A belief to be scared of the fact that if the TVC is not aired then sales won’t come!

My article this time will discuss the TVC syndrome that is one of the reasons for the absence of through-the-line communication.

Exotic islands, Petronas Towers, the massage and deli food! Ah not in Pakistan and definitely not on the ground. We need to travel east of Pakistan to have all these. And for that we need to have TVCs to build Awareness!

We don’t want to go to the next step, trial, purchase; they aren’t important. You can’t see them so it doesn’t hurt not to work on them. But when you see huge stocks piling up then you resort to the infamous Trial activity in other words for such brand managers; Brand Activation.

A China Stall outside trade, get a pack get one free, get a pack, throw a dart or spin the wheel of fortune and yet get another pack and we are done!

Brand building on ground is almost non-existent; the plethora of mobile advertisement vans has firstly taken the rates up and secondly made the scenario bland by homogenizing the experience. A box on top of a truck’s bed with 5 sides showing the same visual. Why isn’t there any ambient branding? Why aren’t touch points being explored to see where the consumer is?

Why do all the 48 vans in the city park at boat basin? Why can’t Molty Foam’s Van have a transparent box and has a couple of kids jumping on the mattress and the unit is placed in furniture market? I am sure it will be a sight to incite!

Why couldn’t Nestle Cerelac show re-run of their program on the vans?

Why can’t these vans park and transform into mobile activation units and engage the consumer in an interactive manner with their brand offering?

Now let us get to the interesting part of the article.

Brand Manager, “Listen man, time has come, budgets are limited, sales haven’t achieved their target and consumer isn’t choosing us over competition. We need a basket of ideas”

Strategy guy, “Ok but why are the budgets and sales low? Why isn’t the consumer choosing us over competitor?”

Brand Manager, “Ahem, Cough, Sniff, see basically the thing is that, we had our communication a while back on ATL, we made a commercial in various countries and it was a 50 seconder, we took channel branding and accumulated lots of GRPS and we have achieved the TOM level. We spent quite some money on ATL and now with that done we want to have some activation done”

Strategy guy, “Ok, so what do we link our activation with, can we afford to give some ATL support for the consumer push for our activation? What is the concept of your upcoming 3^rd TVC of the year so that we can build the idea around it?”

Brand Manager, “Hmmm you see the thing is, that we cannot share the concept with you at this time and you just do our activation don’t worry about the TVC, we have to do it and we will do it”

My fellow marketers, this is where the deadlock is, the thinking, the understanding needs to be refined, ATL, BTL, Media and Brand they all are one team!

It all needs to be synergized for maximum effect. We need to accept that now people don’t have time to watch 50 second copies. They need promos that tell them how brand is activated. Or else the brand is just dormant and sitting on the shelf!

The confidence in each other comes from the fact that there is a long way to go for the Activation Agency to appear as a structured unit rather than being considered as general Vendors.

The “Agency on Record” concept needs to be established between brands. The time is not far when foreign players will enter the local industry and use their international muscle to get local work.

It is not written in some Holy book that you need to have one thematic copy a year and then season and occasion specific copies all talking about the great brand.

Why can’t tactical copies focusing on product features build the brand?

Why can’t activation or a mix of activation and ATL make the brand successful?

For these questions and problems to be addressed, marketers need to sit down and come out of the Thailand Massage Syndrome and focus on building the brand rather than TVCs that change faces and locations but talks about the same brand.

The telecom war is amazing for three parties; Directors, creative and media agency and the Media providers.

Damn it, Say it all, the smart call, aur sunao all these are contributing and heating up the ad scene.

Einstein in the class room, then in the boxing match fighting over 40 paisa?

Does the consumer care?

Phulleeeaasseeee! Have mercy!

Proper brand experience needs to be executed to the consumer.

Just think for a moment, every 10^th day there is a new Ad, are you expecting the consumer to change their connection every 10^th day?

This is just a war between the brand division and the agencies with their counterparts. The irony is that the amount of job switching on the brand and the agency side is more than the consumer switching your connection. Ouch!

Let’s have mercy on Telecom till next time, let’s turn to the beverage category.

Two great activations came out in the last quarter, 1. Minute Maid by the Coca cola Company clap clap!

Amazing TVC, supported by Radio and almost equally supported by ambient branding through the orange illuminated bottles hanging at various spots throughout the country and stall operations that were properly linked to the brand rather than a pasted FLEX on a China stall.

Good 360 Degree communication.

The other good activation is Energile’s devotion to ingrain soccer in the youth of Pakistan. Pulling in brand like Nike and having soccer tournaments around the city for the cool boys really cuts in well. But a question is Energile doing well now? I hope and pray for my friend in charge of Energile!

In the last page you saw me playing the devil’s advocate between the agency and the client. Now my support will be more towards the client and the discussion will revolve around the areas where the agency lacks in providing the quality required for successful activations.

Starting from the truth, I would say that most of the so called Activation agencies are more of an Activity Management companies.

Ideas limited to Mobile Activation Units, Trade activity, Mall stall setup and School activity have become general. They are not in any way a differentiating factor for the brand. The modalities are pretty simple and they can be handled by any client’s in-house activation or event department.

Let’s see a dialogue between the agency guy and the brand man!

