Do you still like teaser advertisements?

You get joy out of making people wait, guess and predict. Meanwhile the respondents test their IQ and feel proud to guess what you are talking about. In the past, advertisers took advantage of this human trait to launch new products, associate their products with the customers’ interests and refresh their brand identities.

The cat and mouse game
You must have been witness to advertisements in dailies that ask you to look at the same place again the next day. The next day you are again requested to do the same. With each day the curiosity inside you increases till it plateaus. And when you think that you are not going to do the same next day, the advertisers cleverly put forth their messages, making you part of their campaigns. You become so involved with the product that you try it at least once. If the product delivers your expectations – you are glued to it – turning into a loyal customer.

I would like to cite the example of launching of a tea brand “Tokla”. The advertisers put hoardings and banners with the message “Kala is coming” for few weeks, all over the marketplace, in the streets and major thoroughfares. The message was there in the daily newspapers as well. People kept guessing and speculating what the thing “Kala” was. On the stipulated date, the marketers revealed the new brand of tea “Tokla”. The brand was an instant hit. Owing to its good quality, the brand has still maintained a string of loyal consumers.

However, things have changed with the fast paced lifestyle. In the current rat race for moneymaking and enjoying life to the fullest, people easily get impatient. They don’t have time to look at the same place of the newspaper day after day. So, if you are a clever marketer, you know that people are not going to ply with your playing the “cat-and-mouse game”. Some might be interested till the second or third day, but from the fourth day onwards, almost everybody will have lost interest in your message.

Filling the gap between curiosity and patience
The marketers have again come up with innovative ideas to bridge in the gap between curiosity and patience of customers. Now you will find a set of teaser advertisements in a certain page of magazine or newspaper which asks you to turn on to the next page and at the end you are led to the introduction of the brand. This little teasing tantalises your brain and in a way you are more attached to the brand than others displaying the products one time only.

The advertisers have also come up with the idea of extension advertising (advise if you have better name), where they design different versions of the same advertisements with coherent message and a common tagline. The advertisements are generally displayed on the right hand side pages. As you turn the pages, the similar advertisements arouse your interest and you are led to the final advertisement which talks in detail about the product. Sometimes the products and the messages are revealed on the first page itself and similar, coherent messages are carried out by a set of advertisements that follow the first one, but of course with new visuals, graphics and colours.

The river returns to its original course once in 12 years
The trends keep changing with time and tend to return with some improvements within a certain time period. As goes the old proverb from the Indian subcontinent, “A river returns to its original course in 12 years’ time”, the marketing trends keep on being tweaked, adjusted, adapted and improved with time – landing up with the similar sort of campaigns which are marketers’ favourite at some point of time. However, for this time around, the teaser advertisements are certainly out of the scene.