Advertising Campaign - Essay Example

Advertising Campaign How to sell a product – this is what advertising is all about. To achieve this goal, advertising agencies go to great lengths to study how a product entrusted to them by a client company could make it to the shopping list of its intended consumers. As first step, the advertising agency mobilizes its creative workforce to formulate an advertising plan on how the product would be presented and sold to the prospective consumers. The master plan for an advertising campaign consists of the following: 1) Objective – here, the agency sets its sights on the type of market it intends to reach and how to dress up the product accordingly. 2) Strategy – the agency determines what methodologies to use to reach the target market, such as whether to use the hard or soft-sell approach. 3) Components – forms of suitable advertising materials that will be used for the campaign, including TV commercials, print ads, radio plugs and billboards for outdoor advertising. 4) Outlets – this specifies which of the traditional media (television, radio or print) are suitable for the advertising materials. 5) Budget – an estimate of the entire production and media placement costs of the advertising materials to be used to execute the plan. 6) Implementation grid – this sets the time period expected to accomplish the campaign, including the schedules and frequency of media placements. The magnitude and intensity in implementation of an advertising campaign depend on many factors, among them the size of the budget allotted to it, the kind of competition it is running into, etc. The advertiser’s handling of the bath soap Safeguard on its Philippine end is an excellent example of a successful advertising campaign that keeps a close ear on actual market conditions. When the advertising agency, which goes by the name of Atlas Promotions and Marketing Co. (APMC), considered taking on the Safeguard account, it immediately launched a study on the demographic profile of its potential market. The company that produces Safeguard wanted the product to penetrate as wide a market as possible, not just establish a specific niche for it. The challenge for the agency then was how to present Safeguard as a soap product of choice for majority of the Philippine populace. There is cutthroat competition in the Philippine market for personal care products such as bath soaps, with nearly 100 different products vying for consumer attention. The market research conducted by APMC showed that majority of the populace is poor, with the low and middle income class comprising over 70 per cent of the entire bath soap market. If APMC projects Safeguard as, say, a skin beauty soap, it would reach only the smaller 30 per cent of the market’s upper income bracket which consists mostly of young women. This has been the narrow and limited market niche of soaps like Dove and Ivory, which is made up of women aged 16 to 40, with high school and college education and gainfully employed. Based on this study, APMC proceeded to package Safeguard as a skin protection, germ-fighting soap. To reach the intended market, it decided to use TV, radio and print ads, minus cable advertisement which has limited viewers. From this case study, the relevance and importance of highlighting appropriate consumer groups in planning and implementing an advertising campaign becomes readily evident. This includes drawing up a socio-economic profile of the intended market, with attention to details on gender, ability and educational background and occupations. Practically all the consumer products that succeeded in breaking into their target market made use of this advertising strategy. As input in the formulation of an advertising plan, consumer grouping and the drawing up of a socio-economic profile of the intended market enable the advertiser to see where it needs to exert more effort. If the product is a laundry soap, for example, it pays to know that the major consumer group it needs to reach are the housewives. Since most housewives follow the soap operas on their radio or TV sets, in between doing laundry and other household chores, TV and radio placement of the advertising materials should be made heavily on popular soap operas to reach this particular consumer group. Accordingly, the ad copy of the publicity materials should as often as possible play on housewives doing their laundry. The advertising campaign can do without print ads, or used sparingly if at all, since housewives as a rule don’t read newspapers. Some advertising campaigns need to be combined with public relations component to achieve their objectives, and here consumer grouping and knowledge of the socio-economic profile of the market plays an important role even more so. There was this project handled by a Manila-based advertising agency that seemed difficult from the beginning. The government built an elevated railway system called Skyway in the capital under a build-operate-transfer contract with a Malaysian company, the first of its kind in the country which being a new idea was viewed with public suspicion. When completed and in operation, use of the Skyway for motorists would be expensive and thus opposition to the project mounted even as construction got underway. The Malaysian company and its Philippine partners hired an advertising agency both to gain public acceptance for the Skyway project and promote the project on a continuing basis. As PR component of the advertising campaign, the agency hired to do the job created a shell organization purportedly made up of motorists traversing the Skyway route daily and put out talking-heads TV, radio and print ads endorsing the Skyway. The ads made out the Skyway as a better alternative to non-toll roads since use of it is faster, more convenient and actually cheaper in the long run in terms of time and gas savings. High on the list of media outlets used for the campaign were of course motoring magazines and TV programs on motoring since car owners and motorists are the prime target of the campaign. More