The travails of launching a western advertising campaign in the Islamic Republic
"Why has she stopped translating?" our foreign guests asked, turning to me and pulling their headphones down in confusion. Our translator had had me mesmerised with her erratic yet curiously detailed doodling, so much so that if it wasn't for the prod I'd received, I wouldn't have noticed.
The translator herself answered for me. "I can't translate politically sensitive comments," she said, maintaining focus on an apple she'd been shading in.
My Persian was good enough to follow the happenings on the other side of the one-way mirror so I quickly replaced my headphones and scanned the eight girls on the other side. The most modernly dressed and possibly youngest among them was confidently relaying her thoughts on the recently contested presidential elections. I wasn't afforded much time to relish this awkward moment before the group moderator politely shifted the focus to another girl. "So how about you, can you tell me about a moment in your life where you'd experienced a big change?"
Focus groups make a vital contribution to my work as creative director at one of Iran's larger advertising agencies, yet in this rapidly developing corner of the world they don't take place all that often. During the six years that I've serviced both national and international clients here in Iran, I've found that not too many of them are willing to have results measured and documented, let alone pay for it. But once in a while, an international client – never a domestic one – will put up the money. On this occasion one such client, a massive multinational, had brought us together, crammed into a smallish room, divided by a mirror, and at the whim of our translator.
I'm often asked by wide-eyed marketers how anything can be advertised in Iran if half-naked women can't be shown embracing their products. I usually tell them that an ad campaign brief anywhere in the world tends to come with a list of "dos and don'ts," and that to me, having to avoid showing a strand of hair is little different from having to avoid showing a model who doesn't reflect the target audience.
But eventually I have to admit that the "dos and don'ts" here can be quite numerous and are often a precursor to a second list, which is sprung on us just when the advert is ready for public consumption. This "surprise" list is conjured up by the ministry of culture and Islamic guidance council, whose vetting of adverts according to religious principles seems to shift like a mood from day to day. Though one can usually get into the minds of the ministry employees and figure out what's likely to be given the stamp of approval, after six years I still get rejections and for the most perverse reasons – on one occasion, I was informed that "people shouldn't be seen running".
In the case of the current ad, we were not yet at the stage of getting feedback from the ministry, but rather from a selection of the audience it was aimed at. A market research company had assembled three groups of eight women who fitted a specific demographic for us: 18 to 35 years old, lower-middle to skilled working class, and nonusers of underarm sprays. They were to be observed by representatives of both my agency and the client – regional, high-level sorts with an unsettling enthusiasm for all things underarm, and the local team who'd be left with us to try to make something of it all.
Those of us on this side of the mirror had come to discover two things: first, why certain women don't use underarm sprays, and second, what those women thought of an "adapted international print campaign" that my associates and I had spent the previous few days rushing to get together.
"Adapted" is industry lingo for what could more plainly be described as a bastard child of a campaign, born from two advertising agencies. A western agency, say, might come up with a coherent, creative approach that would then be screwed with by an agency in our part of the world. In the process of translating text to the local language and altering images for the local culture, the original message can naturally get a little distorted. When the input of a third party like the Islamic guidance ministry comes into play, the end result is sometimes hideously deformed.
On this occasion, the adapted campaign we were about to unleash upon our unwitting subjects had itself started life in pretty bad shape, featuring an ink-stamped image of a pig on a woman's underarm accompanied by the slogan "Don't let bad body odour ruin your beauty." I'm not sure if women in the west would respond to the vision of a pig in their armpit by reaching for their wallets, but I know that in Islam, and all around the Middle East, pigs are considered "unclean" let alone smelly. We thought it better not to even test the ministry on this one.
"So let's talk about daily health routines," continued the moderator. "How about underarm sprays?" The members of the group had different reasons for being what we term "nonusers". A few said they felt that they didn't sweat much, others preferred to be "natural" and a couple expressed the belief that underarm sprays produce cancer.
"So when might one use a spray?" asked the moderator. A contender for the group's opinion leader – a very conservatively dressed woman in black chador – joked that antiperspirant sprays might be used before going to bed, following her comment with a wink to all around the table. The three Persian speakers my side of the mirror, all women, folded over in laughter, whereas our foreign guests (and I, admittedly) mustered a smile after the three-second translation delay.
The time had come to test our adapted ideas, so I stepped up close to the window, careful not to be seen from the other side. The creative suggestions, poorly printed out minutes before on A4, were passed around. Beside me was the regional something for underarm sprays, a lady of confusing ethnic mix and an impressive array of languages at her disposal. She'd been tapping away at her laptop since we arrived so I took a moment to see what interesting points she'd noted, assuming she'd been fascinated by the insights into local life. I was disappointed to discover that she had in fact been planning her subsequent visits, shooting off email after email to map out her month ahead. To the other side of me sat the translator, who'd amassed a collection of doodles since we'd arrived, practically filling the table.
