A good marketing strategy, for any company, is a strategy with a strong yet feasible marketing mix or more commonly known as the four Ps, product, price, place, and promotion. A strong marketing mix enables the company to position their products in the most competitive way[1] and gives them the opportunity to mold the product, and all its components, as perceived best for the company’s brand equity. Although each component of the marketing mix is crucial to the development of the product, Promotion is probably one of the parts that require the most creativity and innovation.
[2] Promotions include a wide range of activities from public relations personal selling. However, with the recent popularity of new media channels, above-the-line promotions became necessary for most companies. Above-the- line promotions are better known as advertising.
Advertising is the use of various media channels to communicate a product’s positioning, which often reflects the promotional mix’s objectives. Many variables contribute to the success of an advertising campaign, and this perhaps is the reason why costs for this kind of services are high. Nevertheless, advertisements and advertising campaigns to a company is more than just an expense, it is a very sound investment. [3]
Advertising decisions should be accompanied by a well-drafted planning scheme.[4] The use of planning schemes widens the management’s decision spectrum and allows them to draw alternatives and contingency plans. The decision spectrum includes various models that aid in choosing the different elements of an advertising strategy. Definition of a decision spectrum is affected by both internal and external factors. External factors can range from the target consumer’s media usage to the country’s advertising laws. On the other hand, internal factors are elements that describe the company’s different necessities and opportunities. These factors are identified in order to maximize their resources and obtain optimum results. Timing is also essential in the decision-making process. Timing decisions are more often associated with media placement and scheduling insertions in various channels are based on numerous factors of influence such as reach pattern of certain mediums.
However, before an advertisement hits the mainstream media channels, careful planning must take place to ensure the campaign’s success. These strategies determine, Alexander Hiam and Charles D. Schewe stated, “the character of the company’s public face.”[5] A strategy must achieve three main goals. These are promote, attract, and establish. Through its strategy, a company must makes its presence known, catch the attention of, and to form a relationship to ensure loyalty with their target consumers. [6] Each goal requires a different means of addressing it and depends highly on the kind of product, the target market, and the company’s available resources. The appropriation of the right advertising strategy provides and identifies the right tools for the right audience.[7] There is a wide range of strategies, which an advertiser can choose from, again depending on the factors stated above. In the 1940’s, generic and pre-emptive advertising strategies were most popular.[8] These strategies provide a weaker a campaign since there is often insufficient product and brand information. Carol Mitchell, author of “How to survive and prosper as an artist: selling yourself without selling your soul,” describes generic advertising strategies as “tombstone” strategies due to the lack of visual information on the product, which she believes makes it weaker than most strategies. [9] [10]A pre-emptive strategy, unlike the previous strategy, provides some, but still limited, information on the product. The criticism to this strategy lies on the delivery of such information. It is sometimes to straightforward and obvious that it lacks overall impact.[11] An example of such strategy is Folgers’s campaign. Folgers’s Coffee is known for coffee beans that are grown in the mountains. Using this information they came up with a campaign that revolves around the tagline “Folgers: Mountain Grown Coffee.”[12]
Unique Selling Proposition, Branding, and Positioning strategies are strategies makes use of the products attributes in relation to its competition and industry environment.[13] Unique Selling Proposition or USP strategies are driven by a product’s differentiating quality and uses it against its competitors. This strategy gives the product a strong persuasive advantage and may cause competitors to shift to strategies that are more aggressive.[14] Brand Image strategy utilizes common psychological symbols, ranging from luxury to prestige, which appeals most to its target consumer. These symbols allows the product to become something covetable not because of the product itself but its perceived benefits of either grandeur, prestige, luxury, or the like.[15] Positioning strategies on the other hand, makes use of a wide range if environment factors, such as its competitor or different industry indicators. Positioning strategies are commonly associated with the creation a niche by directly relating itself to a specific competitor, usually market leaders.[16]
