Keeping the faith (2)

And there is much research to support this argument - but it presupposes you are running the right advertising in the first place; and without the research spend in development, pretesting, and tracking, how can you be reassured that you have the right advertising?

Throughout the 25 years I have been in research in the region it has always fascinated me how rarely agencies have been asked this question. Accountability rarely seems to surface. In fact I have always felt that there is a dual standard operating here somewhere. It has always amazed me how ready clients have been to spend an extra few $100,000 on the media budget or even shooting a new ad, but have been relatively reluctant to spend a few $1,000 researching the likely effectiveness of the next campaign concept.

Historically in the Middle East ad agencies and specialist media buying units have prepared media plans on data that few of the stakeholders actually have much faith in. Certainly not the clients. I shudder to think how much money - millions of dollars - has been mis-spent in media budgets in this time. The ad agencies have done very little to improve the situation. Some would argue it is not in their best interests to do so, and anyway, as I've suggested, so few clients appear to hold them accountable.

From time to time there have been calls for a drastic improvement in the authenticity of audience and readership measurement data in the region. Just recently Committees for such action have been formed again. Déjà vu? This time they say it's going to be different. Let's hope so and that this time all parties are more committed and the much needed improvements follow.

And what about some objective or at least research-based means of measuring the creative? Doubts about the quality of creative in advertising in the Middle East is another old chestnut - which has also recently risen to the surface again.

It is a fact of life that not all ads are created equal. Yet, also rarely in my 25 years' experience have I heard of an ad agency actually being held accountable for the quality of their creative. If only a small proportion of all the wasted media budgets had been invested in ad development or pretesting. After all, if you do not get the ad right in the first place then how much you spend on the media budget is unlikely to make much difference.

When faced with calls for pretesting, ad agencies often claim that research kills creativity. What the agencies actually mean is that research sometimes kills off creative campaign concepts they hoped to persuade their clients to use. But what does creativity count for if the advertisement is not going to work with the intended target audience?

In 1995 in the USA Professor John Philip Jones published the results of a research study using 'single source' data i.e. he tracked a sample of 2,000 households over 2 years for their daily TV watching and fmcg purchases of 78 advertised brands over the following 7 days. Something we would not be able to do here in the Gulf ; we recently relaunched our Household Panel in Saudi Arabia, but there has been no investment so far anywhere in the region in the TV meters necessary for the Prof. Jones study. (As referred to earlier, maybe that is about to change.)

Prof. Jones's study showed that -


• for one in every 5 ads the brand almost doubled its share of market

• for two in every 5 ads there was a noticeable effect of +12 to +30% market share for these brands

• for one in every 5 ads there was no measurable effect in brand share

and


• for one in every 5 ads the effect was actually negative i.e. households exposed to this ad actually bought less of these brands over the next 7 days than households who had not seen the ad.

In summary: in 60% of cases the advertisers benefited from advertising: 20% of advertisers might as well have not bothered - and saved the money they spent in production and media exposure: while 20% spent money, and actually lost even more money as a result of advertising.

Of course our markets might be different. We simply don't know. No one has funded such a study anywhere in the region in the past 25 years.

In fact as I have pointed out it would be much more difficult to do so in our markets. We now have the Household Panel in Saudi to capture purchase records - our second attempt at launching such a product, the first failed because of insufficient client support - but no one has as yet invested in the TV meters also needed for 'single source' data.

Until such resources are available, and research proves otherwise, my argument is that impartial, unbiased feedback from the people the ad is addressing must often (40% of the time ?) be a lot better than the hunches of clients and/or their ad agencies. Experience also tells me so.

After all, the people creating the ads, the agencies and their clients, have either been professionally trained in the art and language of advertising, or they know the product intimately. Both can prevent one from seeing the forest from the trees. The people for whom the ad is being created are not from the same worlds. Isn't it just simple common sense to make sure upfront that the target audience understands the intended message? And isn't there also a benefit in knowing whether or not one has an effective ad : if only to help settle the differences of opinion which often exist between the client and ad agency.

Who knows, perhaps just the suggestion that the creative will be pretested may encourage a better effort from the ad agency in the first place. As I've said accountability is a rarely used word in our markets. So much so that in my experience asking an agency for the creative rationale behind the ad concept has often been met with a blank stare.

'Brands and branding are the key to marketing success.'
- Dr. Hans-Willi Schroiff
VP Business Intelligence
HENKEL

It is advertising's job to present the brand message to the intended audience. Let us never underestimate the challenge that represents. Brands are very sophisticated things. Above all else, brands are relationships. They represent a kind of a treaty or contract of trust and expectations with the consumer. And these expectations or needs may differ consumer by consumer in the market overall.

A very complex scenario. Especially as markets are dynamic. Society is always changing and therefore consumers' expectations are always shifting. Brands therefore need constant attention and updating as consumer expectations change.

One could be complacent and argue that changes in society are very slow. That is undoubtedly true, if only because changes in society are need-based and needs change very slowly. But as any marketing primer will tell you there is a difference between needs - and wants. And wants, i.e. how needs are satisfied, change much more quickly - and may be stimulated or accelerated by competitive marketing strategies. So brand owners must stay always vigilant, if only to wants.

To be first with a competitive advantage they should be proactively seeking ways to stay one step ahead, ideally predicting changing wants and needs and being first to evaluate the opportunities new trends will represent. Hence, I would argue that before we look at the advertising budget, we first need to ask whether we are prepared to compromise our MR spend and therefore the flow of the most essential information we have i.e. what drives our brand - our understanding of the brand relationships which will form the platform of a well founded advertising campaign.

Most commonly in this region such compromises take the form of not pretesting ideas for ad campaigns : cutting MR budgets : tying the research budget in as a percentage of a reducing gross income or bottom line : or even just failing to adjust annually for the effect of inflation.

There is much evidence now to show that consumer expectations in the GCC markets nowadays are undergoing some very fundamental changes. (See our study The Arab As Consumer, 2001.) Most observers now agree that there is a growing trend towards more individualism evident in all the GCC populations. This is an emergent trend - and therefore a nervous, uncertain time for many of these people. Psychologically many will be looking, perhaps unconsciously, for reassurance and support, help with a growing sense of self identity, help to say who they want to be in this brave new world. And amongst other things they will turn to the brands in their lives to help them make a statement about who they want to be, both as individuals and as members of these more fragmented, more mature societies.

There is therefore a real opportunity out there right now for the brand owners who keep the faith, research before they advertise - put some real investment behind their brands in the research which supports them - and always judge the research they are offered on the basis of value, and not price alone.