Advertising: The Five Canons of Recession Communications

She's sceptical about your claims. immune to your softsell. and bored by your testimonials. but how do you make your communications work more effectively for you during a recession? BT showcases the strategies employed by the best advertisers of 1997-98: the Betty winners.

They campaigned their way into her mind. Even as the economy settled into a grim picture of a slowdown-turning-into-a-recession, the smartest of the spenders of the Rs 6,000 crore that corporate India poured into advertising in 1997 stood out for their ability to leave the deepest impression on the unresponsive consciousness of the customer. While the majority responded to their drooping top- and bottom-lines by attacking their advertising budgets-and substituting luxurious lavishness with stark realism in their commercials-the champions of recession advertising showed that a slowdown is not a threat, but an opportunity.

And the most important lesson that emerges from the strategies employed by the winners of the Second Annual Betty Awards-BT's salute to the best advertising of 1997-is this: When The Times Are Good, You Need To Advertise To Stand Apart. When The Times Are Bad, You Need To Advertise To Gain An Unbeatable Advantage. Showing the door to the conventional wisdom of cutting down on both creativity and volume in advertising during a recession, the winners of the Bettys-chosen, as before, on the basis of a 5-city poll of 2,000 consumers covering 7 parameters-have proven that advertising in a recession is an investment, and not a cost.

Or, as Vijay Crishna, 53, the Managing Director of the Rs 658-crore Godrej-GE Appliances, puts it: ''It is a sin for a company to cut down on advertising during a recession. Instead, one needs to invest in it to ensure that customers continue to adopt the same attitude towards the brand as they did before.'' The reason is simple: when she isn't pinching her paise, your customer could love your brand for many reasons: its image, its benefits, or its price equation. But when she switches into a thrift mode, as she must during a recession, your brand must continue to convey the same associations if it doesn't want to drop out of her shopping-basket on account of its suddenly-ephemeral value.

Of course, these recession-beating strategies were deployed in a year when marketers responded by shrinking their adspends in most product-categories. According to the advertising agency Euro-RSCG's data on advertising budgets, as many as 5 out of a randomly-chosen set of 16 categories saw their adspends fall in 1997: audio systems (-22.10 per cent), airlines (-19.10 per cent), automobiles (-54.40 per cent), computers (-19.60 per cent), and financial instruments (-37.50 per cent). By contrast, the growth of adspends in these categories in 1996 over 1995 had been impressive: 21.10 per cent, 26.70 per cent, 52.50 per cent, 172.10 per cent, and 84.40 per cent, respectively. With continuously-increasing advertising tariffs, and the splintering of channels forcing every advertiser to spend more, such a squeeze clearly reflects downsized advertising last year.

But the recession advertisers spent cleverly. Besides changing their media-buying focus-switching to broad time-bands instead of specific programmes when buying time on TV, for instance-they also used the new media opportunities that are springing up: event sponsorship, joint promotions, non-point-of-purchase sampling, roadside media channels like banners and kiosks, and the Net. In fact, events that become talking-points for the media offered a great opportunity for recession advertising. Take the case of the Rs 108.90-crore Consolidated Coffee's promotion for Tata Kaapi coffee, which involved creating the world's largest coffee-cup. Declares Harish Bijoor, 37, Senior General Manager (Marketing), Consolidated Coffee: ''Our calculations show that we would have had to spend Rs 1.60 crore on buying the amount of air-time we got by way of free TV coverage.'' The actual tab: Rs 20 lakh.

For the smartest of the spenders, the pay-off has been higher exposure to the target consumer despite the reduced usage of media. Agrees Sushil Pandit, 35, Vice-President and National Media Director, Contract Advertising (1997-98 billings: Rs 180.17 crore): ''During a recession, it is possible for brands to maintain salience at a lower cost by constantly scouting for new opportunities.'' From established consumer products companies like the Rs 835.22-crore Britannia Industries-ranked 7th on the list of TV advertisers in 1997, with an ad-budget of Rs 24.09 crore, 173 per cent higher than in 1996-to hitherto-marginal players like Parag Sarees-ranked 18th among TV ad-spenders, with a spend of Rs 12.19 crore-the opportunists are using the general cutbacks in media-spend to build their brands strongly. Points out Sainath Iyer, 42, Vice-President, Zee Telefilms: ''Saree brands have burst onto the scene and have been investing heavily on brand-building through satellite TV channels. Other historical low-spenders could follow suit.''

