What we learned from the Singapore Tourism Board ad "fail"

Recently, Netizens had the chance to express their (admittedly many times amusing) creative reactions to two commercials.

The first one was the Singapore Tourism Board ad trying to persuade foreigners to visit Singapore, whereas the second one was Singtel's cheesy –called by some– ad targeting foreign customers living in Singapore. The STB video was quickly retracted after the overwhelming reproach by Netizens.

Here is the question – a question interesting for both Marketing and HR Managers. The marketing world is no stranger to similar serendipitous fails; many companies have been forced to recall very expensive campaigns.

In such cases (such as STB), many people have been asking the obvious: Why did NOBODY point out that these ads might not be appropriate, before releasing them? Why did NOBODY stand up and say, "Are you serious? This is not going to work!"

Before we state our case, a disclaimer is needed: we do not know the exact motives and the processes of the two organisations.

Most of us would agree that the STB commercial was a clear failure. We are unsure about Singtel's ad, as the commercial, despite the occasional negative comments, cleverly achieved its aims (i.e. making the service well-known). Admittedly, Singtel might be very happy with the outcome, as this commercial proves the “rule” that there is no such thing as bad publicity.

We will first make some assumptions. We assume that marketing departments, including STB's collaborators, showed the videos to consumers and asked for their opinions.

This is what marketing agencies call "Focus Groups", where, simply put, a trained professional tries to elicit what consumers believe about a product or an ad, usually via guided discussions. Such practice is in the ABCs of Marketing Training.

So, the next logical conclusion is that (i) either nobody told them that the ad is problematic [to put it softly], or (ii) if somebody said so, the dissenter was ignored.

The former possibility would not surprise us at all, especially in an Asian context. Numerous studies have demonstrated that in Asia, people consider it very rude to express a negative opinion directly. Negative judgements are either conferred implicitly or not at all.

The latter would not also be very surprising. We believe that, slowly, a consensus was built, as part of some social influence mechanism. Other mechanisms such as "diffusion of responsibility" ("I know something is wrong but I do not want to take the responsibility to speak out – let somebody else do that") and the so-called sunk cost effect ("we have devoted so much time and money already; we cannot go back now") might have kicked in.

What to do? Academic research can offer some solutions. Decision Scientists, being aware of these phenomena, have developed advanced methods that could also help organisations counteract the negative effects of these social tendencies and even leverage their effects to achieve a better understanding of the consumers and to improve decision making.

For the first problem (understanding consumers), companies can employ implicit, subconscious methods to understand preferences and attitudes of consumers. Such methods comprise appropriately designed experiments, eye-tracking, and implicit elicitation methods, including neuroscientific methods, while integrating cultural parameters.

For the second problem (group decision making), management and / or external consultants could study (and train) managers to identify such "decision biases". Critically, Decision Scientists can design processes that reduce the possibility that such mechanisms will take over the decision process.

Both methods, though new in the business world, have been very successful in other domains, such as design, medical decision making, and military operations.

So, next time you ask somebody whether he likes your new recipe and he answers yes, do not bank on it. He might spit it out the moment you turn away, so do find a way to elicit true opinions.

And if millions of dollars are at stake, consider educating your managers to make better decisions; also review and improve the (explicit and implicit) rules that govern your company's decision making processes. The error might not lie on how good your people are but, rather, on how they are supposed to make decisions.