Learning Advertising and Sales Promotion

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Integrated Advertising, Promotion, and Marketing Communications

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Advertising and Sales Promotion

 

Rationale

 

 

 

This course provides students an opportunity to gain an understanding of advertising and other mass communications marketing practices: common business activities and terminology, perspectives applied when taking the optimal approach to decisions, plus descriptions and rationales of common practices (which are often far from optimal). The class itself places emphasis on developing students' abilities to express their analysis and recommendations in class discussion, essay exams and written assignments.

The greatest difficulty for students in this class is shifting perceptual focus. You can no longer think as if you are part of the audience (as you do when you watch television commercials or read magazines), but instead, as if you are the creators of communications strategies. And you must put aside your personal tastes. Since not all audience members (if any) are people like you, advertising strategy and tactics must be assessed in terms of what a target audience might perceive, not in terms of what appeals to you.

This is being realistic: in business, people preparing advertising, publicity and sales promotion strategy and tactics are seldom members of the target audience and strategy desirability must be judged in terms of what a target audience might like, dislike or understand. And this also means we will be covering some topic areas and using examples that you might find offensive, such as sexual appeals, or media vehicles whose audiences are people whose lifestyles or values are not the same as yours.

 

Learning Outcomes

After completion of this module, the students will be able to

1. Explore various promotional strategies used as part of the marketing mix.

2. Explain what what advertising is and does and and how it is linked to the marketing concept.

3. Explain what motivates people to buy, including how targeting and positioning are utilized by advertising professionals for the marketing communications mix.

4. Illustrate the relationship between advertising, sales promotion, publicity/public relations, personal selling and direct marketing.

5. Compare and contrast the advantages and disadvantages of the mass media within an advertising campaign.

6. Design a comprehensive Integrated Advertising Plan using appropriate methods of promotion.

7. Utilize professional journals and, or organizations related to this course.

8. Evaluate ethical considerations and issues in advertising.

 

 

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Tutorials and Lectures Assignments Recommended Texts Readings Learner Support Discussion Forums Workshops Web Cases Case Studies Resources Staff Development Subject Reviews

 

An Introduction of Integrated Marketing Communications. The Role of IMC in the Marketing Process

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Readings

Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) is the coordination and integration of all marketing communication tools, avenues, functions and sources within a company into a seamless program that maximizes the impact on consumers and other end users at a minimal cost.[1]

 

Integrated Marketing Communications, & Direct Marketing

 

 

See also

 

Advertising is a form of communication intended to persuade an audience (viewers, readers or listeners) to purchase or take some action upon products, ideas, or services. It includes the name of a product or service and how that product or service could benefit the consumer, to persuade a target market to purchase or to consume that particular brand. These messages are usually paid for by sponsors and viewed via various media. Advertising can also serve to communicate an idea to a large number of people in an attempt to convince them to take a certain action.

 

In an Economic Downturn, Why Spend Advertising Dollars on Blogs?

 

Commercial advertisers often seek to generate increased consumption of their products or services through branding, which involves the repetition of an image or product name in an effort to associate related qualities with the brand in the minds of consumers. Non-commercial advertisers who spend money to advertise items other than a consumer product or service include political parties, interest groups, religious organizations and governmental agencies. Nonprofit organizations may rely on free modes of persuasion, such as a public service announcement.

Modern advertising developed with the rise of mass production in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Mass media can be defined as any media meant to reach a mass amount of people. Different types of media can be used to deliver these messages, including traditional media such as newspapers, magazines, television, radio, outdoor or direct mail; or new media such as websites and text messages.

In 2010, spending on advertising was estimated at more than $300 billion in the United States[1] and $500 billion worldwide.

Internationally, the largest ("big four") advertising conglomerates are Interpublic, Omnicom, Publicis, and WPP.