Unlike a boom, your advertising rupee-spent not just on buying media, but also on managerial time and effort besides paying for your adshop's work-must work harder than it ever has. As Harish Manwani, 43, the Marketing Director (Personal Care Products) of the Rs 8,574.90-crore Hindustan Lever Ltd (HLL), points out: ''Advertising is too expensive to be treated either as a tactical tool or a creative experiment. It is an investment, and the 3 criteria for determining the return on your investment are: the competitiveness of your communication, its effectiveness, and its affordability.'' How do you maximise those returns? The triumvirate in the two categories in which the Bettys can be won, TV and Print, offer the benchmarks. Thus, Pepsi, Close-Up, and Coca-Cola-the Top 3 on TV-and BPL TV, Colgate Dental Cream, and Close-Up in print-are embodiments of the strategies that can be used.

Remember, though, that many of the campaigns that blasted their way into the consumer's awareness did so without taking the recession into account. Indeed, the major themes that dominated communications-celebrities as models; story-telling commercials; deconstructed narration; the presentation of the New Man and the New Woman-emerged without the marketers behind them factoring in the slowdown. The contents of these commercials were dictated by compulsions like making the consumer identify with emerging stereotypes, cutting through the media overkill with well-known stars, or, simply, establishing the image and identity of a new brand without reference to the economic context. Admits Ravinder Zutshi, 43, the Vice-President (Sales) of the Rs 400-crore Samsung Electronics: ''We continued to focus on building our brand irrespective of the ups and downs of the marketplace.'' But theirs was not the communication that customised itself for the recession. That strategy was adopted only by a select set of seers who realised the value of acknowledging the slowdown instead of ignoring it. Delving into their-as well as other advertisers'-methods, BT presents the five canons of communications during a recession.

REBUILD YOUR BRAND WITH A NEW EQUATION
When customers aren't shopping for the best price, the brand that advertises discounts may lose its equity, and become associated with a cut-value label. However, during a recession, being the lowest-price player offers a golden opportunity for branding that advertising can capitalise on. From being mere announcements of price-offs, commercials can be used to establish the unique value that the brand offers. The company's gain: a distinctive positioning. Points out Kamini Banga, 44, ceo, Dimensions Consultancy & Qualitative Research: ''This is when big brands can get stronger on the basis of their advertising power.''

Far from falling into the discounted-brand image-trap, the Rs 920-crore Baron International's Akai used its high-decibel advertising, blitzing the customer's awareness with a series of low-cost schemes, to carve out a super-value position for itself. Using the punchline Redefining The Value Of The Rupee, Akai's advertising associated the brand with additional value: the same features, but a lower price; instead of eroded value, stripped-down features, and, therefore, lower price. Cleverly, the media plan envisaged complementary print and tv campaigns: while the former focused on the low-price component of the value equation, the latter conveyed the premium image of the brand. And the messages converged in the customer's perception to create a definitive positioning.

Likewise, the Rs 408-crore Marico Industries, simply and sharply, communicated the low cost of its branded starch, Revive, in its commercials, eschewing all its other USPs. With the competition coming from unbranded products, Marico focused on economy by pointing out that the effective cost of using Revive was Rs 2 per saree.

Similarly, the message sent out by the Rs 624-crore Indian Hotels' Taj Palace Hotel in Delhi for its Indian cuisine restaurant was just as direct: ''The value of the rupee rises dramatically at the Handi.'' With that claim, the advertising effectively converted a discount into a value-offering aimed at the so-called common man, enabling him to enter a category normally beyond his reach. Posits Mohammad Khan, 56, Chairman, Enterprise-Nexus (1997-98 billings: Rs 130.91 crore): ''A recession provides a superb opportunity to establish a value-based positioning.''

USE REMINDERS INSTEAD OF REPEATING THE ENTIRE MESSAGE
That the champs of recession advertising stretch their rupees much further than the others is obvious. But the best advertisers overcome a bigger challenge: using smaller media-spends without lowering the impact of their advertising. For, the price of a drop in sales in response to a withdrawal of advertising can be disastrous in a recession when companies have to sacrifice margins for the sake of volumes. Reasons Rajeev Karwal, 34, the Vice-President (Sales & Marketing) of the Rs 400-crore LG Electronics: ''Advertising costs have gone up while price realisations have come down. To earn similar margins, companies will have to sell larger volumes. So, their advertising has to work that much harder.''

