Advertising and Public Relations Notes

TOPIC 8 - CHAPTER 12: Engaging Consumers and Communicating Customer Value

Learning Outcomes

  • Explain marketing concepts, theories, and strategies for effective marketing decisions.
  • Apply marketing strategies to consumer needs and the marketplace.
  • Analyze marketing mix elements to produce desired responses in a target market.

Learning Objectives

  • Define the five promotion tools and discuss factors shaping the promotion mix.
  • Describe major decisions in developing an advertising program.
  • Explain how companies use public relations to communicate with their publics.

Objectives of Promotion

  • Provide Information
  • Differentiate the product
  • Stabilize sales

The Promotion Mix (Marketing Communications Mix)

  • Basic Elements/Tools:
    • Advertising
    • Direct Marketing
    • Sales Promotion
    • Publicity/Public Relations
    • Personal Selling

Types & Descriptions of Promotion Tools

  1. Advertising:
    • Any paid form of non-personal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods, or services by an identified sponsor.
  2. Direct Marketing:
    • Engaging directly with carefully targeted individual consumers and customer communities to obtain an immediate response and cultivate lasting customer relationships.
  3. Sales Promotion:
    • Short-term incentives to encourage the purchase or sale of a product or service.
  4. Public Relations:
    • Building good relations with the company’s various publics by obtaining favorable publicity, building up a good corporate image, and handling unfavorable rumors, stories, and events.
  5. Personal Selling:
    • Personal presentation by the firm’s sales force for making sales and building customer relationships.

Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC)

  • Coordination of all promotional activities to produce a unified & customer-focused promotional message.
  • IMC ties together all company messages and images.
  • Delivers a clear, consistent, and compelling message about the organization and its brands.

Elements of Integrated Marketing Communication

  • Advertising
  • Sales promotion
  • Direct and Digital Marketing
  • Personal selling
  • Public relations

Developing an Advertising Program

Advertising - Advantages & Disadvantages

  • Advantages:
    1. Advertiser controls the message
    2. Cost-effective way to communicate with large audiences
    3. Effective way to create brand images and symbolic appeals
  • Disadvantages:
    1. Impersonal and not as directly persuasive as salespeople
    2. One-way communication
    3. Can be very costly

Major Advertising Objectives

  • A specific communication task to be accomplished with a specific target audience during a specific period.
  • Classification & Objectives:
    1. Informative Advertising:
      • Used when introducing a new product category; intended to stimulate and build primary demand.
    2. Persuasive Advertising:
      • Intended to aid in competitive stages as competition increases.
    3. Reminder Advertising:
      • Used for mature products; helps maintain customer relationships and keep consumers thinking about the product.

Major Media Types

  • Newspapers
  • Television
  • Radio
  • Magazines
  • Outdoor
  • CCTV

Public Relations

Public Relation Tools

  1. Publicity:
    • Gaining public visibility or awareness for a product, service, or company via the media to help an organization communicate and maintain communication with the public.
  2. Special Publications:
    • Articles written for target groups in newspapers/magazines.
  3. Community Activity Participation:
    • Activities performed by someone or a group for the benefit of the public or its institutions; required by law (Company Act 1967).
  4. Fund-raising:
    • Process of gathering voluntary contributions of money or other resources by requesting donations from individuals, businesses, charitable foundations, or governmental agencies.
  5. Special Event Sponsorship:
    • Sponsoring sporting, cultural, business, or other unique activities occurring for a limited duration (one-time, annual) and presented to a live audience, impacting the public.
  6. Public Affairs Activities:
    • Building and maintaining a strong reputation with government, media, etc., to influence public policy and find common ground.

Public Relation - Advantages & Disadvantages

  • Advantages:
    1. Public relations can dramatize a company or product.
    2. Uses the same channels as advertising, such as radio & TV.
    3. Can reach many prospects who avoid salespeople and advertisements.
  • Disadvantages:
    1. The final message may not be received.

Examples of Public Relation Activities

  • Publicity: Product release.
  • Special Publications: Finance release, skin care product report.
  • Community Activity Participation: Community programs, challenges, community service.
  • Fund Raising: Charity, live run love events.
  • Special Events Sponsorship: Sponsoring shows, tournaments, games.
  • Public Affairs Activities: Donating money, public affairs programs.

Promotion Mix Strategies

  • Marketers can choose from two basic promotion mix strategies: push promotion or pull promotion.
  • Most large companies use a combination of both strategies.

Push vs. Pull Promotion Strategy

  • Push Strategy:
    • Involves “pushing” the product through distribution channels to final consumers.
    • The producer directs marketing activities toward channel members to induce them to carry the product and promote it to final consumers.
  • Pull Strategy:
    • The producer directs its marketing activities toward final consumers to induce them to buy the product.
    • Consumers will demand the product from channel members, who will, in turn, demand it from producers.

Questions & Answers

  1. Any paid form of non-personal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods, or services by an identified sponsor is called advertising.
  2. Strategic positioning is not an aspect of the promotion mix.
  3. With the use of integrated marketing communications, a company's mass-market advertisements, Web site, e-mail, and personal selling communications all have the same message, look, and feel (from the perspective of seller).
  4. Business-to-consumer companies are more likely to emphasize a pull promotion strategy, while business-to-business companies are more likely to emphasize a push promotion strategy.