Advertisement Strategy

An advertising strategy is a campaign developed to communicate ideas about products and services to potential consumers in the hopes of convincing them to buy those products and services. This strategy, when built in a rational and intelligent manner, will reflect other business considerations (overall budget, brand recognition efforts) and objectives (public image enhancement, market share growth) as well. As Portable MBA in Marketing authors Alexander Hiam and Charles D. Schewe stated, a business's advertising strategy "determines the character of the company's public face." Even though a small business has limited capital and is unable to devote as much money to advertising as a large corporation, it can still develop a highly effective advertising campaign. The key is creative and flexible planning, based on an indepth knowledge of the target consumer and the avenues that can be utilized to reach that consumer. Today, most advertising strategies focus on achieving three general goals, as the Small Business Administration indicated in Advertising Your Business: 1) promote awareness of a business and its product or services; 2) stimulate sales directly and "attract competitors' customers"; and 3) establish or modify a business' image. In other words, advertising seeks to inform, persuade, and remind the consumer. With these aims in mind, most businesses follow a general process which ties advertising into the other promotional efforts and overall marketing objectives of the business.

STAGES OF ADVERTISING STRATEGY

As a business begins, one of the major goals of advertising must be to generate awareness of the business and its products. Once the business' reputation is established and its products are positioned within the market, the amount of resources used for advertising will decrease as the consumer develops a kind of loyalty to the product. Ideally, this established and ever-growing consumer base will eventually aid the company in its efforts to carry their advertising message out into the market, both through its purchasing actions and its testimonials on behalf of the product or service. Essential to this rather abstract process is the development of a "positioning statement," as defined by Gerald E. Hills in "Marketing Option and Marketing" in The Portable MBA in Entrepreneurship: "A 'positioning statement' explains how a company's product (or service) is differentiated from those of key competitors." With this statement, the business owner turns intellectual objectives into concrete plans. In addition, this statement acts as the foundation for the development of a selling proposal, which is composed of the elements that will make up the advertising message's "copy platform." This platform delineates the images, copy, and art work that the business owner believes will sell the product.

With these concrete objectives, the following elements of the advertising strategy need to be considered: target audience, product concept, communication media, and advertising message. These elements are at the core of an advertising strategy, and are often referred to as the "creative mix." Again, what most advertisers stress from the beginning is clear planning and flexibility. And key to these aims is creativity, and the ability to adapt to new market trends. A rigid advertising strategy often leads to a loss of market share. Therefore, the core elements of the advertising strategy need to mix in a way that allows the message to envelope the target consumer, providing ample opportunity for this consumer to become acquainted with the advertising message. TARGET CONSUMER The target consumer is a complex combination of persons. It includes the person who ultimately buys the product, as well as those who decide what product will be bought (but don't physically buy it), and those who influence product purchases, such as children, spouse, and friends. In order to identify the target consumer, and the forces acting upon any purchasing decision, it is important to define three general criteria in relation to that consumer, as discussed by the Small Business Administration: 1. DemographicsAge, gender, job, income, ethnicity, and hobbies. 2. BehaviorsWhen considering the consumers' behavior an advertiser needs to examine the consumers' awareness of the business and its competition, the type of vendors and services the consumer currently uses, and the types of appeals that are likely to convince the consumer to give the advertiser's product or service a chance. 3. Needs and DesiresHere an advertiser must determine the consumer needs both in practical terms and in terms of self-image, etc.and the kind of pitch/message that will convince the consumer that the advertiser's services or products can fulfill those needs. PRODUCT CONCEPT The product concept grows out of the guidelines established in the "positioning statement." How the product is positioned within the market will dictate the kind of values the product represents, and thus how the target consumer will receive that product. Therefore, it is important to remember that no product is just itself, but, as Courtland L. Bovee and William F. Arens stated in Contemporary Advertising, a "bundle of values" that the consumer needs to be able to identify with. Whether couched in presentations that emphasize sex, humor, romance, science, masculinity, or femininity, the consumer must be able to believe in the product's representation. COMMUNICATION MEDIA The communication media is the means by which the advertising message is transmitted to the consumer. In addition to marketing objectives and budgetary restraints, the characteristics of the target consumer need to be considered as an advertiser decides what media to use. The types of media categories from which advertisers can choose include the following:

PrintPrimarily newspapers (both weekly and daily) and magazines. AudioFM and AM radio. VideoPromotional videos, infomercials.

World Wide Web. Direct mail. Outdoor advertisingBillboards, advertisements on public transportation (cabs, buses).

