UNDERSTANDING ADVERTISING

Overview

Schools of marketing and communication have various advanced definition of the subject matter “advertising.” “Any paid form of personal presentation and promotion of idea, goods or services.” Bovee and Arens (1998) says, “Advertising could be defined as a communication process, a marketing process, an economic process and social process or an information process.” Brassington and Pettit (1997) share similar view when they defined advertising “as any paid of non-personal promotion transmitted through a mass medium.”

Advertising is impersonal and communicates to a large number of people through a paid medium or media. Before the invention of television, advertising was simply defined as “salesmanship in print” by Albert Lasker. Coca cola nation campaign simply defined it as “truth well told” (Bovee and Arens, 1989).

Advertising is a group of activities aiming at and including dissemination of information in a non-personal form, concerning an idea, production or service, to compel action in accordance with the intent of an identifies sponsor. This definition shows a more complete concept of the function of advertising. The overall aim of advertising activities is to influence the consumer through dissemination of information regarding an idea, product or service. Such dissemination assumes a non-personal form because the information is addressed to an audience. The intended message is to promote the sale of products or services, to influence public opinion, to gain political support, to advance a particular cause or to elicit some other response desired by the advertiser. Advertising deals with promotion of ideas, goods and services by an identified sponsor.

The main objective of advertising is to induce immediate action, to created liking and preference for a product or service. Some advertisements also seek to build respected corporate identity for a company, product or service or make all familiar to the public.

Advertising does not only concern itself with making sales alone; rather, it awakens, enlightens and activates the public or produces predisposition to buy the advertised product or service. Hence, advertising is defined by a scholar as a taste marker, extraordinary, a powerful shaper of values, a molder of opinion, and a prime transmitter of idea and information. It is equally defined as “a means of promoting goods and services, for giving information about a product’s features and its availability and for persuading people to buy.” “It is a persuasive communication, it is also a tool of marketing.” In other words, advertising functions only when there is a product or service to advertise, and a market to talk to, it works along to advertise, and a market product available at the point where the customer may purchase them. In this sense, advertising works as an outlet for production, as part of continuing cycle of production to meet demand.

Advertising helps a company put value on itself. Strong product name, a unique worth of the product, its raw value materials, the factory plant and or packaging are all presented to the public through and advertising. It is more prevalent in high industrialized countries where the purchasing power is broadly distributed and where the purchasing power is broadly distributed and where the economic system is competitive, and mass communication media are more generally available.

Classification of Advertising

Advertising is used by commercial companies or sell products and services. The forms that advertising takes and the media in which advertisement appear are as varied as the advertisers themselves and the message that they wish to deliver. The following are the various forms into which advertising is classified;

Classification by Audience: 

In advertising, “A target audience” is that group of persons or individuals to whom the advertisement is directed. These are the final consumers and business concerns.

Classification by Intentions: 

Advertising can be classified according to its intention. The common types of advertising by intentions are product advertising, corporate/institutional advertising and public service advertising.

Classification by Function:

Advertising may be classified according to the functions which is intended to fulfill. Such functions may be to stimulate either the primary or selective demand, it may be to promote either the brand or the firm selling that brand, and it may try to cause indirect od direct action.

       Classification Based on Area of Operation:

Advertising can be done based on the area of operation which has to do with local advertising, regional advertising, national advertising and international advertising.

Classification Based on Medium:

Advertising can be classified based on the medium used. Advertising medium is any paid or unpaid means of presenting messages to target audience. It is basically the channel or form of advertisement through which a company chooses to promote its products or services. There are many advertising media which include, television, radio, magazines, flyers, newspapers, handouts, billboards tec. Advertising can be named after these traditional or principal media.

Advertising Functions

The massive investment in broad promotion by Coca-Cola and Microsoft to the tune of $67.5 billion and $59.9 billion respectively in 2005 was an acknowledgement of the potency of advertisement in rendering the following functions as identified by Terence (2000: 261).

