Poverty levels are falling, earning capacities and aspiration has risen. So what are 200 mn, increasingly affluent people across Asia doing with all that money?
“Getting connected, with each other and around the world; about 32 percent of the world’s entire internet community is in Asia. 87 mn in China, 18 mn in India, still about 200,000 in Sri Lanka” says Chief Operating Officer of Bates Asia, Mathew Godfrey.
“Over the next five to ten years, the internet is going to be increasingly influenced by Asian viewpoints, creating an explosion of connectivity, thoughts and ideas in Asia.”
Connectivity and the explosion of input and opinions, is going to be the single biggest driver of advertising, and Asia a potential hotbed in the coming years.
India is expected to have about 25 mn internet users by 2005, up from 5.5 mn users in 2001, and is expected to follow China in economic growth.
Asian mammoth China’s mobile market has shown phenomenal strides, growing at 6 mn subscribers a month, with over 80 bn SMS messages sent out in a year.
It’s not just China or even India. Its even countries like Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Korea, and Philippines. Sri Lanka is growing, but mobile marketing is still in infancy.
As much as 61 percent of mobile phone users in Asia have received an SMS advert, Godfrey says, as compared to 54 percent of Europeans and 12 percent of Americans.
That explosion has seen a proliferation of media and entertainment choice – from digital TV and the internet, to movies, ‘blogging’, online gaming and portable music.
Asia’s online gaming is expected to exceed US$ 1 bn by 2005, growing at 19 percent each year. In Malaysia there is double the amount of online gamers as online shoppers.
So, mobile marketing and others take over, but perhaps not as in-your-face or repetitive as television advertising can sometimes be. Godfrey is cautious. The way to go is referral advertising.
“Consumers rely mostly on information they discover for themselves, based on their own experiences or coming from sources they trust. Cynicism about where to go for that information has led people to build complex personal networks,” Godfrey says.
So as television comes round a full circle, it’s back to word of mouth.
“Referral is one of the most trusted forms of marketing. Create a community that is going to spread the word for you and make sure it’s your brand their talking about.”
“Stop trying to tell customers what you have to sell. But try to get them to tell their community about what it is that you have to sell. That is what is going to be effective. Not bombarding them with ads,” Godfrey says.
The other key is, not making the mistake of treating Asia as one big, single market to be handled in the same way. Do that, and it doesn’t respond.
America’s Music Television in India is 80 percent in Hindi. They learnt from Kellogg’s mistake that Indians didn’t want a cold, crispy corn breakfast. They wanted hot, savoury and cheap.
So Kellogg’s entered with its wheat and rice range, as well as hot cereals that had flavours like chocolate, strawberry and honey, which consumers loved.
“There is this growing sense in Asia that ‘I don’t need a foreign brand but a local brand understands me better’. There is a growing sense of national confidence across Asia,” Godfrey says.
It’s the principle of ‘rice is not rice is not rice is not rice’, anywhere across Asia. That is also the hallmark of the new Bates Asia advertising identity.
“Rice is not rice is not rice is not rice. The nature of rice is as varied as the countries of Asia,” Regional President of Bates Asia, Jeffrey Yu said in a recent visit to Sri Lanka.
“We believe that Asia as one market does not exist. With more than 60 percent of the world’s population, Asia has one of the most diverse cultures and economies imaginable.”
Talking Jazz
So, what’s Jazz fusion or even Beethoven – himself an undying brand, got to do with it?
From creating fusion music that speaks to East and West to cracking the ‘big ideas’, just about everything that means creatively keeping your new consumer’s attention.
“All music is repetition, built around this pattern of expectation. Now and then, the jazz musician builds this pattern of expectation, but breaks it with surprise in such a way you think ‘wow!’ There couldn’t be anything better than that,” Ivan Arthur, former creative Director of J. Walter Thompson and accomplished mandolin player, says.
“It’s the inevitable surprise that’s the big idea. How did Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony of 200 years ago, have young people grooving to it in the 1970’s? Why did it last so long?”
“His big idea in the 3G’s and E Flat (the sudden break in the Fifth Symphony), was destiny knocking on your door. Recognising that big idea, even in advertising brands, requires flair,” Arthur says.
Arthur is one of three musicians and creative ad people, in Sri Lanka recently, to drive a Bates Asia advertising workshop on creativity through jazz fusion music.
In Asian markets, add to the challenges of creativity, it is only a small percentage of the country that can talk English; So advertisers have to learn to write that creative hit tune.
“You have a whole lot of people who have money to spend but who don’t think too much in English or are not too comfortable in English. That is true here as in India,” Arthur says.
All Rights Reserved.