Marketing Communication - Essay Example

Marketing Communication Introduction The nature of an advertisement is so that few can escape the clutches of its message. Its quick, catchy and repetitive characteristics at the very least allow it to attract or lure the attention of the general populace. Then again, an advertisement at its very worst could directly or indirectly introduce or encourage negative behaviour in its viewers. Therefore, restrictions - which can be defined as official rules which limit what can be done - are placed on advertisements in order to curtail the negative implications they could bring about. In many cases, such regulations are put in place with the intention of preventing advertisers from misleading consumers. However, it cannot be forgotten that such restrictions are also placed in order to prevent the degradation of women and to discourage materialism. Furthermore, the rationale for these restrictions could be health reasons and to prevent politicians from misusing electoral advertising. Firstly, restrictions are put in place to prevent advertisers from misleading consumers. This means that advertisements are restricted from containing false statements, descriptions, illustrations or claims regarding material facts or characteristics. Furthermore, there are bodies that are charged with acting as a 'controller' to ensure that the restrictions are upheld. For example, the Advertising Standards Authority of the United Kingdom dealt with almost 1,200 cases regarding health, beauty and slimming products in 2003 alone. This clearly indicates the number of cases regarding false claims will continue to increase if restrictions are not placed on the advertising of slimming products. As such, it is apparent that restrictions are placed on advertisements in order to prevent advertisements from deluding consumers. Government Regulatory Agencies and Fair Standards of Advertising Advertisements are also regulated to prevent the degradation of females. Often, the female is used as a mere sex symbol to entice and titillate the male into purchasing a product. Hence, restrictions are placed to control the extent to which a female is used and how she is used. If this is not done, it is likely that the image of the purer sex will be degraded as the people will lose respect of them due to indecent advertising. In advertisements contained within fashion magazines such as the Vogue, there are at least 20 pictures focused directly on the barely covered breast or cleavage. Not only are these suggestions demeaning to women insinuating that they all just want to wear as little as they can get away with, but they are blatantly unrealistic. Thus, restrictions are placed on advertisements to prevent the extent of such degradation from escalating further. In addition to that, advertisements portray women as frivolous creatures that seemingly spend 99% of their time and space dwelling on beauty, sensuality, sex, health and attracting a man. One example is a lipstick advertisement for Revlon. The theme is one of "choices, choices, and choices", how will one ever be able to choose a shade of red that is just right, as if this is the biggest problem confronting a female in a day. Another example is an advertisement by Savvy, a jewellery company whose slogan is "Be Brilliant", depicting unclothed female bodies with an example of their jewellery draped on them. Not only does it remove the humanity in the picture, it gives the impression of women's brilliance radiating only from the stones that they must wear. This clearly impresses upon the public that women are no more than sex symbols. Therefore, such degradation and debasement of females must be kept in check through the various restrictions placed on advertisements. In addition, restrictions are placed on advertisements to discourage materialism. Exploitative advertising brainwashes people, especially the young who are impressionable into becoming eager consumers and capitalists. Many advertisements are targeted at children and encourage them to be materialistic as association is made between happiness and purchasing power and the possession of particular goods. Hence, many countries have restrictions placed on advertisements targeted at the young children, especially over media that carry children's programmes, in order to discourage such materialism in children. Germany, for example, has a restriction that states that advertising targeted at minors, or in which minors are involved, is illegal if it could damage their interests or take advantage of their inexperience. This restriction undoubtedly protects children from the materialistic content distributed by exploitative advertisements. Furthermore, a study found that children in Sweden, where marketing campaigns to under-12s are banned, wanted significantly fewer toys than their counterparts in Britain, where there are no restrictions. This proves than these restrictions on advertisements are warranted as they discourage materialism in children. Furthermore, unrestricted advertisements could lead to increased spending among the people. However, certain countries have strong restrictions on advertisements of this nature to prevent its negative implications from affecting their citizens. This can be seen in the United Kingdom, where the Advertising Standards Authority restricts the air time and content of advertisements promoting banking instruments, such as credit cards. These regulations prevent people from overly accepting materialism in their lives as a result of advertisements. Overall, restrictions can