Durex and the Toy Story - Careful with your humour
The detergent market in Vietnam is said to be a very competitive race in terms of advertising and marketing. Different brands are trying to approach their consumers in different ways. While OMO successes to gain their popularity with emotional and meaningful TVCs related to family and love sharing during Tet holiday, Ariel focuses on using Influencer - singer My Linh as their brand ambassador to increase brand awareness. On the other side, from 2012, Aba, a detergent product from a local company Dai Viet Huong, choose a different way of marketing - buzz marketing, which has helped the brand’s name is widely known in a short time. However, Would it bring more cons than pros?
Figure 1: Reproduce from Aba, n.d.
The truth behind all Aba’s “lame” TVCs.
Choosing a “changeable” Mekong Delta River area as the main market to launch its product, Aba has an impressive start by providing great promotion for the consumer. A big contribution to this success of Aba is their way of marketing, especially by using buzz marketing. According to Chandler and Munday (2016), buzz marketing or Word of mouth (WOM) is a viral promotional technique which focuses on maximising conversations around a brand, campaign, product, etc. by giving them “something to talk about”. Whether it is the talk between friends and families or on social media platforms. It is said to be a significant source of information in purchases of household goods (Notarantonio et al., 2009). Among all of the controversial TVCs, the most recent one is the video “Anh chồng mê việc” (the workaholic husband) which created numerous conversations both online and offline.
Figure 2: Adopted from Youtube, 2019.
With the purpose of giving the audience something to talk about, All the Aba’s TVCs are said to be so lame and irrelevant with the product in ways. In this TVC, a wife comes to her husband’s office, blaming him for always coming home late while other co-workers rushing out to see what happens. Her friend works in the same company trying to convince her that she does not need to be worried since both of them are all use Aba. The angry wife looks at her husband’s shirt, which is still clean and neat, then happy to go home. It is undeniable that by using this marketing strategy, Aba has succeeded in gaining attention from the audience, therefore, increasing their brand awareness. In some areas, they compete directly with Omo and Ariel with the same target at high segment just after one year of entering the market. According to Q&Me (2016), Aba has more market share despite late launching and stands just behind Omo and Ariel in the survey of which detergent brands are the people participated currently using.
Figure 3: Adopted from Q&Me, 2016.
Buzz marketing might be effective in raising awareness in a short period, however, it does have some uncontrollable sides. First of all, the brand does not have the power or would have difficulties in controlling the messages and the conversations between the consumers. (Sernovitz 2009). For this type of marketing, it can be dangerous since the consumer may spread biased information and distort the message, which may be used against the advertiser (Yahia et al. 2012).
According to Tomorrow marketers (2017), since the Mekong Delta River is the main target market for Aba, the TVCs are put in the familiar situation for suburban areas. Therefore, although having poor content and no meanings, Aba’s ads still received attention from the target audience due to the entertaining sides. Nonetheless, it seems like they received an adverse attitude rather than a positive one. On Aba’s official Youtube channel, the newest ad “The workaholic husband” has more than 9 million views with most of the comments has negative feelings about the ad. Some comments receiving lots of likes such as “The lamest TVC in the entire Northern area” or “Whenever this TVC is shown, I just want to change the channel”. Notably, there is a comment criticising that Aba’s ads are not only lame and meaningless but also disfigure the Vietnamese woman’s image. In these ads, the women are portrayed as a talkative, senseless and unthinking person. Not only on Youtube, but Aba’s Facebook page also has lots of adverse comments and criticisms for these ads.
Figure 5: Reproduced from Youtube, 2019.
Figure 6: Reproduced from Youtube, 2019.
Figure 7: Reproduced from Facebook, 2019.
