Advertising Evaluation

Earlier in the year The Association of Advertising Agencies met in Florida. The basic
theme proclaimed was that advertising won't work unless its creative.
That is the same old saw that the agencies have been pushing for decades. It all starts
with a client meeting with lots of charts, pretty pictures, smoke, not much strategy and a
hefty budget.
What's a client to do? If you've ever been put into this position, here's a short course on
how to evaluate advertising.
First of all, advertising is what you do when you can't go to see somebody personally.
You send a television commercial or a print ad to tell your story. Any ad program has to
start with the product difference you are trying to communicate. Why buy my product
instead of someone else's? You're not after a meaningless slogan. Your program has to
contain that difference and the benefit that comes with it.
Most agencies today will pitch the concept that advertising has to form a bond with the
customer. The customers have to like the advertising, which means you can't sell too
hard. Liking advertising is only useful if you're selling tickets to watch it.
Don't buy into all that.
The basic role of an agency is to take that difference and make it interesting by
dramatizing it. People are attracted to the media because of its entertainment and
information value, not because they are dying to see your latest ad. The agency can use
sex or humor or whatever, but the ad must communicate that reason to buy. If you like the
way the agency did that, approve it. Or ask for more drama.
A good example was the introductory advertising PepsiCo rolled out for their brand of
water called Aquafina. The differentiating idea is guaranteed purity, which is right on the
label. The commercial shows nothing but pure water and the brand. The verbal message
describes the product as "pure nothing." They did a brilliant job of dramatizing nothing.
It's important to realize that people know an ad when they see one. And since these ads
are usually interrupting what they are watching or reading, people are not too happy
about being forced to watch them. No one likes to be sold. So a little candor goes a long
way. This kind of honesty is very disarming. People will often give you a positive
response if you're candid with them.
If your widget is a little ugly, admit it. But then go on to say it's very reliable. People will
buy it. Thats exactly what Bill Bernbach communicated years ago when he started
writing the advertising for the Volkswagen's VW Beetle. They admitted the car was small
and ugly, but they also told people it was reliable. This wasn't creativity. It was candor
and brilliant strategy.
To me one of the most candid and effective current programs is the one that Boar's Head
is running to advertise its 350 deli products. They candidly compare their high-quality
meats to their competitors' products. Their concept is simple: "Almost Boar's Head isn't
Boar's Head." They've convinced people to spend a lot more per pound to get that quality.

Another tip is to try to make your message sound like big news. People are always
looking for news. News is very disarming, and people let down their "being sold"
defenses. Believe me; if you start an advertisement with an announcer saying, "Before
you push that button on your remote, I have some important news for you," you would
freeze every viewer in their chairs.

Different Types of Advertising

Advertising is the promotion of a companys products and services carried out primarily
to drive sales of the products and services but also to build a brand identity and
communicate changes or new product /services to the customers. Advertising has become
an essential element of the corporate world and hence the companies allot a considerable
amount of revenues as their advertising budget. There are several reasons for advertising
some of which are as follows:
Increasing the sales of the product/service
Creating and maintaining a brand identity or brand image.
Communicating a change in the existing product line.
Introduction of a new product or service.
Increasing the buzz-value of the brand or the company.
Thus, several reasons for advertising and similarly there exist various media which can be
effectively used for advertising. Based on these criteria there can be several branches of
advertising. Mentioned below are the various categories or types of advertising:

Print Advertising Newspapers, Magazines, Brochures, Fliers

the print media have always been a popular advertising medium. Advertising products via
newspapers or magazines is a common practice. In addition to this, the print media also
offers options like promotional brochures and fliers for advertising purposes. Often the
newspapers and the magazines sell the advertising space according to the area occupied
by the advertisement, the position of the advertisement (front page/middle page), as well
as the readership of the publications. For instance an advertisement in a relatively new
and less popular newspaper would cost far less than placing an advertisement in a popular
newspaper with a high readership. The price of print ads also depend on the supplement
in which they appear, for example an advertisement in the glossy supplement costs way
higher than that in the newspaper supplement which uses a mediocre quality paper.

