Introduction to Advertising
From Wikiversity
Contents |
[edit] Commonly Used Advertising Terms
-Advertiser The entity that lays for the advertisement, and who wishes to persuade others (in ways). An advertiser can be a person, group of persons, an organization, a company.
-Medium/Media (sing./pl.) The channel through which a message is communicated. Some media are mass, such as print and television, but other channels are not, such as the telephone, mail, and person-to-person. Media may be privately or publicly owned. For example, Newscorp is owned by Rupert Murdoch, but the BBC in the UK and PBS in the US are publicly held, sponsored by the government and/or through taxes or fees.
-Target Audience/Market The group of people, usually consumers, that an advertiser tries to reach by creating the correct message and using the correct media vehicles. A target is defined through either demographic or psychographic data.
-Demographics Demographic data include objective and measurable data about people and their lives. Census data is a common example. Age, ethnicity, occupation, income, zip code, number of children, marital status, gender are other examples. Even more specific information information can be measured: how often one purchases a car, goes shopping, home ownership, etc.
-Psychographics Psychographic data are less objective and often rely on self-reported information. Often, it has to do with what people like, dislike, personality traits. Examples of psychographic categories are: people who are depressed, people with lots of friends, people who adventurous, like to travel, cook, or fish.
-Public Service Advertising Advertising that contains a socially positive message and encourages pro-social activity. It may not be paid for by an advertiser (the advertising time or space may be donated). Usually, public service advertising is generated by a non-profit advocacy group or a governmental organization. Common examples include anti-drug advertising, support the troops, and pro-recycling efforts. In order for TV stations to receive a license from the FCC, they must agree to provide a certain amount of free time for Public Service Advertising.
[edit] The Purposes of Advertising
Advertisers consider advertising a way to communicate with a particular audience. The overarching purpose of advertising is to increase an advertiser's revenue and encourage purchase of the product or service. The more immediate purposes of any particular advertisement can include: -Awareness of the product category These are most common with a new kind of product category, for example, when VCRs became available, advertisers ran advertisements explaining how VCRs worked and what they could do, rather than specifically telling consumers to buy a particular brand. The immediate purpose for these ads is education about the product category - the long term purpose is to encourage purchase.
-Awareness of the brand or product These advertisements are most common when an advertiser introduces a new product or brand in a category that consumers are already aware of. For example, when a company introduces a new flavor of potato chips. Consumers are familiar with snack foods and chips, but perhaps not this specific brand or flavor. The immediate purpose is awareness. Ideally, the consumer is then interested and will engage in trying the product, leading to purchase, and loyalty to the new product or brand
[edit] Targeting
Advertisers use research and other insights to determine which consumers to focus their advertising effort on. Targeting also helps advertisers make creative decisions as well as other marketing decisions.
Case study: Extreme Drinks Company has just developed a new energy drink called Ferocity. It has a lemon flavor and is carbonated and caffeinated. To determine how to advertise Ferocity, Extreme Drinks will conduct or access research on what kind of people already consumer energy drinks. They will also brainstorm about what kind of people could use more energy. They learn that teenage boys and young men already consume lots of energy drinks, and decide that mothers and students could use more energy. Because of sensitivity in society about caffeinating young children, Extreme Drinks eliminates grade school and middle school children as a target. Mothers are eliminated, because even though mothers are tired, it just doesn't feel right to advertise Ferocity to them. So the target is high school and college aged men. To quantify this number, Extreme Drinks defines the target for Ferocity as Males 16 to 24, with a household income of $40,000 or more. However, Extreme Drinks Company has a reputation, and Ferocity needs to reflect the Extreme Drinks corporate personality. Extreme sports like skiing, snowboarding, skydiving all reflect the lifestyle that Extreme Drinks personifies. However, middle income high schoolers are probably not skydiving very much. So Extreme Drinks decides that they would like Ferocity to focus on skateboarding, snowboarding and break dancing. Extreme Drinks hires a popular skateboarder to appear in their ads and also hires a well-known graffiti artist to help design their ads. Extreme Drinks buys ad pages in skateboarding and snowboarding magazines, buys commercial time on an extreme sports network and during the broadcast of the biggest snowboarding competition. At the competition they have a booth where people can sample Ferocity and enter to win a day with the skateboarding celebrity from the ad.
So, even though the Ferocity marketing campaign reached a very small percent of the population, they reached about 80% of their target market. Many teenagers who like extreme sports felt the ads spoke to them. Research shows that these people agree that Ferocity is a drink for them and that the Extreme Drinks Company is a cool company.
[edit] Your turn
Create and distribute some advertising materials for Wikiversity. Describe your work below.
