The crux of the post is marketing effectiveness and how, by not communicating in the language the audience uses every day, the communication is losing its effectiveness and its ability to persuade. “Advertising is not mere communication. It’s persuasion” is a reasoning that’s hard to argue with. The common justification given my marketers are apparently “everyone knows Hindi” and “cost”. I wondered though – can marketers be that callous? Could there be other reasons? A brief thought exercise followed. 

One immediate perspective was the media mix. The brand might want a regional daily for the reach, but use language (English) as a filter to qualify the audience. I have done this in the past, in Kerala, where the English dailies weren’t sufficient to give me the reach. I released an English ad in Malayala Manorama. Another was that its intent was mere presence in print/television (while competitors advertise only on digital) to help it get into the consideration set. Or maybe it was communicating a celebrity association that could work for trust-building and/or a reflection of the brand’s values and personality. In essence, what a brand expects the consumer to register from a communication could be a bunch of things. Thus not using the regional language need not be ignorance or lack of intent, but just a trade-off. Let me attempt an explanation.

But to get there, a step back. Intent is actually a great place to start! The brand’s intent would be based on business factors including, but not limited, to the category and its maturity, the brand’s position in the category, how competitors are using media and what they communicate. All of these also affect the consumer’s decision making process too. 

That decision making process is complex, and hence persuasion is not necessarily a singular thing. Even simplistically, it could be any layer of the basic AIDA marketing model, or recall, or retention! From a communication strategy perspective, there are multiple jobs – flavours of persuasion – to be done. 

Finally, media strategy. In a traditional media – only world, a print/television ad, arguably, was expected to do the heavy lifting across the decision steps, with just the retail promotions/branding, and the physical product as help. But media and consumption experiences are now diverse and fragmented. Even an FMCG brand could provide a digital experience, and use a print/television ad could just be a thought starter that leads to one. The point being the role of the ad. 

But isn’t all this just better with language? Enter the trade-off. With all this background, the usage of local language in persuasion could end up lower in the brand manager’s priorities. The effort of changing language in the larger context vs its impact on the consumer’s decision making. Would the customer really decide against a brand because it did not use the language? If the answer is largely negative, the brand manager might just let it be. 

Do these serve as justifications for all the ads you come across? Not necessarily, the attempt was only alternate perspectives.

A lady in the audience asked a version of the question I wanted to ask. Precisely because digital gives us the capability to target an audience of one, shouldn’t brand communication follow? In other words, shouldn’t all user personas be buyer personas? The speaker stuck to his original point, his contention being that communication needs to be for an audience and not each individual. This is a topic I have spent quite some thinking time on, and have simplified into the 3 points below.

My definition of ‘brand’ is that it is a perception in the mind of the customer.

1. Message: I agree that communication should be focused, but not at an audience. It should be unique to the individual. The tools of traditional media did not allow targeting an audience of one, therefore brands had to go with one messaging that appealed to the largest base – a buyer persona. However, digital allows precision targeting. (hold the “cost of reach” thought) So why shouldn’t the communication be focused? It gives the brand an opportunity to be much more relevant to the customer.
2. Money: The other advantage that digital gives is the ability to test and scale, something that mass media will shy away from. I would probably not advocate 100 different (say) videos for user personas, but between 1 and 100, there could be a 10 or 25. I am reasonably sure that the RoI would work out. Not to mention measurability.
3. Perception: For the longest while, brands have been stuck on consistency. I think that made sense in an un-fragmented media world. Maybe it is still relevant for some aspects of the brand. For example, the visual identity. (Though Google does a great job of killing the argument with its daily play, it’s not for everyone.) But for a while now, I have been advocating cohesion. That’s because while mass media has forced us to think of audiences as a collective, the consumer is really an individual. It is the perception in that individual’s mind that matters. Despite the massive intermingling of thoughts and ideas among minds, I don’t think there is anything as an objective reality. Reality is subjective, but let’s not get philosophical. The individual’s perception of a brand is built based on primary or secondary interactions with the brand. In the case of the latter, I think there are limits to demographic intermingling that could cause dissonant perceptions. Hence the more unique and relevant the message is, the sharper the perception.

To sum it up, here’s my general (there are exceptions) contention. I think brand building and traditional media have been conflated even after pretty much everyone has acknowledged the inevitability of digital media’s final dominance. It’s understandable – after all, segmentation and positioning would be heavily influenced by targeting capabilities. Thus the thinking on brand is still largely dictated by the (message) distribution tools of a previous era. I am not really including the brief blip that was free social media, because I think it’s busy taking its last gasps now. I am also not including random tactical activities.

I have swung completely towards the digital brand building arguments above to show the possibilities. These obviously need to be recast when considering a traditional + digital brand strategy.

Note: I have also kept this to demographic targeting. Psychographic and behavioural targeting add complexity and warrants a separate post.