Advertising

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Generally speaking, advertising is the paid promotion of goods, services, companies and ideas by an identified sponsor. Marketers see advertising as part of an overall promotional strategy. Other components of the promotional mix include publicity, public relations, personal selling, and sales promotion.

History

In ancient times the most common form of advertising was by word of mouth. However, commercial messages and election campaign displays were found in the ruins of Pompeii. As printing developed in the 15th and 16th century, the first steps towards modern advertising were taken. In the 17th century advertisements started to appear in weekly newspapers in England and within a century, advertising became very popular.

As the economy was expanding during the 19th century, the need for advertising grew at the same pace. In 1843 the first advertising agency was established by Volney Palmer in Philadelphia. At first the agencies were just brokers for ad space in newspapers, but in the 20th century, advertising agencies started to take over responsibility for the content as well.

Media

Some commercial advertising media include: billboards, printed flyers, radio, cinema and television ads, web banners, skywriting, bus stop benches, magazines, newspapers, town criers, sides of buses, taxicab doors and roof mounts, musical stage shows, elastic bands on disposable diapers, stickers on apples in supermarkets, the opening section of streaming audio and video, and the backs of event tickets. Any place an "identified" sponsor pays to deliver their message through a medium is advertising. Covert advertising embedded in other entertainment media is known as product placement.

The TV commercial is generally considered the most effective mass-market advertising format and this is reflected by the high prices TV networks charge for commercial airtime during popular TV events. The annual US Super Bowl football game is known as much for its commercial advertisements as for the game itself, and the average cost of a single thirty-second TV spot during this game has reached $2.3 million (as of 2004).

Advertising on the World Wide Web is a recent phenomenon. Prices of Web-based advertising space are dependent on the "relevance" of the surrounding Web content. E-mail advertising is another recent phenomenon. Unsolicited E-mail advertising is known as "spam".

Some companies have proposed to place messages or corporate logos on the side of booster rockets and the International Space Station. Controversy exists on the effectiveness of subliminal advertising (see mind control), and the pervasiveness of mass messages (see propaganda).

Unpaid advertising (also called word of mouth advertising), can provide good exposure at minimal cost. Personal recommendations ("bring a friend", "sell it by zealot"), the unleashing of memes into the wild, or achieving the feat of equating a brand with a common noun ("Hoover" = "vacuum cleaner") -- these must provide the stuff of fantasy to the holder of an advertising budget.

Objectives

One of the purposes of advertising is to stimulate demand for a product, service, or idea. Other factors influencing demand are price and substitutability. A major way advertising may stimulate demand is to create a brand franchise for a product. When enough brand equity is created that the brand has the ability to draw buyers (even without further advertising), it is said to have brand franchise. The ultimate brand franchise is when the brand is so prevalent in people's mind (called mind share), that it is used to describe the whole category of products. Kleenex, for example, can distinguish itself as a type of tissue or a label for a category of products. That is, it is frequently used as a generic term. One of the most successful firms to have achieved a brand franchise is Hoover, whose name was for a very long time synonymous with vacuum cleaner (and Dyson has subsequently managed to achieve similar status, having moved into the Hoover market with a more sophisticated model of vacuum cleaner).

A brand franchise can be established to a greater or lesser degree depending on product and market. In Texas, for example, it is common to hear people refer to any soft drink as a Coke, regardless of whether it is actually produced by Coca-Cola or not (more accurate terms would be 'cola' or 'soda').

A legal risk of the brand franchise is that the name can become so widely accepted that it becomes a generic term, and loses trademark protection. Examples include "escalator", "aspirin" and "mimeograph". (See genericized trademark.)

Other objectives include short or long term increases in sales, market share, awareness, product information, and image improvement.

Techniques

Advertisers use several recognizable techniques in order to better convince the public to buy a product. These may include:

• Repetition: Some advertisers concentrate on making sure their product is widely recognized. To that end, they simply attempt to make the name remembered through repetition.

