Chapter 18: Advertising, Public Relations, and Sales Promotion

Objectives:

• Describe the steps in designing and executing and advertising campaign,
• Identify three objectives of advertising,
• Describe the different ways that advertisers appeal to consumers,
• Identify the various types of media,
• Identify agencies that regulate advertising,
• Describe the elements of a public relations toolkit,
• Identify the various types of sales promotion.

Advertising: A paid form of communication from an identifiable source, delivered through a communication channel, and designed to persuade the receiver to take some action, now or in the future. 

I. Step 1: Identify Target Audience

The success of an advertising program depends on how well the advertiser can identify the target audience. 

II. Step 2: Set Advertising Objectives

Advertising Plan: A section of the firm's overall marketing plan that explicitly outlines the objectives of the advertising campaign, how the campaign might accomplish those objectives, and how the firm can determine whether the campaign was successful.

Pull Strategy: Designed to get consumers to pull the product into the supply chain by demanding it.

Push Strategy: Designed to increase demand by motivating sellers-wholesalers, distributors, or salespeople - to highlight the product, rather than the  products of competitors, and thereby push the product onto consumers. 

• Informative Advertising: Communication used to create and build brand awareness, with the ultimate goal of moving the consumer through the buying cycle to a purchase. 
• Persuasive Advertising: Communication used to motivate consumers to take action. 
• Reminder Advertising: Communication used to remind consumers of a product or to prompt repurchases, especially for products that have gained market acceptance and are in the maturity stage of their life cycle. 
• Focus of Advertisements: 
• Product-focused Advertisements: Used to inform, persuade, or remind consumers about a specific product or service. 
• Institutional Advertisements: A type of advertisement that informs, persuades, or reminds consumers about issues related to places, politics, or an industry (ex: Got Milk? ads).
• Public Service Advertising (PSA): Advertising that focuses on public welfare and generally is sponsored by non-profit institutions, civic groups, religious organizations, trade associations, or political groups; a form of social marketing.
• Social Marketing: The content distributed through online and mobile technologies to facilitate interpersonal interactions. 

III. Step 3: Determine the Advertising Budget

• First, budgeters must recognize the role advertising will play in their overall promotional objectives.
• Second, advertising expenditures vary over a products life cycle. 
• Third, the nature of market and product influence the size of the budget. 
• B2B advertising budgets will be smaller and most likely use personal selling. 

IV. Step 4: Convey the Message

• The Message
• Unique Selling Proposition (USP): A strategy of differentiating a product by communicating its unique attributes; often becomes the common theme or slogan in the entire advertising campaigns. 
• The Appeal - the appeals that an argument may use include logos (logical), ethos (ethical), pathos (emotional)
• Information Appeals: Used in promotion to help consumers make purchase decisions by offering factual information and strong arguments built around relevant issues that encourage them to evaluate the brand favorably on the basis on the key benefits it provides. 
• Emotional Appeals: Aims to satisfy consumers' emotional desires rather than their utilitarian needs. 

V. Evaluate and Select Media

Media Planning: The process of evaluating and selecting the media mix that will deliver a clear, consistent, compelling message to the intended audience.

Media Mix: The combination of the media used and the frequency of the advertising in each medium.

Media Buy: The actual purchase of airtime or print pages. 

• Mass and Niche Media
• Mass Media: Channels that are ideal for reaching large numbers of anonymous audience members; include national newspapers, magazines, radio, television. 
• Niche Media: Channels that are focused and generally used to reach narrow segments, often with unique demographic characteristics or interests. 
• Choosing the Right Medium
• For each class of media, each alternative has specific characteristics that make it suitable for meeting specific objectives. Communication media also vary in their ability to reach the desired audience. 
• Determining the Advertising Schedule
• Advertising Schedule: The specification of the timing and duration of advertising. 
• Continuous Schedule: Runs steadily throughout the year and is therefore suitable for products and services that are consumed continually at relatively steady rates and that require a steady level of persuasive or reminder advertising. 
• Flighting: Refers to and advertising schedule implemented in spurts, with periods of heavy advertising followed by periods of no advertising. 
• Pulsing: Combines the continuous and flighting schedules by maintaining a base level of advertising by increasing advertising intensity during certain periods. 

