Advertising and its meaning to people

Ideally, it would make marketers and consumers very comfortable if consumers enjoyed watching or listening to advertisements. Unfortunately, consumers do not as a way of life consume advertising. Their relationship with the media they select and enjoy is one that has not provided room for advertising. Advertising breaks are a nuisance to many viewers. They are intrusive. They are not enjoyed or welcomed by viewers. In most cases, advertising brings messages, symbols and images that are not necessarily agreed upon between the advertisers and the viewers. It is a one-way form of communication. A lack of understanding of the targeted audience makes this communication meaningless, at worst, impossible. Relevance has to be sought by advertisers and marketers at all times. The advertisement has to be good enough and culturally understood for it to be watched and enjoyed. The repetition of advertisements that fail to connect with the targeted audiences become a waste of marketing and advertising budgets, as people take a break, run to the kitchen, bathroom or simply switch to another channel.

This approach has done great harm to brands across product categories. Unfortunately, if the need to communicate brands effectively grows brands and profit is important, advertisers and marketers will have to understand the fundamental importance of cultural diversity in advertising and marketing.

There is a greater need to celebrate and create awareness in the cultural diversity of the people South Africa. After all South Africans become richer when different cultural groups have the opportunity to appreciate the different traditions, arts, languages, expressions, symbols, religions and values that form the heritage for its entire people.

How does advertising work?

This is a questioned that has over the years bedevilled many marketers and advertisers. Researchers and social scientists have looked into this question and great strides have been made in trying to find answers that could be to the benefit of marketers, advertisers and the people whom these messages and images are targeted at.

Generally, how advertising works is studied from the psychological perspective, at the individual level. The comparison of cultures should be studied from the anthropological perspective, at the collective. The study of how international advertising works needs the multidisciplinary perspective, using findings of effectiveness at the individual level and taking into account how culture influences the individual behaviour of members of different countries.¹

The problems associated with communicating to people in diverse cultures present one of the great creative challenges in advertising. One advertising executive puts it bluntly: “International advertising is almost universally dreadful mostly because people don’t understand language and culture.”² 

It cannot be doubted that marketers and advertisers have over many years looked into finding the basic elements that make for good or great advertising. Whilst advertising agencies can fluff  around as they search for that “Big Idea” and hopefully win awards and be recognised by their peers and by equally less informed clients, serious companies know that the success in creating winning advertising, that is in the eyes of the consumers or purchasers of their brands, can build brands and increase profit. It is only unfortunate that marketers and advertisers have mainly gone the route of looking into their own cultural make-up to determine what will be effective for people who share different cultures.

How communication works in general and, related to that, how advertising works, is culture-bound. In one culture, advertising is persuasive by nature, in another it is meant to build trust between companies and consumers. Thus, models of one culture cannot be projected to other cultures.³

Jeremy Bullmore, a veteran and guru of more than 33 years experience in the advertising industry writes: Much of the world’s most original and effective advertising was quite incomprehensible except to those to whom it was addressed…Do not believe the old saying that good advertising speaks for itself. Good advertising speaks for itself only to those for whom it is intended. Much good advertising speaks quite deliberately in code, or uses a secret language, and excludes the rest of us. That’s one of the reasons why it’s good.⁴   

The Tastic Rice billboard shown below would be an example of the type of advertising referred to by Jeremy Bullmore. The words Tjo, tjo, tjo! carry more meaning for people that are familiar with the use of this type of language. These words are often said in some urban areas when someone is amazed by something that is shocking, exciting, and this case, very tasty. These are words that would influence those that understand the meaning to crave for Tastic Rice and want to taste it. The word Ayeye! is well understood some of the readers of the Sowetan Sunday World and those, mainly celebrities, that are afraid of being in the gossip sections of the newspaper. These are words that would also encourage or entice those that enjoy the latest gossip to purchase the newspaper and read about the scandalous or expose the famous.

 

The view that the utilisation of pictures or images in advertising would ensure that the messages lie in the images and therefore create easy understanding and the interpretation of the advertising commercial is also flawed. The evidence emerging out of various research findings, including that of the Brandpilgrimage is increasingly supporting the fact that the same image can be interpreted and understood differently by people from different cultural groups.

The Most Nutritious Maize Meal, might represent and send the message in some communities or households the fact that Ace Maize Meal gives more strength to do the impossible; however in other communities the message would be laughed at and seen as joke, something not to be believed. For the sake of the brand, one would hope that it does result in distrust for the brand and negatively impact in sales volumes. Many communities view advertising as a form of communication between the maker of the product and the people that consume that product. It is expected that this communication should be based on facts and honesty. People or consumers in the target market, particularly where the communication applies to an important item such as the type of food that is consumed regularly and as a vital part their lives, would expect brands to deliver on the promises that are made.    

