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The New York Times July 20, 2005 pC8(L)

How Effective Is This Ad, In Real Numbers? Beats Me. (Business/Financial Desk)(MEDIA: ADVERTISING)(2005 Marketing Accountability Forum) Elliott, Stuart

THE results of a survey scheduled to be released today at a conference sponsored by the Association of National Advertisers bring to mind the familiar Mark Twain remark about the weather: Everyone complains about the inability to determine the return on investment from advertising spending, but no one seems satisfied with what is being done about it.

The conference is the most recent in a skein of meetings sponsored by the association, the trade organization for the nation's largest marketers, focusing on advertising accountability. Senior marketers are increasingly intent on figuring out what they are doing right -- and wrong -- as the cost of peddling goods and services climbs each year, along with the difficulty of reaching potential customers.

''The efficiency and effectiveness of marketing in generating growth and building brand equity'' is the issue that members tell the association ''is No.1 in their minds,'' said Barbara Bacci Mirque, senior vice president at the association, which is based in New York.

So ''we're going to discuss it,'' she added, ''till our members say it's not important to them.''

The conference, formally titled the 2005 Marketing Accountability Forum, is to begin this morning with a general session at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Midtown Manhattan. To underline what it considers to be the importance of the conference, the association is also promoting it to members of the trade group that represents the agencies that marketers work with, the American Association of Advertising Agencies.

The survey was conducted in April by the advertiser association and two partners, Marketing Management Analytics, part of the Aegis Group, and Forrester Research. In telephone interviews this week, Ms. Mirque and executives from Marketing Management Analytics offered a preview of some survey results.

For instance, 61.5 percent of the survey respondents said it was important to them to define, measure and take concrete steps in the area of advertising accountability. But only 19 percent said they were satisfied with their ability to take those steps.

And 73 percent of respondents were not confident that they understood the effects that an advertising or marketing campaign could have on sales. When asked if they agreed with the statement, ''I would be able to forecast the impact on sales'' of a 10 percent cut in marketing spending, 63 percent said no.

Back in the day, ''marketing had a rock-star mentality, able to do what it wanted,'' said Ed See, executive vice president and chief operating officer at Marketing Management, which is based in Wilton, Conn.

''But we're not living in a rock 'n' roll world anymore,'' he added. ''Elvis has left the building.''

A primary reason for the change, Mr. See said, is what he called the ''halo effect'' of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, centered on the difference the law is making in the way top managers run companies.

''Marketers were able to do what they wanted because they were given a bye from a corporate governance aspect by the C-suite,'' Mr. See said, using the shorthand term for leaders like chief executives. ''But now,'' he added, ''the C-suite sees marketing as the last bastion of uncontrolled spending, and it's being viewed as a risk, a financial risk.''

''It's the old story of the C.E.O. who asks the chief marketing officer, 'What happens if I take 10 percent out of the marketing budget?' and the C.M.O. replies, 'I don't know,''' Mr. See said, ''so the C.E.O. says: 'O.K., I'll take 20 percent.'''

John Nardone, executive vice president and chief client officer at Marketing Management, said the survey showed that it was more important than ever for advertisers to give their marketing departments the types of controls, models and ''repeatable processes'' they use in areas like supply-chain management and human resources.

''Marketers are tracking all kinds of data and they still can't answer basic questions'' about advertising accountability, Mr. Nardone said, ''because they don't have real models and metrics by which to make sense of it.''

Mr. Nardone and Mr. See are to discuss the survey at the conference, along with Jim Nail, principal analyst at Forrester.

Among the other scheduled speakers are: Joseph Auriemma, director for global business services at Procter & Gamble; Robert DeSena, director for relationship marketing at the Masterfoods USA division of Mars; Lawrence Flanagan, chief marketing officer at MasterCard International; Robert D. Liodice, president and chief executive at the advertiser association; Kate Sirkin, executive vice president and global research director at the Starcom MediaVest Group division of the Publicis Groupe; and Susan St. George, director for marketing operations at General Electric.

