Campaigns -- the ins and outs, the ups and downs
Campaigns -- the ins and outs, the ups and downs
JAKARTA (JP): Planning the right moment for a product launch,
making an entrance into the marketplace, when conditions are
right, can be crucial. Pt LippoMelco Electronic Indonesia
pinpointed a time of year when two important events coincided.
The company chose February/March, when the Chinese New Year and
the Moslem Lebaran period coincided, to launch a new
refrigerator. They linked the holiday period of festivities with
the idea that refrigerated storage offered the potential for
refreshments for parties.
To potential clients, LippoMelco offered the incentive of a
hospitality offer. A free gift, a tea service, was offered with
each refrigerator. Last year, refrigerators with cans of Coca
Cola inside were offered to customers.
In the area of electronics, where one product can look,
superficially at least, the same as another, there is growing
competition in the market, especially from new products coming in
at low prices. With current refrigerators sales in Indonesia at a
20 percent increase on last year's figure, interest in this
"white goods" item is clearly on the rise. It is important for a
company to distinguish the difference between its brand of
television and another, similar but a lot cheaper model. The
point about after-sales service also has to be made.
Quality can vary enormously and consequently so can price. For
a company like LippoMelco, it is a challenge to convey to the
market the difference between their products and the others.
Quality among the competition will vary enormously. "Indonesian
people are very sensitive about price," promotion and research
manager at LippoMelco, Soeroto Santoso, says.
Launching a new product, campaigning for increased consumer
awareness, or launching a new corporate identity on the market is
a process involving detailed cooperation between client and
advertising agency. From product brief to media placement, the
process of developing an advertising campaign for a "high-end"
product like a refrigerator may take between eight to 10 weeks.
LippoMelco offered this time scale: Product briefing takes
about one week. The subsequent development of a rough
presentation takes between two to three weeks. Correction of the
presentation will take one week.
Approval of corrected final draft presentation will take
another week. What will then follow will be the procedure to
finished artwork -- another two weeks. The process to color
separation takes another seven to 10 days. When this is
completed, it is time to place the advertisement in the media.
That is just half the story. Fifty percent of LippoMelco's
public relations efforts will need to go to developing their
dealer and toko (store) relationships. This has to be very
intensive with a difficult product to sell, such as an
electronics item. So, half of the company's promotional energy is
directed towards dealer relationships, and the other half to
advertising and product awareness among consumers. Only then will
the combined total result amount to product awareness or sales.
"Below the line" (product awareness, excluding sales) in the
field of high-technology goods requires a concentrated effort.
However, a situation can be foreseen, perhaps, when the level of
dealer-oriented relationships will need less cultivating, when
the consumer is better equipped to make comparative decisions
about products with complex technology.
The banking sector is one of the biggest advertisers in
Indonesia. It has a preference for print media, and is among the
top five categories of print media advertisers listed in Media
Guide 1995/96, along with real estate, vehicles, insurance and
tours and travel.
One of these big advertisers is Bank Bali. It has two branches
for publicity -- corporate awareness and product promotion. It
first saw a need for an advertising agency in 1971, when it took
on the name of Bank Bali, changing from Bank Persatuan Dagung
Indonesia. The change involved not only a new name, but a new
logo and a new identity.
The example of Bank Bali, with its 123 branches throughout
Indonesia and two branches abroad, suggests that in this sector
the advertising campaign might proceed in this way: Once the
objectives have been decided on and the target market specified,
the client gets together with the agency for briefing. The agency
will come back with a concept on which the bank will comment. The
agency will make revisions, produce a final proof and then come
up with the final product.
Localizing a product for the Indonesian market is recognized
among advertisers and agencies alike as an important strategy. In
this area, local companies will have strengths over the
international companies in being able to match up with local
taste. "Sometimes, if we want to place an advertisement in the
print media, in an international publication like Business Week
or Time, we deal with agencies that have international links
because they already know what the international public wants,"
Dian Syarief, of Bank Bali, explains.
