Need for Safety conscious marketers

Sun, 28 May 2017 11:02:29 +0000

By Mark Kunda

Marketers and marketeers are different. Marketing is a profession and marketers are professionals. The way marketing is being conducted in Zambia leaves so much to be desired. Zambia urgently needs safety conscious marketers.

I remember a TV advertisement by Workers Compensation Fund Control Board. The advert showed an employee of a marketing company requesting his boss to register with Workers Compensation. The boss responded “we are not a mining company. We are a marketing company. We don’t need safety.” Thereafter the advert went on to show the same boss having a vehicle break down when rushing for a meeting. As his driver was repairing the vehicle, the vehicle fell on the driver, crushing his legs which resulted in huge medical bills. At that point the boss realized the importance of safety. The attitude exhibited by the boss is common among many marketers. They don’t see need for safety.

Marketers are experts in influencing the behavior of people. Marketing professionals must be very mindful of messages they communicate especially through advertisements. These media adverts are not seen, heard or watched by customers only. The entire general public see, hear and watch these adverts. The most unfortunate thing about most Zambian adverts is that they are centred on negative values in society such as cheating, stealing, fighting, violence, jokes and arguments. Why should an energy drink be advertised with people fighting? Should we fight after taking an energy drink? Is it just fighters who need energy? Why can’t energy drink adverts be centred on someone involved in some useful work requiring energy such as studying, farming or bricklaying? As a result of such adverts, children believe that they need energy drink to fight their friends. Because they can’t afford to buy energy drink, children will simply pick an empty energy drink bottle, put water in it, drink that water, pretend to be strong and start fighting with friends as they play. Such adverts promotes unsafe behavior.

My purpose in this article is not to lecture you on marketing. I leave that to marketing experts. My purpose in this article is to highlight how marketing is compromising safety in Zambia and propose solutions that every marketer should adopt. Since I can’t talk about everything marketers do, I will only focus on three concerns.

The first concern is the quality of TV adverts. Yes, my concern is with the quality of TV adverts, not with the products advertised or the companies advertising them.  Let me give a few examples of the adverts. I am mentioning these examples purely for clarifying the point, not to attack a particular brand or company. I have chosen old TV adverts which have stopped airing on TV. But I see same concerns being repeated even in present adverts. The first one is the advert for biscuits. The advert showed a branded truck dropping biscuits at a speed hump and children running after it to pick those biscuits. The advert looks innocent on the surface. But the negative side of it is that it sends a message to children that they ought to chase a truck branded in the same colours hoping it would drop biscuits. This compromises road safety of children who might end up being hit by vehicles. The second advert is the advert for candles. The advert showed security guards training during their normal drills. While on parade, the trainer started ‘fighting’ with one of the security guard. The trainer got a candle, beat his opponent with it and shouted in local language that “the candle is strong.” What has the strength of a candle got in common with beating someone? So if a mother begins to use candles to beat children, who will be blamed? Of course, a marketer should be blamed for portraying that candles are for beating people! I hope you are beginning to see my point. The last one is the advert for sweets. The advert showed a father sleeping while children sneaked to steal sweets within the house. When he heard the startling sound of sweet wrappers, the father woke up with a panga in his hand and started searching the house, ready to kill the intruder. Upon finding that it was his children stealing sweets, he simply chased them to go back to sleep while he remained to start eating the same sweets. Well, I will not say anything on this one. Help me to make conclusion whether the advert was sending the message that stealing is sweet or not.

Honestly we have serious shortage of creativity among Zambian marketers. You can easily differentiate between Zambian TV adverts from adverts made abroad when both are televised on the same TV. It’s not the question of lack of ‘advanced’ equipment to make adverts but the lack of ‘advanced’ creativity. Advertising is being reduced to comedy and jokes. In Zambia if you are a comedian or a joker, then you qualify to become a marketer. Comedians are the commonest characters in most Zambian adverts. Most Zambian adverts are full of unnecessary jokes. It’s like some marketers think that jokes are what sells. I know how important humour is in driving marketing message.  But the humour or ‘jokes’ we see in these adverts do more harm than promote the product. They do the opposite. I mean what is funny about a comedian selling unlabeled biscuits with a ‘funny’ name and then appear emerging from the midlist of tyres of a truck which delivered labeled biscuits to his competitor? Is emerging from tyres a laughing matter? You answer me. Zambia is not a nation of jokers where marketers should market products using jokers and jokes who violate marketing ethics. A professional marketer can’t perform most of the things that advert characters do because they are often embarrassing, demeaning and ‘childish’.

