Deck 15: Advertising, Publicity, and Sales Promotion

Question 1

The Marketing Plan Coach software on the text website includes a sample marketing plan for Hill side Veterinary Clinic. Look through the "Marketing Strategy" section.
a. What are Hillside's advertising objectives?
b. What types of advertising and media are being proposed? Why are these types used and not others?
c. What type of copy thrust is recommended? Why?
d. What sales promotion activities are being planned? What are the goals of sales promotion?

Answer 1

Advertising objectives can be inferred by reviewing the marketing strategy section. With customers that are not currently using HVC, one of the primary objectives should be is to increase awareness. This is especially true for people new to the area - a very important market in the fast growing community where HVC is located. Another apparent objective is to introduce new products (e.g., the dental services and geriatric pet care packages) to specific target markets.
As with many small retail businesses, HVC's advertising budget is limited. For HVC, traditional advertising relies completely on the Yellow Pages. The marketing plan proposes the development of a website that provides more information about service offerings. The development of a customer database will allow for e-mail advertising. Brochures also operate as a form of advertising - with information about particular services. If the brochures are only taken by interested customers, the cost per contact would be quite low. Chances are other forms of media - television, newspaper, and radio - would be too expensive for the clinic.HVC's tagline, "we treat pets like family," reflects the clinic's positioning and should be a key component of the copy thrust for all advertising. The Yellow Pages ad would emphasize the clinic's most popular services and the new bundled service packages. The website and brochures would include pictures to help humanize the clinic and support its compassionate care positioning - as well as inform.
The marketing plan for HVC includes a number of sales promotion activities. Participation in the Pet Fair, Parade of Lights, Town Wide Garage Sale, all reflect events that will help stimulate interest and trial. These events allow the clinic to distribute brochures as well as refrigerator magnets and bandanas with the HVC logo and name. Most of the sales promotion activities seem designed to build awareness or remind.

Question 2

Identify the strategy decisions a marketing manager must make in the advertising arena.

Answer 2

The primary job of an advertising manager is to create a strategy, conceive an implementation plan and fulfill the promotional activities of the marketing mix. The strategic decisions of an advertising campaign are given below.
With respect to strategy of advertising, a marketing manager has to decide on the following activities.
• Establish advertising objectives
• Determine target audience
• Select appropriate type of advertisement
• Select type of media to meet the objectives
• Develop advertisement budget and manage promotional costs

Question 3

Discuss the relation of advertising objectives to marketing strategy planning and the kinds of advertising actually needed. Illustrate with examples.

Answer 3

Marketing objectives take the most critical position in planning the strategy for advertisement as well as the choosing the type of advertisements. The relationship among them is illustrated below.
Marketing objectives guide the managers to formulate strategy for the advertisements. Some of the objectives that determine strategy include the following.
• Demonstrating the benefits of a product
• Building the image of a company
• Changing perception of a product, service or company
• Media planning to reach the targeted customers
An example of close relationship between objectives and advertisement may include the following. A hair care product manufacturing company that has an objective to demonstrate its product's superiority may include photographs of a customer with before and after use.
Depending on the objectives of promotion, businesses use different types of advertising to achieve its promotional goals. Advertising objectives determine what to project in the advertisements such as benefits of a product, generation of sales leads for sales, build image of a company, compare with competition, position a brand, etc.
For example, an advertisement objective of promoting an industrial machine tool may use media that appeals to production managers, plant engineers, finance managers, etc. The advertisement is likely to be place in industrial magazines and not in local newspapers.

Question 4

List several media that might be effective for reaching consumers in a developing nation with low per capita income and a high level of illiteracy. Briefly discuss the limitations and advantages of each medium you suggest.

Question 5

Give three examples where advertising to intermediaries might be necessary. What is(are) the objective(s) of such advertising?

Question 6

What does it mean to say that "money is invested in advertising"? Is all advertising an investment? Illustrate.

Question 7

Find advertisements to final consumers that illustrate the following types of advertising: (a) institutional, (b) pioneering, (c) competitive, and (d) reminder. What objective( s ) does each of these ads have? List the needs each ad addresses.

Question 8

Describe the type of media that might be most suitable for promoting: (a) tomato soup, (b) greeting cards, (c) a business component material, and (d) playground equipment. Specify any assumptions necessary to obtain a definite answer.

