Discuss the steps involved in developing an advertising program.

Organisation allocate millions and even billions of dollars for advertising. It is important that the marketers effectively use the advertising resources to make the marketing effort successful.The steps involved vary from company to company but there are five major steps that organisations can take in developing an advertising program.

1) Mission/ Objective
2) Budget
3) Message
4) Media plan
5) Evaluation

1) Advertising mission/ objective

The advertising objective refers to the specific goals an organisation wants to achieve in a specified time with specified audience.

The marketing strategy which specifies the target market, marketing positioning and marketing mix elements, gives direction to the advertising objectives. The planning which is done for the steps in making decisions for promotion activities form the basis of each promotion tool. (Kindly see chapter – Promotion Mix – Marketing Communications;Discuss the steps involved in Promotion Decisions?)

Advertising is done to inform the audiences about the company and its products. Some managers’ stress on the communication aspect of advertising of developing awareness of product benefits, influencing buyers to try the product, and generating positive attitudes and emotions towards the products. They believe that the organisation should not be solely dependent on advertising to meet its sales objectives.

Professor Kotler has classified advertising objectives as below-

Informative advertising – In informative advertising the aim is to build primary demand. It creates awareness about new products or new features of existing products. For example, In some markets, Motorola advertised its year old Moto X style model by highlighting that the device was available with the latest android software. Samsung advertising its Galaxy S7 smartphone as water resistant with exceptional camera.

Persuasive advertising – Here the motive is to create preference for the company’s product. It is also known as Comparative advertising. Company’s highlight the attributes of their products which are better than the competitors. For example, Duracell’s advertisement on long lasting batteries as compared to others.

Reminder advertising – This advertising is done to persuade repeat purchasing. It is mostly done when the product or service is in the maturity stage and there is presence of competitor products. Colgate asking customers to regularly use its toothpaste to avoid tooth decay.
Reinforcements advertising – It is to convince the existing users of company’s products that they have made a right choice. The aim is to ensure that the existing users don’t switch to competitor products.

2) Determining the advertising budget

Advertising budget is a financial document that outlines the total amount allocated for advertising along with the information on how the amount will be spent. The management has to decide on the right amount to be allocated so that less amount should not result in ineffective advertising and excess amount should not raise the expenditure which will eat into the profits of the company. Some company’s rely on Percent of Sales. This method sets aside a predetermined percent of sales for advertising. It can be the last sales that the organisation made or the forecast sales. For example, if an organisation has allotted 7% to its forecast sales. If sales are expected to reach $100,000, then the advertising budget is set at $7000.00. Below factors can be considered when deciding on the advertising budget-

a) Stage of product in product life cycle – New products require intense advertising to create awareness in the target market. Whereas, products in maturity stage have less advertising expenses as the motive of advertising is just to remind and reinforce the company’s products.

b) Market share and consumer base – Brands with high market share usually require less advertising budget as a percentage to sales. Similarly, a brand which wants to increase its market share, will need to invest heavily in advertising which will need high advertising budget.

c) Competition and clutter – Among lot of competitors and advertising clutter in the target market, a brand trying to be a leader will need to invest heavily in advertising to make a mark on its potential buyers. Even if the competition is less, the brand will need extensive advertising to stand out from the clutter of advertisements from different organisations.

d) Advertising frequency – Marketers need to be aware of the frequency of the advertisements in the target market when allocating the advertising budget.

e) Product substitutability – Highlighting product features to differentiate it from substitute products in the market will need advertising regularly.

3) Advertising message

Just creating an expensive advertisement will not serve the purpose unless it is creative. The most creative part in advertising is working on the advertising campaign. It takes into consideration what to say to the target audience and how to say it so that the buyers will listen, understand and remember the message when making buying decisions.

There are 4 steps in developing a creative advertising strategy-
Message generation – There are many theories proposed by advertisers for creating an effective message. Some link the brand to a single benefit. For example, Duracell highlights the long lasting batteries in its advertising message. Visa credit card is positioned as the most widely used and accepted credit card. John Maloney proposed the deductive framework for creating an advertising message. According to him buyers expect four types of rewards form a product – rational, sensory, social and ego. The buyers visualise these rewards to three types of experiences – results-of-use experiences, product-in-use-experiences, and incidental-to-use-experiences. The message to be generated should be a combination arrived at by crossing any of the 4 rewards/ benefits with three types of experiences.

For example, a Lotion that provides skin fairness – Result-of-use-experience and ego.

Message evaluation and selection – The advertiser should consider the following 3 factors while evaluating and selecting a message-

(i) The message should highlight something interesting, and invoke the desirability in the consumers.

(ii) The message should highlight the exclusiveness of the product that is not available with other products of same kind from different brands in the market.

(iii) The message should be believable.