 

See also

 

External links

Advertising Educational Foundation, archived advertising exhibits and classroom resources

Duke University Libraries Digital Collections:

 

 

Organizing for Advertising and Promotion

Tutorials

 

Readings

Advertising and the Marketing Process Overview: Advertising is a paid form of communicating the product promotional message by the use of various media amongst the target audience. It is persuasive, informative, and designed to influence purchasing behavior or thought patterns. The various promotional tools involved in product promotion comprise the promotional mix of an organization. They include advertising, personal selling, sales promotion, public relations, and direct marketing. Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) is the judicious and efficient use of the product promotional tools so that a universal, clear, and effective promotional message is communicated amongst the target audience. The paper explores the relationship between advertising and marketing and presents an overview of the IMC planning process.

Organizing for Advertising and Promotion: The Role of Ad Agencies and Other Marketing Communication Organizations

Medium to large-sized advertising agencies divide their work into various departments, traditionally splitting functions into interacting with clients and looking out for their interests (account management), buying advertising (media), and creating advertising (creative). As the importance of research has grown, ad agencies have combined old functions of researchers (who gather information about consumers and markets) and account managers (who keep an overall vision of the client's interests) into a role called account planning.

 

 

The Planning Lab

 

Account planners combine research and strategic thinking. If the account manager is closest to the client, the account planner is closest to the consumer. The account planner is the person on an advertising team who is most likely to have spent time with consumers using the product, or in focus groups asking them about how they think about the product. And in an era in which the brand is sometimes at least as important as a specific product (for instance, Nike as a brand has a place in the culture that far exceeds the particular performance characteristics of their shoes), the account planner is responsible for understanding the place of the brand in the consumer imagination. They are different than a simple research function in that they stay engaged in the campaign process throughout. Rather than offering research insights to others at a single point in time, they use research to continue to provide insights within the campaign process.

However, in Australia the original conception and the original launch of the planning role also included on-going marketing counsel to the agency teams and to clients who needed it. The reason for this was the pioneer account planner’s experience as a senior researcher at Unilever working with Unilever’s marketing teams and its many successful brands.

 

Value Chain of an Ad Agency

 

Chris Cowpe described it this way:

"Account planning is the discipline that brings the consumer into the process of developing advertising. To be truly effective, advertising must be both distinctive and relevant, and planning helps on both counts."

 

External links

 

 

The Communication Process. Perspectives on Consumer Behavior

Tutorials

 

Readings

Know how Advertising Works

Advertising is a very complex business. As you have already seen, a range of diverse activities are involved. It calls for a variety of disciplines. There are different organizations involved.

 

How advertising works

 

There are probably few activities or businesses as complex as advertising. It is not the number and variety of activities or the types of skills involved that 'account for the complexity of advertising. It is the integration of all these activities and skills into a meaningful and purposeful pattern and outcome that accounts for the complexity of advertising.

 

Read more ...

 

Models of the Communication Process

Abstract

We teach the same models of communication today that we taught forty years ago. This can and should be regarded as a mark of the enduring value of these models in highlighting key elements of that process for students who are taking the process apart for the first time. It remains, however, that the field of communication has evolved considerably since the 1960's, and it may be appropriate to update our models to account for that evolution.

 

How Do You Communicate with Your E-Learners?

This paper presents the classic communication models that are taught in introducing students to interpersonal communication and mass communication, including Shannon's information theory model (the active model), a cybernetic model that includes feedback (the interactive model, an intermediary model (sometimes referred to as a gatekeeper model of the two-step flow), and the transactive model. It then introduces a new ecological model of communication that, it is hoped, more closely maps to the the range of materials we teach and research in the field of communication today. This model attempts to capture the fundamental interaction of language, medium, and message that enables communication, the socially constructed aspects of each element, and the relationship of creators and consumers of messages both to these elements and each other.

Read more ...

 

Consumer behaviour is the study of when, why, how, and where people do or do not buy a product. It blends elements from psychology, sociology, social anthropology and economics. It attempts to understand the buyer decision making process, both individually and in groups. It studies characteristics of individual consumers such as demographics and behavioural variables in an attempt to understand people's wants. It also tries to assess influences on the consumer from groups such as family, friends, reference groups, and society in general.

