Promotion (marketing)
Promotion involves disseminating information about a
product,
product line,
brand, or company. It is one of the four key aspects of the
marketing mix. (The other three elements are
product marketing,
pricing, and
distribution.)
Promotion is generally sub-divided into two parts:
Above the line promotion: Promotion in the
media (e.g.
TV,
radio,
newspapers,
Internet and
Mobile Phones) in which the
advertiser pays an
advertising agency to place the
ad.
Below the line promotion: All other promotion. Much of this is intended to be subtle enough that the
consumer is unaware that promotion is taking place. E.g.
sponsorship,
product placement, endorsements,
sales promotion,
merchandising,
direct mail, personal selling,
public relations,
trade showsThe specification of these four variables creates a
promotional mix or promotional plan. A promotional mix specifies how much attention to pay to each of the four subcategories, and how much money to budget for each. A promotional plan can have a wide range of objectives, including: sales increases, new product acceptance, creation of
brand equity,
positioning, competitive retaliations, or creation of a
corporate image.
An example of a fully integrated, long-term, large-scale promotion are
My Coke Rewards and
Pepsi Stuff.
Advertising campaign
An advertising campaign is a series of
advertisement messages that share a single idea and theme which make up an
integrated marketing communication (IMC). Advertising campaigns appear in different media across a specific time frame.
The critical part of making an advertising campaign is determining a campaign theme, as it sets the tone for the individual advertisements and other forms of marketing communications that will be used. The campaign theme is the central message that will be communicated in the
promotional activities. The campaign themes are usually developed with the intention of being used for a substantial period but many of them are short lived due to factors such as being ineffective or market conditions and/or competition in the marketplace and
marketing mix.
Promoter (entertainment)
DescriptionBusiness modelPromoters are typically hired
on contract by
entertainment venues, earning an agreed-to fee or a
royalty (colloquially known as a "cut"). The royalty structure is often a simple percentage of admission fees (called "the door") and/or food and drink sales, but like other royalty arrangements many variations are possible such as minimums or maximums, allowances for various expenses, or limitations (e.g. only drink sales after midnight). Other promoters operate independently, renting venues for a fixed fee or under a
revenue sharing arrangement with the building owner or tenant, and keeping all of the additional profits from a successful event. One common arrangement for small venues is for the promoter to earn all of the admissions fees, while the venue earns all of the food and drink revenue.
Some venues have exclusive arrangements with a single promotion company; others work with multiple promoters on a rotating schedule (one night per week, for example) or on an event-by-event basis. Promoters often work together, either as equal partners or as
subcontractors to each other's events. Several promoters may work together for a large special event, e.g. a New Year's Eve party in a hotel ballroom. They may also deputize "hosts", who are essentially socially influential or desirable non-promoters who will market the events to their circle of friends in exchange for special treatment or free admission to the event.
At a minimum the event promoter manages
publicity and
advertising. Depending on the arrangement they may also handle
security,
ticket sales,
door policies, decorations, and booking of entertainers. Many promoters are
DJs or
musicians themselves, and perform at their own event. Conversely, many musicians act as de facto promoters for their own concerts, either directly or through their manager or
booking company. Historically, promotion has been a cottage industry, with companies operated by one or several well-connected charismatic individuals, often working part-time. However, with the rise of corporate ownership of live entertainment assets several large companies have emerged in the field, most notably
Live Nation via its acquisition (indirectly, via
Clear Channel), of
Bill Graham Presents. The larger companies tend to promote more traditional mainstream music in exclusive contracts with concert halls. Alternative music and events and nightclubs remain in the hands of independent promoters.
Contracts and disputesThere are often disputes over money in the promotions industry because it is largely cash business with a history of corruption and uneven
recordkeeping. In addition there are many
accounting complexities to manage, particularly for large events: revenue, expenses, and oversight of
parking,
coat checks,
concession vendor sales (e.g.
CDs and
t-shirts),
box office so-called "
convenience fees",
in kind trades, promotional give-away items used to lure guests (e.g. free drinks), costs for
insurance,
cleaning staff, and so on. One area of frequent contention are
quid pro quo cross-promotions, where the promoter or some other party connected with the venue will obtain a favor (for example, a price discount) in exchange for giving a future favor to the vendor. If the existence of the scheme, or the relationship between the parties, is undisclosed this may become a form of
bribery. Another opportunity for misunderstanding are the various "lists" of guests who will be admitted for free or with VIP treatment, and the "door policy" used by bouncers to decide who will be admitted and at what price. To deal with these complexities event contracts can become quite long and detailed. Whether written or not, these arrangements tend to favor the party with the greater sophistication or the more control over the production of the event. Even the most detailed, professionally written and negotiated contracts can become the subject of lawsuits over interpretation.
