Advertising Principles and Practice

Advertising: Principles and Practice

We live in a consumers' society. Economic agents no longer compete to create the highest quality products, but they compete to create the strongest marketing campaigns, to best serve customers' needs and wants and to create and consolidate the strongest possible brand. In this setting then, marketing plays an essential role.

Marketing traditionally encompasses the totality of tools and mechanisms involved in the management of the relationship between the firm and its customers. Advertising is one important part of this relationship and it can be defined as the external communications of a firm, with the intent to transmit information and appeal to audiences (Janoschka, 2004).

The development and implementation of a successful advertising campaign is a complex and tedious effort. Marketing specialists have to ensure that their advertisements reflect the features of the product they advertise, capture the attention of the audience and stimulate the purchase decision. Such objectives are not easily attainable and the marketing specialists make use of a multitude of inputs to create their campaigns.

Advertisements are often created to appeal to the natural instincts of the audience; they are created in a manner to gather customer interest and to promote the organizational brand. In order to do so, there are various considerations included in the construction of advertisements, among the most important of which referring to the following:

Color and intensity

Size and contrast

Movement and direction

Motivation -- self-referencing

Novelty and error

Sex, nudity, erotica and provocation

Semiotics, motivation and natural signs (Dahlen, Lange and Smith, 2009).

Colors attract the attention of the audience and they also help preserve it for longer periods of time. Colors create more intense advertisements and they are better able to wake the stimuli of the audience. Still, the choice of the colors is a complex endeavor and it is often necessary to have the collaboration of a designed which offers input on the means of using and combining colors (Clemente, 2002).

Aside from the colors, the advertisements are also differentiated by size in the meaning that a bigger advertisement is perceived as more important. In terms of contrasts, these help by bringing out the product advertised and making it stand out. Then, there are also movements and directions, both of which capture the attention of the audience by raising curiosity. People generally have a short attention span, but moving advertisements draw more attention and make the people remain focused for a longer period of time. This is also common in the presence of novelty and errors, which also draw the attention of the audience.

Another important element to consider in the construction of advertisements is represented by the use of motivation and self-referencing, generally captured in the essence of strong messages, which can be relived by the people even after they have seen the advertisement. Sexual references are also used to linger in the minds of the audiences and are highly successful in attracting their interest.