Advertising clutter and the future of brands

People are subjected to all forms of noise pollution and numerous images that impact on their lives on a daily

basis. Human beings are aware that the only way of survival in this environment is to have the ability to close

up and ignore most sounds and pictures. It can be said that there appears to be a total siege by advertisers and

marketers of the environment within which people live. The picture if more dire in the urban townships of

South Africa. Every clean wall that is located near a busy road has been taken over by painted images of a particular brand or message from some company that is trying to sell a product or service.    

Brands that are going to survive this cluttered environment will have to find innovative ways of establishing that connection with existing and new consumers. Ad agencies and marketing companies are constantly looking at new ways of ensuring that the brands they manage have the edge and can be noticed above competing brands.

Ad agencies have also realised that they cannot survive in the business if they continued to behave like traditional agencies, accepting that clients and brands are searching for integrated marketing tools to reach consumers.  

The influence of advertising in the lives of people

Whilst it can be said that people do not as a matter of life sit and consume advertising, but there is no doubt that there are many commercials that have gained favour with audiences, regardless of whether these audiences fall within the intended target audiences or not. There are commercials that have succeeded in having families run towards their televisions to watch that special commercial or increase the volumes on the radio and concentrate so that they can enjoy that special radio commercial every time these are shown on television or played on radio. These are the commercials that have found those ever-sought points of relevance in their messaging and imaging. But this relevance can only occur when advertisers and clients have more informed knowledge and understanding of the environment, the homes and communities in which these commercials are directed to. Failure to be informed and simply take these messages and images for granted could be too costly for brands and the damages are usually very difficult, if not impossible, to fix after the facts. For example, Vodacom, South Africa’s Leading Cellular Network, placed a gigantic billboard on the side of a tall building of the Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto, with the message, You’ve come To play. We’ve come to Bury. It transpired that the building on which this massive billboard was placed houses two HIV and AIDS clinics and a Peri-natal HIV Research Unit. The message was understood to mean that the hospital has no problems with burying people after they have visited the hospital healthcare services. According to an article written by Jillian Green in The Star newspaper, Vodacom had intended that this specific billboard be placed at another place and not at the hospital.

The language of communicating

Banks have made major strides in brining their services to all communities of South Africa, even in the remotest of places in South Africa. But these institutions must be responsive to the cultures and nuances of the environments in which they find themselves. The head office prescribed cultures of the banks or their corporate cultures continue to make them inaccessible and intimidating for local communities. A number of banks are making the effort to effectively reach many diverse communities of South Africa.

FNB (First National Bank) has created advertising campaigns that attempts to speak to the languages and cultures of the African customers. This is commendable since it allows for the previously marginalised communities to realise that the bank is making attempts at effectively communicating with them.     

I lived in a home in Tembisa, next to Kempton Park in Gauteng. I was fascinated by little Gugu mimicking the voices-over in a television advertisement that uses IsiZulu and subtitles in English. If this advertisement makes sense to the 5 years old Gugu, is it well understood by her parents? If their joy in hearing her say the words in the advertisement flawlessly is anything to go by, they probably also understand the message in the advertisement.

The choice of race in advertising commercials

There is a view within the advertising and marketing industries that black African people actually prefer to see advertisements or commercials with white instead of black characters. This thinking is fuelled by the misconception that black African people associate white people as forbearers of progress, quality and the divine knowledge of the finer things in life. Whilst this interpretation could be a result of the kind of black Africans white people have known and interacted with over long periods of time, but this view is also fed by the subconscious belief that many black African people have about the perceived superiority of white people. There is a proverb in Sesotho that says: lekgowa ke sethlare sa Mosotho, directly translated as: a white person is a black person’s medicine, meaning that it will take a white person to sort out a black African person. It has to be accepted that some black Africans have managed to perpetuate their own subjugation, oppression and suppression, whilst others have inherently provided the white race a platform to stand on and feel superior. If a domestic worker or gardener expresses disappointment with his or her own cultural group, the white master has read this as a general distrust or lack of respect black African people have for one another. This goes a long way to explain the reason behind the dominating faces of white people in commercials and generally in the advertising and marketing industries. This unfortunately has and continues to alienate the majority of black African people that never find commercials with characters that resemble their shapes, colour and behaviour.

