Summary
The sale of TRESemmé cosmetics in South Africa had been halted following widespread complaints about a viral ad showcasing Black hair. The company chose to remove the items from its stores due to recent concerns regarding the corporation’s language used to sell its product range. However, after evaluating its advertising standards, TRESemmé seeks to relaunch its products in the South African markets. Therefore, this paper aims to assess the commercial in terms of AIDA advertisement tactics, evaluate any potential intercultural concerns, and provide recommendations while highlighting reasons for whether or not the advertisement should be employed.
Analysis in Terms of AIDA Advertising Methods
The AIDA model is a succession of effects model, meaning that customers must progress through each phase in order to perform the intended activity. The model outlines the four stages that a customer goes through before deciding to buy a particular item (Ullal and Hawaldar, 2018). The research states that a company’s content should ideally attract attention to its brand, build interest in its good or service, create a desire for it, and persuade the customer to test or buy the product. These stages are:
Attention
TRESemmé brand has chosen to employ an image that is remarkably unique. This attracts customers’ attention and establishes a positive reputation for the company. Other businesses, on the other hand, believe that packaging is superfluous and adds to their costs. However, unlike other companies, TRESemmé has chosen to invest in amazing product packaging to promote its brand. It has chosen the proper brand fonts, key colors, and graphic pictures for its packaging. This will leave a lasting impression on its consumers and effectively communicate the brand values and personality.
Interest
After ensuring that the customer is aware of the product’s existence, the company must try to stimulate the potential consumers’ interest. TRESemmé has done this by ensuring that the advert content is synthesized and comprehensible in the advertisement, with intriguing subtitles and illustrations. The corporation concentrates on the aspects of its product that are most relevant to its target market and solely delivers the most crucial message to consumers “BE ABOUT STYLE NOT DAMAGE” which stresses the item’s attractiveness and lack of potential for damage to clients. This strives to motivate clients’ interest in the goods while encouraging them to try the product. As a result, buyers acquire a hazy impression of the product or service without being familiar with its features.
Desire
As long as the business hopes to generate interest in its product or service, it is critical that they help buyers understand why they need it. TRESemmé considers how the information in infomercials is presented in order to assist customers in understanding why they would need its products. They strive to deliver intriguing information about the product, as well as the benefits of purchasing it “REPAIR & PROTECT 7” which emphasizes the fact that the product will only restore and protect the clients’ hair. These advantages are what will ideally make customers crave the product even more. They communicate the benefits of the goods or service to the audience and why they require it in their lives.
Action
When consumers have received sufficient knowledge about a brand, item, or service, the business must urge them to act. TRESemmé encourages its customers to acquire their items by outlining the issue they will be addressing and how their product will help in solving the problem. In the advertisement, the company states that the product is a new item that will protect the consumer’s hair and repair the damaged ones. This urges customers that may have damaged hair to want to buy the product for repair and protection from further damage.
Intercultural Concerns
However, regardless of the benefits that the advertisement may provide, the image may still convey different meanings to different groups of buyers. Genuine Black African hair is portrayed as wavy, dull, dried, and damaged in the image advertisement, whereas a white woman’s tresses are clearly defined as smooth, flat, and normal in the image next to her. South African shoppers may promptly express their displeasure at the situation and may consider it irresponsible. This could be seen not only as demeaning to black people, who make up the majority of South Africa’s population, but also as proof of a lack of diversity and representation inside the TRESemmé corporation.
Recommendation
Because the picture advertisement could be construed as racist toward African society, it is strongly recommended that TRESemmé brand reconsider its usage of the image and seek a more non-discriminatory alternative. Failure to reconsider this advertisement will have an impact on how a company is perceived by individuals outside the organization. According to Lang and Kahn-Lang (2020), this could result in a loss of revenue for the organization when individuals and businesses in an employee’s private network refuse to deal with the company. It could also hurt recruitment efforts because job seekers evaluating the company are more inclined to look somewhere else if they find a company that doesn’t seem to support their principles.
Reference List
Lang, K. and Kahn-Lang, S. A. (2020). ‘Race discrimination: An economic perspective.’ Journal of Economic Perspectives, 34(2), pp.68-89.
Ullal, M.S. and Hawaldar, I.T., (2018). Influence of advertisement on customers based on AIDA model. Problems and Prospective in Management. Vol, 16(4), pp.285-298.