Outdoor Advertising Billboards, Kiosks, Tradeshows and Events

Outdoor advertising is also a very popular form of advertising, which makes use of
several tools and techniques to attract the customers outdoors. The most common
examples of outdoor advertising are billboards, kiosks, and also several events and
tradeshows organized by the company. The billboard advertising is very popular however
has to be really terse and catchy in order to grab the attention of the passers by. The
kiosks not only provide an easy outlet for the company products but also make for an
effective advertising tool to promote the companys products. Organizing several events
or sponsoring them makes for an excellent advertising opportunity. The company can
organize trade fairs, or even exhibitions for advertising their products.

Broadcast advertising Television, Radio and the Internet

Broadcast advertising is a very popular advertising medium that constitutes of several

branches like television, radio or the Internet. Television advertisements have been very
popular ever since they have been introduced. The cost of television advertising often
depends on the duration of the advertisement, the time of broadcast (prime time/peak
time), and of course the popularity of the television channel on which the advertisement
is going to be broadcasted. The radio might have lost its charm owing to the new age
media however the radio remains to be the choice of small-scale advertisers. The radio
jingles have been very popular advertising media and have a large impact on the
audience, which is evident in the fact that many people still remember and enjoy the
popular radio jingles.

Covert Advertising Advertising in Movies

Covert advertising is a unique kind of advertising in which a product or a particular brand
is incorporated in some entertainment and media channels like movies, television shows
or even sports. There is no commercial in the entertainment but the brand or the product
is subtly( or sometimes evidently) showcased in the entertainment show. Some of the
famous examples for this sort of advertising have to be the appearance of brand Nokia
which is displayed on Tom Cruises phone in the movie Minority Report, or the use of
Cadillac cars in the movie Matrix Reloaded.

Surrogate Advertising Advertising Indirectly

Surrogate advertising is prominently seen in cases where advertising a particular product
is banned by law. Advertisement for products like cigarettes or alcohol which are
injurious to heath are prohibited by law in several countries and hence these companies
have to come up with several other products that might have the same brand name and
indirectly remind people of the cigarettes or beer bottles of the same brand. Common
examples include Fosters and Kingfisher beer brands, which are often seen to promote
their brand with the help of surrogate advertising.

Public Service Advertising Advertising for Social Causes

Public service advertising is a technique that makes use of advertising as an effective
communication medium to convey socially relevant messaged about important matters
and social welfare causes like AIDS, energy conservation, political integrity,
deforestation, illiteracy, poverty and so on. David Oglivy who is considered to be one of
the pioneers of advertising and marketing concepts had reportedly encouraged the use of
advertising field for a social cause. Oglivy once said, "Advertising justifies its existence
when used in the public interest - it is much too powerful a tool to use solely for
commercial purposes.". Today public service advertising has been increasingly used in a
non-commercial fashion in several countries across the world in order to promote various
social causes. In USA, the radio and television stations are granted on the basis of a fixed
amount of Public service advertisements aired by the channel.

Celebrity Advertising
Although the audience is getting smarter and smarter and the modern day consumer

getting immune to the exaggerated claims made in a majority of advertisements, there

exist a section of advertisers that still bank upon celebrities and their popularity for
advertising their products. Using celebrities for advertising involves signing up
celebrities for advertising campaigns, which consist of all sorts of advertising including,
television ads or even print advertisements.

Advertising Campaign Planning

Advertising and campaign planning go hand in hand. You will find that when you decide
to try and sell your product you must be able to come up with an advertising campaign
for said product. This can be a very difficult and arduous task to try come up with the
right avenue of making your product seem desirable and the right one. Many people do
not realize that advertising campaign planning is almost considered an art form. You
need to make sure that you can create a marketing plan, then a plan of action, figure out
an advertising budget, keep it thrifty and know your target audience. These are the steps it
will take for you to create the best advertising campaign. If you follow these simple
steps, you may just pull off the best ad campaign yet!

Create A Marketing Plan:

Creating a marketing plan helps you to figure out what exactly you are looking for in
your own goals and aspirations for your product. You will learn a lot more about your
own business, your product and the competitors that you may have out there. This first
step will help you figure out why your product is the best option. How is your product
different? What can you bring to the table? How will your product solve the problem?
These are the questions that you must ask yourself and find the answers to, because that
is what they will want to know.

Figure Out A Plan Of Action:

Once you have created a marketing plan you now will need to figure out a plan of action.
Your plan of action will help you to show everyone how exactly you will go about
executing your product and getting it sold. This is crucial, because this will show your
investors that you have a plan on how you will sell this product. Investors are interested
in how their money is going to be used to help them make money. They need to feel
secure in the fact that you will be able to execute this properly so they do not loose
money but gain money. You must prove to them and yourself that you will be able to
execute this properly.

