Absolute Essentials of Advertising

Sarah Turnbull

• Editore: Routledge
• Anno: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000609615
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Commerce
• Categoria: Publicité

This concise textbook provides a comprehensive and clear overview of advertising theory and practice. Each chapter covers the essential aspects of the subject matter, provides a supplement for teaching and acts as a valuable revision guide. Split over three core parts, the book begins with a consideration of the role and function of advertising, the customer journey, advertising theory, planning and strategy, and moves on to the creative development process, media planning and strategy. The final chapter considers the industry as a whole and the reality of practice, outlining roles within agencies to highlight employability opportunities to students. To aid learning, each chapter contains brief real-life examples and includes questions to encourage the reader to consider how practical examples can be applied. Written by a renowned textbook author, this short-form textbook is suitable for students at all levels studying advertising. For undergraduates, the book provides a valuable support for traditional or blended online teaching. For postgraduate and MBA students, as well as those studying for professional qualifications, the book also provides a valuable resource.

1 Advertising

DOI: 10.4324/9781003175551-1

Learning outcomes

This chapter aims to enable readers to:

1. Understand the nature and role of advertising
2. Examine the differ types of advertising
3. Appreciate the influence of advertising on society
4. Understand the role of advertising in the economy
5. Consider further reading on advertising issues highlighted

Advertising

Advertising has been practiced for centuries. The advertising on the painted walls of Pompeii dating from 79 BC is still visible to visitors and provides evidence of the importance of advertising as far back as Roman times. The History of Advertising Trust (2013) suggests that advertising can be traced back even further to around 2000 BC when Egyptians carved their public announcements on stone slabs or stelae. Today, advertising remains an omnipresent part of our everyday lives and continues to play a significant role in shaping politics, culture and society.

Turnbull (2019) argues that advertising is part of national culture and suggests,

“the UK is a nation of “ad lovers.” Advertising is part of the national conversation: it is discussed in the national media and school playgrounds, and is embedded within our popular culture. Even the start of Christmas in the UK has been defined by advertising, with media and consumers alike eagerly anticipating the arrival of the annual John Lewis Christmas TV ad”.

Turnbull (2019, p. 142)

In the United States, advertising for the Super Bowl is similarly seen as a “unique phenomenon” and studies have identified that seven percent of Super Bowl viewers watch the Super Bowl to see the advertising (Tomkovick et al., 2001), highlighting the cultural relevance of advertising.

While there is widespread recognition of the cultural influence of advertising, there is no universally agreed definition of what advertising is. Richards and Curran (2002, p. 74) offer a definition that has been used widely which identifies advertising as, “a paid, mediated form of communication from an identifiable source, designed to persuade the receiver to take some action, now or in the future”. There has been much debate around the definition over the last decade, especially in relation to whether advertising is always “paid” for, and is likely to continue for the next decade as advertising is transformed by new media platforms and new types of advertising emerge. More recently, Jeremy Bullmore, an advisory board member for the agency holding group WPP, provided an updated definition of advertising as, “Any communication, usually paid-for, specifically intended to inform and/or influence one or more people” (2021, p. 1). The advantage of this definition is that it addresses the issue of media payment and comes from a highly respected industry practitioner.

While definitions of advertising are regularly debated, the one aspect of advertising that remains constant is the belief and understanding that advertising has the ability to influence large audiences and change consumer behaviours.

Types of advertising

Advertising is used by companies, charities, educational institutions and governments to communicate with a range of audiences, including customers, employees, stakeholders and shareholders. This has led to the emergence of a number of different types of advertising, including:

• Brand
• Business-to-business (B2B)
• Corporate
• Co-operative
• Recruitment
• Public service announcements (PSAs)
• Political
• Consumer-generated
• Brand activism
• Brand purpose
• Femvertising

Brand advertising is one of the most familiar forms of advertising and consumers are exposed to hundreds of brand messages every day. This may be to raise awareness of a new product or service, or to encourage product trial. Brands may also wish to reposition themselves in the marketplace or change consumers’ attitudes to the brand. Similarly, business-to-business (B2B) advertising allows B2B products and services to communicate with their customers. For example, Emirates Sky Cargo may wish to raise awareness of new destinations with cargo agents or announce additional services to their customers.

Organisations also run corporate advertising which is usually less brand orientated and more focussed on building goodwill and relationships. For example, Proctor & Gamble (P&G) ran a corporate advertising campaign to coincide with the Olympic games in celebration of the role and support of mums. In their first-ever corporate campaign, P&G moved away from their usual brand advertising and developed a corporate campaign, “Thank You, Mom” which ran globally (Wieden + Kennedy, 2010).

