Advertising is defined as any paid form of non personal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods or services by an identified sponsor.
The 5 M’s of Advertising
The 5 M’s are basically the different important decisions that are to be taken while designing the advertising campaign. The 5 M’s of advertising are (1) Mission (that is the basic objective or that a company wants to attain by its advertising campaign) (2) Money (How much money should be spent by the company to achieve the objective of advertising and the basic factors that should be considered while deciding the budget of advertising) (3) Message (what specific information company wants to communicate through its advertising; what should be the content of the message etc (4) Media (communication of the message to people requires some media which can be print, or electronic) and (5) Measurement ( it is something related to evaluation of the advertising campaign that can be done either by considering its impact on sales of profit of the company).
The following are the decisions that are needed to be taken / managed before the integration of advertising campaign in the marketing plan:
1. Setting advertising objectives
2. Setting advertising budgets
3. Developing advertising strategy; (a) Message decisions (b) Media decisions
4. Evaluating advertising campaigns
Setting Objectives
The objectives should be based on past decisions about the target market, positioning and the marketing mix, which will define the job of advertising in the total marketing program. The advertising objectives can be classified as:
1. Informative advertising
2. Persuasive advertising
3. Comparison advertising
4. Reminder advertising.
Setting Budget
After the objectives are determined, the marketer must set up an advertising budget for each of its product and the market. Some specific factors that should be considered when setting up and advertising budget are;
1. Stages in the Product Life Cycle. New products typically need larger advertising budgets.
2. Market Share. High market share brands usually need more advertising.
3. Competition and Clutter. More advertising is usually required in a market comprising of several competitors and the advertising clutter.
4. Product differentiation. When a brand closely resembles to the other brand of its class, the more advertising and so the more budget is required to take the market edge effectively.
Advertising Strategy
This consists of 2 elements, (a) creating advertising messages: No matter how big your budget is, advertising can only succeed if commercials gain attention and communicate well. Good advertising messages are especially important in today’s costly and cluttered advertising environment, if all this advertising clutter bothers some consumers; it also causes big problems for advertisers. (b) Selecting advertising media: Media planners are now working more closely than ever with creativity to allow media selection to help shape the creative process, often before a single ad is shaped up.
Evaluation After Execution
Here, the entire plan is then evaluated keeping in view the objectives on which the whole campaign is standing which mostly are:-
a. Slice of life.
b. Life style
c. Fantasy
d. Musical
e. Technical expertise
f. Scientific evidence
g. Endorsement