Introduction to Advertising

1. Introduction to Advertising Advertising is an exciting, dynamic, and truly challenging enterprise-often misunderstood, but essential to business and industry as we know them today

2. What is Advertising ? • Advertising is a powerful communications force and a vital marketing tool – helping to sell goods, services, images, and ideas (or ideals) through channels of information or persuasion • Though it is often credited with making cash registers ring or blamed for failing to do so, advertising is, after all, but one part of the marketing and communication processes.

3. It is crucial to our understanding of advertising, therefore, that we appreciate from the start the dual nature of the process, that draws from both marketing and behavioral science disciplines • It interacts with numerous other marketing concerns, including personal selling, product development and servicing, branding of merchandise and research.

4. Advertising is also forever intertwined with the social-psychological needs, wants, and backgrounds of consumers.

5. Advertising Defined • Every occupation, trade or profession has its own language, nomenclature and jargon • The function of Advertising can be viewed in two basic ways: as a tool of marketing and a means of communication.

6. The Marketing point of view • The American Marketing Association recommends this definition: • Advertising is any paid form of non-personal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods, and services by an identified sponsor. • These words deserve careful scrutiny. Four phrases warrant clarification

7. “Paid Form” • When products or services are mentioned favorably in the media – the item appears because it is presumed to provide information or entertainment for the audience. • It is publicity, and no payment is made by the benefited organization. • Advertising is published or broadcast because the advertiser has purchased time or space to tell the story of certain product or service.

8. “Non-Personal Presentation” • There is no personal face-to-face presentation of goods, services or ideas. • Advertising is done in a non-personal manner through intermediaries - media

9. “Ideas, Goods, & Services” • Advertising is concerned with much more than the promotion of tangible goods. • Although most advertising is designed to help sell goods and services, it is being used increasingly to further public interest goals.

10. “An Identified Sponsor” • This phrase distinguishes advertising from propaganda. • Propaganda attempts to present opinions and ideas in order to influence attitudes and actions. • So does advertising. • Often the propagandist remains anonymous and the source of idea unknown.

11. Advertising on the other hand, discloses or identifies the source of the opinions and ideas it presents. • To do otherwise would be a wasteful expenditure of funds

12. The Communication Point of View Advertising is controlled, identifiable information and persuasion by means of mass communications media

13. The phrase “paid form” in the AMA definition is too restricted for many advertising professionals • The phrase was designed to distinguish between advertising and publicity • Most public service ads are not paid for in the usual sense, yet…

14. To the media that delivers these messages and to the men and women who create and produce them, they are advertisements just as much as are messages designed to increase the sale of soap.

15. Information and Persuasion • The words “presentation” and “promotion” fail to do justice to advertising’s role. • In presenting and promoting an item, the advertiser is engaging in a highly important function of advertising – of informing prospective buyers and users of the availability of the product. • Advertising provides the communication link between someone with something to sell and someone who needs something.

16. The advertiser is providing information to persons who are seeking it. • Advertising is the most efficient means of reaching people with product information. • “presentation” and “promotion” however, hardly suggest an active attempt to influence people to action or belief by an overt appeal to reason or emotion.

17. Persuasion • Is a major objective of modern advertising. • Clyde R. Miller points out that “all successes in business, in industrial production, in invention, in religious conversion, in education and in politics, depend upon the process of persuasion. • Persuasion is the essence of a democratic society. Its opposite is coercion.

18. In modern markets • The producer who is content with advertising that merely identifies or informs may soon be occupying a vulnerable competitive position. • Moreover, the creator of advertising needs to remember that all creative advertising must do more than merely inform or entertain. • It must change or reinforce an attitude or a behavior.

19. The consumer should also be always aware of the persuasive intent of the advertiser, no matter how restrained and informative the message may be. • To avoid restricting the scope of advertising to completely commercial functions and at the same time to convey adequately its purpose, the above definition is recommended.

20. Controlled • Provides an important distinction between advertising and either personal selling or publicity. • The content, time and direction of an advertising message are controlled by the advertiser. • Advertisers say what they want to say – no more, no less.

21. By careful selection of the medium that delivers the message, it is directed to the people whom they want to receive it. • When the advertiser contracts for advertising space or time – definite results can be expected. • The message will be published in the way it was prepared, it will be delivered to the specific audience served by the medium, it will be of a certain size or length, and it will appear at a certain time.

22. “Identifiable” • The receiver of the message is able to indentify both source and purpose. • The source is responsible for the message and recognizes that its purpose is to persuade the receiver to accept the ideas or opinions it presents.

23. “Mass Communication Media” • Separates personal selling and advertising • Convey the concept of multiple messages delivered to groups of people simultaneously.