Come Up With A Budget:

You must have an advertising budget before you go pitch your ad campaign. As I said
before, everything comes down to dollars and cents in the business world. You need to
know and the investors will definitely want to know, how much this ad campaign is going
to cost everyone. The lower the amount the better, in most cases.

Keep It Thrifty:
When deciding on which methods to use for your advertising campaign, you always want
to try to stay thrifty. Any way to save a penny is always a good option. You need to think
of the best and most affordable ways to run your campaign. Think of who you know?
Do you know anyone good at graphics? A director? Photographer? Writer? Illustrator?
You get the picture. You need to use all your resources and remember along the way to
stay thrifty. Every investor loves a good budget, and a person who can stick to it, so keep
that in mind.

Target Audience:
This is the most important thing to keep in mind, who is your target audience? Who are
you targeting with the product you are trying to sell? Who will benefit from your
product? You must keep them in mind and you must remember how to get them
interested. The worst thing you could do is be off on your target audience. You must
target your audience and then reel them in. If you can do that, then the next step is to
figure out how to reel other audiences in. If you follow these steps for your advertising
campaign planning then you will be able to execute a perfect campaign, and not only
wow the investors but wow yourself!

5 Questions To Ask Yourself

When Planning Your Advertising Campaign
1- How much help do you require from an advertising company? Will this project be
created from scratch, or do you have existing marketing that you would like to place into
the hands of an expert?
2- Are you looking to generate immediate interest for a coming event or sales offer that
requires immediate interest, or aiming to promote your business as a whole, growing and
developing in a larger timeframe across the internet?
3- Perhaps you already have a website online, in which case a complete refresh campaign
may not be right for you. An ad company could optimize your existing site, leading to
greater web presence, placing you alongside - or even above - other local businesses in
competition.
4- Likewise, starting from a position of zero online publicity, the right advertising
company for you can show you a great many ways to build up a business website,
handling all corners of your internet campaign.
5- From a short-term perspective, simple solutions may be ideal for advertising special
offers, one-off events or recruitment. The immediate results from such an approach may
not, however, be what you require for a longer-term strategy aimed at building up
customer bases, or encouraging repeat visitors and, importantly, continued sales.

10 Steps To Run A Successful Advertising Campaign

Online
It is important to plan your advertising campaign well in advance. Planning most involve
every stage that your campaign needs.In my opinion, your online advertising must go
through following steps:

Setting objectives:
Before you plan and expand your compaign further, you must answer ask question in
writing, what do I want to achieve from this compaign?
Your objective might be making an- amount or to acquire- number of subscribers.
The objective should be clear and measurable, so that you can compare it with your
achievement.

Target Market:
Whom is this ad intended for Define what segment of market you would be targeting.
For example: Is your product for Mom at Homes or Office goers or so on?
You may include multiple segments but you must know how many segments you are
targeting and what would be your approach for each segment.

Look For Places:

What are the places that your target market is visiting online, what are the possible
advertising awareness on these places.

Budget:
What would be your budget allocated for the compaign?

Ad Designing:
What kind of ad medias would you be using and how you are going to approach creation
of ads.
If you are outsourcing then you would have to look for companies/ persons whom you
would.
Rest of the points are execution of advertising and are self explanatory

Send Ad to Publisher:
Ha! How Obvious.

Track responses:
You must place measures to track the results of your campaign. There are plenty of
services available that would help you with this.

Analyze:
Analyze what is working and analyze what is not working. Is everything happening as
you wanted. If not then you should find the solution for non performing parts of your
campaign.

Review
Monitoring is not one time task. It requires regular review and re-review.