Because nightclubs are often associated with drug and alcohol consumption, rowdiness, and other late-night behavior, promoters may become entangled in various criminal disputes as well.
Promotions methodsPromoters bring crowds through a variety of methods. The most direct are
guerrilla marketing techniques such as plastering
posters on outdoor walls,
flyposting, and distributing
handbills on windows of cars parked in entertainment districts. Promoters also keep mailing lists, usually
email lists, of their preferred guests and their wider list of potential customers. Recently, many promoters have taken advantage of online technology such as
online social networks and event listing sites to handle publicity, invitations, mailing lists, and so on.
Promoters often build a
brand out of their own personalities and the parties they host, marketing the events under a consistent name, style, type of program, and social experience that downplays the branding of the venue or artist. They may develop a loyal clientèle that will follow them from one location to another.
Advertising
Advertising is a form of
communication that typically attempts to persuade potential
customers to
purchase or to
consume more of a particular
brand of
product or
service. Many
advertisements are designed to generate increased consumption of those products and services through the creation and reinforcement of "
brand image" and "
brand loyalty". For these purposes, advertisements sometimes embed their persuasive message with factual information.
Every major medium is used to deliver these messages, including
television,
radio,
cinema,
magazines,
newspapers,
video games, the
Internet and
billboards. Advertising is often placed by an
advertising agency on behalf of a company or other organization.
Advertisements are seen on the seats of
shopping carts, on the walls of an
airport walkway, on the sides of
buses,and are heard in
telephone hold messages and
in-store public address systems. Advertisements are often placed anywhere an audience can easily or frequently access
visual,
audio and
printed information.
Organizations that frequently spend large sums of money on advertising that sells what is not, strictly speaking, a product or service include
political parties,
interest groups,
religious organizations, and
military recruiters.
Non-profit organizations are not typical advertising clients, and may rely on free modes of persuasion, such as
public service announcements.
Advertising spending has increased dramatically in recent years. In 2006, spending on advertising has been estimated at $155 billion in the
United States[1] and $385 billion worldwide, and the latter to exceed $500 billion by 2010.
While advertising can be seen as necessary for
economic growth, it is not without
social costs.
Unsolicited Commercial Email and other forms of
spam have become so prevalent as to have become a major nuisance to users of these services, as well as being a financial burden on
internet service providers. Advertising is increasingly invading public spaces, such as schools, which some critics argue is a form of child exploitation.
HistoryCommercial messages and
political campaign displays have been found in the ruins of ancient
Arabia. Egyptians used
papyrus to create sales messages and wall posters, while
lost-and-found advertising on papyrus was common in
Ancient Greece and
Ancient Rome. Wall or rock painting for commercial advertising is another manifestation of an ancient advertising form, which is present to this day in many parts of
Asia,
Africa, and
South America. The tradition of wall painting can be traced back to
Indian rock-art paintings that date back to 4000 BCE. As printing developed in the 15th and 16th century, advertising expanded to include handbills. In the 17th century advertisements started to appear in weekly newspapers in England. These early print advertisements were used mainly to promote: books and newspapers, which became increasingly affordable with advances in the
printing press; and medicines, which were increasingly sought after as disease ravaged Europe. However,
false advertising and so-called "
quack" advertisements became a problem, which ushered in the regulation of advertising content.
As the economy expanded during the 19th century, advertising grew alongside. In the United States, the success of this advertising format eventually led to the growth of mail-order advertising.
In June 1836, French newspaper
La Presse is the first to include paid advertising in its pages, allowing it to lower its price, extend its readership and increase its
profitability. The formula is soon copied by all titles. Around 1840,
Volney Palmer established a predecessor to
advertising agencies in
Boston. Around the same time, in
France,
Charles-Louis Havas extended the services of his news agency,
Havas to include advertisement brokerage, making it the first French group to organize. At first, agencies were brokers for advertisement space in newspapers.
