One basic problem in the measurement of advertising effects is that too frequently the advertising objectives or goals were not made explicit and, therefore, were not understood.
The author of the present article presents several useful concepts dealing with the proposes of advertising under a variety of conditions.
UNDERSTANDING ADVERTISING’S PURPOSE
It is a fact of modern business life that many different people are involved in the creation and approval of advertising….for a small advertiser, there may be half-a-dozen different people concerned, while a larger advertiser may have dozens of people involved in the advertising of a single product, hundreds of people concerned with the entire product line.
Do all of these people have a common understanding of the purpose of advertising?
We have already indicated what would be the result if you were to conduct a little survey among these individuals asking: “What are we trying to accomplish with this compaign or ad for this product at this time?” The same diversity of opinion would undoubtedly result if the survey asked the more general question “What is advertising’s purpose in our company?”.
The President may be strongly minded toward building a “corporate image. The Sales Manager may regard advertising as a means of getting larger orders from retailers. Financial people may regard advertising as an expense, chargeable to a given fiscal period. The Advertising Manager or the agency account executive may regard advertising as an investment, directed toward building a brand image and increasing share of market.
The job of gaining a common understanding of advertising’s contribution is highly important. Few of those who influence and approve key advertising decisions have had any direct advertising experience. But the final decision makers in American industry are reaching out for a better understanding of advertising and how it can be employed most profitably in the business.
Robert F. Elder, President of the Plex Corporation, expressed the feeling voiced by many other chief executives, in these words:
Most management men want to understand advertising and are eager to listen attentively when you talk to them about it in simple, realistic, down-to-earth terms, and what it means to corporate sales and profits.
The following chapters are presented merely as one way to explain the advertising process, what it is and how it operates. These concepts may be helpful in gaining a general understanding of advertising’s function and contribution in various kinds of business situations.
WHAT IS ADVERTISING?
Those who have spent their lives in advertising may, on first consideration, feel it is naïve to pose the question, “What is advertising?” Such a question, they may say, is appropriate only for students and trainees, but not for experienced and sophisticated marketing and sales executives.
However, different meanings are frequently attached to the terms “Advertising,” “Sales promotion, “publicity,” “selling,” and “Marketing.”
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There is no universally accepted distinction between “advertising” and “sales promotion.” In some companies “advertising” includes all forms of mass paid communication directed toward influencing the end consumer, whereas “sales promotion” includes those forms of mass communication directed toward informing and influencing the channels of distribution: salesmen, distributors, dealers. In other companies, “sales promotion” includes mass communication materials (literature catalogues, displays, films) which are used by the channels of distribution (salesmen, retailer as selling aids. Hence, a piece of product literature mailed directly to a consumer is advertising; literature distributed by the salesmen or dealer is sales promotion. Still another (and perhaps the most traditional) distinction between advertising and sales promotion is that advertising consists of time, space and preparatory costs in commissionable media. All other mass commercial communications are regarded as “sales promotion.” In some industries and channels of distribution the tierm “sales promotion” is used to refer to any and all activities used to promote sales including: premium offers and other special inducements to consumers, special price offers, sales drives and contests, as well as advertising. Under such usage the term “sales promotion” becomes almost synonymous with “merchandising” and even “marketing.” The first important consideration is that some agreed-upon definition be arrived at, as a basis for common understanding within the company and between company and agency. Resolving industry-wide semantic differences is a longer range effort.
Terminology differs from industry to industry and within industry. Differences of opinion on “what is advertising?: are clearly demonstrated when a budget is prepared. In some companies the advertising budget includes only paid space and time. In others it includes practically all forms of the printed word including sales literature, price sheets, publicity releases, house organs, employee communications, etc. (One advertising manager thought it was going a little too far to change his budget for repair and maintenance of the clock over the branch office building.) It is important that those within a given company have a common understanding of terminology.
We start with the obvious fact that advertising is a form of communication. So is a letter or a personal call by a salesman on a customer. The difference is that advertising is mass communication. So is a story in a newspaper or magazine, or a play on television. So is a sermon or a political speech. As a matter of fact, all of the fine arts – music, poetry, painting, drama – are forms of communication. They convey a frame of mind. By whatever the means, somehow these forms of art make contact and thereby transmit a mood or “message” from one humen mind to another.
We begin to separate advertising from the many other forms of communication when we add the term “commercial” or “paid.” It is paid for by a sponsor who express to induce some kind of action on the part of the reader or listener that will be beneficial to the advertiser. To sum up in a definition:
Advertising is mass, paid communication, the ultimate purpose of which is to impart information, develop attitude and induce action beneficial to the advertiser (generally the sales of a product or service).
Paid political announcements, recruitment ads, even the “lost dog” ad in the classified columns of the newspaper are all advertising. They are mass communications, paid for by a sponsor who wishes to achieve command: the selection of a candidate, the hiring of personnel, or the recovery of the family pet. But the bulk of all advertising aims toward the ultimate sale of a product or service. It is this area of advertising as marketing force with which we are primarily concerned.
HOW THE ADVERTISING PROCESS WORKS.
