Advertising holds up in wartime
By Maria Kowalewska
Although advertisers and media in the United States and Great Britain have already observed the negative effects of the lengthening conflict in Iraq, industry experts are confident the local media market will be largely unaffected by the war due to the country's relative lack of involvement in the military operation.
Economic uncertainty coupled with fears over a war with Iraq has resulted in a collapse of confidence in sales targets on the British market, according to the latest surveys from the British Chartered Institute of Marketing.
"Clearly uncertainty about the war in Iraq combined with a continuing consumer slowdown means that senior UK marketers are concerned about the prospect of a recession," said Mike Johnston, chairman of the Chartered Institute of Marketing.
Similarly, American media companies are facing a dilemma whereby the lengthening conflict is stretching their war coverage budgets at the same time as advertisers hesitate to buy airtime for fear it could eventually lead to their products being associated with war footage.
Fears that the situation in the media here could mirror the state of affairs in the West are quickly dismissed by industry experts who believe that the country is much too distanced from the conflict for its media and advertising sectors to be affected. Although sector experts confirm that in the first days of the conflict advertisers behaved similarly as in the U.S. and Britain, they quickly point out that practicality has prevailed and TV stations have already moved away from "around-the-clock war broadcasting," as one analyst called it.
"No one is going to show the war live forever," said Andrzej Szymański, an analyst at brokerage house DM Millennium. "But you can already see the results of the prolonged military campaign on viewer numbers, and TV stations have quickly reacted to that. At first, TVN, for instance, showed war footage almost all day long. Now it just has very brief updates."
Analysts and industry experts believe it is unlikely that advertisers would be deterred from advertising in the long run. Their hesitation to advertise was only limited to the beginning of the Iraqi campaign and has not drastically affected their long-term plans in terms of launching new products or starting new ad campaigns, they said.
"Some clients have expressed concerns about the conflict and its impact on the perception of their products," said Edward Korbel, head of research at MindShare media house, whose clients include Ford, Polska Telefonia Cyfrowa (Era Biznes), Inteligo and BP Polska. "One automobile company has recently backed out of a press campaign because it feared the negative associations."
But advertisers aren't the only ones sensitive to the issue of war and the negative connotations that could be associated with their products. Media themselves appear to be aware of the war's potentially detrimental effect on mass perception of their clients' products, and are acting accordingly. One of the country's most popular radio stations, RMF FM, pulled out all advertising from its morning news show the day the war broke out. It then reimbursed the advertisers for that decision with free airtime.
Korbel attributes such decisions to textbook psychology.
"During the Chechnya conflict a client was upset because his ad was placed next to a rather unpleasant picture," he said. "No one wants to have his or her products negatively associated. Now, as the conflict is fading into the background, the advertisers are less scared. It doesn't shock anymore, and the viewers have gotten used to it."
Andrzej Szymański agrees, adding that advertisers as well as the media here have a more pragmatic attitude toward the Iraqi conflict.
"With the war expected to last about three months, no one will back out of a long-term advertising campaign," he said. "And most see that we are too far away from the conflict to afford to do that."
But experts and television representatives alike agree that as the conflict drags on it will generate progressively less interest and reaction from viewers or readers worldwide. Yet experts doubt that domestic viewer numbers will dwindle since, as many point out, TV stations will simply broadcast shorter reports about the war and focus on other programs.
This view is shared by the largest player on the domestic TV market, state-owned TVP, which in the first quarter of 2003 alone registered a nearly 50% market share.
"We have a report from our advertising office that states there has been no negative reaction from advertisers to Iraqi conflict transmission," said Andrzej Siwek, TVP's spokesman. He added that depending on the length of the conflict, his station would adjust its offer accordingly and change its program lineup.
Andrzej Szymański does not think that in the long run the war will have much of an impact on advertisers. He also dismisses concerns that TV stations could stretch their budgets by covering the war, something about which both private and public TV stations were very hesitant to comment.
"The costs of sending correspondents (to Iraq) are similar to sending them anywhere else in the region, and the transmission of foreign sister-station coverage is based on a long-term barter contract that does not change in the short term," he said.
Edward Korbel attributes the dwindling interest in war broadcasts to a shift in viewers' interests.
"The first Gulf War generated more interest because it was the first war we could watch on TV in a post-communist society that had been previously restricted by censorship," he said. "The same went for the conflicts in Rwanda and former Yugoslavia. But nowadays, people just want to rest. They do not want to look at the TV because they are used to war. It has become something familiar."
Music TV stations, such as MTV Polska and VIVA Polska, also took note of the situation and changed their music selection to "slightly calmer," but they said they do not anticipate changes in advertising numbers. Although VIVA's bosses in Berlin decided that all their stations should place a peace sign on their screens, it was meant to be nothing more than "a declaration of peaceful life," and the local station's representatives said that it did not affect their advertising sales.
"Our advertisers have not reacted to the conflict at all," said Paweł Przygodzki, director of Adventure Team media house, which works with VIVA Polska. "There have not been any advertising decisions made regarding the peace sign either. The conflict is too distant for our advertisers to be affected to such an extent."
