Marketing and Public Relations

Oft-asked Questions About Advertising: Part 1

By October 25, 2018 July 18th, 2019 No Comments

This article was originally published with The Manila Times on October 25, 2018.

Could we start by establishing a working definition of advertising?

Advertising is the release of messages directed to a pre-defined target audience. They are well-thought out so the purchased airtime or space is not wasted, and well-wrought so the attention of our target is captured.

What is advertising supposed to do?
Create consent. That is all and that is everything. In the two seconds a billboard requires your attention, in the time a Facebook post runs down your feed, in the lifetime of a TV spot or a photo on Instagram, in the five seconds preceding the YouTube video you’re about to watch, and just right before your hand flips the page of this newspaper, the marketer needs to create consent for his position, product or service, candidate, idea, advocacy.

Could you describe the role of the creative person in creating advertising?
The creative person is a technician. The copywriter is schooled in the technology of preparing, packaging and presenting messages using words. The art director uses visuals and lays everything out in the manner dictated by strategy. The producer is concerned with cinematic language (does it flow well?) and the feasibility of the idea.

What is the hardest part about creating an advertisement?
The part that precedes craft and creation–the strategy. In the agencies I have led, the strategy is primordial, is sworn to, put on a pedestal and regarded as bible. It guides every single aspect of producing a commercial — every word to be used, even the way a particular shot is to be taken. The strategy is labored over until it is clearly defined, until it instructs every facet of marketing.

When is it time to start a new campaign?
That is a research question. When wear-out starts to take effect. A campaign that has been on air too long is, for all practical purposes, furniture. Invisible.

What is the role of celebrities in advertising?
A two-second shot of Michael Jordan in a Gatorade commercial is an excellent use of a celebrity, while 30 seconds of him in a Coke spot isn’t. I prefer that an advertisement tiptoes into the viewer’s bedroom and then whacks him on the head with the message. The viewer must see the message first. The celebrity, the music, the cinematography — all should simply help the message. When people talk about the celebrity in a recent ad, they are seeing the material, and not the message. I call that an “attention-vampire.”

What is the role of humor?
If the punchline has nothing to do with the product, if it does not highlight or add emphasis to the benefit you can derive from the product, then it has no role in the ad.

Is it the same in television advertising?
Same, only more expensive to indulge a writer’s funny bone.

Rosser Reeves said the most dangerous word in advertising is “originality.” What is your reaction to this?

I do not know the context of the statement, but Rosser Reeves was a businessman. And I believe that if you start out looking to create something original, you’re already off-track.

You begin working from the starting blocks, and there are none other than the strategy, or the objective. The freshness of the idea will come from the uniqueness of your proposition.

If you see the business of marketing as precisely that, a business, then the topic of originality recedes to the background. One’s concern is to sell. If one’s sales pitch is derived from the intrinsic values of the product, and if one understands the uniqueness of the market conditions prevailing, then you can not help but be unique or original.

The author is chairman of Estima, an ad agency dedicated to helping local industrialists and causes, and co-founder of Caucus, Inc., a multi-discipline consultancy firm. He can be reached through vpozon@me.com.

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