Page 125 - DMGT507_SALES AND PROMOTIONS MANAGEMENT

Unit 7: Advertising Strategy: Fundamentals

7.1 Fundamentals of an Advertising Campaign Notes

Advertising must fit nicely into the marketing plans and can occur at three levels. The company
can have an annual advertising plan, or the company may have an annual plan and advertising
campaign plan that is closely focused on solving a specific communications problem. The third
choice is to develop a copy strategy for an individual ad that runs independent of any campaign.
The advertising plan and ad campaign are similar in outline and structure.
A campaign is an interrelated and coordinated set of promotional activities that focus on some
single theme or idea and is built to accomplish some predetermined objective(s). An ad campaign
includes a series of ads placed in different media based on an analysis of marketing and
communication situations. An advertising plan aims at matching the right target audience to the
right message and presents it in the right medium to reach that audience.

Usually, a campaign theme is developed to last for a long time, but depending on an advertiser's
short-term objectives it could be short as well. Many campaign themes last only for a very short
time because either they prove ineffective, or lack respond to changes in competitive or other
marketing conditions. Some advertisers change their campaign themes often while some
successful campaigns may last for years. For example, Nike has been using "Just do it" for quite
sometime, and DeBeers theme "Diamonds are forever," has been continuing for a very long
time, and "Marlboro country" campaign has continued for more than 40 years.

Advertising planning and managing steps include situation analysis, identifying target audience,
determining objectives, setting budget, advertising strategy implementation, and evaluation.
In most cases the ad agency's accounts executive develops the advertising plan or campaign.

7.1.1 Situation Analysis

Marketing plan provides the details pertaining to brand share, anticipated market conditions,
competitors' share and past moves, and any legal constraints concerning the product category.
The first step is to research and review the current business situation that is relevant to advertising.
The aim is to analyse important current trends affecting the market, competitors' share and past
moves, consumer behaviour, the company itself and earlier advertising and its impact, and the
important attributes of product or brand and making sense of all this information and analysis
to determine what should be done for the future success of the product or brand. It is difficult to
achieve perfection in analysis and there will always be some aspect that is overlooked or
improperly analysed, but it is best to analyse the situation to identify communication problems
that hinder successful marketing of the product or brand and what advertising can do to create
or take advantage of the opportunities. Clearly identifying the communication problem that
advertising can successfully address is at the heart of advertising planning.

In case of new product situation, more in-depth analysis of various aspects of the market would
be needed and involve research of some kind. Good advertising starts with a clear understanding
of marketing goals based on thorough market analysis and the aim is to explore the answers to
the two basic questions: Where are we today? And, how did we get here?

7.1.2 Target Audience

A critical decision is to define the specific target audience for the product or service and involves
finding and precisely defining those variables that indicate who and where are the best prospects
in respect to demographic characteristics, geographic location, psycho-graphic variables, and
behavioural patterns. Typically, this is larger than the target market. For example, the advertiser
may target the heavy users but many light and non-users are also exposed to the message. Ned

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