484 Part 6 Promotional Decisions
e. Disadvantages of newspapers
5. Magazines
a. Magazines can be divided into two broad categories:
consumer and business magazines
b. These categories can be subdivided into monthly and
weekly publications
c. Advantages of magazines:
i. Ability to reach precise target markets
6. Direct mail
a. Direct mail consists of sales letters, postcards, leaflets,
folders, booklets, catalogs, and house organs
b. Direct mail accounts for more than $50 billion of advertising
spending annually
c. Advantages of direct mail:
i. Ability to segment large audiences into narrow
market niches
ii. Speed
iii. Flexibility
iv. Detailed information
v. Personalization
d. Disadvantages of direct mail:
e. The advantages of direct mail help to explain its widespread
use; research is available on purchase patterns, preferred
payment, and household characteristics
7. Outdoor advertising
a. Outdoor advertising, or out-of-home advertising, is perhaps
the oldest and simplest media business around
i. It consists of billboards, painted bulletins and
Chapter 16 Integrated Marketing Communications, Advertising, and Public Relations 485
electronic displays
ii. It accounts for $6.9 billion annually
iii. Advertisers are finding new places to put their
messages outdoors, including roofs of taxicabs, on
b. Advantages of outdoor advertising:
i. Quickly and immediately communicates a message
ii. Uses simple ideas
iii. Offers short selling points often through humor
c. Disadvantages of outdoor advertising:
i. Subject to clutter
ii. Brevity of exposure, limited time to view
8. Interactive media
a. Interactive media—especially the Internet—are increasing
i. Interactive advertising budgets for many firms are
9. Media scheduling
a. Once the media is selected to match objectives and
budgets, timing and scheduling need to be considered
b. Media scheduling refers to setting the timing and sequence
for a series of advertisements
486 Part 6 Promotional Decisions
heavy campaigns for competing products
d. The effectiveness of reach and frequency to measure online
ad success has been questioned
Assessment check questions
7.1. What types of products are banned from advertising on television?
7.2. What are some of the advantages radio offers to advertisers? What
about newspapers? Radio ads allow marketers to target a captive audience
7.3. Define media scheduling, and identify the most important factors
influencing the scheduling decision. Media scheduling sets the timing and
sequence for a series of advertisements. Sales patterns, repurchase
cycles, and competitors’ activities are the most important variables in the
scheduling decision.
Chapter Objective 8: Explain the roles of public relations, publicity, and cross-promotion
in an organization’s promotional strategy
Key Terms: publicity, cross-promotion, cookies, puffery, Uniform Commercial Code
PowerPoint Basic: 15–17
PowerPoint Expanded: 44-47
1. Public relations
a. Public relations (PR) involves the firm’s communications and
relationships with its various publics—customers,
employees, stockholders, suppliers, government agencies,
and society at large
c. Public relations is in a period of major growth
i. There are about 62,000 public relations managers in
Chapter 16 Integrated Marketing Communications, Advertising, and Public Relations 487
Solving an Ethical
Controversy—Fast-
the United States
ii. More than 229,000 people actually work in the public
2. Publicity
a. The aspect of public relations most directly related to
promoting a firm’s products is publicity
i. Publicity is the nonpersonal stimulation of demand
for a product, service, place, idea, person, or
3. Cross-promotions
a. A cross-promotion is created when marketing partners share
the cost of a promotional campaign that meets their mutual
4. Ethics and Promotional Strategies
a. Advertising ethics
i. Children greatly influence purchasing decisions of
their parents
488 Part 6 Promotional Decisions
Food Advertising
Directed to
Children
Do children need to
be protected from
ii. By promoting goods and services directly to children,
firms can sell not only to them but to the rest of the
household, too
iii. Many parents and consumer advocates question the
ethics of promoting directly to children
b. Puffery and deception
i. Puffery refers to exaggerated claims of a product’s
superiority, or subjective or vague statements about
it that may not be literally true
ii. Exaggeration in ads is not new—consumers seem to
accept advertisers’ tendencies to stretch the truth
c. The Uniform Commercial Code standardizes sales and
business practices in the U.S.
i. It distinguishes between mere puffery and an actual
“express warranty”, which obligates a firm to stand
Assessment check questions
8.1. What is the role of the PR department in an organization? The PR
8.2. What is publicity? Publicity is nonpersonal stimulation of demand for a
8.3. What are the advantages of cross-promotion? Cross-promotion divides
Chapter 16 Integrated Marketing Communications, Advertising, and Public Relations 489
Chapter Objective 9: Discuss the five factors that influence the effectiveness of a
promotional mix, and how marketers measure promotional effectiveness.
