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UNDER THE RADAR
In this era of an exploding number of advertising outlets – with the media landscape cluttered by seemingly countless television channels, public and private radio, as well as newspapers and magazines – advertisers are having a tough time reaching the right consumers. This crowding of advertising space has prompted many to adopt a more targeted approach to advertising rather than aiming their message at the masses and hoping it sticks.
BY LOUIS WASSER
Unlike above the line (ATL) advertising, which relies on mass media outlets such as television, radio, newspapers and magazines to reach consumers, the broader category of below the line (BTL) aims at more specific target audiences. The use of BTL advertising is a growing trend among advertisers, seeking to attract the attention of their consumers, one consumer at a time. A relatively new approach to Egyptian advertisers and marketers, below the line advertising has become an integral part of many advertising campaigns. Industry experts predict that it will not be long before these techniques are part and parcel of most major advertising campaigns.
Proliferation problems
In the 1990s, a company’s advertising strategy was fairly predictable: TV ads aired before the 9pm news and the evening soap opera on Egyptian terrestrial television Channel One, and before the English soap opera on Channel Two; heavy print advertising in the main daily papers with limited spending on ads in magazines; and a handful of outdoors for those who were really thinking outside the box. Radio didn’t even factor into the equation. Today, the advertising mix is a combination of above the line and below the line advertising. Advertisers dividing their budgets among a slue of terrestrial and satellite television channels, a massive number of print publications, as well as radio, have also adopted BTL to target specific consumer segments.
“Above the line and below the line are not really academic terms,” explains Ahmed Taher, marketing professor at the American University of Cairo (AUC) and chairman and CEO of Integrated Marketing Solutions (IMS). “They’re more practitioner terms, professional terms.”
Generally speaking, above the line advertising encompasses any form of advertising that addresses the largest number of people possible per ad.
“Above the line is when you try to reach the masses, the biggest number of people that you can,” explains Sherif Coutry, marketing manager of Manfoods Egypt, which owns and operates McDonald’s in Egypt. “Generally, conventional media for above the line are TV, radio [and the] press, which includes newspapers and magazines.”
The shift in the advertising landscape has given advertisers more options, but it has also made it more difficult for them to pin down consumers.
Viewers are no longer tuning into a channel, instead they are tuning into content. “Viewers’ behavior has shifted: [they went] from being loyal to a channel to [being] loyal to a program,” argues Marwan Fathy, marketing manager of Tamima Group, which has a variety of business lines including consumer finance and TV shopping.
To continue to reach their audience, companies have had to change the tools used in advertising. “It was easy [before] to reach everybody – including the A, the B and the C class [consumers], everybody – by TV, and the cost was cheap,” says Hazem Hussein, chairman and CEO of Advantage Marketing & Advertising. But now the game plan has to change. The multiple options have made targeting ads to the right consumers a lot more difficult.
You don’t need to be an advertising executive to notice the lengths to which companies are going to get consumers’ attention. “Today, the real competition is for your attention, [just] go over Sixth of October Bridge and look how much advertising there is,” says Taher. “It has become a war for customers’ attention and that war is expensive because everybody’s shouting, so you have to shout even louder, and shouting louder costs money.”
And as more and more companies try to grab customers’ attention, the harder it becomes for them to get their messages across. “Two things are working against you [as an advertiser]: one is the clutter and the [other] is the cost,” says Duncan Howard, chief marketing officer at Vodafone Egypt. “Ultimately you’ve got to be a lot more sensible with your advertising.”
In this crowded environment, below the line advertising is a breath of fresh air, providing marketers and advertisers the opportunity to send a focused message to a select group of people. “It is always said that above the line is like a shotgun; the pellets spread after you shoot it,” says Elwi Captan, managing director of Premier Marketing Group. He compares below the line advertising, on the other hand, to aiming with a telescopic sight. “You know who your target segment is, and you go after it and you bring it.”
The ability to selectively target segments of consumers has also made BTL a critical tool for companies with smaller budgets. “It’s always a challenge for companies with reasonably limited budgets to find ways to reach their customers,” argues Coutry. “That’s where below the line advertising comes in.”
