Marketing only an idea

Snake oil salesmen may be a thing of the past, but a recent advertising campaign proves that, when it comes to sales, an intriguing brand is more important than an actual product.

Czech media agency BigMedia caters to clients as large as Toyota, but a recent campaign for Tučňák (Penguin) Milk is one of the company's most successful in history, says BigMedia Executive Director Jan Vlček - although it was for a company that doesn't exist.

Consisting of 50 billboards and three sections of light boxes on local highways, the milk advertisements cost the company approximately 2.8 million Kč ($148,300). After a month of advertising Tučňák, BigMedia is now negotiating with several Czech milk companies that are vying to purchase the brand, with a reported price tag of 5 million Kč.

"We were trying to create a case study relevant for advertisers with midsize marketing budgets," Vlček said. "The milk category seemed appropriate because it is a generic, price-sensitive market with fierce competition and rising production costs squeezing market margins."

Tučňák Milk was born in BigMedia's boardroom as an experiment in marketing: Create a fictional brand with widespread, memorable advertising, garner public interest and then attempt to sell the brand to a company that actually produces the product.

The plan was far from foolproof, but because BigMedia owns the billboards used in the Tučňák campaign, the overhead was calculated from income that would have been paid by renting the ad space to companies and was thus virtually nonexistent.

"BigMedia enjoyed favorable price conditions for this campaign," Vlček said.

BigMedia is in talks with several milk producers interested in buying the Tučňák brand. According to Czech-language press reports, Laktos Milk has expressed the most interest in purchasing Tučňák. However, both Vlček and Petr Brzobohatý, sales director of Laktos Milk, refused to provide further details.

"No one has ever named milk before. There have only been names for manufacturers. That's why Tučňák is interesting for us," Brzobohatý told the daily Hospodářské noviny.

The innovative Tučňák campaign has the potential to change the face of the Czech advertising industry, or at least offer new approaches, according to Eric Laroque, a professor of marketing at Anglo-American University in Prague, who called Tučňák "a very interesting case indeed."

"[Normally,] when a company launches a new product, the first step is awareness. Companies must let potential customers know that their brand or new product exists. Once potential customers are aware this company or special product exists, the next phase is interest," he said. "This is what BigMedia has attempted: to create awareness and interest from customers."

According to Laroque, however, the current unavailability of Tučňák Milk makes it even more attractive for customers. When potential customers cannot find a product in shops, it increases the brand's mystique, he said.

But advertising a product that doesn't actually exist treads on murky legal grounds. According to Ladislav Šťastný, executive director of the Advertising Standards Council, "it is illegal to advertise a product that doesn't exist or claims it has qualities, elements or components it doesn't have. That's false advertising."

"Legality is always judged on a case-by-case basis," he added.

But, according to Pavel Fabian, a lawyer specializing in advertising law at the Law Offices of Fabian and Partners, "the Tučňák campaign is legal."

"You can prepare advertising for a product that may exist in the future, so it shouldn't pose a problem," he said.

If a complaint regarding a specific ad or ad campaign is lodged with the Advertising Standards Council, a jury composed of 14 advertising agents, lawyers, sexologists and psychologists decides whether the ad breaks laws or standards of advertising. If so, the council formally requests that the company in question modify or remove the offending advertisement. According to Šťastný, the council has no official sanctions, "but compliance with council decisions is very high."

"We haven't received any complaints against Tučňák, and we investigate ads only after we have received complaints," he said.

It is clear the Tučňák campaign has been a success, but whether such efforts can be repeated remains to be seen. According to Vlček, BigMedia is "seriously considering repeating this activity every year as an incentive for midsize companies, to help them build brands out of their generic products."

The success of an advertising campaign for a fictional product is dependent on the public's ignorance of the fact that the product doesn't actually exist. But, according to Laroque, such innovative campaigns lend themselves more easily to certain products, and these campaigns won't always be successful.

"Branding is especially powerful in industries where the product differentiation is limited, as is the case with milk. Companies cannot easily convince their customers that their milk has a better taste or is healthier than their competitors'. In many cases, it is all the same thing, and companies have to fight over price, shelf space and distribution," he said. "If companies are able to make their brands stand out with good advertising, it's all the better for them."

Stephan Delbos can be reached at
sdelbos@praguepost.com