prevent advertisers from increasing the influence of materialism through advertisements. (Kotler, 2003, 69-73) Besides that, advertisements are regulated to prevent politicians from misusing advertisements. Generally, many politicians utilize their huge campaign funds to advertise themselves to their prospective constituents. These advertisements serve to highlight their advantages and their opponent's disadvantages to the public. If the frequency and content of such advertisements are left unregulated, a disproportionate amount of support for any one side would emerge. One example is the situation in Russia, where formally, equal amounts of television airtime are awarded to the registered electoral blocs. However, as the restrictions on electoral advertising are not strongly enforced, there is a vast difference between the number of advertisements promoting United Russia - the current juggernaut - and other parties, which include the Communists, SPS and the Liberal Democrats. The Communists, which are second in the number of advertisements seen on television, actually have only about one third the numbers of mentions of the leading party, United Russia. This disproportionate level of electoral advertising is clearly unfair since politicians with deep pockets will be able to dominate the elections they compete in. Hence, there is a need for tighter regulations and a more powerful overseeing authority. The effects of the lack of restrictions are unmistakable. Such heavy advertising might not only garner support for the politicians using them, but they might also influence the public against the opposition party. Consequently, this could result in various conflicts. The situation in Yugoslavia - where campaigning for the leading opposition candidate in Yugoslavia's presidential election was largely confined to a whirlwind tour of the towns as the state media pumped out support for President Slobodan Milosevic - is evidence of this. As a result of that, a number of people actually deemed the opposition as rubbish and blamed them for problems that had occurred to them. All this only goes to show that restrictions are kept in place in order to prevent politicians from gaining unworthy advantage through the misuse of electoral advertising. Need and Rationale for Restrictions and Regulations In short, advertisements are regulated with proper reasons backing the restrictions. Many assume that restrictions are placed on advertisements only for major and obvious reasons such as to prevent advertisers from misleading consumers through falsely engineered advertisements. However, such restrictions also prevent advertisements from debasing women and for health purposes. Furthermore, the restrictions aim to prevent advertisers from overly affecting materialism. Besides, regulations are kept in place to prevent politicians from exploiting the use electoral advertising towards their needs. It is therefore necessary for every country to place restrictions on any form of advertisement. (Dennis, A. Ray. B, 1995, 81-84) Given all these factors working against change, the first question that arises is the extent to which government regulatory agencies’ efforts actually penetrated the built-in defences endemic to all bureaucracies. We were particularly interested in examining the extent to which the president's regulatory reform agenda had filtered down to bureaucratic officials and been formally adopted as official agency goals. Survey participants were thus asked to name the major regulatory reform goals that their agency was actively pursuing. Given the large number of different policy goals the Reagan administration had established in this area, it was not surprising to find that the amount of variation among goals cited by survey respondents was quite high. Indeed, no less than 34 distinct regulatory reform goals were mentioned. These goals ranged from imposing less costs on the regulated community, to increasing consumer welfare, to updating regulations to keep pace with modern technology, to completely abolishing the agency. The Function of Advertising and communication Regulatory Agencies The Council of Better Business Bureaus, through an ambitious program of voluntary self-regulation, for more than 20 years has provided a mechanism for challenging advertising that may be deemed unethical, misleading, or deceptive. The Council's two principal bodies are the National Advertising Division (NAD), which offers an alternate, private dispute-resolution mechanism for national advertisers, and the National Advertising Review Board (NARB), which is, in effect, a court of appeals for NAD decisions. As with other alternate dispute-resolution services, neither the NAD nor the NARB has any official judicial standing. For instance, it cannot: (a) levy a fine on offenders, (b) order an advertiser to stop publishing or broadcasting an ad, (c) prevent anyone from advertising, or (d) boycott an advertiser, product, or service. Indeed, the only real power this process has comes with publicity (the deliberations are kept confidential, but the findings are made public), and perhaps a certain amount of peer pressure it generates. The idea is to allow neutral arbitrators to recommend solutions to advertising disputes without going through the trauma and expense of formal litigation in the courts. The system seems to have worked well over time: More than 3,200 advertising disputes have been resolved through use of the NAD/ NARB process. 24 Advertising leaders claim that this demonstrates a highly successful record of voluntary industry compliance. (Robinson Glen O. 2000. 