1. MISSION OR SETTING THE ADVERTISING OBJECTIVES
Advertising Objectives can be classified as to whether their aim is:
To inform: This aim of Advertising is generally true during the pioneering stage of a product category, where the objective is building a primary demand.
This may include:
• Telling the market about a new product
• Informing the market of a price change
• Informing how the product works
• Correcting false impressions
• Reducing buyers’ fears
To persuade: Most advertisements are made with the aim of persuasion. Such advertisements aim at building selective brand.
To remind: Such advertisements are highly effective in the maturity stage of the product. The aim is to keep the consumer thinking about the product.
2. MONEY
This M deals with deciding on the Advertising Budget
The advertising budget can be allocated based on:
• Departments or product groups
• The calendar
• Media used
• Specific geographic market areas
There are five specific factors to be considered when setting the Advertising budget.
• Stage in PLC: New products typically receive large advertising budgets to build awareness and to gain consumer trial. Established brands are usually supported with lower advertising budgets as a ratio to sales.
• Market Share and Consumer base: high-market-share brands usually require less advertising expenditure as a percentage of sales to maintain their share. To build share by increasing market size requires larger advertising expenditures. Additionally, on a cost-per-impressions basis, it is less expensive to reach consumers of a widely used brand them to reach consumers of low-share brands.
• Competition and clutter: In a market with a large number of competitors and high advertising spending, a brand must advertise more heavily to be heard above the noise in the market. Even simple clutter from advertisements not directly competitive to the brand creates the need for heavier advertising.
• Advertising frequency: the number of repetitions needed to put across the brands message to consumers has an important impact on the advertising budget.
• Product substitutability: brands in the commodity class (example cigarettes, beer, soft drinks) require heavy advertising to establish a different image. Advertising is also important when a brand can offer unique physical benefits or features.
3. MESSAGE GENERATION
Message generation can be done in the following ways:
Inductive: By talking to consumers, dealers, experts and competitors. Consumers are the major source of good ideas. Their feeling about the product, its strengths, and weaknesses gives enough information that could aid the Message generation process.
Deductive: John C. Meloney proposed a framework for generating Advertising Messages.
According to him, a buyer expects four types of rewards from a product:
Rational
Sensory
Social
Ego Satisfaction.
Buyers might visualize these rewards from:
Results-of-use Experience
Product-in-use Experience
Incidental-to-use Experience
The Matrix formed by the intersection of these four types of rewards and the three types of experiences is given below.
Potential Type of Reward (Sample Messages)
Rational Sensory Social Ego Satisfaction
Result-of-Use Experience 1. Gets Clothes Cleaner 2. Settles Stomach upset completely 3. When you care enough to serve
the best 4. For the skin you deserve to have
Product-in-Use Experience 5. The flour that needs no sifting 6. Real gusto in a great light beer 7. A deodorant to guarantee
social acceptance 8. The store for young executive
Incidental-to-Use Experience 9. The plastic pack keeps the cigarette fresh 10. The portable television that’s lighter in weight,
easier to lift 11. The furniture that identifies the home of modern people 12. Stereo for the man with discriminating taste
Message evaluation and selection
The advertiser needs to eval¬uate the alternative messages. A good ad normally focuses on one core selling proposition.
Messages can be rated on desirability, exclusiveness and believability. The message must first say something desirable or interesting
about the product.
The message must also say something exclusive or distinct that does not apply to every brand in the product category. Above all,
the message must be believable or provable.
Message execution.
The message’s impact depends not only upon what is said but also on how it is said. Some ads aim for rational positioning and
others for emotional positioning.
While executing a message the style, tone, words, and format for executing the message should be kept in mind.
Style. Any message can be presented in any of the following different execution styles, or a combination of them:
• Lifestyle: Emphasizes how a product fits in with a lifestyle.
• Mood or image: Evokes a mood or image around the product, such as beauty, love, or serenity. No claim is made about the
product except through suggestion.
• Musical: Uses background music or shows one or more persons or cartoon characters singing a song involving the product.
• Personality symbol: Creates a character that personifies the product. The character might be animated
• Technical expertise: Shows the company’s expertise, experience, and pride in making the product.
• Scientific evidence: Presents survey or scientific evidence that the brand is preferred over or outperforms other brands. This
style is common in the over-the-counter drug category.
Tone:
The communicator must also choose an appropriate tone for the ad.
Example: HLL is consistently positive in its tone—its ads say something superlatively positive about the product, and humor is almost
always avoided so as not to take mention away from the message. Other companies use emotions to set the tone—particularly film,
telephone, and insurance companies, which stress human connections and milestones.