A study of the market should be carried out to understand which appeal works best for the organisation.
Message execution –Creative advertising can be presented in 3 forms of execution-

(i) Style – slice of life, musical, lifestyle (how product fits in certain lifestyle), personality symbol, fantasy, technical expertise, mood or image (beauty, serenity, love, etc.), scientific evidence (some scientific study or analysis done), testimonial evidence (product endorsing by people or well-known celebrities).

(ii) Tone – Tones can be positive, humorous, informative, self-deprecating, and in rare cases negative. Sometimes two or more tones are combined.

(iii) Words – Attention getting and memorable words also help in creating a creative advertisement. McDonald’s, “I’m loving it”, 7-Up’s, “the Un-cola”.

There are many aspects of advertising that the marketers should study and incorporate. The format elements like ad size, colour and illustration contributes to the ads cost as well as its impact. How nicely the slogans can make the advertisement more effective and catchy to get the audience’s attention.

4) Deciding on the Media

The next step after finalising the message is to select the most effective (high impact) and efficient (less costly, within the budget) media for communicating the message to the masses.

It is a challenge to decide on the media vehicle as each one of them have advantages as well as disadvantages. The marketers must consider various alternatives available in the target market to construct a media mix. Media Mix is referred to a combination of advertising tools or vehicles (TV, Radio, outdoor, newspapers, etc.) that will carry the message to the audiences. The marketers consider the reach, frequency and impact of the media tools. The marketer has to be aware of the reach, impact and frequency of major media types. As each one of these varies in terms of cost, advantages and limitations, a careful analysis becomes important for the marketer. The factors considered are –

(i) Target audience media habits – Internet advertising on websites and mobiles if best vehicle to reach the teenagers as they regularly visit internet sites and applications.

(ii) Product characteristics – Does the product need demonstration? Electronic products can best be advertised on televisions as they have visual and motion elements for proper demonstration. Fashion apparels need colourful presentation hence best advertised on magazines, online and television.

(iii) Message characteristics – for example, a soon to be launched product can be advertised on television as well as magazines. But a discount sale will need immediate communication in the target market. It will be more effective if advertisements are made through outdoor advertising, newspapers, radio, etc.

(iv) Cost – creating an advertisement to be telecast on television is costlier than an advertisement created for newspapers, radio, etc.

The marketer should consider the limitations and advantages of various media types to create effective media mix and media schedule.

Similarly, the Geographical Allocation of the media is considered to target specified regions and territories. It has to decide on local, national, or international coverage and accordingly select advertising vehicle to carry the message in these regions.

5) Media Evaluation

An organisation should have effective planning and control on the advertising program to measure its effectiveness. Most commonly used methods for measuring the effectiveness are-
1) Communication-effect research – There are three methods under this.

(i) In Consumer feedback method, the consumers are asked some questions on the ad and their feedback is analysed for its effectiveness. Questions like,
• What do you think is the main message in this ad?
• How likely it is that this ad will influence you to make the intended decision? etc.

(ii) Portfolio tests take a customer through various ads. And at the end the customers are asked to recall the ads and their content. The effectiveness of the ad is calculated basis the recall of the contents of the ads.

(iii) Laboratory tests use equipment to check the consumer’s physiological reactions like heartbeat, pupil dilation, heartbeat, etc. when exposed to the ad.
Many theorist have argued about the effectiveness of these methods.

2) Sales effect research – Organisations measure the effect of advertising expenditure on the sales. These measures are difficult to measure as the change in sales could have been because of many reasons like price changes, changes in competition, changes in economic conditions, etc. Majorly two approaches are followed to measure the sales effectiveness.

(i) Historical Sales – Advertising relationships- Here the historical relationship is analyzed between the changes in sales and the advertising expenditure in that period. Usually quarterly, half-yearly and yearly data is considered for this analysis. This analysis becomes complex when advertisers consider the effect on sales due to current advertising as well as the carry over effect of advertising done in the previous period.

(ii) Experimental studies – To understand the relation between advertisement and its influence on the sales, experimental studies can be used. One such method is test market approach. The effect on sales is measured in few cities where consumers are exposed to advertisements and also in cities where no advertisement is run. Due to decline in sales for Teflon-coated cookware, Du Pont conducted such study in 13 different cities and concluded that the organisation has to advertise at the highest levels to achieve increase in sales. (For more details on this test, see James C. Becknell Jr., and Robert W. McIssac, “Test Marketing Cookware Coated with ‘Teflon’,” Journal of advertising Research 3 (September 1963), p.g. 2-8.]

(The above discussion is based on Prof. Kotler’s, Marketing Management, 11th edition, 2004, Indian Reprint, and David Cravens, GeraldHills and Robert Woodruff, Marketing Management, AITBS books, Delhi 2002).