Advertising that annoys: The real story.Written by Mark Levit
Critics conclude that entertaining or “creative” commercials sell better than those that are bland. But liking commercial may not really be that important in scheme of things. It all depends on needs and preferences, motivation and financial reservations of customer. The question isn't whether people like advertisement or not, it’s whether advertisement is effective in selling. Often, people who are irritated by certain campaigns don't fall within intended target market. In 2000 Budweiser ran its ''Whassup?!'' campaign. Ad Track reported these commercials scored best with 18- to 24-year-olds; 52% of survey participants said they liked them ''a lot'', while participants 65 years old and over didn't understand them, or didn't want to; 61% disliked commercials. Yet, it's highly unlikely that Budweiser was trying to reach 65+ market. When Toys R Us launched their campaign featuring Geoffrey giraffe to promote revamping of all Toys R Us stores, 38% of women rated advertisements highly compared to 16% of men. Since advertiser's goal was to get moms back into stores, that low rating from men was meaningless to Toys R Us. Pier 1 started running its commercials featuring Kirstie Alley this year. Twenty-seven percent of people familiar with commercials didn’t like them, and only 6% thought that they were effective. That comes as a surprise to Pier 1 because same-store sales rose 17% in February and foot traffic is up 12% since October! The goal of most advertising is to increase sales. So, if people buy, advertising is effective—no matter what critics may say. Let's look at some other factors that contribute to effectiveness of "irritating" or "disliked" advertising. Media weighting has a lot to do with response to advertising. It's important media plan is developed to accurately reach its target. Just right amount of frequency has been proven to increase recall, recognition and even persuasion. So a focused and targeted media schedule with effective frequency is a major influence in selling a product.
| | Combining Technologies To Make The Most Of Your Advertising DollarWritten by Fred Ost
Advertising has come a long way since people used to carve messages into bottoms of sandals, and it takes a little bit of research to make that progress do more for your small business. I say small business because I own and operate a small business specializing in helping small business make most of their advertising budget by combining different forms of advertising. Print advertising will never disappear, as wonderful as internet and television are there is still no substitute for flipping through a newspaper or sitting in your favorite chair by window checking out some of your favorite magazines. The problem with print advertising be it newspaper or magazine for most small business owners is cost. Unless you commit yourself to advertising in multiple issues you will not get best prices and for most of us that usually results in purchasing a smaller ad than we had hoped for. One of biggest downfalls of newspapers is lack of target marketing capability, about only thing you can tell from most newspapers is where majority of subscribers live although you can get other demographic info like income/age/education bracket but that's more info than we need. Magazines do offer an advantage here by appealing to a much more specific type of readership, demographic, target market or whichever buzz word you prefer but that too is going to come at a higher premium with similar sacrifices to quality and size of ad you would like to run. Television, like magazines can be very useful in reaching a very specific group of people with your advertising, for example if you have a bait and tackle shop you can just purchase advertising time during "Fishing With Fred" as opposed to purchasing your time slot during local news. If there is a television show that you know reaches people you know would benefit from your product or service you can contact producers to find out how to buy commercial spots during their program. Cable companies often offer discounts on commercial production with purchase of commercial airtime or "spots" as they are called. These spots usually are either 15 or 30 seconds long. With falling costs of video cameras in addition to computer video editing hardware and software cost of a television commercial is much more affordable than most people think, you might even be able to make one yourself.
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