What are the Trends in
Advertising from a Consumer’s Perspective?
What catches the consumer’s eye today? is the
big question. Gone are the days where consumers would watch a handful of
advertisements on TV and hear some on the radio. Media today is being
flooded by advertisements, campaigns, offers, schemes, voting lines.
Every day the consumer is bombarded with a thousand products, ideas and
each seller is constantly innovating to increase sales, viewership and
revenue.
Following are some trends from a
consumer’s perspective -
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The Human Quotient -
Most advertisements you see
nowadays are based on the emotional quotient- the silent tear, the
bond with parents, grand parents etc. The idea I am assuming is to
trigger the emotional feelings so that a consumer gets emotionally
attached to a product or identifies with the product. This is a
growing trend even for products which would not otherwise show a
family sequence or some emotional drama eg - a bank only focuses on
consumer relationships and how a bank cares and nurtures its
customers. Telecom is getting increasingly dependent on the
emotional linkage.
Example -
Airtel is focusing on relationships
whether it is a husband wife fighting and making up through sms or a
couple fighting over a call and the guy recharging his phone through
sms.
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Increasingly value added
services are being advertised with an aid of different human
relationships.
Growth
of the Voice of the Youth - The
voice of the youth is increasingly being portrayed in ads whether it is
anti corruption or youth leaders. Voice of the youth is identified by
lots of youngsters and even the older generation as even in reality the
youth leaders are being spoken about and being looked up to. Example- HT
Ad – Its time now, and Tata tea (jaago re campaign).
Health aspect in F &
B - Health has become a primary
focus. With the current lifestyles and schedules, no one has any time to
exercise or play a sport, therefore increasingly the focus of today’s
consumer is moving to health food products. Oils such as soya bean and
olive oil, 100% fruit juices, brown rice, organic food are the mantra’s
of today. So, most companies are packaging their products focusing on
the health quotient to attract consumers. For example: Saffola
Gold , Arise rice.
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Common
consumer featured in advertisements
Consumers are slowly getting
disillusioned with the perfect face, the size zero figure in the
perfect house. It is hard to believe that such a babe thinks Harpic
is the best toilet cleaner and uses it regularly too!! It takes a
whale of an imagination to actually visualize her cleaning her
bathroom and looking like that!!
Therefore the new
modus of ads is to portray a common face, someone with who a
consumer can identify with and someone who can be believed and
trusted.
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A product survey or
a competition between different products are filmed and made to
be appear as if a consumer reaction was randomly shot. It is believable
as the people in the advertisements and their reactions are very
candid and appear real. Example
of some of the advertisements are: Harpic
- where a Tv channel anchor goes to a consumer’s house
and challenges that by using harpic her toilet will be sparkling
and no prizes for guessing, he is right!!!Similar is the plan for
Rin - safedi (whiteness) challenge.
Oil of Olay shows women in their
40’s speak very naturally (without a script) on their aging symptoms
and how by using Oil of Olay, they look younger and fresher.
New Methods -
A new trend is to involve
consumers in product development. Pepsi co is going this way and has
launched a campaign asking consumers to share their favorite flavors
which if selected by a panel will be launched as a new flavor for lays
chips. Currently, four new flavours have been selected and viewers are
asked to vote for their favourite in order to select one. The winner
would have the flavor named after him or her and shall also be getting
prizes. This is a novel concept and quite appeals to the consumer and is
really a brilliant marketing tactics to increase sales. Promotion on
bikes, distribution of freebies, contests, voting are the order of the
day.
Thematic or
indirect Advertisements -
What I mean is that no longer
only a car is shown in a car ad or only a soap is shown in a soap ad. It
is all about indirect ads and drawing parallels to products and
concepts.
Example: the ad
for the car –Xylo shows women who
are sleek, and who enjoy sleeping and travelling in the car, the ad
seeks to draw parallels such as the smooth curves the model is similar
to xylo and it is as sparky and great. This is a growing trend and most
often a consumer does not know what is the ad all about till the end.
Often he/ she cannot relate the product to the concept and advertisers
should be beware of this and be very wary when resorting to this method.
Trends of
promoting Websites/ Ventures through Advertisements -
It is no longer only about product advertisements, a large share of ad
space is for non product promotions. Ventures like educational
institutions, websites such as e bay etc. are regularly advertising and
is evoking a lot of interest in the common consumer.
Contributed By : Lubinisha Saha
lubinisha@gmail.com
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