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LEARNING OBJECTIVES
In this chapter, we will address the following questions:
1. What steps are required in developing an advertising program?
2. How should marketers choose advertising media and measure their effectiveness?
3. How should sales promotion decisions be made?
4. What are the guidelines for effective brand-building events and experiences?
5. How can companies exploit the potential of public relations?
SUMMARY
1. Advertising is any paid form of nonpersonal presentation and promotion of ideas,
goods, or services by an identified sponsor. Advertisers include not only business
firms but also charitable, nonprofit, and government agencies.
2. Developing an advertising program is a five-step process: (1) set advertising
objectives, (2) establish a budget, (3) choose the advertising message and creative
strategy, (4) decide on the media, and (5) evaluate communication and sales effects.
3. Sales promotion consists of mostly short-term incentive tools, designed to stimulate
quicker or greater purchase of particular products or services by consumers or the
trade.
4. In using sales promotion, a company must establish its objectives, select the tools,
develop the program, implement and control it, and evaluate the results.
5. Events and experiences are a means to become part of special and more personally
relevant moments in consumers’ lives. Events can broaden and deepen the sponsor’s
relationship with its target market, but only if managed properly.
6. Public relations (PR) includes a variety of programs designed to promote or protect a
company’s image or its individual products. Marketing public relations (MPR), to
support the marketing department in corporate or product promotion and image
making, can affect public awareness at a fraction of the cost of advertising and is often
much more credible. The main tools of PR are publications, events, news, community
affairs, identification media, lobbying, and social responsibility.
C H A P T E
R 20MANAGING MASS
COMMUNICATIONS:
ADVERTISING, SALES
PROMOTIONS, EVENTS
AND EXPERIENCES, AND
PUBLIC RELATIONS
OPENING THOUGHT
Students will be familiar with the major forms of advertising. What might present
challenges to some students will be the ideas surrounding the five-step process involved:
set advertising objectives, establish a budget, choose the advertising message and creative
strategy, decide on the media, and evaluate the effects. The instructor is encouraged to
present examples of differing advertising campaigns and differing forms of
communication (print, electronic, Web-based, billboards, etc.) to show the various
opportunities and complexities involved.
The instructor is encouraged to use events and experiences (sponsorships of university or
college events are good examples to use) to demonstrate the effectiveness (or
ineffectiveness) of this media to build brand equity.
Public relations and MPR might be new material to students and the instructor is
encouraged to use professional public relations officers (university or college
representatives) as guest speakers to explain current developing practices and procedures
in this evolving specialty.
TEACHING STRATEGY AND CLASS ORGANIZATION
PROJECTS
1. At this point in the semester-long project, students should submit their advertising
program complete with objectives, budget, advertising message and creative strategy,
media decisions, and sales and promotional materials.
2. Sponsorships are an integral part of life in America today. The support of college and
university’s teams by various sporting goods companies and local vendors add needed
revenues to colleges and universities. In this project, students are to contact their
college or university’s sports management program and try to discover the dollar
amount that sponsorships add to the university. Secondly, contact as many of these
local sponsors as possible and try to see how these sponsors quantify their
expenditures (to the college and university) in terms of brand awareness, purchase
intent, or consumer product decision-making.
3. Sonic PDA Marketing Plan: Advertising, sales promotion, and public relations are
among the most visible outcomes of any marketing plan. These mass communications
tools provide support for branding, product, pricing, and distribution strategies. At
Sonic, you are starting to plan promotional support for launching the new PDA. After
reviewing your earlier marketing mix decisions and your current situation as a new
player in the PDA market, respond to the following questions about your promotion
strategy:
Should Sonic use advertising to support the PDA introduction? If so, what
advertising goals will you set, and how will you measure your results?
What message(s) do you want to communicate to your target audience? What
media are most appropriate, and why?
Should you use consumer or trade promotion or both?
Should you use public relations to promote Sonic and its products? If so, what
objectives will you set for your public relations program(s)?
Summarize your answers in a written marketing plan or type them into the Marketing
Mix section of Marketing Plan Pro.
ASSIGNMENTS
Organizations handle advertising in differing ways. In this assignment, students should
contact different size companies in their community (one large, one medium, and one
small company) and find out who is responsible for working with their ad agencies and
how (and where) did they receive their training in developing advertising messages. Was
or did their training primarily consist of “on-the-job” training? Experience learned from
previous positions in larger firms? Or is their understanding of the operation of
advertising more of a “learn as I go” process? In compiling their data, can the students
identify any common elements? Can we draw any inference from or about advertising
from the data?
