SA banks are spending millions to bore and confuse consumers – study
Market research agency Columinate says that some of South Africa’s biggest banks continue to spend millions on advertising, but are missing the mark.
“In a single quarter during 2017, South Africa’s ‘Big 5’ banks spent R80,927,209 on ads that didn’t elicit a strong positive consumer reaction. That’s 41% of the banking sector’s advertising budget spent on ads that bored, confused, or frustrated viewers,” Columinate said.
During April to June of 2017, the company said it engaged with over 4,900 consumers to review 33 different television commercials produced by the five leading banks. The airing of these 33 adverts during the quarter is calculated by Ornico to have cost the banks an estimated R197,415,901.
According to Columinate, two banks in particular were responsible for the negative results (though they remained unnamed):
‘Bank B’ spent 95% of the evaluated ad spend on advertising that “elicited an average positive consumer reaction with frequent claims of boredom”.
“While the ads were recognised as that of Bank B (in other words the ads had strong brand linkage), the audience felt that these ads didn’t resonate with them,” Columinate said.
It said that viewers also complained that, while some ads didn’t share enough product information – negatively impacting credibility – other iterations didn’t make it clear how the viewer could benefit, and so the subsequent call to action was lost in translation.
‘Bank E’ spent 12% of its evaluated budget on ads that elicited an average positive reaction, but it spent a whopping 72% of its budget on ads that elicited a weak positive reaction (mainly confusion and frustration).
The audience simply could not understand what it was Bank E was trying to communicate, the research agency said. To make matters worse, the ads were often identified as advertising for another financial service provider.
Banks A, C, and D fared much more admirably, the three spending 85%, 100%, and 99.8% of its evaluated budgets respectively on ads that elicited strong positive consumer reactions.
Worth noting, said Columinate, is that Bank C spent its entire budget on a functional campaign – pushing products and services – while Bank D spent almost its entire budget on an emotive campaign, namely telling a brand story.
“It’s not that people don’t like advertising, it’s that they don’t like bad advertising,” said Dr Henk Pretorius, Founder and CEO of Columinate. “As humans we’re getting exceedingly good at tuning out the bad or average advertising, which is why it’s so important for any brand to pre-test and stress-test their creative.
“While you can potentially convert a member of your audience to consider your brand with a good ad, unfortunately our results show it’s much easier to alienate them with a bad one.”
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