How To Advertise: An Analysis of Contemporary Advertising (part 27)

TOP STORIES 

Search Results

Man embarks on journey to canoe entirety of Mississippi River for ...

KMSP-TV-20 hours ago

MINNEAPOLIS (KMSP) - A Florida man is canoeing the entire length of theMississippi River from Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico to raise ...

Mom, 2 sons drown following crash along Mississippi River

WKRN News 2-12 hours ago

Aisha Fair and her two sons, Charvon Lofton and Jattire Junior, ages 7 and 2, drowned in the Mississippi River on Friday. Days before it ...

EXCLUSIVE: Family Of Mother And Boys Pulled From MS River Speaks
www.localmemphis.com-7 hours ago

View all

Police search for owner of SUV pulled from Mississippi River

News8000.com - WKBT-22 hours ago

BUFFALO CITY, Wis. (WKBT) - A SUV was pulled from the bottom of the Mississippi River Sunday near Buffalo City. The Buffalo Co. Sheriff's ...

Sponsorships and Events (part A)

by

Charles Lamson

The Growth of Sponsorship

Advertising and public relations people get involved in sponsoring many kinds of special events. In fact, sponsorship may be the fastest-growing form of marketing today. It actually embraces two disciplines: sales promotion and public relations. Some sponsorships are designed to create publicity, others to improve public relations through personal contact and affiliation with a worthy cause, and others to immediately improve the bottom line.

A sponsorship is a cash or in-kind (Payment-in-kind (PIK) is the use of a good or service as payment instead of cash. Payment in kind also refers to a financial instrument that pays interest or dividends to investors of bonds, notes or preferred stock with additional securities or equity instead of cash.) fee paid to a property (which may be a sports, entertainment, or nonprofit event or organization) in return for access to the exploitable commercial potential associated with that property. In other words, just as advertisers pay a fee to sponsor a program on radio or TV, they may also sign on to sponsor a bike race, an art show or chamber music festival, a fair or exposition, or the Olympics. The sponsorship fee may be paid in cash or in kind (that is, through a donation of goods and services). For instance, if a local TV station signs on as a sponsor of a 10K run, it will typically pay for some part of its sponsorship with advertising time for the event.

While the sponsored event or organization may be nonprofit, sponsorship is not the same as philanthropy. Philanthropy is support of a cause without any commercial incentive. Sponsorship (and a related strategy, cause marketing) is used to achieve commercial objectives.

The reasons for the phenomenal growth of sponsorships relate to the economics of marketing, the escalating costs of traditional advertising media, the fragmentation of media audiences, the growing diversity in leisure activities, and the ability to reach targeted groups of people economically. Initial growth probably came from the tobacco and alcohol companies, which many governments banned from broadcast advertising. Recent legislation in the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States threatens to end tobacco sponsorships altogether, but their success at sponsoring sports and events has shown the way for mainstream advertisers, who are rapidly picking up the slack.

Today there is greater media coverage of sponsored events---everything from beach volleyball to grand prix horse shows to Xtreme games to cultural events. This provides a highly desirable venue for advertisers seeking young, upwardly mobile, educated customers. Likewise, for transnational markets there is growing interest in global events such as World Cup soccer, the Olympics, and the America's Cup yacht race. Even traditional business-to-business marketers, such as Sweden's Ericsson Corp., are making a play for greater brand awareness in the United States by sponsoring the World Championships of Beach Volleyball, which is staged and marketed by Nike.

Benefits of Sponsorship

In the past, for marketers with limited media alternatives (such as tobacco and alcohol companies), sponsorship offered a means of communication with customers and prospects. Today, the many benefits of sponsorship are well-documented and more far-reaching.

More than almost any other marketing tool, sponsorships and events have the ability to involve customers, prospects, and other stakeholders. Naturally, events vary in degree of participation. A person attending a seminar or workshop will have greater involvement with the sponsor than someone attending a sponsored stock-car race. However, events are also highly selective of their target audience. Someone who actually attends a stock-car race will most likely have a higher degree of interest than the average person. So marketers that define their audiences tightly can select just those sponsorships that offer the closest fit. Of course, marketers that sponsor an event simply because it has a large audience are misusing this tool.

