MAM
Why unconventional advertising is on the rise
MUMBAI: In May last year, what started as a wager between Virgin Atlantic boss Sir Richard Branson and Air Asia owner Tony Fernandes, ended up with Branson serving drinks on an Air Asia flight, sporting lipstick and a red skirt.
The British billionaire had laid a bet with Fernandes that if his Grand Prix team finished ahead of Fernandes’ team, Fernandes would work as a flight attendant on-board Virgin Atlantic and vice-versa. With the Virgin team losing, Branson had to fulfil his part of the deal.
Not only did the stunt garner world-wide publicity, it helped raise over $300,000 for the charity, Starlight Foundation, supported by both Virgin Australia and Air Asia.
In Germany, Big Pilot’s Watches were attached to the hanging straps of buses ferrying passengers between the airport and airplane to encourage them to try them on.
Closer home, Jet Airways came up with a print ad seven years ago saying, “We’ve Changed”. No sooner, rival Kingfisher Airlines came up with an ad above the Jet one saying, “We made them change!”
All instances go to show that marketers are increasingly adopting unconventional means of advertising. And why not, for given the plethora of options, consumers’ attention spans are only heading south. In such a scenario, advertisers are compelled to come up with ‘out-of-the-box’ ways to get their brands noticed.
Newly-appointed regional head of Posterscope APAC, Haresh Nayak, puts it as: “The ultimate goal of the advertiser is to sell things, but the necessary preliminary goal is to get the attention of the public. Advertisers will go to great lengths to get this attention, as the pay-off for a truly successful advertising campaign can be enormous.”
Of the many triggers for unconventional advertising, Madison Media Sigma COO Vanita Keswani enlists some. “The need to target a niche audience and to avoid spill-over from mass media. The need for a lead brand in a competitive category to add unconventional to conventional to beat the clutter. The need for a small brand which does not have adequate monies to compete in traditional media,” she says.
Big Cinemas’ marketing and sales head Shirish Srivastava adds, “Advertisers and marketers have to use unconventional methods to target consumers at the opportune time and sell them the service at the Zero Moment of Truth. This is where non-traditional, out of the box, clutter-breaking ideas and media come into play. For instance, look at the way in-cinema advertising has evolved in the wake of a rise in multiplexes.”
For example, the HDFC Life ad in cinemas a couple of years ago was played right after the national anthem and this helped the brand get the attention it wanted. Similarly, Piramal Healthcare’s ad for its iSure ovulation kit was plastered across doors, mirrors and hand dryers of washrooms at Big cinemas. This was followed by a feedback camp with two promoters stationed at cinema exits, gathering feedback from women about the activation.
Says Amit Sinha of Piramal Healthcare, “Washroom advertising is effective as it gives you a one-on-one moment of impact for a range of products like i-Sure in the intimate space, while ensuring it is gender-targeted and thus very relevant. We are glad to have chosen BIG Cinemas as one of our media vehicles on this one, since the brand provided us a significant reach to connect with our customers, at the right time.”
Unconventional advertising is often referred to as guerrilla marketing and consists of creative, low-cost marketing methods used by businesses to temporarily promote their products or services. According to Srivastava, “Brands need to search for these convenience factors, create communication, create POS and convenient touch-points to generate business. Like traditional paan shops which have now become mini convenience shops where so many more products are available.”
Nayak recalls an innovation which encouraged immediate action on the part of consumers. The bespoke ad for Skoda Rapid, which was played in theatres, had a patron appear on the screen, take a test drive and return back to his/her seat to continue watching the movie. It created a lot of buzz on YouTube and facebook. HDFC Ergo did the same thing to promote car insurance through mobile.
Sometimes, unconventional media channels are to be found within the traditional ones. For instance, HD and DTH on TV or catching consumers at relevant touch-points like out of home screens or multiplexes or activations or stunts.
