An example of an advert that tried to raise awareness from my chosen company (Cadbury) was the advert with a gorilla on drums playing the song ‘In the air tonight’. I think that they tried to raise awareness with this advert, as they haven’t mentioned anything about the chocolate being good or tasty they have just shown the chocolate at the end of the advert to show that it is related to ‘Cadbury’. This advert is very interesting, fun and strange which will make people talk about it raising awareness though word of mouth as well making the promotional campaign better. Also this advert raises awareness as it is easy to remember it and as soon as you hear the music you think about the chocolate. Another campaign by Cadbury to raise awareness was the ‘spots vs strips’ adverts, were used to raise awareness of the Olympics and Paralympics. They have raised awareness by holding a lot of events for the younger age that are based on sports from the Olympics and Paralympics.
To generate sales
As the main aim of most businesses is to gain the most profit as possible, by selling as many of their product as possible, so when businesses plan on advertising campaigns they often plan it to generate more sales of their products. They do this so the money they spend on the advertising will comeback in the extra sells they make from the advertising. They can do this in many ways using many different forms of advertising; they can do this by having several posters outside the shops in which the product is being sold. This would be effective as it means that people will remember that product and advert the most when they want to buy a type of that product. This is used allot outside big supermarkets, as when people go to super markets they want to buy allot of items and they see the advert they will also add that product to the shopping. An example of when ‘Cadbury’ uses this is when they have a new chocolate bar, they place adverts outside so people will want to buy it.
Another example of an advert that was effective at generating sales was Apple’s new TV advert for their new IPhone product. It was effective at generating sales as they spend the whole advert showing the new phone and describing all its newest and best features. This was effective at generating sales as it makes the audience see how good the product is and why they need to buy the product to improve their lives.
To compete
As there are always a limited number of customers all businesses compete against each other to attract the customers to them, to sell more products than each other and to get more people to help them or buy their service. Companies will advantage if they are more popular than their competitors, as it will mean that they have a larger market share. If a company has a bigger market share people are more likely to go to them to buy their products. As usually bigger companies are more reliable, cheaper and sell better products. For example 'Currys' has a larger market share then 'Appliance world' therefore more people are likely to buy from 'Currys' then from 'Appliance world'. This is healthy for all business and computers as people in the company will try harder just to try and beat the other company in the same market. Another example is two companies that might compete are Coca Cola and Pepsi co. They will try to compete as they sell similar drinks and there are limited customers so they will both want to try and get most of them.
Another example is that the military service adverts, such as the RAF advert and the army adverts, compete to get the most people to join their service. They do this effectively but advertising their service as being the best to join, for example the RAF may claim that the pay in the RAF is better than the pay in the army. Whereas the army may claim that if you join the army you would learn more skills then you would in the navy.
To gain a wider audience
Business will often advertise to gain a wider audience, as if they have a wider audience then often the amount of sales will increase as there are more possible customers. This is as if they increase the amount of sales, they will gain a larger profit and making profit is most business’ aims, this means that they will be successful. As if the target audience is 200 people they will gain more sales the if it was just 100 people.
An example of this is the adverts for Coke Zero, as when Coke Zero where advertising their product their adverts were aimed at the male audience. They done this as they noticed that their product ‘Diet Coke’ was mostly being bought by female customers, as being on a diet is seen as a very famine thing, as they watch their weight carefully. So to get males to drink the product they changed the name and made all the adverts and designs very masculine. This made the audience of ‘Coke’ wider, increasing the amount of sales and the profit. This advertising campaign was very successful and in the first sixteen weeks after it managed to sell £24.1 million worth of ‘Coke Zero.’
