A historical look at advertising

Advertising is not an innovation of the twentieth century. In the ancient ruins of Pompeii you can see messages advertising gladiatorial events. Town criers in ancient Greece acted in the same manner as car radios as they announced important news and public events.

Until the 1870s most advertising by manufacturers was directed to wholesalers and retailers. With the appearance of consumer magazines like the Saturday Evening Post and Harper’s, slogans and jingles became the call of tthe day. Manufacturers hoped to gain control over the channel of distributing, which consisted of small, independent wholesalers and retailers. It was the pull strategy to popularize the brand to ultimate consumers with slogans (for example: the New York Times used this slogan “All the news that’s fit to print” in 1880s.).

At the turn of the century advertising was not viewed by respectable businesses as an essential part of marketing strategy. Henry Ford showed the value of advertising in drawing ccustomers in 1927. He ran a series of advertisements announcing the appearance of the new Model A in 2000 newspapers at a cost of $1.3 million. Near hysteria resulted, as 1 million New Yorkers lined up outside the dealer showroom iin Manhattan to view the car.

In the 1940s advertising became more acceptable. After the war, millions of new households were created and became the target for marketing efforts, which were enhanced by the technological breakthrough of a new medium: television.

Advertisement effectiveness

If you want to make adverstisement effective you should know some extremely important things:

• Who is the target audience?

• What are the advertising goals?

• What is the amount of money that can be budgeted for the advertising program?

• When should the advertisements be run?

First of all, you should identify the target audience, the group of prospective buyers toward which an advertising program is directed. To the extent that time and money permit, the target audience for the advertising program is the target market ffor the firm’s product, which is identified from marketing research and market segmentation studies.

In advertising the science-fiction movie Starman, Columbia Pictures identified two segment for the who decision. The film was promoted to women in daytime commercials emphasizing its romantic aspects. Different commercials stressed its space hardware on television shows watched by different segment: teenagers and space enthusiasts.

So, the more a firm knows about its atrget audience’s profile – including their lifestyle, atitudes, and values – the easier it is tto make and advertising decision. If a firm wanted to reach you with its ad, it would need to know what TV shows you watch and what magazines you read.

After the target audience is identified, a decision must be reached on what the advertising campaign is to execute. Consumers can be said to respond in terms of hierarchy of effects:

• Awareness: the consumers ability to recognize and remember the product or brand name

• Interest: An increase in the consumer’s desire to learn about some of the features of the product or brand

• Evaluation: the first consumer’s impression about the product or brand

• Trial: the comsumer’s first purchase and us of the product

• Adoption: after the first trial the consumer’s repeated purchase

Although sometimes an advertising program stresses one main step. For example, awareness is often generated by humor, sound or fear, besides, the first trial of the product is often availalable for magazines readers becouse of many samples in them, and so on.

It is much easier to gain awareness for TV commercials. There was some kind of experiment made with 251 undergraduate students. They saw a 4-minute cut with either a sexually oriented or dramatic scene. After seeing one of the show scenes and one of tthe commercials, students were asked to indicate their interest in the commecial. The mean scores for the men are shown in the diagram. Results show that the commercial with the sexual plot was more effective than the other one. Actually, these results are for the 138 men in the study, but similar results were found for the women. The researchers concluded that sex does generate awareness in both male and female audiences.

In conclusion, the advertiser should always know the advertisement audience, what the audience like, than attract somehow the attention of that audience and sexual oriented scenes always attracts.

Selecting the right media

Every advertiser must decide where to place the advertisements. This decision is related to the target audience, type of product and available budget.

Newspapers and Magazines

Because of the daily publication of most papers, they allow advertisements directed to immediate consumer actions such as “sale today only”. Usually local retailers use newspapers as almost their sole medium.

In many countries there are so many newspapers and advertiser has trouble reaching even partial market coverage. Uruguay has 21 daily newspapers with more than half a million circulation, Turkey 380.. In contrast, Japan has five national daily newspapers, and the largest has aa circulation of almost 7 million.

Companies cannot depend on newspapers for good colour reproduction.

Only few magazines have large circulations.but the marketing advantage of this medium is the great number of special interest publications that appeal to defined segments. Each magazine’s readers often represent a unique profile. Also good colour production is an advantage.

Television and radio.

Television is a valuable medium because it communicates with both sight and sound. Print advertisements could never give you the sense of the sports car cornering at the speed of sound. In addition, network television is the only medium that can reach 95 percent of the homes in the United States or in Japan television has become almost a national obsession. However, television isn’t so popular all over the world because it could be quite expensive in some corners of the world. But there is the recourse – in many countries radio is popular because of being cheaper and that’s why it is the only one reaching large segments of the population. Also the reasearches shows that radio is much more popular than television among the students, therefore advertisers with students as their target market must consider radio. On the other hand,

radio is easier to tune out than television – radio is often listened while driving in the car so the driver can quickly tune the station out, actually he always does that.

Another group of problem while talkin about television and radio is the government, which in many countries is limiting the time of the advertisement or even forbids it. For example Germany permits only 20 minutes a day for commercials. Actually, commercials are started being limited in Lithuania too.

So television aand radio have their own pros and cons, but television always will have the advantage of sight and sound in the same time and radio has the largest audience.

Direct Mail and Billboard

Direct mail is a medium that allows the greatest degree of audience selectivity. Direct mail companies can provide advertisers with a mailing list of their market, such as students who live within 2 miles of the store or people who own mobile homes. Also it has an advantage in pproviding complete product information.

One disadvantage is that rising postal costs are making it more expensive. The major limitation is that people view direct mail as junk, and the challenge is to get them to open a letter.

A very eeffective medium for reminder advertising is outdoor billboards. The visibility of this medium is good extra reinforcement for well-known products, and it is comparatively low-cost, flexible alternative. A company can buy space just in the desired geographic market. On the other hand, billboards are especially useful in countries with high illiteracy rates.

A disadvantage to billboards is that no opportunity exists for lengthy advertising copy, and thus it is restricted to well-known products. Also, a good billboard site depends on traffic patterns and sight lines.

APPENDIX 1

“Selling Levi’s around the World”

Levi’s are sold in more than 70 countries with different cultural and political aspects affecting advertising appeals.

 In Europe, TV commercials have a super-sexy appeal.

 In the United Kingdom, advertisements eemphasize that Levi’s are an American brand and star an all-American hero, the cowboy, in fantasy wild west settings.

In Brazil, the market is strongly influenced by fashion trends emanating from the Continent rather than America. Thus, the advertisements are filmed in Paris featuring young people in a wild traffic scene.

APPENDIX 2

Some advertising misses and near misses

 A U.S. luggage producer came up with the idea of designing a Middle East advertising campaign around an illustration showing its suitcases being flown aaloft by a magic carpet, but the Arab audience thought it was an advertisement for Samsonite carpets.

 Parker Pen Company translated a counter display card for its brand of ink, which had been very successful in the United States. The card said “Avoid Embarrassment – use Quink”, but the Spanish translation unfortunately meant “Avoid Pregnancy – use Quink”.

An advertisement, in which a Nigerian praised a glass of beer, holding it in his left hand, conveyed a sign of homosexuality to his countrymen.

Reference:

• Philip R.Cateara International Marketing (Global advertising, 460-495p.), 1990 USA.

• Berkowitz Kerin Rudelius Marketing (§17 Advertising 455-488p.), 1986 Times Mirrow Publishing.