Used for the same broad purposes as direct-mail advertising, nonmailed direct advertising includes all forms of indoor advertising displays and all printed sales appeals distributed from door to door, handed to customers in retail stores, included in packages and bundles of merchandise, or conveyed in some other manner directly to the recipient.
With each medium competing keenly for its share of business, advertising agencies continue to develop new techniques for displaying and selling wares and services. Among these techniques have been vastly improved printing and reproduction methods in the graphic field, adapted to magazine advertisements and to direct-mail enclosures; the use of color in newspaper advertisements and in television; and outdoor signboards more attractively designed and efficiently lighted. Many subtly effective improvements are suggested by advertising research.
During the 19th century it was possible only to approximate the effectiveness of various advertising techniques. Prospective advertisers were guided almost solely by estimates of magazine and newspaper readership. In the early days of broadcasting and outdoor advertising the industry lacked a reliable measure of the audience of these media. In 1914 the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC), an independent organization subscribed to principally by newspaper and magazine publishers, was established to meet the need for authentic circulation statistics and for coordinated, standardized way of presenting them.
Eventually, greater scientific efforts to determine relevant facts about audience and readership developed as a result of competition among the media and the demand among advertisers for an accurate means of judging the relative effectiveness of the media. The media soon found ways of ascertaining not only how many people see or hear advertising messages, but what kinds of people and where they are located. Newspapers and magazines, either through their own research staffs or through organizations employed for a fee, go to great lengths to analyze their circulations to show where their readers live, their income, education, recreational habits, age, and number of children and to provide other guides to determining their readers’ susceptibility to certain classes of products.
Radio and television stations and networks similarly analyze their audiences for the guidance of advertisers. In this field, too, broadcast companies, advertising agencies, and advertisers subscribe to one or more audience-research organizations to determine how many viewers or listeners tune in regional and network shows at any given time. Special surveys of local broadcast programs can be arranged also. In a similar but less comprehensive manner, outdoor- and transportation-advertising companies have set up organizations to tally the numbers of persons exposed to their posters.
Because of the nature of advertising, depending as it does on psychological and other variables difficult to ascertain precisely, the whole field of audience research is complex and controversial. Researchers have found it necessary to consistently refine their techniques and make them increasingly reliable.
One by-product of this widespread interest in, and dependence on, advertising and marketing research is the Advertising Research Foundation, sponsored, directed, and subsidized by advertisers, agencies, and media. This organization, founded in 1936, not only initiates and commissions research projects of its own but also establishes criteria and standards of procedure that tend to enhance the authenticity, reliability, efficiency, and usefulness of all advertising and marketing research.
One major type of research project is the survey of test markets. Advertisers and agencies frequently conduct extensive and expensive surveys to determine the potential acceptance of products or services before they are advertised nationally at costs that may aggregate millions of dollars. In one common procedure the advertising-marketing division of a company dispatches a crew of surveyors to do a door-to-door canvass in various neighborhoods differing in average-income levels. Householders are shown various versions of the product intended for market. If the survey convinces the manufacturer that one of the versions exhibited will attract enough purchasers, a crew then pretests and asking sales appeals by showing provisional advertisements to consumers and asking them to indicate their preference. After the one or two best-liked advertisements or basic appeals are determined, the advertiser produces a limited quantity of the new product and manufacturer can make a decision as to whether a national campaign should be launched.
The question of what motivates a consumer to buy challenges the imagination and ingenuity of the seller and presses research specialists forward into new fields of investigation. Motivational research, for example, attempts to probe the unconscious impulses that motivate buying decisions; advertising agencies then utilize these findings to influence the consumer and to attempt to break down sales resistance. Critical observe outside the advertising industry have assailed the motivational approach as unreliable and as unfair to the consumer, who should not, they feel, be subjected to such indirect sales attacks. Many researchers, however, regard motivational inquiry as only a means to delve deeper into the psychological springs of behavior than did earlier investigations. Through careful questioning and investigation it is often possible for an advertiser to trace a sale and learn what actually motivated the consumer to buy a product. Workers in motivational research try to explore these influences.
The choice of correct combination of means of promotion demands professional skills. For carrying out this work it is the best way to apply to of services of advertising agency.
The firms having own strong advertising departments also resort to services of advertising agencies . In agencies creative and technical experts carry out advertising functions better and more effectively, than regular employees of companies. Agencies may look on the problems facing the firm independently, and they have operational experience with different clients and in different situations. Advertising for the firms doesn’t cost too much because agencies give discounts for permanent customers. And as the firm can break off the contract at any moment, agencies have powerful stimulus to work effectively.
Usually the advertising agency consists of four departments
1. The creative department engaged in development and manufacture of announcements;
2. The department of advertising responsible for a choice of means of advertising and accommodation of announcements;
3. The research department studying the consumer psychology and requirements of audience;
4. The sales department engaged in commercial activity of the agency.
Very often agencies attract new clients in themselves due to their reputation or work. However, as a rule, the client is suggested several agencies to lead competitive presentations and the customer makes his choice on the result of these presentations.
Agencies with full services face a growing competition on the part of agencies with limited service which specialize either on purchase of means of advertising, or on creation of advertising texts, or on manufacture of promotional materials. Commercial managers win more and more authority in advertising agencies and they demand from personnel being aimed at extraction profits more persistently. Some advertizers have opened their own advertising agencies inside the firm, having stopped, thus, long-term communication with the former advertising agencies.
