Advertising Planning Process - Assignment Example

Advertising management Student’s Name Course Professor Institution City Date Question 1: Advertising Planning Process Advertising is defined as the process of delivering information about goods, services, and products through the media by funding by an identified sponsor. It is also being strategically creative in the way you deliver information to your customers. For an advertisement to be effective, it has to be well planned. The process of advertising entails several stages; objective setting, budget decision, message and media decisions and the campaign evaluation. Objective setting entails clearly defining the objective of the advertisement in clear and measurable term. The benefit of defining the objectives gives a standard upon which the advertiser will evaluate the performance of the advertisement. Generally advertisement objectives are sales oriented or communication oriented. An advertisement may however be specific to increase awareness of a product, changing attitude or giving information about a new product. After setting the objectives, the planning team should come up with a budget for the advertisement. The budget should be realistic and affordable to the company. Once a budget has been prepared and a source for the funds has been established, the team can go ahead to come up with the advertisement message. The message should be aimed at attracting the target audience and give information at the same time. Creativity is very key in structuring the message for the advertisement. The planning team also needs to plan on the media they will use to make the advertisement. Some factors which are considered are the target audience and the most effective way to reach them. Ones the advertisement period is complete, an evaluation of the same is necessary to measure the effect on sales and the communication. This process is however faced with challenges such as the current trends in the advertising forms, the company may not be up to date with the current trends and it is therefore becomes a challenge to select the most effective media to reach out. (321 words) Question 2: Advertising Code The AANA established a self-regulatory system for advertising by releasing codes which should be followed. The codes are platform and technology neutral and evolve and adapt to keep up with the consumer expectations. Some of the codes which have been established are; the code of ethics. These provide an overarching set of principles with which all advertising and marketing communications should comply across all media. It focuses on the competitors and the consumers. It guides that the advertisement should comply with the state rules, should not be misleading, should not contain a misrepresentation that would ruin the goodwill of competitors. It should also not be discriminatory against any people in the society, should not employ a sexual appeal, and portray violence. This code of ethics protects all kinds of people in the society, the consumers, competitors and also the producers. The information of this code is important to the advertising team, as it will guide them as they generally plan for their advertisement to ensure they are as per the required standards. Code for advertising for children is designed to ensure advertising to Australian children is primarily according to the prevailing community standards. It guides advertisements whose theme, visuals and language used is primarily to attract children. The code guides that the advertisement should be factual, in that they must not be misleading, ambiguous and should be understandable to children. It must not also imply that the price of the commodity is within the reach of the family budget. It must also not have any sexual connotation both in language and visuals used. The products advertised to children must have first been declared safe. The advertisers should also not use popular personalities to endorse, promote, or advertise children products. Children are a very sensitive target and these guidelines set a standard in the prevailing moral decay in society as to what reaches the children. The advertising team needs to be aware of the code in order to ensure quality adverts that will be suitable and appealing to children. (338 words) Question 3: Advertising Budgets Several methods are used to set an advertising budget depending on the internal situation of the company. Some of the methods are; percentage of sales method. It is believed that sales follow the effort and expenditure in advertisement and a positive correlation is assumed between the two. Based on this notion, a company may choose to set the advertising budget as a percentage of the sales, either past, current or anticipated sales. This method however has some challenges such as; it neglects other objectives of advertisement and focuses only on sales, it does not consider the different stages in a product life cycle which is necessary during advertisement, it lacks a scientific base, as there are no specific guidelines as to how the percentage will be reached at. Objectives and task method which is also considered the most effective way of coming up with an advertisement budget. It considers the company’s own environment and requirement. The manager is guided to reach this cost by, defining specific objectives, determining the tasks which must be performed to meet them and estimating the costs of performing the tasks. The sum of these costs is the proposed advertising budget. This method is consistent and practicable and considered the scientific way of setting a budget hence no challenges. An advertising manager needs to select the most appropriate method of coming up with an advertisement budget since this is a key in determining certain aspects of the advertisement such as the media to be used. The method used should put into consideration factors such as the economic times for accuracy to avoid instances of budget deficits. The objectives and task methods are recommended. The advertising budget to be considered as other companies expenses are considered for funding and not being treated as a by the way having funds allocated to it after the expenses have been paid. This explains more need for accuracy. (317 words) Question 4: Internet and Traditional Advertising The world has become a global village where people are connected by the internet across all corners. The internet has been very beneficial to the world since people are able to connect with family and friends, do their research, and purchase things online all at the comfort of their homes. The traditional media company owners and staff are not rejoicing at the integration of people’s lives. The internet is continually