Everyone knows this. But still, everyone falls for this! Especially when it comes to marketing creatives. And it is not just the folks in charge of brands. The creative agencies also latch on to this fact to ‘impress’ during a pitch. I once came across an agency that did a real stylish jump-cut video for a prospective. The prospective’s CEO was very impressed. And because he was impressed, all the people down too were ‘impressed’. There was no thought given to what is the objective of the communication, who is the Target Audience, what is it trying to communicate, and what is the call for action.

Yes. I am probably repeating a part of an earlier blog. But this is increasingly becoming a bane – to just look at communications that are beautiful only skin deep. When will we learn to measure communication against a set of parameters that we have set for ourselves? And it becomes frustrating very frequently because those that are in ‘power’ ‘like’ a particular communication – on a very surface level. Either there is no discussion or the discussion leads to the ‘powers that be’ deciding that people raising objections are just trying to inflate their egos. This is definitely not the case.

And the other irritating thing is the tool – ‘put a video here’, ‘let us be on Instagram’ and so on – do people even realise that there is a goal for each medium or tool as well. There is an impact that each tool can deliver only by itself. There is no point in being on social media platforms that leverage the popularity of the account holder and not the other way around. There is no point in saying ‘everyone is doing videos, let us also do one’.

Just remember the simple things:

  • What is the objective of your communication?
  • Who is your target audience?
  • What do you want to achieve?
  • What is the call for action?
  • Based on the call for action and communication objective which medium is good?
  • How will we measure effectiveness?

All of us must have seen film reviews – especially in India. While those that are panned make the most money, while those that are praised do not even get a release. Why so? Are the reviewers wrong? Are the audience wrong? Nothing like that. Every product has a target audience. But if you are going for the mass market, you very well do what the markets want, even if it is against your sensibilities!