BTL: Old versus new
Below the line advertising techniques have picked up steam worldwide, say industry experts. “[It has grown in popularity] all over the world,” argues Galal Zaki, CEO of Perception Communication. “There are new and creative ways for people to get to their target clients and sell to them.”
And Egypt is no exception to this global trend. Compared to ATL, which is a one-size-fits-all approach, BTL comes in a variety of shapes, sizes and costs. “When it comes to below the line, you’re talking about all the promotional tools that you can use in order to reach customers without the mass media,” says Amr Kais, managing director of market research company Ipsos. A number of different advertising techniques fall into this category, ranging from promotional giveaways to direct mailing to holding and sponsoring events.
And, lately, these types of tools have become extremely popular, argues Captan. “There has been a [growth] in direct marketing, mailing and so on, and [also] in events in general.” Companies are now either holding their own events or sponsoring others’ events, he says.
Moemen Taha Mostafa, general manager of Tornado, which provides promotional gifts to companies for their BTL activities, agrees, pointing out that his company’s business scope and depth have grown over recent years. “It’s not a matter of you giving a gift only,” he says. “It’s a matter of [building] brand awareness.” Whereas Tornado’s business used to be confined mainly to a three-month period around the end of the year, Mostafa argues that companies have begun to take more advantage of BTL activities year-round.
Captan says that BTL activities were first introduced to the market by multinationals, and that local companies followed suit. He says among them was BMW, which in the late 1990s and early 2000s began sending birthday cakes to some customers – a personal touch to make the brand stand out in the minds of its target clients. Other multinationals also began to introduce their own below the line advertising campaigns, complete with giveaways, product placement in movies and promotional tents during Ramadan.
Despite the surge, industry insiders argue that Egyptian companies have barely scratched the surface of BTL. “We’re not keeping up with what’s going on around the world,” says Zaki. However, some below the line techniques have become fixtures on the Egyptian market. “[BTL advertising in Egypt uses] mostly conventional [tools], what we call point of sale materials, stickers, danglers, mobiles [and] shelf strips.” But he says other BTL tools could be employed better. For example, he argues that the use of direct mail could be improved upon by a better understanding of how to structure this type of communication.
Strategic planning
A company’s decision to adopt BTL advertising depends on the company itself – its targeted consumers, its size, and the products and services it offers. “When you’re targeting the masses, it makes sense to go to the mass media, and when you’re targeting the few, it makes more sense to go below the line,” argues Taher.
When developing marketing and advertising strategies, companies need to identify their target audiences clearly, at which point they will be able to identify the best tools to reach them. “Your target group classifies what types of media you’re going to use, whether it’s below the line types of media or above the line,” says Amr Darwish, managing director of advertising agency AMA Leo Burnett.
Each type of BTL communication can also help companies achieve different effects in an advertising strategy. Vodafone’s Howard explains that above the line advertising is extremely effective when you are trying to create awareness of a new product or service or when you’re addressing the market as a whole. “If it’s a more mass type of product, above the line is definitely more effective because it speaks to lots more people in different locations.”
However, if a company is trying to foster a certain positioning for its brands in the minds of a target group of consumers, then below the line techniques can be very effective. Once a company has identified which category of consumers it wants to single out, BTL techniques allow the branding message to be delivered to them directly.
Companies must examine what they are trying to achieve when crafting their advertising strategy. For some mass market products, such as laundry detergent, Hussein asserts that it makes more sense to focus largely on ATL. “It becomes more economical to focus your money behind mass media,” he says.
Smaller companies, on the other hand, often find BTL advertising alone to be more effective in terms of reaching the right consumers with a limited budget. Using Egyptian café chain Cilantro as an example, Hussein says certain types of companies are pushed by their circumstances to focus most of their energy and budget on BTL. “They don’t have the critical mass that would allow them to be on the mass media front, so by default they focus on below the line.” He notes Cilantro utilizes social networking site Facebook to create a buzz around their chain.