N. W. Ayer & Son was the first full-service agency to assume responsibility for advertising content. N.W. Ayer opened in 1869, and was located in Philadelphia.
At the turn of the century, there were few career choices for women in business; however, advertising was one of the few. Since women were responsible for most of the
purchasing done in their
household,
advertisers and agencies recognised the value of women's insight during the
creative process. In fact, the first American advertising to use a sexual sell was created by a woman – for a soap product. Although tame by today's standards, the advertisement featured a couple with the message "The skin you love to touch".
When
radio stations began
broadcasting in the early 1920s, the programs were however nearly exploded. This was so because the first radio stations were established by radio equipment manufacturers and retailers who offered programs in order to sell more radios to consumers. As time passed, many non-profit organizations followed suit in setting up their own radio stations, and included: schools, clubs and civic groups. When the practice of sponsoring programs was popularised, each individual radio program was usually sponsored by a single business in exchange for a brief mention of the business' name at the beginning and end of the sponsored shows. However, radio station owners soon realised they could earn more money by selling sponsorship rights in small time allocations to multiple businesses throughout their radio station's broadcasts, rather than selling the sponsorship rights to single businesses per show.
This practice was carried over to television in the late 1940s and early 1950s. A fierce battle was fought between those seeking to commercialise the radio and people who argued that the radio spectrum should be considered a part of the commons – to be used only non-commercially and for the public good. The United Kingdom pursued a public funding model for the
BBC, originally a private company but incorporated as a public body by Royal Charter in 1927. In Canada, advocates like
Graham Spry were likewise able to persuade the federal government to adopt a public funding model. However, in the United States, the capitalist model prevailed with the passage of the
1934 Communications Act which created the
Federal Communications Commission. To placate the socialists, the U.S. Congress did require commercial broadcasters to operate in the "public interest, convenience, and necessity". Nevertheless, public radio does exist in the United States of America. In the early 1950s, the Dumont television network began the modern trend of selling advertisement time to multiple sponsors. Previously, Dumont had trouble finding sponsors for many of their programs and compensated by selling smaller blocks of advertising time to several businesses. This eventually became the norm for the commercial television industry in the United States. However, it was still a common practice to have single sponsor shows, such as the U.S. Steel Hour. In some instances the sponsors exercised great control over the content of the show - up to and including having one's advertising agency actually writing the show. The single sponsor model is much less prevalent now, a notable exception being the Hallmark Hall of Fame.
The 1960s saw advertising transform into a modern approach in which creativity was allowed to shine, producing unexpected messages that made advertisements more tempting to consumers' eyes. The
Volkswagen ad campaign—featuring such headlines as "Think Small" and "Lemon" (which were used to describe the appearance of the car)—ushered in the era of modern advertising by promoting a "position" or "unique selling proposition" designed to associate each brand with a specific idea in the reader or viewer's mind. This period of American advertising is called the Creative Revolution and its poster boy was
Bill Bernbach who helped create the revolutionary Volkswagen ads among others. Some of the most creative and long-standing American advertising dates to this incredibly creative period.
The late 1980s and early 1990s saw the introduction of
cable television and particularly
MTV.
Pioneering the concept of the
music video, MTV ushered in a new type of advertising: the consumer tunes in for the advertising message, rather than it being a
by-product or afterthought. As
cable and
satellite television became increasingly prevalent, specialty channels emerged, including channels entirely devoted to advertising, such as
QVC,
Home Shopping Network, and
ShopTV.
Marketing through the
Internet opened new frontiers for advertisers and contributed to the "
dot-com" boom of the 1990s. Entire corporations operated solely on advertising revenue, offering everything from
coupons to free Internet access. At the turn of the 21st century, a number of websites including the
search engine Google, started a change in online advertising by emphasizing contextually relevant, unobtrusive ads intended to help, rather than inundate, users. This has led to a plethora of similar efforts and an increasing trend of
interactive advertising.
The share of advertising spending relative to
GDP has changed little across large changes in
media. For example, in the U.S. in 1925, the main advertising media were
newspapers,
magazines, signs on
streetcars, and outdoor
posters. Advertising spending as a share of GDP was about 2.9 percent. By 1998,
television and
radio had become major advertising media. Nonetheless, advertising spending as a share of GDP was slightly lower—about 2.4 percent.
