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Cement Industry Essay In today’s world of rapidly increasing competition, firms are selling goods and services through a variety of direct and indirect channels. In mass advertising, marketers are exploring new forms of communication, such as experimental, entertainment and viral marketing. Creative Advertising is the means to break clutter in such new forms it helps Differentiation, Recognition, Recall and Persuasion in an effective manner. Creativity in advertising involves disciplined thinking and requires the creative person to think differently within specific constraints. The advertisement project is a complex exercise that that consumes a lot of effort, cost and time from different experts in the team which requires every part of the project process to be well-studied, documented and well planned. A lot of research needs to get conducted about the audience, product and media of the advertisement. Increasing sales is not the only goal of the advertising decision and could also involve introducing a new product, delivering the product message, etc. The most important aspect of the creative advertising process is the idea and the creative concept. Advertisers use different ways of thinking via several types of creative strategies to promote publicity, public relations, personal selling and sales promotion. One such creative advertisement campaign is the Vodafone’s ZooZoo ads which caught the fancy of the consumers and helped the company develop its own entity in a splendid and innovative manner. The advertising landscape has experienced dramatic change over the past several years and as the advertising medium gradually shifts to the digital platform, agencies are finding new ways to connect with the customers and build their brands. This media confluence is one of the foremost challenges of creative advertising as the advertisers have to reinvent the mass message model, help consumers tell stories, play in an evolving arena and develop talent with creative vision. INTRODUCTION Advertising has long been viewed as a method of mass promotion in that a single message can reach a large number of people. But, this mass promotion approach presents problems since many exposed to an advertising message may not be within the marketer’s target market, and thus, may be an inefficient use of promotional funds. However, this is changing as new advertising technologies and the emergence of new media outlets offer more options for targeted advertising. Advertising also has a history of being considered a one-way form of marketing communication where the message receiver is not in position to immediately respond to the message. In fact, it is expected that over the next 10-20 years advertising will move away from a one-way communication model and become one that is highly interactive. Another characteristic that may change as advertising evolves is the view that advertising does not stimulate immediate demand for the product advertised. That is, customers cannot quickly purchase a product they see advertised. But as more media outlets allow customers to interact with the messages being delivered the ability of advertising to quickly stimulate demand will improve. It is estimated that worldwide spending on advertising exceeds (US) $400 billion. This level of spending supports thousands of companies and millions of jobs. In fact, in many countries most media outlets, such as television, radio and newspapers, would not be in business without revenue generated through the sale of advertising. Most organizations, large and small, that rely on marketing to create customer interest are engaged in consistent use of advertising to help meet marketing objectives. However not every advertisement achieves its objective as the consumer is subjected to innumerable ads daily in newspapers, television, billboards, websites, etc. Therefore those Ads which catch customer’s attention have something unique which makes then interesting and unforgettable. The majority of copywriters agree that creativity is extremely important in ads and it usually works more effectively in catching the interest of people/customer than all other techniques put together. The originality of the idea or ad makes it more recognizable and is able to beat the competition. Creativity is the marriage of imagination and execution, thinking and doing. Creativity in the context of todays world is underpinned by the fact that almost anything is possible given technology and platform advances. Technology is changing behavior, but ideas and how we tell the stories are everything – this is how we influence behavior. Its about the idea and the story, not simply the devices or technologies, which create great and enduring ideas and are the hallmark of Creative Advertisements. ABOUT ADVERTISING Definition of Advertising: Advertising is defined differently by different authorities and the institutions dealing with the subject of advertising. The American Marketing Association defines advertising as â€Å"the placement of announcements and persuasive messages in time or space purchased in any of the mass media by business firms, nonprofit organizations, government agencies, and individuals who seek to inform and/ or persuade members of a particular target market or audience about their products, services, organizations, or ideas.