VietNamNet Bridge – Vietnamese businesses are still poor with limited financial capability. However, they still spend big money on advertisement campaigns.

Marketing means advertisement?

The Vietnamese ad market was estimated to have the value of $500 million in 2011. In the first half of 2012, a survey of Kantar Media found that Vietnamese businesses spent $370 million on TV ads.

The same survey, while noting the sharp increase in the ads on TV, found out the decreases on other mass media means – radio, daily and weekly newspapers. The sharpest fall has been found in the ads on ratio, by five percent, while the 2.3 percent decrease has been reported for weekly newspapers.

According to Do Kim Dung, Deputy Chair of the Vietnam Advertisement Association, businesses prefer posting their ad pieces on TV, which explains why 78 percent of ads appeared on TV, while only 11 percent on daily print newspapers, 7 percent on journals and only four percent on outdoors billboards.

The proportions are 41, 23, 5 and 11 percent, respectively, in Asia.

Experts have noted that Vietnamese businesses’ budgets for advertisement are unreasonably big. In their thoughts--doing marketing means running ad campaigns. Meanwhile, advertisement means posting ads on TV.

A mini survey conducted by a market survey firm on TVC (TV Commercial) found out that 112 TVCs of 48 brands appeared on the national VTV3 channel in the time from 8 pm to 10 pm on August 24, 2012, of which 9 TVCs appeared four times.

The survey also found out that 60 percent of TVCs were made by foreign firms, while the others by domestic ones.

Tan Hiep Phat Group, a drink manufacturer of oriental medicine and supplement foods are the ones which spent big money on ads.

How much does an ad piece costs?

In order to have ad pieces posted on TVs, one would have to pay money for two items – making TVC and “booking seats” on TV. The latter is the biggest expenditure item which has been nearly fixed by TV channels. Meanwhile, clients can make TVCs depending on their budgets. In general, a 30-second clip would cost from hundreds of millions of dong to millions of dollars.

Therefore, 100 percent of domestic owned enterprises try to save money by cutting down the budgets for making TVCs. As a result, a lot of clips with low quality made in a careless way have been put on the screen.

However, experts have noted that foreign groups, though spending bigger money on ads, have been very saving in their ad campaigns.

The TVCs used by the foreign groups not only appear on the mass media in Vietnam, but can be used in the whole South East Asia or Asia – Pacific. Therefore, the business operation of the groups in Vietnam only bears a small part of the expenses.

Especially, the TVCs of the foreign groups, made in a professional and careful way, could be used for a long time, while the core message businesses want to convey to consumers would not be lost in oblivion.

If reviewing the history of the advertising industry in the world, one can see the oldest image ads still have been used. The image of a cowboy advertising for Marlboro has been used since the 1960s. Similarly, the images Coca-Cola bottles first appeared in 1930s.

DNSG