Introduction: In developing effective integrated marketing communications programs, marketing communications must sometimes be explicitly tied together to create or enhance brand equity. Brand equity is very important. After reviewing the nature of the problem, proposes, alternative strategies as soluation Factors Creating Weak Brand Links: Few factors create weak bran link. These ares- Competitive Clutter: Advertisement competing with other advertisement quiet similar in the product category can create interference & consumer confusion as to which ad goes with which brand.
Interference problem is arising because of targeting the same consumer by the authority of advertising organization. For example, an analysis of one week of prime time television advertising found that of the 57 commercials that ran in an average hour, 24, or 42%, faced at least one competitor running an ad during that same time period. Ad Content & Structure: Factors are related to the content & structure of the ad itself can result in weak links from the brand to communication effects created by the exposure of the ad.
For example, advertisers have a vast range of creative strategies & techniques at their disposal to improve consumer motivation & lead to greater involvement & enhanced ad processing on their part. Although these “borrowed interest” tactics may effectively grab consumer’s attention for an ad, the resulting focus of attention & processing may be directed in a manner that does not create strong brand associations. For example, when the popular actor James Garner was advertising for Polaroid, marketing research surveys routinely noted that many interview respondents mistakenly attributed his promotion to Kodak, its chief competitor.
Moreover when these attention-getting creative tactics are employed, the position & prominence of the brand in the ad are often downplayed. Delaying brand identification or providing few brand mentions in an ad may also rise processing intensity but result in attention directed away from the brand. Furthermore, limited brand exposure time in the ad allows little opportunity for elaboration of existing brand knowledge, also contributing to weak brand links. Consumer Involvement:
In certain circumstances, consumer may not have any inherent interest in the product or service category or may lack knowledge of specific brand especially in the case of a low-share brand or a new market entry. The resulting decrease in consumer motivation & ability to process translates to weaker brand links. Similarly, a change in advertising strategy to target a new market segment or add a new attribute, benefit, or usage association to the brand image may also fail to produce strong brand links because consumers lack the ability to easily relate this new advertising information to existing brand knowledge.
Brand signatures: Perhaps the easiest way to increase the strengths of brand links to communication effects is to create more powerful and compelling brand signature. The brand signature is the manner by which the brand is identified at the conclusion of a TV or radio at or displayed within a print ad. The brand signature must creatively engage the consumer and cause him or her to pay more attention to the brand itself and, a consequence, increase the strengths of brand association created by the ad.
An effective brand signature often dramatically and stylistically provides a seamless connection to the ad as whole. For example, the famous “Got Milk” campaign always displayed that tag line or slogan in a manner fitting the ad(e. g. , in flames for the “yuppie in hell” ad or in primary school print for the “school Lunchroom bully” ad). As another example, the introductory Intel inside ad campaign always with a swirling image from which the Intel inside logo dramatically appeared, in effect stamps the end of the ad with Intel Inside in an “I your face” manner.
Ad retrieval Cues: An effective tactic to improve consumers motivation and ability to retrieve communication effects when making a brand related decision is to use advertising retrieval cues. An advertising retrival cue is visual or verbal information uniquely identified with an ad that is evident when consumers are making a product or service decision. The purpose is to maximize the probability that consumers who have seen or heard the cued ad will retrieve from long term memory the communication effects that were stored from earlier processing of that ad.
Ad retrieval Cues may consist of key visual, a catchy slogan, or any unique advertising element that services as an effective reminder to the consumers. For example, in an attempt to remedy the problem they had within mistaken attributions, Quaker Oats placed a photograph of the “Mikey” Character from the popular life cereal on the front page of the package. More recently, Eveready featured a picture of their pink bunny character on the package for their Energizer batteries to reduce consumer confusion with Duracell. Ad retrieval cues can be placed in the store (e. . , on the package or as part of a shelf talker or some other point-of-purchase device), combined with a promotion (e. g. , with a free-standing insert coupon), included as part of a Yellow Pages directory listing, or embedded in any marketing communication option where recall of effects can be advantageous to marketers. By using ad retrieval cues, greater emphasis can be placed in the ad on supplying persuasive information and creating positive association so that consumers have a reason why they should purchase the brand.
Ad retrieval cues allow for creative freedom in ad execution because the brand and package need not to be the centerpiece of the ad. The effectiveness of ad retrieval cues depends on how many communication effects are potentially retrieval and how likely these communication effects are to be retrieved from memory with only the brand as a cue, as compared with the executional information making up the ad retrieval cue is most effective when many communication effects are stored in memory but are only weakly associated to the brand because of one or more of the various factors noted previously.
Media Interactions: Other strategies besides ad retrieval cues may be employed to maximize the brand equity arising from TV advertising. Print and radio reinforcement of TV ads (in which the video and audio components of a TV D serve as the basis for the respective type of ads)can be effective means to leverage existing communication from TV ad exposure and more strongly link them to the brand.
Cueing a TV ad with an explicitly linked radio or print ad can create similar or even enhanced processing outcomes that can substitute for additional TV exposures. Moreover, a potentially useful, although rarely employed, media strategy is to run explicitly linked print or radio as prior to the accompanying TV ad. The print and radio ads in this case function as teasers and increase consumer motivation to process the more complete TV and consisting of both audio and video components.