The strongest advertising strategy lies in the use of an emotional philosophy.[17] The stimulating of emotion or the use of a target market’s ‘personal’ experience creates a sense of identification in the consumer and illicit a connection between the product and its audience. Affective advertising, an example of such strategy, provokes involvement of the audience by enabling their audience to feel something from the proposed use of the product. By providing the element of human emotion to the advertisement, the audience can relate this certain emotion to the use of the product and vice versa.[18] Resonance Advertising makes use of experiences to illicit the significance of the product in their lives. Endowing meaning to the product allows the audience to relate to the product more effectively.[19]
Aside from a campaign’s strategy, its message is also vital. An advertising message is directed towards specific goals on specific audiences. Therefore, it is necessary to produce a message that is clear, specific, effective and yet still captivates it audiences. For an advertising message to be effective, it is first important to identify the product’s unique features and how these features persuade them to purchase the product.[20] This information serves as the advertiser’s anchor and starting point in creating the message. There are two parts or elements of an advertising message, the copy and artwork and layout. The copy contains the ‘selling proposal’[21] of the product that often reflects its theme, major attributes, and the company’s overall marketing objectives. The artwork and layout on the other hand, is the message’s visual rhetoric and should be both visually inviting and easy to understand. [22] Russian agencies have evolved through the years in terms of the content and presentation of advertising messages. Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian advertisements were insignificant and posed no significant benefit to any product. However, after 70 years of visually limp advertising campaigns and the collapse of the socialist market, the birth and popularity for advertisements have grown considerably. It is however criticized that most advertisements in the country have failed to attract and address the local market. Advertisement styles, from their content down to the font styles were “exact copies”[23] of Western advertisements. The unraveling of the Iron Curtain provided Russia an opportunity for a new system, specifically a new market economy. But with the lack of experience in the field of advertising, Russian agencies were left with extremely primitive and box-moving strategies to feed the Russian markets starving for Western goodies.[24] As Alexander Repiev of Mekka Consulting said, agencies in Russia can be described as the blind leading the blind, blind agencies leading blind advertisers. [25]Most advertisements in Russia lacked the guidance of advertising and marketing theory and resulted in the misconception that advertisements were mere graphic arts[26] that lacked content and value. Russian Advertisements were more like stereotypical airheads, all brawn and beauty but no brain. David Ogilvy, known as Russia’s great advertisers, emphasized in his six principles of great advertising[27] the entertainment impact of an advertisement and how these principles contribute to the success o a campaign. However, He failed to mention and give credit to anything that pertained to the content or ‘copy’ of the advertisement.
Another important variable in an advertising strategy is the type of media channel through which the advertising message will be communicated. A strategy can make use of a combination of media or can choose to focus on one channel. These choices are greatly affected by the consumers and their habits and media preferences.[28] Some of the media strategy today includes Print, Audio, Video, Internet, Direct mail and Outdoor advertising. Although it would be good to expose the product, brand or company to as many markets that it can it is advisable to only make use of media channels which will reach their primary markets more effectively rather than spreading the product to thinly over numerous channels.[29] Outdoor advertising, Print, Video, and more recently the Internet are the most popular choices used by advertisers today. [30]
The growth in the purchasing power of Russia and as well as the increasing competition in the market[31] gave birth to a more mature advertising industry. Russian ad market today is among the 15 largest ad markets in the world.[32] One of the most influential type of media in Russia are Print and Video media channels. Televisions, in a 2005 research done by Dr. Marianna Seferova, had the largest volume share in advertising comprising almost 50%. The range of consumers this channel reaches every day explains this. There are six main channels in Russia, including ORT and RTR, cover almost all of the country.[33] In the same survey, print came in second with a share of 30%.[34] Recent advances in technology and as well as the popularity of the internet has resulted in the decline of newspaper revenue in most countries.[35] But Russia is a different case. RuNet (Russian Internet) is not readily accessible and is yet to be used as a mass communication system.[36] These prompted advertisers to take their ads to print media through newspapers, magazines, and press releases. While the rest of the world has engaged in so called ‘billboard wars’ Russia remains to be on the rear end of such phenomenon.