Unlike advertising, sponsorship and events can provide face-to-face access to current and potential customers. Depending on the venue, this access can be relatively clean and uncluttered by competition. Sponsoring a seminar, for instance, creates an opportunity for both customer education and brand involvement. In some cases, it even enables product demonstrations and the opportunity to give a personal sales pitch to multiple prospects at a time when they are open to new information. This is especially good for business-to-business marketers.

A significant benefit is the opportunity to enhance the company's public image or merchandise its positioning through affiliation with an appropriate event.

Also important, but often overlooked, is the effect sponsorship can have on employees. Affiliating with a dynamic event can really boost the morale and pride of the troops in the trenches. And many companies offer attendance at the event (Super Bowl, Olympics, etc.) as an incentive to their sales staff.

Some marketers have discovered that sponsorships can rapidly convert fan loyalty into sales. One fan told Greg Penske, president/CEO of Penske Motorsports, how upset he was that NASCAR driver Rusty Wallace had switched from Pontiac to Ford: "I'm only one year into my Pontiac lease and it's costing me $3,000 to get out of it and into a Ford"

Finally, sponsorships can be very cost-efficient. Volvo International believes the media exposure it gets from its $3 million sponsorship of local tennis tournaments is equivalent to $25 million worth of advertising time and space (2005).

Drawbacks of Sponsorship

Like all marketing communications tools, sponsorship has some drawbacks. First, it can be very costly, especially when the event is solely sponsored. For this reason, most companies participate in cosponsored events, which spread the cost among several participants.

The problem with cosponsored events is clutter. Some events have so many sponsors that getting one marketer's message through is extremely difficult. Look again at stock-car racing. How many logos do those cars sport?

Finally, evaluating the effectiveness of a particular sponsorship can be tricky at best---especially since it rarely happens in a vacuum. The problem is in separating the effects of a sponsorship from the effects of other concurrent marketing activities. 

*SOURCE: CONTEMPORARY ADVERTISING 11TH ED., 2008, WILLIAM F. ARENS, MICHAEL F. WEIGOLD, CHRISTIAN ARENS, PGS. 350-352*

END

How To Advertise: An Analysis of Contemporary Advertising (part 26)

The Role of Public Relations

by

Charles Lamson

The primary role of public relations is to manage a company's reputation and help build public consent for its enterprises. Today's business environment has become so competitive that public consent can no longer be assumed: it must be earned continuously.

The term public relations is widely misunderstood and misused. Part of the confusion is due to the fact that public relations covers a very broad area. Depending on the context and one's point of view it can be a concept, a profession, a management function, or a practice. The writers of Contemporary Advertising define public relations (PR) as the management function that focuses on the relationships and communications that individuals and organizations have with other groups (called publics) for the purpose of creating goodwill.

Every company, organization, or government body has relationships with groups of people who are affected by what it does or says. They may be employees, customers, stockholders, competitors, suppliers, legislators, or the community in which the organization resides. Marketing professionals refer to these people as stakeholders because they all have some vested interest in the company's actions. In PR terminology, each of these groups is considered one of the organization's publics, and the goal of PR is to develop and maintain goodwill with most, if not all of its publics. Failure to do so may mean loss of customers and revenues, time lost dealing with complaints or lawsuits, and loss of esteem (which weakens the organization's brand equity as well as its ability to secure financing, make sales, and expand).

