Advertising fundementals

Advertising

Advertising is the most expensive of all the promotional activities undertaken by businesses. It can be carried out on television, at the cinema, on the radio, on posters, in newspapers, in magazines, and on the internet. Advertising can allow the business to easily reach a vast audience, to have a great impact on consumers and to reinforce other types of promotion that it is carrying out (e.g. competitions). Advertisements can generally fall into two categories:

informative advertisements - informative advertisements attempt to purely let the consumer know the availability of the product, its function and purpose and to inform the consumers about the characteristics of the product (e.g. Government information films).
persuasive advertisements - persuasive advertisements attempt to get the consumers to purchase the product, by emphasising certain aspects of the marketing mix (e.g. the taste, style and moving images). Another category of advertising is 'corporate advertising', where the business advertises its name and image, rather than any of its product range.
There are several criteria that must be met in order for an advertisement to be considered 'effective':

Firstly, it must reach the desired target audience (i.e. those consumers who are most likely to purchase the product- this can be discovered through market research).
Secondly, the advertisements must be attractive and appealing to the target audience (this can be done through using certain images, pictures, words and personalities).
Thirdly, the advertisements must create far more money through sales revenue than the business spends on the advertising campaign.

There are two bodies established by the government which monitor advertisements in the UK. The Advertising Standards Authority (A.S.A) monitors any advertisements in newspapers, magazines and posters, and ensures that they are true, decent, fair and legal'. Any complaints by consumers can lead to the advertisement being investigated and possibly banned from publication. The Independent Television Commission (I.T.C) monitors any advertisements on the radio, on television and at the cinema. Again, it has the powers to investigate any complaints about certain advertisements and ban the business from advertising in the future.