Ad Firms Get Creative in Asia
Worried that marketing executives at GlaxoSmithKline PLC's Malaysian unit would spurn his idea for a TV advertisement for Oxy, a pimple ointment, Ogilvy & Mather's creative director in Malaysia skipped the usual storyboard pitch and filmed a rough version of his idea -- paying for it out of his own pocket -- to show his client.
In the advertisement, a man wearing a stocking over his head enters a convenience store and looks around furtively. As people around him panic and faint, he points frantically to a tube of Oxy behind the counter -- then throws some money at the assistant and runs out.
"I've worked on the account for almost five years," says Sonal Dabral, managing director and executive creative director in Kuala Lumpur for O&M, a unit of WPP GroupPLC. "The moment I wrote the script I knew it would never see the light of day if we went through the normal process. Companies here tend to play it safe."
But when Glaxo executives saw the film, they loved it, and ran the 30-second spot as part of an e-mail campaign. Last year, it won a gold medal at a regional advertising industry awards event.
The episode shows how ad agencies in Asia are pulling out the stops in their bid to shake off the conservatism ingrained in the region's business community. Companies in Asia are much more cautious than their counterparts in the West when it comes to making ads, partly because they are focused on building up basic product or brand knowledge in developing markets, and also because they are concerned about offending audiences from different cultures.
Even multinational companies in Asia often want to play it safe. The result is a stream of predictable ads, such as soft-lit spots for shampoo that feature women swishing their hair about and smiling into the camera. Attempts to veer from the preferred format are frowned upon, say ad executives. And that makes it tough to market brands that stand out from the crowd.
One multinational mobile-phone company, for example, recently backed out of an ad that O&M Asia-Pacific's regional creative director, Tham Khai Meng, designed for China. It featured Beijing punk-rock band Wild Strawberries performing a rendition of Jimi Hendrix's Foxy Lady.
Mr. Tham had secured the rights to the song, obtained the blessing of Mr. Hendrix's son, and had even signed up Malcolm McLaren, the former manager of 1970s punk band Sex Pistols, to produce the song for the ad. The phone company initially liked the idea, but canned the ad after six months of work. They wanted to tap the youth market, but they decided the punk-rock format was inappropriate for China.
"Clients are getting desperate -- they know they need to do more to differentiate their brands -- but aren't desperate enough to be revolutionaries," says Mr. Tham.
Of course, the point of ads is to sell products. And companies contend that research often shows that the nuts-and-bolts type of ad sells well with Asian consumers.
"Consumers here tend to read advertising quite literally, and even when we test work from Europe against work we do here, the work we do here does better because it has a more linear, rational message to it," says Jeff Orr, regional creative director for U.S. advertising company Grey Worldwide, a unit of Grey Global Group Inc. "Maybe we have more pragmatic consumers."
Then there are different racial groups, even within the same country, who react differently to ads. Before ads run, most clients pay big money to show them to test audiences, and in multiracial Malaysia, the tests routinely produce results that reflect ethnic preferences. "Chinese consumers want a rational message -- how does it work, how much is it -- while Malay consumers fall for a more emotional appeal," says Mr., Orr.
Some companies are taking steps to loosen up. Fast-moving consumer-goods company Procter & Gamble Co., for example, has long been known as a conservative advertiser. That is changing. The company has added a new measure -- watchability -- to its extensive ad-testing procedures.
Sensing the winds of change, ad company Saatchi & Saatchi, which handles several P&G brands and is a unit of Publicis Groupe SA, asked its creative directors in Asia to come up with random sales pitches in February. It was a "do all the work for P&G that you always wanted to do, but never could" sort of call, says Austin Lally, P&G's general manager of marketing for greater China.
Saatchi & Saatchi boiled down the various pitches that were created to about 100 and presented it, unsolicited, to P&G. "We loved it," says Mr. Lally. "When you send the right signal about open-mindedness, and the message that you're open to creativity, it's amazing what comes back."
Companies also don't want to fall foul of censors and waste cash making an ad that regulators will reject. After GlaxoSmithKline saw how successful the Oxy ad was on its e-mail campaign, it applied to Malaysia's censorship board to broadcast it on TV. The board rejected the ad, saying the robbery-like scene in the convenience store was too graphic.
"Advertising is a social barometer, it's a reflection of what society will buy into and what they won't," says Calvin Soh, president and creative director of Fallon Asia. "If you create an environment where risk-taking is not encouraged either at a country level or a company level, and you don't embrace change, then you start playing things safe. Even in your communications."