Experts believe that this year the share of Russian companies in the market will increase. In January, 1999, even the mini-sensation was fixed: for the first time the domestic company (it sells sheepskin coats) had more TV advertising, than such a champion in advertising, as Procter&Gamble.
Nevertheless, the general picture doesn’t change essentially.
Budgets of leading Russian advertizers in 2003 (on data Gallup Adfact), in dollars:
Procter&Gamble - 417225216
Nestle - 128608854
Mars - 104419627
Wrigley - 90844724
Stimorol - 89318497
Jonson&Jonson - 55872784
Pepsico - 51788233
Coka-cola - 51135747
Domestic advertising (Tambov region advertisements) has made a large skip during the last few years. When I was a child I could hardly see any advertisements in the streets, on buses, I couldn’t find price-lists in my post. But nowadays nearly once a week in my post I can find advertising commercial messages.
Today we can see many hoardings in the streets of Tambov too. Walking along the main streets we carry our eyes from one signboard to another. I think that their placement is very successful. First of all, they are situated at the entrance of our town. People can learn information about Tambov goods on the way to Tambov. Secondly, the most essential part of hoardings are situated along two main streets: Sovetskaya and Internationalnaya. These are two the most busy streets of the town. In rush hours thousands of people look at these hoardings. To my mind, that is why outdoor advertising in Tambov is well-developed and successful. All the hoardings are bright, effective, colorful and capturing.
Advertising in mass media is also very popular in Tambov. Ads in the Internet is the youngest kind of advertising, may be of this, it is not the leader of mass media advertising. There are some sites with Tambov advertisements but they are not numerous. There are some newspapers containing advertisements such as “Vse Dlya Vas” and “Iz Ruk v Ruki”. I think advertising in press shoul be more well-developed. Many adverts in press are not colourful, there are no interesting ideas, only what and where to buy. I think that it would be better to print advertising newspapers on the paper of higher quality, using more colours. I know the price of such newspapers will rise and the price of adverts too. But we are really interested in such like information, we are interested in qualitative information and we will not mind the price. If advertiser is interested in promoting his goods qualitatively, brightly, effectively, he will pay any money he has, in case it will help in promotion of his products among the audience.
Advertising on TV has changed a lot. A few years ago it was just a “running line” consisting only of words. Nowadays it is not the same “running line” but it consists not only of words but also of emblems and logotypes but also rollicks. There are some interesting rollicks. For example, advertising of Tambov GSM. I think it is one of the most successful because it is true to life, easy for understanding, and I am sure that every person was in such like situation in his or her life. But these rollicks are not ideal. There are some drawbacks. They are too long, some people can zap during it, and it wouldn’t be so effective. It is also a little bit unattractive because the situation is common. I think if the end of this ad would be another it would be more powerful. This is the only example of advertising on TV. But it needs to do much in the development of TV advertising in Tambov and I hope that soon it will be a lot of professional advertisers with creative skills and individuality. Only after that every advertisement would be smart, expressive, unexpected, exciting, creating and individual. Another kind of advertising is samples. It is not well-developed. I think it is so because of the character of Russian people – to have as much as possible if it is free of charge. But sometimes we can meet young girls in the streets or in the supermarkets giving us samples of this or that product.
All in all ads are popular but not well-developed and not of high quality in Tambov. That’s why advertising in Tambov is the sphere which greatly needs to be changed and to be mastered.
I think it is not occasionally that the department of design and
advertising has been set up in Tambov State University named after
G.R. Derzhavin.
I would like to finish my essay speaking about new advertising techniques: endorsement and product placement.
When you watch a TV programme or a movie, you expect to see advertisements in the commercial breaks, but you are also probably receiving a large number of commercial messages during the film or progremme as well, thanks to a marketing technique called “product placement”.
For example, why do the “men in black” wear Ray-Ban sunglasses? The answer is that Ray-Ban did a deal with the film’s producers and followed it with a $ 10 million advertising campaign.
Also many advertisers ask famous, glamorous or successful people to give their approval to a particular brands or products – a technique known as endorsement.
After the end of her marriage to the UK’s Duke of York, Sarah “Fergie” Ferguson was asked by the American company WeightWatchers to appear in an advertising campaign for their range of slimming methods and products.
There is another example of endorsement. Sun Advertising, the Japanese advertising agency, has beaten its main competitor Top Ad, to win a contract to promote Tora’s new soft drinks range. They are going to launch a 10 billion yen TV advertising campaign – one of the biggest ever seen in Japan. The campaign includes an ad with the best baseball player from every major baseball team in Japan. Tatsuo Tokunaga, the director who dreams up Sun Advertising’s campaigns, says that the firm tries to capture people’s attention.
To my mind, they are more expensive than simple advertisements but more powerful. I think so because we usually trust outstanding persons, we want to look like them, we even copy them to some extent.
Advertising is an essential part of business. Ads are necessary either for the manufacturer or for the buyer. They are necessary for the manufacturer because they produce knowledge about it, create preferences, stimulate thoughts and actions about the product. Advertising is one of the most important factors in accelerating the distribution of the products. And it is necessary for the buyer because we learn information about the product from ads. Adverts are trustworthy because advertising cannot turn a poor product into a good one. But what it can do and it really does is to create an awareness about both old and new products.
So, civilization has made a great step in the development of advertising. It has turned into a powerful global network from primitive cries. I think that we can also name our present day era “the era of advertising”, because everything is advertised and everything can be found in adverts.