Advertising Campaign Design

Just the Essentials

Robyn Blakeman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2011
• eBook ISBN: 9781317477679
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Art General

The author's step-by-step approach to campaign design dissects the creative process necessary to design a successful integrated marketing communications campaign one topic at a time, creating an invaluable research tool that students and professors alike will refer to time and time again.

Part I Understanding What Drives a Campaign

DOI: 10.4324/9781315706719-1

1 Advertising and the Campaign Process

DOI: 10.4324/9781315706719-2

Figure 1.1 Sample Ad: Sharpie

Source: Created by Caitlin Bradley, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Defining IMC and Its Role in Advertising

In this saturated world of advertised messages, the only way to reach the targeted consumer or those buyers that research has determined are most likely to purchase the product or use the service is to take an integrated approach.

Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) is all about creating a relationship with the intended target audience and delivering one coordinated message through multiple media vehicles.

Customized advertising efforts like those used in IMC are a far cry from the simple sales-oriented approaches used in traditional advertising efforts. It is no longer feasible to send out an impersonal, generalized message to a mass audience. IMC works to build a long-term one-on-one relationship between buyer and seller by engaging the target in a two-way exchange of information.

IMC makes the traditional mass-advertised message personal. Computerized databases have given the consumer a name and an identity, allowing marketers to personalize advertising efforts based on interests and/or past purchase behavior. This knowledge also helps to isolate those media vehicles most likely to be heard, read, or viewed by the targeted consumer.

Consumer driven, IMC works to build a long-term brand-loyal relationship with the target. In order to do this successfully, IMC relies less on traditional vehicles such as print (newspaper and magazine) and broadcast (radio and television) and more on alternative media vehicles, including direct marketing, out-of-home media (outdoor, transit, or point of purchase advertising), sales promotions, various interactive vehicles, and guerrilla marketing tactics. These methods reach the target where they are and with a message they can relate to.

The use of traditional vehicles alone requires frequent repetition before a message is remembered and acted upon. A customized IMC campaign is individually targeted, requiring less advertising to encourage repurchase. This highly targeted approach encourages brand loyalty, employs less media waste, and allows the advertised product or service to be individualized to fit the target’s overall lifestyle.

It took marketers a long time to understand the lifetime value of existing customers. Research proves that it is more expensive to advertise repeatedly than it is to retain existing consumers: a loyal consumer will buy without the repeated urging of advertising and without special promotions.

Many argue that IMC is popular only because the recession of 2008–2010 has caused marketers to use more media outlets to reach a more fractionalized target. Although recessionary times do call for better-managed advertising budgets, it is IMC that has put a greater amount of emphasis on relationship-building tactics by personalizing the overall visual/verbal message. More important, the more diverse the choice of vehicles collectively delivering a cohesive visual/verbal message, the better the return on investment (ROI) will be. In simpler terms, the marketer or client will make more money than he or she spent.

The recession may have temporarily altered buying habits, but it has not changed consumer media habits. Buyers are still searching the web, blogging, tweeting, chatting on social media sites, and talking and texting on their cell phones. These interactive media outlets engage the consumer in a way that traditional media vehicles cannot. Because of this, technology has forever changed how corporations market their brands. Thanks to the Internet and other forms of electronic media, consumers can check on the prices and quality of goods from the comfort of their own homes or offices, by using any number of interactive options to compare and contrast user experiences. Today’s savvy consumers have taken control of the buying experience by managing whom they buy from, as well as when, where, and how they do their buying.

Traditional Advertising versus IMC

Traditional advertising—also known as mass media advertising because it concentrates on communicating to a mass, mostly unidentifiable audience— relies on a generalized message delivered through mass media vehicles such as print or broadcast. Although not highly targetable, it is still great for launching or reinventing existing brands, creating brand awareness, and building image.

Traditional advertising used alone is not consumer focused, does not encourage feedback, and thus does not create a relationship with the target. In today’s diverse media environment, traditional vehicles will not even be employed if research has determined that alternative media options will more successfully reach the target with the most engaging message. IMC on the other hand, uses a diverse media mix and focuses directly on the consumer. Using databases or computerized lists that electronically catalog the target’s personal information and buying habits, advertising efforts can address the target by name, identify target interests and needs, and allow for more individualized and personalized messages.

When the promotional mix employs both traditional and alternative media vehicles, the message has a greater chance of reaching the target with an integrated message. To create more interactive and engaging opportunities, consider employing both media options simultaneously. For example, research has shown that many consumers watch television or listen to the radio while using their computers. Consider turning listening—a passive activity—into an interaction with the message—an active and more memorable activity. Simple examples of this tactic involve the inclusion of website names in television advertising or directing radio listeners to a website for contest information or coupons.

Successful engagement must also ensure all internal and external contacts are working from the same page and are integrating knowledge in three key ways: (1) by offering quality products the customer needs and wants; (2) by using the talents of educated employees who both understand and know how to market the product or service; and (3) by presenting a brand that offers the target a relevant reason to buy. Internal or corporate employees such as customer service representatives need to know what the external advertising efforts are saying and promising. Any problems can affect the brand’s or service’s image.

