Philippines has world’s heaviest ad loads Willy E. Arcilla Inquirer
November 30, 2007
One of the significant implications of the theme of the recently concluded Advertising Congress -- The New Order -- is the need to reduce advertising spending and clutter in the country.
Christopher Prox, managing director of Icon Brand Navigation Group, an integrated marketing firm, revealed in a global study that the Philippines suffers from the longest commercial load per hour of TV programming in the whole world -- 20 minutes, versus the Asian and European averages of 12 minutes, while even the US has been trying to trim down their load from 16 minutes as they realized viewers were getting turned off (judging from the increasing popularity of TiVO, a TV recorder that can skip commercials).
Print and outdoor ads are not exempt either, as Mindshare’s James Chadwick showed that the average Filipino adult is exposed to 1,027 ad messages per week -- also among the highest in the world.
Not surprisingly, the Icon research concluded that the level of unaided advertising awareness and related content recall dropped off precipitously in a directly inverse proportion to an increasing amount of commercial load. If one is to translate these (over)loads into peso revenues, the realization is the Philippines is an economy spending a disproportionate amount of money on advertising -- P150 billion in 2006 alone (only on mass media and excluding immeasurable forms like merchandising and below-the-line promotions and events that can easily double the ad and promo spending to P300 billion based on our rule-of-thumb). The billions of pesos of ad spending in the past decades might be partly responsible for the strong consumptive culture of Filipinos.
Think about the decades of commercial “bomb-ad-ment” that have indoctrinated Filipinos to buy all we can -- eat all you can, bottomless drinks, shop-till-you-drop, 24/7 call-and-text, charge-all-you-can, and now, even fly all you can.
Is it any wonder therefore that the country’s private consumption expenditures constitute the biggest element of its GDP reaching as high as 70 percent? This matches the heavily indebted Americans, first-world economy, but significantly higher than the Asian average. Yet the Philippines’ domestic savings rates and private domestic investments are among the lowest in Asia. This may also explain why families of overseas Filipino workers end up without adequate savings despite years of steady dollar remittances.
The ad congress’ keynote speaker, John Gokongwei, once quipped in a separate occasion, “We are a nation that produces nothing and consumes everything.” If China is known as the “superfactory of the world,” the Philippines must be the “supermarket of the world,” where Filipinos buy virtually everything -- an unsustainable economic development model, and simply unwise.
Filipinos need to spend less and save more, to be more of producers and not just consumers. Unbridled ad spending may also contribute to the country’s worsening culture of materialism, which without proper guidance, can lead to an erosion in morality manifested in envy and covetousness, as shown in dishonesty in school tests and even TV game shows, in national elections and tax declarations. In the extreme, it can also lead to criminality and violence, and even in the rampant graft and corruption of civil servants who aspire for but cannot afford the tempting luxuries from the relentless indoctrination of glamorous ads that goad them to “live up with the Joneses” on their shoestring wages.
It is not enough to say the country needs less media spending however, because advertisers may object if denied their constitutional right to promote their products and services. The reduction in media spending must be accompanied by a dramatic and consistent improvement in the quality and effectiveness of advertising executions. This is what bang-for-the-buck is all about.
Great ideas brought to life in excellent executions will stand out in the crowd and require less media spending; they will influence consumer attitude and drive behavior more effectively and efficiently. Great advertising is not false over promises, as consumers will quickly realize it and penalize us, and neither is great advertising sheer share-of-voice as audiences will zap and tune out.
Excessive advertising is making it increasingly difficult to break through the commercial clutter, which itself becomes rationale for even more media spending. Add to this the common mistakes of wrong brand positioning, off-strategy campaigns or mediocre executions which, by nature will require even more media spending to create any form of marketplace impact, and what you possibly have are the ingredients for a vicious cycle of rising ad spending that can spin out of control.
British fiction/comic writer Neil Gaiman, a speaker at the congress, opined, “Advertising can be incredibly useful when well-done, but very irritating when badly done.”
For the Philippine economy, bad ads are not only irritating but a waste of scarce corporate budgets. Net, the Philippines needs less media spending and more effective creative. Wayne Fletcher of Universal McCann Sandbox admonished delegates to “suspend notions of ad distribution” in seeking true media integration, and he cited a senior Nike executive’s remark: “We’re not in the business of keeping media companies alive. We’re in the business of connecting with consumers.”
But media companies are also beginning to realize they cannot abuse commercials to the detriment of their viewers and readers, listeners and surfers. The screening of the 2007 Cannes Lions winners by the Inquirer provided an inspiring reel of TV ads and series of prints that were relevant and refreshing, provocative and stimulating, intelligent and humorous.
Christopher Prox also confirmed in his survey that the top performing executions suffered less from the negative effects of commercial clutter versus the vast majority of “normal” ads.
Instead of spending more on advertising and promotions next year, try raising salaries and wages or sharing corporate profits with your employees and watch them drive your revenues and cut costs because workers who are part owners are more productive.
Before we criticize our political leadership on issues of national interest such as massive poverty and income inequality, homelessness and landlessness, hunger and malnutrition, illiteracy and joblessness, graft and corruption, we need to step back and examine our own conscience with respect to the values we have been promoting as advertisers and marketers.
As we embrace a new order characterized by better creatives and less ad spending, I invite industry colleagues to also unite in giving selflessly of their time, talent and treasure toward the loftier goal of nation-building. I believe if all 3,500 delegates (and all our colleagues) have the talent, skills and power to influence public perception and drive human behavior; educate society in values formation and build character, then we all have the collective obligation to do so. Imagine a concerted effort that brings to bear advertisers’ strategic thinking and massive resources, agencies’ creative genius and 360° IMC, and media’s reach and responsible programming upon the noble task of nation-building.
A country whose leadership has been declared morally bankrupt will require a moral rehabilitation, and moral values will need to be communicated, dramatized, and reinforced in all forms of media in a consistent, systematic and sustainable manner. It can be done. This way the new order can move to a higher order.
(The author has 22 years of marketing, sales and general management across Asia-Pacific, managing 50 brands and is now president of Business Mentors Inc., a newly formed management consultancy firm, and concurrently regional director of ZMG Ward Howell Inc. Feedback willyarcilla@yahoo.com.)
