Category: Advertising

Reaching todays consumer in this complex and confusing media environment is a challenge. The audiences are consumed by their fast- paced lifestyles and technology has also contributed to the changes in their behavior patterns. Consumers can no longer be reached using the same old mediums. Times have indeed changed. But over the past few years, the outdoor advertising industry has evolved yet into a revolutionized and modernized media force that is to be reckoned with. It may even be able to compete aggressively against the 21st century media. While many traditional media segments have struggled to remain competitive during economic changes and developments, out of home advertising has remained unfazed. The reason is simple. Out of home advertising such as Digital Mediaoffers outstanding value for money and a myriad of ways to increase exposure plus a few more advantages.

1. Innovativeness

One of the major reasons why out of home advertising is the one mostly preferred by advertisers and advertising agencies is because of the innovations that have happened with this advertising media over the past decade. Its not just about a pretty picture anymore. It involves the commercials used, displays made and the way they were executed. With advertising, its always recommended to think outside the box and outdoor advertising provides various opportunities and possibilities for advertisers to do just that.

2. Flexibility

Out of home advertising also has the greatest flexibility in terms of being able to transform ideas and imaginations into a reality. With the use of Digital Media, outdoor advertising can be transformed into a new medium wherein advertisements are able to communicate in real- time and effectively engage the consumers. This mediums flexibility is also the main reason why the practice is still alive today.

3. Coverage

Out of home advertising is the unavoidable medium. It is visible from all corners and cannot be turned off or ignored. It can be seen on city buses, bus stops, taxis, trains, train stations, billboards, gymnasiums, parks, malls, and all other public places. And since it is usually placed in public areas, it guaranties a huge amount of exposure from drivers, commuters and passers- by. Through this medium, outdoor advertisers and outdoor advertising agencies are able to make use of a variety of platforms and reach a wide audience without going overboard with their advertising budget.

4. Impact

The purpose of out of home advertising is to get the peoples attention while they drive or walk. It can catch their attention during rush hour wherein people are stuck in traffic, unable to do anything, and probably bored out of their mind. By placing advertisements near the point of purchase, it can effectively remind the audience of the product being advertised at the time just before they purchase.

Out of home advertising is truly a universal and timeless form of advertising. And it will continue to grow, develop and adapt in the future. This is the best platform for advertising because it never gets old. Thus, if you go for out of home advertising, you are aiming for a 100% guarantee of Successful Advertising Campaigns for your companys services or branded products.

When you are able to obtain advertisers for your website, you will hope they stay with you for an extended period of time. The security provided by the continuous weekly or monthly payments is reassuring. This is especially true in the volatile online advertising market, where many advertisers will change sites with great ease if simply given a better offer elsewhere. If they do decide to stick with you, it will probably be because of one of the five following reasons:

Performance
Only the advertiser can decide how well their ads are performing on your website. Some will be happy with a certain number of clicks, while others will focus more on the quality of those clicks and the sales that come from them. A good advertiser will know exactly what they want out of their ads, and will stay with your site for as long as their goals are being achieved.

Value
The price you offer your advertisers is not necessarily the most important factor that determines how happy your advertisers are with your service. It is a combination of how much they pay and what they get in return. In other words, the return on their investment. Ideally, they should be getting a fair amount of ad impressions, leads, signups, and/or sales, for a reasonable amount of investment. Again, only the advertiser can gauge what is and is not acceptable in terms of ROI.

Quality
Clearly, advertisers love it when visitors intentionally click on their ad and visit their site, but generally, that is not all that matters. What the visitor does after they click on the ad is just as or even more important. Visitors that mention the advertiser’s site and products on social media networks are very valuable. Of course, any sales generated from the visitors or newsletter signups are also of great value. These are all signs of quality visitors which are what the advertiser really benefits from. The more people of this kind that come from your site, the more likely it is that the advertiser will stick with you.

Tech Support
Advertisers will often want to quickly change out or tweak the ads that appear on your website. They may also notice that there is a problem with their ad that needs to be rectified. If you can promptly address those technical issues and make all the changes that they need, the advertiser will be a lot more likely to put their trust in your abilities to take care of their advertising needs. This emphasizes the need for a good ad server that allows you and your advertisers to handle your ad operations with a few simple clicks.

Customer Service
The same rule applies when it comes to all other details of your advertising program, such as billing and the ability to answer questions or concerns. It is essential that you respond to any such questions as quickly and as professionally as possible. The longer an advertiser goes without having their issues and questions addressed, the more likely they are to become disgruntled and take their business elsewhere. There are plenty of other options to choose from, so make sure you meet and listen to your customers’ needs.

The projective techniques are used to overcome the barriers of rationality, logicality and politeness, which often play an important role in case of direct questioning. In direct questioning people often tend to give politically correct answers that are considered right by many. Also they try not to hurt the researcher and thus avoid negative answers. In case of projective techniques, an indirect approach is adopted. Instead of asking questions, the respondents are subjected to different test. These include the associations test, sentence completion test and thematic appreciation test.

Association tests attempts to get an immediate response to a stimulus such to get an immediate responses to a stimulus such as a word or picture by asking the respondent to say the first thing that comes to his mind. Sentence completion tests are an extension of the association test. Here the respondents are given incomplete test use pictures, which are shown to respondents. They are asked to tell stories about the pictures. These descriptions and interpretations are analyzed to find out about their attitudes.
In depth interviewing the respondent is first put at ease by the researcher while he tries to build up a rapport with the respondents. Then the respondents are asked leading or probing questions to bring out his underlying subconscious reaction to the brand or organization advertised. The questions are never structures and the interview is always conducted in a free and cordial manner. The flexibility and freeness brings out many facts. Which usually are hidden beneath the conscious mind of the respondent? Depth interviewing needs to be conducted by highly skilled and trained psychologists to be able to fully explore the attitude of respondents.