A company's publics change constantly. After being acquired by Unilever, Ben & Jerry's faced previously silent, content publics. It still generally projects a sunny, caring image even though it is now part of Unilever. Criticism of the company appears to have increased after the acquisition. The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) accused Ben and Jerry's of misleading the public by claiming that some of its products were "all-natural" when they in fact contained hydrogenated oils and artificial flavors. CSPI called upon the FDA to take action against the company. Ben & Jerry's hedged response was the term "all natural" had various definitions in the food industry, but that it would work with natural food organizations on the issue. In 2005, the company voluntarily recalled pints of its Karamel Sutra ice cream that contained peanuts not mentioned on the label. After receiving one illness complaint about this common food allergy, the recall went forward, with CEO Yves Couette stating that "Our primary concern is always for the health and safety of our consumers."

Because of the powerful effect of public opinion, companies and organizations must consider the breadth of impact of their actions. This is specifically true in times of crisis, emergency, or disaster. But it also holds true for major policy decisions: changes in management or pricing, labor negotiations, introduction of new products, or changes in distribution methods. Each decision affects different groups in different ways. Effective public relations can channel groups' opinions toward mutual understanding and positive outcomes.

In short, the goals of public relations are to improve public opinion, build goodwill, and establish and maintain a satisfactory reputation for the organization. PR efforts may rally public support, obtain public understanding or neutrality, or simply respond to inquiries. Well-executed public relations is an ongoing process that molds good long-term relationships and plays an important role in relationship marketing and integrated communications.

The Difference between Advertising and Public Relations

Since they both use the media to create awareness or to influence markets or publics, advertising and public relations are similar---but they are not the same. Advertising reaches its  audience through media the advertiser pays for. It appears just as the advertiser designed it, with the advertiser's bias built in. Knowing this, the public views ads with some skepticism or ignores them outright. So in an integrated marketing communications program, advertising is rarely the best vehicle for building credibility.

Many public relations communications, like publicity, are not openly sponsored or paid for. People receive these communications in the form of news articles, editorial interviews, or feature stories after the messages have been reviewed and edited---filtered---by the media. Since the public thinks such messages are coming from the medium rather than a company, it trusts them more readily. For building credibility therefore, public relations is usually the better approach. Ben & Jerry's, for example, relies heavily on press coverage of its ice-cream giveaways during events it helps sponsor.

However, while advertising is carefully placed to gain particular reach and frequency objectives, PR is less precise. Public relations objectives are not as easy to quantify. In fact, the results gained from public relations activities depend greatly on the experience and skill of the people executing it and the relationship they have with the press. But PR can go only so far. Editors will not run the same story over and over. An ad's memorability, however, comes from repetition. While PR activities may offer greater credibility, advertising offers precision and control. This is why some companies relay their public relations messages through corporate advertising.

Advertising and PR in the Eyes of Practitioners

Another major difference between public relations and advertising is the orientation of professional practitioners. Advertising professionals see marketing as the umbrella process companies use to determine what products and services the market needs and how to distribute and sell them. To advertising professionals, advertising and public relations are "good news" marketing tools used to promote sales.

Public relations professionals take a totally different view. With their background typically in journalism rather than marketing, they believe public relations should be the umbrella process. They think companies should use PR to maintain relationships with all publics, including consumers. As Inside PR magazine says, "Public relations is a management discipline that encompasses a wide range of activities, from marketing and advertising to investor relations and government affairs. To PR professionals, public relations should be integrated "corporate" communications, which is certainly broader than what most people consider integrated "marketing" communications. Public relations people, for example, are also concerned with employee relations and investor relations. Marketing and advertising people rarely are. So public relations is really much broader.

To date, though, few companies are structured with a public relations orientation; most are still marketing oriented, perhaps due to marketing's bottom-line orientation. But in today's world of downsizing, reengineering, and total quality management (TQM), marketing people would be well advised to adopt the multiple-stakeholder approach and relationship consciousness that PR people bring to the table. 

Moreover, in times of crisis, the candid, open-information orientation of PR is invariably the better perspective to adopt. Fortunately, with the growing interest in relationship marketing, two-way interactivity, and IMC, companies are finally beginning to embrace a public relations philosophy.

