INTRODUCTION.3
Definition of Concepts of Advertising..3
Factors that make Advertising Effective5
Elements of Advertising.7
Effective Advertising and Culture..8
Barriers of Great Advertising..9
Creating an Effective Advantages9
Characteristics of an Effective Advertising10
Conclusions..10
References..11
INTRODUCTION
Definition and Concepts of Advertising
The word ‘advertising’ comes from the latin word ‘ad vetere’ and it means ‘to draw attention’. From this we decipher that advertising is all about drawing a person’s attention to purchase a product or service. Advertising is a paid form of non-personal presentation of goods, services or ideas by an identified sponsor according to Richard Buskirk.
Advertising consists of all activities involved in presenting to a group; a non-personal, visual or oral, openly sponsored message disseminated through one or more media and is paid for by an identified sponsor, according to William J. Stanton. According to the Webster’s Dictionary, advertising is the action of calling something to the attention of the public especially by paid announcements by emphasizing the desirable qualities so as to arouse a desire to buy.
According to Barron’s Magazine an American leading financial weekly, Advertising is a paid form of non-personal message communicated through the various media by business firms, industry, individuals and nonprofit organizations, it is persuasive and informational and the main aim is to influence the purchasing behavior, thought patterns of the audience.
- The main aim is to increase the volume of sales of a business
- It is non-personal and it is directed to a mass audience
- It is a paid form of publicizing an idea, good or service
- It has an identified sponsor
The main objective and/ or function of advertising are;
At the end of the day, advertising aims at benefiting the producer, educating the consumer, supplementing the salesmen and link the producer and the consumer.
The benefits of advertising are numerous namely;
- it broadens the knowledge of a product or brand to the consumer
- it enables the consumer find and buy products without wastage of time
- it aids the producers in speeding up sales of their commodities
- it increases the efficiency of labour during distribution of the products therefore diminishing the cost of selling
Factors that make Advertising Effective
Media of advertising: This refers to the means by which the message of the advertiser is transmitted to the desired class of people. It is the vehicle or channel by which the message of the advertiser is conveyed or brought to notice of the prospective buyer or consumer. The means of delivery can be direct or indirect. Direct method is where the advertiser can establish direct contact with the prospective consumers by use of maybe a hired agency to personally reach the consumers. The indirect method is the most commonly used mode of conveying the advertiser’s message and they include:
Radio: This means has existed for generations, it is able to reach out to a wide audience of all ages, young and old and there are a vast number of radio stations around the world. It is a relatively cheaper media of advertising and is cost effective. It can also be targeted to reach a particular target audience so as to minimise costs and maximise on the eventual sales. This can be attained because certain groups listen to specific types of stations, e.g. a certain advertisement can be targeted at the youth as they like to listen to particular types of songs which are played at radio stations that are targeted at the youth.
Newspaper: This media is considered very cheap and efficient as it has a wide distribution as a national newspaper reaches almost everybody therefore publishing an advertisement on it is an effective way to ensure that the message spreads widely. It is commonly used where by advertisers who require a media that has a high distribution and a wide reach. The advertiser buys a space at the newspaper that has a high distribution and is guaranteed to reach a wide audience as the society today is obsessed with current affaires and most household buy a newspaper daily.
Television: For one to have an effective television commercial it must be believable and attractive, it must have a catchphrase that the audience can associate with the product and not just a company slogan and the commercial should have a theme. In these modern times almost every household has a screen in the living room and therefore it reaches the widest audience base. Television also incorporates the elements of advertising like color, sound, movement, words and the ability to focus on the product that it is promoting. Due to these factors the television has been a good media for promoting goods, services and even political campaigns.
The television advertisements have been able to adapt to current popular ideals like the use of trendy jargons, notions related to popular culture, movements that are easy to remember, catchy tunes and phrases therefore allowing for a better understanding of the message by the viewers. Television stations use a technique where they strategically place commercials at dramatic moments in a show or interrupt shows at random intervals therefore ensuring that the viewer will sit through and watch the advertisement instead of changing channels.
During political campaigns televisions employ propaganda or propaganda-like adverts through the repeated use of certain slogans that sustain them through months eventually becoming embedded in our culture that youngsters can associate with it. Therefore at the end of the day that particular advertisement is successful in conveying its ideas. Due to these positive factors, television has become an effective, popular and widely available media to communicate ones ideas to a large populace.
Websites - This a rather new mode of advertising, but its ability to reach the masses has increased exponentially since its inception in the mid 1990s. There are many forms of advertising on the wed namely,
Adware and pop-up programs: These programs plant themselves onto downloaded software and frequently appear or pop-up to remind the user about the product being advertised by emphasizing and re-emphasizing the advantages of the advertised product.