For Bank Bali, the restriction on the use of English in
advertising lends a further opportunity for being "creative", in
ways to find the match between customers in the local market and
the products and image that they want to sell. It is a "new
chance" to adapt the Indonesia language to a new situation, a
more relevant way of localizing the product for potential buyers,
than by using foreign concepts and language. "Otherwise the
message will not match with the audience", Dian Syarief says.
The advertising agency Cabe Rawit, winner of the industry's
creativity award over several years, came up in interviews with
client companies. This small agency has drawn attention to itself
through clever concepts using the Indonesian language.
Appropriate
To make advertising culturally appropriate is a very sensitive
area. Clients and their agencies must come up with choices for
representations (selecting representative gender, ethnic group,
and class), based not only on an understanding of their history
but also their culture. Even when internationally-known products
are being advertised, it is important to give them a local
accent, to adjust them to the local scene.
A knowledge of the world of myth and legend inhabited by an
advertiser's target group is prerequisite. The dragon, for
example, signifies evil in the European mythologies but has a
good reputation in the mythologies of Asia. A three-headed
species of this beast was once chosen to represent the symptoms
of a flu virus -- sore throat, headache, etc. The medicine
advertised was represented by a figure like St George, the knight
who relieved the dragon of its head, or in this case, heads. This
was not a successful campaign in Asia.
Apart from culturally appropriate advertising, there is the
matter of creating other dimensions, namely the "new luxury
dimension", dimensi kemeyahan baru. Several years ago LippoMelco
introduced a 27 inch television set to the market in Indonesia, a
launch which began with a "customer campaign", enticing the buyer
to make this kind of luxury purchase, outside the scope of their
wants and needs.
It is important to get media placement in advertising
campaigns right. "Now, we have to be a little smarter for
placements," Johny C. Wijaya, marketing manager of LippoMelco,
says. For instance, the media scene was, not so long ago, simple,
but is now complicated by a proliferation of new commercial
television broadcasters. As Wijaya sees it, people are "loyal to
the program, not to the station". A problem in placing
advertisements within popular programming can be this very
abundance of advertisements within commercial breaks.
If there are too many products advertised, or if commercial
breaks are too long, then viewers will turn away from the
intrusion until the program returns. Without regulation to limit
the number or duration of commercial breaks on television, the
advertiser can be disadvantaged. "So, in this case, we need
advice and information from the agency. Top-ranking programs may
be useless for us," Wijaya says.
Media mix is seen as a key to a successful product launch or
advertising campaign, as is the creative aspect. Choice of media
will depend on the target audience. The product services
development division at Bank Bali prefers to use the electronic
media, rather than print, to reach housewives and young people.
A final word on adspend. The money that a company spends on
advertising may be increasing substantially over the years, but
the level of placements may not change much. It can be a matter
of advertising becoming more expensive. For example, LippoMelco's
adspend is "actually increasing very slowly", taking into account
the quantity or frequency of the placement of advertising. The
suggestion here is that figures on the adspend can be misleading,
if these factors, together with currency inflation, are not taken
into account.
Big corporations differ on the option for having in-house
advertising divisions. Some feel that it is an impediment to
creativity. Having in-house advertising can stunt the creativity
of advertisements because, as Santoso of LippMelco (previously
with Matari) suggested "independence, with another view" is
needed.
A number of rapidly developing banking companies, under
pressure from a lot of projects on the go at once, have found
that having their own in-house staff developing concepts and
designs for products and the corporate culture, connects with
their needs. Bank Bali has a small staff, five to six in number,
who are university graduates in design, working in-house
developing designs -- but they do not deal with the media.
They are charged with developing concepts, for staff uniforms,
for the general public image, etc. It is an arrangement that
works well for Bank Bali because they are already working within
the company. They already know the corporate culture, and they
are aware of budget and time constraints. In their experience, it
has been very effective to have people in-house.