Sunday, July 13, 2008 Sun.Star Essay: Ads on and on By Erma M. Cuizon
IN THE ‘60s, I thought one TV ad was fantastic—one that promoted Esso Oil (the Esso or Exxon tiger) and promised speed and mettle for your car. Advertising in this case used the tiger as symbol of power. The catchphrase was “Put a tiger in your tank!” Then you saw the car-tiger fly past.
When the ad came on the boob tube, I would stare, thinking it to be very clever, and was entertained, except for the fact that I didn’t make the decision on what gas to use for the family car when I was just starting to drive. Father used the gas he had chosen then, himself probably worked on successfully by another ad.
As for me, I didn’t quite see what I needed but advertisers were quick to hint on my insufficiencies. Then, as now, the ads tell me in exciting ways what’s lacking in my life.
So you’d think the commercial blurbs work very well. Today in a world normally enmeshed in marketing, susceptible to ads about items advertisers say you need, there are a hundred choices of a way to live—from affordable to high-end—you could shift from one lifestyle to another, it doesn’t take years to change. Truly, truly, the tiger (or Marie France’s Dawn Zulueta, or The Champions Kia and Nadal, or Enervon’s More-energy-Mas-happy, or bodipod21) is part of our life.
But haven’t you heard, they’re talking of advertising “clutter.”
There’s not much more of this clutter on TV than during the breathless coverage of Pacquiao’s fights. And the viewer, helpless in the face of ads ad infinitum, is trapped in the excruciating wait from one boxing round to the next, between jingling, clever (sometimes corny), catchy sales pitches going into high decibels in color splashes and vampy motions.
The viewer is forced to save himself from the trap.
During the ad breaks, he would get up and walk away, while the ads last, then come back on time for the next round. One viewer I know takes a quick walk to the yard and back. Another makes himself useful by making a quick sandwich between rounds. There are, of course, the inevitable trips to the comfort room. Or a tete-a-tete with the neighbor, about Pacquiao, of course.
In American advertising, a marketing official of a big firm notes that in the ‘70s, the company’s ads went by 500 per day to 5,000 in the last few years and recently. Advertisers and agencies would dream of covering all open spaces (and up nearest the sky) with their brand logos, especially over broadcast in TV media in cable channels from sunrise to sunset.
If the potential buyer (who doesn’t know he’s one) doesn’t stay at home in front of the TV, he’s out in the mall where the ads are under (and above) his nose. The ads are in the side roads, in parking spaces, in walls that do not have Post-No-Bill signs, or are hanging in the air in balloons. Sometimes the potential buyer can’t escape the TV screen in shops that display ads on the screen.
But how about TV news or sitcoms? Well, the viewer could shift stations any time the ads come. Long ago, you pressed control buttons in the TV unit to change channels. If you got bored with what was showing and you wanted to change channel, you got up from your chair to do it.
Now with the remote, the viewer could shift channel from one to another between ads without turning a hair. They call it surfing.
In other words, the consumer is somewhat in control.
Emily Abrera of McCann Worldgroup of Asia said Philippine TV has “the highest commercial load in the world.” She referred to ad exposure limit per hour, or 18 minutes set up by the AdBoard and the Kapisanan ng mga Brodkaster ng Pilipinas. In an analysis, ABS-CBN was found to go down to 15 minutes per hour, but also up to 20.
In the De La Salle students analysis, GMA-7 was found to use an ad load of 30 minutes per hour. But it’s no longer a member of KBP, thus not under the association guidelines.
The viewer, unable to take the clutter, isn’t the only one with a problem here. Marketing, too.