As for the attendees on the far side of the glass, many seem to see the event as an aptitude test, which accords with what I've learned of Iran's highly competitive culture. Subjects will quickly find a qualifying asterisk and yet fail to read the massive three-word slogan. They will, however, never fail to read a human face, which if present in any print advert will be fixed on faster than by any advanced face-recognition technology. Today was no exception.
No sooner had the test started before an uncomfortable silence befell the group. I've also found that many Iranians have a heightened sense of paranoia, and in new and unfamiliar groups an impressive performance of normality and friendliness can readily be observed, even as much else is read between the lines. Occasionally, a little too much can be read into things and as a partial outsider I've been unable to sense escalations and have been bewildered by explosive outbursts.
The silence was for saving face – the group's members, it appeared, felt they couldn't decipher a deeper meaning in the test ad so found it better to say nothing than be seen as wrong. The moderator, realising this, made it easier for them by asking what exactly they saw.
"This one is the side of a woman," responded the conservative lady.
"Do you see anything else?" asked the moderator.
After a pause, the conservative lady spoke again. "A rubbish bin … with flies around it … under her arm." She looked over at the moderator to see whether she was correct.
"What do you think this advert is trying to say?" the moderator patiently asked, but the room remained silent.
One girl whispered to another, "Isn't it a stain remover, for clothing?"
Reluctantly the moderator asked what the advert literally was saying – as in, the slogan. A few read it out loud before the moderator prodded: "So what could this advert want you to know?"
She only got the slogan read to her again. "Don't let bad body odour ruin your beauty."
The last of the four ideas we were testing came out and along with it, my gasp. "Shit, you've printed the wrong artwork!"
Seemingly by accident my designer had added one of her own ideas to the files saved for print, an idea that I'd rejected. "There's a lipstick mark, in the shape of lips on a black plastic bin bag," said the girl who'd been asked to hold up the artwork, somehow mimicking the screwed-up look of the bag.
"So how would you rate these adverts from one to 10?" asked the moderator as the session drew to a close.
The results were predictable. It's rare that we arrive at a compromise that both pleases the public and survives the vetting body. The highest scoring idea – though still with a worryingly low score – was the one that we went to print with, but as it turned out, the public was subjected to it for only a week before the ministry reversed its initial decision, deciding that the curve of our model was a little too curvy. In its place, we put an image of the product itself, which managed to survive for the duration of the campaign, one that still serves to remind us why we now avoid adapting campaigns.
Iran Standard Time is a series of personal looks at life in the Islamic Republic today. Reported by guardian.co.uk 1 day ago.
"Why has she stopped translating?" our foreign guests asked, turning to me and pulling their headphones down in confusion. Our translator had had me mesmerised with her erratic yet curiously detailed doodling, so much so that if it wasn't for the prod I'd received, I wouldn't have noticed.
The translator herself answered for me. "I can't translate politically sensitive comments," she said, maintaining focus on an apple she'd been shading in.
My Persian was good enough to follow the happenings on the other side of the one-way mirror so I quickly replaced my headphones and scanned the eight girls on the other side. The most modernly dressed and possibly youngest among them was confidently relaying her thoughts on the recently contested presidential elections. I wasn't afforded much time to relish this awkward moment before the group moderator politely shifted the focus to another girl. "So how about you, can you tell me about a moment in your life where you'd experienced a big change?"
Focus groups make a vital contribution to my work as creative director at one of Iran's larger advertising agencies, yet in this rapidly developing corner of the world they don't take place all that often. During the six years that I've serviced both national and international clients here in Iran, I've found that not too many of them are willing to have results measured and documented, let alone pay for it. But once in a while, an international client – never a domestic one – will put up the money. On this occasion one such client, a massive multinational, had brought us together, crammed into a smallish room, divided by a mirror, and at the whim of our translator.
I'm often asked by wide-eyed marketers how anything can be advertised in Iran if half-naked women can't be shown embracing their products. I usually tell them that an ad campaign brief anywhere in the world tends to come with a list of "dos and don'ts," and that to me, having to avoid showing a strand of hair is little different from having to avoid showing a model who doesn't reflect the target audience.
But eventually I have to admit that the "dos and don'ts" here can be quite numerous and are often a precursor to a second list, which is sprung on us just when the advert is ready for public consumption. This "surprise" list is conjured up by the ministry of culture and Islamic guidance council, whose vetting of adverts according to religious principles seems to shift like a mood from day to day. Though one can usually get into the minds of the ministry employees and figure out what's likely to be given the stamp of approval, after six years I still get rejections and for the most perverse reasons – on one occasion, I was informed that "people shouldn't be seen running".
In the case of the current ad, we were not yet at the stage of getting feedback from the ministry, but rather from a selection of the audience it was aimed at. A market research company had assembled three groups of eight women who fitted a specific demographic for us: 18 to 35 years old, lower-middle to skilled working class, and nonusers of underarm sprays. They were to be observed by representatives of both my agency and the client – regional, high-level sorts with an unsettling enthusiasm for all things underarm, and the local team who'd be left with us to try to make something of it all.
