Advertising Campaigns

In advertising campaign is a series of advertisement messages that share a single idea and
theme which make up an integrated marketing communication (IMC). Advertising campaigns
appear in different media across a specific time frame. Various types of media can be used in
these campaigns such as radio, TV, and internet.

Radio and TV advertising campaigns use methods including but not limited to electronic
billboards, commercial announcements, personal endorsements, promotions, blurbs, and
plugs. Radio and TV Advertising Campaigns can also utilize Direct Response Advertising,
Viral Marketing, and Remnant Advertising, as well as include newer technology such as
Satellite advertising.

Much like Satellite radio, Internet advertising campaigns can be viewed as a more recent
development based on the advancements of technology and the growing availability of
internet throughout the world. Methods used in internet advertising include but are not
limited to search engines, banners, blurbs, video clips, interactive games, and emails.
Campaigns can also utilize Direct Response Internet Advertising, Viral Advertising, and
Remnant Internet Advertising.

Marketing departments and advertising agencies might utilize one or any number of different
media types as well as advertising methods. Others will focus on one form of medium and/or
specialize in one or two particular methods of advertising.

The critical part of making an advertising campaign is determining a campaign theme, as it

sets the tone for the individual advertisements and other forms of marketing communications
that will be used. The campaign theme is the central message that will be communicated in
the promotional activities. The campaign themes are usually developed with the intention of
being used for a substantial period but many of them are short lived due to factors such as
being ineffective or market conditions and/or competition in the marketplace and marketing
mix.

Advertising campaign is an attempt to reach a particular target market by designing a series

of advertisements and placing them in various advertising media. In other words advertising
campaign is series of advertisement messages that share a single idea and theme which make
up an integrated marketing communication (IMC). Advertising campaigns appear in different
media across a specific time frame.

Elements of a Successful Advertising Campaign

A successful marketing campaign needs certain elements to be successful. The following
information will help you to develop a successful marketing campaign.

1) Establish a feeling of urgency for the buyer

Basically tell your customers, "You need to sign up today because it will make you reach
your goals." Don't tell your customer the offer will still be as good tomorrow; they must buy
today! Urgency! Study how successful ads make the customer act now.

2) Show a list of benefits

There must be a list of benefits to make customers sign up. Will you be smarter using your
services? Will he get more visitors? Will your server be better than the competitions
hardware? Will your business help to make the site more successful? Or make him richer, or
healthier, or faster? Focus on the client, not the advertiser. Most benefits need to be skillfully
integrated into the ad. It is a waste of time and money in an ad or on your website if you don't
work in benefits and present them properly.

3) Call to action
Tell them what they must do to get it. Don't assume that your prospects and customers will
figure out how to get what you are offering. They won't do your work for you. So, go ahead
and tell them what to do. If they have to call you to get it, then tell them to call (to call you
now!). If they have to write or drop a post card in the mail, or fax something to you, then tell
them clearly and in words easy to understand. The point is to make it as easy as possible for
your target customer to do what you want them to do. People don't like to do anything that is
going to take work on their part. Make it as easy for them to respond as possible, or they
won't = no good results for you.

4) Do it again
You have to (must) tell customer what to do (to sign up with you). Tell your customer to
order now (this moment). So many ads assume that the customer will guess to fill out the
contact us form, email you, or telephone for the information, or product. Tell the customer
what to do. Provide the customer on how to respond today in several ways. As more options
you can offer, the better will be the results.

5) Plan your advertising calendar and campaign several months in advance

Failure to plan advertising in advance will waste a lot of your money. Rush charges, poor
design, rate increases, poor creative and poor copy are common results of failing to plan in
advance. “I didn’t have enough time”, “I was under the gun to get this placed”, are common
phrases heard under rushed circumstances. Take a blank calendar and fill in the days, months,
or quarters to advertise to your target markets. Figure out the number of ad insertions that
will make sense and negotiate a contract with the various media suppliers (e.g. local
newspapers). Book banner web space on the important website early in advance. Prepare
your website with a special landing page for the expected visitors.