One often face the problem of artificiality a while conducting pre-testing. This problem is easily overcome during post-testing. Post-tests attempt to measure the actual effect of real advertisements in real situations. This is a more practical approach to measure the effectiveness of car mat advertisements. Different types are conducted as part of post-testing advertisements.
Whatever the purpose of a car mat advertisement, its first task is to be seen, read, or heard. Every advertisement uses some means or other to get attention and hold it. Here comes the first big hurdle recognition. This is simply a matter of identifying an advertisement that one has seen before. Recognition is a necessary condition for effective advertising. If advertisements cannot pass this hurdle, it will probably not be effective. Recognition tests are usually used for print ads.

While many types of recognition have been designed for the car mats advertisements. The starch recognitions test sends newspaper or magazine to respondents and then sends interviews to conduct the tests. Starch tests usually finds out the recognition rates of various elements of the ads like the visual or illustration, headline, logo, body copy, color, size, shape etc.

Due to the complexity of the human mind, it has various levels of consciousness: the state of dreaming, conscious-rational and lastly the subconscious level. This last level is one which is not able to function through logic or reasoning abilities, and cannot differentiate between what is real and what is fictional.

Subliminal messages sent into the subconscious mind gives it the foundation to grow the message into reality. It is a form of thought-controlling, as there is a link of communication between the subconscious and the conscious mind, allowing it to affect each other. Hence, there is much controversy surrounding the use of these subliminal messages, as hidden persuasive messages have been used to influence audiences. Such incidents are commonly found in commercials and advertising, and in rock music. There has been much criticism on the use of insidious subliminal messages to maximize revenue.

Subliminal messages used in advertising or subliminal advertising, are most of the time consisting of brief visual or audio messages that our brain does not consciously register what it has seen or heard. Most of the time, there is less than 25% chance that the message will be picked up by the conscious, and is used to provide stimulus for action.

Subliminal advertising does exist. In actual fact, very little marketing agencies endeavor to input such messages due to the powerful impact that they can place on the audience, which would lead to overwhelming bad press that would be received if the subliminal message was found out. This puts off any potential benefit that the subliminal advertising may bring.

According to an April 2006 issue of the New Scientist, research has proven that subliminal advertising messages do work, under the right conditions. The researchers also found that priming only works when the prime is goal-relevant. In plain English, this means youre potentially going to buy a product that quenches your thirst only if you were already thirsty anyway. Subliminal messages are therefore more effective in priming a target audience to choose one brand over another, rather than in recreating an real need for the product.

While it is has yet to be sufficiently proven that the brief subliminal messages can affect your behavior without you knowing, it is still arguable that subliminal advertising can be more effective than normal means of promotional communications which people are consciously aware of.

This is the third article in a series of the history of advertising and marketing. We pick up the story from when John E. Kennedy exited Lord and Thomas leaving Albert Lasker with the monumental task of replacing him.

1908 Kennedy must have been a hard act to follow.

But Lasker did replace him with a man who made an even greater overall contribution to the advertising world than Kennedy did.

Kennedys replacement was called Claude C. Hopkins.

And what a true pioneer he proved to be.

Hes the man who inaugurated free sampling, risk-free trials, money-back guarantees, market testing, and much more.

Hopkins agreed with Kennedy on the Salesmanship on Paper philosophy, but where Kennedy was a one idea man, Hopkins had many ideas.

Hopkins reckoned that just placing ads and seeing what happened was futile. Pure guesswork. He wanted to measure everything that he did.

And we should all be glad that he did.

Hopkins wrote only two books but both were classics. His first: Scientific Advertising written in 1923 contained manyof his secrets that he found with his testing techniques. These secrets are still as valid today.

His second book, written in 1927, was an autobiography called: My Life in Advertising. Many regard this as the best advertising book ever written.

All top marketers regard Hopkins first book as their copywriting how-to bible.

And the late advertising great, David Ogilvy, had this to say about Scientific Advertising: Nobody should be allowed to have anything to do with advertising until he has read Scientific Advertising seven times it completely changed my life.

Jay Abraham, known as Americas #1 marketing wizard, had this to say: Claude Hopkins is the master of them all. His influence has easily added over $6m to my personal income..and still counting.

Hopkins created ad campaigns for many major US companies that are still going strong today. Companies such as Palmolive, Pepsodent, and Quaker Oats.

One of his secret strategies for creating more turnover for his clients was that of pre-emptive strikes.

By this strategy, he used to tell a story of how things were done in an industry and thus educate the customers. Any competitor could have told the same story but didn’t. and whoever did so first, gained the edge.

Hopkins stated in his books that a large part of advertising done at the time was based on the concept of: “Buy My Product” or “Come into My Store.” Lots of advertisers today make this same mistake. Are you one of them?

Customers are not fooled by this. They want to know: “What’s in it for me?”

Hopkins knew this and used this psychology to grow Van Camp’s pork and bean business. After his research, Hopkins found that 94% of housewives were baking their own beans at home and only 6% were buying canned beans.

But Hopkins realized that everybody advertising canned beans merely stated: “Buy My Brand.” Nobody explained what the benefit of their product was.