Information Function

The role of advertising here is to communicate to consumer, the existence of goods and service are available and in what locations can they be purchased and sometimes at what price. In playing the information role, advertisement highlights the specials physical and quality attributes of available good to satisfy consumer needs.

Reminding Function

Advertising is intended to keep a brands name in the memory of consumers. When a need arises that it related to the advertised products, past advertising impact makes it possible for the advertisers brand to come to the consumers mind as a purchase candidate. An advertisement created to do this is referred to as reminder advertisement.

Persuading

Effective advertising persuades customer’s rotary advertised products or services. Often times, the persuasion may take the form of influencing primary demand i.e. creating demand for an entire product category.

Adding Value

Giving that there are three major ways a company can add value to its offerings, via; innovation, quality improvement and alteration of consumer perceptions; advertising adds values to brands by influencing consumers’ perception. Effective advertising causes brand to be viewed as more elegant, more stylish, more prestigious and probably superior to competitors’ offerings.

Education Function

Advertising creates knowledge about a wide range of products usage and the alternatives available and offers the right of choice.

Advertising Appeals

Advertising appeals refer to the approach used to attract the attention of consumers to influence their feelings towards the product, service, or cause. It’s something that moves people, speaks to their wants or needs and excites their interest. Advertising uses appeals as a way of persuading people to buy products. Advertising appeal are designed in a way so as to create a positive image of the individuals who use certain products.

The most important types of advertising appeal include.

Emotional Appeals

Emotional appeal is related to an individual’s psychological and social needs for purchasing certain products and services. Many consumers are emotionally motivated or driven to make certain purchases.

Emotional appeal includes personal and social aspects and are often effective for the youths.

Rational Appeals

Rational appeal as the name suggests aims to focus on the individual’s functional utilization or practical needs for particular products and services. Such appeals emphasizes the characteristics and features of the service and how it would be beneficial to own or use the practical brand. Examples of rational appeals are Band wagon appeal, plain appeal, endorsement, youths appeal, romance appeal, snob appeal, brand appeal, masculine/feminine appeal etc. Rational appeal work well for product directed towards the older generation.

Band Wagon Appeal

This type of advertising appeal is meant to signify that since everybody is doing something you should be part of since the crowd as well. It appeals towards the popularity aspects or coolness aspect of a person using a particular product or service.

Youth Appeal

Advertisement that reflect youths giving aspects or ingredients of products use those types of appeal. Cosmetic products in particular make use of this appeal.

Brand Appeal

This appeal is directed towards people who are brand conscious and wish to choose particular products to make a brand statement.

Youths Appeal: All About It

Youths appeal is one of roughly twenty advertising strategies that marketing professional use to persuade people to buy a product, pay for a service, donate to a cause, or buy a product, pay for a service, donate a cause, or otherwise be persuaded. The youth appeal persuades people to purchase a product because they feel it will make them feel younger in some way, either in appearance or in attitude. Many people, especially those over the age of 40, have a longing desire to feel young again, particularly when their bodies aren’t as able as they once were.  The youth appeal tugs on this desire.

This youth appeal is best used when you have a product or service that can make people younger in some way. While beauty products and anti-aging creams seem like the natural products type for the youth appeal, the reality is many products can speak to a person desire to feel younger, more energetic, cooler, and so forth. If your product or service can appeal to someone’s desire to feel younger, it may be a good approach.

Because the youth appeal seeks to persuade people that they will look and/or feel younger by using your company’s product or service, images of youthful people are often effective. Also, you can consider the before/after approach, playing on the idea that a person feels old or aged in some way before using your product but they again back years after using your product. Use words and visuals that appeal to persons longing for feeling that way once again.

It is that appeal that is apparent in offering medications aimed at older adults, adult diapers, erectile dysfunction solutions, hearing aids, dentures, emergency call buttons, hung community centers and other products or services for the elderly. If your company offers product that are appealing to young, it’s important that you know how to properly market these items using a variety of advertising methods and tactics to attract tweens and teenagers means finding out what this demographic is interested in and taking some risks to ensure that consumers in this age group take your company seriously.