5) Test your banners and your ads

Only by trial and error will you be able to set a baseline as to the best response rates for your
ads and banners. It is very important to maximize response for the amount of dollars spent.
Sometimes re-phrasing text or adjusting the ad layout can make the difference between a low
or just average response and a great success and high ROI (Return on Investment). You will
need to find out what works best for your business. After you find this out, you’ll want to stay
on course and base future advertising campaigns on the success of the old one.

6) Avoid misleading or dishonest advertising

Avoid misleading or dishonest advertising in hopes of converting duped readers/website
visitors into using your products or services. Honesty and integrity are the primary key to
repeat sales and repeat business. If you have to trick your audience to get their attention, you
will have a very hard time keeping their attention and their business if they sign up at all.

7 ) Running on-(Web)site events

Running events on your website is an excellent way to encourage repeat traffic and repeat
visitors. You'll want to begin running events once traffic from your site launch begins to fade.
Examples include contests, games, on-line interviews, chat sessions and maybe even audio
broadcasts. Do the things your competitors don't do.
Five Indian Advertisements

Advertising is one of the most important factors behind the success of any product today. The
quality of a product may be superb, but if it fails to create a buzz in the market in terms of
visibility and covetability, it is more or less written off.

To illustrate the point an advertising guru makes the crude, but apt comparison that a fish lays
hundreds of eggs in one go but stays quiet about it. A hen lays one egg but announces it to the
world with a loud cockadoodle doo. And the difference is pretty obvious- not many of us can
boast of eating a fish egg whereas most of us cannot do without the hen’s egg as part of our
daily diet. So if you want your product to be consumed, you better let it be known to the
world. However, there are times when the best of ad campaigns fall short of sending a clear
and desired message to the target audience and end up being exercises in futility. These are
either over ambitious, unrealistic or simply too intelligent for their own good. Let’s try and
study a few ad campaigns in recent times that left a void in terms of creating the right effect
and made us believe in the virtue of ‘ keep it simple’.

1. Motorola (Model No): The ad depicts three men in an office pouring their heads over
certain discrepancies in their financial sheets. The two bosses are interrogating a subordinate
who claims to be totally innocent and unaware of how such a misappropriation could take
place. This is when the subordinate’s mother calls up on his mobile and the bosses notice the
expensive looking phone. They exchange knowing glances and start questioning him on
when he bought the mobile. The ad hopes to convey in a humorous manner that it is a cheap
phone that looks expensive and if you choose to buy it, please face the consequences.

Let's for a minute imagine that many youngsters with limited pocket money would like to go
for a contraption that looks far more expensive than it is. But isn’t the advertising loud and
clear about the same aspect, which makes the phone model very recognizable and defeats the
whole purpose. What is worse than being stuck with an average looking cheap phone after
all? Being stuck with a phone that set out to look expensive, but looks cheap now because
everybody knows how cheap it is!

2. Maggi Healthy Soups: Now we all know what powdered soups are all about. A
dehydrated glib glob (read mass) of some circumspect vegetables with noodles of
hydrogenated fats and mono sodium glutamate thrown in for flavor. They are high on
convenience and the MSG ensures that we often even end up yearning for these products. But
to actually call them healthy soups is getting a bit over ambitious. Just because you have
printed ‘added calcium, vitamins, iron and what not on the cover is no proof of its nutritive
value. Therefore this ad campaign fails to make a mark. It would be better if they just
highlighted it as an indulgence that any overworked working woman resorts to in order to
feed her family on stressed out days. But show me one woman who serves Maggi noodles or
soups to her kids without an iota of guilt and I’ll show you an ad campaign that failed before
it started.

3. Ponds Age Defying Complex: Ok, those on the wrong side of thirty generally know about
the fine lines appearing on their faces, the crow’s feet, the laugh lines etc. Not that one is
thrilled to bits to see the first signs of aging, but the point is the way in which the campaign
tries to sell the product. To think that their models are basically shown as these unsure, not-
so-confident and unaccomplished women in their late thirties with the sole ambition of
getting their husbands to notice the overnight change in their looks and take them out for
candle lit dinners leaves a lot to be desired. One almost feels like screaming and telling them,
“Please go and get a life first.” I, for one, would not be caught dead buying such a cream.
Wouldn’t it be much better if a campaign celebrates all that a woman of substance stands for,
who is not mortally scared of aging gracefully and definitely not so insecure about her
husband passing her on for someone younger. The ad fails to create a positive vibe among
smart older women of today who would take pride in the wisdom and maturity that comes
with age and managing to look young is just a bonus and not the end of life.