After deciding on the medium that is 1) financially in reach, and 2) most likely to reach the target audience, an advertiser needs to schedule the broadcasting of that advertising. The media schedule, as defined by Hills, is "the combination of specific times (for example, by day, week, month) when advertisements are inserted into media vehicles and delivered to target audiences." ADVERTISING MESSAGE An advertising message is guided by the "advertising or copy platform," which is a combination of the marketing objectives, copy, art, and production values. This combination is best realized after the target consumer has been analyzed, the product concept has been established, and the media and vehicles have been chosen. At this point, the advertising message can be directed at a very concrete audience to achieve very specific goals. Hiam and Schewe listed three major areas that an advertiser should consider when endeavoring to develop an effective "advertising platform":

What are the product's unique features? How do consumers evaluate the product? What is likely to persuade them to purchase the product? How do competitors rank in the eyes of the consumer? Are there any weaknesses in their positions? What are their strengths?

Most business consultants recommend employing an advertising agency to create the art work and write the copy. However, many small businesses don't have the up-front capital to hire such an agency, and therefore need to create their own advertising pieces. When doing this a business owner needs to follow a few important guidelines. COPY When composing advertising copy it is crucial to remember that the primary aim is to communicate information about the business and its products and services. The "selling proposal" can act as a blueprint here, ensuring that the advertising fits the overall marketing objectives. Many companies utilize a theme or a slogan as the centerpiece of such efforts, emphasizing major attributes of the business's products or services in the process. But as Hiam and Schewe caution, while "something must be used to animate the theme care must be taken not to lose the underlying message in the pursuit of memorable advertising." When writing the copy, direct language (saying exactly what you mean in a positive, rather than negative manner) has been shown to be the most effective. The theory here is that the less the audience has to interpret, or unravel the message, the easier the message will be to read, understand, and act upon. As Jerry Fisher observed in Entrepreneur, "Two-syllable phrases like 'free book,' 'fast help,' and 'lose weight' are the kind of advertising messages that don't need to be read to be effective. By that I mean they are so

easy for the brain to interpret as a whole thought that they're 'read' in an eye blink rather than as linear verbiage. So for an advertiser trying to get attention in a world awash in advertising images, it makes sense to try this message-in-an-eye-blink route to the public consciousnessbe it for a sales slogan or even a product name." The copy content needs to be clearly written, following conventional grammatical guidelines. Of course, effective headings allow the reader to get a sense of the advertisement's central theme without having to read much of the copy. An advertisement that has "50% Off" in bold black letters is not just easy to read, but it is also easy to understand. ART WORK AND LAYOUT Small business owners also need to consider the visual rhetoric of the advertisement, which simply means that the entire advertisement, including blank space, should have meaning and logic. Most industry experts recommend that advertisers use short paragraphs, lists, and catchy illustrations and graphics to break up and supplement the text and make the document both visually inviting and easy to understand. Remember, an advertisement has to capture the reader's attention quickly. ADVERTISING BUDGET The advertising budget can be written before or after a business owner has developed the advertising strategy. When to make a budget decision depends on the importance of advertising and the resources available to the business. If, for instance, a business knows that they only have a certain amount of money for advertising then the budget will tend to dictate what advertising is developed and what the overall marketing objectives will be. On the other hand, if a business has the resources available, the advertising strategy can be developed to meet predetermined marketing objectives. For small businesses, it is usually best to put together an advertising budget early in the advertising process. The following approaches are the most common methods of developing an effective budget. All the methods listed are progressive ones that look to perpetuate growth:

Percentage of future or past sales Competitive approach Market share All available funds The task or objective approach

The easiest approachand thus the one that is most often usedis the percentage of future or past sales method. Most industry experts recommend basing spending on anticipated sales, in order to ensure growth. But for a small business, where survival may be a bigger concern than growth, basing the advertising budget on past sales is often a more sensible approach to take.

METHODS OF ADVERTISING

Small business owners can choose from two opposite philosophies when preparing their advertising strategy. The first of these, sometimes called the push method, is a stance wherein an advertiser targets retail establishments in order to establish or broaden a market presence. The second option, sometimes called the pull method, targets end-users (consumers), who are expected to ask retailers for the product and thus help "pull" it through the channel of distribution. Of course, many businesses employ some hybrid of the two when putting together their advertising strategy. PUSH METHOD The aim of the push method is to convince retailers, salespersons, or dealers to carry and promote the advertiser's product. This relationship is achieved by offering inducements, such as providing advertising kits to help the retailer sell the product, offering incentives to carry stock, and developing trade promotions. PULL METHOD The aim of the pull method is to convince the target consumer to try, purchase, and ultimately repurchase the product. This process is achieved by directly appealing to the target consumer with coupons, in-store displays, and sweepstakes.

