Ad-wise

THE FIGURES are mind-boggling, so much so that they made the banner headline in BusinessWorld last week: "RP companies spend P113.26 billion on ads."

The figure comes from Nielsen Media Research, based on their monitoring of ads on television, radio and print. The P113-billion figure was for 2004, representing a 20-percent increase over the previous year's advertising expenditures, a very healthy growth rate when you look at the way other business sectors have been faring.

What does all this mean for the Philippines and the Filipino?

Mass media, mass reach

Any basic course in business will mention ads as being essential. Even the smallest sari-sari store "advertises" itself with a little sign, usually provided by a large company so that the sari-sari store's signage is itself transformed into advertising for some food or soft-drink manufacturer.

But in this age of mass media, we're interested in a much wider reach for advertising. Nielsen's figures show that television receives the bulk of advertising revenues: P82.2 billion or 73 percent of the total. Radio stations got P19.5 billion or 17 percent, while print media got the crumbs, about P9.6 billion or 8 percent.

Advertising and mass media go together -- the ad companies aim for the mega-reach provided by radio, TV and print to get their clients' potential customers. Mass media, on the other hand, need the revenues to operate-broadcast media is basically free while newspaper sales and subscriptions are almost token in terms of supporting operating expenses. Mass media's reach is overwhelming, literally reaching millions with each TV ad, the messages repeated through blitzkrieg campaigns, a kind of mental carpet bombing that may last only a few days, to be quickly replaced by a new campaign with fresh new messages. The goal here is to imprint on consumers a particular brand name.

Defining the good life

To get a brand name through to people, advertisements draw from culture: our notions of cleanliness, beauty, good health, nutrition and a "good life" in general. But even as they draw from popular culture, the advertisements reshape existing notions, transforming society itself, for better or for worse, especially in relation to particular needs-and wants.

From Nielsen's data, we learn the country's top 20 advertisers are: Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Colgate-Palmolive, Unilab, Nestle, Smart Communications, Fortune, Globe Telecom, San Miguel Brewing Group, Johnson & Johnson, Ginebra San Miguel, Pagcor, Whitehall, Mead Johnson, PLDT, California Manufacturing Corp., Universal Robina Corp., Monde Nissin, Jollibee and Tanduay.

We see then that the most advertised products are home-care products such as detergents and a range of personal-care products, including shampoos, soaps and skin care lotions. Other widely advertised products are medicines, cigarettes and alcohol, snack foods (including instant noodles), fast foods and telecommunications (cell phone-related services). And yes, there's Pagcor. Now I'm not quite sure how we should classify their ads as directly endorsing gambling or justifying gambling by showing how it supports social concerns.

Take time out to list the main messages you're getting through the ads, and you can actually get insights into what Filipino culture is like. I'll be random and list some of my own thoughts (some, of course, tongue-in-cheek), just focusing on the gender aspect. Notice the messages are often for women, recognizing that they do a lot of the buying for the family. (And if you listen hard enough, you'll find the voice-over, the one telling the women to buy, even "feminine hygiene products," is that of a man.)

A woman's most important assets, for getting a boyfriend, lover or husband, are her skin whitened with X brand and hair shampooed with X brand. (What is it about the Philippines and hair? Of the 10 most advertised brands in 2004, six were shampoos: Palmolive, Head and Shoulders, Pantene, Sunsilk, Rejoice and Cream Silk.)

Once you get that lover or husband, the sure-fire way of keeping him is using particular detergents and fabric softeners so his clothes look clean, smell clean. (But don't forget to feed him with instant noodles as well.) And when the kids start arriving, show you love them with certain infant formulas (especially those that claim to produce geniuses), vitamins, instant noodles, a cell phone.

Notice that the messages are often for women, on how to get and keep a man. Men, on the other hand, are urged to show their virility, through particular vitamins, cigarettes and alcohol. Even cell phones have brought in the "sexy male" image: one company shows a man holding a cell phone with screaming women dying to get their hands on him.

Life imitates ads

Ads don't just respond to needs; they're powerful for creating wants as well. They can distort priorities. Doctors always ask me why their patients will complain that they can't afford to take a particular medicine regularly and yet spend thousands each month on cell phones. We see that the telecommunications companies play on our basic human need to be in touch with other people, and amplify this to create new wants: don't be content with hearing your loved one's voice, get a phone with a camera so you can send your picture as well.

The advertising industry spends millions on research, including the use of social scientists to look into what's already out there, from people's primordial needs to the latest slang terms. But in the process, they literally fashion us to believe what is fashionable, from clothing styles to language itself. We may scoff at and spoof many of the ads, but don't forget that the more outrageously ridiculous they are, the deeper the product name recall.

In the end, ads don't just imitate life; we find ourselves living out the ads, buying the products with the hope of becoming a bit more like the advertising models with all the connotations of glamour and sophistication and sex appeal and social status. I've wondered how many night-time conversations have people imitating that ad for a vitamin claiming the product can keep a man's energy levels at a maximum, even if he's put in a whole day's work at the office.
"Ako pa..." (loose translation: Me? Tired?), he claims seductively, suggesting he's ready for more "work," made indefatigable by the vitamin.

We need to teach our kids to be more "ad-wise," conscious of how ads manipulate our feelings and aspirations. But before we can do that, we need to be sure we are able to read through the ads as well, and reflect on how they do affect our lives, from what we serve on the table to the way we use our cell phones.

It's time we turned the table around and tell the advertisers: "Ako pa..." Me? I'm not that gullible. I'm ad-wise.