The first-level strategy: snipe at the customer instead of carpet-bombing your way into her consciousness. That's how the Rs 1,000-crore PepsiCo India, for instance, used Pepsi-Cola's Rs 12-crore advertising budget for 1997, cutting down on 30-second commercials, and sprinkling the airwaves liberally, instead, with 10-, and even 5-seconders, using them with greater frequency. Thus, it registered more impressions on the customer's mind even if it wasn't able to spell out its message in full, simply using visual and audio cues to enable viewers to connect to the longer versions of the commercials. The second-level strategy: expand the impact laterally by using other media to reinforce the TV commercials. For Pepsi, that translated into promos and merchandising-caps, bags, mugs, point-of-sale reminders, posters, stickers-built around the Freedom theme which the longer ads portrayed.

Cleverly, the company used the support advertising to achieve interactive, as opposed to just one-way, communications. Explains Vibha Paul Rishi, 34, Vice-President (Marketing), PepsiCo: ''The Freedom offers made the campaign come alive by reaching consumers at a personalised level, something that a TV campaign alone couldn't have done.'' Thus, a lower budget was used as an opportunity for deeper, if not wider, contact with customers. Adds Rajesh Jejurikar, 34, General Manager (Marketing), Marico Industries, who has shifted much of his company's advertising from national to regional channels: ''In a multi-channel scenario, as media space becomes more expensive, brands can cut wastage through channel prioritisation.''

DIVERSIFY THE CHANNELS THROUGH WHICH YOU COMMUNICATE
Inevitably, the recession-hit customer is less disposed than her counterpart in a booming economy to expanding her consumption basket to include new products or brands, or towards replacing tried-and-tested products or brands with unfamiliar ones. In such circumstances, can companies use their advertising to stoke her impulse for experimentation? Indeed they can, provided the communications use the appropriate cues. And, more important, creates what Prem Mehta, 53, the CEO of Ammirati Puris Lintas (1997-98 billings: Rs 451 crore), refers to as a ''complete brand experience.''

The most powerful cue that advertising can offer: the prospect of a benefit that can be validated easily by the customer. Strongly conscious as she is of the need not to waste her budget, the consumer feels more confident by the testability of the proposition. After all, she can easily reject the brand for not having lived upto its objectively-verifiable claim. Even that promise may not be enough to convince the ambivalent; for that, the communications must also offer an opportunity to test the proposition. Adds Asit Mehra, 37, International Client Director, Ammirati Puris Lintas: ''The advertising proposition must be vindicated by the consumer's brand experience. An integrated approach, including sampling, merchandising and testimonials, is enormously effective.''

Applying this principle, HLL turned the advertising for its Clinic All Clear shampoo into a total brand experience. Using conventional communication channels, it advertised its proposition of guaranteeing dandruff-free hair by setting a two-week deadline for the brand to prove its efficacy. And it broadened the interaction by sending Clinic All Clear vans around the cities where the brand was available, presenting detailed demos of ways to clear dandruff problems, using give-away shampoo sachets to establish a connection with the brand. It wasn't just an everyday sampling exercise though. Instead, the idea was to use the live interaction as a form of advertising that breaks through the barriers to hardsell that recession-plagued consumers erect around their consciousness.

INTRIGUE YOUR CONSUMER, DON'T HARANGUE HER
Creativity always slices through the clutter like a hot knife through butter, but never more so than in a recession. That's when conservative companies fall back on rational, reason-to-buy advertising, eschewing imaginativeness in their earnestness. Scoffs Ravi Deshpande, 35, National Creative Director, Contract Advertising: ''While you need to throw obscure subtleties out the window and go for more focused, benefit-oriented advertising, advertisers tend to suddenly rob their ads of quality and charm.'' So, the advertiser who grabs the opportunity by insisting on unorthodox executions even of everyday selling-propositions can win handsomely.

As they try to convince the customer who has second thoughts about every purchase, the recession advertisers are redefining creativity. Instead of using stereotypical weapons of creativity like heartstring-tuggers, SFX, or flamboyantly-constructed scenes-and-situations, the new creative execution sees the message creeping up on the consumer from a tangential direction, almost catching the viewer by surprise. That's what Warner Lambert India used, for instance, for its Chiclets chewing-gum ad, leaving the viewer wondering about the story-line of the patently self-conscious narrative, and about just where the brand fits in. The surprise-end kept the brand alive in the mind.

Another classic example: the Rs 329-crore Pidilite Industries' campaign for Fevicol adhesive. Crafted by Ogilvy & Mather (1997-98 billings: Rs 312.44 crore) for a product whose usage-occasion cannot but be mundane, the advertisements had little to entice customers with. To convince the economy-seeking buyer of the superior bonding-ability of the brand through a rational campaign would be well-nigh impossible. Enter the hen that lays unbreakable eggs, thanks to its diet of Fevicol, helping to brighten the recession-afflicted consumer's mood. Sums up Enterprise-Nexus' Khan: ''Lean times make innovative, creative solutions almost mandatory.''