leading to a downfall in the traditional advertising media. Some of this media includes newspaper, radio, television, and outdoor billboards. The newspapers were previously a good form of advertisement, as people were known to read the papers to keep up with the current affairs. The internet has however provided a quick source of information and provides news as soon as they break and therefore with the internet, one is constantly up to date. This has translated to a reduction in the readers hence making it no longer appealing to advertise through this media. This has significantly reduced the revenue of the publishing companies and sadly to an extent of retrenching their staff or closing down of the company. In order to cope up with this, newspaper publishing companies should put their papers online such that they can be accessed by the readers through the internet without having to get the hard copy of the same. Magazines were very effective also for use as advertisement media. Different magazines addressed different issues and had a specific target audience. Companies would use this platform to advertise products targeting the same kind of population. A women magazine would for example be a good platform to advertise women targeted products. The internet is however giving the same information on the issues addressed in the magazines more readily and thus the readers opt to use the internet. This has caused a significant decrease in the readers. This making them an almost irrelevant mode of advertisement. This has also seen a close of so many magazine publishing companies and the few which are remaining have seen a great decline in their publications from the recent past. Magazines can avail their products online will be a great boost in reviving the magazine industry. Radios and televisions were mainly run by income from advertisements. The internet has however led to a decrease in the number of listeners and viewers respectively. People choose to stream what the televisions are offering and watch without interruptions and they can also do it at their own time and wherever one is. The internet also gives a variety so that the user can choose to watch or listen to what they want and not what is dictated by the television. All these factors make people stop the television and radio as a source of information and entertainment. In order to keep up and prevent their collapse, the media houses need to think of having their channels and programs online has that the viewers can still follow through even without the television itself. The internet also provides a platform for advertisement which is seemingly cheap and has proven to be effective. It is considered effective since it reaches more people and provides a platform for the advertisers and customers to interact. The customer is able to ask questions to the advertiser and also give a feedback. This feedback helps in advertising to new customers and convincing them purchase the product. The advertising team for any company should therefore carry out a detailed analysis of the media they intend to use for their advertisement and assess whether using them; the information is going to get to the target audience as required. (605 words) Question 5: Learning, Dissonance and Low involvement in advertising Learning is there process of getting a new way of doing things. In advertisement, learning is expected to be achieved through observation. Modeling is used as the most effective way to get people to adapt a behavior. It has been observed from research that once an individual sees something, they tend to model it and a behavior arises out of it. These behaviors are the key contributors to purchasing behavior. Advertisements therefore use attractive people to model what they are advertising and reinforced by a good thing if it is a product they are promoting. This will attract people to model the same thing and out of that a behavior is developed and a pattern of loyalty to the product is developed also which is what any company targets. If an organization is trying to discourage a certain behavior, they use unattractive people to model the behavior, and a punishment follows along the bad behavior. This makes people quit the behavior which is perceived as wrong. The advertising team therefore needs to be very specific on the objective of the advertisement. This will enable them choose the appropriate models for their products. Dissonance in marketing is not a very good feature which the advertising management team seeks to eliminate. Dissonance refers to a psychological conflict that occurs in a buyer when making a purchase consideration of a product. It is a tension that arises between ones beliefs and practices and a purchase decision that contradicts these beliefs. The tension arises when a buyer is faced with two equally appealing options or two options which are equally unappealing. Marketers work to combat dissonance by providing consumers with ways of narrowing down product choices and separating their products from those of the competition. Marketing campaigns may seek to manage consumer doubts about making product purchases with the use informative advertising. This gives them a chance to bring in testimonials from other people concerning the quality and effectiveness of a product and hence clear the confusion. The advertising team is tasked with reducing dissonance to ensure customers choose their product and guarantee repeat purchase. This they can achieve as indicated above through making well informative adverts concerning their products. A consumer’s level of involvement is how interested he or she is in buying a product. Low involvement products are cheap and pose a low risk even if the consumer makes a mistake in choice. Examples of low involvement decisions are what soft drink to purchase after lunch. Low involvement decisions do not need a lot of information as they are made mostly from routine response to a scenario. As in the example above, the consumer has a drink they take and they will make an order for the same without need for any research. Impulse buying is also considered a form of a low involvement purchase decision since the purchase decision is made without much research or information on the product. The advertising team therefore needs to come up with adverts which will make consumers form a routine purchase for their product and hence develop a behavior on the same. This will make their product a first option when a consumer needs to make a low involvement decision. They also need to make their products eye captivating to the consumers and this will increase the chance of impulse buying even for a consumer who was not interested in the product. (567 words) Read More