Brand man, “We need to have a brand activation that talks about the brand essence and brings out the emotional and functional attributes of the brand”

Agency guy, “No problem, we have stalls, kiosk and uniforms from the mall operation last year. Let’s use those that will save the cost, you can give us the artwork of your Thematic TVC or if you say we can use the SKIN we used as the backdrop for the School program”

Brand Man, “Hmmm, but how will we emotionally link with our consumer”

Agency Guy, “See, we will tell our brand ambassadors to give the brief to the consumer on how our brand can help them grow and be healthy”

Brand Man, “But where is the experience?”

Agency guy, “In the product!”

Brand Man, “We don’t want to sample our brand!”

Agency guy, “Then why will people come to your stall”

Brand Man, “Grrrrrrr I want more ideas!”

This is a typical scenario that the Brand Man faces and in the end it comes down to sampling or bundling it with another product and selling it on discount.

Lack of qualified resources at the Activation agency results in lack of innovation.

Agency on Record, Fixed fee, resource allocation and all other such systems and procedures need to be part of the Activation agency business.

The agencies need to give more than a Vendor based solution and move towards being as a true “Strategic Partners”.

We are yet to see Activations that are on an international level and complete the whole process of Activation a 360 Degree way.

Because in the age of competition and bombardment of messages to the consumer, brand won’t fly if clutter breaking activations aren’t done.

The brand is the bird and brand team and the agency are the broken wings.

Both need to be in sync with each other for a flight to the panacea.

This article helps clarifying the misconception about the scope of Brand Activation and builds on the ways brands can activate themselves in the cluttered waves. The idea is to not only place the brand on ground but to create a brand experience that exhibits the attributes, personality and essence of a brand. This blog was earlier published in ‘Activate’, a Contact Plus Learning Centre Publication

The major stake holders in any successful activation are:

The client (Brand, Sales and activation team)

The advertising agency (Media and creative)

The Activation agency (Strategy, Planning and Execution)

If you notice the above stakeholders involved in devising a communication strategy for activation you will see a visible difference from the conventional ATL advertising model where the only people involved are the brand managers and the creative person from the creative agency.

You go to a mall and a person dressed in clothes that are branded to a certain brand’s color palette gives you a sample of their product; that’s sampling.

You enter a super market and the floor tiles guide you towards the shelf of a certain brand to buy it; that’s Activation pull.

But before I move further I would like to share what brand activation is.

Brand activation is a scientific process of engaging your target market in an interactive manner with efficacy in communication and effectiveness in result to achieve.

More crudely put it is calculated communication or for the people operating in the communication business Activation is Quantitative Communication; measured on variables such as number of contacts, exposure, response, converters as opposed to the ATL terms of reach, frequency.

These variables are the objective for brands to achieve through activation, however the earlier model of advertising also worked on such variables but today in the era of glamour and glitz the only few objectives left for advertising on ATL are to inform, aware, recall. Besides the Consumer Promotions there is not much in advertisements to entice the consumer to make a purchase. Well Shan didn’t make me buy Haleeb or for that matter Viqar Ali Khan didn’t convert me to Warid Zahi.

Now let’s take a look at these variables in detail so as to understand their importance to execute 360 Degree impact activation.

contacts, exposure, response, converters as opposed to the ATL terms of reach, frequency

Any activation is planned keeping in view the realistic objectives, for a certain brand activation could be to make a certain number of consumer contacts. If further augmented the objective also encompasses the kind of response we need from them to our communication and that would ideally result in converted consumers.

Activation are not half baked communication, it is done with the objective in mind to achieve a certain target.

Breaking the clutter with something that is relevant and something that the consumer can relate to is what matters in the world of style, glamour & paparazzi.

In order to take the brand forward we need to come out of our offices and TV sets and go out in the world where we have our consumers in front of us.

Continuing from what I said at the start of my article as to how brands can ideally activate themselves. It is an established fact that today’s consumer is more educated then it was in the yesteryears. Globalization has paved way for choices. The shelf has become cluttered so has the conventional media. The ideal scenario would be to make the consumer try your product, purchase it and convert to loyal consumer.

I am sorry that 45 seconders really don’t give consumers enough reason to go out and try out your product.

However with activation a direct link is created through product trials, sampling, feedback, consumer relationship management takes its role.

Brand activation is more customized for the consumer rather than Meera speaking to the entire nation of beauty inspired females.

Selling the essence of a brand via activation is the real challenge as that is what can be gauged in the long run.

Even today Fair & Lovely ‘Kismet kay Sitaray’ holds a certain link to the thousands of females of our country, Gold Flake movie trailer is expected to return to hundreds of towns and villages all across Pakistan. Walls Canteen Kahani hasn’t been forgotten, Mountain Dew sampling is still recalled as it played a major role in developing the excited, adventurous youth of Pakistan.

With the major chunk of communication budgets shifting from conventional media to Activation is a proof that activation is not only limited to putting up a stall at a mall for a few thousand but it tells that the companies are now going through the lines (TTL) to get to their consumers and retain them. Things are not being left to chances and mistakes as now is the time to Activate!

I will say my goodbye with an example that will hopefully tell the difference between conventional communication and brand activation Difference of ‘driving Ferrari on play station and actually driving it’.

Cheers