A number of social scientists and politicians have described the negative view some black African people have about themselves as “self hate”. The extent of this concern is explained by the frequency of such discussions in shebeens, taxis, buses, trains, stokvels, offices, factory floors and other community gathering places. 80% of the respondents in a focus group reluctantly accepted that in a number of times in their lives have opted to be served by a white person than a black African person, more so when they were in situations where it involved high financial risks. The same number of respondents say that at the time of this crucial decision making moment, they some how felt that the white person would be more knowledgeable about the product under consideration and the other options that might be available for the person parting with their hard earned financial resources. For example, in the farming communities of Groblersdal, in Limpopo, many of the farm workers and other people working in shops in the small town believe that, in their experience, black Africans in the area would more likely do anything that a white person commands them to do, even if they would suffer their possessions at times their lives. The Ndebele people have a phrase that says, jama ,  ungaragiragi ilikhuwa liku rithe, uzaragaraga u robe ihorlosi yelikhu, meaning that be still and do not kick around, so that the white person can beat you up, you will kick wildly and break the white person’s watch. Implying that there will be greater trouble if kicking results in the breaking of the watch, therefore it is safer to remain still and accept the beating.

There are white people in the marketing and advertising industry that genuinely believe that black African people aspire to be white or at least have adopted the values and ways of life of their white counterparts. The fact that some black African people have adopted western fashion, etiquette, language and aspects of that culture has convinced many whites that black African people have discarded anything that associates them with being black Africans in favour of adopted a western way of life.     

The choice of characters for advertising commercials

It would not be believable to use celebrities in advertising commercials and place them in roles that do fit with what the targeted audiences know of the featured celebrity. If a brand or company selects to use an actor that plays the role of a lawyer in a soapie such as Generations or Isidingo and feature that celebrity in an advertising commercial playing the role of a fireman or paramedic, the message or brand will not be trusted. This does not ignore the fact that celebrities, radio and television presenters, musicians, models, soccer and other sports heroes are loved and easily identified with in commercials. But for greater relevance to target audiences, they should be featured in commercials that are related to the roles they play in their real lives. Featuring Doctor Khumalo, the famous soccer legend, in a commercial where he plays the role of medical doctor or passenger airline pilot would be laughable and unbelievable. When household members see their favourite soccer star in magazines or television, they see Doctor 16V Khumalo, the soccer star. His glory days playing for Kaizer Chiefs or Bafana Bafana would come to the mind of most people.

Woolworths launched a campaign showcasing the fashion and the types of clothes designs available in their stores. Various models, musicians, soccer stars and actors were featured in the campaign. The inserts used during the campaign were of high quality paper and bold imagery. This campaign was run with the positioning statement, making a difference for 75 years. The inserts featured the musician Zamajobe and that fact that she was born in Vosloorus, with supporting line, The right to be proud.  Miss SA 2005, born in Sebokeng, with a supporting line, The right to be bold. Tanya Fourie, International model born in Cape Town, The right to make a statement. Mary-Anne Barlow actress raised in Johannesburg, The right to choose. Lucas Radebe soccer star born in Soweto, The right to lead. Roland Schoeman Olympic medallist and world record holder born in Pretoria, The right to shine.  These are very influential and admired achievers in the country and the communities that they come from. The use of such celebrities does enhance the campaign and the quality of the clothes available from Woolworths stores. It is a brilliant campaign, but only up to a point where targeted people do believe that these super-achievers do purchase or indeed wear clothing from Woolworths. Woolworths also ran another campaign with younger models, with the message freedom to be positioning or pay-off-line the difference. This campaign comes at a time in South Africa wherein young people continue to become vocal about the need to move forward as free young people who do not see race as an issue that has to define their future in this country. The image of a white man lovingly holding a black African young woman is not common for the older members of the various communities of South Africa. It would be taboo in many Afrikaans speaking communities and unforeseen or unbelievable for many in black African communities. Mixed marriages and relationships have taken place in the past in South Africa, but with great negative pressure from communities. To this day, mixed relationships are not a “natural” phenomenon in South Africa.   

The role played by Joe Mafela, Sdumo, in the Nedbank personal loans commercial is appropriate for the actor. Sdumo is known to have played roles in movies and television that fits the role that he plays in the Nedbank commercial. This is an advertising commercial that benefits from the history and the achievements of the character or celebrity. The Nedbank commercial is enhanced and made believable, because it is appropriate and in-tune with the perceived image of the character. The choice of setting for the Nedbank commercial is also similar to the television setting of the sitcom that he is an actor in. 89% of the respondents in a focus group believe that even in real life, Sdumo or Joe Mafela has been unable, that is in the minds of people, to dissociate himself from the screen characters that he plays.