ANALYZING ADVERTISING RESULTS

Many small businesses are distressingly lax in taking steps to monitor whether their advertising efforts are having the desired effect. Instead, they simply throw a campaign out there and hope for the best, relying on a general sense of company health when determining whether to continue, terminate, or make adjustments to advertising campaigns. These small business owners do not seem to recognize that myriad factors can influence a business's fortunes (regional economic straits, arrival of new competition, seasonal buying fluctuations, etc.). The small business owner who does not bother to adequately analyze his or her advertising efforts runs the danger of throwing away a perfectly good advertising strategy (or retaining a dreadful one) if he or she is unable to determine whether business upturns or downturns are due to advertising or some other factor. The only way to know with any accuracy how your advertising strategy is working is to ask the consumer, the opinions of whom can be gathered in several ways. Although many of the tracking alternatives are quite specialized, requiring either a large budget or extensive advertising research expertise, even small businesses can take steps to measure the effectiveness of their advertising strategies. The direct response survey is one of the most accurate means of measuring the effectiveness of a company's advertising for the simple reason that it measures actual responses to a business's advertisements. Other inexpensive options, such as use of redeemable coupons, can also prove helpful in determining the effectiveness of an advertising campaign.

ADVERTISING AGENCIES
The decision whether or not to use an advertising agency depends both on a company's advertising strategy and its financial resources. An agency has professionals who can

organize, create, and place advertising so that it will meet established objectives better than most small businesses can do on their own, but of course the expense associated with soliciting such talent is often prohibitive for smaller companies. Still, some smalland mid-sized businesses have found that agencies can be helpful in shaping and monitoring advertising strategies. Because of their resources and expertise, agencies are useful when a business is planning a broad advertising campaign that will require a large amount of resources. An advertising agency can also help track and analyze the effectiveness of the advertising. Some criteria to consider when choosing an agency include size of the agency, size of their clients (small companies should avoid allying themselves with agencies with a large stable of big corporate clients so that they are not treated as afterthoughts), length of time that the principals have been with the agency, the agency's general advertising philosophy, and the primary nature of the agency's accounts (are they familiar with your industry and the challenges involved in differentiating your company's products or services from others in that industry?).

ADVERTISING LAWS
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) protects consumers from deceptive or misleading advertising. Small business owners should be familiar with the following laws, which pertain to marketing and advertising and are enforced by the Commission:

Consumer Product Safety ActOutlines required safety guidelines and prohibits the sale of harmful products. Child Protection and Toy Safety ActProhibits the sale of toys known to be dangerous. Fair Packaging and Labeling ActRequires that all packaged products contain a label disclosing all ingredients. Antitrust LawsProtects trade and commerce from unlawful restraints, price deception, price fixing, and monopolies.

Many complaints against advertisers center on allegedly deceptive advertisements, so small business consultants urge entrepreneurs and business owners to heed the following general rules of thumb: 1. Avoid writing ads that make false claims or exaggerate the availability of the product or the savings the consumer will enjoy. 2. Avoid running out of advertised sale items. If this does happen, businesses should consider offering "rain-checks" so that the consumer can purchase the item later at the same reduced price. 3. Avoid calling a product "free" if it has cost closely associated with it. If there are costs associated with the free item they need to be clearly disclosed in the ad. Since advertising is a complex process, and business law undergoes continual change, business owners should consult an attorney before distributing any advertising.

FURTHER READING:
Adams, Bob. Adams Streetwise Small Business Start-up. Holbrook, MA: Adams Media Corporation, 1996. Bovee, Courtland L., and William F. Arens. Contemporary Advertising. 3d ed. Homewood, IL: Irwin, 1989. Cohen, William. The Entrepreneur and Small Business Problem Solver. 2d ed. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1990. Fisher, Jerry. "Fast Pitch." Entrepreneur. August 1997. Hiam, Alexander and Charles D. Schewe. The Portable MBA in Marketing. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1992. Hills, Gerald E. "Market Opportunities and Marketing." The Portable MBA in Entrepreneurship. Edited by William D. Bygrave. 2d ed. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1997. Keri, Jonah. "Doggone Creative." Washington Business Journal. November 27, 1998. Nucifora, Alf. "Getting the Most from Your Media Purchase." LI Business News. October 23, 1998. Shea, Barbara S., with Jennifer Haupt. Small Business Legal Guide. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1995.

