Select the advertising media

Advertisers must select media through which to send their messages. The major types of advertising media are: 1) print, 2) broadcast, 3) direct, 4) location. Furthermore, the advertiser also has to decide which particular vehicles within each medium to use. For example, if the selected medium is magazines, which vehicle(s) (Time, TV Guide, etc.) should be selected? These decisions must take advertising objectives, information to be communicated, and funds available for advertising into consideration.

The more alike members of a vehicle's audience are in one or more characteristics that are important to the advertiser, the greater the qualitative selectivity. Thus, a dress manufacturer that wants to advertise to larger-sized women should consider BBW (formerly Big Beautiful Women) magazine to be more qualitatively selective than Cosmopolitan. The greater the vehicle ability to reach people in selected areas, the greater its geographical selectivity. Southern Living offers more geographical selectivity than Better Homes and Gardens. But using highly selective vehicles can be dangerous if the marketer has not defined the target market clearly. The ads could miss (not reach) important market segments.

More frequently, advertisers want to use the knowledge of learning theory that shows that consumers can learn to discriminate between brands. Therefore, the promotional strategy may be based on positioning the brand so that consumers will differentiate it from the competition. In many instances, learning becomes so entrenched that a habit develops and the consumer buys the same brand without even being aware of the learning experience that originally led to the purchase. Under such circumstances, it is extremely difficult for advertising to get consumers to switch brands. To counter strongly entrenched buying habits, significant innovation and a heavy level of promotion are usually needed.

 

Exercise 3. Answer the questions.

1. What are the major types of advertising media?

2. What do the vehicles of advertising depend on?

3. Explain the meaning of qualitative and geographical selectivity.

4. Why do advertisers want to use the knowledge of learning theory?

5. Why is it so difficult to get consumers to switch brands?

6. What is the importance of discrimination? Can you give any example?

7. When is entrenchment an advantage?

Exercise 4. Define the following words and phrases.

Learning experience, entrenched habits, switch brands, heavy level of promotion, without being aware of, get somebody to do something, discriminate between brands, more frequently, differentiate from the competition, in many instances, available.

 

Exercise 5. Fill in the appropriate words:

1) advertisement; 2) advertisements; 3) a mail-order advertisement; 4) beer commercials; 5) make good commercials; 6) publicity; 7) the advertisements; 8) they don't advertise; 9) to define and to publicise; 10) to publicise.

1. "In the past, we had a strategy, but our agencies didn't stick to it. But they did

a) _________ and they did win awards. This may surprise you, though. I don't care about awards; I want to sell products." (James H. Harralson)

2. I hope every company will make arrangements b) _______ accurately the facts.

3. "Kodak sells film, but c) _______ film. They advertise memories." (Theodore

Parker)

4. The d) ________ must also contain an example of the details of payment.

5. Similarly, a British satellite station could broadcast e) _________ to France,

while French television could not.

6. "You can tell the ideals of a nation by its f) ________." (George Norman)

7. Overall coverage and g) _________of the day was excellent.

8. The welfare worker’s is h) _____ the firm's good intentions toward the

community.

9. The most truthful part of a newspaper is i) ________" (Thomas Jefferson)

10. In j) ________ for the book he makes a unique offer.

 

Exercise 6. Fill the blanks with the necessary words.

Some commercial advertising_____include: billboards, printed flyers, radio, cinema and television_______, web banners, skywriting, bus stop_______, magazines, newspapers, town criers,_______of buses, taxicab doors and roof mounts, musical stage_______, elastic bands on disposable diapers, _______on apples in supermarkets, the opening section of ________audio and video, and the backs of event tickets. Any place an "______" sponsor pays to deliver their message through a medium is advertising. Covert advertising_________in other entertainment_______is known as______placement.

The TV commercial is_______considered the most effective mass-market advertising format and this is reflected by the high prices TV networks charge for commercial airtime during popular TV events. The annual US Super Bowl football game is known as much for its commercial advertisements as for the game_______, and the average cost of a single______-second TV spot during this game has reached $2.3________ (as of 2004).

Advertising on the World Wide Web is a ______phenomenon. Prices of Web-based advertising space are_____on the "relevance" of the surrounding Web content. E-mail advertising is another_____phenomenon. Unsolicited E-mail advertising is_____as "spam".

Some_____have proposed to place_____or corporate logos on the side of booster rockets and the International Space Station. Controversy exists on the______of subliminal advertising (see mind control), and the pervasiveness of mass_____ (see propaganda).

