ADVERTISING ESSAY

ADVERTISING INDUSTRY

Discuss how meeting the needs of an audience is important to the success of advertising companies in New Zealand. 

The New Zealand advertising industry is generally made up of full service agencies, small boutique agencies, and in-house advertising departments. Full service agencies are involved in all aspects of advertising, boutiques offer more specialized niche services, and in-house departments are attached to individual companies.  Each serves the demands and needs of particular audiences and brands. Many factors affect the advertising industry - for example money, client requirements, and cultural trends. Advertising is a fast-growing and dynamic industry. New Zealand advertising agencies are winning global recognition for their originality and effectiveness. To remain relevant and impactful, advertising agencies are seeking to reach audiences more directly. From 2010 to 2012 there has been an 42.2 per cent increase in the industry turnover of interactive adverts (ASA report, website). Amanda Cater, the media director of SparkPHD (a full-service agency with a staff of eighty-five established in 1999, winner of agency of the year in 2012) stated, ‘we are in a world of multi-screen users’ and that companies must be more unique and original in reaching consumers.

Many factors shape the target audience of advertisements. Agencies will often arrange focus groups to determine the composition and tastes of their target audience. Cater sees the agency’s job as partly a balancing act, ‘trying to establish how people consume media in their own environment’. In the focus group the agency is able to gain an understanding of the psychographic and demographic profile of their audience. Establishing an audience is central to the success of an advertising campaign. For example, SparkPHD organized focus groups for one of their biggest clients, Lynx (a brand of male grooming products owned by Unilever).  They can then determine strategies for this already well-established product to gain more publicity. In 2013 SparkPHD oversaw the launch of the ‘Lynx Apollo’ campaign in New Zealand. This was part of a global competition where Lynx users could enter a competition to win a place at a space training program through a website. This encourages brand interactivity. Through the focus group, SparkPHD were able to gain an understanding of who was likely to sign up so they could more effectively target them. SparkPHD have been involved in other creative campaigns. For example, they arranged a billboard for the release of a new variety of Surf washing powder where customers could smell the new scent as they walked through Westfield Malls in Auckland. One of the most successful ice cream advertising campaigns in New Zealand was SparkPHD’s launch of the Magnum Sandwich. The agency were quick to establish the brand was targeted towards ‘Generation Y’ pleasure seekers who saw being famous as one of their key ambitions. Their PR Department arranged a ‘Red Carpet’ experience at the New Zealand Music Awards. The winner was announced live on the youth-orientated television channel C4. The key to the success of the campaign was it ability to reach audiences through a unique experience. The success of this advertising and public relations campaign saw the Magnum Sandwich outsell other ice cream products in both November and December in 2010.

Another successful full-service agency operating in New Zealand are DraftFCB (winners of agency of the year in 2008 and 2010). They are the second largest agency in New Zealand and have 210 full-time staff. With over 110 offices worldwide their range of clients includes: Vodafone, ANZ, Air New Zealand, BMW, Kellogg’s, Nivea, and the New Zealand Women’s Weekly. Toby Sellers, a ‘suit’ (director) at DraftFCB describes the company as ‘an Agency of Change’. DraftFCB has been able to connect to audiences through Kiwi cultural codes. Sellers describes the freedom and accessibility of New Zealand culture as very different to Australia. DraftFCB’s recent campaign for Mitre 10 (a major home-improvement store who have been a client for thirty years) draws on this. A well known New Zealand company DRAFT FCB has been advertising for 30 years is Mitre 10. The theme was, ‘DIY is in our DNA’. It became the company’s most successful and well-known commercial. It focuses on a Kiwi approach emphasizing inventiveness and a can-do ethos.  This ‘Number 8 wire’ mentality is quintessential to Kiwi culture and the self-image of Mitre 10’s target audience. 

Starseed is a specialist Auckland-based all female public relations agency. The key to the company’s success is stunt work, interaction with audience partition, and left-of-centre public relations. Starseed establishes how newsworthy potential stunts are and if they will be uploaded to shared media platforms. Recognizing the ongoing audience shift towards online media, Starseed have had to establish how ‘social media trends (are) applied quickly to (brands)’ as Karen Maurice O’Leary, the Managing Director of Starseed states. An example of using social media trends was their campaign for Number One Shoes. Karen was quick to decide that a stunt would be an effective way to open the new season for the store. The theme was the question of what happened to shoes after being used on the catwalk. Starseed offered members of the public the opportunity to win fifty free pairs of catwalk shoes by standing on the sidewalk. Using Instagram and Twitter they managed to reach 800,000 New Zealand women with the hashtag ‘#fromcatwalktosidewalk’. This generated 172 news articles in total and established Number One Shoes as a fresh and major brand. The campaign can now be found on Trendhunter. 

Within any successful campaign there must be control and regulation. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) is recognized as the principal regulator for adverts in New Zealand. The ASA’s prime focus is to self-regulate advertisements in New Zealand. It is free to file a public complaint against advertisements in New Zealand. The ASA is key to the success or failure of a campaign. If the complaint is upheld then the advertiser and the agency are requested to withdraw the advertisement. The ASA writes the codes, Therapeutic Advertising Pre-Vetting System (‘TAPS’), and Liquor Advertising Pre-vetting System (‘LAPS’) for all advertising in New Zealand. These systems allow control over what advertising agencies do but can often pose challenges to advertising campaigns. For example, Tui Beer’s controversial billboard bearing the slogan ‘Let’s take a moment this Christmas to think about Christ. Yeah Right’. Comments through the ASA can often draw negative attention to the company and to the brand. As the New Zealand advertising industry, advertising agencies generally comply to these rules to avoid offense. 

The future of the advertising industry relies heavily on market force, brand loyalty, and technology. The recession in New Zealand and the greater challenge to reach audiences has resulted in clients demanding cheaper forms of advertising. This cheaper form of advertising can be seen as going from ‘above’ to ‘below the line’. Below the line advertising can be considered as 360° advertising, viral advertising, events, pop-ups, and PPC (pay per click). This demonstrates that agencies do not need to have larger budgets but better and more creative ideas to be successful. The Number One Shoes campaign by Starseed, mentioned above, only cost $30,000 and was a major success. 

The New Zealand audience is a fragmented one. Advertising and public relations agencies are quick to realize that not every story or campaign will be picked up on the morning news. The digital planning department at SparkPHD determined that audiences in New Zealand are now consuming traditional mediums in different ways  -such as the TVNZ app. Other mediums have cropped up in New Zealand like the free music service Spotify. The advertising industry now understands that audiences want to be connected and watch what they want and in whatever way they want to do it.  They must then change their strategies to achieve success.

An advertising agency must recognize the industry is fluid and adaptable. Changes are necessary in order to meet the needs of the consumer. Companies increasingly demand innovation to ensure they maintain relevance, brand recognition, market share. As a consequence there is a greater range of advertising modes (from the internet to texting to laser projections and the Yellow Pages tree house restaurant!). Advertising companies are keeping up to date with consumers and adapting to the ever-changing demands of New Zealand cultural tastes. Understanding the audience is vital to the evolution of a company as they must tailor their strategies and campaigns in order to ensure that they reach them.