Feature: Advertising In The Face Of The Iraq Conflict
Wars and conflict have become, rightly or wrongly, something of a media event over the past few decades, with a marked effect on media consumption and advertising. From the Sun‘s legendary “Gotcha” headline during the Falklands War, when the Argentinean ship, General Belgravia, was sunk by the British, to the more recent spectacle of the tragic events of September 11 unfolding on live TV. It is clear that the threat of conflict and the devastation that such conflict will inevitably entail, is something that the ad industry should consider carefully over the coming months.
Forecasts vary on the economic effects that the war will have on the already battered ad industry and the impending conflict has cast a long shadow over the market. The latest forecasts from Zenith Optimedia take a fairly positive view on the possible consequences of conflict, using the example of the 1991 Gulf Crisis: “The Gulf Crisis lasted nine months and coincided with global recession. At the time we remarked unsurprisingly that while it would have an immediate impact on advertising categories such as travel and others dependent on oil, its general effect would be simply to make a poor situation worse.”
Zenith never attempted to quantify the effect of the 1991 conflict and assumed that the displaced advertising money returned to the market later on in the year. It concludes: “It would take a much more protracted and damaging conflict to do measurable damage to the advertising economy. Although many of our local agencies identified war as a downside risk, it has so far made no impression on their numbers.”
Regardless of the long-term economic impact of the impending conflict on the industry, war with Iraq will inevitably change the media landscape that advertisers are operating in.
Television Commercial broadcasters have the most to lose in a war, due to the huge costs involved in covering the conflict and the problems of advertising being pulled by either the network or the advertiser themselves. In the US, executives from CNN, Fox News Network and MSNBC have said they expect to suspend advertising for at least one day if war breaks out. However, in the UK commercial broadcasters have no such contingency plans in operation.
Newspapers Newspaper circulation’s have traditionally risen during times of conflict and there is no reason to suggest that the escalating Iraq crisis will be an exception. Especially in light of the short lived, but sharp increase in newspaper circulation after the September 11 tragedy in the US, which was mirrored in the sharp increase in traffic to internet news sites.
However, the juxtaposition of advertising and brutal imagery remains a difficult issue for advertisers and newspaper editors alike, especially in light of the growing trend against the sanitation of war photography.
Consumer Climate Perhaps the most difficult category to quantify, but the most important to advertisers, consumer climate is greatly effected by war and tragedy. There are varying views on the appropriate way to approach this sensitive issue, and while media planners are advocating business as usual, the risks of alienating the consumers they are attempting to connect with should be carefully avoided. Some media advisors are privately advising more controversial clients, such as oil companies, to bow out of the spotlight, or re-evaluate their media spend during the crisis.
On the other hand, some advertisers have attempted to harness the moods of people facing uncertainty and conflict and use it to their brand’s advantage. This was seen across the US in post September 11 with a range of advertisers embracing the seemingly patriotic stance of the nation. In the UK the popularity of the anti-war movement has not been missed on advertisers trying to tap into the ever elusive Zeitgeist of the nation.
Perhaps the most interesting example of this was the Daily Mirror‘s unofficial sponsorship of the anti-war march in London, complete with branded placards. The Guardian estimated the Mirror gained hundreds and thousands of pounds of free publicity. However, the problematic nature of such alliances was not lost on many protesters, who had chosen to rip the Mirror masthead of the placard.
Advertisers must tread carefully in the face of war. Ronald Collins from the Centre For Media Literacy warns: “War is a terrible solemn fact. We may support it or oppose it. But we should not allow marketers to demean the solemnity of war by capitalising on it.”