Co-operative advertising is often seen where supply chains co-operate together to advertise. A good example of this is where a holiday destination may advertise the destination with the support of an airline, both sharing the cost of the advertising. Another form of advertising is recruitment advertising, which is used to attract new employees and to help to retain those already employed in the organisation. For example, the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) launched an extensive nursing recruitment campaign in 2018. The campaign, “We Are the NHS” used television and cinema to drive recruitment of nurses to the NHS and encourage existing nurses to remain in the profession (The Drum, 2018).

Public service announcements (PSAs) are a type of advertising that are aimed at changing the way consumers behave and encouraging citizens to adopt healthy or safe behaviours. The Covid-19 pandemic has provided a range of examples from governments around the globe encouraging their citizens to adopt better hygiene behaviours, socially distance and at times to stay at home to avoid spreading the virus.

Stay home

The UK government ran an emotive public service announcement (PSA) campaign during the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in January 2021 asking citizens to: “Stay Home. Protect the NHS. Save Lives”. The simple campaign message urging people to stay at home ran across television, radio, press, digital, out-of-home (OOH) and on social media.

Further reading

• Anon (2021). New hard-hitting national TV ad urges the nation to stay at home. GOV.UK. Retrieved from www.gov.uk/government/news/new-hard-hitting-national-tv-ad-urges-the-nation-to-stay-at-home

Political advertising is used by political parties and lobbying groups to influence political opinion. Political advertising can be used to gain votes at an election or to bring about new legislation. For example, Amnesty International used advertising to lobby the UK government to change legislation on human rights. The organisation ran a double-page advert in The Times to ask the government to keep the Human Rights Act. The ad was crowdfunded by supporters and is therefore arguably also an example of consumer-generated advertising, which is advertising that has been created by consumers.

“Fearless Girl”

The “Fearless Girl” campaign was created by State Street Global Advisors to champion the promotion of women to senior leadership positions. This award-winning campaign drove awareness that women in corporate leadership positions are good for business and society. As Stephen Tisdale, the Chief Marketing Officer of State Street Global Advisors (2019, p. 25) argues, “Fearless Girl taught us all about the power of diversity. But, as marketer, she taught me something else: that with an authentic message and experience you can do so much more than promote a product. You can start a conversation. You can inspire people to action. And maybe you can even change the world”.

Further reading

• Tisdale, S. (2019). In Fill, C., & Turnbull, S. (2019). Marketing Communications: touchpoints, sharing and disruption. Harlow: Pearson.

Brand activism advertising is advertising created by a brand and supports a particular cause to address a particular environmental or social issue. This is a nascent from of advertising and recognises the power of advertising to effect change in society. For example, Iceland ran the film Rang-tan (2018) to highlight the environmental impact of harvesting palm oil in the orangutan’s natural habitat. The campaign aimed to raise awareness of the impact of using palm oil and change consumer behaviour (Ibrahim, 2018).

Brand purpose advertising is used to position the brand with a higher purpose. This may be an ethical, moral or social purpose. For example, in 2004 Dove launched the “Campaign for Real Beauty” which aligned the brand with progressive portrayals of women in advertising. The advertising, which featured realistic portrayals of women, has aligned the brand with a higher purpose.

Channel 4 paralympics

Fill and Turnbull (2019) highlight the case of Channel 4, who created a campaign to drive positive perceptions of disability in the United Kingdom to support the Rio 2016 Paralympic Games. They discuss how, “Channel 4 wanted the campaign to be a positive, life-affirming celebration of the ability of disabled people. The channel developed an integrated strategy with inclusivity at the heart of the campaign” (Fill and Turnbull, 2019, p. 58). The authors provide an overview of the campaign’s use of AI and audio-enabled posters to make the campaign more accessible.

Further reading

• Fill, C., & Turnbull, S. (2019). Marketing Communications: touchpoints, sharing and disruption. Harlow: Pearson.

Femvertising is a form of advertising that portrays women in advertising in more progressive ways and challenges, “gender norms by building stereotype-busting, pro-female messages and images into ads that target women and girls” (#Femverstising Awards, 2021). Examples of femvertising include Microsoft’s “We All Win” campaign, which drives female empowerment and inclusion.

Advertising within society

Advertising can influence societal values, beliefs and norms. While advertising has largely been associated with its impact on business, it is hard to ignore the role that advertising has played in changing society over the decades. Advertising has the ability to change behaviours and have a positive impact on society. Middleton and Turnbull (2021) for example highlight the role advertising has played in changing attitudes towards the use of female stereotypes and identify the role that advertisers and agencies have had in changing the portrayal of women in advertising. Their study explores “how advertising got woke” and examines the influence that advertising can have in changing a...