The emergence of a new Arab father figure in advertising - Part 1

The response is the consumer's comprehension of and response to the ad. The end result desired by every marketer is brand purchase. But every advertiser also wants to understand what drives consumer attention and how an ad helps the brand bond with the consumer.

Matters are complicated by the 'attitudinal heterogeneity' of Arab consumers recently documented in TNS Arab As Consumer. Consumers are not similar. What interests one may be irrelevant for another. How does one gauge an ad's appeal and diagnose the individual elements making up the total communication?

Various ad development tools are available. Our advertiser should look for one which combines rich, qualitative insights with reliable and valid quantitative data. This is because a consumer essentially makes two types of responses to an ad communication:


• Emotional: a consumer's spontaneous comments. Made without much rationalization or thought given to the technicalities. They reflect the most salient and top of mind reactions generated by a communication. Questioning should be spontaneous and undirected. Indicative of thoughts, ideas and feelings towards the communication.


• Rational: structured, scaled responses on specific aspects of the communication. Consumers 'consciously' think and rationalize before answering. Questioning is structured and a numeric rating scale can be used. Answers reflect rational consumer responses to attributes encompassing the nature of the creative content, message, relevance etc.

We have conducted many ad tests using such a qualitative and quantitative approach. This article is an attempt to present one of our learnings and illustrate the changing Saudi society with respect to advertising and brand communications - and specifically the potential of a new emerging Arab father figure.

A client in the GCC approached us to help develop a new ad for a food product at the end of 2002. The brand was number 3 in a market dominated by the leader with a 40+% share. The client's ad attempted to create an emotional bond with the consumer, positioning the brand as being good for someone you love. The ad had high visual impact and a lot of focus on the visual appeal of the product and pack.

Two thirds of the ad was devoted to such visuals and product led messages. The balance consisted of simple family scenes. The main cast was a mother and her two children preparing and sharing a meal made from the product. The father was very much in the background.

The ad concept animatic scored averagely well in the development phase - something that we and the client were not satisfied with. We wanted to make a big difference, and we needed an ad that was not just passable but one that stood out from the crowd. Quantitative data indicated that the ad passed all threshold scores.

Qualitative comments also suggested the ad would meet minimum performance targets. But was that sufficient? Could we improve the ad and, if so, how?

In the subsequent part of this article we will examine the data and see how this ad was made even more effective.