Advertising Management © Anup Mukherjee i3pep.org

Part 1 (this page) Part 2

What is Advertising:
Advertising is an inseparable aspect of business activity. It forms the core of marketing function. It is as old as human civilisation. Archaeologist have found signs announcing events and offer in the Mediterranean Sea region. Romans used to paint walls to announce gladiator fights. An earliest use of advertising for political purposes is found in a Pompeii wall painting that praises a politician and solicits votes.

By advertising in the field of business is meant ‘any paid form of non-personal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods, or services by an identified sponsor’ (Philip Kotler & Gary Armstrong in Principles of Marketing).

Advertising is an important aspect of business activity. It is an important process of product promotion. Though there are other processes of promoting products from sales promotion to public relations, the Advertising is the most important criteria that build up awareness of the product among the consumers. Within this framework, Advertising forms a part of the Marketing Communication Strategy of the Business Company.

Advertising is used mostly by business, but not limited to it. Advertising extends its reach to be used as an effective tool of promotion by non-profit organisations, NGOs, Welfare associations, Charity organisations, Political parties and many other such organisations that cannot be classified as strictly business organisation.

The tools employed in Advertising includes use of print medium, broadcast thorough different media channels like radio and television, use of hoardings or bill boards, distribution of pamphlets, pullouts in magazines and newspapers, road-shows, online advertising via the internet, use of songs etc, and any other method that is able to attract the target consumer base.

Objective of Advertising:
The objective of advertising is to inform, to persuade, and to remind. Through such process, it aims to promote the products and services for sale. Through it people are able to get to know about new products. It gives an opportunity of informed choices to the people by informing and helping people to make decision by highlighting the various aspects of the product or service. For the company, it provides an outlet to publicise their products whether its continuing product or a new product. Through it the company can promote their product or service to the wider audience. It increases competitive spirit in the market among the producers of similar products. Through this process, the main objective of the company is to influence the decision of the consumer or to induce him to try out the company’s product, and translate the attention of the consumer into sale. In this regards, different companies use Advertising for different purposes.

For example, Advertising can be used for many different purposes that range from building of brand identity, to that of brand recall. However, the objective of advertising needs to be focussed. Only a focussed message can be understood and be successful. The primary objective of advertising is to increase the sales of the product or services. However, this is not always the only objective. Take for example, the advertising of a Boeing aeroplane. Now no one buys Boeing in retail. Or take the Advertising of CISCO systems. Now such high tech companies are not mere retailers. CISCO makes the components of servers on which the Internet system works. In such cases, by advertising itself, the company wishes to build its brand. One might ask, what use would this brand building be? It is useful for the purpose of being known in the business, and particularly if one is taking out public issue and floating equity shares. In such cases, advertising tends to heighten the awareness of such company among the public. Many of the companies manufacturing industrial products have such aims. Such brand image is also useful if the company diversifies itself into other product lines or other businesses. Such an effort increases confidence of the people in the company and increases its credibility in the market place. If people have confidence in the company, then it is obvious that they would buy products of such company, or use such products that use those components. An example is the Intel Chip used in the Computer. Now no one uses the Intel Pentium in isolation. It forms one of the components of the computer. But through heightening of awareness, it tries to influence the perception of the consumers that it is the best processor. And thereby aim to have a positive consumer response when the consumers go to buy computer for themselves. This also means that many other computer processor makers are outwitted in the market, just because people are not aware that there are many other companies making such a thing. Moreover, consumers can’t have confidence on a brand that they haven’t heard about.

Advertising is very important in the issue of perception. In marketing, perception comes first, and Quality of the product comes next. If people perceive a product to be better it would sell, no matter if the other competitive product is technically superior, though does not have the perception of being of good quality. But in the longer run, it is the Quality that works. So initially a company that has a good Advertising plan might work well; though, if its product does not have quality, it would not be able to induce its customers for a repeat purchase. So, however good the Advertising, people would not buy the product in such cases. In such sense, Advertising is helpful in inducement for first instance of sales in regard to a consumer. After the consumer buys the product, it is the product that speaks for itself.

Many times Advertising used by the companies is for the purpose of assuring the buyer that the product is good. This usually happens in the case of costly products. When someone buys costly products, it usually happens that there is post-purchase dissatisfaction. One would always think whether the money that s/he spent was worth it, or whether s/he should have bought another brand. Advertising addresses this aspect of consumer behaviour and reassures the customer that what s/he bought was the best.

Then there are other objectives also that the businesses have. A company can be under investigation by the Tax authorities; or Court of Law might be suing a company for violation of legal provisions; or it can be under attack of environmentalists; or it can happen that the company has been accused of unfair and unethical business practices. In such cases, the company might bring forth advertisement that aim to inform the company’s point of view to the public, and reassure the public that the company is following all the laws. This would maintain the confidence of the people, the customers, the investors, the creditors etc, and also keep up the credibility of the company. Such issues of credibility are also involved in cases of medicine producing companies. We come across ads that say that the particular company has recalled all packages of the particular drug from the market after complains were received etc. Thus in such cases Advertising acts as an important means of communication between the company and the society at large.

Thus we see that Advertising is an important medium of communication between an organisation and the people. Depending on the situations these ads can be targeted to a particular section of people or to the society at large. Advertising can be used to popularise birth control techniques and persuade people to join defence services; it can be used for popularising saving habit in the children and it can be used to popularise ecological friendly habits among the people- from saving paper to saving electricity. It is used in social awareness campaigns like AIDS awareness and popularising safe sex by use of condoms. Thus there are various reasons for which Advertising is used. The main thing is that Advertising serves the primary purpose of communication. However generally Advertising has come to be associated with the field of trade and commerce where a company aims to sell its products and services to people.

Advertising process:

The advertising process consists of various steps. An organisation has to decide, for what purpose it wishes to use Advertising. What is its communication objective? And what is its sales objective? Then one has to decide what should be the Advertising budget. Then comes the important process of message decision that relates to the message and the medium to convey that message. And finally when one has executed the Advertising campaign there comes the stage of campaign evaluation that reviews the campaign to find whether the campaign was successful based on the objectives that it set out to achieve.

Communication objective is most important determinant. A company might not just be selling a cosmetic, but might be trying to sell hope of looking beautiful to young ladies; a computer company might just not be selling software, but ease of use of information. The objective can range from basic thing like informing the consumers about launch of a new product to more sophisticated issues like creation of company image or brand loyalty or repeat purchase or reduce post purchase dissatisfaction etc. An advertisement is a good one only if it focuses on one objective. If an advertisement is trying to convey more than one message in an advertisement, then it is sure to create confusion in the minds of its consumers. This phase is also important because it finally goes into positioning of the product in the market vis-à-vis its competitors as well as in the minds of the consumers.

The next step is to put the advertising plan under the limits of the budget constraints. Any company cannot have unlimited funds. They have limited funds that they need to maximise. The advertisement budget is decided by the nature of the advertisement, the stage of the product life cycle, the advertisement frequency, nature of competition, market share etc. Usually new products, impulsive products, products with high market share, and products with many competitors etc. require greater frequency of advertising.

Part 1 (this page) Part 2

© Anup Mukherjee

Click here to print.