Listen to an audio version of this article. Advertising is paid, nonpersonal communication that is designed to communicate in a creative manner, through the use of mass or information-directed media, the nature of products, services, and ideas. It is a form of persuasive communication that offers information about products, ideas, and services that serves the objectives determined by the advertiser. Advertising may influence consumers in many different ways, but the primary goal of advertising is to increase the probability that consumers exposed to an advertisement will behave or believe as the advertiser wishes. Thus, the ultimate objective of advertising is to sell things persuasively and creatively. Advertising is used by commercial firms trying to sell products and services; by politicians and political interest groups to sell ideas or persuade voters; by not-for-profit organizations to raise funds, solicit volunteers, or influence the actions of viewers; and by governments seeking to encourage or discourage particular activities, such a wearing seatbelts, participating in the census, or ceasing to smoke. The forms that advertising takes and the media in which advertisements appear are as varied as the advertisers themselves and the messages that they wish to deliver. The word advertise originates from the Latin advertere , which means to turn toward or to take note of. Certainly, the visual and verbal commercial messages that are a part of advertising are intended to attract attention and produce some response by the viewer. Advertising is pervasive and virtually impossible to escape. Newspapers and magazines often have more advertisements than copy; radio and television provide entertainment but are also laden with advertisements; advertisements pop up on Internet sites; and the mail brings a variety of advertisements. Advertising also exists on billboards along the freeway, in subway and train stations, on benches at bus stops, and on the frames around car license plates. In shopping malls, there are prominent logos on designer clothes, moviegoers regularly view advertisements for local restaurants, hair salons, and so on, and live sporting and cultural events often include signage, logos, products, and related information about the event sponsors. The pervasiveness of advertising and its creative elements are designed to cause viewers to take note.

The Functions of Advertising

Although the primary objective of advertising is to persuade, it may achieve this objective in many different ways. An important function of advertising is the identification function, that is, to identify a product and differentiate it from others; this creates an awareness of the product and provides a basis for consumers to choose the advertised product over other products. Another function of advertising is to communicate information about the product, its attributes, and its location of sale; this is the information function. The third function of advertising is to induce consumers to try new products and to suggest reuse of the product as well as new uses; this is the persuasion function. The identification function of advertising includes the ability of advertising to differentiate a product so that it has its own unique identity or personality. One famous

example of this is found in the long-running advertising for Ivory Soap. In the late 1800s, a soap maker at Procter and Gamble left his machine running during his lunch period and returned to find a whipped soap that, when made into bars, floated. The company decided to capitalize on this mistake by advertising Ivory Soap with the phrase It Floats. This characteristic of Ivory Soap served to uniquely identify it and differentiate it from other bars of soap. The information function of advertising can also be found in advertising for Ivory Soap. For more than one hundred years, advertisements for Ivory Soap have focused on such product characteristics as purity of ingredients, child care, and soft skin. These characteristics, in turn, were often related to key benefits that could be obtained from using Ivory Soap. Thus, various advertisements emphasized That Ivory Look, which focused on the relationships between product characteristics and the benefits of obtaining a fresh and healthy appearance. The third and most important function of advertising, persuasion, is also evident in the long-running Ivory Soap advertising campaigns. The advertiser, Procter and Gamble, has linked Ivory Soap with obtaining benefits that are important to customers: a fresh and healthy appearance for women, a mild, nonirritating method for bathing babies, and a novelty for children in the tub (since it floats). The benefits of the product suggest reasons to buy and use Ivory Soap and thus provide a basis for persuading consumers. Different benefits are important to different customers. Thus, to realize its full potential as a persuasive tool, advertising must often be tailored to emphasize those benefits that are important and meaningful for a particular type of customer or a particular use of the product. Advertising has a very long history. It existed in ancient times in the form of signs that advertised wares in markets. In Europe and colonial America, criers were often employed by shopkeepers to shout a message throughout a town. Medicine shows, in which there was a combination of entertainment and an effort to sell a product, usually a patent medicine or elixir, presaged modern advertising by creating an entertainment context in which advertising was embedded. Advertising became especially important in the second half of the nineteenth century as retailers began to advertise products and prices that would bring customers to their stores. Advertising for patent medicines also played a prominent role in the development of advertising, and by the end of the nineteenth century, the firms that would become advertising agencies had already begun to form.

Advertising and Psychology

Although advertising has a very long history, serious study of advertising and its effects on consumers did not begin until early in the twentieth century. Psychologists began to recognize that advertising was an important form of communication and began to apply the theories and methods of psychology to its study. Individuals such as Harlow Gale began to conduct experiments designed to determine the power of individual advertisements to attract attention and persuade consumers to buy. Walter Dill Scott of Northwestern University wrote the book The Theory of Advertising (1903), which sought

to build a theoretical understanding of advertising based on the principals of psychological science. Scott suggested that advertisers should develop certain fundamental principles on which to construct a rational theory of advertising. The work of these psychologists was noted by such advertising professionals as Stanley Resor of the J. Walter Thompson Agency, who, in 1912, commissioned a study of the demographics and purchasing patterns of consumers to understand better both what motivated consumers to buy and how to persuade better those same consumers. Since this early work, psychologists and other social scientists have played an important role in both the study and practice of advertising. The application of psychological theories to advertising provides an understanding of how consumers process advertising messages and make purchase decisions. Theories of attention, information processing, attitude formation, and decision making all have relevance to understanding how advertising affects consumers. Another important application of psychological principals is to develop an understanding of consumer needs so that products can be developed, designed, and communicated in a manner that reflects the relevant and important needs of consumers.