Improvise:
Based on your reviews, ad needs to be improvised.

organisation - decision-making in business

Introduction
Decision-making is a crucial part of good business. The question then is how is a good
decision made?
One part of the answer is good information, and experience in interpreting information.
Consultation ie seeking the views and expertise of other people also helps, as does the
ability to admit one was wrong and change ones mind. There are also aids to decisionmaking, various techniques which help to make information clearer and better analysed,
and to add numerical and objective precision to decision-making (where appropriate) to
reduce the amount of subjectivity.
Managers can be trained to make better decisions. They also need a supportive
environment where they wont be unfairly criticised for making wrong decisions (as we
all do sometimes) and will receive proper support from their colleague and superiors. A
climate of criticism and fear stifles risk-taking and creativity; managers will respond by
playing it safe to minimise the risk of criticism which diminishes the business
effectiveness in responding to market changes. It may also mean managers spend too
much time trying to pass the blame around rather than getting on with running the
business.
Decision-making increasingly happens at all levels of a business. The Board of Directors
may make the grand strategic decisions about investment and direction of future growth,
and managers may make the more tactical decisions about how their own department
may contribute most effectively to the overall business objectives.

Types of Business Decisions

1. Programmed Decisions These are standard decisions which always follow the same
routine. As such, they can be written down into a series of fixed steps which anyone can
follow. They could even be written as computer program
2. Non-Programmed Decisions. These are non-standard and non-routine. Each decision
is not quite the same as any previous decision.
3. Strategic Decisions. These affect the long-term direction of the business eg whether to
take over Company A or Company B
4. Tactical Decisions. These are medium-term decisions about how to implement strategy
eg what kind of marketing to have, or how many extra staff to recruit
5. Operational Decisions. These are short-term decisions (also called administrative
decisions) about how to implement the tactics eg which firm to use to make deliveries.
Figure 1: Levels of Decision-Making

Figure 2: The Decision-Making Process

The model in Figure 2 above is a normative model, because it illustrates how a good
decision ought to be made. Business Studies also uses positive models which simply aim
to illustrate how decisions are, in fact, made in businesses without commenting on
whether they are good or bad.
Linear programming models help to explore maximising or minimising constraints eg
one can program a computer with information that establishes parameters for minimising
costs subject to certain situations and information about those situations.
Spread-sheets are widely used for what if simulations. A very large spread-sheet can
be used to hold all the known information about, say, pricing and the effects of pricing on
profits. The different pricing assumptions can be fed into the spread-sheet modelling
different pricing strategies. This is a lot quicker and an awful lot cheaper than actually
changing prices to see what happens. On the other hand, a spread-sheet is only as good as
the information put into it and no spread-sheet can fully reflect the real world. But it is
very useful management information to know what might happen to profits what if a
skimming strategy, or a penetration strategy were used for pricing.
The computer does not take decisions; managers do. But it helps managers to have quick
and reliable quantitative information about the business as it is and the business as it
might be in different sets of circumstances. There is, however, a lot of research into
expert systems which aim to replicate the way real people (doctors, lawyers, managers,
and the like) take decisions. The aim is that computers can, one day, take decisions, or at
least programmed decisions (see above). For example, an expedition could carry an
expert medical system on a lap-top to deal with any medical emergencies even though the
nearest doctor is thousands of miles away. Already it is possible, in the US, to put a credit
card into a hole-in-the-wall machine and get basic legal advice about basic and standard
legal problems.

Constraints on Decision-Making
Internal Constraints
These are constraints that come from within the business itself.

- Availability of finance. Certain decisions will be rejected because they cost too much
- Existing Business Policy. It is not always practical to re-write business policy to
accommodate one decision
- Peoples abilities and feelings. A decision cannot be taken if it assumes higher skills
than employees actually have, or if the decision is so unpopular no-one will work
properly on it.

External Constraints
These come from the business environment outside the business.
- National & EU legislation
- Competitors behaviour, and their likely response to decisions your business makes
- Lack of technology
- Economic climate
Quality of Decision-Making
Some managers and businesses make better decisions than others. Good decision-making
comes from:1. Training of managers in decision-making skills. See Developing Managers
2. Good information in the first place.
3. Management skills in analysing information and handling its shortcomings.
4. Experience and natural ability in decision-making.
5. Risk and attitudes to risk.
6. Human factors. People are people. Emotional responses come before rational
responses, and it is very difficult to get people to make rational decisions about things
they feel very strongly about. Rivalries and vested interests also come into it. People
simply take different views on the same facts, and people also simply make mistakes.
Business Thinkers -John Pierpoint Morgan & Good Management Self-Assessment
Interdependence
Businesses are highly interdependent on each other, their suppliers and their customers.
Decisions are not taken in isolation. The effects of any decision will depend critically on
the reactions of other groups in the market. These have to be, as far as possible, taken into
account before decisions are made.