THE ‘AMBIENT’ STRATEGY’ TO DIMINISH THE RESISTANCE.  A STUDY ON AMBIENT ADVERTISING AND THE CONTEMPORARY CONSUMERS’ RESISTANCE TOWARDS ADVERTISING _________________________________________________________________________________________ Authors: Supervisor: Clara GUSTAFSSON Max MARTINSSON & Research field: Advertising Serban-Constantin SEMENESCU Deadline: 23rd May 2012 SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS AND MANAGEMENT DEPARTMENT OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION Master in GLOBALIZATION, BRANDS & CONSUMPTION -Master Thesis- Page i The ‘Ambient’ strategy to diminish the resistance: A study on Title ambient advertising and the contemporary consumer resistance towards advertising. Date of the Seminar 28th of May, 2012 Course BUSN29. Master thesis Serban-Constantin SEMENESCU Authors Max MARTINSSON Advisor Clara GUSTAFSSON Keywords: Ambient, advertising, guerrilla, marketing, postmodern The purpose of this thesis is to investigate Ambient Advertising from the contemporary consumer’ perspective – consumer that we Thesis purpose: place in a postmodern context, in order to identify new insights on consumer’s resistance towards out-of-home advertising. The methodology of the thesis targets an abductive approach, using an iterative strategy. The research design takes a constructionist Methodology view. The study uses phenomenology –part of an interpretative epistemological standpoint. The data is collected through a Qualitative Research Method. Taking into consideration a CCT approach, this thesis follows Theoretical perspective theoretical backgrounds in advertising, guerilla marketing, postmodernism and consumer behavior. Empirical data The data is gathered through semi-structured in-depth interviews. Main findings are that ambient marketing has an exceptional ability to stand out and grab the attention of its immediate surroundings. It can be eye-catching and effecting in both positive as well as negative ways. However if marketers have the knowledge to control the elements within this powerful advertising strategy, they have Conclusions great chances to diminish the negative attitude of contemporary consumers. Ambient marketing has the potential to attract valuable attention and an appealing image, if used in the right way. Also, valuable outcomes helped grasp ideas for further research in the field of Ambient Advertising, this being an essential contribution of this thesis to the academia. Page ii Preface We wrote this thesis as a concluding part of our international marketing Master program at School of Economics and Management, University of LUND. As our special and common interest particularly lay in the field of market communication and advertising we decided to work together in order to accomplish this dissertation. Page iii List of Figures: Figure 1: Understanding the research process for the thesis - from theory to insights (OWN) Figure 2: A few marketing strategies within the Guerrilla Marketing concept (OWN) Figure 3: The placement of Ambient Advertising within the boundaries of Out-of-Home Advertising (OWN) List of Tables: Table 1: Participants profiles (*=Respondents interviewed in the Pilot Interviews) Table 2: Proposed Ambient Advertising model (Luxton and Drummond, 2000, p.737) Table 3: Possible problems with Ambient Advertising (OWN) (with information summed from Chatterjee and Shuvam, 2011) Table 4: Main issues regarding Ambient Advertising (OWN) List of Images: Image 1: Microsoft 16.000-butterfly Campaign (Jana, 2006) Image 2: An Ambient Advertisement made in a form of a coffin within a crossroad Image 3: Airport baggage carousel personalized by Casino de Venezia in It Image 4: Ambient Advertising made for Tibits-restaurant, Switzerl Image 5: Ambient Advertising for Perlodent Image 6: Ambient Advertising made for movie KILL-BILL Page iv Table of Contents 1. INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................... 1 1.1. BACKGROUND INFORMATION ................................................................................................... 1 1.2. PURPOSE .................................................................................................................................... 3 1.3. LOGIC OF THEORY ...................................................................................................................... 4 2. METHODOLOGY ............................................................................................................... 6 2.1. RESEARCH LOGIC ........................................................................................................................ 6 2.2. RESEARCH STRATEGY ................................................................................................................. 6 2.3. RESEARCH METHODS ................................................................................................................. 7 2.4. EMPIRICAL STUDY ...................................................................................................................... 8 2.4.1. PRIMARY DATA ............................................................................................................. 8 2.4.2. SECONDARY DATA ........................................................................................................ 9 2.5. INTERVIEW DESIGN AND PROCEDURE ....................................................................................... 9 2.5.1. STRUCTURE OF THE INTERVIEW ................................................................................. 10 2.5.2. CONDUCTING THE INTERVIEW ................................................................................... 11 2.6. DATA ANALYSIS ........................................................................................................................ 12 3. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ............................................................................................. 14 3.1. ADVERTISING OVERVIEW ......................................................................................................... 14 3.2. GUERRILLA MARKETING ........................................................................................................... 15 3.2.1. DEFINITIONA AND KEY ASPECT ................................................................................... 