Advertising

There’s a FIFA campaign running right now; you’ve probably seen it, because they’ve put a bit of cash behind it. Featuring a range of South Africans, mostly non-soccer supporters (which is usually code for “white women”) saying, in wonder, “I was there”, the key takeout focuses on the historical significance of 2010.

The aim is presumably to encourage people who think that dribbling is something that Julius Malema does when he has to explain why driving a Range Rover is not incompatible with demanding the nationalization of the mines, to go along and attend a World Cup match. The campaign is all terribly moving, but it doesn’t help that it’s being flighted against a backdrop of negative publicity about slow local ticket sales. Recently, Danny Jordaan had a moan, saying that at this rate there would be more England than Bafana Bafana fans watching matches.

Arthur Goldstuck, one of South Africa’s leading internet and ecommerce experts, responded immediately.  Blogging for Thought Leader, he pointed out that many more tickets could have been sold if FIFA hadn’t made it so damned difficult for people to buy them. Not only do you have to fill in reams of information to register in the first place – including the ID numbers, comprehensive CV and blood type of every individual for whom you wish to purchase a ticket – you’ve then got to apply for tickets and wait to be approved. (No instant gratification for FIFA, oh no.) After a bit of a wait, you’ll be informed whether you’ve been successful in being granted the (hideously expensive, relative to the PSL) tickets you wanted. If you’ve managed to secure tickets for all the matches you applied for, the system will then inform you that you may not apply for any more, because, presumably, FIFA wants to make sure that everybody gets an opportunity to attend a match.

So truly passionate football fans are excluded from participating fully in the event. How insane is that, to prevent people who want your product from buying it? And how much more divorced from reality to expect that people who aren’t especially excited about football, but will watch it if the opportunity comes along and they don’t have anything better to do, will go to all that trouble to buy tickets?

Let’s be honest, the FIFA campaign isn’t especially memorable, but even the best creative campaign in the world won’t make any difference to the bottom line if it’s too difficult for the public to respond to your beautifully shot, emotively scored 40” TV ad.

How many of us have been involved in campaigns where we come up with compelling messages communicated in an inspiring and memorable way… only, because there’s no proper backend delivery, it’s too difficult for the public to respond to the message, and the product fails to sell? How many times does the advertising get blamed because the campaign tanks – when the client should be examining where they went wrong – usually long before the campaign was briefed?

It’s amazing how many advertisers don’t get this.

Which brings me to a perhaps unlikely example of an organization that has done a lot to make what was once an onerous task much, much easier, and has the results to show for it. Mention SARS and not everyone is overcome with warm and fuzzy feelings, but you have to admire the results of their campaigns of the past three years (which are the subject of a case study I’m writing at the moment). In 2006, 35 000 individual income tax returns were submitted by eFiling, when the system was first introduced; during tax season 2009, that number had risen to over 2.17 million. That’s a massive shift in behaviour over a relatively short period of time. Sure, SARS has the ability to take out the legal sjambok if you don’t fulfil your obligations, but negative incentives on their own are never enough. Fear only works up to a point, and all too quickly it can turn to loathing.

The point is that SARS has made it a lot easier to act on the message communicated in their advertising. They don’t just tell you to do something and then walk away, thinking that their job has been done. (Can you imagine if applying for a new passport or ID book from Home Affairs was as easy as filing a tax return?)

You’d think that FIFA, which is supposed to be so first world and advanced compared to us Africans, would understand that making people jump through hoops in order to buy their product is just plain stupid. They’ve attempted to rectify this by announcing that over-the-counter sales will be possible from April, but it’s all a bit late.

Anybody in possession of two working neurons and a synapse could have seen that the ticketing system was going to be a disaster. Clearly FIFA were arrogant enough to believe that they can treat customers with contempt and get away with it. As the sales figures have shown, they can’t. All the advertising in the world isn’t going to change that.

 

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