• Bandwagon: By implying that the product is widely used, advertisers hope to convince potential buyers to "get on the bandwagon."

• Testimonials: Advertisers often attempt to promote the superior quality of their product through the testimony of ordinary users, experts, or both. "Three out of four dentists recommend..." This approach often involves an appeal to authority.

• Pressure: By attempting to make people choose quickly and without long consideration, some advertisers hope to make rapid sales: "Buy now, before they're all gone!"

• Association: Advertisers often attempt to associate their product with desirable imagery to make it seem equally desirable. The use of attractive models, a practice known as sex in advertising, picturesque landscapes and other alluring images is common. Also used are "buzzwords" with desired associations.

• Advertising slogans

• Controversy, as in the Benetton publicity campaign.

• Subliminal messages: It was feared that some advertisements would present hidden messages, for example through brief flashed messages or the soundtrack, that would have a hypnotic effect on viewers ('Must buy car. Must buy car.') The notion that techniques of hypnosis are used by advertisers is now generally discredited, though subliminal sexual messages are extremely common, ranging from car models with SX prefixes to suggestive positioning of objects in magazine ads and billboards.

It is important to note: During the past decade, advertising has increasingly employed the device of irony. Aware that today's media-savvy viewers are familiar with -- and thus cynical about -- the traditional methods listed above, advertisers have turned to poking fun at those very methods. This "wink-wink" approach is intended to tell viewers, "We know that YOU know we're trying to sell you something, so bear with us and let's have fun." The ultimate goal of such advertising is to convey a sense of trust and confidence with viewers, by essentially saying, "We respect your intelligence, and you should respect us because we're not trying to fool you." Common television examples include most beer advertising and the commercials of the Geico insurance company.

Public service advertising

The same advertising techniques used to promote commercial goods and services can be used to inform, educate and motivate the public about serious non-commercial issues, such as AIDS, energy conservation, and deforestation.

Advertising, in its non-commercial guise, is a powerful educational tool capable of reaching and motivating large audiences. "Advertising justifies its existence when used in the public interest - it is much too powerful a tool to use solely for commercial purposes." - Attributed to Howard Gossage by David Ogilvy

Public service advertising, non-commercial advertising, public interest advertising, cause marketing, and social marketing are different terms for (or aspects of) the use of sophisticated advertising and marketing communications techniques (generally associated with commercial enterprise) on behalf of non-commercial, public interest issues and initiatives.

Regulation

There have been increasing efforts to protect the public interest by regulating the content and the reach of advertising. Some examples are the ban on tobacco advertising imposed in the USA, and the total ban on advertising to children under twelve imposed by the Swedish government in 1991. Though that regulation continues in effect for broadcasts originating within the country, it has been weakened by the European Court of Justice, which has found that Sweden was obligated to accept whatever programming was targeted at it from neighboring countries or via satelite. In Europe and elsewhere there is a vigurous debate on whether and how much advertising to children should be regulated. This debate was exacerbated by a report released by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation in February 2004 which suggested that food advertising targeting children was an important factor in the epidemic of childhood obesity raging acroos the United States.

Some suggest that access to the mental space targeted by advertisers should be taxed, in that at the present moment that space is being freely taken advantage of by advertisers with no compensation paid to the members of the public who are thus being intruded upon. Efforts to that end are gathering momentum, with Arkansas and Maine considering bills to implement such taxation.

See also

• Bait and switch
• Beauty advertising
• Brand
• Clio Awards
• Comparative (i.e. comparative advertising)
• Ethics in Advertising
• List of advertising characters
• Marketing
• Neon signage
• Nudity
• Promotion
• Propaganda model
• Sex in advertising
• Spamvertising
• Subvertising
• Trailer

External links

• Educating the Consumer about Advertising: Some Issues
• Advertising in the Schools
• Consumer Angst - essay about lies in advertisements, and coping to resist them
• The Persuaders - a frontline documentary about new emerging marketing techiques
• American Advertising: A Brief History

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