2010

Advertising Strategy and Planning

Individual Assignment 1

It must be remembered that advertising does not exist in isolation from the other tools of marketing communications. A significant debate over recent years has been the significance of ensuring the integration of these tools of marketing communications.

Module Leader: Helen Robinson Module Code: BM3613

Name: Purav Suryamurty KU ID: k0851344

05-Dec-10

Introduction The above claim made by Yeshin, is one of great controversy. Advertising is a way of mass communication that provides an intense level of control for those providing the design and delivery of advertising messages. The method of advertising is considered to be very flexible in that it can be used to convey concepts to national viewers or a specific target market group. Even though the costs can be excessively high, a vast audience can be addressed with a message, resulting in the cost per contact being the lowest of all the tools of marketing communication. On the contrary, it can be argued that the capacity of advertising alone to convince the target market to believe or act in a specific manner is doubtful. Moreover, the amount that it contributes to sales is also difficult to measure. Advertising, also suffers from low reliability due to the target market being less likely to believe messages that are delivered through this technique than if they were to deliver the same messages through some other tools (Fill, 2005). Advertisement vs. IMC In terms of the above statement being correct, there is supporting evidence in the form of claims made by business scholars. In the article, Understanding the Diffusion of Integrated Marketing Communications, Kim et al. (2004), state in an article by Caywood (1997) suggests the background behind the emergence of IMC comes from three major areas. This claim is further explained in detail by listing the three segments. The first one being the view from the corporate angle, which is that there is a growing competitiveness created due to managements unification and acquisition group that have been needed to meet the consumers desires more successfully via a series of new marketing strategies. The second segment, which is from the media and the market side, indicates the decreasing power of the traditional forms of marketing and advertising due to the rapid development of information technology escalating the search for more useful and cost-efficient approach in marketing communications. And lastly, the third segment being the consumers perspective, stating that the rapid changes in their post-modern lifestyles, have enabled the advertisers to develop faster response communication means. This concept is further supported by the declaration that, IMC is one of the easiest ways an organisation can maximize its return on investment (Duncan and Everett, 1993, p.30). According Duncan and Everett (1993) this specific policy is then utilized for accomplishing each communications function, such as, advertising, PR, sales promotion, etc, throughout a series of communications means. The three segments explained above and the claim about IMC being one of the easiest and convenient ways to maximize profit, support clearly the concepts expressed in the statement in the question that advertising is not in isolation to other forms of marketing communication (e.g.

sales promotion, public relations, direct marketing and personal selling) but that all of these tools work hand in hand for any marketing strategy to be successful. Furthermore, to sustain the accuracy of the statement in the question, Cornelissen (2003) affirms that IMC is one of the most recent innovative marketing concepts widely endorsed by marketing and advertising academics in the Western hemisphere especially and this proves the point that advertising alone isnt enough to get a certain brand phenomena working, for example. In addition to this, the author suggests that the discursive legacy of IMC explains clearly its representational utilization for academic as well as practitioner situations. To insist the usefulness of IMC, an idea is expressed in relation to consumers. The aim of integrated marketing is that consumers must be contacted in a way that they get the idea. Contacts are referred to as anything that can influence the consumers experiences. Duncan and Everett However, any other way of affecting the consumer is equally a contact. A contact can come before and after as well during product handling. These contact points together become the marketing plan (Calder and Malthouse, 2005). (However, this claim is contradicting itself in the same article when it states that advertisement is a crucial mediate contact. This creates confusion as on one hand the authors are claiming that IMC consists of several equal contacts but then later on it states that advertisement is a crucial contact?) Since in the Western hemisphere, particularly in the UK, there is great emphasis put on the notion of IMC. On the other hand, contradictory to the statement in the question, it can be argued that advertising can exist in isolation and is the major one from the other tools of marketing communications. Research shows that decisions regarding IMC are established on the advertising agency level and seem to have failed on management level for its communicative power being inadequate because of outdated custom. If assessed on a macro view, one can differentiate amongst three aspects that have essentially changed the situation for IMC and have highlighted the importance of advertising .They are - the deregulations of markets, the globalisation of the economy and specifically the individualisation of the consumption. The factor behind it is suggested to be the emergence of the recent information technology. Communication (through advertisement) consists of three varied factors sound, image and writing. Beforehand, these three factors used to be separate, but the IT revolution has made it possible for a complete communicative integration to occur, that has in turn transformed business forms. Three enormous business segments are now combined- telephony, television along with the computer industry; the new technology has spread globally in the past 20 years and through this the power of advertising has also started playing a major part in the economic and social world (Holm, 2006). Moreover, it has been reflected that advertising (particularly in mature markets) fundamentally performs a reminder role based on protecting existing market share or gaining share from other competitors instead of being strongly persuasive (Eagle et al., 2006).

Conclusion To conclude, after the controversial debate, though advertising has a positive effect on the purchase of a product, it questions the origins of the hierarchy of effects that are the basis of the strong forced arguments. Thus, in relation to the statement in question, it is true that advertising does not exist in isolation from other tools of marketing communications and that topic the concept of IMC is highly significant in business strategies especially in the UK. In terms of the hierarchy of effects of marketing strategies, the most quoted hierarchy of effects model is AIDA that is ascribed to Strong who initiated the notion of IMC in 1925. The AIDA process indicates that the primary task is to move people from being unaware to being aware, and move them to take action through enabling them to develop interest and desire. Hence, advertisings role is to make the market aware and supply exciting and inspiring messages to create interest and desire amongst the target audience. But, other promotional tools (such as, sales promotion, direct marketing, PR, personal selling etc) have to be included to support the outcome of the purchase. Also, the hierarchy of effects have been highly criticised by many for not being an exact indication of the procedure. For instance, people do not make their decisions to purchase a product in the claimed sequential manner and that advertising isnt the principal factor as listed in the AIDA model. In terms of brands like Coke, Pepsi, Microsoft, McDonalds, etc, awareness building or interest generation can hardly characterize a vital role for advertising for most of these expensive brands. On the topic of advertising as a force of persuasion, there are two criticisms that can be highlighted here. Firstly, studies do not actually suggest that people instantly buy products after seeing an advertisement. Secondly, because competing brands too advertise, if the public was to be convinced, they would have stores of different brands of the same product. So, there is definitely something more occurring that intervenes with the procedure. Ehrenberg et al. (2007) have explained that purchase tendencies are generally consistent, steady and predictable in spite of the fluctuations that take place week by week. For that reason, they state that this would not be the case of advertising were a strong force (Pickton & Broderick, 2005). Hence, IMC is essential for a brand to be proven successful in the market as it tries to integrate, combine, and synergise parts of the communications mix, due to the strengths of one covering the weakness of another, for example, Smith (2002) claims that advertising and publicity support one another and produce stronger effect in a cost-effective way. IMC has now become the dominant paradigm for illustrating how marketing communications work (Kitchen et al., 2004). As a result, to answer the question, the statement provided is correct as advertisement surely does not exist in isolation to other tools of marketing communications and the integration of these tools has to be enforced (as it has been over the past several years) to guarantee a successful attempt to the accomplishment of a product/brand.

Bibliography
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