Document Number: A134181043

The New York Times Dec 22, 2004 pC2(L) col 01 (15 col in)

The art of promoting products, oh so subtly, through interactive and entertaining Web sites.
(Business/Financial Desk)(THE MEDIA BUSINESS: ADVERTISING) Ives, Nat


MARKETERS usually try to slip their names into every conceivable venue -- like cellphone screens, bathroom posters and TV shows via product placement. But there are times when an ad that almost disguises its sponsor can be more effective.

Many of these ads have taken the form of specialty Web sites, like www.subservientchicken.com, which is intended to entrance visitors with humor, video or games.

Subservient Chicken, perhaps the year's most prominent example, allows visitors to type orders to someone dressed in a chicken costume, who is seen obeying, as if on a live Webcam.

The site, a promotion for the TenderCrisp chicken sandwich sold at Burger King, says little about Burger King or the sandwich, although there is a discreet link to the Burger King site.

Other marketers have moved into specialty Web sites, including Alaska Airlines, which operates a parody site at www.skyhighairlines.com, and Best Buy, the retail chain, which is creating specialty sites tied to particular campaigns, products and audiences.

At one site, Best Buy depicts a fictional Slothmore Institute (www.slothmore.com), which brags of ''enabling greatness through sedentary living.''

A note from the institute's fictional founder, Dr. Harvey Funkel, explains. ''Here at Slothmore we believe that everyone deserves to achieve one's dreams and aspirations,'' he says, ''especially if one's dream is to never achieve a thing.''

The idea is that stay-at-home sloths may as well surround themselves with a stereo system, which, incidentally, visitors can check out by clicking on a Best Buy banner ad at the bottom.

Michael Borosky, vice president and creative director at Eleven in San Francisco, said specialty sites enjoy technical and creative support from the marketers, but do not have to observe the conventions of the corporate site. Eleven has created sites for companies like Barclays Global Investors and Eastman Kodak.

''I do consider them kind of like pirate radio stations,'' Mr. Borosky said. ''You're kind of borrowing some bandwidth from the brand, but it allows you to do things the brand may not be comfortable with on its own corporate site.''

Another site, Digital Joy (www.digitaljoy.com), advertises the benefits of a partnership between Microsoft and Intel to sell digital entertainment technology, like personal computers that can record television programs. Microsoft and Intel hired Deutsch in New York, part of the Interpublic Group of Companies, to create advertising promoting their products.

''Clearly these guys want to be players in the digital home entertainment world,'' said Fred Rubin, a partner at Deutsch and director of its iDeutsch and directDeutsch divisions. ''There's this big idea you want to get out there. It also is different things to different people.''

''A television commercial alone would not have solved their problem,'' Mr. Rubin said. ''A Web site alone would not have solved their problem either.'' It took commercials to drive consumers to the site, he said, and the site's abilities and narrow focus to show them what is available.

At www.comeclean.com visitors are asked to type in confessions, urging, ''Start the new year fresh by coming clean.'' Entered confessions then appear on a hand over a sink, where it is washed away with soap that you can buy at an online gift shop linked to the site.

Visitors can also peek at previous visitors' anonymous confessions. ''I haven't changed my sheets in about a month or two,'' one palm reads. Other confessions are not appropriate for a family newspaper, but all go down the drain in the end. Even confessions of criminal acts are washed away -- after an advisory on the site that says they have been sent to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The site was created by the same agency that is behind Subservient Chicken, Crispin Porter & Bogusky in Miami, to promote Method, the San Francisco marketer of the soaps used to wash away the confessions

Newsweek August 30, 2004 p9

Tourism: Do Slogans Sell? (city and state slogans, United States)(Brief Article)Byline: Ron DePasquale