In small groups, have the students create an advertising campaign for a product/service of
their choosing, including ad copy and creative execution (mock-up print ads, a
“homemade” television commercial for example). This campaign should contain each of
the elements of the chapter material and most importantly, define the 5Ms objectives.
The remainder of their class members should evaluate each group member as to the
effectiveness of their campaign.
It has been suggested that over 70 percent of all buying decisions are made in the store
and as a result, point-of-purchase advertising has grown in its appeal. Students should
give three examples of point-of-purchase advertising that they have recently come across
(ads in-store, personal selling by a cosmetic counter salesperson, etc.) and comment on
the effectiveness to them of this type of advertising. Did they buy the product? Did the
advertising annoy them? Moreover, in the role of a marketing executive, would the
student recommend spending part of their advertising budget on this form of media?
In the Marketing Memo entitled, Print Ad Evaluation Criteria, the author lists seven
questions that should be answered in the affirmative concerning the executional elements
of print advertising. Have the students select two print advertisements, then ask them to
evaluate each of them in regards to the criteria stated in the Marketing Memo.
This assignment should be a favorite one for the students to complete. Breaking the class
up into groups, assign a different television channel (cable and network) to each group.
Have the students’ record all the television commercials shown during prime time for a
particular night (say for a Thursday night). After watching the commercials, students
should list their favorite ones, their not so favorite ones, and the ones that annoyed them
the most. Have the students share their commercials with the other class members and see
if the other members share the same opinion(s). Finally, in light of the advertising
objectives presented in this chapter, can the students “pick out” the
message of the ad?
Events, experiences, and sponsorship advertising is increasing. The chapter outlines eight
reasons given for sponsoring events. Students should choose an event or sponsorship
(recent activity on campus, attendance by students at an event, etc.) and evaluate how
effective they feel the event is/was towards achieving these eight objectives. Students
should also be able to comment on why they feel that the sponsorship event did not
achieve some of these stated objectives.
DETAILED CHAPTER OUTLINE
Opening vignette: Despite the enormous increase in marketers’ use of personal
communications due to the pervasive nature of the Internet, mass media are still a vitally
important component of most marketing communications programs. To generate
consumer interest and sales, mass media must often be supplemented and carefully
integrated with other communications (like P&G’s “Thank You Mom” campaign).
I. Developing and Managing an Advertising Program
A. Advertising can be a cost-effective way to disseminate messages, whether to
build a brand preference or to educate people.
B. In developing an advertising program, marketing managers must always start
by identifying the target market and buyer motives.
C. Then they can make the five major decisions known as “the five Ms”:
i. Mission: What are our advertising objectives?
ii. Money: How much can we spend and how do we allocate our
spending across media types?
iii. Message: What should the ad campaign say?
iv. Media: What media should we use?
v. Measurement: How should we evaluate the results?
D. Setting the Advertising Objectives
i. Advertising objectives must flow from earlier decisions about target
market, brand positioning, and the marketing program.
ii. An advertising objective (or goal) is a specific communications task
and achievement level to be accomplished with a specific audience in
a specific period of time
iii. We classify advertising objectives according to whether they aim to
inform, persuade, remind, or reinforce.
1. Informative advertising aims to create brand awareness and
knowledge of new products or new features of existing
products
2. Persuasive advertising aims to create liking, preference,
conviction, and purchase of a product or service.
3. Reminder advertising aims to stimulate repeat purchase of
products and services.
4. Reinforcement advertising aims to convince current purchasers
they made the right choice
iv. The advertising objective should emerge from a thorough analysis of
the current marketing situation.
E. Deciding on the Advertising Budget
i. Although advertising is treated as a current expense, part of it is really
an investment in building brand equity and customer loyalty.
ii. Factors Affecting Budget Decisions
1. Stage in the product life cycle
2. Market share and consumer base
3. Competition and clutter
4. Advertising frequency
5. Product substitutability
iii. Advertising Elasticity
1. The predominant response function for advertising is often
concave but can be S-shaped
2. When it is S-shaped, some positive amount of advertising is
necessary to generate any sales impact, but sales increases
eventually flatten out
F. Developing the Advertising Campaign
i. Advertisers employ both art and science to develop the message
strategy or positioning of an ad—what it attempts to convey about the
brand—and its creative strategy—how it expresses the brand claims.
ii. They use three steps: message generation and evaluation, creative
development and execution, and social-responsibility review.
iii. Message Generation and Evaluation
1. Advertisers are always seeking “the big idea” that connects
with consumers rationally and emotionally, distinguishes the
brand from competitors, and is broad and flexible enough to
translate to different media, markets, and time periods
2. A good ad normally focuses on one or two core selling
propositions.
