The placement of announcements and persuasive messages in time or space purchased in any of the mass media by business firms, nonprofit organizations, government agencies, and individuals who seek to inform and/ or persuade members of a particular target market or audience about their products, services, organizations, or ideas ("Definition of Advertising," 2013, para. 86).
But before sketching out advertisements, we should understand that advertising plays important role in marketing communications and the business as a whole. Remember the hierarchy of effects model?
The steps in that model are awareness, knowledge, liking, preference, conviction, and purchase.
As mentioned, advertisers have to convince customers to travel through all six steps of a model in order to purchase the product.
The main functions of advertising reflect those six steps.
Advertising is needed to increase brand awareness or remind a customer of the brand (awareness), inform or communicate product information to the customer (knowledge), to influence or convince the customer that the brand meets his or her needs (liking and preference), and finally add value to the brand by increasing market share (conviction and purchase).
The advertising management program is the process of creating the advertising strategy, implement the strategy, and determine the effectiveness.
Overall, there are three main steps to the advertising management process: consider the company's goals and objectives as well as the established marketing communications objectives, determine the advertising strategy, implement the strategy, and measure the effectiveness.
Next, the advertising and marketing managers will determine the advertising strategy.
This includes creating the advertising messages (along with a creative brief) and selecting the preferred media for the advertisements.
Developing the advertising message will be discussed in Lecture #2 and Planning and Analysis of Advertising Media are the topics of the video presentation.
Before the advertising messages are created, the organization will have to determine who will complete that task.
Depending on the business, there are three options: an in-house advertising department, a` la carte advertising, or an external advertising agency.In-house advertising is used by a few large companies that want to retain creative control over the message.
An in-house advertising department varies in size but usually includes researchers, creative talent, and media buyers.
The advantage of the in-house advertising departments is that the employees are part of the company's organization and are well versed in its mission and vision.
They could have immediate access to the developers of the product and have more first-hand knowledge.
However, an in-house advertising department is expensive and only pays if the company is continually advertising.
Another option companies may also use is a buffet or a` la carte method.
This method can include an organization with a partial in-house advertising department that handles the creative portions and relinquishes the media buying to a skilled agency or a company uses different specialized agencies to handle specific sections of the advertising process.
The external advertising agency, or full-service agency, handles all aspects of the strategy from research to creative services to media buying.
Some external agencies will also provide services regarding public relations and sales promotions.
While using an external full-service agency does require relinquishing some of the creative control, most companies retain final approval of the advertising message.
One final consideration in regards to advertising management is to determine when it is right to considerinvesting in advertising.
When economic conditions reduce the profit of companies, it is natural for some executives to want to cut the advertising budget.
So, why should money continue to be invested in advertising?
This goes back to the reasons for advertising in the first place.
Advertising is needed to increase brand awareness or remind a customer of the brand (awareness), inform or communicate product information to the customer (knowledge), to influence or convince the customer that the brand meets his or her needs (liking and preference), and finally add value to the brand by increasing market share (conviction and purchase).
Developing the Advertising Message
The basis of the marketing communications plan is creating effective advertisements that reach the desired target market.
In Week one, we defined Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) as a concept of marketing communications planning that recognizes the added value of a comprehensive plan that evaluates the strategic roles of a variety of communication disciplines - general advertising, direct response, sales promotion, and public relations - and combines these disciplines to provide clarity, consistency, and maximum communication impact.
Effective advertising is an important part, possibly even the backbone, of an IMC plan.
One of the traditional methods for determining an effective advertisement is the CAN method of connectedness, appropriateness, and novelty.Connectedness checks that advertisement will resonate with the appropriate target market.
Does it show the target the appropriate benefit that will fulfill the specific wants and needs?
Does it elicit a suitable emotion for the product?
Does the target identify with the message of the ad?
For example, an ad for diapers should be directed towards Moms (and Dads) of young children.
A teenager is not an appropriate spokesperson for this product.
Appropriateness means that an advertisement must provide information (knowledge) that shows the benefit while at the same time relating to the positioning and branding strategy.
In order for an advertisement to capture the audience's attention, it needs to present somethingoriginal and fresh.
For a time, advertisers were increasing the volume on television advertisements to capture attention. (This was banned in 2011). Or some television ads were silent causing a viewer otherwise occupied (such as surfing the internet) to look up to see why the sound disappeared.
However, a novelty ad that is unique or strange does not guarantee an effective ad--the other traits of connectedness and appropriateness need to be present as well.
In order to begin that working on the effective advertising message, a creative brief is used.
The creative brief is a document that is an informal contract between the company and the advertising agency and outlines the advertising campaign expectations.
The sections of a basic creative brief include: description of the product, background/history, objectives, target audience description, key propositions, supporting information, positioning and branding, and any mandatory elements such as brands or tag lines.
Watch this brief video for additional information
Click here to view
Measuring Effectiveness
Measuring the effectiveness of an advertisement is not easy. In 1981, 21 of the top advertising agencies realized this and decided to do something about it. They created PACT or Positioning Advertising Copy Testing, which according to the document is "a consensus credo representing the views of leading American advertising agencies" (PACT, 1981, p. 3).
The goal of this document is to set a standard on fundamental copy testing principles. The principles includethe following:
Principle I: A good copy testing system provides measurements which are relevant to the objectives of the advertising.
Principle II: A good copy testing system is one which requires agreement about how the results will be used in advance of each specific test.
Principle III: A good copy testing system provides multiple measurements – – because single measurements are generally inadequate to assess the performance of an advertisement.
Principle IV: A good copy testing system is based on a model of human response to communications – – the reception of the stimulus, the comprehension of the stimulus and the response to the stimulus.
Principle V: A good copy testing system allows for consideration of whether the advertising stimulus should be exposed more than once.
Principle VI: A good copy testing system recognizes that the more finished a piece of copy is, the more soundly it can be evaluated and requires, as a minimum, that alternative executions be tested in the same degree of finish.
Principle VII: A good copy testing system provides controls to avoid the biasing effects of the exposure context.
Principle: VIII: A good copy testing system is one that takes into account basic considerations of sample definition.
Principle IX: A good copy testing system is one that can demonstrate reliability and validity. (PACT, 1981, p. 10-27).
While PACT sets the standards for testing, there are various methods used for research.One is the Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique (ZMET).
This technique recognizes that consumers use non-verbal elements and metaphors as descriptors.
A few other services provide information to advertisers including Bruzzone Research Company (BRC) (recognition of television commercials), Starch Readership Service (magazine advertisement awareness), and Ipsos-ASI (Next*TV-television message recall).
References
Media Strategy and Advertising
Create the first part of the Advertising portion of the Marketing Communications Plan using the business and information presented in the Case Study. Meet the following requirements:
In 200-300 words, explain the creative media strategy that will be used for the plan for television, direct marketing, magazine, newspaper, and/or other media discussed this week. Choose at least two media.
Provide a rough sketch, blueprint (use ClipArt), or detailed explanation of the premise of the ads. (pdf files will be accepted)
Using feedback, update and make changes to the previous section of the plan.Please adhere to the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, (6th ed., 2nd printing) when writing and submitting assignments and papers.