To save time and money
This is a less obvious reason why a business would promote their product, as people often see advertisements as being expensive and taking a long time to produce. However in reality it can save the company a lot or money and time especial for car companies or businesses that sell a range of appliance. As with an advertisement you are usually advertising to hundreds of people at the same time, therefore you are informing a hundred people about your product at the same time. Whereas if you wait until the person comes in to your store, you would have to explain the product features and why they should buy it to each person separately, this can take a long time and you have to pay someone to explain this to the costumer, so it can end up costing allot more. For example if you are a car company selling this new car that just came in, if you place an advertisement in the newspaper of it and all its features, it will take up a page. Advertising a whole page in the Bishop’s Stortford observer costs £300, this advert will roughly reach about 700 people.
b)
How messages are encoded
Promotion always contains encoded messages so the audience know what the advert is about. Messages can be encoded in much different form, such as photos, text, sound and actions, for example ‘Go Compare’ where there is a man singing about a car insurance, showing they are happy and fun not boring. There is a message that is also encoded with in the lyrics, this message is that they should buy their car insurance from 'Go compare'.
Receiving and decoding messages
The receiver will decode the message of the advert, but everyone will decoded the message differently depending how they are. This means that it is important that the company makes the message of the advert clear and it is shown to their target audience, otherwise the promotion is ineffective and a waste of time. An example is the ‘Go Compare’ where there is the man being shot the message of the advert may be decoded incorrectly and dislike the company.
Clarity
The message of the advert must be clear and understand able for effective promotion. The sound and the speech has to be clear, also the video must be clear, as the Cadbury Fuse had a unclear advert video, so the audience didn’t understand it. This meant that the company gained fewer sales then they had hoped. Also for the advert to be clear the advert has to be a good length of time, as if the advert is too short then the audience may miss it and if the advert is too long then the audience will get bored and do something else.
C)
There are many different barriers to effective promotion some the audiences vault and some the advertisers fault, some of the reasons include: attention span, existing perception and distortion.
Misunderstanding
One of the main barriers of effective promotion is the audience misunderstanding the intended meaning of the advert, this occurs as everyone has different understanding of actions and symbols. For example; if you see some people messing around and jumping about everywhere, one person may think it shows the product being advertised is fun where as other people may see it as just some people being stupid. Therefore when someone misunderstands the advert but it may also repel them from the product, meaning the advertising is doing the opposite of its purpose. There have been many adverts in the past where the audience have misunderstood it, such as: the ‘Cadbury Fuse’ advert, the advert was a lot of random people doing a lot of random things on the street and then at the end the chocolate bar shows up on screen. The intended message was that the chocolate bar was random and has a lot of different ingredients, but the public couldn’t understand what the message of the advert was so the promotion campaign was very ineffective.
Attention span
The attention span of the audience is not a major issue with adverts on the television, but when it comes to promotion on bill boards, posters and bus stops not a lot of people will see them as most are driving and are putting all their attention on the road. So when someone is on the motorway driving they are concentrating on the cars around them and what is happening not on the hundreds of bill boards they have driven past. Advertisers have tried to solve this by making the bill boards/ posters just one massive picture and a couple large words, so that the driver only has to glance at the bill board for a second and they will remember the product. Another issue of attention spawn on the television is that they show nine or ten adverts within a period of 5 minutes, so by the time the last one has finished showing most people have already forgotten the first one. Another issue with television advertising is that after watching adverts for two minutes or so the audience will get bored or start doing something and miss the last adverts.
Existing perception
Existing perceptions is a major issue when it comes to using famous celebrities to advertise your product, as some people may dislike the person you use so they will be repelled from the product. This will mean using the celebrity will be ineffective as not as many people as you hoped will be attracted to the product. For example Justin Beibar is a celebrity that many people like but there are also a lot of people that dislike him, therefore if a company uses him to advertise their product it will repel a lot of people from their product.
Distortion
Distortion is when the advert is broken or not working fully, this is not the fault of the audience of the advertisers it is the issue of the technology that is used to advertise the product. For example if you are advertising on the internet the internet speed may not be fast enough so not all of the advert is shown.
Amin Sadik Unit 7: Promotion in business Mrs Dervish
by
aminsadik9 (student)
