Know Your Market

Marketers know how vital it is to understand the target market and its nuances for successfully positioning and marketing products and services. This becomes increasingly important in international markets, where cultural differences accentuate the significance of understanding consumer behaviour and markets. You may have heard stories about marketers and brands facing problems because of not respecting cultural differences and expected norms.

The following joke candidly depicts a similar situation!

A disappointed salesman of a Cola drink returns from his Middle East assignment. A friend asked, “Why weren’t you successful in this part of world?” The salesman explained, “When I got posted in the Middle East , I was very confident that I would make a good sales pitch as Cola is virtually unknown there. But, I had a problem I didn’t know Arabic. So, I planned to convey the message through three posters…

exhausted

Drinks Cola

Running

First poster: A man lying in the hot desert sand…totally exhausted and fainting.
Second poster: The man is drinking our Cola.
Third poster: The man is now totally refreshed. And then these posters were pasted all over the place “Then that should have worked!” said the friend.
“The hell it should had!? Said the salesman. I didn’t realize that Arabs read from right to left”

Designing Better Ads – Stop Readers In Their Tracks

I recently attended a webinar on Designing Better Ads conducted by Susan Down, Director Marketing at the Canadian Newspaper Association. Susan inferred from extensive market research and readers’ surveys by epic advertising research organizations. She advised on what generally works and makes print ads stand out from the clutter. Many of us would be aware of the points she highlighted and may be putting some of these in practice. It was, however, useful to get an affirmation and systematic refresher. I share the information with you, as I gathered, adding my two cents’ worth on few points.

Ad Size & Color
1. Ad size matters. Full page ads are noticed 48% more than smaller ads
2. There is no difference in the visibility of ads between right hand side and left hand side page positions. If the ad is attractive, it will get noticed on any page.
3. Color ads are noticed 33% more than black & white ads. The impact of color ads has grown over the time. Susan showed a bar chart to highlight this fact. She also informed that women notice color ads more than men.