Why the bloody hell are you here?

I was flipping through web pages, scrolling up and down in a mindless manner when I came across this post that said…If you curse at them, they will come?

It spoke about the Australian government's effort to boost tourism in their country.

And I thought to myself, what a quaint way to get people to their country…compare this to the effort launched by the Indian tourism authorities preaching all and one to treat the guest as god, this was rather bold !!!

Why would some one come to their country I wondered?

What are they trying to say? How do they want me to react to this?

So I sat back and allowed my thoughts to drift a bit

Are they asking such a rude question – so people start thinking up earnest and interesting responses to give to such a question – which at some subliminal level is going to work on their mind and finally give them enough reasons to make them want to go there and – is that how this communication supposed to make people want to go to Australia? What a twisted thought!

Yeah…was beginning to convince myself of this logic…after all they are a plain speaking and friendly lot. Maybe this is how they talk to people who come visiting. If I ever go to Australia, I thought to myself, and if anyone asks me that question, I will surely have a witty response ready :)…

Its later when I read the details on the campaign that I gathered they are not trying to tell me….Why the bloody hell are you here but asking me

Where the bloody hell are you?

I guess my mind was pre-conditioned since the title of the article read …If you curse them they will come and reading that I started spinning my own yarn

I could not help feel more foolish when I figured this out…but it reinforced in my mind an important lesson I have learnt and come across in how people decode communication.

I have often found in the context of carrying out research on advertising (especially print ads…since TVCs engage the consumer’s attention in more ways than one) that consumers do not always decode the campaign as intended by the marketer.

Most often I have seen people latch on to a few key words in the copy of the ad and just spin a story around it in their minds and blurt it out.

Sometimes the story could be close to the intended one…at other times it could be completely off the mark! Clients frown (especially if there is someone from the ad agency present), this is not the way the ad is supposed to work…your consumers are inarticulate…they are not our target audience…blah...blah

The truth however is…it is not the poor consumer who is at fault. Whenever we are faced with new stimuli, we attribute meaning to it, based on what we already ‘know’ or what is already in our ‘frame of reference’ and throw out, stimuli that we do not need.

You can read more about Selective Perception here where the concept has been explained in a fairly simple manner

So, the next time you see a print ad for the first time – why don’t you try it for yourself. Get all fuzzy eyed and just give it a glance and then close the mag and guess what they were trying to say there and then compare…it could be fun!

And drop me a line if you come across some funny such incidents yourself :)

selective perception'australia'communication