Unpaid advertising (also called_____of mouth advertising), can______ ________exposure at minimal cost. Personal recommendations ("bring a friend", "sell it by zealot"), the unleashing of memes into the wild, or achieving the feat of equating a______with a common________ (" ______" = "vacuum cleaner") – these must_______the stuff of fantasy to the______of an advertising________.

 

Exercise 7. Match the words to their corresponding definitions:

1) institutional advertising; 2) marketing middlemen; 3) personal selling; 4) marketing research; 5) limited-function wholesaler; 6) industrial goods; 7) merchant wholesaler; 8) industrial advertising.

a) advertising from manufacturers to other manufacturers;

b) products used in the production of other products;

c) advertising by organizations designed to create an attractive image for an organization rather than for a product;

d) a merchant wholesaler that performs only selected distribution functions;

e) Individuals or organizations that help distribute goods and services from the producer to consumer;

f) a major function used to find needs and to determine the most effective and efficient ways to satisfy those needs;

g) independently owned wholesalers that take title to goods that they handle;

h) the face-to-face presentation and promotion of products and services plus the searching out of prospects and follow-up service.

 

Module 4

Exercise 1. Translate the following words.

Bygone, bygone days, advertising, to depend on, doubt, merchant, wares, existence, immemorial, oral skills, medium, a crier, a hawker, Phoenician, refined over the centuries, to carry down-up, to roam, to make pleas, dairy, to decline in importance, relic, craft, a forerunner, brand name.

 

Exercise 2. Read and translate the following text.

ADVERTISING IN BYGONE DAYS

Ancient advertising. Just when advertising began depends on how one wishes to define the term. In this History of Advertising, published in 1875, Henry Sampson says of the beginning of advertising: " There is little doubt that the desire among tradesmen and merchants to make good their wares has had an existence almost as long as the customs of buying and selling, and it is but natural to suppose that advertisements in some shape or form have existed not only time immemorial, but almost for all time. "

Because oral skills developed before reading and writing did, it is only natural that the earliest advertising medium was the spoken word. There is evidence that criers and hawkers were shouting their wares as far back as the days of the early Greeks, Romans, and Phoenicians. This primitive advertising, refined over the centuries, has carried down to the present day. Although hawkers do not often roam the streets with their cries, they have entered the home to make their pleas on radio and television.

Before long, competition and the need for identification necessitated signs. Signs used for identifying shops, with such appropriate illustrations as a goat (for a diary) or a mule driving a mill (for a baker), were unearthed in the ruins of Pompeii. (At the door of a schoolmaster there was a sign depicting a boy receiving a whipping!) There is also evidence of announcements painted on walls during this period. These included notices for theatrical performances, sports and gladiatorial exhibitions, advertisements of houses for rent, and appeals to tourists to visit local taverns. Perhaps the first written advertisement, however, was this three-thousand-year-old one inscribed on papyrus and found by an archaeologist in the ruins of Thebes: " The man-slave, Shem, having run away from his good master, Hapu the Weaver, all good citizens of Thebes are enjoyed to help return him. He is Hittite, 5.2 tall, of ruddy complexion and brown eyes. For news of his whereabouts, half a gold coin is offered. And for his return to the shop of Hapu the Weaver, where the best cloth is woven to your desires, a whole gold coin is offered. "

There is no doubt that advertising flourished in this period, but with the fall of the Roman Empire and the onset of the Dark Ages, advertising temporarily declined in importance to Western civilization.

Early English advertising. Perhaps the oldest relic of advertising among English-speaking people is family names referring to the various specialized crafts. The earliest of these designations was Smith. Names like Miller, Weaver, Wright, Tailor and Carpenter were the earliest means of product identification – the forerunner of the brand name so essential to modern advertising.

Beginning of printed advertisements. One of the most significant events in the development of advertising was the invention of a system of casting movable type by the German, Johann Gutenberg, in 1438. Paper had been invented more than a thousand years earlier by the Chinese and was introduced to Europe by the Turks in the twelfth century. Now all the necessary components were available for mass printing. At the same time, literacy was increasing. William Caxton, an early English printer, made advertising history in 1478 when he printed a handbill now regarded as the first known printed English advertisement. It advertised a book he had printed, the Salisburi Pye, rules for the clergy at Easter. The advertisement read: " If it please ony man spirituel or temporel to bye ony pyes of two and thre comemoracios of Salisburi use enpryntid after the forme of this present letter whiche ben wel and truly correct, late hym come to Westmonester in to the almonestrye at the reed pale and he shal have them good chepe. Supplico stet cedula ". The Latin phrase at the end translates, "Let this notice stand."