MCM501 Handouts Lectures 1-15

LESSON 01 Introduction to Advertising

Defining Advertising

Advertising is paid communication through a non-personal medium in which the sponsor is identified and the message is controlled. Variations include publicity, public relations, product placement, sponsorship, underwriting, and sales promotion. Every major medium is used to deliver these messages: television, radio, movies, magazines, newspapers, the internet, and billboards. Advertisements can also be seen on the seats of grocery carts, on the walls of an airport walkway, and on the sides of buses, or heard in telephone hold messages or in-store PA systems – nearly anywhere a visual or audible communication can be placed. Advertising clients are predominantly, but not exclusively, for-profit corporations seeking to increase demand for their products or services. Other organizations that frequently spend large sums of money on advertising include political campaigns, interest groups, religion-supporting organizations, and the military of the United States. Other non-profit organizations are not typical advertising clients, and rely upon free channels, such as public service announcements. The advertising industry is large and growing. In the United States alone in 2005, spending on advertising reached $144.32 billion, reported TNS Media Intelligence Advertising is increasingly invading public spaces, such as schools, which some critics argue is a form of child exploitation.

History

Commercial 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 Greece and Rome. Wall or rock painting for commercial advertising is another manifestation of an ancient media advertising form, which is present to this day in many parts of Asia, Africa, and South America. For instance, the tradition of wall painting can be traced back to Indian rockart paintings that go back to 4000 BC. 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 ads were used mainly to promote books and newspapers, which became increasingly affordable thanks to the printing press, and medicines, which were increasingly sought after as disease ravaged Europe. However, false advertising and so-called "quack" ads became a problem, which ushered in regulation of advertising content. Although advertising has existed for a long time, explicit "branding" is a product of the late 1800s. Due to the prevalence of dangerous products and unregulated industries of the Industrial Revolution, brands were introduced to increase the reputation and value of a particular manufacturer. An identified brand often meant safety and quality. Quaker Oats is among the oldest modern brands in continual use. At first, agencies were brokers for ad space in newspapers. N.W. Ayer & Son was the first full-service agency to assume responsibility for advertising content. It was also the first agency to charge a commission on ads. The radio station owners soon realized they could earn more money by selling sponsorship rights to other businesses. In those days, each show was usually sponsored by a single business, in exchange for a brief mention of the sponsor at the beginning and end of the show. This practice was carried over to television in the late 1940s and early 1950s. In the early 1950s, the Dumont television network began the modern trend of selling advertisement time to multiple sponsors. 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 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 byproduct 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, the search engine Google revolutionized 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.

Advertising and Society

Advantages:

It provides information about the product.

Advertising help people to make a quick selection.

Advertising help to increases the standard of living.

Advertising provides wide choice to consumers

Advertising helps to fix the prices by creating competition among various brands.

Advertising dispels wrong impressions by providing information about various things.

Advertising supports media as it is the primary source of income.

Advertising helps to create awareness in the society through public service messages.

Advertising also has an entertainment value.

Advertising mirrors fashion and design and contributes to our aesthetic sense.

Disadvantages:

Advertising moves the people to buy thing they cannot afford

Advertising is biased.

Advertising is irrelevant e.g. now a day’s cricket world cup is going on, so every ad tries to build

up a relationship with world cup.

Advertising is unduly repetitious.

Use of objectionable appeals.

Advertising misleads the people

It inclines a person towards materialism.

People have to pay for the advertising

Advertising is too much intrusive. E.g. during a cricket match coming live on TV , suddenly we

see an ad at the time when the bowler is appealing for L.B.W;

It causes people to take up harmful habits. E.g. cigarette ads

LESSON 02 Structure and Functions of an Advertising Agency

The first advertising agencies had no copywriters. They had no art directors and no account executives either. In fact, a career in advertising during the late 1800’s required virtually no experience with advertisements and no particular insight into the product being sold. The first advertising agencies were simply brokers of media space, buying pages in newspapers and periodicals and selling them to advertisers. Agencies were rarely staffed by more than a couple of people and their motivation was not to help companies attract customers or sell more goods, but to maximize profit on their own transactions. Over the years, the business environment facing agency clients has become incredibly complex. Simple products have become multifaceted brands. Manufacturing companies have given way to marketingdriven corporations. And communications have become increasingly vital to their existence. Simultaneously, the outlets for communications have also grown more complex. Consumers have access to hundreds of channels on broadcast TV, cable, and satellite. There are thousands of newspapers and magazines for people to read and millions of web sites to access. Advertising is everywhere and companies more than ever need help identifying the right opportunities. As a result, advertising agencies have grown incredibly. Today, the largest agencies employ thousands of professionals across the globe and manage billions of dollars in business every year. And advertising agencies offer more diverse services than ever, serving as strategic partners with their clients and helping them increase the value of their business. Essentially an agency’s task is to evaluate a client’s product or service and then develop an effective advertising strategy to assist their clients to maximize their marketing efforts. To do this an agency will go through a process along the lines of the following:

What are we selling?

An analysis of the product or service in relation to competition. This includes not only tangibles, such as price, size, etc, but also intangibles such as the attitudes and feelings engendered in the consumer from exposure to the product/service.

To whom are we selling it?

Development of a consumer profile – age, sex, socio-economic group, geographical location, etc.

Why are we selling it?

What particular need or want does the product address.

Where are we selling it?

What media will be most appropriate – TV, newspapers, magazines, radio, etc.

When are we selling it?

Are there certain times of the day, days of the week, and months of the year when it is more effective to advertise?

Agency Structure

While advertising agencies are fairly adept at tailoring their structure to the needs of specific clients, a full-service advertising agency involves four main departments. ¾ Account Service ¾ Creative Services ¾ Media Planning and Buying ¾ Account Planning and Research

Account Service

The Account Service team works closely with the client to map out their communications needs and define the role the agency can play in helping meet their business objectives. They engage agency resources as appropriate and ensure all the work done for the client is suitable for their business and that projects run smoothly. On a day-to-day basis, this means creating agency teams to work on specific projects, communicating the agency opinion in formal points of view, presenting work, and setting timelines and budgets. Account