How Advertising Works

Advertising is a form of communication. Like all forms of communication, it has many different effects and these effects are often related to one another. The message in an advertisement, no matter how strong and persuasive, will have no effect if the consumer does not see the advertisement or pay attention to it. One useful framework for understanding these multiple effects and their interrelationships is called the hierarchy of effects model. The hierarchy of effects model identifies different stages in the communication process. Effective communication must begin by obtaining the attention of the consumer. Then, the consumer must process the information carried in the advertisement. Such processing of information may be followed by an evaluation of the information, the source of the information, and ultimately the desirability of any actions suggested by the communication. This evaluation process may, in turn, give rise to the formation of attitudes, the development of intentions for future action, and, eventually, an action. Different characteristics of an advertisement have effects at different points in this hierarchy.

Getting Attention
In the context of advertising, the first hurdle for an advertiser is to obtain the attention of the consumer. This involves two important actions. First, it is important for the advertiser to know where a communication should be place to increase the odds of reaching a particular type of consumer; this is the media decision. Careful analysis of the consumer use of various media (e.g., what television shows they watch, what route they take to work, and what magazines they read) allows the advertisers to identify those media to which target consumers are most likely to be exposed. Placing an advertisement in a place where relevant consumers are unlikely to see it assures that the advertising will be

ineffective. However, just because a consumer happens to view a television show or read a magazine in which an advertisement is placed does not a guarantee that the consumer will see the advertisement. The consumer may have left the room when the television commercial aired or may not have read the particular part of the magazine in which the advertisement appeared. Advertisers solve this problem by repeating advertising in the same and in different media in order to increase the probability that a given consumer will actually be exposed to the advertising. Thus, a key task for the advertiser is to identify those media to which relevant consumers regularly attend and develop a schedule of repetition for the advertisement that maximizes the number of consumers who will be exposed to the advertising message. This is typically the responsibility of the media department in an advertising agency. Ads by Google Consumer development Avnet offer advanced components for the Consumer development www.em.avnetasia.com Behavioral software Software and instrumentation for the study of behavior www.noldus.com/ Special Effect Sale Save up to 82% on Special Effect Bargains! BuyCheapr.com/Special-Effect Types Of Internet Advertising Multiple Positions Open In Your Desired Field. Apply Now. Free! www.Quikr.com Exposure to an advertisement still does not mean that a consumer will attend to it. A consumer may simply turn the page of a magazine, look away from the television, or click on a banner advertisement on the Internet to make it go away without ever paying attention to the advertisement. Thus, obtaining the attention of consumers who are, in fact, exposed to an advertisement is a significant challenge for advertisers. Various characteristics of advertisements have been found to increase the likelihood that consumers will attend to an advertisement. Advertisements that include relevant information for the consumer, such as a product benefit that is important to the consumer, are especially likely to attract attention. Information that is new to the consumer is also likely to obtain the attention of the consumer. Various creative devices such as the use of humor, a well-known celebrity, or an especially entertaining presentation also tend to attract attention. The latter devices must be used carefully; if they are not well integrated with the primary message of the advertiser, the consumer may attend to the advertisement, but only focus on the creative device (the humor, the identity of the celebrity) rather the intended message of the advertiser. Advertisers often refer to

characteristics of advertisements that gain attention but distract the viewer from the primary message as creative clutter. An especially challenging dimension of advertising revolves around balancing the repetition of an advertisement, which is intended to increase the probability of a consumer being exposed to it, with the likelihood the consumer will attend to the advertisement when exposed. Consumers are less likely to attend to advertisements they have already seen, and the more often an individual consumer has seen an advertisement previously the less likely they are to pay attention to it when exposed again. This phenomenon is referred to as advertising wearout. Wearout can be a particular problem when advertising in markets where the likelihood of advertising exposure varies considerably across consumers. The number of repetitions of the advertisement needed to reach some consumers may be so great that the advertisement wears out among other consumers who are more readily exposed to the advertisement. To combat such wearout, advertisers will often use multiple advertisements that vary in terms of execution or presentation but carry similar messages. Such variation tends to reduce advertising wearout by providing something new to the consumer that serves as the basis for attracting attention.

