An investigation of the perceptions of affluent consumers of the television advertising messages of South African investment brands

Abstract: Investment brands use television advertising to communicate messages strategically to audiences in an emotive manner, with the objective of achieving reach and increasing their share of the market. As these brands allocate large portions of their marketing and communication budgets to television advertising it becomes crucial for them to be able to determine whether their expenditures on advertising efforts are generating the desired output. As financial services products are often complex in nature and tend to require consumers to have high levels of education and ability to make calculations, it is perhaps unsurprising that the household savings rate is particularly low in South Africa, having hardly reached 1% from 2006 to 2016. Conversely, it is estimated that affluent consumers in South Africa spend over 300 billion Rand annually. Against this background, this study used qualitative methodology to ascertain how affluent consumers who met the sample frame respond to the television advertising messages of the leading South African investment brands. After exposure to the television advertisements in the focus group sessions, participants were asked questions relating to the brands and content that they had just seen. Thereafter, the participants were also asked to complete an information sheet which collated additional information on their television and advertising viewing behaviours. Secondly, three semi-structured interviews were conducted with creative personnel of the agencies which developed the television advertising campaigns of the selected leading investment brands to gain informed insights into television advertisements for investment-related products and services from the perspective of the creative people who conceptualised them. Two of the most significant findings were that affluent consumers appear to perceive investment brands as elitist and out of touch with the lived reality of South Africans, and that they regarded emotive messaging less persuasive than expert messaging in influencing decisions pertaining to investments. Secondly, television is still considered as the best means of conveying the content of messages to large audiences.M.A. (Strategic Communication