The ultimate purpose of most advertising is to help bring about the sale of a product or service.
To come to grips with this question of the purpose of advertising we ask two very simple and obvious questions:
1. When? (Speed of reaction)
2. How much of the sales-making load is to be carried by advertising?
Answers to the question “When is advertising expected to bring about a sale?” will run the complete gamut. A department store runs an ad in the eventing paper announcing a sensational sale of an item. Next morining, people ae lined up waiting for the doors to open. An hour later clerks are saying, “Sorry, we’re sold out.”
A corporation runs a “corporate image” ad aimed at prospective employees at the student level. Ten years later a man who read the ad many apply for a job, or he may specify the company’s products on a purchase order, he may buy some of the company’s stock.
Of course, the time objective of most advertising falls somewhere in between these two extremes. The advertiser of automobiles, insurance, farm equipment or machine tools does not expect people to rush out and buy his product. But he does expect to move the prospect a little closer to the purchase of his product. Advertising’s job is to increae propensity to buy- to move the prospect, inch-by-inch, closer to a purchase. If one out of ten or even one out of a hundred of the people who are exposed to the ads take near-term buying action we may have a huge success on our hands.
Let’s examine the second question: “How much of the selling load is advertising expected to carry?”
At one extreme we have a mail-order advertiser who would say, “100%,” because advertising is the only commercial communication force. At the other extreme is the industrial company in which personal selling is the key sales-making force. Advertising assists by carrying part of the communicating work load. One corporation, having a line of both consumer and industrial products, figured the advertising-to-sales ratio varied from a high of 25% to a low of 25/100 of one per cent.
Between these extremes we have the wide range of products where advertising is blended with packaging, promotion, price and personal selling; all of these forces contributing to the consumption of a sale.
To repeat, we have two variables:
1. The speed of reaction to advertising
2. The share of the communicating work load to be carried by advertising
The Communications Spectrum
The concept of the “Marketing Communications Spectrum”…..offers a starting approach to the solution of our problem. This concept is applied common sense. It breaks the subject up into logical and comprehensible steps. It begins with the obvious assumption that advertising is a communication force. Advertising does not physically impel the consumer toward the purchase of goods; its purpose is to create a state of mind conducive to purchase. Advertising, therefore, is one of several communication forces which, acting singly or in combination, move the consumer through successive levels of what we have termed the communications spectrum. These levels as shown in Exhibit A are Unawareness, Awareness, Comprehension, Conviction and Action.
The lowest level of this communications spectrum is Unawareness. At this level are the people who have never heard of our product or company. The messages about the product have not penetrated to the point where the consumer recognizes or recalls the brand or company name. Now it is conceivable that
Exhibit A. Marketing Communications Spectrum
MARKETING FORCES
Motivate people toward buying action Countervailing Forces
UNAWARENESS
AWARENESS
COMPREHENSION
CONVICTION
ACTION
People buy products or vote for candidates whose name are unknown to them. The chances are, however, that such a product makes few sales and such a candidate gets few votes. As a bare minimum, we strive for achieving consumer Awareness.
The next level above Awareness in the communications spectrum is that of Comprehension. In this state the consumer not only is aware of the product or service, but knows the brand name and recognizes the package or trademark and, in addition, possesses some degree of comprehension of what the product is and does. He may say, “Brand A is a headache remedy which the ‘maker claims will give fast relief and will not upset the stomach,” or “The B company is a manufacturer of earth-moving equipment that will scoop up 20 tons in one bite.”
The next level of the spectrum, Conviction, can be illustrated by a consumer who says, “Brand B is a name for a polyester fiber made by the X Company Garments made of this fiber dry faster, wear longer and hold their shape better. I intend to buy this product in the future. “ It may also be illustrated by a woman who prefers a particular brand of lipstick or a man who prefers a particular brand of beer on an emotional rather than a strictly rational basis.
Finally, there is Action, in which the consumer has made a some overt move toward the purchase of the product He may have visited a dealer’s showroom and asked for a demonstration. He may have asked for literature or for a salesman to call. He may have asked for or reached for the brand at the retail store. Comsume\ationof the sale may have been beyond the power of advertising: the dealer did not have the brand in stock, the salesman failed to follow up the lead, the price was considered too high, or the product lacked appeal when physically examined. However, the advertising induced action.
Advertising performs its role when it contributes to moving the consumer through one or more levels in the spectrum: awareness of the existence of the product, comprehansion of the features and advertanges, rational or emotional conviction of the benefits an, finally, action leading to a sale.
The Marketing Communications Mix
Advertising is one of several forces contributing to awareness, comprehension, conviction and action. Other forces will vary, depending upon whether this is a “consumer” or “industrial” product or service. They may include; person-to-person selling, recommendation of user or retailer, publicity and various other forms of mass communication such as displays, exhibits, films, literature, etc.
Rarely does a single communication force move a prospect through the entire cycle. The exceptions prove the rule Mail-order type advertising can move a reader through the entire spectrum from unawareness to a cash-in-advance sale in a few hundred words. Door-to-door salesman and street-corner demonstrators can sell kitchen utensils, consmetics, brushes, etc., to consumers in a few minutes of persuasive selling.