Las Vegas's new slogan--"What happens here, stays here"--helped bring visitors streaming in: a record 35 million tourists went to Vegas last year. Other cities hope rebranding will help them, too. Dallas unveiled its new "Live large, think big" slogan in June; San Francisco, battered by the dot-com bust and a slowdown in Asian tourism after September 11, is trying out "Only in San Francisco." A new slogan can boost a place's image, but only if it's around long enough to stick in the minds of travelers, says Patty Hubbard, a Travel Industry Association of America executive: "You can't constantly change a brand and expect people to know what it is." Kansas went from the "Land of Ah's" to "Linger Longer" to "Simply Wonderful," and is shopping for a new slogan. So is Denver, the "Mile High City," which has also cycled through "Above the rest," "Center for the New West" and "Gateway to the Rockies." The two most famous tourism slogans--"I love New York" and "Virginia is for lovers"--are more than 25 years old. Officials in Columbia, S.C., think their new slogan, "Where friendliness flows," will last--and, to make sure, they're putting hotel workers, waiters and cabdrivers through four hours of friendliness training.

CAPTION(S): Brands and Success: Longevity is key

Document Number: A121147173


Time Oct 13, 2003 v162 i15 p24

Nation Of Sloganeers. (Notebook)(Brief Article) Novack, KateByline: Kate Novack

THE LAS VEGAS CONVENTION AND VISITORS Authority launched an ad campaign this year touting Sin City with one of the nation's more unusual come-ons--"What happens here, stays here." Excelsior, Minn. (pop. 2,400), has started a campaign to lure twenty-and thirtysomethings away from franchise-dominated big cities, with "Secede from Starbucks Nation." Clearly, communities are taking their slogans seriously. A look at some others: --By Kate Novack

Hico, Texas "WHERE EVERYBODY IS SOMEBODY" The biggest somebody was Billy the Kid. Town legend has it that the outlaw died here in 1950.

Manhattan, Kans. "THE LITTLE APPLE" The home of Kansas State University throws down the gauntlet to N.Y.C.

Omaha, Neb. "OMAHA: RARE. WELL DONE" Sounds good for steaks, but the city is getting ready to make a change to simply "O!"

Hereford, Texas "TOWN WITHOUT A TOOTHACHE" A water supply chock-full of natural fluoride means tooth decay is rare here.

Tulare, S.D. "MORE THAN JUST A BLINK OF THE EYE" Wishful thinking? Maybe. But proud schoolkids also helped create a mural with the motto "Little City with a Big Heart."

Kalamazoo, Mich. "YES, THERE REALLY IS A KALAMAZOO" Not too many residents are nostalgic for an earlier slogan, "Where I-94 turns into fun."

Scottsdale, Ariz. "THE WEST'S MOST WESTERN TOWN" There's talk of replacing it with something more cutting edge. "The New West ... for the New Economy" is one idea.

Document Number: A108560734

Globe & Mail (Toronto, Canada) March 26, 2001 pNA

Signs, signs everywhere signs: I guess most people who wear clothes with the labels on the outside are making a fashion statement. Myself, I'm nobody's walking billboard. Kehoe, Bill


Everywhere you look today, people are wearing clothes proudly displaying the maker's name or logo. It's the "in" thing.

I guess most people do it because they are making the sort of fashion statement that escapes me.

When I opened my gifts last Christmas morning, I was pleased to find among them a colourful golf shirt, just like the ones I'd seen on TV. (I enjoy watching golf the way it should be played.)

My pleasure with the present was slightly tinged by a feeling of resentment that I have carried with me for nearly 50 years. As I held up the shirt to check its size, there on the front was the name and logo of a well-known manufacturer. I thought to myself, why should I go around the golf course advertising a maker's product and not get paid for it?

My four-year-old grandson shared the joy of Christmas day with us and he looked just great dressed up like a little locomotive engineer, in a pair of overalls. And, b'gosh, there on the bib was the name of a well-known maker of kiddy's clothing.

I decided then I was fighting a losing battle.

When I see Tiger Woods sinking those impossible putts on TV, I'm distracted by the "swoosh" adorning his cap and shirt. But then, the company is paying him something like $50 million or more to do so. That makes it okay. Same with all the other golfers with brand names on their caps and shirts. They're being paid to.

I guess I should explain my weird attitude toward people who willingly act as billboards. Never mind that some of this clothing is produced in Third World countries by low-paid workers, who are often putting in long hours in less-than-ideal working conditions.

