social networking sites are great right now but even Facebook is slowly deteriorating as the dispute of if it will go the same way as second life where brands were seen as the third wheel in a place where people primarily wanted tom interact with other people, not brands. ‘This is because its real financial value is tied to its marketing value, and Facebook is of very limited value as a marketing tactic’, Marketing week (2012). Right now, all brands think they need a Facebook page even when it is not relevant or affects their target audience, so the agency need to actually detail reasons why not as well as reasons why. Better ways of showing effectiveness need to be developed, to demonstrate once and for all the return on investment of a client. Google will prove to be a friendemy and the development of smart TVs should aid in better ways of communicating with the public whilst showing direct correlation to consumer interaction. Tracking studies, case studies and awards are good in an industry that celebrates itself, but there needs to be accurate measurements against a briefs objectives. Engagement is a word that is mentioned but to define what this actually means and if it leads to interaction and understanding of promotional messages still needs to be assessed. With the development of smart TVs and mobile phones, we could almost possibly be reaching accuracy, but the establishing reasoning behind why people purchase will always be difficult to pin point as people are always going to be complex and have the tendency, especially in a postmodern society to make purchasing decision on a whim, emotion or even subconscious motives or even whatever they feel at that moment. Despite this, advertising has before and can always have the role of speaking to these customers, in different forms of communications. There just needs to be more innovation and a push towards better relationships, moving more towards the collaboration of the brand, the agency and the consumer.

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References APA (2009) Sex Doesn’t Sell [Online] Available: http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/aca-3-4-200.pdf [Accessed 5th May 2012] Baskin S, J. Unerman, S (2012)Tell The Truth: Honesty Is Your Most Powerful Marketing Tool. Texas: BenBella Books. Bradley, N. (2010) Market Research: Tools and Techniques. 2nd Ed. New York: Oxford University Press. De Chernatony, L. (2010) From Brand Vision to Brand Evaluation: The Strategic Process of Growing and Strengthening Brands. London: Elsevier Ltd

Edge, J. Milligan, A. (2009) Don’t F**k/Mess with the Logo: The Straight-Talkers Bible Of Branding. Harlow: Pearsons Education LTD. Hegarty, J (2011) Hegarty On Advertising: Turning Intelligence Into Magic. London: Thames & Hudson Ltd. Independent (2008) The Politics of Advertising [Online] Available: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/the-politics-of-advertising-how-might-a-2009-election-campaign-shape-up-1213851.html [Accessed 16th May 2012] Marketing week (2012) Facebook Bubble Burst [Online] Available: http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/opinion/facebooks-104bn-bubble-is-set-to-burst/4001842.article [Accessed 5th May 2012] Wright, R (2000) Advertising. Essex: Pearsons Education LTD.

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