Of course, some companies choose to combine ATL and BTL, adopting a more rounded approach. “Most of the multinationals, and some of the big local and regional companies, [implement a] 360-degree [advertising approach] in my opinion,” Hussein says. “They tend to think across all mediums.”
Hussein says Chipsy is one example of a company that has adopted the 360-degree approach, where they use all types of media to send a single unified message. In this case, BTL becomes a component in a larger plan to reinforce a company’s main message.
Ipsos’s Kais echoes the point that advertisers don’t have to choose from either ATL or BTL, forsaking the other. “Some go for combining both – depending on the nature of the target,” says Kais. “When it comes to below the line, most of those companies that use [it] as a primary tool are business to business [B2B] companies by nature.”
In fact, BTL has been the tool of choice for B2B activities for some time in Egypt. Taher argues that companies that sell to other companies hardly need to use mass media advertising because there are more efficient means to get their messages to their target audiences. If you have 20,000 [B2B] customers, you still know them by name because you build [relationships with] them one by one. You have their names and addresses and you know the key people,” he says. “Why would I go to TV or why would I go to massive advertising when I know that all I need is 20,000 customers, and I know them by name? That doesn’t make any sense.”
And when these companies do adopt mass media campaigns, audiences are often confused as to why a company would go through the trouble of launching an expensive TV campaign when their main consumers are other corporations as opposed to consumers at large. In the early 2000s, several cement and steel companies launched heavy TV ad campaigns during Ramadan, when TV viewership peaks. The expensive ads added color and production value to the overall above the line TV ad mix of the season, but the point of these campaigns was largely unclear to viewers, who were unlikely to buy cement bags or steel rebars directly.
“[B2B companies will occasionally] go above the line when they do a public relations campaign, [for example] when they have to prepare for an IPO, but other than that they play almost exclusively below the line,” says Taher.
While many B2B companies can use BTL as their primary tool, big companies such as Coca-Cola use it as a secondary tool, says Kais. “These [companies] use below the line very effectively, but they always use it as a secondary tool,” he says. “They can’t use it as a primary tool. You cannot expect [this type of company] to stop mass advertising or above the line advertising completely and just depend on below the line.”
And combining both ATL and BTL techniques can yield incredible results, say some industry insiders. If employed correctly, the effectiveness of both above and below the line advertising can be increased. “The synergy between them is beautiful,” says Taher. “If you are doing [an] above the line campaign and then you go just a little bit below the line, that suddenly improves the effectiveness of your above the line by anywhere between 20 to 30 percent, which is fantastic.”
The seasonal business
At no time during the year does below the line advertising come to life like over the summer. With many Egyptians congregating at the North Coast, companies have been quick to pick up on BTL advertising opportunities. These start from the moment holiday makers hit the highway, where they may receive gifts ranging from sun block to CDs. And these activities only intensify once holiday makers reach the North Coast itself. “The North Coast beaches are flooded with below the line events, [day] and night, [with] product sampling, demos, interaction, games, shows [and] parties,” says Hussein.
And the seasonality is with good reason: advertisers need to be where their consumers are. “If you intensify your mass media activities [during the summer,] then you are wasting money. You want to capture the attention of people, so you become creative in following the behavior pattern of your consumers.”
Manfood’s Coutry agrees, noting that during July and August conventional media are less effective because most people are in holiday mode. They watch less television and read fewer newspapers. So even companies that depend largely on ATL advertising opt for below the line activities to bolster their presence in the minds of consumers. “[Summer is] when below the line is most effective,” he says.
Despite the emerging trend, Hussein says companies still need to keep in mind their target consumer and the nature of the product they are marketing when adopting below the line or above the line advertising. The decision to increase BTL during the summer is heavily influenced by the advertising’s target group. “If you’re selling a Rolex or a car, then by default the summer becomes a big season for your below the line [activities],” he explains, noting that the segments that can afford these products are likely to summer at the beach. If you are targeting the masses, he says, then heading to the North Coast may not be the best tool to reach your target segment – you’d be better off going to Alexandria.
