Advertising research (was a power point i created)

Advertising research
Amy Morgan
Word list
Account The relationship between agency and client - an account may cover one campaign or many years of advertising, and may include all the products marketed by a client or just one
Advertorial An paid-for advertisement which includes editorial content; normally identified in a print magazine with the word "Advertisement" printed as a head across the top of the page to distinguish it from true (in theory unbiased) editorial content
Agency The organisation which takes care of advertising for clients.
Anchorage The 'pinning down of meaning' that a caption provides when coupled with an ambiguous image - or vice versa
Animatic A filmed storyboard, where stills or short extracts are put together as a rough edit to show the client prior to the filming and editing of a full quality (and therefore expensive) TVC
Benefits The features of a product which are highlighted to customers in ads. there are only two true benefits: better and cheaper. An ad may highlight the supposed emotional benefits of owning a product (eg you'll be happier, more attractive)
Billboard Space for outdoor advertising


Brief The outline of a campaign's purpose given to the agency by the client. The brief is then developed further by the agency for internal use
Campaign A time-limited set of ads - campaigns may run across different media, and for one month or ten years, but can be categorised together as they are the execution of a central idea
Client The organisation who pays the agency
Coverage calculated in percentages, the proportion of a target audience who has the opportunity to see an ad once
Creative The creative ideas behind an ad, or the person/team who comes up with them
Classified advertising which does not used pictures, and is generally not produced by an agency. A good example of how vendors can communicate directly with buyers
Copy The text created for an ad
Demographics Describing an audience by age, gender, ethnicity, location - ie the facts about them
Focus Groups Small, select groups representing a target audience who are paid to answer questions at the behest of a market research organisation
Frequency The number of times an audience get the opportunity to see an ad

Pitch The communication by the agency of a campaign strategy to the client
Penetration The proportion of a potential market that is actually using a particular brand
Product Placement The practice of paying for a branded product to be used by a character in a movie - eg James Bond driving a BMW Z3
Product Positioning Establishing the market niche of a product - which may not be as the brand leader - and advertising to the appropriate segment of the audience
Propaganda The deliberate manipulation of information in order to achieve certain objectives - NB this is RARELY used in connection with modern advertising
Psychographics Describing an audience by their shared psychological profile (likes, dislikes etc)
Reach Similar to coverage
Slogan Line of copy which encapsulates the campaign strategy
Space The pages in a magazine or newspaper which can be sold (as double spreads, foldouts, full, half and quarter pages) to advertisers
USP Unique Selling Proposition/point - a highlighted benefit of a product which makes it stand out from all rival brands.


What is advertising?
Advertising is a process, not a medium in its own right, although it uses different media forms to communicate. Advertising, in its simplest form, is the way in which the vendor or manufacturer of a product communicates with consumers via a medium, or many different media.
The vendor is giving notice that a product is for sale at a given price to people who might be interested in buying it. This harks back to the earliest forms of advertising, when exotic new goods shipped into Europe from the Far East and India (eg tea and spices) needed to be brought to the attention of people who had never encountered them before.
They also have to emphasise the benefits of the product they are offering. There are only two basic benefits that a product has when compared to others of a similar sort. It can be described as being better or cheaper (or both!!).