LET YOUR MESSAGE DO THE TALKING
If you're going to say it out aloud, make sure that you have something to say that the recession-hit consumer will want to listen to. Ask hll's Manwani, who says: ''The most important criterion is that you must have something significant to say, or offer, to your customers.'' And then, fire a barrage of advertising to drive home the idea, virtually pushing the competition off the communication channels. The benefits justify the violence: once a competing brand has been pushed out of the consumer's mindspace, it is difficult for it to claw back into it. And, importantly, since rivals often cannot match large spenders, rupee for rupee, when the going is bad, a powerful message and intensive media-usage can secure a strong lead. Agrees Deepak Roy, 46, the CEO of the Rs 743-crore IDI: ''During difficult times, it becomes that much more important to build brand equity. This year, we will spend 15 per cent more on our advertising.''

That's precisely what HLL did in 1997 for its re-launched toothpaste brand, Pepsodent, spending Rs 39 crore on its advertising in just 3 months, which made it the top-spending brand of the year. The content, although worded deceptively simply, was actually unusual: the challenger was asserting, virtually in as many words, that it was a little better than the champion. After all, the line claiming 102 per cent superiority over other products was a far-from-subtle claim to outperforming the market-leader, the Rs 972.68-crore Colgate-Palmolive's Colgate Dental Cream. Instead of seeking a USP or a definitive rational benefit, Pepsodent simply assaulted the customer's long-standing perception of it as the best toothpaste in the market. And, as Manwani points out: ''To communicate this idea effectively, we had to do it in a burst of advertising rather than in drips.'' Realising the effectiveness of the tactic, it is Colgate-Palmolive that has since then been blitzing the airwaves with counter commercials for its flagship brand. In fact, in a witty rejoinder that strikes at its rival, whose commercial ended with the line Yeh Toothpaste Hai Ya Tendulkar?, Colgate-Palmolive actually used Tendulkar as a celebrity-endorser.

By conventional yardsticks, it would appear to be only the brave who would risk spending more on their advertising in a recession. Actually, it is the wise. No recession is permanent, and the advertiser who capitalises on the lower clutter and better media deals during one can gain a headstart. Confirms R. Sridhar, 45, Executive Director, R.K. Swamy/BBDO (1997-98 billings: Rs 183.25 crore): ''Companies that advertise during a slowdown do better than companies that don't. It is a good time to gain share-of-mind.'' When consumers step up their spending, the champs of recession advertising are the ones they will remember. Thus, to get them to buy your products tomorrow, you must get them to buy into your communications today.

RECESSION ADSPEAK

Mohammad Khan, CEO, Enterprise-Nexus

Lean times tend to accentuate the thrust on delivering more value to the consumer. As advertisers and agencies grapple with this task, it makes innovative, creative solutions almost mandatory. One strategic option that works well is to gun for smaller, and more hard-working, advertising. The idea is to get an impact hugely disproportionate to the cost. For instance, a company that normally uses large print ads can, instead, choose a page with high topicality-the sports page during the World Cup, for instance-and place small ads in strategic positions. The visibility and impact will be far beyond what the cost would normally allow. That's how innovation can pay in advertising during a recession.

Ravi Deshpande, N Creative Director, Contract

A recession implies that the consumer's mood is grim. And it is critical for advertising to offer a glimmer of hope. In effect, excite people even more, and make them smile. Tough times bring the tendency to go for smaller ads although you need to say a lot. While you need to throw obscure subtleties out the window, and go for more focused, benefit-oriented advertising, many advertisers tend to suddenly rob their ads of quality and charm. That's dangerous since you send wrong signals to the customer. So, how you say it is critical during a recession, and the brand's strength must come through in the advertising. Ads must be immensely likeable-not just visible-during a recession.

Kiran Khalap, CEO,
BatesClarion

Advertising in a recession means buying the most expensive real estate in town-the consumer's memory-at a bargain. So, the better you know your consumer, the better your chances of striking the bargain. There is no one creative strategy that can do the job. Indeed, the creative focus must continue to be dictated by the stage of its life-cycle at which the brand is. What helps, however, is research, which provides insights into consumer behaviour during a recession that advertising should address. The opportunity lies in the established fact that, for mature brands, gaining marketshare via advertising is cheaper in a recession. That makes both advertising and the strategies behind it crucial when a recession is under way.