A recent advertising innovation is "
guerrilla promotions", which involve unusual approaches such as staged encounters in public places, giveaways of products such as cars that are covered with brand messages, and interactive advertising where the viewer can respond to become part of the advertising message. This reflects an increasing trend of interactive and "embedded" ads, such as via
product placement, having consumers vote through
text messages, and various innovations utilizing
social networking sites (e.g.
MySpace).
Paul McManus, the Creative Director of TBWA\Europe in the late 90s summed up advertising as being "…all about understanding. Understanding of the brand, the product or the service being offered and understanding of the people (their hopes and fears and needs) who are going to interact with it. Great advertising is the creative expression of that understanding."
Public service advertisingThe same advertising techniques used to promote commercial goods and services can be used to inform, educate and motivate the public about non-commercial issues, such as AIDS, political ideology, energy conservation, religious recruitment, and deforestation.
Advertising, in its non-commercial guise, is a powerful educational tool capable of reaching and motivating large audiences. "Advertising justifies its existence when used in the public interest - it is much too powerful a tool to use solely for commercial purposes." - Attributed to Howard Gossage by
David OgilvyPublic service advertising, non-commercial advertising, public interest advertising,
cause marketing, and
social marketing are different terms for (or aspects of) the use of sophisticated advertising and marketing communications techniques (generally associated with commercial enterprise) on behalf of non-commercial, public interest issues and initiatives.
In the United States, the granting of television and radio licenses by the FCC is contingent upon the station broadcasting a certain amount of public service advertising. To meet these requirements, many broadcast stations in America air the bulk of their required Public Service Announcements during the late night or early morning when the smallest percentage of viewers are watching, leaving more day and prime time commercial slots available for high-paying advertisers.
Public service advertising reached its height during World Wars I and II under the direction of several governments. Now in days, people average around 500 advertisements a day, found one researcher.
Types of advertisingMediaCommercial advertising
media can include wall paintings,
billboards, street furniture components, printed
flyers and
rack cards, radio, cinema and television ads,
web banners, mobile telephone screens, shopping carts, web
popups,
skywriting, bus stop benches,
human directional, magazines, newspapers,
town criers, sides of buses or airplanes ("
logojets"),
in-flight advertisements on
seatback tray tables or overhead storage bins, taxicab doors, roof mounts and
passenger screens, musical stage shows, subway platforms and trains, elastic bands on disposable diapers, stickers on apples in
supermarkets,
shopping cart handles, the opening section of
streaming audio and video,
posters, and the backs of event tickets and supermarket receipts. Any place an "identified" sponsor pays to deliver their message through a medium is advertising.
Another way to measure advertising effectiveness is known as ad tracking. This
advertising research methodology measures shifts in target market perceptions about the brand and product or service. These shifts in perception are plotted against the consumers’ levels of exposure to the company’s advertisements and
promotions.The purpose of
Ad Tracking is generally to provide a measure of the combined effect of the media weight or spending level, the effectiveness of the
media buy or targeting, and the quality of the advertising executions or creative.
Covert advertisingCovert advertising is when a product or brand is embedded in entertainment and media. For example, in a film, the main character can use an item or other of a definite
brand, as in the movie
Minority Report, where
Tom Cruise's character John Anderton owns a phone with the
Nokia logo clearly written in the top corner, or his watch engraved with the
Bulgari logo. Another example of advertising in film is in
I, Robot, where main character played by
Will Smith mentions his
Converse shoes several times, calling them "classics," because the film is set far in the future.
I, Robot and
Spaceballs also showcase futuristic cars with the
Audi and
Mercedes-Benz logos clearly displayed on the front of the vehicles.
Cadillac chose to advertise in the movie
The Matrix Reloaded, which as a result contained many scenes in which Cadillac cars were used.
Similarly, product placement for
Omega Watches,
Ford,
Vaio,
BMW and
Aston-Martin cars are featured in recent
James Bond films, most notably
Casino Royale.
Television commercialsThe
TV commercial is generally considered the most effective mass-market advertising format, as is reflected by the high prices TV networks charge for commercial
airtime during popular TV events. The annual
Super Bowl football game in the United States is known as the most prominent advertising event on television. The average cost of a single thirty-second TV spot during this game has reached $2.7 million (as of 2007).
The majority of television commercials feature a song or jingle that listeners soon relate to the product. See
Music in advertising.
