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Advertising and Your Students: Read On

Advertising plays a large role in modern culture, with catchphrases and slogans from ads entering everyday conversation. While TV advertising was once dominant, the proliferation of channels and saturation of markets has led to growth in other media like radio, print, and billboards. Internet advertising is also increasing, though banner ads are a major annoyance to some. Beyond ads, companies sponsor events and place their products in films. Reaching the desired target audience is key, so choosing the right media channels is important. Ultimately, word of mouth from friends and colleagues remains one of the most effective forms of advertising.

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84 views1 page

Advertising and Your Students: Read On

Advertising plays a large role in modern culture, with catchphrases and slogans from ads entering everyday conversation. While TV advertising was once dominant, the proliferation of channels and saturation of markets has led to growth in other media like radio, print, and billboards. Internet advertising is also increasing, though banner ads are a major annoyance to some. Beyond ads, companies sponsor events and place their products in films. Reaching the desired target audience is key, so choosing the right media channels is important. Ultimately, word of mouth from friends and colleagues remains one of the most effective forms of advertising.

Uploaded by

TulipBelle
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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UNIT 5 ....

ADVERTISING

Whether or not you agree with communications guru Marshall Mcluhan that advertising was the
greatest art form of the twentieth century, it is a big part of modern culture. Shared references
feed into it, and it in turn feeds into daily life: advertising catchphrases turn up in TV comedy
sketches and everyday conversation. And we become 'ironic' about advertising, perhaps to show
that we think are able to resist it. TV advertising is still glamorous, even if its heyday is over,
what with the proliferation of channels and the saturation of the markets (at least in advanced
economies) of the consumer goods it normally promotes. But the other media are not to be
ignored - radio, cinema and the press - while hoardings (BrE) or billboards (Am E) are an integral
part of the urban landscape. All these will be around for some time.

Internet advertising expenditure is on the increase. Some people find banner and pop-up
advertisements have become a major source of irritation, but others find them a useful source of
information. Debate about the relationship between Internet advertising and search engines such
as Google is intensifying.

Advertising can be continued by other means, such as sponsorship of particular events or


product placement in films. This is where the product's makers negotiate for their products to
appear and be used by the film's characters. A related phenomenon is product endorsement,
where a celebrity is used in advertising a particular product. This can be dangerous if, for
whatever reason, the celebrity falls from favour.

Some very creative minds come up with seductive combinations of sound, image and words,
but tests show that we often don't remember the brand being advertised. Quantifying the
effect of advertising is very difficult, and there has been a backlash against it in favour of other,
supposedly more targeted, forms of communication. This usually means direct marketing,
otherwise known as direct mail, but, as those living in apartments who receive mailshots for
gardening products know, the targeting can still be ludicrously imprecise.

Advertising agencies may offer to run direct-mail campaigns, but what they are best at is creating
advertising campaigns. When a client becomes dissatisfied and the agency loses the account, this
is major news in the advertising industry and means a big loss of revenue (and self-esteem) for
the agency. Agencies develop a creative brief for clients, with proposals on the ideas to be used in
the campaign. One key problem is reaching the right target audience (for example, young women
between 28 and 30), so the selection of media (the right TV channels, magazines, etc.) or new
media (such as the Internet) is very important. And the advertising must fit into the company's
overall marketing strategy - its plans on how it will compete and succeed in particular markets.

All these activities, all this expenditure. But the ultimate in advertising is word of mouth: friends
and colleagues are often our most reliable sources of information. This form of advertising is
usually free. All the advertiser can do is hope that it is positive.

Advertising and your students


Pre-work and in-work students should have no trouble relating to advertising, as its willing or
unwilling consumers! They will also be able to talk about the place of advertising in their industry
or one they would like to work in.

Read on
Mario Pricken: Creative Advertising: Ideas and Techniques from the World's Best Campaigns,
Thames and Hudson, revised edition, 2008

David Ogilvy: Ogilvy on Advertising, Prion, new edition, 2007

Rajeev Batra, John Myers, David Aaker: Advertising Management, Pearson Education,
5th edition, 1996

Kevin Lee and Catherine Sed a: Search Engine Advertising, New Riders, 2nd edition, 2009

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