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Advertising
The purpose of advertising is to affect people's opinions of a product- ideally, leading them to buy that product. Market Research Before you can sell a product or service, you need to know your product. You need to know everything about your product.
Most importantly, you need to know what people think about your product. Does it have a favorable or unfavorable association? What's its reputation? Do people think it's traditional or modern? Do they think it's cheap or classy? Is it hip or geeky? To determine public perception of products and services, marketers may take in random people off the street, or people of a certain age range or political persuasion or gender and ask them what they associate with that product. This is called a focus group. Focus Groups
Company's pay Nielsen millions of dollars to analyze consumer's impressions of their brands. Nielsen's BuzzMetric web site (which you have to pay for) can show you the associations of almost any brand.
Nike is happy about "comfortable" "cool" and "awesome" being highly associated with their name. Are they happy about "Adidas", "converse" "reebok" and "sweatshops" also being closely associated with the their name? Celebrities, especially, care greatly what the public thinks about them. Companies may cancel endorsement contracts when celbrities get themselves into trouble. Don Imus, Michael Richards, and Mel Gibson are recent examples of how public perceptions can change overnight. In the case of Don Imus, people threatened to boycott the sponsors of his radio show. Geicko, Proctor & Gamble, Aetna, Spring and American Express pulled their sponsorship, causing MSNBC to stop carrying his show. Politicians spend millions of dollars on advertising so that possible voters know who they are and what their positions on the issues are. Attacks ads can smear the character of their opponents. Demographics Once you know your product, you need to know who buys your product. Are they white middle school girls who live in the suburbs, live in McMansions and watch the PowerPuff Girls? Or does your market consist of Caucasian 19 year old frat boys who go to state universities, watch the Daily Show, listen to Nirvana and drink Mountain Dew? Demographics consist of:
Psychographics takes into account people's values personalities, lifestyles:
Marketers conduct surveys asking all kinds of personal questions, and reward them with coupons. Rewards cards (keychain cards) like grocery stores use are scanned into computers. They collect information about everything you buy, especially when you use a credit or debit card. This information collected by companies like ChoicePoint. is worth millions of dollars. The government can also find out who has bought items of interest and where they bought them and when. divide people into market segments based on the above categories. Advertisements aim at reaching a target audience.
Who drinks milk? Everyone does. But not all ads will work for all market segments. So, the dairy industry has produced hundreds of ads to reach every segment of the population.
Appeals Once you have determined who your target audience is, you need a marketing strategy to best affect them. There are a wide variety of strategies for changing people's opinions of your product. You can emphasize the flavor, color, quality, comfort, value of a product. Associating your product with a particular value or emotion is called an appeal. By far the most common advertising appeal is SEX.
What they are implying is that if you use Lever 2000, you will have a well-toned, well-tanned member of the opposite sex in wet, white clothing, pick you up and straddle you and gaze into your eyes. The Sex appeal is most commonly used to sell alcohol.
What is this image implying about Skyy vodka? Another common appeal is FRIENDSHIP.
If you use Clean and Clear, you will have multicultural happy, healthy friends with white, perfect teeth, with great hair. Is this true? Johnson & Johnson would like you to think so. Patriotism is another common advertising appeal. It is more effective at certain times and with certain people.
Tommy Hillfiger is an American company. It is patriotic to use American perfumes and colognes, as opposed to French perfumes. Isn't it?
Above is a different appeal to sell cologne. What is it?
What is the appeal in the ad above? What colors are used? What composition is used in the photograph? How does it make you feel? If you drink this gourmet coffee, how will you feel?
What is the advertising appeal Whirlpool is using?
How do you sell boots?
If your product doesn't smell good, tastes bad, and isn't warm and fuzzy, this appeal is used. Layout When we see an image for the first time, our eyes are drawn to the center of the image. What is at the center of this image?
The first place many of us look is the top left of the page. Why are our eyes drawn to the top left?
The last place we look on a page is the bottom right, so that is a great place to put your logo.
Our eyes like to follow lines. Physical lines are called graphic vectors.
Sometimes those lines are imaginary or incomplete.
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