Virtual advertisements may be inserted into regular television programming through computer graphics. It is typically inserted into otherwise blank backdrops or used to replace local billboards that are not relevant to the remote broadcast audience. More controversially, virtual billboards may be inserted into the background where none existing in real-life. Virtual product placement is also possible.
InfomercialsThere are two types of
infomercials, described as long form and short form. Long form infomercials have a time length of 30 minutes. Short form infomercials are 30 seconds to 2 minutes long. Infomercials are also known as direct response television (DRTV) commercials.
The main objective in an infomercial is to create an
impulse purchase, so that the consumer sees the presentation and then immediately buys the product through the advertised
toll-free telephone number or
website. Infomercials describe, display, and often demonstrate products and their features, and commonly have testimonials from consumers and industry professionals.
Some well known companies in the infomercial business are Script to Screen, Hawthorne Direct, International Shopping Network and
Guthy-Renker.
Newer media and advertising approachesIncreasingly, other media are overtaking television because of a shift towards consumer's usage of the internet as well as devices such as
TiVo.
Advertising on the
World Wide Web is a recent phenomenon. Prices of Web-based advertising space are dependent on the "relevance" of the surrounding web content and the traffic that the website receives.
E-mail advertising is another recent phenomenon. Unsolicited bulk E-mail advertising is known as "
spam".
Some
companies have proposed to place messages or
corporate logos on the side of booster
rockets and the
International Space Station.
Controversy exists on the effectiveness of
subliminal advertising (see
mind control), and the pervasiveness of mass messages (see
propaganda).
Unpaid advertising (also called
word of mouth advertising), can provide good exposure at minimal cost. Personal recommendations ("bring a friend", "sell it"), spreading buzz, or achieving the feat of equating a
brand with a common noun (in the United States, "
Xerox" = "
photocopier", "
Kleenex" =
tissue, "
Vaseline" =
petroleum jelly, "
Hoover" =
vacuum cleaner, and "
Band-Aid" = adhesive bandage) — these are the pinnacles of any advertising campaign. However, some companies oppose the use of their brand name to label an object. Equating a brand with a common noun also risks turning that brand into a
genericized trademark - turning it into a generic term which means that its legal protection as a trademark is lost.
As the mobile phone became a new mass media in 1998 when the first paid downloadable content appeared on mobile phones in Finland, it was only a matter of time until
mobile advertising followed, also first launched in Finland in 2000. By 2007 the value of mobile advertising had reached 2.2 billion dollars and providers such as Admob delivered billions of mobile ads.
More advanced mobile ads include banner ads, coupons, MMS picture and video messages, advergames and various engagement marketing campaigns. A particular feature driving mobile ads is the 2D Barcode, which replaces the need to do any typing of web addresses, and uses the camera feature of modern phones to gain immediate access to web content. 83 percent of
Japanese mobile phone users already are active users of 2D barcodes.
A new form of advertising that is growing rapidly is
Social network advertising. It is
Online Advertising with a focus on social networking sites. This is a relatively immature market, but it has shown a lot of promise as advertisers are able to take advantage of the demographic information the user has provided to the social networking site.
From time to time,
The CW airs short programming breaks called "Content Wraps," to advertise one company's product during an entire commercial break. The CW pioneered "content wraps" and some products featured were Herbal Essences, Crest, Guitar Hero 2, Cover Girl, and recently Toyota.
Effect on memories and behaviorThe impact of advertising has been a matter of considerable debate and many different claims have been made in different contexts. During debates about the banning of
cigarette advertising, a common claim from cigarette manufacturers was that cigarette advertising does not encourage people to smoke who would not otherwise. The (eventually successful) opponents of advertising, on the other hand, claim that advertising does in fact increase consumption.
According to many sources, the past experience and state of mind of the person subjected to advertising may determine the impact that advertising has. Children under the age of four may be unable to distinguish advertising from other television programs, while the ability to determine the truthfulness of the message may not be developed until the age of 8.
Over the past fifteen years a whole science of marketing analytics and
marketing effectiveness has been developed to determine the impact of marketing actions on consumers, sales, profit and
market share. Marketing Mix Modeling, direct response measurement and other techniques are included in this science.
Public perception of the mediumAs advertising and marketing efforts become increasingly ubiquitous in modern Western societies, the industry has come under criticism of groups such as
Adbusters via culture jamming which criticizes the media and consumerism using advertising's own techniques. The industry is accused of being one of the engines powering a convoluted economic mass production system which promotes consumption. Recognizing the social impact of advertising,
Mediawatch-uk, a British special interest group, works to educate consumers about how they can register their concerns with advertisers and regulators. It has developed educational materials for use in schools.
