Consider for analysis a major marketing tool – the TVC. Whether it creates waves or bombs, five clear winners can be identified straightaway and the brand itself is not always one of these! The first is the ‘talent’, the highly-paid celebrity endorser. The second are the agencies – the creative and the media buying agency. The third is the production house. The fourth, for all those wwwwTVCs shot in foreign locations, is the authority in the foreign country permitting the shoot for a sizeable fee. The fifth are the TV channels airing the TVC.

The brand footing of this bill may or may not come out a winner. Ask the brand team and they will respond with sublime euphoria that no better TVC has ever been produced! On the other hand, ask a cross section of the target audience about their reaction to a particular TVC, and a wide spectrum of responses emanate. Some will have loved it. Others will opine that it was terrible. In between will be still others, with varying shades of appreciation or indifference. Not to be forgotten will be those who will not be able to recall the TVC at all!

However, getting many people to like your TVC, or even winning a trophy for it at the PAS Awards, by no means automatically implies that the TVC has achieved its primary objective – boosting sales and creating brand loyalty.

Look at it another way – as a consumer yourself. To start with, consider when was the last time a TVC deeply moved you to the point of you deciding to definitely purchase the brand advertised at the first opportunity? And conversely, consider the number of times a TVC turned you off, even to the point of making you quite disgusted; a point which one reaches especially when forced to watch a TVC repeated ad nauseum; for example, during the course of a four-hour transmission of an international T20 cricket match.

You might say that no single TVC by itself is expected to win over everyone and catalyse brand sales exponentially. Fair enough, but then the question arises whether whatever impact the TVC made, could have been achieved at a far lesser cost, or even by some other means?

The need today is for authentic marketing. In three words, authentic marketing is ‘telling the truth’, something that advertising has forever treated with a generous dose of poetic license. Ironically, ‘tell the truth’ is a fundamental principle of another key arm of marketing – PR, notwithstanding some detractors labeling PR (erroneously) as ‘spin doctoring’.

Consider another question. How many TVCs can you recall as being really credible or persuasive, leaving aside the visual appeal of the exotic foreign locales featured? Can we really relate to the story that is spun? For example, and at the risk of sounding sexist, do women generally, when they are watching a TVC targeting them, focus more on the brand promise being shoved down their throats rather than on the clothes and makeup of the female celebrity endorser in the TVC? Are their minds absorbing the TVC’s call to action? Consider also the fact that for a lot of the products we regularly use, most of us are ‘locked’ into particular brands for years, even generations, and perhaps more so out of habit than out of brand loyalty. So are any of the TVCs we are routinely bombarded with, effective in changing our brand preferences?

These are pertinent questions and if the present style of advertising religiously followed by most brands is just creating recall at best, and fatigue or even revulsion at worst, shouldn’t this mainstay of marketing be critically reviewed and overhauled to be transformed into communication that is more effective with the consumer of today? Of course, this can only happen if advertisers first dispassionately accept that a sea change is indeed needed.

The need today is for authentic marketing. In three words, authentic marketing is ‘telling the truth’, something that advertising has forever treated with a generous dose of poetic license. Ironically, ‘tell the truth’ is a fundamental principle of another key arm of marketing – PR, notwithstanding some detractors labeling PR (erroneously) as ‘spin doctoring’.

Tell the Truth: Honesty is Your Most Powerful Marketing Tool is the loud and clear title of a book on authentic marketing by Sue Unerman and Jonathan Salem Baskin. The question remains whether marketers and advertisers today can accept this reality and then go on to practice it, discarding age-old concepts of creating surreal fantasies? Because today not only are consumers calling their bluff, the regulators are too. Recently Dawn reported that the Competition Commission of Pakistan (CCP) has imposed a penalty of Rs 10 million on P&G for deceptively advertising Safeguard as Pakistan’s number one anti-bacterial soap. The CCP’s ruling was in response to a formal complaint lodged by a leading competitor brand. It was perhaps P&G’s bad luck that it got caught in the net in a sea swarming with deceptive advertisers.

My counseling on authentic marketing can be summed up in six points.

1 Accept unconditionally that today, only authentic marketing will work. Rethink old concepts like ‘aspirational’ advertising and move towards credibly and persuasively (and creatively by all means) telling the truth and towards transparency. Packaged milk brands for instance, have been lambasted in recent times for allegedly mixing harmful adulterants to the milk; an allegation that consumers tend to believe widely, resulting in sales going down. Anyone doing basic research will find out that these allegations are false and misleading, and for solid, verifiable reasons. Yet, packaged milk brands are oddly enough, not proactively and unequivocally declaring their communications and on their product packaging, exactly what additives, permitted by food laws, go into their milk, and for what good reasons. Instead of telling the truth, most brands are just responding reactively to each allegation that surfaces, with denials most of the time – which lack credibility and leave lingering doubts.

2 Accept that reputational damage – often irreversible – can occur in an instance and for any of a bewildering array of causes. And reputational damage, when it occurs and depending on its magnitude, may severely negate the respect, credibility, saliency and brand loyalty created after years of hard marketing effort and spending tens of millions on such efforts.

3 Linked to the above, realise that in the consumers’ buying decision today, besides the usual influencing factors (need, price, availability, appeal, perceived usefulness, loyalty) another definite influencing factor is the image or perception of the brand the consumer has formed. The brand’s advertising certainly plays a vital role in the formation of the perception. Authentic marketing, which creates the positive and credible perception vitally needed, is in the words of Sue Unerman, “rooted in the simple idea that ‘truth sells’.”

4 Perception of a brand cannot be divorced from corporate perception. If a strongly positive corporate perception is built through a meaningful CSR programme for example, the benefit will pass onto the brand as well. CSR is not a marketing arm at all, but it will strengthen corporate and brand reputation.

5 Drop the ‘hard-sell’; the in-your-face, ‘we are the best’ communication. Stop trying to convince people you are better than others. Instead talk transparently and truthfully about yourself and how your brand fulfils a need.

6 Finally, authentic marketing must be about engaging with your audience. And the best marketing tool for audience engagement has to be PR. The golden rule should be to introduce a concept through PR, reinforce the messaging through advertising, and generate consumer action through various promotions – in this order. Reverse the order or start with advertising first, and your messaging will straightaway be seen as the hard sell.

Authentic marketing may not be as glamorous as the ‘fantasy world’ advertising currently largely practiced. But in a world of intense competition and increasingly discerning and critical consumers, long-term brand saliency is best guaranteed by winning consumers’ trust by coming out as honest and fair.

Zohare Ali Shariff is CEO, Asiatic Public Relations Network and blogs at www.bobbhai.com.pk