Effective ads tell a good story and use drama very well: Soumya Mohanty

Kantar, the leading marketing data and analytics company in the world, has put to test over 13,000 creatives for its clients, including Mondelez, Amazon, Whirlpool, Hindustan Unilever, across the world. The India report has shortlisted more than 350 ads to test them for their creativeness and effectiveness. Kantar has awarded standout performers across television ads tested in India, in five product categories – Food & Beverage, Personal care, Durables, Home Care & Services, with a special segment on social causes putting into the spotlight gender progressive advertising. Among the winners, are the Nighttime ad by Chocobakes Cake under Mondelez, conceptualised by Ogilvy; the Braids ad by Nihar Naturals under Marico, conceptualised by BBH, and many others.

Some of the key findings of the study have been that majority of Indians love to experience meaningful and insightful stories through ads, as this creates space for empathy, and this could influence the way consumers think and feel about the brands. A little dramatisation of ad elements is another factor that helps to make a brand more personal to the audience. Kantar has developed the Unstereotype metric in collaboration with the Unstereotype Alliance, as a measure of gender portrayal in advertising. It has been observed that Unstereotyping in advertising is linked to higher marketing ROI and that progressive ads are more effective triggering positive engagement.

In conversation with Adgully, Soumya Mohanty, Managing Director & Chief Client Officer, Insights Division, Kantar, said “We are seeing a lot more winners in our CEA, a lot more mainstreaming of positive gender portrayals because brands are realizing that there is benefit to be gained by doing that. At the other extreme is reinforcing stereotypes and actually not doing the right things, in terms of the portrayal of the roles that men and women play, both these extremes are happening”. Excerpts:

What are the key findings and takeaways of the Creative Effectiveness Award Report, 2022?

There are two broad themes we have, in terms of what we are talking about, while bringing out the Creative Effectiveness Award. One part is that mainstreaming progressive gender portrayal helps business outcomes, so many of our winners actually have  got progressive gender portrayals – be it Vim, Amazon or Surf. So, they have mainstreamed gender portrayal instead of falling into the stereotypical way of doing it. We have data to prove that this actually helps business outcomes. The second part of what we are saying is good storytelling, which uses all the key elements of storytelling, whether it is a fulfilling story arch, whether it is a drama, whether it is great visualisation, emotive context or showing not just telling. All the elements that go into telling a good story, really works in India and that’s what again our winners are clearly demonstrating. So, these are the two broad thematic learnings we have.

When we talk about gender portrayal, we are talking about mainstreaming gender progressiveness. There is a vivid space between objectifying women vis-à-vis defying women. It is not necessary that you need to make ads which make a very strong pointed statement against certain ways in which regressive gender mindsets need to be addressed. In between space, there is a lot of possibility in which you can make very engaging executions just by the way you portray the gender roles, who is doing what, who is talking what, through subtle variations you can create wonderful advertisements, both creative and effective. We would like brands to look at those spaces going forward.

What is the idea behind the Creative Effectiveness Awards?

The idea is to celebrate the good work that our clients have been doing, ads that are more creative and effective. Many a times there is a question about whether creativity can be evaluated through, and that one needs to make a compromise between either being creative or being effective. Kantar’s learning across the brand studies that we do has been that it is possible to be both creative and effective, and those are the kind of ads that build brands in the long run and even in the short term for that matter. The idea of this event is to just celebrate the creative and effective ads that we have been privileged to work with in the course of one year.

What kinds of ads are more effective in the Indian society?

The ads which are more effective in India are ads that tell a good story, use drama very well – if you look at the Munch ad, it uses drama, it’s a very typical story in that sense. There is a college context, there is a fresher group, there are the seniors and there is a little bit of ragging going on, but Munch helps the junior kid to actually gain confidence and then express himself, and then it ends in friendship. So, a pretty typical setting, but with a touch of drama, a great visualisation, for example, the Redmi ad, which has  brilliant visualisation.