Public interest groups are increasingly suggesting that access to the mental space targeted by advertisers should be taxed, in that at the present moment that space is being freely taken advantage of by advertisers with no compensation paid to the members of the public who are thus being intruded upon. This kind of tax would be a
Pigovian tax in that it would act to reduce what is now increasingly seen as a public nuisance. Efforts to that end are gathering more momentum, with Arkansas and Maine considering bills to implement such a taxation. Florida enacted such a tax in 1987 but was forced to repeal it after six months, as a result of a concerted effort by national commercial interests, which withdrew planned conventions, causing major losses to the tourism industry, and canceled advertising, causing a loss of 12 million dollars to the broadcast industry alone.
RegulationIn the US many communities believe that many forms of outdoor advertising blight the public realm. As long ago as the 1960s in the US there were attempts to ban billboard advertising in the open countryside. Cities such as São Paulo have introduced an outright ban with the UK capital also having specific legislation to control unlawful displays.
There have been increasing efforts to protect the public interest by regulating the content and the influence of advertising. Some examples are: the ban on television tobacco advertising imposed in many countries, and the total ban of advertising to children under twelve imposed by the Swedish government in 1991. Though that regulation continues in effect for broadcasts originating within the country, it has been weakened by the
European Court of Justice, which had found that Sweden was obliged to accept foreign programming, including those from neighboring countries or via satellite.
In Europe and elsewhere, there is a vigorous debate on whether (or how much) advertising to children should be regulated. This debate was exacerbated by a report released by the
Kaiser Family Foundation in February 2004 which suggested that food advertising targeting children was an important factor in the epidemic of
childhood obesity in the United States of America.
In many countries - namely New Zealand, South Africa, Canada, and many European countries - the advertising industry operates a system of self-regulation. Advertisers, advertising agencies and the media agree on a code of advertising standards that they attempt to uphold. The general aim of such codes is to ensure that any advertising is 'legal, decent, honest and truthful'. Some self-regulatory organizations are funded by the industry, but remain independent, with the intent of upholding the standards or codes (like the
Advertising Standards Authority in the UK).
In the UK most forms of outdoor advertising such as the display of billboards is regulated by the UK Town and County Planning system. Currently the display of an advertisement without consent from the Planning Authority is a criminal offense liable to a fine of £2500 per offence. All of the major outdoor billboard companies in the UK have convictions of this nature.
Naturally , many advertisers view governmental regulation or even self-regulation as intrusion of their freedom of speech or a necessary evil. Therefore, they employ a wide-variety of linguistic devices to bypass regulatory laws (e.g. printing English words in bold and French translations in fine print to deal with the Article 12 of the 1994
Toubon Law limiting the use of English in French advertising); see Bhatia and Ritchie 2006:542. The advertisement of controversial products such as cigarettes and condoms is subject to government regulation in many countries. For instance, the tobacco industry is required by law in most countries to display warnings cautioning consumers about the health hazards of their products. Linguistic variation is often used by advertisers as a creative device to reduce the impact of such requirements.
FutureGlobal advertisingAdvertising has gone through five major stages of development: domestic, export, international, multi-national, and global. For
global advertisers, there are four, potentially competing, business objectives that must be balanced when developing worldwide advertising: building a brand while speaking with one voice, developing economies of scale in the creative process, maximising local effectiveness of ads, and increasing the company’s speed of implementation. Born from the evolutionary stages of global marketing are the three primary and fundamentally different approaches to the development of global advertising executions: exporting executions, producing local executions, and importing ideas that travel. (Global marketing Management, 2004, pg 13-18)
Advertising research is key to determining the success of an ad in any country or region. The ability to identify which elements and/or moments of an ad that contributes to its success is how economies of scale are maximised. Once one knows what works in an ad, that idea or ideas can be imported by any other market.
Market research measures, such as Flow of Attention, Flow of Emotion and
branding moments provide insight into what is working in an ad in any country or region because the measures are based on the visual, not verbal, elements of the ad.
TrendsWith the dawn of the Internet came many new advertising opportunities.
Popup,
Flash,
banner,
advergaming, and email advertisements (the last often being a form of spam) are now commonplace.
