Personal Selling and Building Brand Equity

Advertising and Promotion

1 Advertising in the 21st Century

The 21st century is the Digital Age, the age that marked the shift from legacy media to new media. Advertisers have thus focused more and more on digital media, social media, and “clicks” than on the power of print media or traditional commercials on TV. The reason for this shift is that more people now use their mobile devices for browsing the Internet, consuming information, shopping via e-commerce, or communicating with peers than ever before. More people have “cut the cord” of cable TV and now stream content via providers like Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, HBOMax and more. Fewer people read books and magazines than ever before. Advertisers have to go where the eyeballs are, and digital media platforms like Facebook and Google have ways to track eyeballs through online monitoring, which gives advertisers a way to understand what users are doing. Advertising in the 21st century has become more personalized, targeted, and digital as a result.

2 The Philosophy and Practice of IMC, Brand Equity and Ethics in Advertising

The philosophy and practice of integrated marketing communications (IMC) is to focus on the profile of the target market—its needs, opinions, values, interests, and media habits. It then proceeds with the development of communication synergy, with a message that is consistent across all media. The aim is to influence the target market’s behavior and to build relationships with customers. Advertising within the IMC approach is effective when predicated on a solid understanding of the target market and the preferred media of the market is used to channel a single message to establish brand equity and loyalty.

Brand equity is the worth of the brand—how highly it is esteemed by consumers. For instance, customers might view highly a brand like Coca-Cola because of its consistency, heritage, and cultural value—until they hear that Coke is telling its employees to “try to be less white”—and then suddenly the brand equity drops precipitously among consumers who oppose the “woke culture” movement of corporate America. For companies, brand equity is important because it describes the company’s value among consumers in terms of its reputation. Whatever products it releases, the company knows its brand will be popular. It takes pride in doing nothing that will harm the brand, such as avoiding scandal, releasing inferior products, and so on.

Ethical issues associated with advertising, sales promotions, social media, and other practices are that advertising should never be false or misleading; promotions should never be used for a bait-and-switch practice, and social media should always be used honestly and never to try to dupe followers or offend large segments of the community by putting out statements that are meant as half-jokes the way Tesla CEO Elon Musk often does.

3 Importance of Market Segmentation

The importance of market segmentation for specific consumer groups is that it allows companies to put consumers into groups based on demographics, behaviors and other characteristics. This in turn enables the company to market its products to particular groups that have the same needs, values, interests and behavioral and purchasing habits in common.

The five important factors of persuasion—message strength, peripheral cues, receiver involvement, receiver initial position, and communication modality that advertisers look for when creating promotions—are essential in accomplishing a successful ad campaign. Message strength pertains to the relevance, clarity, appeal and consistency of the message; peripheral cues, such as the credibility of the source or the facility of several arguments in one message, help to convince the consumer as well. Receiver involvement is the degree to which the consumer is ready to act or wants more information; it helps the advertiser know which tools to rely on most. Receiver initial position will indicate whether the consumer is likely to buy the argument or have counter-arguments. Communication modality refers to the how the message is conveyed, i.e., what channels, medium, manner and so on.

The process of the marketing communication objective setting and the requirements for good objectives also play a part in a successful campaign in terms of the long-term enhancement of the brand. The purpose of having good objectives is to be able to increase the company’s brand equity over time.

4 Strengths and Weaknesses

The different levels of impressions made by advertising to calculate the performance of a campaign include an ad impression (whenever an ad is loaded online), a page view impression, a post impression, a viral impression and others. Each is important in calculating the performance of a campaign—but not all are measurable. A viral impression, for instance, is difficult to calculate because these are posts that are shared, whereas a page impression can be counted easily to see how often a page is viewed.

The strengths and weaknesses for each of the following major traditional advertising media—newspapers, magazines, radio, and television—depend upon the target. Old media skews to older consumers. New media skews to younger consumers. The strengths of newspapers are that they tend to be viewed daily; the weakness is that they are quickly discarded; magazines have longer staying power because they are kept around longer, but they reach a smaller audience than newspapers; radio’s audience depends upon the content of the station and the messages are brief and not heard by many; television ads can stick in the mind longer, but they have to be targeted and can be costly.

The advantages and disadvantages of social media compared to traditional media choices are that it is seen by the majority of younger consumers today. These consumers also trust social media more, especially Influencers. These same consumers are not as exposed to traditional media.

5 Promotions

The nature of trade promotions, including cooperative advertising, vendor support programs, trade contests and incentives, and trade shows, are a way for companies to bring products to consumers in unique ways. Trade contests are a way to offer prizes for different channel members; incentives allow a retailer to obtain something in return for setting up a display, for instance. Trade shows are a way for a company to identify prospects for later sales. Vendor support programs allow a manufacturer to pay back a retailer for putting up a display, similar to cooperative advertising.

Promotions and how they perform objectives for marketers are rooted in the idea of getting a company’s products into the market through channels that are non-traditional. The prospects are brought together in many cases into one place (like a trade show) or they are reached through another’s channel, such as a retailer setting up a display. They help to build brand value over time. The potential effectiveness of sales promotion ideas, and the effectiveness of completed promotional programs, are that they help the company to identify potential targets and increase brand equity in the long term.