How delivering the right message is tough for brands during a crisis

Why did Nike's ad resonate? And why Kent's backfired...

The atta maker advertisement by Kent RO Systems and Nike’s anti-racism “Don’t do it” campaign are miles apart — by geography, context and relevance. What binds them, however, is the fact that each was responding to an ongoing crisis and instantly became a talking point.

While opinion on the Nike ad might be divided, the reaction to the Kent ad was uniformly critical to the extent that the company had to apologise for the same. So how do brands avoid falling into such a trap? How can they come up with winning communication amid time and resource constraints as they are going through today?

While the maxim that “communication has to change beliefs and behaviour and get some action done” remains relevant during a crisis, brands need to do a few things differently, say experts. These include not seeing the crisis as merely a transactional phase, exhibiting empathy and yet not jumping onto the bandwagon for the sake of it.

“Relationship between customers and brands are built by behaviour and not merely advertising,” says industry veteran Anil S Nair who is currently managing partner and director, Sekel Tech. “So for something as sensitive as racism, you have to ask yourself ‘Do I have the right to speak?’. Nike can claim to do so as it has done something similar in the past too,” says Nair who recollects the sportswear brand’s 2018 campaign with Colin Kaepernick, the NFL free agent quarterback, whose kneeling during a national anthem in protest of police shootings of unarmed black men ignited a controversy. In its recent attempt, Nike has twisted its “Just Do It” slogan to "Just don't do it" and "For once, don't do it" to drive home the point that racism has to stop.

But what if the silence of other brands is questioned in an era of two-way communication? Here, says Nair, it becomes important to know the difference between expressing a “view” and a “point of view”. “State your belief and stop at that but don’t run a full-fledged campaign,” he says.

Brands like Tata Tea, which has a proven history of associating with different causes through its Jaago Re campaign, are better suited to speak out during a crisis situation

This indeed can be a double-edged sword. As TRA Research founder N Chandramouli tries to explain with examples closer home. He mentions a Red Label Tea advertisement featuring a father and son in the backdrop of the Kumbh Mela. The advertisement — in which the son abandons the father in the crowd only for fond memories from an earlier mela to awaken his conscience before the two reunite at a tea shop —  is described by Chandramouli as a case where even good storytelling doesn't allow the brand to gain because that's a frivolous attempt "to associate with an important religious event".

Now let’s see the other extreme: Say, the Tata Tea Jago Re that has taken up many social causes over the years. If such a brand chooses to associate with something like #BlackLivesMatter or something similar, it will be a natural fit because the consumer has come to associate the brand with speaking up against what is wrong. “Ultimately, the consumer who puts money into the brand is the real owner. The company is merely the custodian even if it has created the brand and the agency's role is even more peripheral,” says Chandramouli.

The Covid crisis is far more complex and hydra-headed and lives are being impacted at an unprecedented scale which poses another challenge for brand communication. Pranesh Misra chairman and managing director, Brandscapes Worldwide, who calls the pandemic a Black Swan event says care should be taken to ensure that the tone of communication is not competitive, but inclusive.

“We can’t benefit from a claim building an USP (how my brand is superior to competition), because consumers would see that as opportunistic. Instead, the tone of the advertising should recognise the suffering and offer the category (not the brand) as a solution. Consumers are looking for hard evidence, so if the brand can provide some evidence, that would be welcome. But the role of the brand in the communication needs to be more as the sponsor of the message, than as the salesman,” says Misra.

Dabur, for example, has packaged some of its health products as an “immunity boosting kit” during the pandemic. The company’s marketing head for health supplements, Prashant Agarwal, says the idea behind the television commercials (shot with stock footage amid the restrictions) or other forms of brand communication was simply to tell the customer that Dabur has relevant products for the whole family.

But a fake attempt to benefit from the crisis can be counter-productive. “Like a mattress brand that claimed it was selling anti-Covid mattresses. It’s a baseless claim,” says Ambi Parameswaran, independent brand strategist, brand coach and founder of Brand-Building.com. The brand in question here was a small furniture brand that posted its misleading ad in a local daily but thanks to social media it got an instant backlash followed by a police FIR.

In the Kent case, believes Chandramouli, the onus was largely on the agency as the client, already in a crisis because of flight of workers or lack of finance, would not have expected the backlash for the ad. “At the same time, the company has to be more watchful because sometimes, creatives can mess up.” It is here that the legacy brands have an edge compared to the newer ones, he adds.

Then comes the challenge of delivering the right message with the resource constraints. Amyn Ghadiali, Director-Strategy of an integrated ad agency Gozoop, says that for them it was taking personalized approaches for clients as diverse as Taj Hotels to Viacom18 to a protein supplement brand Ace Blend or the campaign that was conceptualised in association with Niti Aayog. 

“Now Ace Blend was initially not in the list of essentials. So we designed their communications around campaigns which talked about different aspect of health. Similarly Intermiles was trying to diversify into providing loyalty programmes for other categories than travel that it was known for. We also designed a ‘Smiles with Intermiles’ campaign that spoke of de-stressing.”

There also are traps. For those who are staring at a prolonged wait before resumption — like the multiplex brands — should do something that Maggi did years ago, says Parameswaran. “They should try telling the consumer that the wait would end soon or the happy days would return again, essentially build anticipation,” he says.