In an article written by Fredrick M. Hueston, he described how the failure of adhering to basic advertising principles can lead to wasted money[37] and opportunity for the product and the company. He narrated how in a recent trade show he noticed the different eye-catching designs and concepts of advertisements. But it each and everyone seemed to lack one thing in common. “I had no idea what they did, or what service or product they provided. I was examining one booth that had photos and displays, and across the top of the booth was a large banner with the company name that read ABC Enterprises. I looked and I searched, but for the life of me could not figure out what they did. After about 10 solid minutes of looking, I saw a little sign off to the side that said “Historic Stone Restoration.”[38] There is more to an advertising campaign than well-designed fliers and heavily promoted brands. Sometimes the littlest mistake in a campaign accounts for millions of dollars lost in expected revenue.[39] A campaign’s evaluation is critical both before and after the run of the campaign. Before implementing any kind of campaign, critically assessing all aspects f the campaign, its strategy, message, and media channel, can make sure that everything is done accordingly and that it meets the objectives of the company. Aside from the advertisement itself, it also vital that the placement and media scheduling is properly assessed. Evaluation of the campaign’s affectivity is usually made using third party consultants and researchers. Evaluating a campaign’s success is made through empirical investigations, such as Brand Recall and Brand Attitude. Both investigations is carried out through the use of surveys. There are three different figures where success is measured. Contact figures refer to the degree, duration, and frequency of contact between the target persons and the campaign. Brand recognition and recall are measured with the use of Awareness figures. These figures describe the ability of target persons to remember a brand and its product whether by themselves or induced by other factors. The third empirical level is brand attitudes. This figure measures the target persons attitude or opinion towards the brand or advertisement.
Olga Zaitseva, Head of Business Science at MediaCom Russia, describes the Russian market as an emerging consumer but is still a very fickle and immature market[40] which should be understood and analyzed more carefully. Market trends, target audiences, competitors, regionality and other factors, as well as econometric modeling analysis are vital in the evaluation of historical advertising campaign. Proper evaluation of such factors gives advertisers a better view of the Russian advertising industry and can eventually aid in the making decisions relating to media mix, communications focus, scheduling, portfolio budget allocation, etc. [41]
Bibliography:
Brown L., Competitive marketing strategy: developing, maintaining and defending competitive position (California: Thomas Nelson, 1990)p. 174
Chaudhuri A., Emotion and reason in consumer behavior (Amsterdam: Butterworth-Heinemann, 2006)p. 112
Stevens R., D. Loudon, B. Wrenn, P. Mansfield, Marketing planning guide (New York: Haworth Press, 2005), p. 115
S Ulanoff, Handbook of sales promotion(California: McGraw-Hill, 1985), p. 431
Sandage C., Advertising: theory and practice (California: R.D. Irwin , 1948) p. 572
Laird P., Advertising progress: American business and the rise of consumer marketing(Baltimore, Maryland: JHU Press, 2001) p.281
Hiam A, C Schewe, Portable MBA in Marketing (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1992)p.
Cohen W., The Entrepreneur and Small Business Problem Solver (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1990)p. 213
Jones J., J. Slater, What’s in a name: advertising and the concept of brands (New York:M.E. Sharpe, 2002)p.231
Schorman R., ‘Claude Hopkins, Earnest Calkins, Bissell Carpet Sweepers and the Birth of Modern Advertising’ Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, vol. 7, no. 2 (2008), p. 1-5 , May 16, 2009, History Cooperative database
Michels C., How to survive and prosper as an artist: selling yourself without selling your soul (New York: Alworth Press, 2001) p. 95
Clarke H.J., ‘.Can Copy that is unadorned exposition of facts get itself read?’, Printers’ Ink, Vol. 116 (1967), p. 141
Ustinova I., ‘English and emerging advertising in Russia,’ World Englishes vol. 25 no. 2 (2006), p 267-277
Repiev A., ‘A glimpse of Russia’s advertising and marketing,’ Mekka Consulting, (2008)
Ogilvy D., Confessions of an Advertising Man (California: Southbank,2004) p. 140
Lancaster G., P. Reynolds, Marketing: the one-semester introduction (Amsterdam: Butterworth-Heinemann, 2002) p. 143
Katz H, The media handbook: a complete guide to advertising media selection, planning, research, and buying, (New York: Routledge, 2006)p. 3
Seferova M., Advertising in Post-Soviet Russia: New Trends (Moscow: Moscow State University Press, 2005) p. 1
Hueston F., ‘Bad Advertising Is Money Wasted,’ AllBusiness , Surface Fabrication (2008) p. 1, May 16, 2009, All Business Database
Forbes B., ‘At the New York stock exchange, the future is fresh daily,’ Forbes, Vol. 132 (1983,) p.225
Zaitseva O., ‘An analysis of FMCG advertising effectiveness in Russia, World Advertising Research Center, August (2008), p. 7, May 16, 2009, WARC Online Exclusive database
Danesi M., Why it sells: decoding the meanings of brand names, logos, ads, and other marketing and advertising ploys(New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007)p. 30
Yeshin T., Advertising (Andover: Cengage Learning EMEA, 2006) p. 253
Keller K.L. , Strategic brand management: building, measuring and managing brand equity (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1998) p. 97
Brown L., Competitive marketing strategy: developing, maintaining and defending competitive position (California: Thomas Nelson, 1990)p. 174
[1] R. Stevens, D. Loudon, B. Wrenn, P. Mansfield, Marketing planning guide (New York: Haworth Press, 2005), p. 115
[2] S Ulanoff, Handbook of sales promotion(California: McGraw-Hill, 1985), p. 431
[3] C. Sandage, Advertising: theory and practice (California: R.D. Irwin , 1948) p. 572
[4] P. Laird, Advertising progress: American business and the rise of consumer marketing(Baltimore, Maryland: JHU Press, 2001) p.281
[5] A Hiam, C Schewe, Portable MBA in Marketing (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1992)p.