The ability to record shows on DVRs (such as
TiVo) allow users to record the programs for later viewing, enabling them to fast forward through commercials. Additionally, as more seasons of pre-recorded “Boxed Sets” are offered for sale of
Television show series; fewer people watch the shows on TV. However, the fact that these sets are sold, means the company will receive additional profits from the sales of these sets. To counter this effect, many advertisers have opted for
product placement on TV shows like
Survivor.
Particularly since the rise of "entertaining" advertising, some people may like an advertisement enough to wish to watch it later or show a friend. In general, the advertising community has not yet made this easy, although some have used the Internet to widely distribute their ads to anyone willing to see or hear them.
Another significant trend regarding future of advertising is the growing importance of niche or targeted ads. Also brought about by the Internet and the theory of
The Long Tail, advertisers will have an increasing ability to reach specific audiences. In the past, the most efficient way to deliver a message was to blanket the largest mass market audience possible. However, usage tracking, customer profiles and the growing popularity of niche content brought about by everything from blogs to social networking sites, provide advertisers with audiences that are smaller but much better defined, leading to ads that are more relevant to viewers and more effective for companies' marketing products. Among others,
Comcast Spotlight is one such advertiser employing this method in their
video on demand menus. These advertisements are targeted to a specific group and can be viewed by anyone wishing to find out more about a particular business or practice at any time, right from their home. This causes the viewer to become proactive and actually choose what advertisements they want to view.
In
freelance advertising, companies hold public competitions to create ads for their product, the best one of which is chosen for widespread distribution with a prize given to the winner(s).
During the 2007 Super Bowl,
Pepsico held such a contest for the creation of a 30-second television ad for the
Doritos brand of chips, offering a cash prize to the winner.
Chevrolet held a similar competition for their Tahoe line of
SUVs. This type of advertising, however, is still in its infancy. It may ultimately decrease the importance of advertising agencies by creating a niche for independent freelancers.
Embedded advertising or in-film ad placements are happening on a larger scale now than ever before. Films like
Krrish had over a dozen placements including Lay’s, Bournvita, Samsung, Faber Castell and Hero Honda.
Publicity
Publicity is the deliberate attempt to manage the public's perception of a subject. The subjects of publicity include people (for example, politicians and performing artists),
goods and services, organizations of all kinds, and works of art or entertainment.
From a
marketing perspective, publicity is one component of
promotion. The other elements of the promotional mix are
advertising,
sales promotion, and
personal selling.
Promotion is one component of marketing.
But the publicist cannot wait around for the news to present opportunities. They must also try to create their own news. Examples of this include:
Contest
Art exhibitions
Event sponsorship
Arrange a speech or talk
Make an analysis or prediction
Conduct a poll or survey
Issue a report
Take a stand on a controversial subject
Arrange for a testimonial
Announce an appointment
Invent then present an award
Stage a debate
Organize a tour of your business or projects
Issue a commendation
The advantages of publicity are low cost, and credibility (particularly if the publicity is aired in between news stories like on evening TV news casts). New technologies such as weblogs, web cameras, web affiliates, and convergence (phone-camera posting of pictures and videos to websites) are changing the cost-structure. The disadvantages are lack of control over how your releases will be used, and frustration over the low percentage of releases that are taken up by the media.
Publicity draws on several key themes including birth, love, and death. These are of particular interest because they are themes in human lives which feature heavily throughout life. In television serials several couples have emerged during crucial ratings and important publicity times, as a way to make constant headlines. Also known as a
publicity stunt, the pairings may or may not be truthful.
PublicistsA
publicist is a person whose
job is to generate and manage publicity for a product, public figure, especially a
celebrity, or for a work such as a
book or
movie. Publicists usually work at large companies handling multiple
clients.
Effectiveness of publicityThe theory
any press is good press has been coined to describe situations where bad behaviour by people involved with an organization or brand has actually resulted in positive results, due to the fame and press coverage accrued by such events.
One example would be the Australian Tourism Board's "
So where the Bloody Hell are you?" Advertising Campaign that was initially banned in the
UK, but the amount of publicity this generated resulted in the
official website for the campaign being swamped with requests to see the banned ad.
The popular sitcom,
Married... with Children, achieved skyrocketing ratings after moralist
Terry Rakolta attempted to have it removed from the air.