When PR activities are used for marketing purposes, the term marketing public relations (MPR) is often used. In support of marketing, public relations activities can raise awareness, inform and educate, improve understanding, build trust, make friends, give people reasons or permission to buy, and create a climate of consumer acceptance---usually better than advertising. Marketing strategists Al and Laura Ries believe the best way to build a brand is through publicity: Starbucks, The Body Shop, Wal-Mart, to name a few.

In an integrated marketing communications program, advertising and MPR need to be closely coordinated. Many ad agencies now have PR departments for this very purpose. And many companies now have communications departments that manage both advertising and PR.

*SOURCE: CONTEMPORARY ADVERTISING 11TH ED., 2008, WILLIAM F. ARENS, MICHAEL F. WEIGOLD, CHRISTIAN ARENS, PGS. 338-342*

END

How To Advertise: An Analysis of Contemporary Advertising (part 25)

The Importance of Direct Marketing to Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC)

by

Charles Lamson

Perhaps the reason for direct marketing's (Direct marketing is a form of advertising where organizations communicate directly to customers through a variety of media including cell phone text messaging, email, websites, online adverts, database marketing, fliers, catalog distribution, promotional letters, and targeted television, newspaper, and magazine advertisements, as well as outdoor advertising. Among practitioners, it is also known as direct response.) current growth is that marketers and agencies realize that they cannot do the job with just one medium anymore. As the mass audience fragmented and companies began to integrate their marketing communications (Integrated Marketing Communications ensures that all forms of communications and messages are carefully linked together. At its most basic level, Integrated Marketing Communications, means integrating all the promotional tools, so that they work together in harmony.), customer databases became key to retaining and growing customers.

Direct marketing is the best way to develop a good database. The database enables the marketer to build a relationship by learning about customers in-depth, their nuances, what and where they buy, what they are interested in, and what they need. With a database, companies can choose the prospects they can serve most effectively and profitably---the purpose of all marketing. You do not want a relationship with every customer. In fact, there are some bad customers out there.

People like to see themselves as unique, not part of some 100-million-member mass market. Through direct marketing, especially addressable electronic media, companies can send discrete messages to individual customers and prospects. With different types of sales promotion, a company can encourage individuals, not masses, to respond and can develop a relationship with each person. By responding, the prospect self-selects, in effect giving the marketer permission to begin a relationship. The direct marketing database, then, becomes the company's primary tool to initiate, build, cultivate, and measure the effectiveness of its loyalty efforts.

By providing a tangible response, direct marketing offers accountability. Marketers can count the responses and determine the cost per response. They can also judge the effectiveness of the medium they are using and test different creative executions.

Direct marketing offers convenience to time-sensitive consumers, and it offers precision and flexibility to cost-sensitive marketers. For example, to reach small BTB (business to business) markets, there is no more cost-effective method than the database-driven direct-response media.

Also, the economics of direct marketing are becoming more competitive. It used to be easy for big companies to spend a few million dollars for prime-time network TV spots when everybody was home watching and the average cost was only a penny to 10 cents per person. But those days are over. Everybody's not home today. And if they are, they are watching 150 channels or a DVD. They have a remote control to mute ads or a TiVo to skip them. Further, network TV advertising is far more expensive than it used to be. Thus, targeted direct-response media (magazines, niche TV, direct mail, email, kiosks) are more cost-effective than ever before.

Finally, unlike the public mass media, direct-response media can be more private. A company can conduct a sales letter campaign without the competition ever knowing about it.

Drawbacks to Direct Marketing

At the same time, direct marketing still faces some challenges. In the past, direct marketers were sales oriented, not relationship oriented. This gave direct marketing a bad reputation in the minds of many customers. Some people enjoy the experience of visiting retail stores and shopping. They like to see and feel the goods personally, and they are hesitant to buy goods sight unseen. This is why the objective of many direct marketing campaigns is now to help drive traffic to retail locations.