But whether or not advertising budgets shift from ATL to BTL during the summer months is a point of contention. Some experts argue that companies tend to slash their ATL advertising budgets in favor of below the line.
“In general during the summer, the budget allocated to mass media is somehow reduced, with the exception, of course, of certain products [such as ice cream and air conditioners],” says Kais.
Others argue that the prominence of BTL activities during these months creates the illusion that companies are putting less money into above the line. “The segment you’re trying to talk to is naturally in one place, so there is a lot more going on in terms of below the line tactical activation, absolutely,” says Vodafone’s Howard. “[But] I’m not sure that the spend [between ATL and BTL] really shifts that much. You see it [BTL advertising] more, but I think that’s more because it’s more localized and focused at that point.”
Room for growth
The number of companies using BTL techniques has grown, but the evolution of the techniques they use has not kept pace, argues Coutry. “[In reference to] growth in terms of the number of companies that have come into the country, then yes, there has been growth,” he says. “But in terms of the quality, in terms of the ideas, in terms of the creativity of it, I’d say it has been pretty much stagnant over the last five years.”
Hussein agrees. He believes that companies have yet to truly give BTL advertising the same amount of focus and development time that they give other forms of advertising. “I think we still have to – as a country in general – spend as much time in creativity in below the line as we do above the line,” argues Hussein.
Companies are going to have to spend more time developing their BTL tools and work closely with agencies to identify when is the most appropriate time to use them.
“Most of the agencies are after successful business cases,” says Darwish. “So the easy way out is to do a very strong [ATL] campaign when you have the budget and hit the market heavily so the impact is [seen] immediately in sales.” He argues that the impact of ATL advertising is simply easier to measure than BTL, leading many marketers to forsake the better option in favor of being able to demonstrate the impact of their work.
There is the unjustified belief that television is the most effective medium and has the most penetration, argues Fathy. “At large, I think Egyptian marketers and agencies are still pushing towards above the line, regardless [of] how efficient and ineffective it is,” he says.
But BTL can be a very important tool for some businesses – one that they should take more advantage of, argues Hussein. “When it comes to particular segments and type of products, below the line will become more vital – not just to experiment with, but to master, develop and excel at,” he says.
“It is a revolutionary process. It is getting more refined year by year, and eventually it will reach maturity, once you have the talent that can use it,” says Captan. “Some of it is quite effective, no question about it. But it is not as optimized as it should be.”
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Definition dilemma
Defining where different media tools fit into the above the line (ATL) versus below the line (BTL) equation is sometimes hard to do. While few will debate that TV, for instance, is above the line and that giveaways are below the line, a question remains about where Internet advertising falls. Activities such as placing banners on popular websites and direct e-mailing are making a dent in the Egyptian market, but industry insiders are in disagreement about the classification of these activities.
“[Online advertising] is hard to classify because it’s not in the books, because it’s very fresh and new,” says Amr Darwish, managing director of advertising agency AMA Leo Burnett. He currently classifies online advertising as BTL, but expects this to change in the near future. “I bet it will be classified as an above the line medium over the coming years,” he says. “With the level of penetration of the Internet globally and [the fact that it’s] being used as the main tool of interaction between different cultures and different nations, for sure it will land somehow in ATL land sometime over the coming 10 years.”
Some in the industry label certain forms of online advertising as ATL, while putting others into the BTL category. “If you just put a banner on Google that’s above the line obviously,” says Ahmed Taher, marketing professor at the American University of Cairo (AUC) and managing director of Integrated Marketing Solutions (IMS). “But then there are gray areas, like when you send a massive e-mail campaign. Most people would classify it as below [the line, and] I would tend to agree. But the fact that you are [directing] an e-mail campaign to masses of people – you could send [e-mails] to hundreds of thousands for that matter – definitely it doesn’t really meet the criteria for below the line.”
The potential for online advertising is clear, even if its classification is not; the only question now is if advertisers and marketers will be able to take full advantage of this relatively new form of advertising to help get their messages across to consumers.
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