My prejudice goes back to the time in 1953, when I was part of the first privately-owned television station in Canada. In October of 1953, CKSO-TV Sudbury opened, and I was the anchorman -- the first in Canada. Although, back then, I called myself a newscaster, because the word anchorman had yet to be coined.

Not only was I required to write and read my own news, I also had to look for advertising sponsors. I canvassed local merchants, drumming up business for the new station.The boss reminded us daily that if we wanted to be paid at the end of the week, we had to sell. Not only sell, but service the account and write the advertising copy.

The lesson was brought forcefully home to me one morning, when the same boss called a staff meeting -- all five of us were present. He didn't start as he usually did, by citing the gross advertising revenue earned the previous day, and urging us to top it today. Rather, he took a different tack.

He began by telling us a story. It went like this:

"When I parked my car this morning in our lot outside, I couldn't help but notice a brand-new car that was not there yesterday. It's a beauty all right, and I checked it over very carefully. I thought to myself: I guess the staff is doing alright to be able to afford something like that.

"Then," he said, "I checked the back of the car, and guess what I found? The name and logo of a local car dealer whom we have not been able to sign up for air time. We have five other local car dealers already on the books, but not this guy.

"Now, I want to know, who owns that car?"

There was a pause, and finally a technician held up his hand, and lowered his eyes.

"Who pays your salary here?" the boss asked.

"You do," replied the operator.

"How do you suppose we are able to make out your paycheque each week?" the boss persisted.

"By selling advertising," replied the cowed technician.

"That's right. Now you march right down to where you bought that car and sell him some advertising time on this station. If he refuses, tell him to pry that sign of his off the back of your car. Tell him you are not going to drive around town advertising his business for free. Not as long as you work here."

I don't recall if that poor technician ever sold a minute of air time, but shortly afterwards somebody did, and the car dealer became another of our valued sponsors.

Even though I haven't sold air time for years, ever since that meeting in 1953 I've felt: Why should I advertise for free?

By the way, I just love grocery shopping, and sometimes I'm able to fill my entire list with generic or "no-name" products.

Bill Kehoe is a retired CBC announcer living in Ottawa.

Document Number: A30145756

U.S. News & World Report Jan 22, 2001 v130 i3 p13

One tin slogan. (United States Army advertising)(Brief Article) Leo, John


After 20 years, the Army is dropping its famous recruiting slogan, "Be all you can be." Guess which of the following is the new slogan: a) One man, one Army; b) An Army of one; c) Your Army thinks you're the one; d) One place for you is the Army; e) Hey, we have only one Army!

The answer, of course, is b.

"An Army of one" is an odd contradiction in terms, and it may be too mystifying to make anyone dash to the nearest enlistment center. But the Army has a problem. It missed its recruiting goals in three of the past six years and barely met them in the other three.

The economic boom is a factor, draining off many potential recruits. But the real difficulty is the mind-set of the 18-to-24-year-olds targeted for enlistment ads. They think of soldiers as "nameless, faceless people in green uniforms crawling through mud," said an Army PR man. The Army churned up a lot of research on young adults by the Rand Corp., Yankelovich Partners Inc., and McKinsey & Co. On the basis of the findings, many of them already well known, the Army apparently concluded that the current generation of young people is so individualistic, so resistant to authority and rules, that it has to market military life as the natural home of the freewheeling, unfettered spirit.

Soldiers have to follow orders and work for group cohesion. They also have to risk getting shot at from time to time. Selling this to the young as the freedom of the independent self is no easy task. But the research was sobering. Even "Be all you can be"--a me-generation slogan entirely about self-actualization--was widely perceived as too authoritarian. "Kids don't like it," said Ray DeThorne of Leo Burnett, the ad agency that produced the "Army of One" campaign. "They say it's the voice of their parents telling them what to do."

No orders, no guns. J. Walker Smith of Yankelovich says: "The problem is, how do you attract people who want to be free agents?" By selling a sort of implied and ambiguous free-agency within the Army. Research shows that young adults want to feel connected and they want to be part of something bigger than themselves. But they don't want to yield their freedom. So authority figures are absent from the ads. Officers and orders apparently don't exist. Instead, young soldiers talk about how independent and strong the Army makes them feel.

