From the nostalgic Glico “Cushion You” commercial, Kasapa “Free Night Calls”, MTN “Wrong Number”, Keysoap “Me Dofo Pa”, Tigo “Honey”, MTN “Mensa Aka”, Vodafone’s “3030” commercials to more current AirtelTigo “Tu Gu Me So”, Kalypo “Abi You Know Dada”, Fan Milk “Shine Your Hustle” series on the Ghanaian market, we are slowly evolving to the needs of a tech savvy audience, while still playing into cultural elements that are yet to let us down.
The Ghanaian audience has also evolved to demand more ingenuity and creativity rather than a repetitive fall back on old ideas. Take into account TV commercials. They worked when it was the biggest platform, now, it’s all social media. This is not to say that TVC’s are useless now, just that an ad needs to be streamlined for the requirements of its audience on respective platforms.
For example, the average Ghanaian has a smartphone and lives in a household with a working television that is almost always in use. However, the demographics of the household and their screen of choice vary and should be taken into account. For parents and grandparents, they are likely to spend more time on tv screens, which makes it the best platform to reach them.
For the same brand reaching younger audiences, social platforms will do the trick. Occasionally, there might be some intersection, where audiences might converge on traditional tv screens and/or social media, in which case, the said ad should be created for the average audience, that is, the profile of the brand’s target audience.
Contrary to what we might want to believe, the Ghanaian audience still has a gap to fill. With highly concentrated capital cities and an overzealous need to appear modern, it’s easy to think that the average Ghanaian is fully digitalised and with reliable internet access. The reality is actually quite different, with inaccessible areas even in the southern hemisphere, there is a wide range of audience left behind in the glory days of traditional radio as a major form of entertainment, news and current affairs…but there is hope for an inclusive future.
We foresee, high tech commercials with enormous budgets, feeding to the creative needs and requirements of our audience, smart investments in both new and traditional media bridging the gap between a highly digital audience and their traditional counterparts based on brand target, interactive billboards and relatable video and still concepts that play on nostalgia and futuristic vibes.
It will be a whole new world, with endless possibilities.