Due to the rapid infiltration of the Internet and other factors, mass media still remains an important factor of a modern marketing communications program. Four mass communication tools are advertising, sales promotion, events and experiences, and public relations and publicity.
Advertising is any paid form of nonpersonal presentation and promotion of a product by an identified sponsor. Marketing managers must always start by identifying the target market and buyer motives in developing an advertising program. They then can make the five major decisions, known as “the five Ms”. These are the mission, money, message, media, and measurement.
The mission asks what are the advertising objectives. The advertising objective (or advertising goal) is a specific communications talk and achievement level to be accomplished with a specific audience in a specific period of time. They can be classified according to whether their aim is to inform, persuade, remind, or reinforce. Informative advertising aims to create brand awareness and knowledge of new products or new features of existing products. Persuasive advertising aims to create liking, preference, conviction, and purchase of a product or service. Reminder advertising aims to stimulate repeat purchase of products and services. Reinforcement advertising aims to convince current purchasers that they made the right choice.
The money asks how much can be spent and how is spending allocated across media types. Five specific factors to consider when setting the advertising budget include: stage in the product life cycle, market share and consumer base, competition and clutter, advertising frequency, and product substitutability.
The message asks what message should be sent. Marketers develop the message strategy or position of an ad (what the ad attempts to convey about the brand) and its creative strategy (how the ad expresses the brand claims). Advertisers go through three steps: message generation and evaluation (usually focuses on one or two core selling propositions), creative development and execution (how the ad says something is more important than what is says), and social-responsibility review (ads need to comply with legal and regulatory guidelines and does not offend the general public, ethnic groups, racial minorities, or special-interest groups).
The media asks what media should be used. The steps used in determining this are deciding on desired reach, frequency, and impact; choosing among major media types; selecting specific media vehicles; deciding on media timing; and deciding on geographical media allocation. Media selection is finding the most cost-effective media to deliver the desired number and type of exposures to the target audience. The effect of exposures on audience awareness depends on reach (the number of different persons or households exposed to a particular media schedule at least once during a specified time period), frequency (the number of times within the specified time period that an average person or household is exposed to the message), and impact (the qualitative value of an exposure through a given medium). The media planner must know the capacity of the major advertising media types to deliver reach, frequency, and impact, along with their costs, advantages, and limitations. Media types include newspapers, television, direct mail, radio, magazines, outdoor, yellow pages, newsletters, brochures, telephone, and Internet. Alternate advertising options have increased due to reduced effectiveness of traditional mass media. Place advertising is a broad category that includes many creative and unexpected forms to grab consumers’ attention. Types include billboards, public spaces (movie screens and hotel elevators), product placement, and point of purchase. The media planner must search for the most cost-effective vehicles within each chosen media type. The advertiser has both a macroscheduling and a microscheduling decision in choosing media. The macroscheduling decision relates to seasons and the business cycle. The microscheduling decision calls for allocating advertising expenditures within a short period to obtain maximum impact. When launching a new product, the advertiser must choose among continuity (exposures appear evenly throughout a given period), concentration (calls for spending all the advertising dollars in a single period), flighting (calls for advertising during a period followed by a period with no advertising), and pusling (continuous advertising at low-weight levels, reinforced periodically by waves of heavier activity). A company must decide how to allocate its advertising budged over space as well as over time. Advertisers also try to measure the communication effect of an ad, that is, its potential impact on awareness, knowledge, or preference. Communication-effect research (copy testing) seeks to determine whether an ad is communicating effectively.
Sales promotion is a key ingredient in marketing campaigns. It consists of a collection of incentive tools, mostly short term, designed to stimulate quicker or greater purchase of particular products or services by consumers or the trade. It offers incentive to buy. It includes tools for consumer promotion, trade promotion, and business and sales force promotion. Objectives of sales promotion include attracting new triers, rewarding loyal customers, increasing the repurchase rates of occasional users, and attracting brand switchers. Advertising appears to be more effective at deepening brand loyalty. However, small-share competitors may find it advantageous to use sales promotion because of the high cost of advertising.
In using sales promotion, a company must establish its objectives, select the tools, develop the program, pretest the program, implement and control it, and evaluate the results. Sales promotion objectives derive from broader promotion objectives, which derive from more basic marketing objectives for the product. Main consumer promotion tools include samples, coupons, cash refund offers (rebates), price packs (cents-off deals), premiums (gifts), frequency programs, prizes (contests, sweepstakes, games), patronage awards, free trials, product warranties, tie-in promotions, cross-promotions, and point-of-purchase displays and demonstrations. Manufacturer (trade) promotion tools include price-off (off-invoice or off-list), allowance, and free goods. Business and sales force promotion tools include trade shows and conventions, sales contests, and specialty advertising. In deciding to use a particular incentive, marketers must consider the following: size of incentive conditions for participation duration of the promotion, distribution vehicle, timing of promotion, and total sales promotion budget. The cost of a particular promotion consists of the administrative and incentive costs, multiplied by the expected number of units sold. Marketing managers must prepare implementation and control plans that cover lead-time and sell-in time and they can evaluate the program using sales data, consumer surveys, and experiments.
Marketers have several reasons they sponsor events: to identify with a particular target market or lifestyle, to increase salience of company or product name, to create or reinforce perceptions of key brand image associations, to enhance corporate image, to create experiences and evoke feelings, to express commitment to the community or on social issues, to entertain key clients or reward key employees, and to permit merchandising or promotional opportunities. Making sponsorships successful requires choosing the appropriate events, designing the optimal sponsorship program, and measuring the effects of sponsorship. Experiential marketing not only communicates features and benefits, but also connects a product or service with unique and interesting experiences.
Companies must also relate to a large number of interested publics. A public is any group that has an actual or potential interest in or impact on a company’s ability to achieve its objectives. Public relations (PR) includes a variety of programs to promote or protect a company’s image or individual products. The PR department performs the following five functions: press relations, product publicity, corporate communications, lobbying, and counseling. Marketing public relations (MPR) are publicity and other activities that build corporate or product image to facilitate marketing goals. It plays an important role in launching new products, repositioning a mature product, building interest in a product category, influencing specific target groups, defending products that have encountered public problems, and building the corporate image in a way that reflects favorably on its products. In considering when and how to use MPR, management must establish the marketing objectives, choose the PR messages and vehicles, implement the plan carefully, and evaluate the result. The main tools of MPR include publications, events, sponsorships, news, speeches, public service activities, and identity media.
Example: One of the most creative advertisements for a product is for Axe. It makes shower gel, shampoo, conditioner, body spray, and deodorant for men. They advertise on the radio, television, in the movie theater, online, and they even have ring tones. Their tv commercials will have a man in various parts of the store and the woman will drop what they are doing and flock to them. Their most catchy pitch is “Bom Chicka Wah Wah”. Their ads are very catchy and rememorable.
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