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ADVERTISEMENT Advertising is any paid form of non-personal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods, or services by an identified sponsor. Of all the promotional activities conducted by businesses and other organizations, advertising is probably the most evident because it touches the greatest number of consumers.

THE ROLE OF ADVERTISING IN AN ORGANIZATION Advertising plays the following roles in an organization: 1. Advertising informs, persuades, and reminds: It informs buyers of

existence and nature of a product, may attempt to persuade them to purchase the advertised brand, and reinforces the buying behavior of the brand’s existing users. 2. Advertising can substitute for personal selling: Advertising

performs functions that personal selling performs but in much different fashion. 3. Advertising complements personal selling: While advertising may

substitute for personal selling, it usually exists in conjunction with it.

TYPES OF ADVERTISEMENTS The types of advertisements are distinguished by the content and purpose of add, the target audience, and the sponsors of ad. 1. Product Advertising presents information and/or persuasive appeals

about products and services. 2. Pioneer Advertising consists of messages about a product class and is

designed to stimulate primary demand.

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3. Competitive Advertising consists of brand-oriented messages

designed to stimulate selective demand. 4. Comparative Advertising makes direct comparisons between the

advertised brand and one or more competing brands, usually across several attributes. 5. Institutional Advertising seeks to enhance the overall image of and

build goodwill for the organization. 6. Trade Advertising consists of messages directed at resellers that

appeared in specialized trade publications or are sent through the mail. 7. Cooperative Advertising occurs when the costs of an advertising

message are shared by more than one party.

ADVERTISING PROCESS Advertising goes through the following process: DEVELOPING THE ADVERTISEMENT PROGRAM 1. Identifying the Target: To the extent that time and money permits,

the target audience for the advertising program is the target market for the firm’s product, which is identified from marketing research and market segmentation studies. 2. Specifying Advertising Objectives: After the target audience is

identified, a decision must be reached on what the advertising campaign is to be accomplished. Specific advertising objectives will be determined by the firm’s overall marketing strategy. Typical objectives are: • To support personal selling • To reach people inaccessible to the sales force • To improve dealer relations • To enter a new geographic market or attract a new market segment 2

• To introduce a new product Two broad distinctions are often made in the purpose of an advertising communication. First the message may be informational. It does not seek immediate action on the part of the audience; rather it seeks to inform the audience of the availability and/or nature of the product. Second, the purpose may be persuasive. Here the message or campaign has the explicit purpose of increasing sales through persuasion. 3. Setting the Advertising Budget: After setting the advertising

objectives, a company must decide on how much to spend. Determining the ideal amount for the budget is difficult because there is no precise way to measure the exact results of spending advertising money. When setting the budget following factors are considered: • Stage in the Product Life Cycle • Market Share • Competition in Market • Advertising Frequency • Product differentiation 4. Message Formulation: The central element of an advertising

program is the message or campaign that the target audience is intended to see. It is formulated after considering knowledge of the target audience and the stated objectives of the advertisement program. Any message can be presented in different execution styles such as following: • Slice of Life • Lifestyle • Fantasy • Mood or image • Musical • Personality Symbol • Technical expertise • Scientific evidence • Testimonial evidence

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5. Selecting the Right Media: Every advertiser must decide where to

place the advertisements. Three levels of decision making enter into advertising media selection. First the type of medium must be selected. Of the major media which will be used among newspaper, television, radio or magazines. Second, a particular category of medium must be chosen e.g. television has network and cable; magazines include general interest and special-interest categories. Finally, a specific vehicle must be chosen e.g. if an advertiser chooses radio, he has to determine on which stations to use in each city. 6. Scheduling the Advertising: Scheduling is concerned with the timing

of advertising messages. The following factors are considered while scheduling the advertising program: • Buyer Turnover – how often new buyers enter market to buy products • Purchase Frequency – more frequently the product is purchased, the less repetition is required • Forgetting Rate – the speed with which buyers forget the brand if advertising is not seen. Scheduling can be for short range and long range: • Long Range Timing: The long-range media scheduling deals with the timing of advertising expenditures over a year's time. • Short Range Timing: The short-range timing decision involves the scheduling of messages over short time periods: a month, a week, or even a day. EXECUTING ADVERTISEMENT PROGRAM 1. Pre-testing Advertising: Pre-tests are conducted before the

advertisements are placed in any medium. Pre-tests of communication effects attempt to identify the strengths and weaknesses of an ad prior to its full-scale implementation. There are three procedures for pre-testing: • The consumer jury involves a sample of consumers each of whom evaluates a set of alternative adds in terms of likelihood of reading each add, its interest-generating abilities, how convincing the add is, and how effective it would be in causing a purchase. • In portfolio tests consumers are given a portfolio of ads consisting of a mix of the ads being tested and dummy adds. 4

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Psychological tests measure consumer reaction to ads as shown by galvanic skin response, blood pressure, pupil dilation, salivation, and even brain wave activity.

2. Carrying out Advertising Program: After pre-testing the

advertisements, they are finally executed. To manage and perform the advertising activities an organization has three alternatives as follows: • To develop an internal advertising department • To use an advertising agency • To use both a department and an agency EVALUATING THE ADVERTISEMENT PROGRAM 1. Post-testing Advertising: Post-testing is done in order to see that how

much has been the advertisement program effective. The two major posttests of add campaign are recall and recognition. • Recall tests use a sample of consumers who regularly use a media source in which several ads appear. Respondents are asked, in unaided or aided fashion, to recall advertisers, and products they saw in the media source under study and the nature of the message. • Recognition tests ask consumers to indicate for a specific print medium whether certain ads in the issue were noticed and read. However often sales effects are used as a measurement to post-test an advertisement program. 2. Making Needed Changes: After post-testing, the required changes

are made in the advertisement program. The defects of the advertising program are tried to be removed in this step after the advertising program has been evaluated and the main weaknesses of the advertising program have been pointed out.

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