Alan Mitchell, in an article appearing in the Journal of Marketing Management, sums up coordinated internal and external messaging this way: “An organization can only ‘walk the talk’ when its managers deliberately shape its internal reality to align with its brand promise…. [The brand’s] values must be internalized by the organization, shaping its instinctive attitudes, behaviors, priorities, etc.”

What Makes a Campaign a Campaign?

Basically, an advertising campaign can be defined as a family of ads that shares a visual/verbal identity and promotes a single idea to a defined target audience. Multiple targeted media vehicles are used to reach the intended audience with a specific message about a particular product, service, or company. A multimedia campaign’s job is to introduce a project or service, create an identity, build increasing awareness for the product or service, and promote a sale.

A campaign can be directed at either a business or a consumer. Either way, it is safe to say that research has already identified the target’s needs and problems: The goal of all advertised messages—and the first step in engaging consumer interest—is addressing those needs and solving those problems. Ineffective messages often recognize the problem yet fail to offer a solution.

Although the visual/verbal style of a campaign is delivered through multiple media vehicles, it is defined by a very individualized and personalized repetitive voice and creative style. The tone set by this voice and style will reflect the brand’s identity, use, and reputation—often for years.

It takes more than a good idea and a coordinated look to ensure a campaign’s success. Good timing, appropriate media use, and a bit of old-fashioned luck are also required. While it used to be common to see almost every campaign launch use traditional media, today’s inventive and highly targeted campaigns may ignore traditional vehicles altogether. Quite often, media choices will rely on vehicles more customized to reach the target, among them the Internet, direct mail, sales promotions, and mobile or social media outlets.

In twenty-first century advertising, nothing is traditional. The most successful campaigns go where the target is and capture their attention with unusual and engaging devices such as intercept teams, mobile advertising, and cinema, as well as guerrilla events and product placement, to name just a few of the hundreds of media options available to today’s advertiser.

Every product or service needs advertising in order to stand out from competing brands. A good ad campaign gets a product’s name, logo, and purpose in front of an apathetic public that sees well over a thousand or more advertising messages every day. To help break through the advertising haze, it is important for every campaign to have its own look, style, and personality. The total effect of a successful ad campaign is greater than any of its individual parts. The combined impact of the visual/verbal identity employed can push the key consumer benefit to the right target, stand out from the competition, and accomplish a set of communication objectives with the right strategy, in the right media. Success takes time—most campaigns will take anywhere from 90 days to a year to complete—and the length of a given campaign is typically determined by what needs to be accomplished, the product’s life cycle, and the overall strength of the competition, to name just a few key factors.

Over a product’s lifetime, a consistent theme is established, developed, and molded into a lasting image. Apple has always promoted its hipness, ingenuity, and innovative spirit to those target members who would rather be on the cutting edge than simply one of the crowd. Allstate wants you to know “You’re in Good Hands,” and Capital One wants you to think about “What’s in Your Wallet?”

Traditionally, advertising campaigns often lasted for years, but today this trend has become less and less common. Why? Because in a world of multiple media options, disinterested targets, and product parity, it is important for campaigns to be ever evolving, ever ramping up their image and goals. When adjustments are warranted, it is important that they be integrated into the campaign slowly and that they avoid any abrupt changes that might confuse or even anger loyal brand users. To avoid the appearance that messages lack brand integrity or clear direction, many campaigns will tweak their messages while retaining slogans or taglines and/or character representatives indefinitely. Familiarity, after all, suggests quality, longevity, and reliability.

The Life Cycle of an Advertising Campaign

A campaign’s life cycle will assume several different incarnations as it launches, evolves, is improved upon and eventually put out to pasture to make room for the look and sound of a new generation of consumers. When to toss or evolve a brand’s message often depends on where it is in its life cycle stage. Most successful brands will go through three stages: (1) a new product launch, (2) a mainstream or maintenance phase, and (3) reinvention. Each stage requires a different message and often employs different media vehicles to reach the target. Let’s take a quick look at each one.

Anew product launch typically employs traditional media vehicles that provide broad reach and the ability to build brand awareness and promote image. As the brand reaches phase two, mainstream popularity in the marketplace, it requires not only less advertising, but the use of less traditional advertising vehicles. At this point, the campaign can make use of alternative media to reach loyal users by name, wherever they are, and with a message they will respond to. The goals during this phase are to remind users, to strengthen the relationship with the buyer, and to build or maintain equity. The third phase, reinvention, comes into play when a brand (1) needs a face-lift to update its image or promote a new and improved feature, or (2) must overcome a damaged reputation.

There are no individual media vehicles or outlaw messages in an IMC campaign. Each vehicle must convey the same look and message. Any contact points, such as customer service representatives or sales clerks, must be aware of the campaign’s message and promotional efforts, in order to personally convey or represent the advertised message and accomplish the campaign’s overall objectives.

Campaigns can run into the millions of dollars, so why use them when you can run an ad or two as needed? Good question. Advertising today bombards consumers, so in order for a brand to be top of mind, or the first brand people turn to, a product needs to keep its name and reputation in the public arena. A single ad buy is successful only if it can guarantee the target will see that particular media vehicle and need ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Part I. Understanding What Drives a Campaign
• Part II. Campaigns Speak Through Numerous and Diverse Media
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author