But the use of advertising or personal selling to achieve the wrapped-up, one-shot sale is but a tiny fraction of total advertising and selling effort. All of the forces of marketing communication are brought together in a “mix” or “blend” to move the prospect step by step, even inch oby inch, toward the ultimate goal of a satisfied customer.
The purpose of advertising is to perform certain parts of the communicating job with greater economy, speed and volume than can be accomplished through other means.
In some instances – notably consumer package goods – advertising may be called upon to carry the major part of the marketing communicating work load: from awareness, though comprehension, conviction and right through to action. Consider a product sold through self-service grocery and drug outlets. Advertising is the major communicative force between manufacturer and consumer. The function today of the package goods retailer is mainly to make the goods conveniently available at a price and to provide facilities for the physical exchange between goods and money.
In other product lines, notably industrial goods, advertising is a complementary communicative force. The typical company salesman calling on industrial accounts may make only three or four calls a day. If we subtract the time he opens behind a steering wheel, in reception rooms, in handling various service duties and in building friendly relations, the actual face-to-face time spent in presenting the merits of his product to the customer is small. The cost per sales call and per selling minute is high; the rate of penetration of sales messages to the many thousands of buying influences is slow. Advertising’s job is to increase the productivity of the salesman by relieving hi of a substantial part of his communication workload.
Falling somewhere in between those two extremes are consumer durables and semi-durables (autos, appliances, home furnishings, jewelry, clothing, etc.). Advertising’s job is to deliver people who are informed and emotionally favourable to a brand, across the retailer’s threshold (and, of course, advertising informs and influences the retailer, too). Consummation of a sale hinges upon product appearance, price, availability in desired size and color and a dozen other factors.
Advertising’s job may vary with the season or the stage of a product’s development. It may be to introduce a new product or a new use of an old product. It may be to hammer away at product benefits or to crease a favourable emotional disposition toward a company or brand. In some cases the primary function of advertising is to remind people to buy or to stimulate impulse purchases.
In very case the function of advertising is to perform a commercial communication task more economically than by some alternate means.
Advertising Is Automated Marketing Communications
We tend to regard automation as a relatively recent development in American industry, and so it is when applied to the factory or office. We tend to overlook the fact that advertising is “automated marketing communication.” Automation can be a powerful force for increased productivity If it is applied selectively. It would be foolish to propose that every operation in a factory or office should be automated. The process of boring cylinders in an engine bloo may land itself to automation, whereas the assembly of carburetors may not. It may be economical to put factory payroll or finished goods inventory on an electronic computer in one company and not feasible in another company.
In a similar manner, we approach marketing communications on a “task basis”:
….What are the communicating tasks to be done?
….What parts of the total communicating job is advertising uniquely and economically qualified to perform?
….What is the ideal “mix” of these communication forces for each product at this particular stage in its marketing development?
MARKETING MIX IN ACTION
If we refer again to Exhibit A, we see that advertising is one of several marketing forces acting upon potential customers and moving them toward buying action. Seldom does a single force, such as advertising or personal selling, perform the entire task alone. And rarely is a single force powerful enough to move a prospect though the entire spectrum, from unawareness to action, through a single message. Advertising’s function is to move the consumer, step b step, closer to buying conviction and finally, to buying action.
In some situations, advertising may be designed to work at all levels at the same time, Let’s assume that the market is equally divided into the five levels (Exhibit B):
Exhibit B.
ACTION - 20% are present users of the product
CONVICTION- 20% are convinced but haven't got around to buying
COMPREHENSION - 20% comprehend the product but are not convinced
AWARENESS - 20% are aware of the product but don't know of the advantages
UNAWARENESS - 20% never heard of it
Let’s assume that, as a result of an advertising campaign, half of those at each level move up the rung on the ladder. Then we should have (Exhibit C):
Exhibit C.
ACTION - 30 % present users
CONVICTION - 20%
COMPREHENSION - 20%
AWARENESS - 20%
UNAWARENESS - 10%
Advertising in this instance has worked “across the board,” moving some people from unawareness to awareness, others to comprehension, conviction and action.
Under certain market conditions (such as intense competition), advertising may perform a valuable economic function if it succeeds in holding its present share of the comsumer mind. In addition to replacing customers lost to competition, the advertising has succeeded in counter-acting such opposing forces as memory lapse and the losses that occur through death and through customers “outgrowing” the beed for the product (example: baby food).
Consider some entirely different situations. The force of advertising may be directed at one particular level in the spectrum, rather than “across the board.” Some situations call for advertising that is entirely action-oriented (Exhibit D):
Exhibit D
ACTION
CONVICTION
COMPREHENSION
AWARENESS
UNAWARENESS
For example, consider aleading brand of razor blades. Everyone is acquainted with the product. And while not 100% of the people are convinced, the brand's high share of industry indicates that this is not the key problem. What is advertising's job? It may well be to remind people to buy: men forget to buy blades, use old blades beyond their normal length of life. Similarly, advertising of such impulse items as soft drinks is strongly action oriented.