Processing Information
Consumers may attend to advertisements for a variety of reasons. Attention alone is not sufficient to make the advertising successful. Advertisements that are interesting, entertaining, and even irritating can attract attention; however, such advertisements may not result in the consumer attending to or understanding the intended message of the advertiser. Assuring that consumers attend to and understand the intended message rather than peripheral characteristics (such as a joke or song) requires careful crafting of the advertising message. Advertising research has demonstrated that the message must be clear and meaningful to the consumer; if the consumer does not comprehend the message, it will not have the desired effect. Thus, it is important when creating the advertisement to understand how consumers think about products and product benefits and to use language that the consumer will understand. It is also important that the product and the product message be the focal point of the advertisement. Most of the time or space in the advertisement should be devoted to the product and the product message should be well integrated within the advertisement. Advertising that consists primarily of creative clutter and does not focus on the product is unlikely to be effective. Longer advertisements tend to facilitate better information processing, but the benefit of a longer advertisement may not always be sufficiently large enough to justify the additional costs of a longer advertisement. An especially important issue in the creation of advertising is related to understanding how much information consumers want about a given product. For some products, consumers may want a great deal of information and may wish to exert a great deal of effort in processing the information. In many cases, however, especially for products of relatively low cost, consumers do not want very much information and are unwilling to process more than a modest amount of product information. In fact, consumers may

differ with respect to the amount of information processing they are willing to do even for the same product. Thus, the advertiser must understand how much information individual consumers desire and how much variability exists among consumers with respect to their willingness to process information. Such an understanding not only indicates how much information to put in an advertisement, it also suggests which media may be most appropriate for delivering the message. Complex messages are generally better delivered in print advertising, while simple messages can generally be delivered on television or radio.

Information Evaluation
After a consumer has processed information, there is a need to evaluate it. The consumers will need to determine how believable the information is and how relevant it is to their individual situation in life and to their behavior as consumers. This evaluation phase poses significant problems for advertisers. Most consumers tend to discount the information in advertising because they understand that the purpose of the advertising is to persuade. Making an advertising message believable is not easy; though often it is sufficient to make the consumer curious enough to try the product. Such curiosity is often referred to as interested disbelief. Advertisers use a variety of devices to increase the believability of their advertising: celebrities or experts who are the spokespersons for the product, user testimonials, product demonstrations, research results, and endorsements.

Attitude Formation
In some cases, the objective of the advertiser is immediate action by the consumer; this is typical of direct-response advertising where the goal is to have the consumer do something immediately (buy a product, make a pledge, and so on). In most cases, however, there is a lag between advertising exposure and any action on the part of the consumer. In such cases, an important communication goal of an advertiser is to create a positive attitude toward their product. Attitudes are predispositions or tendencies to behave or react in a consistent way over time. There is an affect, or feeling, dimension associated with attitudes, and there are generally various beliefs that provide justification for the feeling and predisposition. The goal of advertising is to have a positive impact on attitudes; these attitudes, in turn, influence future behavior. When the consumer next goes to the store to buy a particular type of product, these attitudes influence the choice of the product. In some cases, the goal of advertising may be to create negative attitudes. For example, in various antidrug and antismoking public-service announcements, the objective of the communication is to reduce the likelihood that the viewer will use drugs or smoke. Attitudes and attitude formation are among the most widely researched phenomenon in communication research. Various theories have been offered to explain how attitudes are formed and how they may be reinforced or modified. Advertising plays a role in attitude formation, but it is important to recognize that the advertised product itself is the most

important determinant of attitude in the long term. A bad experience with a product will create a negative attitude that no advertising is likely to overcome. On the other hand, advertising can play an especially important role in inducing consumers to try a product for the first time, and if the product is satisfactory, a positive attitude will result. In addition, advertising can reinforce positive attitudes by reminding consumers of product benefits, desirable product characteristics, and positive product experiences.

Intentions and Behavior

Ultimately, the success of advertising rests on whether it influences behavior. Product advertisers want consumers to buy their product; political advertisers want voters to vote for their candidate; and sponsors of public-service announcements related to the harmful effects of smoking want the incidence of smoking to decline. While such effects are of primary interest for understanding the influence of advertising, advertising is only one of many factors that influence such behaviors. A consumer might want to buy an advertisers product, but may not find it in the store, or another less-desirable product is so much less-expensive that the consumer chooses it instead. It is possible, in some cases, to identify the direct effects of advertising on behavior, but in most cases, there are simply too many other factors that can influence behavior to isolate the effects of advertising. It is for this reason that most advertising research focuses on other effects in the hierarchy of effects. When measuring the direct effect of advertising on behavior is of interest, it is necessary to design carefully controlled experiments to control for all factors other than advertising.

What Advertising Does Not Do

Some writers have argued that advertising can create needs and stimulate unconscious and deep-seated motives. This view has led some critics of advertising to argue that advertising is a persuasive tool with the dangerous potential to create consumer needs. John Kenneth Galbraith, in The New Industrial State (1985), suggests that the central function of advertising is to create desiresto bring into being wants that previously did not exist. It is certainly true that people frequently want things when they become aware that they exist and advertising does contribute to such awareness. It is also the case that people sometimes do not realize that they have a need until they become aware of a solution that meets this need. Advertising is not able to create needs that did not already exist, however. Indeed, advertising is a relatively weak persuasive tool. The evidence of this weakness is abundant and unambiguous. First, the failure rate for new products is very high (approximately 90%). This fact is not consistent with the claim that advertisers can actually mold peoples needs. If advertisers could create needs, they should then be able to compel consumers to buy their products. Second, experts argue that advertising works best when it is working with, rather than counter to, the existing interests of the consumers. For example, for many years, low-calorie beer had not been able to find a consumer need to address and the product had limited sales. When the Miller Brewing Company introduced its Lite brand of beer and positioned it as the beer with fewer calories (which makes it less filling), it became an instant success.