Words: Memorable and attention-getting words must be found.
Format:
Format elements such as ad size, color, and illustration will make a difference in an ad’s impact as well as its cost. A minor
rearrangement of mechanical elements within the ad can improve its attention-getting power. Larger-size ads gain more attention,
though not necessarily by as much as their difference in cost.
Four-colour illustrations instead of black and white increase ad effectiveness and ad cost. By planning the relative dominance of different elements of the ad, optimal delivery can be achieved.
4. MEDIA
The next ‘M’ to be considered while making an Advertisement Program is the Media through which to communicate the Message generated during the previous stage. The steps to be considered are:
5. MEASUREMENT
Evaluating the effectiveness of the Advertisement Program is very important as it helps prevent further wastage of money and helps
make corrections that are important for further advertisement campaigns. Researching the effectiveness of the advertisement is the
most used method of evaluating the effectiveness of the Advertisement Program. Research can be in the form of:
• Communication-Effect Research
• Sales-Effect Research
There are two ways of measuring advertising effectives. They are:
Pre-testing
It is the assessment of an advertisement for its effectiveness before it is actually used. It is done through
• Concept testing – how well the concept of the advertisement is. This is be done by taking expert opinion on the concept of the ad.
• Test commercials - test trial of the advertisement to the sample of people
• Finished testing
Post-testing
It is the assessment of an advertisement’s effectiveness after it has been used. It is done in two ways
• Unaided recall - a research technique that asks how much of an ad a person remembers during a specific period of time
• Aided recall - a research technique that uses clues to prompt answers from people about ads they might have seen.
Advertising objectives can be classified according to whether their aim is to inform, persuade or remind.
Informative advertising figures heavily in the pioneering stage of a product category, where the objective is to build primary
demand.
Persuasive advertising Becomes important in the competitive stage, where a company’s objective is to build selective demand for a
particular brand. Some persuasive ads use comparative advertising, which makes an explicit comparison of the attributes of two or
more brands.
Most detergent ads – Surf, etc. use persuasive advertising wherein one brand is shown as being superior to the others on various
counts such as “more whiteness”, “your clothes wont stink after you use brand X”, “your clothes wont shrink…”, etc.
Reminder advertising is important with mature products
Advertising Objectives can be classified as to whether their aim is:
To inform: This aim of Advertising is generally true during the pioneering stage of a product category, where the objective is building a primary demand.
This may include:
• Telling the market about a new product
• Informing the market of a price change
• Informing how the product works
• Correcting false impressions
• Reducing buyers’ fears
To persuade: Most advertisements are made with the aim of persuasion. Such advertisements aim at building selective brand.
To remind: Such advertisements are highly effective in the maturity stage of the product. The aim is to keep the consumer thinking about the product.
2. MONEY
This M deals with deciding on the Advertising Budget
The advertising budget can be allocated based on:
• Departments or product groups
• The calendar
• Media used
• Specific geographic market areas
There are five specific factors to be considered when setting the Advertising budget.
• Stage in PLC: New products typically receive large advertising budgets to build awareness and to gain consumer trial. Established brands are usually supported with lower advertising budgets as a ratio to sales.
• Market Share and Consumer base: high-market-share brands usually require less advertising expenditure as a percentage of sales to maintain their share. To build share by increasing market size requires larger advertising expenditures. Additionally, on a cost-per-impressions basis, it is less expensive to reach consumers of a widely used brand them to reach consumers of low-share brands.
• Competition and clutter: In a market with a large number of competitors and high advertising spending, a brand must advertise more heavily to be heard above the noise in the market. Even simple clutter from advertisements not directly competitive to the brand creates the need for heavier advertising.
• Advertising frequency: the number of repetitions needed to put across the brands message to consumers has an important impact on the advertising budget.
• Product substitutability: brands in the commodity class (example cigarettes, beer, soft drinks) require heavy advertising to establish a different image. Advertising is also important when a brand can offer unique physical benefits or features.
3. MESSAGE GENERATION
Message generation can be done in the following ways:
Inductive: By talking to consumers, dealers, experts and competitors. Consumers are the major source of good ideas. Their feeling about the product, its strengths, and weaknesses gives enough information that could aid the Message generation process.
Deductive: John C. Meloney proposed a framework for generating Advertising Messages.
According to him, a buyer expects four types of rewards from a product:
Rational
Sensory
Social
Ego Satisfaction.
