Marketing Series Article The Artful Advertiser Using our dollars…and our sense! by Dick Barnes, Principal, The Freeland Group The advertising manager for the firm showed me the half-page trade journal ad he was running that month. On one side of the ad the company logo was displayed prominently followed by the subtitle “for 35 years, bringing quality and reliability to our customers.” So far, so good. But on the other side of the ad was a list of products that were being closed out with the heading “50% off…this month only…get them now before they’re gone.” It actually took me a minute to figure out that the “two” ads were really one. I would not have noticed except that the “first” ad did not seem to have a phone number. It was when searching for the number that I figured out it was actually just one ad by one company. We have all heard the story about the politician who was told about a particularly nasty story written about him in the press. “I don’t care what they say about me,” he claimed, “as long as they spell my name right.” There seem to be a number of business owners with similar feelings about their firms. They don’t care what message their ads actually deliver or where those ads are placed…just as long as the company name is out there somewhere and it’s spelled right. Those same managers are often willing to place ads in just about any medium that exists. Every ad salesperson that walks in the door is likely to get an order. But it is not only due to these folks that pundits have declared, statistically speaking, the single greatest waste of the American business dollar to be in advertising. Then again, your advertising dollar can be one of the most productive you spend…when you spend it right. Throughout the past year we have been following along as two imaginary distribution professionals began the process of making major strategic changes to their business and marketing plans. Now that those plans have been completed the time has come to begin seeing them through implementation. Our two CEO’s have come to understand that a marketing plan consists of many pieces, all part of a large puzzle, and that the pieces must all relate to one another. The plan is much like a carefully choreographed ballet with dozens, maybe hundreds of performers all on stage at once and all working to create one extraordinary image. This is an important concept for them to keep in mind as they put their plans into motion. In one form or another we have discussed the five major elements of the marketing mix. One of those elements is labeled “promotion” and is the element that most people think of when they think of marketing. This is simply because promotion is the element by which we usually communicate with the consumer. Our customers generally learn about us through one of the four areas of promotion; advertising, public relations, sales, and point of sale promotion. It’s not hard to understand, therefore, why some business people feel this is the heart of the marketing puzzle. But we cannot write the whole marketing story using only promotion. No gaudy point of sale display will sell a product that is outdated to the extent of uselessness. All the public relations in the world will not create customer loyalty to a firm that grossly overprices its goods. The best sales force in the world will not successfully sell items that are no longer desired by consumers. And, finally, even the best advertising will not sell a product when that advertising is aimed at the wrong target market or gives a confusing message. Our two CEO’s have already decided on product mix changes, pricing strategies, and on how they are going to position their companies relative to their competition. They have more yet to do, nevertheless our make believe business owners begin the new year by planning their 1999 ad campaigns. They are both aware, thanks to their recent marketing exercises, that their ad campaigns in the past have been hit and miss affairs. They used randomly established ad budgets and chose media ineffectively. They failed to design ads that would work toward fulfilling planned goals and objectives. This time, they review their new marketing plans and decide how advertising can be used to support these plans. This is something they have never done before. In the past their advertising was intended to make the phones ring…period. Not to say that “action inducing” advertising is bad…not at all, as long as the action being induced supports your goals. A lot of advertising is successful in making people pick up the phone and call. Unfortunately, they may be the wrong people or may call for the wrong reasons. Both owners ran “image building” ads in the past as well. Without really considering the effect, both men adorned their image ads with information about current promotions and sales items. The idea was that image ads were just too expensive and all that “white space” was going to waste. As long as an ad is being run, their thinking went, why not stuff everything you can into the space. Think about the ad described in the opening paragraph of this column. That ad did less than it might have in projecting the image the company wanted; stability, reliability, and long term customer relationships. This is because the urgency of the action message was contradictory to the proposed image. In addition, the action oriented part of the message was diluted by the image building part of the message. The ad pulled in some calls, but far fewer than it should have, and long term image was not properly enhanced. There were a lot of wasted ad dollars being spent. Jack and Dave, our subjects, decide to extract from their new marketing plans the information on their targeted consumers. This may seem an obvious move, but many folks fail to do this before designing their ad campaigns. One of the points, of course, is to use a medium that is most likely to reach this target audience. If your target doesn’t see or hear your ad, the ad is a total loss. Those who read and advertise in this magazine are already well ahead on this vital issue as they are obviously aware of the value of trade journals. The same goes for business people in other industries who read and advertise in their particular trade journals and business magazines. Over the last few years, specialized trade journals have probably become one of the best places to put your advertising dollar. And it goes beyond industrially oriented magazines. Many new magazines are published for consumers with special interests. Such magazines as Flyfishing, Motorcycle World, Modern Photography, Guns & Ammo, or PC World are quite different from industrial trade journals, but no less effective in reaching a target market. Whether consumer or trade oriented, specialty magazines have flourished as publishers have more closely defined their audiences. As a result of that process, such magazines have become a very effective means of reaching a designated target. Since the advertiser knows the target market is being reached, it gives him an opportunity to study the effects of different ad styles, designs, and of varying messages. This enables an advertiser to truly refine his ads and optimize his return on the dollars spent. The wise advertiser, unlike the person who placed the ad we talked about in the opening of this column, would have known to write two separate ads and place them in different areas of that trade journal. Studies show an increase in recall when multiple ads are used in the same publication. Such studies also indicate better recall when messages are clear. The wise ad writer would have understood there were very different messages being given, and would have dedicated separate ads to separate messages. The effect of each ad would have been greater. In or next column we will talk about the messages our ads relay about our firms. We will look at the goals of an ad, how we create a message that meets those goals, and how we make certain we do not confuse the consumer in the process. An advertisement is a complex and directed form of communication. If the person on the other end doesn’t clearly receive the message, we might as have saved ourselves the trouble of sending it. 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