169-82) NAD's mission is to look into complaints about truth and accuracy in national (but not purely local) advertising messages. Once the NAD launches an inquiry into an advertising claim, it gathers information from all sides about it, determines the key issues, and then issues an opinion as to whether the claims have been substantiated. If a claim is found to be unproved, the NAD does not administer penalties, but simply asks the advertiser to modify or discontinue making the claim. The advertiser may voluntarily abide by the NAD recommendation (most do), but may choose instead to appeal the NAD finding to the NARB. The NARB is a peer review group composed of a five-member panel, chosen from among the 80 NARB members--advertising professionals and others representing the general public. Since it was established in 1971, NARB has considered 72 cases on appeal. In all but one case, there was total compliance by the parties involved. Although this is a voluntary process, with no real power in and of itself, the NAD / NARB can, and will, turn a file over to a government agency (usually the Federal Trade Commission [FTC]) if a truly deceptive advertising practice is found and not corrected. Most NAD / NARB cases are initiated by business organizations objecting to the advertising practices of a competitor. Advertising Communication and Regulatory Agencies Advertising is traditionally defined as any paid form of non-personal communication about a product, a service, or a company with the intention to sell the product or service or to influence opinions on and attitudes towards the product, service, or company. Direct marketing refers to marketing communication techniques, which will enable the marketer to communicate directly with the target audience with a view to prompting immediate or direct reaction in the form of purchase behaviour or asking for more information. Direct marketing has not traditionally been regarded as an element of the marketing communication mix. In recent years it has, however, become such an integral and important element of the overall marketing communication strategy of many companies that it often merits a substantial portion of the total budgetary appropriation, and an extensive separate strategy. (Corstjens, 2000, 113-20) Over the past fifteen years large international advertising agencies have set up their own direct-response divisions, or purchased existing direct-marketing agencies. Four predominant traditional media classes can be distinguished: printed media, electronic media, out-of-home media, and all other media. More recently, the Internet and its various cyber-applications have emerged as a new media class. Each of these broad media classes represents a number of specific media types, of which radio and television are the most frequently used electronic media, and newspapers and magazines the predominant printed media. In addition, there are many different vehicles within each media category, such as specific radio stations and television channels or specific magazine or newspaper titles that can be used to convey the message. Thus, one of the crucial decisions in marketing communication is to determine the most appropriate combination of media vehicles to convey the message to the target audience. The media plan starts with developing media objectives that are in line with and supportive of the marketing objectives and strategy. "As with most of the other variables in the marketing communication process, there is no set formula for creating media objectives. Media objectives are often formulated in terms of reach and frequency—that is, the percentage of potential consumers in the target audience to be reached and the frequency with which they need to be exposed to the message. (Shimp, 2000, 67-72) Conclusion It has become an accepted adage that change is the only certainty today. This truism also applies to the world of marketing communication. Most of the existing textbooks on marketing communication are predominantly representative of an endangered, if not almost extinct, paradigm of marketing communication. Companies that are unable or unwilling to change will become ‘exhibits in the museum of corporate dinosaurs’ may very well apply to marketing communication executives and practitioners. This section provides a somewhat speculative, and hopefully provocative, overview of current trends, and new and future technologies that already affect and will in future impact on marketing communication as we know it now. In most developed countries of the world, there is an increasing and almost never-ending proliferation of new products. This simply means that the consumer now has a much greater selection to choose from than only a few years ago. Competition is much fiercer, and the marketing communication clutter requires revolutionary new approaches to vie for consumer attention, interest, and support. References Corstjens, J. (2000), Strategic Advertising: A Practitioners Handbook (Oxford; Heinemann Professional Publishing). 113-20 Dennis, A. Ray. B (1995) Marketing Principles & Practice 2ndEdition Pitman publishing, London. 81-84 Kotler, P(2003) Marketing Management. International Edition.11th Edition Prentice Hall. 69-73 Robinson Glen O. 2000. "The Federal Communications Commission: An Essay on Regulatory Watchdogs." Business Law Review 64, March, pp. 169-182. Shimp, T., (2000), "Joe came: case study", Advertising promotion: supplemental aspects of integrated marketing communications." 5th Edition, Fort Worth, Tex London, Dryden. pp 67-72. Read More