Straight Talk: Be innovative or be ready to perish

"Yesterday's discoveries are today's commonplaces; a daringly fresh image soon becomes stale by repetition, degenerates into a cliché, and loses its emotive appeal." Thus noted Arthur Koestler in 'The Act of Creation' - over 35 years ago.

While our world and the populace that makes it continues to evolve, this statement would rank among the most fundamental of truths for every marketing and communications practitioner. Consumers constantly discover things about brands they interact and interestingly in the process they also discover things about themselves. Big Ideas facilitate and catalyse a synergy between these discoveries.

Communication is not communication unless it is two way. Unless a stimulus elicits a response, breeds a reaction and instigates a thought process, it has not served its purpose however great or small, complex or simple that might be.

Advertising that works, serves the purpose of eliciting response better and in doing so, brings about a concurrence between the reality of the consumers' own little world and that of the brands pervading it.

Today, more than ever before, there is a pressure on brands to perform. Tomorrow will be even more intense. But today brands will do well only if everything that they represent is perfectly in-sync with the consumers' world. What brands represent is what they communicate and the question most advertisers should ask is whether their brands indeed communicate what they represent.

Markets and consumers in the Middle East have quickly moved on from being sure acceptors of anything new and exciting to becoming hardened and even cynical. Twenty years ago, advertising could just entertain and I remember watching consumers in Cairo fully enjoy a 15 minute advertising clutter with glee and merriment and take a break when the series actually came on.

That was nearly a decade ago and before the invasion of multiple satellite networks. Today, if advertising is not saying any thing fundamentally appealing to these consumers, the chances are that they will switch off and rest their tired senses.

Consumers can 'edit' their attention to advertising and few seconds of this edit can destroy the relevance of a 30-second commercial. The sheer pace of change in our macro-economic landscape has meant that long-held assumptions about consumer behaviour are becoming less useful and so are conventional models of dividing consumers into segments.

Whenever consumers have been confronted with a fundamentally different reality than what the past represented (or even forecast), on most occasions, they have been up to the task undertaking immediate changes and adjustments in their lives that they think would serve them and their needs better.

This realisation while very rational, also tends to leave an emotional blurr which is often resolved in their minds with very rational arguments. It is also true that the answer to most rational dilemmas, more often than not, is an emotional wallop of a promise that life will indeed be better.

In advertising, nothing exemplifies it better than David Ogilvy who passionately believed that emotions and moods can move mountains.

Decision-making is a process, which can often be non-linear. The why's of an act can follow a what. Good advertising must aid the decision making process and must allow the consumer to benefit from that decision.

When economies are in transition, there is a greater propensity to question one's own decision since the ebullience of optimism is often missing. Hence in my opinion the key task of communication should be to help consumers make a decision that is true to their nature.

Surely it is the only way to build long-term brand relationships. Indeed a difficult task but a task most good advertising has handled skillfully and with great flair.

Checks and balances must be exercised to ensure that there is a greater probability of communication being complete and true to its objectives. The cost of lost opportunity in fluid economies is far higher than one thinks.

The only way forward is a constant, consistent and continuous attempt at bringing about innovations in both the form and content of communication. Only a commitment to the consumer of the highest order can determine, distill and eventually deliver ideas relevant to the consumer. Relevant ideas will elicit response leading to a positive dialogue with your consumer. Beginning of a wonderful relationship.

The author is UAE-based Managing Director for Gulf and Iran, ACNielsen.