广告创意努力挣脱亚洲保守枷锁
奥美公司(Ogilvy & Mather)马来西亚的创意总监担心葛兰素史克(GlaxoSmithKline PLC)马来西亚子公司的市场营销经理会否决他的一个Oxy丘疹药膏的电视广告创意，因此他就跳过了向客户介绍广告剧情的步骤，自掏腰包拍了一个粗版广告给客户看。
广告中，一个头套长袜的男子走进便利店，鬼鬼祟祟的东张西望。周围的人吓得晕倒在地，他狂燥地指著柜台后面的一瓶Oxy，随后将钱扔给导购，扬长而去。
奥美吉隆坡的董事总经理兼执行创意总监Sonal Dabral说，"我负责这位客户将近5年，在我写广告剧本的时候，我就知道，如果走正常程序，这一广告将永远不见天日。这里的公司走的是稳妥路线。"奥美是WPP Group PLC的子公司。
但是葛兰素史克的经理人员对这则广告一见倾心，并作为其电子邮件广告攻势的一部分播出了这个30秒的电视广告。去年，这则广告在一个地区广告业评奖中赢得了金奖。
这段小插曲显示亚洲广告公司在不遗余力地为摒弃亚洲商界根深蒂固的保守思想做努力。亚洲公司在制作广告方面远比西方同行谨慎，部分原因是他们集中在发展中国家市场建立基础产品和品牌认知度，另外，他们还担心会得罪来自不同文化背景的受众。
甚至在亚洲的跨国公司也经常奉行稳妥的原则。广告业内人士称，任何偏离稳妥模式的努力往往会招致不满。这样就很难推广出类拔萃的品牌。
例如，一个跨国移动电话公司最近就拒绝了奥美亚太地区创意总监Tham Khai Meng为中国市场设计的一则广告。在广告中，北京朋克摇滚乐队"野草莓"翻唱吉米?亨德里克斯(Jimi Hendrix)的Foxy Lady。
Tham已获得了这首歌的版权，得到了亨德里克斯的儿子的许可，甚至争取到70年代朋克乐队Sex Pistols的前经理马尔科姆?麦克拉伦(Malcolm McLaren)加盟为这则广告制作歌曲。移动电话公司最初还是喜欢这个创意，但广告在经过6个月的制作后被该公司束之高阁。他们想打开年轻人的市场，但是他们认为朋克这种形式不适合中国市场。Tham说，"客户越来越敢于铤而走险，但是还没有到演变为革命的程度。"
这些公司辩解称，研究通常表明简单易懂型广告在亚洲消费者中间颇受欢迎。Grey Worldwide的地区创意总监杰夫?奥尔(Jeff Orr)说，"亚洲消费者倾向于照表面意思理解广告，即便当我们拿欧洲做的广告作品和我们在亚洲的广告作品对比测试消费者的反响时，我们在这里做的广告效果更好，因为它包含更多直观的、理性的讯息。也许这里的消费者更加务实。"Grey Worldwide是Grey Global Group Inc.的一个子公司。
亚洲有不同的种族，甚至在同一个国家之内也都如此，这些人对广告的反应不尽相同。在广告播放之前，大多数客户花费大笔金钱播放这些广告试探观众的反应，在多种族的马来西亚，这些测试的结果往往反映了不同族群受众的偏好。"奥尔说，"华人消费者更接受广告中的理性信息－－商品做何用途，价格几何－－而马来人更倾向于情感诉求类的广告。"
一些公司正采取更宽松的举措。以消费用品公司宝洁公司(Procter & Gamble Co.,又名:宝硷公司)为例，该公司长期以来一直以广告保守著称，这一状况正在改变。该公司已经在其广告测试指标中增加了一项新内容－－可看性。 在感觉到这股变化之风后，盛世广告公司(Saatchi & Saatchi)在2月份要求其亚洲的创意总监们拿出随机的创意想法。盛世是Publicis Groupe SA的子公司，负责宝洁数个品牌的广告。宝洁大中华区营销总经理奥斯汀?拉利(Austin Lally)说，这一要求类似于"为宝洁做所有你一直想做但从未能够做的工作。"
盛世想出了各种各样的大约100个创意，并主动呈现给宝洁。拉利说，"我们非常喜欢，当你传递出思想开放的信号、发出对创意来之不拒的信息，你得到的东西会让你惊奇不已。"
各个公司也不希望在审查问题上栽跟头、浪费金钱制作一则会被监管机构枪毙的广告。在葛兰素史克看到其在电子邮件促销中Oxy广告大获成功之后，它向马来西亚监管当局申请在电视上播放这则广告。监管机构枪毙了这则广告，表示便利店中类似打劫的场景过于直露。