† Purpose of Advertising: Through advertising, one can disseminate the message very effectively. Within few seconds the message can be disseminated to masses. The basic purpose of advertising for commercial advertisers is to identify and differentiate one product from another in order to persuade the consumer to buy that product in preference to another. Non-commercial advertisers (political parties, interest groups, religious organizations and governmental agencies) use advertising to educate people for their cause. Major Decisions before committing for any advertising campaign: Like other area of marketing management, decision-making is necessary in advertising. This relates to 5Ms mission, money, message, media and measurement. Mission: What are the advertisement objectives? Decision in regard to mission is a basic one as other decisions are to be adjusted as per the mission or objective or purpose of advertising decided. It can be: Introduction of new product or service, or information about new features, repositioning of the brand or just reminder campaigns etc. Money: How much money to be spent. Advertising is costly and companies have to spend billions of dollars for this purpose. Advertising objectives determine the required budget. Message: What is the message to be sent? Positive results depend on message. It should be attractive and meaningful. It’s the job of the creative copywriters and artists. Message can be communicated by written words, pictures, slogans and so on. Media: What kind of media to be used. Selection of media depends upon cost, coverage, effectiveness and budget in hand. Wrong decision on media may make advertising ineffective and money spent will be wasted. The steps here are deciding on desired Reach, Frequency and Impact. Measure: How are the results to be determined? Evaluation of advertisement in order to judge its effectiveness. The post advertising sale is one major consideration. The other consideration is visibility of the advertisement. Steps involved in influencing customer decision: There is a very famous principle in ad world called as AIDA principle, which describes the steps that a prospective customer goes through before deciding to buy. AIDA stands for A- Awareness, I- Interest, D- desire and A- Action. Awareness Ad should surprise the customer. Interest This is usually where benefit phrases come heavily into play. Desire Third step, customer realizes that product is good and beneficial. Action- The fourth stage occurs when the prospect decides to take Action and become a customer. HISTORY OF ADVERTISING History of ads can be traced back to 3000-4000 BC. There are signs that Romans used to announce gladiator fights by painting on the walls. Egyptians used papyrus to make sales messages and wall posters. Commercial messages and political campaign displays have been found in the ruins of Pompeii and ancient Arabia. Lost and found advertising on papyrus was common in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. Active advertising in print media started in late 19th century. 20th century has witnessed evolution of advertising through various media. The concept of creativity in advertising was not discussed much until the 1960s, when a sea change in the way of producing advertising transformed the field forever. The central feature of this Creative Revolution was that creativity came to be valued over the formulas and research that previously drove the production of ads. Creative teams, a mainstay of nearly all agencies since the 1960s, did not exist prior to that time. The reigning paradigm was reason the why advertising that spoke to consumers in terms of unique selling propositions (USPs). The Creative Revolution changed not only the ground rules for making advertising, but also the kinds of people who were recruited into the business. The preeminence of creativity over formulaic advertising was strongly articulated and the effect was to place creativity before the other services of an advertising agency market research, media analysis, and other support functions. CREATIVE ADVERTISING To really stand out in the crowd, an ad concept has to be really out of the box, something that intrigues an audience or at least make them look twice. There is no second chance at making a good first impression. With both online and offline advertising you only have seconds to catch the attention of your consumers. If that doesn’t happen, your ad campaign is considered a failure. Today’s advertising message must be better planned, more imaginative, more entertaining and more rewarding to customers. Inclusion of creative ideas (original, novel, out of box and useful ideas) in the ad campaign is called creative advertising. Creative advertisements are made not only to sell the product but to entertain the target audience. Creativity in advertising does not arise in a vacuum; it requires a certain degree of both general knowledge and field-specific knowledge. This is clearly true if we think of creativity as a form of innovation – we cannot know what is novel without a sense of what is already known in any area. The ad’s impact depends not only on what it says, but often more important, how it says it execution is decisive and this is the crux of Creative Advertising. TYPES OF CREATIVE STRATEGIES Creative Strategies are used in order to obtain consumer attention and provoke shoppers to purchase or use a specific product. Creative Strategies promote publicity, public relations, personal and sales promotion. Creative strategies are divided into three basic forms: Weak Strategies: Generic and Pre-emptive strategies