4. Tata Sky: This ad is planned around the World Cup fever where a person is off on a trip to
the West Indies wearing a costume made out of grass. Hrithik Roshan makes a timely
intervention in the guy’s holiday plans and suggests watching the matches on Tata Sky with
the possibility of his being the lucky winner and watching the Final in Hrithik’s personal
theatre. Is the ad aiming to dissuade people from traveling to an exciting destination where
they can watch great cricketing action unfold live in front of them? Or is it a small hint that
given the form of the Indian team, it is really not worth going all the way. Whatever be the
intention, the ad fails to make an impact and Hrithik is truly wasted.

5. Guru- Abhi Ash: In recent times this was the most well planned ad campaign to promote
their documentary style movie, Guru, in the theatres. So we had Big B himself making
announcements in the media about how Abhishek had proposed to Aishwarya in the US
where they had gone for the premier and how she said yes and so on. Considering that both
the Bacchan parivar and Ash have spent a major part of the last few months doing the rounds
of all possible temples and shrines under the media glare, why this sudden need to inform the
masses of their alliance just a week before the release of Guru. The fact of the matter is that
even though Abhishek’s role is reasonably good, once you know it is Dhirubhai Ambani’s
story there seems no reason to watch it till the end unless you romanticize watching a couple
about to get married in real life. Thank God the audiences did not fall for the silly campaign
and gave its own verdict.

Managing the Advertising Campaign

In this part of our Principles of Marketing Tutorials we continue our discussion of advertising
by taking a closer look at the decisions involved in creating an advertising campaign.
Whether a marketer employs a professional advertising agency to handle its advertising
campaign or chooses to undertake all advertising tasks on its own, a successful campaign
requires a number of important decisions including:

1. Setting the Advertising Objective

2. Setting the Advertising Budget
3. Selecting Media for Message Delivery
4. Creating a Message
5. Evaluating Campaign Results

For major consumer products companies that spend large sums to promote their products
each of these decisions will be intensely evaluated.

On the other hand, smaller companies with limited budgets may be forced to focus what little
money they have on only one key decision, such as selecting media, and give less attention to
other areas. In either case, knowledge of all advertising campaign decisions is important and
should be well understood by all marketers

Setting the Advertising Objective

As we noted in the Promotion Decisions tutorial, marketing promotion, which includes

advertising, can be used to address several broad objectives including: building product
awareness, creating interest, providing information, stimulating demand and reinforcing the
brand. To achieve one or more of these objectives, advertising is used to send a message
containing information about some element of the marketer’s offerings. For example:

 Message About Product – Details about the product play a prominent role in
advertising for new and existing products. In fact, a very large percentage of product-
oriented advertising includes some mention of features and benefits offered by the
marketer’s product. Advertising can be used to inform customers of changes that take
place in existing products. For instance, if a beverage company has purchased the
brands of another company resulting in a brand name change, an advertising message
may stress "New Name but Same Great Taste".
 Message About Price – Companies that regularly engage in price adjustments, such as
running short term sales (i.e., price markdown), can use advertising to let the market
know of price reductions. Alternatively, advertising can be used to encourage
customers to purchase now before a scheduled price increase takes place.
 Message About Other Promotions – Advertising often works hand-in-hand with other
promotional mix items. For instance, special sales promotions, such as contests, may
be announced within an advertisement. Also, advertising can help salespeople gain
access to new accounts if the advertising precedes the salesperson’s attempt to gain an
appointment with a prospective buyer. This may be especially effective for a company
entering a new market where advertising may help reduce the uncertainty a buyer has
about a new company.
 Message About Distribution – Within distribution channels, advertising can help
expand channel options for a marketer by making distributors aware of the marketer’s
offerings. Also, advertising can be used to let customers know locations where a
product can be purchased.

