Hype: The Advertiser's Wet Dream

It is assumed that we all know what it is and that we all encounter it everyday as long as we see advertisements. Why do people refer to the hype element when they want to assess an advertising campaign? Do we live in a world ruled by hype? One of the definitions of hype by The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition (2003) goes thus: “Exaggerated or extravagant claims made especially in advertising or promotion.”

In today’s advertising world, truth is as stretchable as a limousine. Hence advertising people are “forever sending the language, to say nothing of common sense and good taste, into hyperbolical orbit.” (Larry Gelbert, LA Magazine, Dec.2002). According to Melanie Wells of Forbes Magazine (Nov.01, 1999), hype is the entrepreneur’s greatest asset as young companies are forced to find more outlandish ways of getting attention.
Ironically, Melanie opines that good products do not sell themselves, while an entrepreneur’s staying power is mostly determined by an ability to create the kind of hype that gets noticed by customers. Hype routinely raises our expectations and influences our behaviour (Camworld, Sept. 11, 1998).

Sometime last year Diageo Ireland, makers of Guinness, and several other drinks companies, including Irish Distillers and Heineken Ireland, were guests of that country’s Oireachtas Health Committee. The industry was accused of flouting advertising regulations by resorting to a hype technique which linked young happy people achieving success with drink (Irish Examiner 2004). In their defence, the drinks companies told the Committee that most of advertising and promotion is brand advertising and competitive by nature.

However, it is interesting that alcohol consumption in Ireland in the last decade shot up by 41 percent, while the average Irish consumes the equivalent of 11 litres of alcohol annually compared to a European average of about nine litres (Irish Examiner). Hype enables the advertiser to gain market share, that is, our naira, which is his ultimate target. However, we are often disappointed with the outcome, when the product/service fails to live up to expectations. That reminds me – where are the three orange men, and do we get to see the hyped drink these days?

According to Harish Bijoor, a brand-domain specialist and CEO of a consultancy he named after himself, which is based in India, hype has a negative rub-off effect on brands. He believes that the “moment you talk of a brand, you need to think of its consumer interface through mass media in the form of advertising. And advertising is so full of hype and hoopla!” Hype transforms the simple and accepted form of advertising into an advertiser’s wet dream, no thanks to advertising professionals, otherwise known as “Waxers of the Lyrical”, who do not only laud the genuinely laudable but also aggrandize the awful or inflate the inferior “in such glowing terms, you can practically read their copy in the dark.” (L.Gelbert).

While Melanie Wells believes that hype is a natural tendency to exaggerate your attributes and a survival strategy (to get your products on the shelf, win customers, establish your brand, rise above the noise, etc.), Bijoor cautions that the more hype you use, the less “the credibility factor that consumers will invest in the brand.”

Hype spinners are quick to retort that we live in a world so littered with slick and seductive advertisements that consumers are subconsciously resisting messages. In view of this therefore, hype, for them, is inevitable. An advertisement is not just advertisement. To attract attention, the advertisement must be hot. Hype begets heat, which in turn, begets noise, and noise begets business, a “strategy” designed to rake in profits for whatever it is that hype commands as must-see, must-own, must-know, must-go, must-drink, etc.(L.Gelbert).

When will the real brand with real advertising and real branding emerge? Advertising practitioners need to guide their clients in identifying the real market and its needs. They should introduce the much needed realism in their brand communications i.e., candid-cam advertising, real-life cameo branding, such that a real interface of the brand with the real consumer is established in the market place. (Hindu Business line 2003).

Who, then, is willing to create this first piece of advertising that will talk about the positive sides of the brand appeal at hand for a start and followed by a comparative evaluation of the competitors in the market? It is imperative that both brand managers and advertising practitioners exercise restraint and ensure that sanity and balance are maintained. According to Bijoor, a brand should be managed solidly at the start, while it is the job of the brand manager to vest in its appeal integrity and solid state features that cannot be disputed.

Perhaps you have heard of some advertisements turning out as “surprise hits.” They are very simple and very clever campaigns. One of such is Rally’s (USA 1998), where a man
Drives up to the drive- through window and says, “Give me a burger. Hold the hype.” If you have a good product, you do not need hype but good ‘word-of-mouth’ recommendation as a follow-up to the clever advertisement. I concur that competitive zeal is responsible for the hype but advertisers may be risking passing all their brand advertising through a certification board that will give a credibility and integrity clearance.
Try visualizing the frustration advertisers will go through if compelled to include a certificate flash at the start of every advertisement, which admits that it “comprises 20 per cent fact and 80 per cent hype.” (Harish Bijoor 2003). A visible section of the Irish population is already agitating for a total ban on alcohol advertising for the reason that every single advertisement appears to be aimed at young people. Is it not time we, in Nigeria, paid a closer attention to the degree of ‘hype’ in advertising?