describe the two weakest forms of advertising that were most popular through the 1940s. A generic strategy gives a product attribution. Consumers arent learning anything new about the product. It enhances the product in no other way. A pre-emptive strategy is a form of advertising that makes a generic claim stronger. Middle Strength Strategies: Unique positioning and Brand Image are the two types. This proves that something about your product is truly unique. This is commonly found when producers take an average product and add a new, unique element to it. In brand image, an advertiser is not trying to create rational thinking. This type of advertising strives to create emotion and give a brand a personality. A common way of doing this is by using a celebrity as a spokesperson. Strong Strategies: Affective and resonance advertising are the two types. Making people feel really good about a product is called affective advertising. This is difficult to do, but often humor and an honest character can make affective advertising possible. Resonance advertising is a way of identifying with consumers. If an advertiser can create a campaign that certain target markets identify with, then resonance advertising has been achieved. FUNDAMENTALS OF CREATIVE ADVERTISING The Fundamentals of Creative Advertising provides an understanding of how to create and produce ad campaigns. The focus is on the various media available, the thinking and planning behind the campaign, the creative brief, and the creative solution and execution of the ad campaign. Market research underpins virtually all of the decisions made at the campaign planning stage. Through market research both the client and the agency are better able to understand the marketplace, identify and profile the target audience, test their creative ideas, choose the most appropriate media form and, finally, evaluate the success of the campaign. The client will normally provide basic and initial research about the target market and audience in the client brief, which is then supplemented by research undertaken by the agency. Having received the brief from the client, the creative ad team must now take all the knowledge that they have and use it to develop a campaign that will meet the requirements of the brief. They need to look closely at all the information they have been given and understand what it really means. The creative ad team must also identify any gaps in their knowledge that can be filled through market research. The Creative Brief: Role of the brief: A creative ad team will transform a client brief into a creative brief. Together they will develop an advertising strategy based on the information supplied in the client brief and the supplementary research undertaken. The campaign strategy is then articulated in the creative brief, which is approved by the client. Developing the brief: Before the creative brief can be formulated, the objectives of the advertising campaign have to be identified, together with a strategy for achieving those objectives. It is important to remember that the advertising medium itself is only one part of the communication strategy, which in turn is part of the overall marketing strategy. As such, the broader marketing strategy has to be considered before the creative brief can be formulated. The Creative Concept: The creative team: At the heart of every successful advertising campaign is the creative concept. The task of having an original concept, and a range of ideas allied to this concept, is in the hands of the creative team. The best creative teams have the capacity to be both original and fluent when it comes to generating such ideas. In other words, it is not just about having a novel idea†¦it’s about having lots of them! Research and Familiarization: The way the creative brief is written and its content can be an important trigger for your ideas and will also provide an important point of focus in terms of advertising objectives; who you are talking to, what you want to say to them, and how you want them to respond. For this reason it is best to keep referring back to the brief every so often during the creative process to make sure that you are staying on track. Idea Generation (Ideation): The secret to having good ideas is to have lots of ideas to choose from. The more ideas, the greater the chance, that there will be few ‘winners’ among them. Quantity equals quality, so don’t hold back and pre-judge your ideas, just have lots of them – the wilder the better! Wild ideas may be unusable in their raw state, but they can provide a springboard to a better idea as they can help you to see things from a different perspective. Once the basic campaign concept for the advertisement has been formulated and agreed by the client, it’s down to the creative team to coordinate its execution. In traditional creative partnerships, the copywriter will write any body copy so that the message is conveyed in a punchy and memorable way, using the correct tone of voice to evoke the right mood or provoke the desired reaction. The art director will be responsible for ‘crafting’ the advertisements – making sure that they look visually strong and have a consistency of layout and composition across the campaign. Crucially, they must also exude and reflect the brand values. EXAMPLE OF A CREATIVE ADVERTISING CAMPAIGN Creative ad campaigns instill a sense of awe and marvel in the people they target. They cause us to stand back and wonder, â€Å"How did the brand even come up with that?