Creativity under siege: Ad-men come to terms with meltdown

Diamond has hitherto been understood as a status symbol. But now, thanks to the meltdown, ad-men are projecting it as an investment option.

It is not just diamonds. A host of other items are now being cast in a new role.

Chandan Nath, the president of Mudra Communications, Ahmedabad, recognises this impact as a brand specific issue rather than category specific.

“The change in content happens to be a brand specific issue. It’s mostly the regional players that can resort to tactical advertising or theme advertising. However, the national players are mostly taking a stand either to respond to the basic need to communicate or postpone it for the time being,” he said.

He added: “Since the bigger boys in the game have long-term objectives and the effect may continue up to a year at the most, they are less likely to change their ‘creatives’. But smaller brands will definitely hold back advertisements and resort to a tactical approach.”

While on one end the downturn has led to a downtrend among smaller players, the rough time is also being looked upon by the bigger players as an opportunity to have a banging effect in the relative absence of competitors.

Sanjay Chakraborthy, Group Director for Brand Services of Triton Communications, Ahmedabad said: “It has become a necessity for every advertiser to mould the content of the advertisements according to the desired product perception that they want to create.” Brand communication, he said, in a larger perspective has not really changed “but a tactical approach is being adopted in the content of the advertisements to bank on the crisis”.

While Chakraborthy gave an example of the ads of Clinical Research courses on a high and marketing on how the crisis can benefit the students in future, Satysh Venugopal, a Senior Copywriter with Ahmedabad-based One Advertising said, “Value is now being concentrated upon.”

“With clients wanting a change in the perception of their products, they are ready to change the taglines and punch lines. A diamond product client with us now wants his product to be projected as an investment option from an earlier luxury item. The content of the advertising hereby is seeing a huge difference,” Venugopal added.

However, with tighter budgets, creativity is out for the smaller brands and information is in. While they have a lot of time for evaluation and smaller budgets, the alternative means of advertising are becoming more organised.

Khantil Mehta, Creative Director, Go Bananas & Init Design studios, a local advertising agency said: “The smaller players now come to us with specified information that they want to give. Creativity is totally out and thereby there is a reshuffling in the ad content. Moreover, as an effect, alternative media like ‘viral videos’ are booming on the Internet and rather getting established as a targeted media.”