Celebrity endorsements are another way a company increases their products popularity and awareness. A company pays a well known figure large amounts of money for them to wear their product or be part of an advertisement for their product this makes people want the item so that they can be more like their favourite celebrity. Tiger Woods is the most paid celebrity for endorsements because he is paid to where Nike sports wear and to appear in lots of TV adverts such as Gillette. Even though it costs large amounts to hire a celebrity endorsement it often makes a larger return because it makes their product stand out, and it makes people think if its good enough for them its good enough for me.
Pre-releases are exactly what they say they are, a pre-release of the product it is often a small sample of the product releases before the actual mass launch of a product. This can be a trailer at the cinema for upcoming films or food samples at supermarkets. It can even be testers in magazines, the consumer tries the sample and if they like the product they want more of it, so then a few weeks later the actual product is released they buy it. This is a good idea if the product is successful, this can also bring out faults and problems in the product if it’s released in a sample before its been properly tested. This can be good but you would need to show a lot of the good qualities and few of the bad ones. This will hopefully encourage the consumers to buy your product.
These are the people in the company that look after the company image and convince the consumers and the press that their product is good even if it is not. These people also talk to the press so that they can influence the public through the papers and news. An example of this is when Cadbury had a scare about their chocolate being poisoned. The people from Cadbury’s public relations department assured the press that their chocolate wasn’t poisoned and was healthy.
Advertising on the TV is a very good way to advertise a product because most of the world owns a TV and most of those watch it. There are peak times when people watch more TV which will be in the evening after work. This means that companies have to pay more to advertise their product during these times. That is the only real disadvantage for advertising on TV, it is very expensive.
Advertising on the radio is another good way to advertise you product but the problems are that not many people listen to the radio because they watch TV instead. Another disadvantage is that the consumer doesn’t get to see the product.
These were just a few ways of advertising a product. Some companies make a promotional plan to plan when they are going to release certain things about the product. This can be written using AIDA. AIDA stands for:
- Attention
- Interest
- Desire
- Action
This is usually done on a timeline as below.
This timeline is for the release of a children’s toy in time for Christmas. Below I have explained each stage.
Attention
At this stage the company will do minimal advertising to let the consumer know when the product will be released and what the product is. In this case the toy company will tell people about the product.
Interest
At the interest stage you get the consumers more interested in the product. So in this case the toy company might give more information on the product or just increase the number of adverts.
Desire
The desire stage is where you want the consumer to know that they are going to buy your product before it is even released. The toy company would probably make a new advert and explain what the toy can do and really sell it to little kids.
Action
This is the release stage for the product. The product is released on to the market and starts to get sales. In this case the toy company will have released the product just before Christmas for maximum sales as the consumers are buying gifts for their children or friends.
All advertising is split into two categories, above or below the line advertising, or sometimes both which means that it will be on the line. Advertising which is described as being above the line is advertising which is paid for by the company and is visible and obvious to the target audience. These can be TV adverts or adverts on the internet. Below the line advertising is the opposite and is not paid for by the company. Examples are merchandising and PR agencies.
