Going Back To What Advertising Should Be

From Thomas J Barratt’s Pears Soap slogan to the different varieties we see on different mediums today, advertising was, is and will always be an ever changing, evolving concept that can never be defined absolutely. We can only look at the basis of what it does, which is making a consumer aware of a product and creating a usage desire. Then comes a whole lot of strategy, planning, psychology, tone & manner, design and then it’s all put together. Like all kinds of evolution, though, it is fluid in its scope. It is defined by the world and the way it works and it adapts with the world.

Now, the way advertising is viewed, mainly because everyone needs to do it, is a very ambiguous perception. Some of the novice marketers think they don’t need to understand anything to advertise – they can just slap on any text to any image and the concept will sail. It takes away the beauty of the process and the planning and strategy used and makes people think advertising is easy.

Like many fields before it, technology has improved enough to let the common man participate in the field, but that has led to ad agencies becoming lazy, stagnant and reactive. The client explains everything they want and the agency works on it rather demurely, with a certain air of uncertainty, mixed with their own insecurities about their abilities.

That’s not how advertising was, though. Advertising was about being proactive. It was about the advertisers being viewed as specialists, who were valued. One in a million, instead of a dime a dozen. Advertisers had more freedom to go crazy with their ideas and show clients what creativity is about. Creativity that made clients go, “Wow! I didn’t even think of that!” instead of, “Okay. I got what I asked for. This is good.” The wow factor isn’t present anymore.

That’s exactly what Reverse Advertising focuses on. Taking ideas to the clients that they had no idea they wanted. Like Steve Jobs once said, “It’s not the consumers’ job to figure out what they want”. It’s your job to lead them and show them what can be, if you truly want to stand on top of your field.

Check out www.reverseadvertising.in to know more about this paradigm shift in the approach to advertising.

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Handling a Fashion Brand – Not All Fun And Glamour.

Fashion is a very interesting subject. Depending on the type of client you have and the type of life you’ve lived, fashion can either be the greatest or the worst thing for you. Unfortunately, more often than not, it’s not a great experience in advertising. The problem lies in the fact that the client has a certain expectation from the agency, which is hard to meet. Unless the designers and copywriters are immersed in fashion, it’s hard to sync with the client about what to post and what to do.

In situations like these, it is important for the client to establish a brand manual that clearly states both the design style and the tone of the conversation to be used. It is also important to form a plan before each campaign and make sure the client is okay with it. Sticking to the plan will result in a successful campaign while changing it on a whim will result in a swirling vortex of entropy. This isn’t a good way to go about it and creates problems in the long run.

Finally, there has to be mutual respect between the client and the creative team. The only way to make sure there aren’t arguments is for the client to be open to suggestions (ready to accept creative ideas) and the creative team to understand and implement what the client wants. At Reverse Advertising, we are fortunate to have forged a strong and effective long-term working relationship with one of India’s most renowned couture designers – MahekaMirpuri. Her social campaigns have led not just to appreciation and enquirers, but the sale and repeat purchase too. Check out her Facebook page to know more about how Fashion can be smartly tackled with the audience left asking for more.

Digital Marketing – The New Wave

Originally we had marketing. A product, price, place, promotion.The 4 Ps. The important things to look out for. Marketing was a huge field on its own, with advertising being just a small part of it. Then came digital. Digital changed the scale and scope of marketing entirely, offering a plethora of new media to communicate with one’s audience. Digital, including social media, has changed the way campaigns are planned and executed. Here’s a glimpse into the world of digital marketing:

First off are search engines. Search engines were epitomes of “buy your way to the top” until Google introduced their unique ‘Page Rank’ algorithm and changed everything. A lot of factors had to be considered to get your web page or article ranked high and money was not always one of them.

Along with this came a very important part of digital marketing, which is SEO (Search Engine Optimization). SEO is an n organic (unpaid) way of getting your website rank higher on search engines through keywords, back links, directory listings and relevant content. This also led to SEM (Search Engine Marketing) or PPC (Pay Per Click ads).

Aside from search engines, e-commerce sites have changed the way people shop. Flipkart and Amazon are names that anyone would know, purely because of the marketing that they’ve done and the services they provide – though they don’t own any of the products they ship. This service is very valuable to people and helps improve their lives in many ways – time-saving being the most important.

This also leads to social media marketing and then a more personal method of communication, email marketing. In email marketing, the email sent to the consumer is written in a way that makes it seem like the email was written especially for them, while the same email might be going out to thousands of people. This way of marketing is effective as it makes people think they’re special.

This is just the tip of the iceberg with what can be done with digital, as a medium. At Reverse Advertising, we understand the needs of the audience and target them accordingly, in the best ways possible.

Check us out at www.reverseadvertising.in and we’d love to hear from you!

 

Social Media And Its Impact Today

Let me tell you a little story. There was once a second year college student in Harvard who had a lot of ideas and the ability to create them on a computer screen. This student, one night, decided to write a piece of software that would offer up comparisons of women and asked the user to rate who was more attractive. Dubbed ‘Facemash’ and brought down quickly by the authorities, this site later transformed into a platform we all today know as ‘Facebook’. No one could imagine that the world would be taken by storm through a simple website.

Back when it started, Facebook didn’t have much to it. It was a simple way for college students to connect with each other. Thanks to the power of the Internet, Facebook was open to all and became the method of communicating and interacting with friends, from wherever you were. Facebook continued to grow and is now a Goliath of the social media industry.

Story time again – four people with good technical know how decided to create a program that would send out text messages about your status or thoughts you had. They also decided to try organizing these texts with the help of hashtags, the first of many to do so. Guessed who? Last clue, they decided to limit the characters in the service to 140 characters. People would have to communicate what they wanted within these characters.

It must be obvious now. Twitter is another Goliath of the social media industry. A platform that has become something that the founders never expected to become, Twitter is used by anyone with a sense of humour or someone who wants to make a statement or share a strong opinion. Celebrities interact with their fans on Twitter and sometimes even meet them in real life. As the service kept growing, companies saw merit in using this avenue for their brand to keep in touch with its consumers and we’ve seen some hilarious tweets from companies like Dominos, Oreo and Wendy’s.

These stories show the potential that even a fun or seemingly useless idea might have. These two ideas started off as something small and are now world-changing enterprises. The impact of digital media can never be put into words sufficiently. Digital has taken over our lives in ways that we didn’t know were possible. Everyone is hooked to their phones. Nothing to do?Browse Facebook. Bored? Join a conversation on Twitter. Have a memory? Put it up on Instagram. Shot a video? YouTube is here for you. Having food? Check in at the restaurant!

And it doesn’t stop there. As mentioned earlier, companies have been using social media to reach out to their audiences in innovative and creative ways. They have had tremendous success with the digital medium and have gotten clicks, conversions, footfalls and interaction that they wouldn’t have ever expected. And this is what we do. We get you noticed on the digital space.

Check out www.reverseadvertising.in to know more about how we can help you derive greater mileage out of your social media presence.