Direct marketing efforts often have to stand on their own without the content support of the media that advertising enjoys. They do not always get the prestigious affiliation offered by some media. This makes it more difficult (and costly) to build image for the product, something mass-media advertising is particularly good at.

Direct marketing also suffers from clutter. People are deluged with mail from commercial sponsors and drum-beating politicians. Cable channels are filled with infomercials for food processors. And telemarketing pitches for insurance plans intrude on consumers at home and at work.

Many customers are also concerned with privacy. They do not like having their names sold by list vendors. At one national forum of direct marketers, attendees were told they must self-regulate, give consumers more control, and treat privacy like a customer service issue---or risk legislation restricting access to the information they desperately need. Wise marketers have heeded these warnings and developed methods for responsible direct marketing. Using IMC theory, they integrate all their marketing communications and focus on building the relationship value of their brands.

*SOURCE: CONTEMPORARY ADVERTISING 11TH ED., 2008, WILLIAM F. ARENS, MICHAEL F. WEIGOLD, CHRISTIAN ARENS, PGS. 311-314*

END

How To Advertise: An Analysis of Contemporary Advertising (part 24)

The Impact of Databases on Direct Marketing

by

Charles Lamson

Modern computer technology enables marketers to compile and analyze important customer information in unprecedented ways. Pitney Bowes, for instance, is the dominant company in the postal meter business. However, its growth rate and profitability were flattering. So the company used its database to identify its best customers, their value to the organization, and their needs and buying behavior. From this, Pitney Bowes created a customer lifetime value (LTV) model based on historical and potential share of wallet. Computing and ranking the lifetime value of all its 1.2 million customers showed that more than two-thirds of the customer base value resided in fewer than 10 percent of the customers. The company also found it had a major retention program within its low-volume, low-cost accounts. Cancellation rates were running as high as 40 percent per year in some segments. This analysis enabled Pitney Bowes to develop a distinct direct marketing strategy for both its best and its worst customers. It began a sophisticated loyalty program for its best customers and a retention program for its problem accounts. By the end of the first year, the program had reduced attrition by 20 percent, and the reduction in sales alone paid back the entire direct marketing investment. In another situation, a company might determine from its LTV analysis that its best course of action is simply to drop the most unprofitable customers.

The database is the key to direct marketing success, especially in an IMC (integrated marketing communications) program. It enables marketers to target, segment, and grade customers. It is the corporate memory of all important customer information: name and address, telephone number, email address, NAIC (The National Association of Insurance Commissioners is a nationwide organization whose main responsibility is to protect the interests of insurance consumers.) code (if a business firm), source of inquiry, cost of inquiry, history of purchases, and so on. It should record every transaction across all points of contact with both channel members and customers. The company that understands its customers' needs and wants better than any of its competitors, and retains more of its best customers, will create a sustainable competitive advantage. Strategically, therefore, companies have to determine if they will focus on share of market or on retention and loyalty (share of customer). More often than not, this is a short-term versus long-term trade-off.

The database also lets the company measure the efficiency of its direct-response advertising efforts to see, for instance, which radio or TV commercials, or which mailing lists, perform the best.

Working with a marketing database requires two processes: data management and data access. Data management is the process of gathering, consolidating, updating, and enhancing the information about customers and prospects that resides in the database. For most companies of any significant size, this requires a sophisticated computer system due to the complexity and volumes of the processes involved.

Most important, the database gives marketers data access, enabling them to manipulate, analyze, and rank all the information to make better marketing decisions. Thanks to new software, this can now usually be accomplished on PCs hooked up to client/server computers.

Rob Jackson, coauthor of Strategic Database Marketing, suggests that database marketing should start with customer profiling. Profiling allows marketers to get a snapshot of what their customers look like at any given time by identifying common characteristics and ranking their relative importance in different segments.

In the same vein, direct marketing expert Bob Stone recommends using an RFM formula (recency, frequency, monetary) to identify the best customers---the ones most likely to buy again. The best customers have bought recently, they buy frequently, and they spend the most money. Customers may be further ranked by the type of merchandise or services they buy, information that becomes very useful in the effort to cross-sell other merchandise.