† When a brand gets an ad campaign right, they stand out amongst the myriad of typical, hackneyed, and lackluster ads that bombard us daily. Just like the Vodafone ZooZoo ads. Vodafone is known for its unique advertisement campaign such as pug, happy to help service and the â€Å"ZooZoo† advertisement campaign. As Vodafone was a new brand in India, it had a challenging task to develop its own entity. The previous name of this Indian company was associated with a pug. Vodafone decided to come with a new persona for itself, so the people of the country can associate it with the company. The company came with a brilliant persona for itself, which was very apt for it, The â€Å"ZooZoo†. With 25 such commercials planned, releasing one a day, to sustain interest till the end of the IPL SEASON 2.HaritNagpal, chief marketing officer, Vodafone India explains, â€Å"†¦the brand was in need of an idea that would work doubly hard, as it was planning to spend some four months’ worth of marketing monies in one month†¦Ã¢â‚¬  ZooZoo are advertisement characters promoted by Vodafone during the Indian Premier League Season 2. OM experimented with several characters and finally â€Å"ZooZoo† was born as a completely Indian concept. The name had to be catchy, funny and memorable, though the name actually never pops up in any of the communication. Zoozoos are white creatures with ballooned bodies and egg heads who were used to promote various value added services of Vodafone. Each ad used a story which was enacted by the Zoozoos. These ads though look animated are actually real humans in the ZooZoo costumes. The ZooZoo advertisements were created in South Africa by Ogilvy Mather, an international advertising, marketing, and public relations agency and Nirvana Films. Ogilvy Mather were asked by Vodafone to create a series of 3D advertisements which could be aired each day during the IPL Season 2. They spent near Rs. 30 million to make these advertisements. The campaign created the buzz both in the traditional media as well as in social networking sites like Face book and Twitter and video sharing website, YouTube. Zoozoos are part of a unique and innovative advertisement strategy aimed at outdoing the strategies of Vodafone’s competitors. By the means of ZooZoo, Vodafone has tried to represent an image of the urban common man who is the main drive force behind the increased usage of telecom VAS services in the tele-communication industry. Through ZooZoo characters they have tried to showcase how the various offers by Vodafone can be useful for an urban common man. What Vodafone did was they projected the usage of their VAS services through various advertisements based on different themes as per the product (VAS) that they were offering. The various services offered by Vodafone such as chota recharge, group SMS service, busy alert service, fashion tips, recharge anywhere, bhakti songs, stock alert, voice SMS etc were shown to the viewers not by normal advertisement ways but through some funny catchy ZooZoo ads which were successful in immediately drawing the attention of urban population including all age groups. Each of the advertisement was specific to one particular VAS service revolved around the same to make the customer understand the service. Because of the uniqueness attractiveness of these Zoozoos, Vodafone was able to draw the attention of the audiences quickly towards these ads which became soon very popular thus the VAS offered by Vodafone. The success of ZooZoo is the success of minimalism and simplicity. As a part of a unique and innovative advertisement strategy which was being tried for the first time in India, the ZooZoo also generated tremendous mass appeal through the internet. The ZooZoo campaign has been able to generate a lot of curiosity among the viewers. The fan club of ZooZoo touched to several million and various interactive quizzes came up in these days as evident in the wallpapers and screensavers in the cell phones. All these transformed into a great viral marketing event. Another important advantage is that it involves very low cost in the implementation of the ZooZoo campaign and this amount as compared with the benefits it generated was infinitesimal. There is no celebrity required as a brand ambassador, unlike the campaigns being run by its competitors like Airtel and Idea, which resulted in a dual advantage. ZooZoo advertisements helped Vodafone increase its customer base by 3.8 % in the 1st quarter of 2010. The reason behind the Zoozoos becoming so famous is its familiarity with the cartoons which people used to watch as kids and invokes pleasant memories and fantastical world people used to live as children. It also does not produce bias of any kind (class, creed, religion etc) and hence this advertising strategy of Vodafone has been able to capture the imagination of millions across the country. The ad campaigns have given Vodafone a new look that will go a long way in further improving its brand image. The commercials have hit the Indian market like storm and will now probably go into history as one of the most brilliant advertising idea for the industry and the results it achieved are instructive for marketers and advertising agencies. Vodafone has benefited immensely from this campaign as the Zoozoos have become a brand in themselves. The creativity in the advertisement campaign caught the attention and fancy of the consumers, aroused curiosity, told stories and made people retell the story. In their remarks about