Setting the Advertising Budget

Setting an advertising objective is easy, but achieving the objective requires a well-thought
out strategy. One key factor affecting the strategy used to achieve advertising objectives is
how much money an organization has to spend. The funds designated for advertising make
up the advertising budget and it reflects the amount an organization is willing (i.e., approved
by high-level management) to commit to achieve its advertising objectives.

Organizations use several methods for determining advertising budgets including:

 Percentage of Sales – Under this approach advertising spending is set based on either
a percentage of previous sales or a percentage of forecasted sales. For example, an
organization may set next year’s advertising budget at 10% of this year’s sales level.
One problem with this approach is that the budget is based on what has already
happened and not what is expected to occur. If the overall market grows rapidly in the
following year, the 10% level from the previous year may be well below what is
necessary for the company to maintain or increase its market share. Alternatively,
companies may consider allocating advertising funds based on a percentage of
forecasted sales. In this way advertising is viewed as a driver of future sales and
spending on advertising is linked directly to meeting future sales forecasts. However,
since future sales are not guaranteed, the actual percentage spent may be considerably
higher than expected if the sales forecast is greater than what actually occurs.
 What is Affordable – Many smaller companies find spending of any kind to be
constraining. In this situation, advertising may be just one of several tightly allocated
spending areas and, thus, the level spent on advertising may vary over time. For these
companies, advertising may only occur when extra funds are available.
 Best Guess – Companies entering new markets often lack knowledge of how much
advertising is needed to achieve their objectives. In cases where the market is not well
 understood, marketers may rely on their best judgment (i.e., executive’s experience)
of what the advertising budget should be.

Selecting Media for Message Delivery

With an objective and a budget in place, the advertising campaign will next need to focus on
developing the message. However, before effort is placed in developing a message the
marketer must first determine which media outlets will be used to deliver their message since
the choice of media outlets guides the type of message that can be created and how frequently
the message will be delivered.

An advertising message can be delivered via a large number of media outlets. These range
from traditional outlets, such as print publications, radio and television, to newly emerging
outlets, such as the Internet and mobile devices. However, each media outlet possess different
characteristics and, thus, offer marketers different advantages and disadvantages.

The characteristics by which different media outlets can be assessed include the following
seven factors:

1. Creative Options
2. Creative Cost
3. Market Reach of Media
4. Message Placement Cost
5. Length of Exposure
6. Advertising Clutter
7. Response Tracking

Note that a detailed discussion of different media outlets for delivering an advertisements can
be found in the Types of Advertising Media tutorial.

Selecting Media: Creative Options

An advertisement has the potential to appeal to four senses – sight, sound, smell and touch.
(It should be noted that promotion can also appeal to the sense of taste but generally these
efforts generally fall under the category of sales promotion which we will discuss in a later
tutorial.)

However, not all advertising media have the ability to deliver multi-sensory messages.
Traditional radio, for example, is limited to delivering audio messages while roadside
billboards offer only visual appeal. Additionally, some media may place limits on when
particular options can be used. For instance, some search engines or websites may only
accept graphical-style ads, such as images, if these conform to certain large dimensions and
limit small advertising to text-only ads.

Selecting Media: Creative Costs

The media type chosen to deliver a marketer’s message also impacts the cost of creating the
message. For media outlets that deliver a multi-sensory experience (e.g., television and
Internet for sight and sound; print publications for sight, touch and smell) creative cost can be
significantly higher than for media targeting a single sensory experience. But creative costs
are also affected by the expectation of quality for the media that delivers the message. In fact,
media outlets may set minimal production standards for advertisements and reject ads that do
not meet these standards. Television networks, for example, may set high production quality
levels for advertisements they deliver. Achieving these standards requires expensive
equipment and high cost labor, which may not be feasible for small businesses. Conversely,
creating a simple text only Internet advertisement requires very little cost that almost anyone
is capable of creating.

Selecting Media: Market Reach of Media

The number of customers exposed to a single promotional effort within a target market is
considered the reach of a promotion. Some forms of advertising, such as television
advertising, offer an extensive reach, while a single roadside billboard on a lightly traveled
road offers very limited reach.