Some companies may simply purchase a mailing list as its initial database. There are typically three types of data available for purchase: demographics, lifestyle (leisure interests), and behaviorists (purchase habits). 

*SOURCE: CONTEMPORARY ADVERTISING 11TH ED., 2008, WILLIAM F. ARENS, MICHAEL F. WEIGOLD, CHRISTIAN ARENS, PGS. 310-311*

END

How To Advertise: An Analysis of Contemporary Advertising (part 23)

TOP STORIES

Search Results

Why the Mississippi Remains the South's Most Vital Artery

TIME-10 hours ago

From that experience, I developed a sense of romance about the Mississippi River. Like Huck Finn, I came to associate it with freedom and ...

Authorities Identify Burned Human Remains near Mississippi River

OzarksFirst.com-11 hours ago

WEST ALTON, Mo- Authorities are now identifying burned human remains found near the Mississippi River. Police in West Alton say the ...

Mississippi River search continues for child

Quad-Cities Online-18 hours ago

Emergency crews search the Mississippi River this morning for a child who reportedly fell into the river Tuesday night near Schwiebert ...

"I just want him found" family devastated after 2-year-old falls into ...
OurQuadCities-22 hours ago

View all

Methods for Scheduling Media

by

Charles Lamson

After selecting the appropriate media vehicles, the media planner decides how many space or time units to buy of each vehicle and schedules them for release over a period of time when consumers are most apt to buy the product.

Continuous, Flighting, and Pulsing Schedules

To build continuity in a campaign, planners use three principal scheduling tactics: continuous, flighting, and pulsing.

In a continuous schedule, advertising runs steadily and varies little over the campaign period. It is the best way to build continuity. Advertisers use this scheduling pattern for products consumers purchase regularly. For example, a commercial is scheduled on radio stations WTKO and WRBI for an initial four-week period. Then, to maintain continuity in the campaign, additional spots run continuously every week throughout the year on station WRBI.

Flighting alternates periods of advertising with periods of no advertising. This intermittent schedule makes sense for products and services that experience large fluctuations in demand throughout the year (tax services, lawn-care products, cold remedies). The advertiser might introduce the product with a four-week flight and then schedule three additional four-week flights to run during seasonal periods later in the year.

The third alternative, pulsing, mixes continuous and flighting strategies. As the consumer's purchasing cycle gets longer, pulsing becomes more appropriate. The advertiser maintains a low level of advertising all year but uses periodic pulses to heavy up during peak selling periods. This strategy is appropriate for products like soft drinks, which are consumed all year but more heavily in the summer.

Additional Scheduling Patterns

For high-ticket items that require careful acceleration, bursting---running the same commercial every half hour on the same network during prime time---can be effective. A variation is roadblocking, buying air time on all three networks simultaneously. Chrysler used this technique to give viewers the impression that the advertiser was everywhere, even if the ad showed for only a few nights. Digital Equipment used a scheduling tactic called blinking to stretch its slim ad budget. To reach business executives, it flooded the airwaves on Sundays (on both cable and network TV channels) to make it virtually impossible to miss the ads. 

*SOURCE: CONTEMPORARY ADVERTISING 11TH ED., 2008, WILLIAM F. ARENS, MICHAEL F. WEIGOLD, CHRISTIAN ARENS, PG. 298*

END

How To Advertise: An Analysis of Contemporary Advertising (part 22)

The Advertising Plan (part B)

by

Charles Lamson

Advertising Strategy and the Creative Mix

The advertising (or communications) objective declares where the advertiser wants to be with respect to consumer awareness, attitude, and preference; the advertising (or creative) strategy describes how to get there.

Advertising strategy blends the elements of the creative mix: target audience, product concept, communications media, and advertising message.