Coming to which is better, unconventional or traditional advertising? Media experts say that the biggest risk in unconventional advertising is that the insurgent stunts can flop and ultimately become a PR nightmare. However, smaller businesses don’t run as much risk as most people would just write it off as another failed stunt. There are other risks in unconventional advertising too like misrepresentation of brand image, vague communication creating false rumours about the brand and so on. As Keswani says: “There are risks of not having measurement metrics like traditional media, but then brands need to derive learnings through their own internal research and create measurement criteria for success.”
Brands
Creative Intelligence: Using AI to Predict Which Ads Will Actually Convert
Priyanka Aeron, Director & Co-founder of Thrive Global AI
MUMBAI: In a heavily populated digital landscape, simply being creative with your advertising will not guarantee that your ad will be successful. In fact, brands today are producing more content than ever. However, very little of that results in actual engagement or sales. However, Creative Intelligence, powered by AI, is fundamentally transforming the advertising industry.
Creative Intelligence utilizes data, machine learning, and statistical behavioral insights to analyze and predict how well a creative asset will perform prior to it being published. Therefore, marketers no longer have to rely on either their gut instincts or post-campaign analytics for making informed decisions before production. That said, AI-powered creative intelligence greatly improves results and decreases wasted dollars spent.
Moving Beyond Guesswork
In the past, making ads was a mix of gut feeling, experience, and A/B testing. These methods were useful, but reactive by nature. People have already spent their budgets by the time the results are looked at. AI models can find patterns that are linked to higher engagement and conversion rates by looking at huge datasets. These datasets can include things like past campaign performance, audience behavior, and visual elements like color, composition, and facial expressions. This helps marketers guess which ads will do well even before they go live.
Decoding What Truly Drives Conversions
AI-powered creative intelligence allows for an evaluation of advertisements that is not limited to the basic data but also explores the elements of an effective advertisement through subtle reactions; clarity and directness of the ad message and how well the ad captures audience’s attention in the first three seconds. AI can also provide insights into the successful use of advertisements directed to human faces, which connect through eye contact based on media channels, and how advertisements that utilize shorter but clear calls to action may produce more clicks from certain populations. The insights, provided through AI, provide marketers with the ability to think beyond creating more advertising material and additionally create more effective ad campaigns that actually convert.
Personalization at Scale
Consumers expect relevance more than ever. Irrelevant mass messaging is not going to work in a society inundated with information. Hyper-personalization, using AI, allows companies to create content that suits individual segments within their target markets based on their demographics, interests, and behaviors. Rather than having one single message that aims to reach everyone, brands can have many versions of their messages tailored to each segment within the market. Such flexibility is what makes campaigns successful nowadays.
Faster Iteration, Better Results
Another advantage to using AI in creative decision-making is speed. Companies must improvise because their campaign cycles are shorter than ever before, and having the ability to iterate rapidly is more important than it has ever been. There is no greater way to do this work than through AI, as new technologies give brands the ability to test multiple creative avenues and figure out which ones are working well. This reduces a lot of the testing that companies would otherwise have to do and makes the process faster.
With AI, brands can also make creative changes in real-time during a campaign, allowing the, to make vital decisions and adjust their creatives, rather than waiting out. This allows for faster adaptability, well-tested campaigns and reduced lost ad spend.
The Human-AI Collaboration
Even though AI is capable of performing certain tasks, its purpose is not to eliminate human creativity. Successful campaigns require human collaboration with computer intellect since both complement each other. While computers are capable of dealing with massive amounts of information, discovering patterns, and providing predictions, humans are the one to inject stories and emotions into campaigns.
The Future of Advertising
As the complexity of advertising becomes harder with the passage of time, Creative Intelligence will play a significant role in helping marketers formulate a strategic approach. The yardstick that will set standards for determining whether a marketing firm has fulfilled its responsibilities will be the forecasting of future outcomes, as well as personalized content and optimization of creative elements in real-time. In contrast to the existing scenario where the campaigns remain fixed, these campaigns will be capable of adjusting themselves according to the customer interacting with the brand, as well as other trends on social media channels. This will enable brands to offer customers an engaging experience that will exceed expectations. The biggest hurdle marketers will face will be finding ways to utilize these capabilities without compromising branding and enhancing the creativity of the team involved.