Customer behaviour study is based on consumer buying behaviour, with the customer playing the three distinct roles of user, payer and buyer. Relationship marketing is an influential asset for customer behaviour analysis as it has a keen interest in the re-discovery of the true meaning of marketing through the re-affirmation of the importance of the customer or buyer. A greater importance is also placed on consumer retention, customer relationship management, personalisation, customisation and one-to-one marketing. Social functions can be categorized into social choice and welfare functions.

Each method for vote counting is assumed as social function but if Arrow’s possibility theorem is used for a social function, social welfare function is achieved. Some specifications of the social functions are decisiveness, neutrality, anonymity, monotonicity, unanimity, homogeneity and weak and strong Pareto optimality. No social choice function meets these requirements in an ordinal scale simultaneously. The most important characteristic of a social function is identification of the interactive effect of alternatives and creating a logical relation with the ranks. Marketing provides services in order to satisfy customers. With that in mind, the productive system is considered from its beginning at the production level, to the end of the cycle, the consumer (Kioumarsi et al., 2009).

 

 

See also

Consumer Behaviour Overview

 

 

Creative Strategy: Planning and Development. Implementation and Evaluation

Tutorials

 

Readings

In advertising, different creative strategies are used in order to obtain consumer attention and provoke shoppers to purchase or use a specific product. Advertisers use different ways of thinking to create catchy slogans that capture consumer attention. Creative strategies promote publicity, public relations, personal selling and sales promotion.

 

Creative Strategy

 

These ways of thinking are divided into three basic descriptions: Weak strategies, mid-strength strategies and strong strategies. The strategies labeled "strong, mid-strength, and weak are generic phrases used in the text books referenced below to help students understand the intensity of each different type of advertising strategy. Advertisements, weak, mid-strength, and strong can be found in television, radio, and magazines/print.

Since the beginning of advertising, strategies have been created, starting with the simplest (weak) strategies in the 1940s.

 

Graphic design is a creative process — most often involving a client and a designer and usually completed in conjunction with producers of form (i.e., printers, programmers, signmakers, etc.) — undertaken in order to convey a specific message (or messages) to a targeted audience. The term "graphic design" can also refer to a number of artistic and professional disciplines that focus on visual communication and presentation. The field as a whole is also often referred to as Visual Communication or Communication Design. Various methods are used to create and combine words, symbols, and images to create a visual representation of ideas and messages. A graphic designer may use typography, visual arts and page layout techniques to produce the final result. Graphic design often refers to both the process (designing) by which the communication is created and the products (designs) which are generated.

Common uses of graphic design include identity (logos and branding), web sites, publications (magazines, newspapers, and books), advertisements and product packaging. For example, a product package might include a logo or other artwork, organized text and pure design elements such as shapes and color which unify the piece. Composition is one of the most important features of graphic design, especially when using pre-existing materials or diverse elements.

 

 

See also

 

External links

Print design and production

 

 

Media Planning Strategy

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Readings

 

 

 

Media planning is generally the task of a Media Agency and entails finding the most appropriate media products for a clients brand or product. The job of Media Planning involves several areas of expertise that the Media Planner uses to determine what the best combination of media is to achieve the given marketing campaign objectives.

In the process of planning the Media planner needs to answer questions such as:

  1. How many of the audience can I reach through different media?
  2. On which media (and ad vehicles) should I place ads?
  3. Which frequency should I select?
  4. How much money should be spent in each medium?

 

In answering these questions the Media Planner then comes to an optimum Media Plan that enables him/her to deliver on the clients objectives.

 Diagonal Thinking: Introduction

 

Search Media & Marketing Audit Tools

Alexa Site Audit. It is the latest addition to the toolbox, the launch of which actually inspired this post. This tool produced a very thorough report, and one of the prettiest. Many of the reports included suggestions for keywords – such as the title tags and internal linking.