Spam e-mail: They serve the same purpose as pop-up programs but have a disadvantage of tricking targets with and other undesirables like spyware. (these means of advertising is not very effective as it is annoying to the consumers and some of them go out of their way to get rid of these programs therefore making the advertisement counter-productive.)
Google AdSense: It shows similar matches to a particular search word that the user searches for in the Google search engine. In this way the user find supplementary items that might be of interest to him. This tool is effective as it can be found on almost all websites and is installed free. The downside to this tool is that it shows a random selection of links and as such is not a very reliable way to advertise a particular product, service or idea.
MySpace, Google Video, iFile, Youtube and Metacafe: These incorporate the use of video clips which are uploaded for public viewing and are very popular. These websites are open to the widest range of internet users therefore are very effective media of advertising but require the users to manually searches for topics, title subjects and videos before they can view an item.
Website banners are targeted to a specific audience but the downside is that they are not widely spread to be very effective in advertising a particular product. They are also usually found on company’s homepages and do not widen the reach and increase the rate of transmission to the masses being communicated to.
Elements of advertising
They include sound, color, pictures, text, space, movement and entertainment value. They are incorporated with the Medias of advertising to create a more persuasive advertisement. Advertisements are classified according to the Target Market, Company demand, function, region, the desired response and the media.
Effective Advertising and Culture
Taking for example the United States which has the largest advertising market with an estimated advertising expenditure of 500 billion in 2004. It is followed by Japan at less than one fifth of United States total then Germany and the United Kingdom. The top targeted market at the U.S. is the youth market. They spend over $70 billion yearly as consumer and they also influence their parents’ purchases. Almost 90% of the ads shown during children’s programs promoting food and drink products therefore the youth are exposed to advertising at childhood. As they grow they are inclined to be loyal to their favourite products as they were influenced from a tender age. Another tactic employed by companies to lure the youth market is by enlisting celebrity endorsers like musicians, actors and athletes who earn a lot of money promoting the products.
Majority of the youth are attracted to logos, popular chains and brand names but others also resist brand culture for political reasons. An example of this resistance is the culture jam movement in North America. Founder and publisher of Adbuster magazine Kalle Lasn and other media activists are concerned about the erosion of our cultural and physical environments by commercial forces. The of culture jamming is to change the way institutions wield power, change the way information flows, the way television stations are run and how fashion, food, sports, automobile, music and culture industries set their agendas.
Barriers to Great Advertising
Self Delusion is one of the major barriers of proper advertising. This is where the advertiser assumes that he/she knows what a good advertising is therefore there is no need for any kind of independent, objective evaluation. Another barrier is gauging the effectiveness of an ad by the sales performance. This can only be true if the sales response to the advertising is immediate and overwhelming but advertising often has short-term effects that sales data might reflect, and long-term effects that is most often overlooked in subsequent sales data. Also, the tendency of advertising agencies to delay and undermine efforts to objectively test their adverts as the report can upset the creative team and clients. Copying the advertising strategy of a known successful advertising agency instead of testing all major competitive commercials is another of the barriers that companies tend not to notice. Last and not least is lack of strategy or poor advertising strategy.
Creating an Effective Advertisement
The client must have a clear strategy for its brand which should be based on facts and not delusions and a clear role of the advertisement should be set. The advertising agency should come up with creative executions which should all be pretested among members of the target market. Pretesting should be done all the stages of the creative process i.e. the storyboard and at the finished commercial stage.
Characteristics of an Effective Advertisement
- It should grab people’s attention immediately. It should force people to take a second glance instead of simply moving on
- It should be creative and clever therefore attracting people and representing the product in a positive way.
- It should speak loudly because the louder you speak the more people hear you.
- It should make the audience think too much as the person should know what the ad is saying as soon as they look at the ad.
- It should have colors that pop but also make sense, the colors should represent the aspect of the advertisement and the feeling of the brand and it should work with the environment in which the brand is placed in.
- It should be informative and convey the message of the brand. Visual ad represents the message easily.
- It should stand out and be memorable by being unique and completely different from anyone else and original.
CONCLUSION
There is no absolute or universal method of creating the most effective advertisement. An effective advertisement would generally refer to an advert that is able to intrigue, interest, inspire and pursued a consumer that a certain product, service or idea is worth buying and therefore generate more sales for the producers and manufacturers successfully. An effective advertisement does not necessarily use all the various elements of advertising, but is able to function because all the appropriate elements have been manipulated to the advertiser’s favor and all these elements have been combined to make it achieve its purpose which is increased sales. The advertiser should know how to break an advertisement down to its elements, what elements to use and focus on for a particular product and how to build up the advert to be effective that is in resonance with the target market. Effective advertising is therefore a complex ever-changing process
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