Key Terms: percentage –of-sales method, fixed-sum-per-unit method, the meeting competition
method, task-objective method, direct sales results test, indirect evaluation, cost per thousand
impressions (CPM), media research, message research, pretesting, blind product tests,
posttesting, readership tests, unaided recall tests, inquiry tests, split runs, hits, impressions, click-
through rates, view-through rates, cost per impressions, cost per response
PowerPoint Basic: 18-23
PowerPoint Expanded: 48-61
Figure 16.4
Advertising
Objectives in
Relation to Stage in
Can you think of
1. Measuring promotional effectiveness
a. Developing an effective promotional mix is a difficult task as
quantitative measures are not available to determine the
effectiveness of it
b. Several factors influence its effectiveness
i. Nature of the market
ii. Nature of the product
iii. Stage in the product lifecycle
iv. Price
v. Funds available for promotion
c. Nature of the market:
i. The target audience has a major impact on the
choice of a promotion method.
e. Stage in the product lifecycle
i. The promotional mix must be tailored to a product’s
stage in its lifecycle
ii. In the introductory stage, both personal and
nonpersonal selling is used
iii. Advertising and sales promotion are used to create
f. Price
490 Part 6 Promotional Decisions
g. Funds available for promotion
i. Budget size is crucial to promotional strategies
ii. Traditional methods used for creating a promotional
budget include the percentage-of-sales and fixed-
sum-per-unit methods, along with techniques for
meeting the competition and achieving task
objectives
iii. The percentage-of-sales method is based on sales
either from some past period (such as the previous
year) or forecasted for a future period (the current
year)
2. Evaluating promotional effectiveness
a. Evaluating effectiveness is a complex exercise
b. With the Internet and social media sites, marketing research
has entered an evolutionary period
3. Measuring advertising effectiveness
a. Advertisers typically pay a fee based on the cost to deliver
the message to viewers, listeners or readers- the cost per
thousand impressions (CPM)
b. Measures of advertising effectiveness are both difficult and
e. Pretesting
i. Pretesting involves the evaluation of advertisements
before they actually appear in the chosen medium
ii. This allows ads to be evaluated and adjusted while
they are being developed
iii. Marketers conduct a number of pretests, from the
concept phase when they have only rough copy of
f. Posttesting
i. Posttesting is an assessment of advertising copy
after it has appeared in a print or broadcast medium
ii. Pretesting is often more desirable because it can
save the cost of placing ineffective ads, but
iv. Such readership tests, or recognition tests, assume
that future sales are related to ad readership
v. Unaided recall tests ask respondents to recall
magazine ads from memory, without the aid of a
copy
2. Measuring public relations effectiveness
a. PR results should be measured based on their objectives
both for the PR program as a whole and for specific
activities
i. Marketers must then decide what to measure
ii. This choice includes determining whether the
message was heard by the target audience and
whether it had the desired influence
b. The simplest and least costly level of assessment involves
outputs of the PR program and analyzes if
i. the audience received the messages
3. Evaluating interactive media
a. Marketers employ several methods to measure how many
users view Web advertisements:
i. Hits—user requests for a file
ii. Impressions—number of times a viewer sees an ad
4. Strategic implications of marketing in the 21st century
a. The need to integrate marketing communications into an
overall customer-focused strategy has become critical in the
global marketplace
Assessment check questions
9.1. What five factors affect the choice of a promotional mix? The five
9.2. Why is the choice of a mix a difficult task for marketers? Developing an
9.3. What is the most common way of establishing a promotional budget?
9.4. What is the direct sales results test? Why is it difficult to administer?
494 Part 6 Promotional Decisions
ANSWERS AND TEACHING NOTES TO CHAPTER EXERCISES
Chapter 16 Assurance of Learning Review
1. What is the role of integrated marketing communications (IMC) in a firm’s overall marketing strategy?
When executed well, what are its benefits?
Answer: Integrated marketing communications (IMC) is the coordination of all promotional activities to
produce a unified, customer-focused promotional message. IMC is a broader concept than marketing
2. Differentiate between advertising and product placement. Which do you think is more effective, and
why?
Answer: Advertising is a paid communication about an organization via various media, intended to inform
or persuade members of a certain audience. Product placement is the appearance of a brand item in a
3. Why is sponsorship such an important part of a firm’s IMC?
Answer: Sponsorship occurs when an organization provides money or resources to an event or activity in
exchange for a direct association with the event or activity and access to its audience. It is generally
4. For each of the following goods and services, indicate which direct marketing channel or channels you
think would be best.
Answer: Here are some suggestions—but the nature of promotion changes all the time, so students may
have other ideas:
a. Kansas City Royals tickets—direct mail, electronic (Internet), broadcast (infomercial)
5. How does the nature of the market for a firm’s goods or services affect the choice of a promotion
method?
Answer: The size of the potential market and the characteristics of the customer affect this choice. In a
market with only a small number of buyers, personal selling can be highly effective. In a market with a
6. What are the three primary objectives of advertising? Give an example of when each one might be
used.
Answer: Marketers use advertising messages to accomplish three primary objectives: to inform, to
persuade, and to remind. These objectives may be used individually or, more typically, in conjunction
with each other. For example, an ad for a not–for-profit agency may inform the public of the existence of
7. Identify the different types of emotional appeals in advertising. What are the benefits and pitfalls of
each?
Answer: An ad can use fear, humor, or sex in order to sell products. The benefit of a fear appeal is that
fear is a powerful stimulus to motivate people to take action. Ads for services such as insurance often
8. Compare and contrast interactive ads and traditional ads.
Answer: Interactive ads involve two-way promotional messages transmitted through communication
channels that induce message recipients to participate actively in the promotional effort. Interactive ads
9. Identify and describe the different advertising media. Which are on the rise? Which are facing possible
decline?
Answer: The various types of media fall into several broad categories: broadcast media (including TV and
radio ads), print media (including newspapers, magazines, direct mail, and outdoor ads), and electronic