Advertising has the power to create awareness, inform, and persuade. It is a communication tool of enormous complexity, however. Much advertising does not have its intended effect. The reasons for this failure lie in the variety and complexity of the effects of advertising. Like all successful communication, effective advertising is guided by a thorough understanding of its intended audience and how that audience will receive the intended message. Read more: Advertising Effects - The Functions of Advertising, Advertising and Psychology, How Advertising Works, Getting Attention, Processing Information, Information Evaluation http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/articles/pages/6414/AdvertisingEffects.html#ixzz1FSiMLyPq

example
Advertisement that focuses on a consumer problem and offers a solution to the problem. For example, a problem-solution advertisement for a sunburn relief product will remind consumers of the problem of sunburn pain and promote its product as offering a fast, safe, and soothing solution to this pain. Product-solution advertisements are most effectively used when the consumer can readily identify with a problem, and when the solution to this problem is easily solved by purchasing the product. Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/problem-solutionadvertisement#ixzz1FSj4njW2

Advertising Technique: Problem / Solution

Problems. Everyone has them. And some products solve them. A TV commercial opens with the kids screaming, "We're hungry, mom!" A headline reads, "Do you have enough money for retirement?" This is a technique to grab attention, to engage people who have the problem. Or people who want to avoid getting the problem. Or those who are concerned about the problem for other reasons, like the guy whose wife has headaches every night. Later in your ad, commercial, or mailer you'll explain how your product solves the problem. But the focus of the ad, the concept, should be about the problem. This technique works particularly well when your target audience has a big problem, a big concern. The bigger the problem, the better it works. But it can also be used with charm or humor. "Problem # 3 with SPIKE cologne: Women touch you in elevators."

Or perhaps you want to alert consumers to a problem they may not even know they have. "Like Duh! Your Paying Too Much For You Cell Phone, Sister." Below you see two print ads that address the deeper, underlying causes of two types of problems. One of the problems is psychological. The other is physical, a headache. In the first ad you meet a woman who can't find a job, is running out of money, and becoming desperate. Solution? A better education. The second ad below features some of the causes of headache, not the pain itself. This ad is part of the campaign, "Life Is A Contact Sport." So you better stock up on Tylenol Quantifying Advertisings Impact

By Don Ryan and Doug Rae December 20, 2005

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iKnowtion execs say the ideal way to manage marketing performance involves a combo of tactics. Understanding and quantifying the benefits of advertising is a problem as old as advertising itself. The problem stems from the many purposes advertising serves: building awareness of products, creating brand equity and generating sales. Each of these objectives is not easily measured or related to the advertising that may have affected it. First, there has been an explosion in media alternatives from the traditional standbys of television, radio and print into a broader spectrum of both offline and online options, with the internet clearly being the most visible example of this change. The choices within each medium have also expanded in an attempt to reach more targeted audiences. Television, for example, has burgeoned from three primary networks to literally dozens of mainstream cable channels, all capable of reaching large audiences with brand messages or product promotions. Hundreds of new magazines now serve many special interest groups, while web advertising presses the edge of one-to-one marketing. In addition, more and more companies are using integrated, multi-media strategies to reach their desired audiences, layering broadcast advertising over direct response campaigns or combining online with offline campaigns. All of this is making it harder to separate out the individual influences of each advertising effort. Second, most companies are no longer satisfied relying solely on traditional methods of measuring advertising effectiveness, namely awareness surveys and tracking studies, and

want more precise and concrete evidence that their marketing investments are paying off. It is one thing to know how memorable an ad might be or how potential customers feel about a company or its products, but it is quite another to quantify the sales and profitability impact that advertising might produce. The difficulty is that measuring these effects may involve tracing advertising's stimulus through a behavioral chain of events that eventually may culminate in a sale long after the advertising has been delivered. Third, companies today are in a more competitive and faster-paced environment than ever before, accelerating the need to understand the consequences of their marketing efforts. Marketers simply do not have the luxury any more to rest on their laurels or to assess how a set of campaigns performed months after they have concluded. The marketplace is moving so rapidly in many cases that knowing what's working and what's not almost as fast as it is happening has great value. For these reasons, marketers have begun to use new measurement tools to help them estimate the impacts of their advertising efforts. One such technique that is gaining in popularity is marketing mix modeling, which, when used prudently, can add new insight into how to maximize business results from a broad range of marketing investments. An approach to evaluating advertising effectiveness While advertising may have several objectives, ultimately marketing and business executives want to know, How has advertising contributed to sales and ultimately to the companys bottom line? Since we cant ask consumers to tell us what made them purchase a product, we have no choice but to make this assessment by other means. The first thing to recognize is that advertising is only one of many marketing elements that affect sales (see Figure 1). Other elements include pricing, promotional offers, product attributes and reactions by competitors. In addition, external factors, such as macroeconomic trends and seasonality, are likely to affect response in the market. Consequently, the response to advertising can best be evaluated by techniques that allow researchers to account for the mix of marketing activities and other external factors. Figure 1: Factors That Affect Sales

