Team Agreco Farm: The power of communication

Once I had a guest lecture from a communication scientist who claimed that if everybody would communicate better, 80 percent of the problems in the world would be solved. This is of course an enormous simplification, but sometimes it is necessary to simplify to come to the core. All the problems we have, from lack of clean water till migration streams and relationship troubles till crimes, could all use a better way of communicating in order to work towards solution. All communication problems we have, are submissive to noise. Noise is a communication barrier that influences the way we transmit and understand the information we try to send to our receivers. One of the assumptions made in communication, is that the sender assumes more than actually true, that the receivers listen well. In order to get the message received the way the sender intended, there are four ground rules to improve the communication. The first one is to empathize, put yourself in your receiver’s shoes, how would the message be as best possible understood? The second one is to repeat message, then repeat, rephrase, repeat and summarize your message again. The third improvement is that you have to make sure your receiver is not distracted by other messages so think about the time you send your message out, and lastly focus on the problem and not on the person by being descriptive.

How is this all related to advertising? Advertising is about communicating a message that should drive the receiver to buy a certain item or service. During the Superbowl, a major American football competition that is also broadcasted on tv, attracts million of watchers and is therefore an excellent opportunity to advertise during the commercial break.

On one brand especially will be magnified, mostly because of their excellent combination of above described four key communication points. Tide is a washing detergent, that bought commercial time in the Super Bowl of 2018. The above four mentioned advertising key points, will be adjusted on their commercial for last year’s Super Bowl.

1.The first part they do really well, is that they empathize by using familiar situations. The public will immediately be able to relate to these situations, and will become more sympathetic and responsive.

2. The second part is that they repeat their message awfully often, but in smart way so it is the good kind of annoying. They say it 12 times within 1.44 minutes.

3. Tide decided to spend a part of their marketing budget to buy commercial time during the superbowl, which is extremely expensive. But also an extremely convenient time since over 110 million watchers are able to see the commercial. This public will never be reached with traditional markting tools.

4. In the commercial they focus on the problem that every ad is the same, and they focus on that by repeating all the typical advertisement layouts and continuously saying their slogan ‘It’s a tide ad’. They are not going to tell you to use their product or how other washing detergents cannot get you clothes clean, they stay descriptive.

To conclude, communication is a powerful tool which needs to be applied under circumstances to get the message across as the way the sender intented.

Ευσταθία Κολοβού Philip Maltambes Στέλιος Καλαιτζακης Betty Tsakarestou ΣΤΕΦΑΝΟΣ ΧΩΡΙΑΝΟΠΟΥΛΟΣ Alex Dimou