15 3.2.2. GUERRILLA MARKETING STRATEGIES ......................................................................... 17 3.3. AMBIENT MARKETING ............................................................................................................. 19 3.3.1. DEFINITION AND CONCEPT OF AMBIENT ADVERTISING ............................................ 19 3.3.2. DEVELOPMENTS IN AMBIENT ADVERTISING. EXAMPLES. .......................................... 25 3.4. CONSUMER CULTURE THEORY ................................................................................................ 28 3.5. POSTMODERN CONSUMER ...................................................................................................... 28 Page v 3.6. CONSUMER RESISTANCE TOWARDS ADVERTISING ................................................................. 31 3.6.1. FACTORS THAT ADD TO THE RESISTANCE TOWARDS ADVERTISING .......................... 31 3.6.2. NEEDS OF THE CONTEMPORARY CONSUMER ............................................................ 36 3.7. THEORETICAL CONCLUSIONS ................................................................................................... 39 4. ANALYSIS AND OUTCOMES ............................................................................................... 40 4.1. INTERVIEWEES AND THEIR ATTITUDES TOWARDS ADVERTISING ........................................... 40 4.2. ELEMENTS OF THE ‘AMBIENT’-STRATEGY ............................................................................... 42 4.2.1. UNCONVENTIONALITY ................................................................................................ 42 4.2.2. INVOLVEMENT ............................................................................................................ 46 4.2.3. EMPOWERMENT ......................................................................................................... 49 4.2.4. EXPERIENCE ................................................................................................................. 50 4.3. THE ‘AFTER-EFFECTS’ OF AMBIENT ADVERTISING ................................................................... 51 4.3.1. CLUTTER ...................................................................................................................... 51 4.3.2. SKEPTICISM ................................................................................................................. 54 4.3.3. INTRUSIVENESS ........................................................................................................... 56 4.3.4. ‘BRAND RESENTMENT’................................................................................................ 59 5. DISCUSSION ..................................................................................................................... 61 5.1. RESISTANCE VS. COMPLIANCE ................................................................................................. 61 5.2. AMBIENT ADVERTISING: ON THE EDGE OF BEING OVERRATED .............................................. 63 5.3. THE VIBE OF A ‘NEW-CONSUMER’ ........................................................................................... 64 5.4. CONCLUSIONS .......................................................................................................................... 66 5.5 LIMITATIONS AND FURTHER RESEARCH .................................................................................. 67 REFFERENCES ................................................................................................................. 69 APPENDIX 1 ................................................................................................................... 78 APPENDIX 2 ................................................................................................................... 86 APPENDIX 3 ................................................................................................................... 98 APPENDIX 4 ................................................................................................................... 99 Page vi 1. INTRODUCTION In the introduction chapter an overview of the thesis will be given. Within Background Information the reader will comprehend the overall state of Ambient Advertising within the context of todays’ society. The chapter also reveals in a clear manner the purpose and the logic of the thesis flow. 1.1. BACKGROUND INFORMATION The fact that societies reached the tail end of hyper-consumerism is still to be researched upon (The Atlantic, Jul.2010), yet consumption will always represent a major element in our evolution that would probably not happen without the major help of advertising. Advertising in its outspoken form has been following the development of communication in society from the early days of the industrial revolution to the beginning of a more consumer-based society where consumption is a “motor force for the economy” (Corrigan, 1997). However, in a world where societies tend to live on a fast pace, along with the economic uncertainties of the past decade, humankind is experiencing increasingly psychological stress and reluctant to bear another one - that is the confusion and entropy of mass advertising. Tradition, conventional, or in other words even obsolete marketing is adding to this clutter and promotes deceptiveness as a way to catch the attention of today’s consumers. Subsequently the emotional reactions of consumers are often disregarded. We are witnessing a new marketing era; we are experiencing a massive flux from the advertisements we used to know as adaptive advertising. Having more and more commercial- skipping services on the TV and the WEB, there is a need for brands to regain attention on the market (Jana, 2006). “Consumers are growing desensitized to the constant bombardment of logos and ads emblazoned on everything from take-out coffee cups to movie-ticket stubs” (Jana, 2006). Advertising techniques like the ones presented by the BusinessWeek (Jana, 2006) are perfect examples of how brands should adapt on the advertising-space for the nowadays’ consumer, a consumer that needs to be involved and interact with to attain its attention on the market. Overall, it is hard to argue on the efficiency of these less expensive marketing strategies that bring an undeniable return on investment. Guerrilla