In one of the first TV ads, a soldier is seen running alone through a vast desert. "I am an army of one," he says. "Even though there are 1,045,690 soldiers just like me, I am my own force. . . . The might of the U.S. Army doesn't lie in numbers; it lies in me." In another spot, an "imagery group station operator" is presented as a sort of independent contractor, making his own decisions about dispatching Apache helicopters on the spot. A future one will feature a lone Hispanic American soldier helping a child after an earthquake in a Latin American nation.

Louis Caldera, secretary of the Army, says of young people, "What we are telling them is that the strength of the Army is in individuals. Yes, you're a member of the team and you've got support from your fellow teammates, but you as an individual make a difference." Bob Garfield, an ad critic for Advertising Age, has a different view: "It's a clever campaign, but substantially dishonest. The Army is not, never has been, and never will be about one soldier. Individuality has absolutely nothing to do with Army life."

Normally, new Army TV ads are unfurled during the Super Bowl, but "An Army of One" debuted last week during the sitcom Friends and is scheduled to run on The Simpsons and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The announced reason is that these shows mostly attract the young, while the Super Bowl is watched by millions who are too old for the Army. But there's another reason: The Super Bowl features macho males, while the Clinton administration has been working for a gender-fair, androgynous Army that seems to downplay aggressiveness and bravery as too macho. (Even weapons may carry a new stigma. So far, no soldier has been shown carrying a gun in the "Army of One" ads.)

Meanwhile, the Marines, who have no trouble meeting their recruitment goals, keep stressing the old values. The Marines' current TV ad seems like the end of a video game. A man with a sword slays a monster made up entirely of fire and is rewarded by being turned into a marine. But viewers have no doubt that the Marines demand struggle and readiness for combat, as opposed to nation building or international social service. The Navy's new recruitment slogan is "Accelerate your life," which seems midway between the Army's self-centered vision of recruits and the Marines' straightforward account of what marines do (they don't moon about their individualism; they fight).

One can sympathize with the Army's problem in reaching out to a very independent generation. But maybe a showing or two of Saving Private Ryan might have accompanied all that market research. At the heart of the movie's success was its vision of military culture based on leadership, sacrifice, unit cohesion, trust, and faithfulness to duty. Or do we just think that the World War II generation was the last one that could possibly be interested in any of this?

Document Number: A69296982

Globe & Mail (Toronto, Canada) August 10, 2000 pNA

Adman's best friend: advertising images change constantly, depending on what's trendy. But one symbol you can always rely on is a dog. Nolen, Stephanie


Toronto -- A young woman with long, streaky blond hair, wearing a rumpled shirt and jeans, sits in an overstuffed chair in a spare living room, sipping from a steaming mug, or maybe ruffling the fur of a golden retriever. She speaks directly to the camera, in a confident sort of voice.

Sound vaguely like an ad you've seen lately? Like a lot of ads you've seen lately?

Dogs and coffee mugs are standbys. Big comfy chairs -- and cellphones -- are the images of the moment. And their ubiquity is a function of the advertiser's formula: the delicate mix of images which convey the hip newness of a product, but don't scare anybody off.

The symbols that convey the sure-fire selling values of Reliable or Comfortable or Dependable are easy. Everyone loves a shaggy dog. The hip images are more tricky: They change constantly, and increasingly cynical consumers don't want to feel that they are being played. Put them together in a paint-by-numbers strategy, and you get ads for everything from minivans to mutual funds that are difficult to distinguish.

The first problem, says Geoffrey Roche, president of Roche Macaulay & Partners Advertising in Toronto, is that advertising permeates even the darkest corners of society, plastered as it is on bananas, parking-lot gates and spaceships. "It is harder and harder to be original with the amount of advertising out there," he says. "There's so much stuff coming at people on a daily basis."