VI. Create Advertisements

• After the advertiser has decided on the message, type of ad, and appeal, its attention shifts to the actual creation of the advertisement. During this step, the message and appeal are translated into words, pictures, colors, and/or music. Often, the execution of the style will dictate the type of medium used to deliver the message. 
• Advertisers create advertisements by simultaneously considering the objectives of the ad, the target consumer segments, the product's or service's value proposition or the unique selling proposition, and how the ad will coordinate with other IMC elements. 
• Visual, identify the subject, show product use and unique features, create favorable impression or product or advertiser, and arouse interest in headline. 
• Headline: In advertising, large type designed to draw attention. 
• Subhead: An additional smaller headline in an ad that provides a great deal of information through use of short and simple words. 
• Body Copy: The main text portion of an ad. 
• Brand Elements: Characteristics that identify the sponsor of the specific ad. 
• Although creativity plays a major role in the advertisement, advertisers must not let their creativity overpower their message. 

VII. Assess Impact using Marketing Metrics

• Pretesting: Assessments performed before and ad campaign is implemented to ensure that the various elements are working in an integrated fashion and doing what they are intended to do. 
• Tracking: Includes monitoring key indicators, such as daily or weekly sales volume, while the advertisement is running to shed light on any problems with the message or the medium. 
• Posttesting: The evaluation of an IMC campaign's impact after it has been implemented. 

VIII. Regulatory and Ethical Issues in Advertising

• Federal Trade Commission: Enforces federal consumer protection laws; enforces truth in advertising laws, defines deceptive and unfair advertising practices. 
• Federal Communications Commission: Regulates interstate and international communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable; enforces restrictions on broadcasting material that promotes lotteries (with some exceptions),; cigarettes, little cigars, or smokeless tobacco products; or that perpetuates a fraud. Also enforces laws that limit or prohibit obscene, indecent, or profane language. 
• Food and Drug Administration: Regulates food, dietary supplements, drugs, cosmetics, medical devices (including radiation emitting devices such as cell phones), biologics (biological issues), and blood products; regulates package labeling and inserts, definition such as terms such as light and organic, and required disclosure statements (warning labels, dosage requirements, etc.).
• Puffery: The legal exaggeration of praise, stopping just short of deception, lavished on a product. 

IX. Public Relations

• Public Relations (PR): The organizational function that manages the firms communications to achieve a variety of objectives, including building and maintaining a positive image, handling or heading off unfavorable stories or events, and maintaining positive relationships with the media. 
• Cause-related Marketing: Commercial activity in which businesses and charities form a partnership to market an image, a product, or a service for their mutual benefit; a type of promotional campaign. 
• Event Sponsorship: Popular PR tool; occurs when corporations support various activities (financially or otherwise), usually in the cultural or sports and entertainment sectors. 

X. Sales Promotion

Sales Promotion: Special incentives or excitement building programs that encourage the purchase of a product or service, such as coupons, rebates, contests, free samples, and point of purchase displays. 

• Types of Sales Promotion
• Coupons: Provides a stated discount to consumers on the final selling price of a specific item; the retailer handles the discount. 
• Deals: A type of short term price reduction that can take several forms, such as a "featured price", a price lower than the regular price; a "buy one get one ..." offer; or a certain percentage "more free" offer contained in larger packaging; can involve a special financing arrangement, such as reduced percentage interest rates or extended repayment terms. 
• Premiums: An item offered for free or at a bargain price to reward some type of behavior, such as buying, sampling, or testing. 
• Contests: A brand sponsored competition that requires some form of skill and effort.
• Sweepstakes: A form of sales promotion that offers prizes based on a chance drawing of entrants' names. 
• Samples: Offers potential customers the opportunity to try a product or service before they make a buying decision. 
• Loyalty Programs: Specifically designed to retain customers by offering premiums or other incentives to customers who make multiple purchases over time. 
• Point of Purchase Displays: A merchandise display located at the point of purchase, such as at the checkout counter in a grocery store. 
• Rebates: A consumer discount on which a portion of the purchase price is returned to the buyer in cash; the manufacturer, not the retailer, issues the refund.
• Product Placement: Inclusion of a product in nontraditional situations, such as in a scene in a movie or television program. 
• Using Sales Promotion Tools
• Be aware that lowering prices on a non-perishable product may increase sales in the short run, but may lead to consumers stockpiling the item and diminishing demand in the long-run. But on a perishable item, may provide an opportunity to beat a competitors price and increase sales over the competition. 
• Cross-Promoting: Efforts of two or more firms joining together to reach a specific target market. 
• The goal of any sales promotion is to create value for the consumer and the firm.