Varying responses to TV advertising in Riyadh and Jeddah - Part 1

Good ads are creative. They interest viewers and make them feel like watching again. And above all, they enhance brand perceptions, feelings and the consumer-brand relationship.

Of course, the current status of the brand in the market plays a role. One probably should not use the kind of creative ideas designed for strong brands for less well known brands - such ads might succeed in being noticed, but could well fail to enhance brand perceptions. Less well known brands need to communicate rational benefits as well. Consumers need to know what they stand for functionally.

Before starting our analysis, we made some assumptions:

1. Advertising generates a holistic consumer response.
2. Viewers conduct 'selective processing' i.e. they selectively look for and process information that interests them and is important and relevant for them.
3. Responses to any advertising are made up of several factors e.g. encompassing creative aspects, message understanding, brand feelings etc.

We analysed data from more than 50 ad concepts we had tested over the past couple of years in both Riyadh and Jeddah. We classified responses using two main dimensions - Attention and . By Attention, we mean a measure of the creative's ability to hold the viewer's attention and engage his or her involvement (aspects like entertaining, original, like to watch again). Bonding is the ability of the ad to communicate relevant messages and enhance the audience's relationship with the brand (aspects like brand empathy, brand affinity, user identification). We call a combination of these two measures Commitment - respondents who are high on both Attention and Bonding are classified as 'Committed'.

Some interesting findings emerged. But some caution is advised. We should bear in mind that these are just preliminary indications and hypotheses. And advertising being a creative art will not always follow proven scientific formulae.

There was a key similarity across both locations - overall Bonding scores were higher than Attention scores for the majority of ads tested. Additionally, the spontaneous qualitative responses were skewed in favour of brand take out or brand responses rather than creative responses. Viewers were simply saying that there were a lot of product messages and product led aspects in these ads, but there was not much creativity. The messages were appreciated, but perhaps what was lacking was a more impactful way of delivering them.

We will further examine for possible differences in audience responses between the two locations in a follow up article.