Matrix Search Media Planner. It tells you where to point your online marketing dollars. With calculations and intelligent analysis based on AI and data mining, Matrix generates budget allocation recommendations that lead to the best positioning results for your website.

SEOmoz Tool. It has become a powerhouse in the SEO tools sector in recent years. The most recent tool releases include the Campaign Based Web-App and Open Site Explorer, although they have many, many other tools – some of which are available with a free site membership, and some that require a Pro subscription.

WebSite Auditor. It is part of the SEO Power Suite group of tools, although you can download/purchase just the auditor tool if you wish. The other tools include a rank tracker, competitive intelligence, and link manager.

Website Grader. It, from Hubspot, takes a bit of a different approach to the site audit, in looking at your site from a marketing point of view rather than a technical one. Grader is actually a suite of tools for measuring your website, Twitter account, Facebook page, blogging efforts and more.

Web CEO. SEO Software by Web CEO (website optimization, submission and promotion software). SEO Software 'Web CEO' includes 12 SEO Tools in One Powerful SEO Suite.

Media Planning

Planning Examples

 

 

Media strategy, as used in the advertising or content delivery (online broadcasting) industries, is concerned with how messages will be delivered to consumers or niche markets. It involves: identifying the characteristics of the target audience or market, who should receive messages and defining the characteristics of the media that will be used for the delivery of the messages, with the intent being to influence the behaviour of the target audience or market pertinent to the initial brief. Examples of such strategies today have revolved around an Integrated Marketing Communications approach whereby multiple channels of media are used i.e. advertising, public relations, events, direct response media, etc.

 

Social Media Planning and Strategy – An Oxymoron?

 

This concept has been used among proponents of entertainment-education programming where pro-social messages are embedded into dramatic episodic programs to change the audiences attitudes and behaviors in such areas as family planning, literacy, nutrition, smoking, etc.

 

External links

Pentin promoted to role of international advertising director at Newsweek

 

 

Measuring the Effectiveness of the Promotional Program. Evaluation of Broadcast Media

Tutorials

 

Readings

Evaluating Advertising Effectiveness

 

 

Sales Promotion

Tutorials

 

Readings

 

 

 

Sales promotion is one of the four aspects of promotional mix. (The other three parts of the promotional mix are advertising, personal selling, and publicity/public relations.) Media and non-media marketing communication are employed for a pre-determined, limited time to increase consumer demand, stimulate market demand or improve product availability. Examples include:

 

Sales promotions can be directed at either the customer, sales staff, or distribution channel members (such as retailers). Sales promotions targeted at the consumer are called consumer sales promotions. Sales promotions targeted at retailers and wholesale are called trade sales promotions. Some sale promotions, particularly ones with unusual methods, are considered gimmick by many.

 

Integrated Marketing Communications, & Direct Marketing

 

 

See also

 

External links

 

Sales Promotion Sales Promotion
How to Create, Implement and Integrate Campaigns That Really Work

Authors: Roddy Mullin and Julian Cummins
Third Edition

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Public Relations, Publicity, and Corporate Advertising

Tutorials

 

Readings

 

 

 

Public relations (PR) is a field concerned with maintaining public image for businesses, non-profit organizations or high-profile people, such as celebrities and politicians.

An earlier definition of public relations, by The first World Assembly of Public Relations Associations held in Mexico City in August 1978, was "the art and social science of analyzing trends, predicting their consequences, counseling organizational leaders, and implementing planned programs of action, which will serve both the organization and the public interest." [1]

Others define it as the practice of managing communication between an organization and its publics.[2] Public relations provides an organization or individual exposure to their audiences using topics of public interest and news items that provide a third-party endorsement[3] and do not direct payment.[4] Once common activities include speaking at conferences, working with the media, crisis communications and social media engagement[5], and employee communication.