Econometric modeling techniques, especially time series regression, provide a wellstructured means of evaluating the impact of advertising on sales by isolating key explanatory variables and holding constant certain variables that may mask the effects of advertising. This is the technique used in marketing mix modeling, which has long been applied in the consumer package goods industry where the direct relationship of advertising to sales is weakest. Under the right circumstances, we think marketing mix modeling is a useful way to assess the effectiveness of advertising, particularly when a company uses an integrated multi-media strategy. But we also recommend that marketing decision makers use additional information in deciding how much advertising to do and what the mix should be. In fact, the ideal way to manage marketing performance probably involves a combination of statistically robust modeling, traditional advertising tracking studies and other marketing analyses. Essentially, we believe that marketers are better served by using as many tools as they can in tackling this complex issue. Advertising carryover and wear-out Another important consideration in quantifying the effect of advertising is measuring its carry over effects or persistence. Advertising media deliver impressions at a point in time, but psychological measurements of stimulus retention show that advertising messages may linger in the consumers mind over time. Thus, this relationship must be understood and accounted for. What is clear from models we have done is that the effect of advertising persistence differs by media type. For example, as shown in Figure 2, the impact of broadcast TV may persist for months, while the impact of online advertising is likely to fade very quickly. For other advertising media, maximum durations are typically measured in weeks. Figure 2: Differences in Advertising Persistence

Thus, each type of advertising investment is likely to have different persistence, and models of advertising impacts need to recognize and specify these differences. Continuous measurement and forecasting While marketing mix modeling has its pluses and minuses, we think there are specific uses that are highly beneficial for marketing performance management, such as when it is used to understand advertisings effects on different consumer segments. Moreover, we think that, in order for it to have a substantive impact on a company's business, marketing mix modeling needs to be applied in a systematic and iterative process, where modeling accuracy improves and the insights become more granular as additional spending and response data are collected. Marketing mix models may also be used beneficially to project the likely results of future marketing activities. This capability is a key component of marketing performance management because it helps the marketer understand what is likely to result from the money he is spending now or is about to spend -- which is far more relevant than simply looking at past spending. The models enable the marketer to forecast results across all media, as well as simulate outcomes based on a set of alternative advertising plans. An example of this is using marketing mix modeling to predict the volume of leads coming into a call center to assist staff planning, or likewise to predict the number of visitors to a website requesting information that will be fulfilled via direct mail. Managing marketing performance Historically, maximizing marketing performance has largely been an exercise in uncertain intuition and gut feel for marketers. Using marketing mix modeling can help marketers immensely, especially at a time when they are under mounting pressure to account for their actions and spending. The benefits of assessing advertising effectiveness using marketing mix modeling will, no doubt, vary from business to business, depending on company size, the role of advertising and other marketplace factors. However, our experience shows that this type of analysis can greatly enhance a marketers ability to evaluate how well his investments are doing, enabling him to adjust the amounts invested in advertising or their mix allocation. For some, this will translate into multi-million dollar benefits, which will certainly get the CMOs attention, not to mention the CFOs. Donald Ryan is senior partner and director of consulting services for iKnowtion. Ryan has nearly 20 years of experience in the marketing field with intimate knowledge in direct and database marketing, customer behavior analysis, marketing strategy development, marketing performance management and CRM consulting. Prior to iKnowtion, Ryan was senior VP of the marketing consulting and quantitative analysis divisions at Epsilon, Inc., one of the leading database marketing firms in the United States. Doug Rae is director of optimization systems at iKnowtion, leading a team of resources responsible for statistical modeling, econometric forecasting and optimization solution

development. Rae has more than 25 years of experience in analytic consulting, statistical analysis and forecasting. Before joining iKnowtion, Rae served as director of quantitative analysis at Veridiem, Inc. and was responsible for the development of marketing measurement tools and managed a staff of econometricians who worked with clients in such industries as financial services and telecommunications. In the 1970s and 1980s Rae worked for Charles River Associates of Boston before establishing his own consulting firm. Note Getting your name out to the public is the key to raising your sales volume. The old adage that you have to spend money to make money is very true in this case. If you want your customer base to expand, you must advertise. Word