Viewer’s dilemma on TV advertising

V L S Jayasekera

For a period of years, TV viewing public have been subject to disgust, bordering on hatred of anything that is connected to advertising on the TV screen.

The unfortunate thing is that viewing public are helpless to remedy the situation and are suffering in silence stomaching a nuisance that leads some of them to near insanity and a hatred of all TV programs that allow use of indiscriminate advertising clips that completely overshadow the main program just the way a parasitic plant kills the mother plant by suffocating it.

This situation is largely due to conflict of interest among stakeholders in the advertising war. There are several parties in the unfortunate drama - Marketing unit of the organization selling it ware, advertising agent, medium selected to advertise (in the instant case the TV), Competitor offering similar or identical product to the market under a different brand name, the producer/director of the main TV theme that is financially supported by unscrupulous advertisers and last but most important - the viewer whose fancy the parties (other than the competitor) attempt to win over to purchase the advertised product or service. Interplay of all these stakeholders tend to forget the most important stakeholder - the viewer.

Let’s take a quick look at the interplay of these forces. The program is sponsored by product/services advertisers. The more such ads are repeated during a program, the bigger flow in of money into their money chest. It so happens that a half an hour program is inundated by 17 minutes of advertisement clips, repeated and re-repeated. In the first couple of days, the viewer tolerates it.

When seen a couple of times more, he/she learns to close eyes, look elsewhere in disgust and beyond that the product advertised is hated and the mere mention of the product name makes him mad. What the producer of the product/service is after is maximization of sales. He never realizes that he is caught up in a trap web that not only denies him the targets of increased sales but is the victim of a reverse flow effect. The viewer - the most important component in this chain is completely antagonized and the chain of expectations completely wiped out.