1.5 International planning of advertising design

 

Developing advertising measures means on the one hand the design of formal elements such as picture, font and colours and on the other hand the verbal description of the positioning in terms of a central message. This visual and verbal specification is named positioning concept.
In view of the importance of advertisement for the brand development, creativity plays a big role for the design of advertising means. However, we can observe that many international campaigns are little creative. Content analyses of advertisements document that certain advertising messages in automobile advertisements are used above average and are often formally realised with the same stereotyped pictures (Clifton 1997, p155; Dmoch, Wisniewski 2000, p54). The exchangeability of advertisement is affiliated to an important loss of the advertising impact (KroeberRiel, Esch 2000, p53).

 

This exchangeability can be attributed to shortages in advertising design. Firstly, often too few ideas are gathered in the beginning, even though, according to findings in creativity research, only a fraction is finally suitable for the implementation. Secondly, many creative are overchallenged when designing international advertisement, because they are lacking deeper comprehension for the emotions and experiences of foreign target audiences. Due to this uncertainness they tend to dispense with all presumably specific cultural elements, such as models, hairstyle, a red dress, the way a table is set, the landscape in the background, etc. This procedure often entails boring advertisements that do not emotionally affect the addressee.

 

 

Figure 12: Ignorance of cultural characteristics often entails boring advertisements (Source: Renault Trucks).

For an unerring positioning, we have to claim not only high creativity but also the consideration of strategic and behavioural-science findings from advertising agencies. A process for methodical idea generation designed according to the new product development that consists of 4 steps takes this into account (Esch 1996, p365; Kroeber-Riel, Esch 2000, p82 ff.):

• Generation of positioning concepts,
• Elimination of inappropriate positioning concepts,
• Operationalisation and methodical review,
• Selection and realisation of a positioning concept,

The particularity of this approach consists in generating a large number of ideas and considering their cultural tie.

To 1.): When generating positioning concepts we can consult two important search fields according to Kroeber-Riel (1989):

• Behavioural-science theories,
• Content analysis.

Within the behavioural sciences, cultural anthropology and psychology provide many suggestions for linguistic and figurative realisation that probably have a high international comprehensibility. The hierarchy of needs by Maslow according to which we can differ between 5 types of needs furnishes suggestions (see table 3). According to Maslow, first the low-order needs are satisfied before the next level of needs is achieved.

 

 

Table 3: Example for the search of positioning concepts for the Volkswagen Lupo (Source: Volkswagen AG).

 

Lifestyle studies, too, describe typical behaviour patterns of certain groups, which can trigger internationally similar ideas. Further ideas can be furnished for example by content analysis of print (comic strips) and electronic media (soap operas), which are effective but have not been used for advertisement yet (Kroeber-Riel 1989, p256 ff.).

Such ideas on the basis of famous movies and TV series, which are occasionally stereotype, not only increase the abundance of ideas, but also facilitate the communication on ideas in international teams. Instead of arguing about words, marketing experts with different cultural imprint may better communicate on the basis of mood boards that use elements from international movies, fairy tales, comic strips and artworks. According to experience, these are better suited than words to describe certain emotions for the briefing of the agency intelligible to all because of their international spread and higher information density.

The abundance of ideas can further be increased by creativity techniques and computer software for brainstorming. The CAAS search system, for example, has a module to generate picture concepts for advertisement, which not only provides techniques to stimulate the creativity of the user, but also includes a database of more than 80,000 pictures. The database also offers information about the prevalence of certain picture concepts among the population (Esch 1996, p378). In principle, this system could also be qualified to furnish cultural know how in form of mental images of different nations to the creative professionals (Dmoch 1996, p33). Please refer to the following website to see a database of picture concepts from Germany, France and Switzerland.

 

Another possibility to increase the abundance of ideas and to incorporate cultural know how in the development process consists in entrusting several agencies from different countries with the concept development. For example, the Audi Agency Network consists of five agencies in Germany, Italy, Great Britain, Spain and France. It proved of value because it equals to a creativity competition.
To 2.): While the first step serves to increase the number of ideas for mental images common among the target audience, the second step helps to eliminate inappropriate positioning concepts.
In order to do so, the ideas are first hierarchically structured and similar suggestions are concentrated in clusters. Subsequently, those positioning ideas are eliminated which

 

• are not in line with the corporate philosophy,
  
• do not produce demarcation from competitors,
  
• are not relevant for the target audience,
  
• make too high demands on implementation.

 

Demarcation from competitors is a neuralgic point because international positioning is only successful if it is unique in all countries (Köhler 1993, p101).

Evidences on positioning of competitors are furnished by content analyses of advertisement (Dmoch, Wisniewski 2000). Corresponding studies showed, for instance, that certain features of the Volkswagen Lupo had already been assigned by competitors and communicated with high advertising impact.

 

Table 4: Example of a content analysis of competitive advertisement

As safety and reliability are already common characteristics of Volkswagen, it was decided not to communicate them in advertisement. Positioning via prestige was out of question because Volkswagen stands for neutrality in view of the status according to its brand guideline.

At the end of this process stands a positioning concept which is considered to be realised. Based on preliminary work, Volkswagen came to the decision to position the Lupo via „self-fulfilment“.
To 3.): Operationalisation and systematic revision include the design of advertising means that communicate the positioning. The design should thereby be geared to market and communication conditions (Esch 1996, p383):

 

• Advertisement has to be eye-catching in order to prevail in view of the information overload.
  
• Positioning has to be quickly identifiable because even advertisement for emotionally strong involved products such as automobiles is threatened by consumers turning away.
  
• In view of peripheral perception positioning should primarily be conveyed through the picture because pictures are always looked at first and mostly also longer than verbal messages. In doing so, it has to be considered in the context of international advertisement that not only the text, but also the picture requires „translation“ because its understanding is subject to rules of the common metaphorical language of the target audience (Dmoch 1999, p180 f.).

 

For the visualisation of the Volkswagen Lupo pictures that show self-development in the physical sense, such as a spontaneous journey to the seaside, or in the psychological sense, such as the development of the own creativity, were considered.

The testing of such concepts tends to the question whether consumers recognise the intended positioning on the basis of the scribbles. Moreover, the uniqueness has to be analysed. Problems often occur, when executing group discussions, because, on the one hand, the high-involvement situation of the interview is not in accordance with the actual communication conditions of advertisement. It provokes a readiness to criticise which is in sharp contrast to reality. On the other hand, consumers evaluate advertising campaigns with their underlying experience so that new campaigns are often assessed hypercritically and fail (Esch 1996, p384 f.).

to 4.): In order to select and realise a certain positioning concept a point rating model is suitable. Selection criteria may be the degree of autonomy and favourableness the degree of implementation. At Volkswagen, the decision was taken to implement the positioning self-fulfilment with the slogan ‘You don‘t have to be big to be great’ and referring to celebrities. Thereby such celebrities were chosen that were small in size, but had accomplished big things and therefore gained celebrity, such as Marilyn Monroe (see fig. 10), Albert Einstein or Leonardo da Vinci.

 

 

Figure 13: Standardisation of positioning of the Volkswagen Lupo (Source: Volkswagen AG).

Planning of advertising design is a repetitive task. The quality of its results is preciseable with regard to uniqueness, conformity with the strategy and advertising impact. However, the working process is not observable at every step, if the execution is delegated to agencies which usually do not allow such deep insight. Therefore, whether the planning of advertising design can be standardised has to be rated critically if the concept development is not backed up in a behavioural-science way. This requires agency experience and assertiveness that not all national sales companies have.