When teasing actually helps

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An outdoor billboard launched before Durga Puja last year had most of my friends baffled. This is how the ad ran. “Why are there tears in a Bengali’s eyes?” And it showed eminent Bengali personalities like danseuse Mamata Shankar and litterateur Sunil Gangopadhyay with tears in their eyes.
The ad aroused the curiosity of many. After a few weeks, the mystery shrouding the advertisement was revealed when Emami launched its mustard oil, whose aroma, the company claimed was so strong that it could bring tears to your eyes! Well, Emami was able to enter the kitchen with a bang!
Yes, teaser ads are exactly that. A series of advertisements that are designed to create awareness and curiosity. The intent is to alert the consumer that something great is coming his way. Says Anushree Seksaria, Planning Asso-ciate, Rediffusion Y&R, “Teaser ads can provoke a large amount of curiosity and buzz. Take for example the amount of curiosity generated during the Hutch Hi campaign a few years ago.”
“It also stops the audience or at least makes it think about making a purchase from the competition,” says Saumya Chattopad-hyay, Head, Strategic Planning, Rediffusion Y&R. Naturally, the campaign has to be well planned for it to be a success. There are certain questions to be considered. Will you place one advertisement or more than one? If there is more than one advertisement, what is the best way to plan the series? After all, the ads must never leave the audience dissatisfied.
A jeweller recently came up with an advertisement that ran like this — Thik Jomche Na. When translated, it meant, the idea is not selling. That definitely left consumers zapped — ‘what’s not selling?’ The jeweller soon answered the question — the monthly installments of the gold loan that the company offered were actually an attractive proposition.
Now for the next question: if there is more than one advertisement, can they all be the same? Or should each advertisement build up on the previous one? The second strategy definitely helps. Then there’s the question of whether the advertisements should be identified or not. As M. Sen, an advertising professional says, “The course of action definitely depends on the type of announcement and of course, the market condition.” If you take the example of motor cars, before an automobile major launches a new product, competition is sure to know about it. And competitors will definitely be very active in the months before to overshadow the launch. So the automobile company that plans to come up with its new series has to be very guarded and not reveal too many features of the new car it plans to launch. Yes, there is a word of caution when it comes to teaser campaigns.
Seksaria also says, “The strategy can be risky too as one’s elaborately laid-out plans can be disrupted quite quickly by a competitor. Take, for example, the recent war of the shampoos, when Pantene that was launching its teaser ads announced, ‘A Mystery Shampoo! Eighty per cent of women say it’s better than anything else.’ Soon a competitor saw the opportunity to score a point, with the message ‘There is no mystery. Dove is the No.1 shampoo!’
There are also instances where follow-up campaigns fail to sustain the interest generated by teasers. The lesson: don’t make teasers run too long otherwise curiosity may turn to irritation. However, certain advertisements that fail to impress. Remember how Kajol as the leader of the anti-Marie squad raided rooms? After a series of advertisements, it was revealed that Kajol had declared war against Marie eaters in order to clear the kitchen of all Marie biscuits. A new product — digestive Marie — had made its way into the market. Even Amby Valley showcased a series on celebrities after which the project was launched. Consumers did not associate themselves with the series and the ads, to my knowledge, fell flat.
However, the HSBC campaign did impress. It started a campaign for a home loan portfolio with a teaser campaign that talked about home loan disorders. The ad aroused curiosity and even before the product was launched the target audience was impressed. “But sometimes one feels that teaser campaigns are a waste — they actually gain nothing except for making people wonder what is to come,” says S. Chatterjee, an advertising professional. All said and done, a teaser campaign works on the simple premise that you need to create a buzz before launching a product. How-ever, remember you must have a huge budget to sustain your brand. And when you finally unveil the product the product should elicit, “Oh really?” from the consumer and not a bored, “Oh no”!

The writer is a well- known industry watcher