Those of us on this side of the mirror had come to discover two things: first, why certain women don't use underarm sprays, and second, what those women thought of an "adapted international print campaign" that my associates and I had spent the previous few days rushing to get together.
"Adapted" is industry lingo for what could more plainly be described as a bastard child of a campaign, born from two advertising agencies. A western agency, say, might come up with a coherent, creative approach that would then be screwed with by an agency in our part of the world. In the process of translating text to the local language and altering images for the local culture, the original message can naturally get a little distorted. When the input of a third party like the Islamic guidance ministry comes into play, the end result is sometimes hideously deformed.
On this occasion, the adapted campaign we were about to unleash upon our unwitting subjects had itself started life in pretty bad shape, featuring an ink-stamped image of a pig on a woman's underarm accompanied by the slogan "Don't let bad body odour ruin your beauty." I'm not sure if women in the west would respond to the vision of a pig in their armpit by reaching for their wallets, but I know that in Islam, and all around the Middle East, pigs are considered "unclean" let alone smelly. We thought it better not to even test the ministry on this one.
"So let's talk about daily health routines," continued the moderator. "How about underarm sprays?" The members of the group had different reasons for being what we term "nonusers". A few said they felt that they didn't sweat much, others preferred to be "natural" and a couple expressed the belief that underarm sprays produce cancer.
"So when might one use a spray?" asked the moderator. A contender for the group's opinion leader – a very conservatively dressed woman in black chador – joked that antiperspirant sprays might be used before going to bed, following her comment with a wink to all around the table. The three Persian speakers my side of the mirror, all women, folded over in laughter, whereas our foreign guests (and I, admittedly) mustered a smile after the three-second translation delay.
The time had come to test our adapted ideas, so I stepped up close to the window, careful not to be seen from the other side. The creative suggestions, poorly printed out minutes before on A4, were passed around. Beside me was the regional something for underarm sprays, a lady of confusing ethnic mix and an impressive array of languages at her disposal. She'd been tapping away at her laptop since we arrived so I took a moment to see what interesting points she'd noted, assuming she'd been fascinated by the insights into local life. I was disappointed to discover that she had in fact been planning her subsequent visits, shooting off email after email to map out her month ahead. To the other side of me sat the translator, who'd amassed a collection of doodles since we'd arrived, practically filling the table.
As for the attendees on the far side of the glass, many seem to see the event as an aptitude test, which accords with what I've learned of Iran's highly competitive culture. Subjects will quickly find a qualifying asterisk and yet fail to read the massive three-word slogan. They will, however, never fail to read a human face, which if present in any print advert will be fixed on faster than by any advanced face-recognition technology. Today was no exception.
No sooner had the test started before an uncomfortable silence befell the group. I've also found that many Iranians have a heightened sense of paranoia, and in new and unfamiliar groups an impressive performance of normality and friendliness can readily be observed, even as much else is read between the lines. Occasionally, a little too much can be read into things and as a partial outsider I've been unable to sense escalations and have been bewildered by explosive outbursts.
The silence was for saving face – the group's members, it appeared, felt they couldn't decipher a deeper meaning in the test ad so found it better to say nothing than be seen as wrong. The moderator, realising this, made it easier for them by asking what exactly they saw.
"This one is the side of a woman," responded the conservative lady.
"Do you see anything else?" asked the moderator.
After a pause, the conservative lady spoke again. "A rubbish bin … with flies around it … under her arm." She looked over at the moderator to see whether she was correct.
"What do you think this advert is trying to say?" the moderator patiently asked, but the room remained silent.
One girl whispered to another, "Isn't it a stain remover, for clothing?"
Reluctantly the moderator asked what the advert literally was saying – as in, the slogan. A few read it out loud before the moderator prodded: "So what could this advert want you to know?"
She only got the slogan read to her again. "Don't let bad body odour ruin your beauty."
The last of the four ideas we were testing came out and along with it, my gasp. "Shit, you've printed the wrong artwork!"
Seemingly by accident my designer had added one of her own ideas to the files saved for print, an idea that I'd rejected. "There's a lipstick mark, in the shape of lips on a black plastic bin bag," said the girl who'd been asked to hold up the artwork, somehow mimicking the screwed-up look of the bag.
"So how would you rate these adverts from one to 10?" asked the moderator as the session drew to a close.
The results were predictable. It's rare that we arrive at a compromise that both pleases the public and survives the vetting body. The highest scoring idea – though still with a worryingly low score – was the one that we went to print with, but as it turned out, the public was subjected to it for only a week before the ministry reversed its initial decision, deciding that the curve of our model was a little too curvy. In its place, we put an image of the product itself, which managed to survive for the duration of the campaign, one that still serves to remind us why we now avoid adapting campaigns.
Iran Standard Time is a series of personal looks at life in the Islamic Republic today. Reported by guardian.co.uk 1 day ago.