SINGAPORE: Television remains the most popular lead media for advertising campaigns across Asia, but it is not necessarily the most effective, according to a new WARC report.

Television significantly under-indexed at the shortlist stage of the 2017 WARC Prize for Asian Strategy, where an increasing number of campaigns were focused on social and online video.

The finding is contained in WARC’s Asian Strategy Report, which features insights gleaned from analysis of shortlisted entries to the 2017 WARC Prize for Asian Strategy.

“The shortlisted case studies didn’t dwell on targeting or distribution of the message,” noted David Atkins, Strategy Director, DigitasLBi Hong Kong and a member of the judging panel.

“But, as a result of clear strategy and powerful ideas, the resulting channel strategies felt beautifully simple and unforced. To an extent, the idea became the media, and the media became the idea.”

That was particularly evident in a Tata Motors campaign, Use Dipper at Night, that raised awareness of safe sex amongst truck drivers by creating a condom brand that was advertised by the trucks themselves.

Sometimes, Atkins observed, “it’s necessary to look beyond standard media formats and standard media thinking”.

He was especially pleased that, in a region where brands often turn first to celebrities for endorsement, none of the shortlisted case studies relied on this approach. This, he suggested, was “the greatest triumph” of the strategies examined.

“What the case studies actually demonstrate is that, by developing ideas that connect more purposefully with a target audience, media thinking can be far more informed and precise,” he argued.

“Through a deep and empathetic understanding of consumers’ lives and motivations, they created both real change in behaviour and business performance.”

Sourced from WARC