The European view of public relations notes that besides a relational form of interactivity there is also a reflective paradigm that is concerned with publics and the public sphere; not only with relational, which can in principle be private, but also with public consequences of organizational behaviour [6][2]. A much broader view of neo-ubiquitous interactive communication using the Internet, as outlined by Phillips and Young in Online Public Relations Second Edition (2009), describes the form and nature of Internet-mediated public relations. It encompasses social media and other channels for communication and many platforms for communication such as personal computers (PCs), mobile phones and video game consoles with Internet access.

Public relations is used to build rapport with employees, customers, investors, voters, or the general public.[7] Almost any organization that has a stake in how it is portrayed in the public arena employs some level of public relations. There are a number of public relations disciplines falling under the banner of corporate communications, such as analyst relations, media relations, investor relations, internal communications and labor relations.

Other public relations disciplines include:

 

Positive Publicity via Effective Public Relations

 

See also

 

External links

 

 

Personal Selling. Direct Marketing

Tutorials

 

Readings

Sales management originally referred exclusively to the direction of sales force personnel. "sales management" meant management of all marketing activities,including advertising,sales promotion,marketing research,physical distribution,pricing & product merchandising.

 

Sales Management Skills

 

Sales management is attainment of an organization's sales goals in an effective & efficient manner through planning, staffing, training, leading & controlling organizational resources. Revenue, sales, and sources of funds fuel organizations and the management of that process is the most important function.

 

See also

 

Personal selling occurs where an individual salesperson sells a product, service or solution to a client. Salespeople match the benefits of their offering to the specific needs of a client. Today, personal selling involves the development of longstanding client relationships.

 

Scope & Significance Of Personal Selling & Sales Management

 

In comparison to other marketing communications tools such as advertising, personal selling tends to:

 

There are exceptions of course, but most personal selling takes place in this way. Personal selling involves a selling process that is summarised in the following Five Stage Personal Selling Process. The five stages are:

1. Prospecting.

2. Making first contact.

3. The sales call.

4. Objection handling.

5. Closing the sale.

Read more ...

 

Direct-response marketing is a form of marketing designed to solicit a direct response which is specific and quantifiable. The delivery of the response is direct between the viewer and the advertiser, that is, the customer responds to the marketer directly. This is in contrast to direct marketing in which the marketer contacts the potential customer directly.

 

In direct marketing (such as telemarketing), there is no intermediary broadcast media involved. In direct-response marketing, marketers use broadcast media to get customers to contact them directly. It is direct-response marketing because the communications from the customer to the marketer are direct, this differentiates it from simple direct marketing in which the communications from the marketer to the customer are direct, but do not allow for instant feedback.

Like direct marketing, direct-response marketing seeks to elicit action. It is inherently accountable since results can be tracked and measured. Furthermore, direct-response campaigns perform best if the underlying strategies and tactics are highly competitive.
Direct Response Marketing graphical representations and trends analysis

 

 

Direct newsline

 

 

See also

 

 

Evaluating the Social, Ethical, Economic and Regulatory Aspects of Advertising

Tutorials

 

Readings

Advertising and Society

 

 

Doing Business 2011

 

 

Recommended Texts

 

Introduction to Advertising and Promotion

Introduction to Advertising and Promotion,
5th Ed., George E Belch, Michael A Belch, Irwin/McGraw-Hill,

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Advertising and Promotion: An Integrated Marketing Communications Perspective Advertising and Promotion: An Integrated Marketing Communications Perspective, 6/e

George Belch, San Diego University
Michael Belch, San Diego University

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A Framework for Marketing Management

A Framework for Marketing Management, 3/e
Philip Kotler

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The Subject is Marketing The Subject is Marketing
Second Canadian Edition

Charles W. Lamb, Texas Christian University
Joseph F. Hair, Louisiana State University
Carl McDaniel, University of Texas at Arlington
A.J. Faria, University of Windsor

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Resources

 

Promotion Mix

 

 

 

 

 

Corporate identity

Adbusters

AdAge.com