Then there's the fact that advertisers, according to Chris Staples, a partner at Vancouver's Rethink agency, tend to work from a limited bag of tricks. Dogs and children are tried and true -- a puppy or a cute kid will sell anything, or so the theory goes. What's "new," on the other hand, changes every few months. Currently, he says, the trend is to living rooms by Wallpaper magazine, with pulsing soundtracks by techno artists such as Moby. And an actor with a piercing or tattoo is currently perceived as a sure-fire way to say This is Hip.

Advertising veteran Erin Iles, now a brand manager for Unilever Inc., says she thinks the woman in the large chair, legs draped so her feet don't touch the floor, has become the cultural shorthand for Young and Groovy. And hockey, she adds, has been used to sell no end of things since the success of the first "out-of-the-Blue" Labatt road-hockey ads.

There is, however, a short shelf life for this stuff. Staples says that in six months we will see no more blond hardwood floors, no more overstuffed chairs. "Ads are always just slightly ahead of what real Canadians have in their homes," he says. Something that appears on London or Paris runways will show up in ads three months later, then on television programs three months after that, he explains. (The ad mimicry pops up faster because commercials take less time to make than films or TV shows.)

At the same time, says Stephen Jurisic, associate creative director at Ammirati Puris in Toronto, it is "hard to lead in advertising, because the consumer will say `I don't understand.'" Consumers are put off by anything too new -- so ad-makers borrow from what's already been tested in film and art, he says. The movie Pulp Fiction was the borrowed style for a while, and now the trend is to low-budget-esque spots shot in the European Dogma style.

Richard Pollay is a professor of marketing at the University of British Columbia, and has taught about advertising for more than 30 years. "All advertising works with easily understood cultural images and symbols," he says. "This is easy for most people to relate to." Dogs represent trustworthiness and dependability, while warm drinks are nurturing. "Everyone is drawing from the same pop-culture folio, so of course there are redundancies."

The golden-retriever/cup-of-coffee image is selling consumers something subtle but powerful.

"There are dramatic and obvious differences in what people aspire to now, compared to 10 or 15 years ago," says Bruce Philp, co-owner of Garneau Wirstlin Philp Brand Engineering, an advertising agency in Toronto. The 1980s were all about acquisition, Porsches and Rolexes and Armani suits. "But now the greatest luxury of all isn't stuff or money, it's time. If you paint a picture of someone able to relax with a cup of coffee and pet a dog, you've created the millennial version of the Porsche Turbo."

Dogs are ubiquitous these days, selling mobile phones, toilet paper, fast food and beer -- they make the cut more often than, say, cats, because not everyone likes cats, and they're much harder to teach to fetch slippers. But not just any dog. Even the symbol of dependability and trustworthiness has its moment of fashion. Greyhounds are now passe, and bull terriers are so last year; cocker spaniels, in contrast, are very Now.

Exotic animals are a good bet, although they do go through phases. Penguins are hot right now, as is anything reptilian -- think of Clearnet's lizard, or Budweiser's frogs. The secret to the proliferation of geckos and parrots and things are the huge advances made in computer animation -- "all of a sudden you can do a million penguins," Staples notes -- without needing a penguin wrangler or even any ice. Your penguins can sing and dance.

But exotic animals can veer into gimmickry, and that puts today's savvy buyer off. So does anything too perfect. Good commercials, Jurisic says, contain "no happy, smiley people," as consumers find them unbelievable. Sunny skies, bright colours, wide open roads and clothes drying on clotheslines are all equally unreal. Better advertising, Staples says, appeals to truths about human behaviour, and is Seinfeldian in its observational quality.

But Philp says he understands why the Happy People recur, in what he calls the "self-actualization-through-orange-juice" formula. "The fact that consumers are cynical and brilliant semioticians doesn't mitigate the fact that they're still human and therefore still hopeful." And suckers for a golden retriever.