They might also add an image of the desk - a picture is worth 1000 words after all - in order to persuade the consumer still further that this desk is the right desk to buy. They might add a headline or slogan to their ad, to announce exactly what it is that is being sold. Thus they have all the basic elements of print advertising: a catchy slogan, an image, and copy text. This advertisement will hopefully fulfill its purpose which is to provide information which might influence someone to buy the desk. It has done this by linking the vendor of the desk to people who are looking to buy a desk. The link appears in the medium of the supermarket noticeboard, and the vendor pays the owner of the medium to place it there. The vendor has chosen this medium because the kind of people who buy the kind of desk advertised read advertisements on supermarket noticeboards.
Advertising as Branding
Most advertising today is about communicating the complex range of messages about a product known as branding. A brand is a product or range of products that has a set of values associated with it that are easily recognised by the consumer. A brand is distinguished immediately by its name and/or a symbol (eg the Nike swoosh, the adidas three stripes). Brand Identity is created by using the following elements
1. Brand Essence - a way of summing up the significance of the brand to stockholders and consumers alike of the brand in one simple sentence
2. Brand Slogan - a public way of identifying the brand for consumers - often associated with a logo
3. Brand Personality - marketeers can describe their brand as though it were a person, with likes and dislikes and certain behaviour
4. Brand Values – what does it stand for/against?
5. Brand Appearance - What does it look/sound/taste like?
6. Brand Heritage - how long has it been around? does it have customers who have been loyal to it for many years?
7. Emotional benefits – how it avoids/reduces pain or increases pleasure
8. Hard benefits – bigger? better? cheaper? washes whiter?
As consumers, we tend to be more familiar with a whole brand, as opposed to individual products. The process of advertising allows us to associate values with products that may not have a real connection to them - for instance, Nike has always selected rebellious athletes to promote its shoes, the 'bad boys' of basketball, tennis & football, and therefore the Nike brand has connotations of rebelliousness, of doing whatever it takes to win.
The Advertising Industry
The advertising industry has an important part to play in developed economies. As well as generating sales of goods and services, it provides often the sole source of revenue for media companiies such as magazines and radio stations. The institution of advertising is made up of a number of different advertising agencies. These agencies employ a variety of different personnel who perform diverse roles, from coming up with creative ideas, to doing audience research, to post production on TV commercials. The agencies provide expertise in a number of different areas (eg print design, market profiling) to manufacturers and thus provide a vital link to audience. It was recognised as long ago as the late nineteenth century that an advertising agency could offer the services of skilled personnel as and when their specialism were needed on a particular project, and that this was a more cost effective approach that individual manufactuers employing their own advertising department.
Advertising is a global industry, and just as there are huge global corporations who sell and advertise their goods around the world (Nike, McDonalds, Microsoft, Adidas, Samsung) so there are huge global advertising agencies who have offices in every major territory.The main advertising agencies (and their websites) are:
Bates Asia - includes useful case studes (Nokia)
BBDO - Their Mission Statement plus some good case studies (FedEx & Pepsi)
DDB - "bringing Humanity to the Digital Age"
M&C Saatchi - this is the mac link
Ogilvy - plus links to their different incarnations
TBWA - the UK site, flash-tastic (not), but again some good examples of campaigns
The Advertising Process & Personnel
The manufacturer provides a number of different agencies with a particular brief. The brief includes details of the product and the aims of the campaign - it might be to launch an new line or inspire new interest in an old favourite - as well as limitations of budget, timescale etc. Each agency will then research the brief, and come up with a campaign idea which they will pitch to the client. The client chooses their favourite pitch and employs that agency to mastermind the campaign. The agency is then responsible for executing the campaign, producing in full the designs for adverts, buying space in magazines, on billboards and TV, and rolling out the campaign on the given dates.
Producing a single campaign can be an expensive process involving hundreds of skilled people - read about a recent Audi (A8) campaign here which employed over 600 people and "the kind of state-of-the-art film technology otherwise reserved for Hollywood blockbusters".

The main personnel who work for an advertising agency include:

Account Managers - They deal directly with the client and oversee all operations. They have overall responsibility for individual accounts - and their success or failure. Quite a responsibility if your client is FedEx...
Creatives - art directors and copywriters who are responsible for coming up with visual and verbal ideas. They are responsible for turning the strategy devised by the strategic planner and account manager into a series of original and effective advertisements.
Strategic Planners - are responsible for researching audiences and markets -an increasingly scientific task - and coming up with a strategy which will connect audience to product. They need to know about psychographics, demographics and economics.
Media Buyers - spend their time negotiating for pages in magazines, and bashing out deals with TV companies for prime time commercial spots. Because they are often negotiating on behalf of many clients at once, buying huge blocks of advertising space, they are powerful enough to get good deals.
NATURE OF INDUSTRY
Firms in the advertising industry prepare advertisements for other companies and organizations and might also arrange to place them in print, broadcast, interactive, and other media. This industry also includes firms that sell advertising space for publications, radio, television, and the Internet. Divisions of companies that produce and place their own advertising are not considered part of this industry.
Companies often look to advertising as a way of increasing sales. Most companies do not have the staff with the necessary skills or experience to create effective advertisements; furthermore, many advertising campaigns are temporary, so employers would have difficulty maintaining their own advertising staff. Instead, companies commonly solicit bids from ad agencies to develop advertising for them. Next, ad agencies offering their services to the company often make presentations. If an agency wins the account, the real work begins. Various departments within the agency-such as creative, production, media, and research-work together to meet the client's goal of increasing sales