3. As part of refining the brand positioning, the advertiser should
conduct market research to determine which appeal works best
with its target audience and then prepare a creative brief,
typically one or two pages.
4. The more themes explored, the higher the probability of
finding an excellent one.
5. Marketers can also cut the cost of creative dramatically by
using consumers as their creative team, a strategy sometimes
called “open sourcing” or “crowdsourcing.”
6. Consumer-Generated Advertising can be pure genius or a
regrettable failure.
iv. Creative Development and Execution
1. The ad’s impact depends not only on what it says but, often
more important, on how it says it.
2. Every advertising medium has advantages and disadvantages.
a. Television is generally acknowledged as the most
powerful advertising medium and reaches a broad
spectrum of consumers at low cost per exposure.
i. TV can vividly demonstrate product attributes
and persuasively explain their corresponding
consumer benefits.
ii. TV can dramatically portray user and usage
imagery, brand personality, and other
intangibles.
iii. Product-related messages and the brand itself
can be overlooked.
iv. High volume of nonprogramming material on
television creates clutter that makes it easy for
consumers to ignore or forget ads.
b. Print media can provide detailed product information
and effectively communicate user and usage imagery.
i. The static nature of the visual images in print
media makes dynamic presentations or
demonstrations difficult, and print media can be
fairly passive.
ii. Newspapers are timely and pervasive,
magazines are typically more effective at
building user and usage imagery.
iii. Print advertising has steadily declined in recent
years.
iv. Although advertisers have some flexibility in
designing and placing newspaper ads, relatively
poor reproduction quality and short shelf life
can diminish the impact.
v. A print ad should be clear, consistent, and well
branded
c. Radio’s main advantage is flexibility—stations are very
targeted, ads are relatively inexpensive to produce and
place, and short closings for scheduling them allow for
quick response.
i. Radio can engage listeners through a
combination of popular brands, local presence,
and strong personalities.
ii. It is a particularly effective medium in the
morning; it can also let companies achieve a
balance between broad and localized market
coverage.
iii. Radio’s obvious disadvantages are its lack of
visual images and the relatively passive nature
of the consumer processing that results.
3. Legal and Social Issues
a. Advertisers must not make false claims, use false
demonstrations, or create ads with the capacity to
deceive, even if no one is actually deceived.
b. Sellers in the United States are legally obligated to
avoid bait-and-switch advertising that attracts buyers
under false pretenses.
G. Choosing Media: deciding on desired reach, frequency, and impact; choosing
among major media types; selecting specific media vehicles; and setting
media timing and geographical allocation.
i. Reach, Frequency, and Impact
1. Media selection is finding the most cost-effective media to
deliver the desired number and type of exposures to the target
audience.
2. Impact is the qualitative value of an exposure through a given
medium
3. Reach is most important when launching new products, flanker
brands, extensions of well-known brands, and infrequently
purchased brands or when going after an undefined target
market.
4. Frequency is most important where there are strong
competitors, a complex story to tell, high consumer resistance,
or a frequent-purchase cycle.
5. A key reason for repetition is forgetting. The higher the
forgetting rate associated with a brand, product category, or
message, the higher the warranted level of repetition.
ii. Choosing Among Major Media Types
1. Media planners make their choices by considering factors such
as target audience media habits, product characteristics,
message requirements, and cost.
Table 20.1 Profiles of Major Media Types
Medium Advantages Limitations
Newspapers Flexibility; timeliness; good local
market coverage; broad
acceptance; high believability
Short life; poor reproduction
quality; small “pass-along”
audience
Television Combines sight, sound, and
motion; appealing to the senses;
high attention; high reach
High absolute cost; high clutter;
fleeting exposure; less audience
selectivity
Direct mail Audience selectivity; flexibility; no
ad competition within the same
medium; personalization
Relatively high cost; “junk mail”
image
Radio Mass use; high geographic and
demographic selectivity; low cost
Audio presentation only; lower
attention than television;
nonstandardized rate structures;
fleeting exposure
Magazines High geographic and demographic
selectivity; credibility and prestige;
high-quality reproduction; long
life; good pass-along readership
Long ad purchase lead time; some
waste in circulation
Outdoor Flexibility; high repeat exposure;
low cost; low competition
Limited audience selectivity;
creative limitations
Yellow Pages Excellent local coverage; high
believability; wide reach; low cost
High competition; long ad purchase
lead time; creative limitations
Newsletters Very high selectivity; full control;
interactive opportunities; relative
low costs
Costs could run away
Brochures Flexibility; full control; can
dramatize messages
Overproduction could lead to
runaway costs
Telephone Many users; opportunity to give a
personal touch
Relative high cost; increasing
consumer resistance
2.