the brand, the campaign achieved a remarkable success. We are all familiar with the standard measures of advertising effectiveness memorability, message comprehension, persuasion and likeability. However, getting people to talk and discuss the advertising gives it a multiplier effect that helps to reach and impact more people than before. As the media gets more cluttered and expensive and viewers get cynical about the message, there is a need for advertising to be spoken about to make the brand and it’s messaging more impactful. It is not just traditional 360 degrees integrated communication by using multiple media to bombard the consumers with the message. Rather effective advertisement is all about developing creative content that naturally lends itself into being talked about and thus gets present in multiple media. CREATIVE ADVERTISING IN DIGITAL WORLD As consumers spend more time online, they have more control over traditional advertising vehicles, and chose to create and share their own content. As a result, some advertisers are evolving to a confluence culture where traditional methods of work must adapt to embrace the new reality of interactive content, emerging media, and production/consumption methods. Confluence culture thus suggests that agencies as units and the advertising profession as a whole face numerous challenges to their traditional ways of operation as they grow and morph and react to cultural shifts, particularly when it comes to creativity and ideas. Interactive creativity is built around engagement, and it recognizes that people are inherently social and look to create and maintain relations not only with other people but also with brands. Brand stories, both in traditional media and online, provide ways for advertisers to engage consumers more deeply with their brands. An engagement perspective changes the view of a brand from a transactional perspective, in which a brand addresses a transient need, to an interactional perspective, by which the brand story becomes part of a persons own story about him or herself. The act of consuming media online has become synonymous with the act of producing media. Many online users are not content with accessing and viewing or listening to content from established sources; rather, they want to interact with message content by adding to it or repurposing it for new and different uses. Some traditionally closed models of information distribution (e.g., Web pages) therefore have given way to new, open models. These new systems, including the social media sites Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube, enable consumers to distribute content that they create. Interactive creativity therefore involves providing consumers with the tools they need to be creative themselves. To promote its new line of coffees, McDonalds developed a site where visitors could create their own coffee ring snowflakes. On the CNN site, consumers can select news headlines to make into t-shirts, branded with the CNN logo. In each of these settings, the brand becomes the base for the creative product, and the time spent on the sites during the creation process allows brand registration to occur. Participation suggests that brand stories actually are created and disseminated in a partnership between advertiser and consumer. Leaders in the confluence culture will be those creative strategists who have an understanding of all aspects of the advertising process and use creative skills to solve brand problems. These individuals-nimble, digital, and prepared for new challenges will be able to consider the stories people tell, craft resonant brand narratives, and help clients use these stories to connect people to brands in new and exciting ways. Agencies embracing the creative strategist approach will be poised to provide outstanding messages for clients, protect against economic downturns as clients embrace the value of such messages, and find even more innovative ways to communicate. CONCLUSION Creative Advertising comes with its own set of challenges, particularly when it comes to harnessing the power of creativity so that the message gets conveyed in an appropriate manner keeping the holistic vision of the brand into context. The real success of an ad campaign for its creativity can be measured by evaluating the sophistication level of below parameters: * Time and Space consumed * Superiority over competition * Distinguish Products * Influence customers * Was it Eye Catchy * Relate with the Values of Target Audiences Advertising is an exciting field and the industry is constantly changing to provide new challenges and creative problems to solve. The true test of creativity is the ability to adapt to change, and consistently find new and original solutions. Advertising is likely to play a crucial role in marketing products and services for the foreseeable future, but the opportunities offered by new technology and media provide a much broader canvas for advertisers and creative teams. REFERENCES 1. Marketing Management – Kotler, Keller, Koshy, Jha 2. Advertising in Rural India: Language, Marketing Communication, and Consumerism Bhatia 3. What is Advertising? Advertising Society Review 6, no. 3 (2005) 4. The fundamentals of Creative Advertising by Ken Burtenshaw, Nick Mahon Caronine Banfot 5. Inclusive Branding by Klaus Schmidt Chris Ludlon. 6. Zenith International Journal of Business Economics Research 7. Rediff.com Business – The Magic of the Zoozoos 8. Wikipedia – Creative Strategies