Then there is whole element of emotion, Indians are suckers for emotions. If you look at the Wipro Max Kleen ad, it’s how we live our lives on the floors. So, there is emotion that is imbued into the floor. If you look at the Whirlpool ad, which is again a winner, we are talking about adaptive technology, and it’s the technology that adapts to the grandfather, the grandfather does not adapt to the technology. So, it is an emotion that is imbued into the technology.

And finally, the whole construct of showing, rather than telling. For example, the Chocobakes ad – the kids actually discover the Cadburys’ in the cake. It’s not about saying there is Cadbury in the cake. The little girl discovers it and the surprise that she has and how she enjoys it. That is what will stay on after you have seen the ad. There are these elements which tend to come together and when you overlay this with mainstreaming, the way genders are portrayed, not in a stereotypical way but in an unstereotypical way, the way in which we want gender to be portrayed, to provide positive role models, when you overlay that, then you have both positive business outcomes and also make a positive impact on overall society.

What is the difference between the global and local effects of advertising?

I think the principal difference is that we are still keen on hearing stories. We reward ads which give us rich stories, for us to emphatise with, for us to love, to cry. We still love stories, whereas in the global, you could get away with disruptive imagery, disruptive stories, but here we all love stories. Fundamentally, that’s one big difference. We are also very much keen on the emotive payoffs, from our advertisements. Those are the two big differences.

What makes an ad creative and effective?

It is the right balance of providing consumers and viewers reward. So, we are asking 15 seconds of the time, 20 seconds of the time or 30 seconds. Those 30 seconds should be rewarding for them from a sensorial point of view and during the course of the reward, they should be able to think and feel differently positively about the brand. It is then that you have a Creative and Effective ad. For example, if you take a look at the Surf Excel ad, titled ‘Dumb Charades’. It’s a father and son situation, with the father at home, and he is doing the cooking and there is some messing up that happens and the son, without even opening his mouth, uses a certain brand mnemonic to remind him how the brand could solve the staining problem that has happened. So, from cooking, he also moves on to taking care of washing. If you look at the situation, it is a case of subtle mainstreaming of gender progressiveness, where the lady of the house is not at home, it’s the father who is doing the cooking, he is also going to do the cleaning, and the brand is also playing a role. It’s a fun ad. They have got the casting perfectly right, got the direction balanced in terms of bringing about the character of the father and the son, even as it introduces the brand through the mnemonic. Everything has been done in almost perfect manner.

How is gender portrayal in advertising in today’s times and how has it changed over the years?

We are seeing a lot more winners in our CEA, a lot more mainstreaming of positive gender portrayals, because brands are realising that there is benefit to be gained by doing that. At the other extreme is reinforcing stereotypes and actually not doing the right things, in terms of the portrayal of the roles that men and women play, both these extremes are happening. What we are actually saying is that when we do the right thing, which is when we actually show progressive male and female role models, it helps brands, it helps business outcomes and, therefore, we should see more of that. We want brands to actually think through how they want to communicate using more progressive role models.

In terms of variety of ad styles, not much has changed over the course of the years. The elements, the situation people are in, those are the things that have seen a change amongst the winners.

What needs to be done with respect to Indian advertising nowadays? What do consumers expect more?
Consumers want to see good content, they want to see ads which are positive, give a positive message, and also give them a reason to consider the brand and a reason for buying. Positive portrayals, strong brand messaging integrated into a good story which makes consumers want to buy the brand but also it builds brand equity for the brand.

Consumers’ expectations from the quality of the content, and the viewer reward from the content have increased multiple times. So, now we have Tiktok, then we have Reels, we have YouTube Shorts, so the consumers are consuming a lot more content and especially lot more content on the mobile. So, advertisements need to be far more engaging and rewarding, than all these experiences. Their expectation is that brands tell them a story, which makes the brand more personal and relevant to them.