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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,
2. Developing an advertising program is a five-step process: (1) set advertising
3. Sales promotion consists of mostly short-term incentive tools, designed to stimulate
5. Events and experiences are a means to become part of special and more personally
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
C H A P T E R
20
MANAGING 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
TEACHING STRATEGY AND CLASS ORGANIZATION
PROJECTS
1. At this point in the semester-long project, students should submit their advertising
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
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:
• 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)?
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
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?
END-OF-CHAPTER SUPPORT
Marketing Debate: Should Marketers Test Advertising?
Advertising creatives have long lamented ad pretesting. They believe that it inhibits their
creative process and results in much sameness in commercials. Marketers, on the other
hand, believe that ad pretesting provides necessary checks and balances as to whether an
ad campaign is being developed in a way so that it will connect with consumers and be
well-received in the marketplace.
Take a position: Ad pretesting in often an unnecessary waste of marketing dollars vs. ad
pretesting provides an important diagnostic function for marketers as to the likely success
of an ad campaign.
Con: Pretest critics maintain that agencies can design ads that test well but may not
necessarily perform well in the marketplace. Proponents of ad pretesting maintain that
useful diagnostic information can emerge and that pretests should not be used as the sole
decision criterion anyway. Widely acknowledged as being one of the best advertisers
around, Nike is notorious for doing very little ad pretesting.
MARKETING DISCUSSION
What are some of your favorite TV ads? Why? How effective are the messages and creative
strategies? How are they building brand equity?
Student answers will differ depending upon their favorite TV commercials but all
answers should cover the major points of this chapter.
Marketing Excellence: Coca-Cola
1. What does Coca-Cola stand for? Is it the same for everyone? Explain.
2. Coca-Cola has successfully marketed to billions of people around the world. Why is it
so successful?
3. Can Pepsi or any other company ever surpass Coca-Cola? Why or why not? What are
Coca-Cola’s greatest risks?
Suggested Answer: Student answers will vary based on their personal opinions and “tastes.”
Coke’s greatest risks have to be the managing of its mass communications strategy and
Marketing Excellence: Gillette
1. Gillette has successfully convinced the world that “more is better” in terms of number
of blades and other razor features. How did it do it? Why has that worked in the past?
Will it continue to work in the future? Why or why not?
Suggested Answer: The company’s impressive marketing knowledge and campaigns
have helped it reach an international level of success. Gillette uses one global marketing
2. Explain why Gillette’s sports marketing partnerships have been so successful.
Suggested Answer: Gillette was a pioneer in sports marketing, and selected highly
3. Some of Gillette’s spokespeople such as Derek Jeter and Tiger Woods have run into
controversy after becoming endorsers for the brand. Does this hurt Gillette’s brand equity
or marketing message? Explain.
Suggested Answer: In the long-run these spokespeople should not hurt the brand’s equity
4. Will Gillette ever become as successful at marketing to women as to men? Why or why
not?
Suggested Answer: Yes, the strategies, tactics, and communication message used to market to
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?
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
2. Persuasive advertising aims to create liking, preference,
conviction, and purchase of a product or service.
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
3. Competition and clutter
5. Product substitutability
iii. Advertising Elasticity
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
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
2. A good ad normally focuses on one or two core selling
propositions.
3. As part of refining the brand positioning, the advertiser should
5. Marketers can also cut the cost of creative dramatically by
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
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
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,
3. Legal and Social Issues
a. Advertisers must not make false claims, use false
demonstrations, or create ads with the capacity to
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
3. Reach is most important when launching new products, flanker
4. Frequency is most important where there are strong
5. A key reason for repetition is forgetting. The higher the
ii. Choosing Among Major Media Types
1. Media planners make their choices by considering factors such
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
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;
Limited audience selectivity;
2. Place advertising, or out-of-home advertising, is a broad
category including many creative and unexpected forms to grab
consumers’ attention where they work, play, and, of course,
shop.
a. Billboards use colorful, digitally produced graphics,
iii. Evaluating Alternate Media
1. Nontraditional media can often reach a very precise and
2. Ad placements designed to break through clutter may also be
3. The challenge for nontraditional media is demonstrating its
reach and effectiveness through credible, independent research
iv. Selecting Specific Media Vehicles
1. The media planner must choose the most cost-effective
vehicles within each chosen media type.
2. Media planners rely on measurement services that estimate
3. Marketers need to adjust the cost-per-thousand measure.
4. Media planners are using more sophisticated measures of
v. Media Timing and Allocation
1. The advertiser makes both a macroscheduling and a
microscheduling decision.
2. The chosen pattern should meet the marketer’s
communications objectives and consider three factors.
a. Buyer turnover expresses the rate at which new buyers
enter the market; the higher this rate, the more
continuous the advertising should be.
3. In launching a new product, the advertiser must choose among
continuity, concentration, flighting, and pulsing.
a. Continuity means exposures appear evenly throughout a
given period.
4. A company must allocate its advertising budget over space as
well as over time.
H. Evaluating Advertising Effectiveness
i. Communication-effect research, called copy testing, seeks to
determine whether an ad is communicating effectively
2. Proponents maintain that useful diagnostic information can
1. The fewer or more controllable other factors such as features
2. The sales impact is easiest to measure in direct marketing
situations and hardest in brand or corporate image-building
advertising.
II. Sales Promotion
A. Sales promotion, a key ingredient in marketing campaigns, consists of a
collection of incentive tools, mostly short term, designed to stimulate quicker
or greater purchase of particular products or services by consumers or the
trade
i. Sales promotion expenditures increased as a percentage of budget
expenditure for a number of years, their growth has recently slowed.