[6] W. Cohen, The Entrepreneur and Small Business Problem Solver (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1990)p. 213
[7] J Jones, J Slater, What’s in a name: advertising and the concept of brands (New York:M.E. Sharpe, 2002)p.231
[8] R Schorman, ‘Claude Hopkins, Earnest Calkins, Bissell Carpet Sweepers and the Birth of Modern Advertising’ Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, vol. 7, no. 2 (2008), p. 1-5 , May 16, 2009, History Cooperative database
[9] C Michels, How to survive and prosper as an artist: selling yourself without selling your soul (New York: Alworth Press, 2001) p. 95
[10] M Danesi, Why it sells: decoding the meanings of brand names, logos, ads, and other marketing and advertising ploys(New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007)p. 30
[11] T Yeshin, Advertising (Andover: Cengage Learning EMEA, 2006) p. 253
[12]K.L. Keller, Strategic brand management: building, measuring and managing brand equity (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1998) p. 97
[13] L Brown, Competitive marketing strategy: developing, maintaining and defending competitive position(California: Thomas Nelson, 1990)p. 174
[14] Yeshin op. cit., page 254.
[15] Yeshin op. cit., page 30
[16] Yeshin op. cit., page 206
[17] Yeshin op. cit., page 103
[18] A Chaudhuri, Emotion and reason in consumer behavior (Amsterdam:Butterworth-Heinemann, 2006)p. 112
[19] Ibid., ,page 115
[20] Ibid., page 128
[21] H.J. Clarke, ‘.Can Copy that is unadorned exposition of facts get itself read?’, Printers’ Ink, Vol. 116 (1967), p. 141
[22] Ibid., p. 143
[23] I Ustinova, ‘English and emerging advertising in Russia,’ World Englishes vol. 25 no. 2 (2006), p 267-277
[24] A Repiev, ‘A glimpse of Russia’sadvertising and marketing,’ Mekka Consulting, (2008)
[25] ibid
[26] ibid
[28] D Ogilvy, Confessions of an Advertising Man (California:Southbank,2004) p. 140
[29] G Lancaster, P Reynolds, Marketing: the one-semester introduction (Amsterdam: Butterworth-Heinemann, 2002) p. 143
[30] H Katz, The media handbook: a complete guide to advertising media selection, planning, research, and buying, (New York: Routledge, 2006)p. 3
[31] M Seferova, Advertising in Post-Soviet Russia: New Trends (Moscow: Moscow State University Press, 2005) p. 1
[32] Ibid., p 3
[33] Ibid., p 4
[34] Ibid., p 3
[35] Ibid., p 3
[36] Ibid., p. 4
[37] F Hueston, ‘Bad Advertising Is Money Wasted,’ AllBusiness , Surface Fabrication (2008) p. 1, May 16, 2009, All Business Database
[38] Ibid., p 3
[39] B Forbes, ‘At the New York stock exchange, the future is fresh daily,’ Forbes, Vol. 132 (1983,) p.225
[40] O. Zaitseva, ‘An analysis of FMCG advertising effectiveness in Russia, World Advertising Research Center, August (2008), p. 7, May 16, 2009, WARC Online Exclusive database
[41] Ibid., p 6-7