Market reach can be measured along two dimensions: 1) channels served and, 2) geographic
scope of a media outlet.

 Channels Served - This dimension relates to whether a media outlet is effective in

reaching the members within the marketer’s channel of distribution. Channels can be
classified as:
o Consumer Channel – Does the media outlet reach the final consumer market
targeted by the marketer?
o Trade Channel – Does the media outlet reach a marketer’s channel partners
who help distribute their product?
o Business-to-Business – Does the media outlet reach customers in the business
market targeted by the marketer?
 Geographic Scope – This dimension defines the geographic breadth of the channels
served and includes:
o International – Does the media outlet have multi-country distribution?
o National – Does the media outlet cover an entire country?
o Regional – Does the media outlet have distribution across multiple geographic
regions such as counties, states, provinces, territories, etc.?
o Local – Does the media outlet primarily serve a limited geographic area?
o Individual – Does the media outlet offer individual customer targeting?

Selecting Media: Message Placement Cost

Creative development is one of two major spending considerations for advertising. The other
cost is for media placement; the purchase of ad time, space or location with media outlets that
deliver the message. Advertising placement costs vary widely from very small amounts for
certain online advertisements to exorbitant fees for advertising on major television programs.
For example, in the United States the highest cost for advertising placement occurs with
television ads shown during the National Football League’s Super Bowl championship game
where ad rates for a single 30-second advertisement exceed (US) $2.5 million. By contrast,
ads placed through online search engines may cost less than (US) $1 dollar.

Media outlets set placement cost using several factors though the most important are
determined by audience size, audience type and an advertisement’s production
characteristics:

 Audience Size – Refers to the number of people who experience the media outlet
during a particular time period. For example, for television outlets audience size is
measured in terms of number of program viewers, for print publications audience is
measured by number of readers, and for websites audience is measured by number of
visitors. In general, the more people experiencing a media outlet, the more the outlet
can charge for ads. However, actual measurement of the popularity of media outlets is
complicated by many factors to the point where the media outlets are rarely trusted to
 give accurate figures reflecting their audience. Today nearly all media outlets rely on
third-party audit organizations to measure audiences and most marketers rely on these
auditors to determine whether the cost of placement is justified given the audited
audience size.
 Audience Type – As we have discussed many times in the Principles of Marketing
tutorial, the key to marketing is aligning marketing decisions to satisfy the needs of a
target market. A well-defined target market is critical to successful marketing and
vital to a successful advertising campaign. When choosing a media outlet, selection is
evaluated based on the outlet’s customer profile (i.e., viewers, readers, website
visitors) and whether these match the characteristics sought by the marketer’s desired
target market. The more selectively targeted the audience, the more valuable this
audience is to advertisers since with targeted advertising promotional funds are being
spent on those with the highest potential to respond to the advertiser’s message. The
result is that media outlets, whose audience shares very similar characteristics (e.g.,
age, education level, political views, etc.), are in a position to charge higher
advertising rates than media outlets that do not appeal to such a targeted group.
 Characteristics of the Advertisement – Media outlet also charge different rates based
on creative characteristics of the message. Characteristics that create ad rate
differences include:
o Run Time (e.g., length of television or radio ads )
o Size (e.g., print ads size, billboard size)
o Print Style (e.g., black-and-white vs. color)
o Location in Media (e.g., back magazine cover vs. inside pages)

Selecting Media: Length of Exposure

Some products require customers be exposed to just a little bit of information in order to
build customer interest. For example, the features and benefits of a new snack food can be
explained in a short period of time using television or radio commercials. However,
complicated products need to present more information for customers to fully understand the
product. Consequently, advertisers of these products will seek media formats that allot more
time to deliver the message.

Media outlets vary in how much exposure they offer to their audience. Magazines and other
publications provide opportunities for longer exposure times since these media types can be
retained by the audience (i.e., keep old magazines) while exposure on television and radio are
generally limited to the time the ad was broadcast.

