CORPORATE/ INSTITUTIONAL AVDERTISING

Corporate advertising is a advertising design to promote overall awareness of a company or

enhance its image among a target audience. This type of advertising is designed with two goals in
mind – creating positive of the firm, and communicating firm’s views on social, business and
environmental issues. It is designed to build an overall positive image of the firm among the publics
in and around the firm.

Wells, Burnett and Moriarthy, in this connection, have said, ”Corporate advertising is a type
advertising used by firms to build awareness of a company, its products and the nature of its
business.

Therefore, corporate advertising is designed to attain the following specific objectives in mind:

◼ Boosting employee morale and smoothing labor relations;

◼ Helping newly deregulated industries by easing consumer uncertainty and answer investors
questions;

◼ Helping diversified companies by establishing an identity for the parent firm rather than relying
solely on brand names;

◼ Promotion of organization as well as an idea;

◼ An effort to build up public consciousness about the company and its overall business
operations;

◼ A continuous deliberate effort to build, maintain and enhance close ties with the people in the
society.

TYPES OF CORPORATE ADVERTISING

1. Image Advertising : One form of corporate advertising is devoted to promote the organization’s
overall image. Image advertising is a advertising that creates an identity for a product or service by
emphasizing psychological meaning or symbol association with certain values, lifestyles, and the
like. Image advertising may accomplish a number of objectives including creating goodwill both
internally and externally, creating a position for the company and generating resources both human
and financial. A number of methods are used here:

◼ Sponsorship advertising : by associating itself with high quality (or educational) programming
the firm hopes for a carryover effect that benefits its own image.

◼ General image or Positioning advertising : it attempts to create an image of itself as a market

leader or expert in any suitable area- say, health care expert.
◼ Recruiting advertising : it is designed to attract new employees. By doing this, though an ad, it
attempts to promote a corporate image for the company and induce interest for employment
seeking youths.

◼ Generating financial support advertising : it is designed to generate investments in the

corporation. By creating more favorable image, the firm makes itself attractive to potential
stock purchasers and investors.

2. Event Advertising : Event sponsorship is a type of promotion whereby a company develops

sponsorships relations with a particular event such as a concert, sporting event, or other activity.
Some companies sponsor specific events or causes with primarily traditional public relations
objectives in mind, a separate and more marketing oriented use of sponsorship is also on the
increase. Such event sponsorships take on a variety of form like sports, entertainment, tour,
festivals, fairs, events or arts. Marketers are attracted to event sponsorships because it gets their
products or company name to the consumers. By choosing the right events for sponsorships,
companies can get visibility among their target markets. Event sponsorship is a very effective way
to reach specific geographic, demographic, psychographic, and the ethnic markets.

3. Advocacy Advertising : Advocacy advertising is associated with the publicizing of ideas and
elucidating controversial social issues of public importance in a manner that supports the position
and interests of the sponsor. This type of advertising may be sponsored by a firm or by a trade
association and are designed to tell the readers/viewers the opinion or views of the management and
also their position on a particular issue. Sometimes the advertising is a response to negative
publicity or to the firm’s inability to place an important message through public relation channels.
With this, sometimes the firm just wants to get certain ideas accepted.

4. Cause-related Advertising : According to Semenik, “Cause related advertising is an approach

that features a firm’s affiliation with an important social cause.” An increasing popular method of
image building is cause related advertising in which companies link with charities or non-profit
organizations as contributing sponsors. The company benefits from favorable publicity while the
charity receives much needed funds. Proponents of cause related advertising say that association
with a cause may differentiate one brand or store from another, generate favorable publicity. It can
take a variety of forms. Making outright donations to a non-profit cause, donating materials or
supplies, running public service announcements, or even providing event refreshments are some of
the ways companies get involved.

ADVANTAGES OF CORPORATE ADVERTISING

Companies can get benefit by the use of corporate advertising in number of ways :

◼ It is an excellent vehicle for positioning the firm : firms like product, need to establish an
image or position in the market place to win over competition. Corporate image advertisings are
one way to accomplish this objective. Companies with strong positive corporate images have an
advantage over competitors that may be enhanced when they promote the company in the
society as a whole.
◼ It takes advantage of the benefits derived from positive relations : corporate image
advertising gets the message out, and though the consumers may not perceive it as information
from an objective source, the fact remains that it can communicate what has been done.
Because there is no guarantee that public relation efforts will always receive press coverage or
attention.

◼ It reaches to a selective target market : corporate image advertising sometimes might not be
targeted to the general publics. But sometimes it is targeted to specific groups- say to investors
and managers of other firms in order to attain a specific objective (investment deregulation, for
example).

DISADVANTAGES OF CORPORATE ADVERTISING

The use of corporate advertising always does not offer an unmixed blessing to the firm. Definitely
it has got some disadvantages too. They are :

◼ Questionable effectiveness : there is no strong evidence to support the believe that corporate
advertising works effectively without any trouble for the firm. Its limited use is a testimony for
the same.

◼ Constitutionality or ethics : some critics contend that since larger firms have more money they
can control public opinion in an unfair way. Many consumers see such advertising as unfair and
immediately take a negative view of the sponsor.

◼ Wastage of company resources : through this type of advertising, a company can not directly
appeal to the market to purchase of present their brands. Even the viewers of this advertising
can not understand the company’s offers. Therefore sometimes it appears to be merely an
wastages of company’s valuable resources without having nay practical benefit for the
company.

Book References :

1) Advertising and Promotion - An Integrated Marketing Communications Perspective: Belch &

Belch, 5th edn, Tata McGraw –Hill Publishing Company Ltd, New Delhi.

Prepared for the MBA students of the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh by Dr. Samir Kumar
Sheel, Professor, Department of Marketing, University of Dhaka, Dhaka – 1000 Bangladesh. Phone
: 8611996 (off); Mob : 01717-184071; e-mail : samirmkt@du.ac.bd