Buyers might visualize these rewards from:
Results-of-use Experience
Product-in-use Experience
Incidental-to-use Experience
The Matrix formed by the intersection of these four types of rewards and the three types of experiences is given below.
Potential Type of Reward (Sample Messages)
Rational Sensory Social Ego Satisfaction
Result-of-Use Experience 1. Gets Clothes Cleaner 2. Settles Stomach upset completely 3. When you care enough to serve
the best 4. For the skin you deserve to have
Product-in-Use Experience 5. The flour that needs no sifting 6. Real gusto in a great light beer 7. A deodorant to guarantee
social acceptance 8. The store for young executive
Incidental-to-Use Experience 9. The plastic pack keeps the cigarette fresh 10. The portable television that’s lighter in weight,
easier to lift 11. The furniture that identifies the home of modern people 12. Stereo for the man with discriminating taste
Message evaluation and selection
The advertiser needs to eval¬uate the alternative messages. A good ad normally focuses on one core selling proposition.
Messages can be rated on desirability, exclusiveness and believability. The message must first say something desirable or interesting
about the product.
The message must also say something exclusive or distinct that does not apply to every brand in the product category. Above all,
the message must be believable or provable.
Message execution.
The message’s impact depends not only upon what is said but also on how it is said. Some ads aim for rational positioning and
others for emotional positioning.
While executing a message the style, tone, words, and format for executing the message should be kept in mind.
Style. Any message can be presented in any of the following different execution styles, or a combination of them:
• Lifestyle: Emphasizes how a product fits in with a lifestyle.
• Mood or image: Evokes a mood or image around the product, such as beauty, love, or serenity. No claim is made about the
product except through suggestion.
• Musical: Uses background music or shows one or more persons or cartoon characters singing a song involving the product.
• Personality symbol: Creates a character that personifies the product. The character might be animated
• Technical expertise: Shows the company’s expertise, experience, and pride in making the product.
• Scientific evidence: Presents survey or scientific evidence that the brand is preferred over or outperforms other brands. This
style is common in the over-the-counter drug category.
Tone:
The communicator must also choose an appropriate tone for the ad.
Example: HLL is consistently positive in its tone—its ads say something superlatively positive about the product, and humor is almost
always avoided so as not to take mention away from the message. Other companies use emotions to set the tone—particularly film,
telephone, and insurance companies, which stress human connections and milestones.
Words: Memorable and attention-getting words must be found.
Format:
Format elements such as ad size, color, and illustration will make a difference in an ad’s impact as well as its cost. A minor
rearrangement of mechanical elements within the ad can improve its attention-getting power. Larger-size ads gain more attention,
though not necessarily by as much as their difference in cost.
Four-colour illustrations instead of black and white increase ad effectiveness and ad cost. By planning the relative dominance of different elements of the ad, optimal delivery can be achieved.
4. MEDIA
The next ‘M’ to be considered while making an Advertisement Program is the Media through which to communicate the Message generated during the previous stage. The steps to be considered are:
5. MEASUREMENT
Evaluating the effectiveness of the Advertisement Program is very important as it helps prevent further wastage of money and helps
make corrections that are important for further advertisement campaigns. Researching the effectiveness of the advertisement is the
most used method of evaluating the effectiveness of the Advertisement Program. Research can be in the form of:
• Communication-Effect Research
• Sales-Effect Research
There are two ways of measuring advertising effectives. They are:
Pre-testing
It is the assessment of an advertisement for its effectiveness before it is actually used. It is done through
• Concept testing – how well the concept of the advertisement is. This is be done by taking expert opinion on the concept of the ad.
• Test commercials - test trial of the advertisement to the sample of people
• Finished testing
Post-testing
It is the assessment of an advertisement’s effectiveness after it has been used. It is done in two ways
• Unaided recall - a research technique that asks how much of an ad a person remembers during a specific period of time
• Aided recall - a research technique that uses clues to prompt answers from people about ads they might have seen.
Advertising objectives can be classified according to whether their aim is to inform, persuade or remind.
Informative advertising figures heavily in the pioneering stage of a product category, where the objective is to build primary
demand.
Persuasive advertising Becomes important in the competitive stage, where a company’s objective is to build selective demand for a
particular brand. Some persuasive ads use comparative advertising, which makes an explicit comparison of the attributes of two or
more brands.
Most detergent ads – Surf, etc. use persuasive advertising wherein one brand is shown as being superior to the others on various
counts such as “more whiteness”, “your clothes wont stink after you use brand X”, “your clothes wont shrink…”, etc.
Reminder advertising is important with mature products