Peter Drucker, a renowned global management expert, rightly said that marketing should result in a customer who is ready to buy. Most of the Zambian adverts fail to achieve this marketing goal. They just entertain viewers but fail to market the products to the viewers. In fact some of them just irritate viewers. Professionally done adverts capture the attention of the audience, generate interest in product and inspire action to buy the product. Outstanding marketers focus their marketing message on the benefits of the product which customers will get from the product. Adverts that perpetuate negative social values like stealing, violence and cheating are not just unprofessional but unethical and unsafe. Let your adverts centre on positive values such as honesty, hardworking and respect.

The second concern is about outdoor advertising especially billboards. The rate at which billboards are being erected in our towns is so alarming. Our Zambian marketers are taking outdoor advertising to another level by clothing buildings with outdoor adverts. For example FINDECO house, Zambia’s tallest building, has lost it beauty because it’s clothed with adverts, top and bottom. Water tanks are carrying adverts. Every pole of street lights is carrying bill boards. Every wall fence is painted with adverts. Every road junction, curve and roundabout is saturated with uncontrollable number of bill boards. Some marketers are turning some road junctions into ‘Cinemas’ for road users to watch big screen posing a serious safety hazard.

Billboards capture the attention of the target audience. While marketers call it capturing attention, safety conscious people call it distraction. Technically speaking, anything that can capture the attention of a driver is actually distracting the driver. Marketers may argue that they target the billboards on passengers, not drivers. But billboards don’t choose whose attention to capture. They will capture attention of a driver and passenger equally. The saddest thing is that these billboards are erected at places where drivers needs maximum concentration such as road junctions and curves.  When the driver causes road traffic accident at a curve, the blame will be put on losing control. But no one questions what caused the losing of control. After all it’s difficult to ascertain that the billboard distracted the driving resulting in losing control.

Some time back Road Transport and Safety Agency (RTSA) embarked on removing some billboards on some roads in Lusaka which posed a danger to motorists. Marketers protested sharply. That exercise couldn’t continue. I am appealing to the moral conscious of all marketers to consider the negative impact that billboards pose to Zambian people. There is a billboard in Lusaka advertising shock absorbers with a woman leaning forward to expose her breasts. What is the purpose of naked breasts or ‘sexy-looking’ woman on a billboard for shock absorbers if it’s not to capture attention – or should I say to distract motorists? The number of billboards at a given location must be regulated. If there is no law to limit the number of billboards, we expect marketers to use their professional reasoning and common sense. There is no point to squeeze your billboard at a location where there are already enough billboards. Billboards should have big texts and images to make it easier for the targeted audience to get the message at a glance. A billboard with too many small letters and pictures increases the risk. The height of billboards ought to be high enough to avoid obstructing the sight of road users. Some billboards are lower than the recommended height of 2m making it difficult for pedestrians to pass under them. Too many billboards cause visual pollution to the general public. Some of these billboards collapse during rainy season causing unnecessary traffic jams.

The last concern is the safety of employees for marketing firms. Just a few weeks ago, two marketing workers lost lives and one survived an accident due to electrocution as they were erecting the billboard under a high voltage cable in Lusaka. It’s a common sight to see these marketers working on billboards without putting barricades to control traffic at a work site. You will find them swinging on billboards without any protection. Most of them work without wearing personal protective equipment (PPE) or having any fall protection such as safety harness or safety belt. You will find a marketer hanging like a Spiderman welding the billboard without welding glasses or shield. These practices are unsafe and must be stopped. Your staff need safety training. They need to be trained on how to use scaffolds, ladders and safety harnesses safely. Provide PPE and right tools to your staff.

The need for Zambian marketers to be safety conscious cannot be overemphasized. Philip Kotler, world’s leading authority on marketing said “marketers must ensure that their advertising does not overstep social and legal norms. They must avoid false or deceptive advertising such as making false claims. To be socially responsible, marketers must ensure that they do not offend ethnic groups or special-interest groups.” Don’t violate safety in the name of marketing. Don’t promote unsafe behavior in the name of marketing. Don’t market unsafe products as though they are safe. Entertainers ensure that cartoons for children wear seat belts because they understand the power of media in influencing behavior of people. It’s very disturbing to see everyday ZESCO, a big company with qualified safety professionals, advertising during ZNBC evening news showing SMEs wearing ‘tropicals’ instead of safety boots when working in the name of encouraging people to switch to alternative energy. If you want watch the ZESCO advert just before tonight’s ZNBC news and see the many unsafe practices displayed in the advert, the unsafe behaviors endorsed by ZESCO marketers. Be safety conscious. Market safely. Until next week, stay safe. Zambia needs you.

For your comments, contact the author on cell +260 975 255770 or email: marksucceed@gmail.com

Mark Kunda—Safety Consultant