The Target Audience: Everyone Who Should Know

The target audience, the specific people the advertising will address, is typically larger than the target market. Advertisers need to know who the end user is, who makes the purchase, and who influences the purchasing decision. Children, for example, often assert a strong influence on where the family eats. So while McDonald's target market is adults, its target audience also includes children, and it spends much of its advertising budget on campaigns directed at kids.

Similarly, while companies may target heavy users of a product, many light users and nonusers are exposed to the advertising as well. That's good, because research shows that brand popularity (which advertising is uniquely good at creating) cuts across all levels of purchasing frequency. The dominant brands are purchased the most by both heavy and light users. It is the accumulation of all these sales that makes a product the dominant brand.

The Product Concept: Presenting the Product

The "bundle of values" the advertiser presents to the consumer is the product concept. General Motors markets essentially the same truck to two different audiences but presents two different product concepts. The Silverado is marketed to the vast middle class with ads that stress its rugged, macho durability. Advertising for the Sierra truck, on the other hand, is aimed at white-collar professionals and emphasizes the vehicles snob appeal.

When writing the advertising plan, the advertising manager must develop a simple statement to describe the product concept---that is, how the advertising will present the product. To create this statement, the advertiser first considers how consumers perceive the product and then weighs this against the company's marketing strategy.

The Communications Media: The Message Delivery System

As an element of creative strategy, the communications media are all the vehicles that might transmit the advertiser's message. They included traditional media such as radio, TV, newspapers, magazines, and billboards, plus the Internet, and, in an integrated, communications program, direct marketing, public relations, special events, sales promotion, and personal selling.

Marketers at Mountain Dew use a variety of media to create a special environment for the product. This means not only advertising the product in mainstream media and sampling the product at sporting events but also creating the particular environment that the consumer wants for drinking the Dew. For example, Mountain Dew has used Hummers, radio stations, computer game demos, and extreme athletes to be part of the experience. In the summer of 2000, marketers decked out a subway car with "Do the Dew" memorabilia and hauled it around the country to major youth-oriented events where they passed out branded premiums such as snowboards, gear, and T-shirts---all relevant to the target market.

While balancing Dew on both ends of the grass-roots and mass-appeal spectrum, Pepsi marketers realize that not all teens are into alternative sports. The one-time hillbilly drink is now also moving toward African-American and Latino youth. Endorsement deals with artists such as Busta Rhymes and professional snowboarder Ben Hinkley allow the Dew to appeal to the fast-growing ethnic market---which also coincides with the regional urban markets targeted by Dew. "Mountain Dew is a brand whose core is inextricably linked to a pervasive human need for fun and exhilaration," says one executive. "That basic need has not changed over time, so we have to stick with that and be as current and leading edge as possible."

The Advertising Message: What the Advertising Communicates

What the company plans to say in its ads and how it plans to say it, both verbally and nonverbally, make up the advertising message. The combination of copy, art, and production elements forms the message, and there are infinite ways to combine these elements.

Dew personifies its product concept not only through events, but via a team of 10 extreme athletes, each representing a sport more daring than the next. That same attitude is passed on to Dew advertising. With longtime agency BBDO helping the brand stay true to its youthful feel, its campaigns have an edginess and audacity not typically associated with the big cola companies. In one of the brand's Super Bowl commercials, a Dew Dude on a bicycle chases down a cheetah and wrestles it to the ground. Reaching into the cat's mouth, he retrieves a stolen can of Dew.

"Bad cheetah," he says.

Ted Sann, the chief creative director at BBDO, says "The idea is to evolve the campaign---take it to the next plateau."

The Secret to Successful Planning

Whether the advertiser is a large corporation or a small company, the key to successful planning is information. But the genius of business is in interpreting what the information means. This leads to direction, which makes planning easier and more rewarding.

*SOURCE: CONTEMPORARY ADVERTISING 11TH ED., 2008, WILLIAM F. ARENS, MICHAEL F. WEIGOLD, CHRISTIAN ARENS, PGS. 255-258*

END