Television Advertisement Frenzy!!!

According to wikipedia on "Advertising",

It is a form of communication used to influence individuals to purchase products or services or support political candidates or ideas. Frequently it communicates a message that includes the name of the product or service and how that product or service could potentially benefit the consumer.

After understanding the function of advertisement, we can infer that effective communication is required for advertisements to work. However, a specific techniques or strategies used in a television advertisement targeted at a high context culture would not be effective in a low context culture, and vice versa. For the purpose of discussion, I would focus on the techniques and strategies employed for television advertisements in high context culture (Japan).

FYI,

High context culture refers to a culture's tendency to use high context messages over low context messages in routine communication. In a high context culture, many things are left unsaid, letting the culture explain.

Low context cultures make much less extensive use of such similar experiences and expectations to communicate. Much more is explained through words or verbalization, instead of the context.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_context_culture

A little background...
Japan is the world's second largest advertising market, just behind United States of America. An interesting point to note is that Japan has rather high advertising budgets, so they will scout for popular celebrity to feature in the product and even outsource foreign celebrity talent to appear in the Japanese advertisements.

To begin, let us look at the advertisement of a well known confectionery giant in Japan, Ezaki Glico (Pocky).





In these advertisements, there’s a line that constantly repeats, “anata mo, watashi mo, pocky”, which literally means you, me, pocky. This strategy used is simply to feature a jingle that viewers can eventually relate to. Also, the celebrities who were featured in the advertisements are well liked actor and actress. Although there were no explicit verbal cues to elaborate on the attributes of the product, the advertiser has successfully allowed the viewers to recall the advertisements.

Though the two advertisements earlier were aired a few years ago in Japan, similar strategy is used in recent advertisements. Let me introduce you to this product, a gum, Lotte Fits.

Season 1:


Season 2:


In the season 1 aired in Japan earlier this year, they used a similar strategy to create a strong impression on viewers so that they can relate to the product once they hear the jingle. Also, they tried to induce humour where the mannequin came to life and joined in the Fits dance, and another part where the dog became humanised, stood up to join in as well. Again, not many verbal cues were used to deliver the main message of the product and in fact the absence of it. Furthermore, there was a joint publicity by having a competition for the best Fits dance. I would say that this is unique and only probable for the Japanese culture because they are known for creative, wacky and cheesy ideas, and people are not too shy to post their videos on Youtube to participate. In fact, there were so many entries from all levels of occupations. (Check out Lotte’s Youtube Channel for them. http://www.youtube.com/user/LOTTE#p/c/75CBE61675BB8514) And indeed, the winner of season 1 was impressive! By looking at the responses from the public and all, we can say that they have effectively communicated a subtle message to the public even though it may seem unrelated at first. Somehow, it just made sense to the people of the home culture! Then recently, there is a second wave of publicity for this product, using the same dance. With this second wave of publicity, there is going to be another Fits dance competition. Expect nothing but surprises!

Do you know Takuya Kimura (木村拓哉)? He is one of the most famous celebrities in Japan of all time and because of that, he has a whole list of endorsements from ranging from the dorky ones, to the more mild and serious ones.

Let us revisit one that was shown in Singapore


Other related Gatsby Products:






**LATEST!!!**


I think we can all recall when we first watched the first advertisement on the television! Initially we found it a little silly because it was almost totally unrelated to the product that was advertised – hair wax. As I recall, I identify this as one of drawbacks of using the same advertisements that was targeted at the home market to another country. Even though we're also in a relatively high context culture, adjustments have to be made because we do not have the same expectations and experiences as the Japanese. The adjustments could be easily made and it was soon embraced, being a hot topic. We could hum “I… can give you Gatsby” and when we hear that jingle somewhere, we would know almost instantaneously know that it’s related to a Gatsby product. It shows that it is successful and effective the advertisements is in bringing attention to the product in high context cultures. However, if this were to be shown in a low context culture like United States of America, there would be more criticisms and far from being well received. This is because the viewers would not be able to make any sense out of the whole advertisement. They expect more verbalisation and messages that made sense (definitely not "I give you Gatsby). Moreover, the person featured is not someone the Americans could relate (unlike in Singapore, where some of Takuya Kimura’s works were shown on our free-to-air channels). In that case, there is a lack of common experiences and expectations between Japaneses and Americans.

All in all, I feel that advertisements targeted at a high context culture should not be used in a low context culture because it brings about ambiguity and misunderstandings. The ineffectiveness is mostly attributed by the construct of the advertisements, where one is focused on featuring the explicit attributes of a product using verbal cues (low context culture) while the other focuses on creating memory on viewers by providing entertainment (high context culture).

This could never go wrong:

When in Rome, do as the Romans do :)

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Though it is apparent that Japan uses less verbal cues in advertising products, there are some advertisements which use many verbal cues because of the nature of the product, for instance, laptops and cameras. One of the most effective ways in advertising these products is to focus on the special features of the product, which is the pulling factor for most potential buyers.