What Jargon would you use to Describe the form of Advertising Skillfully integrated into your Natural Surroundings such that it Catches your Attention at places you least expect it? 4Ps B&M adds yet Another term to your Marketing Dictionary. Call it Ambient Advertising
A vagabond once shared an anecdotal experience about one of the several magnificent churches in London. He would describe the finery of the church and then mention about the inevitable cracks in the walls, both inside as well as outside the church. Now, cracks in walls are not astounding to an extent that they need a mention, though they are definitely a pain for the maintenance people. In fact, you too might have observed such cracks in walls, which are usually T-shaped, almost crossing each other, resembling a cross at times. But there was something extraordinary about the cracks in the walls of this particular church in London.
This church had almost the same kind of cracks, but instead of filling them up the church authorities had framed those cracks and written right beneath them: “God exists in everything!” Certainly, God is the last person who would require any marketing strategy, but what a way to use your surroundings to spread across a divine message that God is omnipresent. You might take this as devotion, but it is ineluctably a classic example of an effective yet simple advertising strategy called Ambient Advertising.
Simply put, Ambient Advertising is advertising integrated into our surroundings to catch our attention when and where we least expect it. “It’s about looking at everything in your surrounding as having the potential of becoming a medium of advertising,” Zenobia Pithawalla, Executive Creative Director, O&M India tells 4Ps B&M. For instance, when you finish eating a fairly luscious choco-bar, you expect nothing inside except mushy vanilla and choco crust. But when you are finished eating it all, you end up with a stick, which is not a usual stick that you would just throw away without giving it a second look. Yes, you will throw it away eventually, but not before you spot a toothbrush made out of that stick, and a small yet conspicuous ‘Colgate’ written at the top of the stick, and a ‘Don’t Forget’ message following it (the creative agency for this project was Y&R, Bangkok, Thailand). That’s precisely what Ambient Advertising is! Positioning the brand in a surrounding where the consumer least expects it, but having found it believes that it is the best place to have encountered the brand’s existence.
For starters, Ambient Advertising found its first user in 1996, when a UK based ad agency, Concord Advertising, at the wish of a client, who wanted a change from the traditional mediums, started placing ads at unusual places such as on floors, on fuel dispensers at petrol pumps, toilet doors, et al. Clearly these places were not traditional places to advertise for a product. But the idea worked, and in 1999, British Media recognised this form of advertising as ‘Ambient Advertising’.
Ambient Advertising encapsulates two key factors, one being unusual locations and the second being the quintessential ‘wow’ factor, something that catches you unaware. For instance, when JWT London got a little artsy to emulate a KitKat chocolate bar on a bench in a park (to make it look like a chocolate bar cum bench) with ‘Have a break have a KitKat’ inscribed on the bench; it made use of the both, an unusual location (a bench in a park) and had the wow factor, because the moment you sit on the bench to relax the tagline seems to work on your senses and since you are having a break in the first place, you can’t help but have a KitKat bar!
A vagabond once shared an anecdotal experience about one of the several magnificent churches in London. He would describe the finery of the church and then mention about the inevitable cracks in the walls, both inside as well as outside the church. Now, cracks in walls are not astounding to an extent that they need a mention, though they are definitely a pain for the maintenance people. In fact, you too might have observed such cracks in walls, which are usually T-shaped, almost crossing each other, resembling a cross at times. But there was something extraordinary about the cracks in the walls of this particular church in London.
This church had almost the same kind of cracks, but instead of filling them up the church authorities had framed those cracks and written right beneath them: “God exists in everything!” Certainly, God is the last person who would require any marketing strategy, but what a way to use your surroundings to spread across a divine message that God is omnipresent. You might take this as devotion, but it is ineluctably a classic example of an effective yet simple advertising strategy called Ambient Advertising.
Simply put, Ambient Advertising is advertising integrated into our surroundings to catch our attention when and where we least expect it. “It’s about looking at everything in your surrounding as having the potential of becoming a medium of advertising,” Zenobia Pithawalla, Executive Creative Director, O&M India tells 4Ps B&M. For instance, when you finish eating a fairly luscious choco-bar, you expect nothing inside except mushy vanilla and choco crust. But when you are finished eating it all, you end up with a stick, which is not a usual stick that you would just throw away without giving it a second look. Yes, you will throw it away eventually, but not before you spot a toothbrush made out of that stick, and a small yet conspicuous ‘Colgate’ written at the top of the stick, and a ‘Don’t Forget’ message following it (the creative agency for this project was Y&R, Bangkok, Thailand). That’s precisely what Ambient Advertising is! Positioning the brand in a surrounding where the consumer least expects it, but having found it believes that it is the best place to have encountered the brand’s existence.
For starters, Ambient Advertising found its first user in 1996, when a UK based ad agency, Concord Advertising, at the wish of a client, who wanted a change from the traditional mediums, started placing ads at unusual places such as on floors, on fuel dispensers at petrol pumps, toilet doors, et al. Clearly these places were not traditional places to advertise for a product. But the idea worked, and in 1999, British Media recognised this form of advertising as ‘Ambient Advertising’.
Ambient Advertising encapsulates two key factors, one being unusual locations and the second being the quintessential ‘wow’ factor, something that catches you unaware. For instance, when JWT London got a little artsy to emulate a KitKat chocolate bar on a bench in a park (to make it look like a chocolate bar cum bench) with ‘Have a break have a KitKat’ inscribed on the bench; it made use of the both, an unusual location (a bench in a park) and had the wow factor, because the moment you sit on the bench to relax the tagline seems to work on your senses and since you are having a break in the first place, you can’t help but have a KitKat bar!
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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2011.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri and Arindam chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).
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