Marketing communications strategies and practices

¶ … advertising on specialty channels. Discuss how both large national advertisers and small local companies might use cable TV effectively in their media plans.

Specialty channels have made it possible to more precisely segment prospects for a product or service based on their specific interests. Specialty channels attract highly unique and differentiated audiences, many of which share common demographic and psychographic profiles, making advertising on these channels the most efficient approach to reaching specific prospects of interest. Compared to the national channels that have a very wide demographic base that requires a correspondingly broader message, specialty channels offer large national advertisers and local companies alike the opportunity to reach more precisely defined audiences with more focused messages. These specialty channels then a much more effective at reaching a specific audience than the larger national channels.

Explain why advertisers of products such as cosmetics or women's clothing would choose to advertise in magazines such as Flare, Elm Street, or Chatelaine.

Each of these magazines and their accompanying websites approach women's perceptions of themselves as independent, autonomous, self-confident and high achieving from a slightly different vantage point, yet all are affirming of women's self-concept as being self-confident, decisive and strong. Because each of these magazines and their websites speak to women about how they feel about themselves, it's most likely that manufacturers of cosmetics and women's clothing would choose to advertise both in print and online in each of them with slightly different strategies. The messaging of each of these publications and their websites is slightly different with varying degrees of career, fashion, lifestyle, physical fitness, in addition to many other topics of interest to women, yet all share in promoting a healthy self-image of women as high achievers. For cosmetics and women's clothing companies, advertising in each of these magazines and their websites is most likely critical to their overall marketing strategies.

Discuss advantages and disadvantages associated with advertising in movie theatres. For what types of products and/or services might these media be most effective?

Increasingly mainstream advertisers are turning to advertising in movie theatres to accentuate and further strengthen their advertising strategies. While there are the disadvantages of being perceived as an irritant to movie goers and also the high cost, there are many advantages to advertising in movie theatres. These include highly targeted exposure to specific audiences, as many theatre chains now allow for specific advertisements to be placed on specific movies whose audiences can be predicted along demographics and psychographic variables. There is also the advantage of capitalizing on the mood within a movie theatre of anticipated entertainment. American Suzuki was able to capitalize on the mood within theatres with their advertising during the holiday season of 2007 tying in their motorcycle and sports utility vehicle (SUV) brands, using a storyline that accentuated the strengths of their motorcycle line and the XL7 SUV line the company launched in the Fall of 2007. Additional advantages of advertising in move theatres are higher levels of retention and recall of the specific advertisements, and greater unaided brand recall. Many advertisers, despite the many advantages of in-theatre advertising, feel that that the follow-up required to measure effectiveness in the lobby as theatre-goers are existing is too big of an irritant to the general public. Other advertisers give out a small card with a web address on it and offer to give the respondents to their surveys a $5 Starbucks' card for their responses. For the disadvantages and for the trouble of tracking effectiveness however, many advertisers are beginning to capitalize on the opportunity to target specific demographic and psychographic groups based on the movies they are interested in seeing.

Discuss the various reasons marketers have been shifting their marketing dollars to sales promotion from media advertising. Discuss the pros and cons of this reallocation of marketers' advertising and promotion budgets.

Marketers are shifting their marketing budgets to support sales promotion from media advertising in an effort to get greater impact on brand recognition at the upper ends of their sales funnels, and more effectively influence lead generation in the lower areas of their sales funnels. Sales promotion is seen increasingly as having a more immediate impact on lead generation, lead fulfillment and the entire pipeline of sales activity. Media advertising on the other hand is not as easily tracked directly to sales activity and often is seen as "air cover" to drive up awareness of a given brand. Where media advertising is strategic and long-term in scope, in fact it has to be long-term to have an appreciable impact on brand awareness, sales promotions are increasingly becoming more measurable and quantifiable in their impact on sales strategies. The pros of this allocation of marketing dollars to sales promotion include better measurement of the ROI of the program, more efficient use of marketing dollars to support sales efforts, more targeted and focused programs with specific dates they run between, and higher levels of impact on sales. The cons of this are that often without media advertising brands will become less well-known and the advertiser will have to battle for greater mindshare during sales cycles as a result of not being known. Additionally, not spending on media advertising can also impact, during times of economic uncertainty, the perceived viability of a company. During a recession then it is critical for companies to continually advertising to provide potential prospects the assurance they are still viable as an organization.

What is a video news release (VNR)? Provide an example of a situation in which a company might employ the use of a VNR. Discuss some of the ethical implications (if any) in using this tool.