Question 9

Briefly discuss some of the pros and cons an advertising manager for a producer of sports equipment might want to think about in deciding whether to advertise on the Internet.

Question 10

Discuss the use of testimonials in advertising. Which of the four AIDA steps might testimonials accomplish? Are testimonials suitable for all types of products? If not, for which types are they most suitable?

Question 11

Find a magazine ad that you think does a particularly good job of communicating to the target audience. Would the ad communicate well to an audience in another country? Explain your thinking.

Question 12

Discuss the future of smaller advertising agencies now that many of the largest are merging to form megaagencies.

Question 13

Does advertising cost too much? How can this be measured?

Question 14

Is it unfair to criticize a competitor's product in an ad? Explain your thinking.

Question 15

Name two companies that you think would have success building a Facebook page. Why do you think they should choose to build a page? What type of content should each company place on its page?

Question 16

As a community service, disc jockeys from radio station WMKT formed a basketball team to help raise money for local nonprofit organizations. The host organization finds or fields a competing team and charges $5 admission to the game. Money from ticket sales goes to the nonprofit organization.
Ticket sales were disappointing at recent games, averaging only about 300 people per game. When WMKT's marketing manager, Bruce Miller, heard about the problem, he suggested using sales promotion to improve ticket sales. The PTA for the local high school-the sponsor for the next game-is interested in the idea but is concerned that its budget doesn't include any promotion money. Miller tries to help them by reviewing his idea in more detail.
Specifically, he proposes that the PTA give a free T-shirt (printed with the school name and date of the game) to the first 500 ticket buyers. He thinks the T-shirt giveaway will create a lot of interest. In fact, he says he is almost certain the promotion would help the PTA sell 600 tickets, double the usual number. He speculates that the PTA might even have a sellout of all 900 seats in the school gym. Further, he notes that the T-shirts will more than pay for themselves if the PTA sells 600 tickets.
A local firm that specializes in sales promotion items agrees to supply the shirts and do the printing for $2.40 a shirt if the
PTA places an order for at least 400 shirts. The PTA thinks the idea is interesting but wants to look at it more closely to see what will happen if the promotion doesn't increase ticket sales. To help the PTA evaluate the alternatives, Miller sets up a spreadsheet with the relevant information.
a. Based on the data from the initial spreadsheet, does the T-shirt promotion look like a good idea? Explain your thinking.
b. The PTA treasurer worries about the up-front cost of printing the T-shirts and wants to know where they would stand if they ordered the T-shirts and still sold only 300 tickets. He suggests it might be safer to order the minimum number of T-shirts (400). Evaluate his suggestion.
c. The president of the PTA thinks the T-shirt promotion will increase sales but wonders if it wouldn't be better just to lower the price. She suggests $2.60 a ticket, which she arrives at by subtracting the $2.40 T-shirt cost from the usual $5.00 ticket price. How many tickets would the PTA have to sell at the lower price to match the money it would make if it used the T-shirt promotion and actually sold 600 tickets? (Hint: Change the selling price in the spreadsheet and then vary the quantity using the analysis feature.)

Question 17

What kinds of publicity would work best at a company that markets tractors, combines, and other farm equipment to farmers? Why would the publicity you suggest be effective?

Question 18

How would your local newspaper be affected if local supermarkets switched their weekly advertising and instead used a service that delivered weekly freestanding ads directly to each home?

Question 19

Explain why P G and other consumer packaged goods firms are trying to cut back on some types of sales promotion like coupons for consumers and short-term trade promotions such as "buy a case and get a case free."

Question 20

Discuss some ways that a firm can link its sales promotion activities to its advertising and personal selling efforts-so that all of its promotion efforts result in an integrated effort.

Question 21

Indicate the type of sales promotion that a producer might use in each of the following situations and briefly explain your reasons:
a. A firm has developed an improved razor blade and obtained distribution, but customers are not motivated to buy it.
b. A competitor is about to do a test market for a new brand and wants to track sales in test market areas to fine-tune its marketing mix.
c. A big grocery chain won't stock a firm's new popcornbased snack product because it doesn't think there will be much consumer demand.

Question 22

Why wouldn't a producer of toothpaste just lower the price of its product rather than offer consumers a priceoff coupon?

Question 23

If sales promotion spending continues to grow-often at the expense of media advertising-how do you think this might affect the rates charged by mass media for advertising time or space? How do you think it might affect advertising agencies?