Selecting Media: Advertising Cluttter

In order to increase revenue, media outlets often include a large number of ads within a
certain time, space or location. For instance, television programs may contain many ads
inserted during the scheduled run-time of a program. A large number of advertisements create
an environment of advertising clutter, which makes it difficult for those in the targeted
market to recognize and remember particular advertisements. To break through the clutter
advertisers may be required to increase the frequency of their advertising efforts (i.e., run
more ads). Yet greater advertising frequency increases advertising expense. Alternatively,
advertisers may seek opportunities that offer less clutter where an ad has a better chance of
standing out from others. This can be seen with online downloads (e.g., podcasts) of sports
and news programming where a 5-10 minute story will be presented with a single 30-60
second ad.

Selecting Media: Response Tracking

As we noted in the Advertising tutorial, marketers are embracing new technologies that make
it easier to track audience response to advertisements. Newer media developed using Internet
technology offer effective methods for tracking audience response compared to traditional
media. But Internet-media are not alone in providing response tracking. Other advertising
outlets, such as advertising by mail and television infomercial programming, also provide
useful measures of audience reaction.

Creating an Advertising Message

In our discussion of the communication process in the Promotion Decisions tutorial, effective
communication requires the message source to create (encoding) a message that can be
interpreted (decoding) by the intended message receiver. In advertising, the act of creating a
message is often considered the creative aspect of carrying out an advertising campaign. And
because it is a creative process, the number of different ways a message can be generated is
limited only by the imagination of those responsible for developing the message.

When creating an advertising message the marketer must consider such issues as:

 General Message Factors

 Message Structure
 Message Testing

General Message Creation Factors

When developing the message the marketer must take into consideration several factors
including:

 Characteristics of the Target Audience – The makeup of the target audience (e.g., age,
location, attitudes, etc.) impacts what is conveyed in the message.
 Type of Media Used – The media outlet (e.g., television, print, Internet, etc.) used to
deliver the message impacts the way a message will be created.
 Product Factors – Products that are highly complex require a different message than
simpler products. Additionally, the target market’s familiarity with a product affects
what is contained in a message. For instance, a new product attempting to gain
awareness in the market will have a message that is much different than a product that
is well-known.
 Overall Advertising Objective – As mentioned, the objective of the advertising
campaign can affect the type of ad that is designed. For example, an advertisement
with the objective of stimulating immediate sales for an existing product will be
different than an advertisement that seeks to build initial awareness of a new product.

Advertising Message Structure

Most advertising messages share common components within the message including:

 The Appeal – This refers to the underlying idea that captures the attention of a
message receiver. Appeals can fall into such categories as emotional, fearful,
humorous, and sexual.
 Value Proposition – The advertising message often contains a reason for customers to
be interested in the product which often means the ad will emphasize the benefits
obtained from using the product.
 Slogan – To help position the product in a customer’s mind and distinguish it from
competitors’ offerings, advertisements will contain a word or phrase that is repeated
across several different messages and different media outlets.
Advertising Message Testing

Before choosing a specific message marketers running large advertising campaigns will want
to have confidence in their message by having potential members of the targeted audience
provide feedback. The most popular method of testing advertising for the marketer (or their
ad agency) is to conduct focus groups where several advertising messages are presented. On
the Internet, advertising delivery technology allows for testing of ads by randomly exposing
website visitors to different ads and then measuring their response.

Evaluating Advertising Campaign Results

The final step in an advertising campaign is to measure the results of carrying out the
campaign. In most cases the results measured relate directly to the objectives the marketer is
seeking to achieve with the campaign. Consequently, whether a campaign is judged
successful is not always tied to whether product sales have increased since the beginning of
the campaign. In some cases, such as when the objective is to build awareness, a successful
campaign may be measured in terms of how many people are now aware of the product.

In order to evaluate an advertising campaign it is necessary for two measures to take place.
First, there must be a pre-campaign or pre-test measure that evaluates conditions prior to
campaign implementation. For instance, prior to an advertising campaign for Product X a
random survey may be undertaken of customers within a target market to see what percentage
are aware of Product X. Once the campaign has run, a second, post-campaign or post-test
measure is undertaken to see if there is an increase in awareness. Such pre and post testing
can be done no matter what the objective including measuring