1. Some sales promotion tools are consumer franchise building.
2. Sales promotion tools that are typically not brand building
include price-off packs, consumer premiums not related to a
product, contests and sweepstakes, consumer refund offers, and
trade allowances.
ii. Sales promotions in markets of high brand similarity can produce a
high sales response in the short run but little permanent gain over the
B. The fastest-growing area in sales promotions is digital coupons, redeemed via
smart phone or downloaded to a consumer’s printer.
i. Digital coupons eliminate printing costs, reduce paper waste, are easily
updatable, and have higher redemption rates.
ii. Many retailers are now offering customized coupons based on
consumer purchase histories
C. Major Decisions: Establish objectives, select the tools, develop the program,
implement and control it, and evaluate the results.
i. Establishing Objectives—Sales promotion objectives derive from
communication objectives, which derive from basic marketing
objectives for the product.
1. Objectives for consumers include encouraging more frequent
2. Retailer objectives include persuading retailers to carry new
items and more inventory, encouraging off-season buying,
3. For the sales force, objectives of promotion include
encouraging their support of a new product or model,
ii. Selecting Consumer Promotion Tools—The promotion planner should
take into account the type of market, sales promotion objectives,
competitive conditions, and each tool’s cost-effectiveness.
1. Samples
3. Cash Refund Offers
5. Premiums
7. Prizes
9. Free Trials
11. Tie-in Promotions
13. Point-of-Purchase displays and demonstrations
iii. Selecting Trade Promotion Tools
Award money to the trade to
1. Persuade the retailer or wholesaler to carry the brand
3. Induce retailers to promote the brand by featuring, display, and
price reductions
5. Tools include
a. Price-Off
b. Allowance
c. Free Goods
iv. Selecting Business and Sales Force Promotion Tools
1. For many new businesses that want to make a splash to a
2. Major Business and Sales Force Promotion Tools
a. Trade Shows and Conventions
v. Developing the Program
1. In deciding to use a particular incentive, marketers must first
determine its size.
3. Decide on the duration of the promotion
5. Establish the timing of promotion
6. Establish the total sales promotion budget
vi. Implementing and Evaluating the Program
1. Marketing managers’ implementation and control plans must
cover lead time and sell-in time for each individual promotion.
2. Manufacturers can evaluate the program using sales data,
consumer surveys, and experiments.
a. Sales (scanner) data help analyze the types of people
who took advantage of the promotion, what they bought
III. Events and Experiences
A. Events Objectives—Marketers report a number of reasons to sponsor events:
i. To identify with a particular target market or lifestyle
ii. To increase salience of company or product name
iii. To create or reinforce perceptions of key brand image associations
iv. To enhance corporate image
B. The result of an event can still be unpredictable and beyond the sponsor’s
control.
C. Major Sponsorship Decisions
i. Choosing events: Because of the number of sponsorship opportunities
and their huge cost, many marketers are becoming more selective.
1. The event must meet the marketing objectives and
communication strategy defined for the brand.
3. The audience must match the target market and make favorable
attributions for the sponsor’s engagement.
4. An ideal event is also unique but not encumbered with many
ii. Designing Sponsorship Programs: Many marketers believe the
marketing program accompanying an event sponsorship ultimately
determines its success.
2. Event creation is a particularly important skill in publicizing
fund-raising drives for nonprofit organizations.
3. Fund-raisers have developed a large repertoire of special
events, including anniversary celebrations, art exhibits,
iii. Measuring Sponsorship Activities: It’s a challenge to measure the
success of events.
2. Define and benchmark objectives on the front end.
4. Measure behavior.
6. Research the emotional identities of customers and measure the
results of emotional connections.
8. Include cost savings in ROI calculations.
10. Capture normative data
11. Supply-side methods for measuring an event’s success assess
the media coverage
way
12. Demand-side method identifies the sponsorship’s effect on
consumers’ brand knowledge.
D. Creating Experiences
i. Experiential marketing not only communicates features and benefits
but also connects a product or service with unique and interesting
IV. Public Relations
A. Public relations (PR) includes a variety of programs to promote or protect a
company’s image or individual products.
B. PR departments counsel top management to adopt positive programs and
eliminate questionable practices so negative publicity doesn’t arise in the first
place and perform the following five functions:
i. Press relations—Presenting news and information about the
organization in the most positive light
ii. Product publicity—Sponsoring efforts to publicize specific products
C. Marketing Public Relations support corporate or product promotion and image
making and serves the marketing department.
i. Used to be called publicity, the task of securing editorial space—as
opposed to paid space—in print and broadcast media to promote or
hype a product, service, idea, place, person, or organization.
ii. MPR goes beyond simple publicity and plays an important role in the
following tasks:
2. Repositioning mature products.
4. Influencing specific target groups.
6. Building the corporate image in a way that reflects favorably
on its products.
D. Major Decisions in Marketing PR: establish the marketing objectives, choose
the PR messages and vehicles, implement the plan, and evaluate the results.
i. Major tools
1. Publications
3. Sponsorships
5. Speeches
7. Identity Media
ii. Establishing Objectives:
2. Build credibility by communicating the message in an editorial
context
4. Hold down promotion cost because MPR costs less than direct-
mail and media advertising
iii. Choosing Messages and Vehicles
iv. Implementing the Plan and Evaluating Results
1. Easiest gauge of its effectiveness is the number of exposures
carried by the media, but it contains no indication of how many
2. A better measure is the change in product awareness,