or less the same considerations need to be given to such equally important inputs as gender, educational background, occupation and ability to pay of the intended market. If the target market of a product are women, the advertising materials for the campaign should kowtow to their needs and desires. Similarly, if the intended market is made up of people with little or no education, the message of the advertising materials must be simple and easy to grasp. It has been found that few advertising studies have been made on consumers on a larger, more encompassing scale involving consumers of all ages, genders, income and educational background – and how each group responds to advertising. This insight is vital, according to the 1998 Rice-Bennet study, because it enables the advertisers to plan and execute their advertising campaign more effectively. “If advertisers are aware of the involvement these groups have with specific brands, then they can influence the consumers more effectively – by either softening their tendency not to buy a competitor’s brand or to strengthen the consumers’ involvement with their current brand of choice.” (“The Psychology of the Consumer,” 1999 Reem Regina Tatar.) Through this expansive research, advertisers will become more in touch with the motivations behind the consumers’ response to advertising. In the Rice-Bennet study, it was found that users of a particular product are more likely to respond positively to advertisements about that product and to be influenced by them more than the non-users. Such users have been categorized into four: Entrenched (those highly involved with the product), Average (those unlikely to change brands now but might do so later), Shallow (those with lower commitment and exploring other alternatives), and Convertible (those mostly likely to abandon the product in favor of another). Well-informed advertisers are always on their toes, primed to react on the fast movement of consumer trends as it were. The International HeraldTribune (Jan. 1, 2006) notes that hemlines which are down today go up again without a moment’s notice. Advertisers handling garment products would be sent into disarray by this if they have not honed their “trend-spotting skills.” By developing such a skill, advertisers worth their salt will also know that they can’t rely totally on TV, radio or print ads, with new technology now letting viewers/readers skip advertisements or even choose ad-free programs and publications. In ad placement and transmission schedules, advertisers consider several critical factors, such as the readership and audience profiles of the newspapers and radio or TV programs chosen as ideal outlets for their advertising materials. First, the agency creates the advertising material which is generally a 60- second commercial. Then comes the selection of the appropriate TV or radio program as carrier of the advertisement. Once the material is placed on a one-hour TV or radio program, it will be aired in at least six commercial gaps. It’s up to the advertiser if it wants only two or three exposures in the duration of that program. A 60-second TV or radio commercial on such frequency of exposures costs a lot of money. That’s why many advertising agencies at the behest of their client companies shorten their ads from 60 seconds of playing time to 30 seconds after two or three months of almost daily exposures. This cost-cutting technique is done carefully so that the basic message of the 60-second ad is not lost in the compressed material. The rationale is that the fundamental content of the initial 60- seconder has already been planted in the minds of the target consumers. In the case of newspaper ads, the initial salvo may be splattered in full page spreads, after which the ad placement will make do with half or one-fourth of a page. In the American setting and elsewhere, the moral and ethical issues are the concerns of several agencies, led by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). This agency requires compliance with the Code of Advertising Practices and the Trade Descriptions Act. In the main, the ASA sees to it that advertisements should not mislead, cause serious or widespread offense or cause any harm. It should be socially responsible and show regard for the principles of fair competition. Under the Trade Descriptions Act, ASA controls the accuracy of statements made by business describing goods and services. It also imposes penalties on advertisers that violate the Code of Advertising Practices, which provides that all advertisements should be legal, decent, honest and truthful. There is no exact counterpart here in the Philippines, where the concept of self-regulation is largely observed through an organization called Advertising Board (Adboard). The Adboard requires from local advertisers more or less the same conditions under a Truth in Advertising Act. In matters of copyright protection, the advertising industry gets valuable assist from special agencies under the Department of Trade and Industry. To carry out its self-regulation functions, all advertising materials intended for public consumption require Adboard approval. If the board found during screening that the ad is offensive to public morals, makes false claims, violates existing laws and the principles of fair competition, it is disapproved outright. Reference Lists: Advertising Standards Authority. The Rules for Advertising [online]. Mid City Place 71 High Holborn London WC1V6QT. Available from: http://www.asa.org.uk/asa/adcampaign/rules.htm [accessed 25 February 2006.] Pfanner, E. 1 January 2006. On Advertising: Do I spot a trend? International Herald Tribune. Business section page 1. Sawyer. A. Copyright Hampshire County Council 2006. Trade Descriptions Act 1968. Hampshire County Council. Available from: http://www.hants.gov.uk/regulatory/tradesta/law/traddesc.html [accessed 25 February 2006.] Tatar, R.R. 1999. The Psychology of the Consumer. Reem Creations. Available from: http://www.reemcreations.com/literature/consumer.html [accessed 27 February 2006.] Read More