Leila and Abderrazak (2013) say that buzz marketing has a great positive influence on how consumers see the brand, how they react to the brand and also affect their purchasing decision. However, it is easy for the brand to fall into the pitfalls if they misuse it. According to Mourad (2012), a negative buzz can damage the brand’s image, which can be dangerous and affect the future of the product. Grégoire and Fisher (2008) also state that negative buzz may make audiences interest in other competitors. In this case, they are other detergent brands. More drastically, consumers say they decide to buy Omo (their competitor) due to Aba’s bad advertisements. This comment on Youtube has received more than one thousand likes, which is alarming for the brand.
Figure 8: Reproduced from Youtube, 2019.
Getting out of the Pitfalls.
According to Wijaya (2012), AIDA model is used to measure the effectiveness of an advertisement. Looking through the AIDA’s model, Aba has successful increasing their brand awareness, however, they need to take action in order to change consumer’s attitude from negative to positive. Aba should take an effort to connect with their audience, especially by being responsive to the audience. Notably, the reply should be implemented through a campaign since it is better to be proactive rather than reactive (Notelet 2016). If Aba continuing using buzz marketing as their strategy for future advertising campaign and promotion, more prediction and research needed to be made so as not to be caught off guard in case of a bad buzz.
Since buzz marketing strongest point is to create a large jump in awareness for a product, therefore, in order to compete with other detergent brands that currently have more market share in Vietnam, I suggest Aba’s marketing team to think of a new way which also can create more desire in consumer which will increase the action of buying Aba.
Reference:
Bột giặt nhiệt Aba 2019, Quảng cáo Bột giặt nhiệt Aba - Anh chồng mê việc, Facebook, 15 May, viewed 29 July 2019, <https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=649965692133895>
Bột giặt Aba n.d., ‘Bột giặt Nhiệt’, Bột giặt Aba, image, viewed 26 July 2019, <https://botgiataba.com/>.
Bột giặt Aba 2019, Quảng cáo Bột Giặt ABA - Anh Chồng Mê Việc, Youtube, 9 May, viewed 26 July 2019, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHOiNPwOCfk>.
Chandler, D & Munday, R 2016, ‘Buzz Marketing’, A Dictionary of Social Media, Oxford University Press.
Grégoire, Y & Robert, J.F. 2008, ‘Customer Betrayal and Retaliation: When Your Best Customers Become Your Worst Enemies’, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, vol. 26, no.2, pp. 247-261.
Hughes, M 2005, Buzzmarketing : get people to talk about your stuff, Portfolio, New York.
Leila, C & Abderrazak, G 2013, ‘The Impact of the Effectiveness of a Buzz Marketing Campaign on the Image, Awareness and Purchasing on the Image, Awareness and Purchasing Decision: The Moderating Role of Involvement’, Journal of Marketing Research & Case Studies, vol.2013, viewed 28 July 2019, <https://ibimapublishing.com/articles/JMRCS/2013/584547/584547.pdf>.
Notarantonio, E.M. & Quigley, C.J. 2009, ‘The Effectiveness of a Buzz Marketing Approach Compared to Traditional Advertising: An Exploration’, Journal of Promotion Management, vol. 14, no. 4, pp.455-464, viewed 26 July 2019, Taylor & Francis Online Journals Collection database.
Notele C. 2016, “How to successfully manage a Bad buzz?”, DMU, viewed 26 July 2019, <https://digital-me-up.com/2016/06/15/successfully-manage-bad-buzz/>.
Sernovitz A 2009, Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking,Kaplan Publishing, Chicago.
Tomorrow Marketer 2017, “Co gi dang sau TVC kho hieu cua Aba”. Tomorrow Marketer, viewed 26 July 2019, <https://blog.tomorrowmarketers.org/co-gi-dang-sau-tvc-kho-hieu-cua-aba/>.
Yahia, K.B., Touiti, S & Tousani, M 2012, ‘The dark side of buzz marketing: The position of Communication and Advertising Agencies’, conference paper, Nancy, France.
Wijaya, B. S. 2012, ‘The Development of Hierarchy of Effects Model in Advertising’, UniversitasBarkie, Jakarta.
.png)
