Give us something to chew on

A sexy woman picks up a large bowl of chocolate chip ice cream and slowly begins eating. The taste delights her and she purrs. Soothing music and a candlelit room make up the rest of the scene. A voiceover at the end gives the brand name of the ice cream and a tagline. If that was your idea of a great TVC to promote a food product, burn it and go back to the drawing board. That's because a major, regional survey has revealed that the average Asian person largely distrusts food product advertising and that a completely different approach needs to be taken to cut through the cynicism. Conducted by Ogilvy & Mather, the study across 21 cities in 14 countries found that about 65 per cent of respondents said they didn't trust advertising as a source of advice on healthy eating. A similar number said they even ignored the information provided in the manufacturer's label. So who do they trust? More than 80 per cent pointed to their mother. Other members of the family and friends were also up there. At almost 70 per cent, even the government scored highly. Contamination scandals in the pre-packaged food and drink sector around the world - not just in Asia-Pacific - and the fact that consumers are constantly being bombarded with countless new choices and advertising messages on a daily basis are behind the public cynicism. Mr David Elsworth, O&M regional planning director, said, "Your mother wouldn't give you a physics or chemistry lesson every time you saw her. She wouldn't hit you with so many messages inside a 24-hour period that it confuses you." The study, titled 'Eating Disorders', also found that the media's credibility had been eroded compared with five years ago. "You would have expected women's magazines to have a higher credibility, but according to 'Eating Disorders', less than 50 per cent of respondents said they trusted ads in women's titles," Mr Elsworth said. "But this isn't a surprise because as it is the news media's job to go out there and find the news, you'll have stories like 'Eat more potatoes' today, and 'Eat less potatoes' in six month's time, with the resultant effect being that you are once again confusing the market." He said, therefore, that the current general creative style of advertising in the food sector - showing the product as being beneficial in some way - was all wrong. Reverse psychology, he stressed, was the way forward. The survey found that people felt guilty when they ate junk food and bored when they made more healthy choices. "No-one seems to be completely satisfied and they aren't satisfied because every time they make a choice, there is a trade-off involved and that stresses them out. For every positive there is a negative," Mr Elsworth said. "So," he asked, "why don't we overcome the feeling of guilt or boredom by leveraging the sacrifice?" He cited a number of campaigns, which illustrate how to successfully overcome the negatives. In the Philippines, for instance, pure water brand Viva is positioned as a product, which is healthy for the body. However, its latest TVCs, launched just recently, showed people dancing at a disco and an overweight man eating a hamburger and fries before cutting to the imagery of the product and the tagline, "Wash away your sin". Upmarket coffee brand Left Bank created a fantasy Parisian cafe through a series of television and print ads, which successfully sold the product to an unsuspecting market in Taiwan. "Neither Viva nor Left Bank had the benefit of the findings of 'Eating Disorders', however, the survey identifies key insights into how people think about food vis-a-vis health. This type of data helps advertisers make their ads less of a hit and miss thing," Mr Elsworth said. It goes without saying that advertising should build up trust with a target market, however, Mr Elsworth pointed out that food manufacturers needed to take more care with how they translate product labelling from English to the language of a local market. "In the Philippines, 'healthy' means a fat man dressed in a Hawaiian shirt, but that same word in Singapore implies someone who goes to the gym every day."

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