Advertising Management
Definition:
Advertising management is a planned
managerial process designed to oversee and
control the various advertising activities
involved in a program to communicate with a
firm's target market and which is ultimately
designed to influence the consumer's purchase
decisions.
Introduction
In small companies, advertising is handled by someone in
sales department who works with an advertising agency.
Large companies set up their own advertising departments
whose managers report to vice president marketing.
Here the cos. Prepare their advertising budgets, approves
advertising agency ads, campaigns and handles direct
marketing mails, dealer displays and other forms of
advertising not ordinarily performed by the agency.
Most companies use an outside advertising agency which
offer several advantages.
Steps in Advertising Management
Once agency (inhouse or external) is selected the steps are
followed for managing advertising are:
1. Situational Analysis
2. Advertising strategy
a) Objective setting
b) Budgeting
c) Message strategy
d) Media strategy
3. Strategy Implementation
4. Strategy Evaluation/ Accessing advertising effectiveness
1. Situational Analysis
The first step is back grounding & briefing , the advertiser needs to
brief about the Company and product which has to be advertised.
(involving SWOT Analysis of company and product)
Agency then Researches and reviews the current state of business
relevant to brands Advertising.
Analysis means making sense of all data collected and figuring out
what the information means for future success of brand.
Internal analysis involves analysis of :
- Previous advertisements
- Departmental Organisation
- Firms ability to implement programme and review of previous
results, etc.
External Analysis involves analysis of:
- Consumer Behavior
- Market segmentation (segments to be targetted) & Positioning.
- competitive and environmental analysis
Decisions to be made on:
- Setting of advertising objectives
- targeting audience
- Product feature & competitive advantage
- Establish Brand image and personality
- Position a product
2. Advertising Strategy
It involves the four major activities:
- Setting of Objective
- Selecting the Target Audiences
- Deciding the budgets
- Setting message strategy
- Setting Media Strategy
Setting the objective
o Informative advertising (brand awareness & knowledge)
o Persuasive advertising( creating liking, preferences,
conviction & purchase)
o Reminder Advertising ( stimulate repeat purchases)
o Reinforcement advertising ( convince current purchasers
that they made right choice)
Selecting Target Audience
the next step is to identify the target consumers most
likely to buy the product. The target should be
appropriately identified without any confusion.
For e.g. if the product is a health drink for growing
kids, then the target customers will be the parents
who are going to buy it and the kids who are going to
drink it.
Deciding on advertising budget (5 factors worth
considering in setting advtg. Budget)
o Stage in product life cycle (new products more budget &
established brands requires lesser)
o Market share & consumer base (High mkt share less budget,
more consumer base less cost per impression basis)
o Competition ( more competition more spending)
o Advertising frequency ( no. of advt. repitition impacts
budget)
o Product substitutability
Setting Message strategy
Advertisers go through following steps to develop the
creative message strategy:
o Message generation
o Message evaluation & selection
o Message Execution
Message generation
- Inductive method: generate advertising ideas by talking to
customers, dealers, experts and competitors.
- Deductive Method: looking for more & more Ads
alternatives to reach the most high rated Ad.
Message Evaluation and selection
o Message should be rated on desirability, exclusiveness and
believability.
o Must say something desirable & interesting about product.
Should be distinct, it must be provable or believable.
Message Execution : Messages impact depend not only on
what is said but also on how it is said.
- the advertiser has to put the message across in such a way
that wins the audiences attention & interest.
- Creative people must find style, tone words headlines and
format for executing the message.
o Execution style:
- Slice of life: (family sitting around dinning table shows
interest about product) (Tata Tea, kurkure)
- Lifestyle: how a product fits into life style (MTR Food
items, Dawat Rice)
- Fantasy
- Musical (Perk ad)
- Personality symbol ( character that personifies the product)
Boomberman
- Technical expertise (Volkswagen)
- Scientific evidence (Pantene, head and sholders)
- Testimonial evidence
- Tone (Humours, informative, emotional)
- Fears (anti ageing, safety, security, etc)
o Words
- memorable and attention getting words must be found.
o Headlines
- News (new boom & more inflation ahead
- Question (Have you had it lately)
- Ways (12 ways to save your income tax)
- Command (dont buy until u try all three)
o Format:
- format elements such as Ad size, colour illustration
Setting Media Strategy
Deciding on reach frequency and impact
Choosing among major media types
Choosing specific media vehicles
Selecting specific media vehicles
Choosing Among Major Media Types
Media planners make their choices by considering following variables
Target audience and media habits (TV & radio most effective to reach
teenagers)
Product characteristics ( male accessories like watch watches cuff lets in
business magazines and LCD Tv , washing machines, good night machines
on TV)
Message characteristics (technical message requires specialized magazines,
a sale announcement message requires radio, newspaper or TVs local
channel -Cost (Tv most expensive, newspaper inexpensive)
Selecting specific vehicles
Media planner must search for most cost effective vehicles within each
chosen media type. Planner has to depend on measurement services
that provide estimates on audience size, composition, media cost.
Audience size has following measures:
Circulation: the number of physical units carrying the advertising.
Audience: the number of people exposed to the vehicle.
Effective audience: the number of people with target audience
characteristics exposed to the vehicle.
Effective ad-exposed audience: the number of people with target
audience characteristics who actually saw the ad.
Deciding on media timing and allocation
In choosing media, advertiser may choose macroscheduling
or microscheduling.
Macroscheduling: scheduling advertising in relation to
seasons & business cycle.
Microscheduling: allocating advertising expenditures
within a short period to obtain max. impact.
Strategy Implementation/Execution
finally the advertise is released with perfect creation,
perfect placement and perfect timing in the market.
Evaluation
the last step is to judge the performance of the ad in terms
of the response from the customers, whether they are
satisfied with the ad and the product, did the ad reached all
the targeted people, was the advertise capable enough to
compete with the other players, etc. Every point is studied
properly and changes are made, if any.
It requires baseline measures before the advertising
campaigns begins and afterwards to check if advertising
objectives are accomplished.