marketing arose as a strategy to comfort with these reactions and slowly started being a growing type of marketing mainly throughout SMEs. This strategy is based on low-cost unconventional means like graffiti, sticker-bombing, to public flash-mobs or street real-time social interactions. Page 1 In today’s competitive environment, where clutter with classical advertising seems to invade our public space, unconventional promotional methods seems to be more and more of a need rather than a simple choice. Guerrilla marketing which was first elaborated by Levinson (1984) seems to come as a new concept in creating easier marketing tools for world-wide businesses and with less money. The term itself, Guerrilla marketing, “comes from the concept of Guerrilla warfare that is a form of irregular warfare” (Lum, 2009). Within the plethora of Guerrilla strategies, Ambient-marketing has the potential to stand out, as it is unconventional, interactive and innovative. This edgy and creative marketing method encompasses clever strategies with elements of ‘surprise’ (Cozens, 2011, The Guardian) that blend with local culture and take into account the behavioral aspects of the audience. As a part of guerrilla marketing, Ambient-marketing started by being a low-cost approach of doing marketing in a more efficient way. However, with the new technologies, from LED technology, high quality sound editing, more creative modern architectural designs, the industry became more and more of a costly investment (Dahlén et al., 2009). However, creativity makes this marketing strategy stand out in a world filled with passive messages. Advertising tends to come at the wrong time, the wrong place and to the wrong person. Marketers don’t think about the consumers’ reactions to advertisements anymore, usually assaulting the wrong target group with marketing schemes that interfere with the personal time and space of consumers. Advertising needs to adapt to the right individuals through a more personalized way in order to target the postmodern demands placed upon the business today. Due to misplaced, intrusive and untrustworthy marketing, brands are losing credibility among their customers (Kimmel, 2005). But since advertising is an important building block of a marketing strategy and a capitalistic society, brands must start to regain the trust of the consumer and reestablish the reputation of advertising as an instrument of communicating value. Today, consumers want relevant advertising about matters they are interested in as well as having the possibility to find extensive information about it. Thus marketing strategies should be adapted more on the consumer’s wants and needs, not make it general wise. To do so, these strategies should not be intrusive and rather it should engage its audience at the right time and the right place, as if they are potential customers. For example, involvement is something that the modern-day society needs and thrive for. This is what ambient marketing seeks as well: to involve the potential consumers to engage with the advertised brand, to create, as BusinessWeek (Jana, 2006) calls it, a ‘streetwise identity’ and to Page 2 capture the limited attention of today’s consumer that is flooded with advertisements and ambushed by messages. However, other than the potential advantages of Ambient Marketing, further research on under which circumstances consumers dislike or even reject ambient campaigns are recommended by Hirschmann and Stern (1999). Questions can still emerge on the issues of advertising clutter, marketing unintended consequences, advertising innovation and creativity: Is today’s Ambient Marketing strategies enough to diminish the resistance experienced by the contemporary consumer towards advertising? 1.2. PURPOSE The purpose of this thesis is to investigate Ambient Advertising from the contemporary consumer’ perspective – consumer that we place in a postmodern context, in order to identify new insights on consumer’s resistance towards out-of-home advertising. In other words, the study aims to address the following research questions: Q1: How does the ‘post-modern consumer’ perceive ambient advertising in terms of resistance opposed to traditional forms of marketing? (As a second research question, we want to discover whether the fact that a new term on the contemporary consumer still didn’t emerge for the past half a century, is a hinder for researching upon a contemporary state of marketing) Thus: Q2: Does the concept of a postmodern consumer still apply in changing advertising strategies today? Page 3 1.3. LOGIC OF THE THEORY AMBIENT Research in a NOWADAYS’ ADVERTISING contemporary basis CONSUMER POSTMODERN s Context t n e m e vo The psychology r pm feedback behind Advertising Issues: Involvement, i ro Ethics, Trust, Experiences, f st Advertising etc. h g is Clutter, etc. n I Contemporary RESISTANCE Out-of-HOME regarding AMBIENT ADVERTISING Advertising RESISTANCE of the insights feedback contemporary consumers upon Advertising FIGURE 1: Understanding the research process for the thesis - from theory to insights (OWN) The object of analysis is ambient advertising and its effects on the tendencies of the nowadays consumer to oppose and avoid outdoor advertising. As there is limited academic background on the definition of the nowadays’ consumer, this thesis places the consumer in a postmodern context. Ambient marketing is viewed as an alternative to traditional styles of out-of-home advertising. As it is a broad and versatile area, we chose to define traditional advertising as passive communication were people predominately act as an audience, not as participants. Within out- of-home advertising there are several formats of communication. Conventional advertising methods based on print-formats (billboards, posters, etc.) that can be viewed as “passive” advertising strategies are not object to our study. Neither are “digital” alternatives of any kind where technology plays a crucial part of the strategy, although they might fit in the category of ambient advertising methods. Having feedback on the overall out-of-home advertising from the nowadays’ consumer that cover both positive and negative aspects, we want to make clear what are considered to be the overall factors that add to this resistance towards advertising. Along with the theoretical Page 4