Page 470 - Foundations of Marketing

Integrated Marketing Communications | Chapter 15 437

Figure 15.3 The Four Possible Elements of a Promotion Mix

Personal
selling

Public
Advertising
relations

Sales
promotion

From Pride/Ferrell, Marketing 2014, 17E. 2014 Cengage Learning.

Advertising

Advertising is a paid nonpersonal communication about an organization and its products
transmitted to a target audience through mass media, including television, radio, the Internet,
newspapers, magazines, video games, direct mail, outdoor displays, and signs on mass transit
vehicles. Advertising is changing as consumers’ mass media consumption habits are chang-
ing. Companies are striving to maximize their presence and impact through digital media; ads
are being designed that cater to smaller, more personalized audiences; and traditional media
like newspapers are in a decline due to a drop in readership. Individuals and organizations
use advertising to promote goods, services, ideas, issues, and people. Being highly flexible,
advertising can reach an extremely large target audience or focus on a small, precisely defined
segment. For instance, Quizno’s advertising focuses on a large audience of potential fast-food
customers, ranging from children to adults, whereas advertising for Gulfstream jets aims at a
much smaller and more specialized target market. On the other hand, the outdoor advertise-
ment about the dangers of secondhand smoke among children is used to spread awareness.
This advertisement points out that secondhand smoke is equivalent to children smoking 102
packs of cigarettes by the age of five.
Advertising offers several benefits. It is extremely cost-efficient when it reaches a vast
number of people at a low cost per person. For example, the cost of a four-color, full-page
advertisement in the national edition of Time magazine costs $ 339,400 . With a circulation
of approximately 3,298,390 , this makes the cost of reaching roughly a thousand subscribers
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about $ 97.00 . Advertising also lets the source repeat the message several times. Subway
credits its promotional and advertising success to a catchy theme and heavy repetition of
its “$ 5.00 footlong” sub sandwich campaign. Furthermore, advertising a product a certain
way can add to the product’s value, and the visibility an organization gains from advertising
can enhance its image. For instance, incorporating touchable elements that generate positive
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sensory feedback in print advertising can be a positive persuasive tool. At times, a firm tries
to enhance its own or its product’s image by including celebrity endorsers in advertisements.
For example, Louis Vuitton featured Angelina Jolie in an advertisement in its “Core Values”
campaign. The campaign, set in Cambodia, shows Angelina Jolie barefoot with no makeup
and wearing her own clothes with a Louis Vuitton monogrammed Alto bag slung over her
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shoulder.

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