Document Number: A30164516



ADVERTISING STRATEGY
An advertising strategy is a campaign developed to communicate ideas about products and services to potential consumers in the hopes of convincing them to buy those products and services. This strategy, when built in a rational and intelligent manner, will reflect other business considerations (overall budget, brand recognition efforts) and objectives (public image enhancement, market share growth) as well. As Portable MBA in Marketing authors Alexander Hiam and Charles D. Schewe stated, a business's advertising strategy "determines the character of the company's public face." Even though a small business has limited capital and is unable to devote as much money to advertising as a large corporation, it can still develop a highly effective advertising campaign. The key is creative and flexible planning, based on an indepth knowledge of the target consumer and the avenues that can be utilized to reach that consumer.

Today, most advertising strategies focus on achieving three general goals, as the Small Business Administration indicated in Advertising Your Business: 1) promote awareness of a business and its product or services; 2) stimulate sales directly and "attract competitors' customers"; and 3) establish or modify a business' image. In other words, advertising seeks to inform, persuade, and remind the consumer. With these aims in mind, most businesses follow a general process which ties advertising into the other promotional efforts and overall marketing objectives of the business.

STAGES OF ADVERTISING STRATEGY
As a business begins, one of the major goals of advertising must be to generate awareness of the business and its products. Once the business' reputation is established and its products are positioned within the market, the amount of resources used for advertising will decrease as the consumer develops a kind of loyalty to the product. Ideally, this established and ever-growing consumer base will eventually aid the company in its efforts to carry their advertising message out into the market, both through its purchasing actions and its testimonials on behalf of the product or service.

Essential to this rather abstract process is the development of a "positioning statement," as defined by Gerald E. Hills in "Marketing Option and Marketing" in The Portable MBA in Entrepreneurship: "A 'positioning statement' explains how a company's product (or service) is differentiated from those of key competitors." With this statement, the business owner turns intellectual objectives into concrete plans. In addition, this statement acts as the foundation for the development of a selling proposal, which is composed of the elements that will make up the advertising message's "copy platform." This platform delineates the images, copy, and art work that the business owner believes will sell the product.

With these concrete objectives, the following elements of the advertising strategy need to be considered: target audience, product concept, communication media, and advertising message. These elements are at the core of an advertising strategy, and are often referred to as the "creative mix." Again, what most advertisers stress from the beginning is clear planning and flexibility. And key to these aims is creativity, and the ability to adapt to new market trends. A rigid advertising strategy often leads to a loss of market share. Therefore, the core elements of the advertising strategy need to mix in a way that allows the message to envelope the target consumer, providing ample opportunity for this consumer to become acquainted with the advertising message.

TARGET CONSUMER The target consumer is a complex combination of persons. It includes the person who ultimately buys the product, as well as those who decide what product will be bought (but don't physically buy it), and those who influence product purchases, such as children, spouse, and friends. In order to identify the target consumer, and the forces acting upon any purchasing decision, it is important to define three general criteria in relation to that consumer, as discussed by the Small Business Administration:


Demographics—Age, gender, job, income, ethnicity, and hobbies.
Behaviors—When considering the consumers' behavior an advertiser needs to examine the consumers' awareness of the business and its competition, the type of vendors and services the consumer currently uses, and the types of appeals that are likely to convince the consumer to give the advertiser's product or service a chance.
Needs and Desires—Here an advertiser must determine the consumer needs—both in practical terms and in terms of self-image, etc.—and the kind of pitch/message that will convince the consumer that the advertiser's services or products can fulfill those needs.
PRODUCT CONCEPT The product concept grows out of the guidelines established in the "positioning statement." How the product is positioned within the market will dictate the kind of values the product represents, and thus how the target consumer will receive that product. Therefore, it is important to remember that no product is just itself, but, as Courtland L. Bovee and William F. Arens stated in Contemporary Advertising, a "bundle of values" that the consumer needs to be able to identify with. Whether couched in presentations that emphasize sex, humor, romance, science, masculinity, or femininity, the consumer must be able to believe in the product's representation.

COMMUNICATION MEDIA The communication media is the means by which the advertising message is transmitted to the consumer. In addition to marketing objectives and budgetary restraints, the characteristics of the target consumer need to be considered as an advertiser decides what media to use. The types of media categories from which advertisers can choose include the following:

Print—Primarily newspapers (both weekly and daily) and magazines.
Audio—FM and AM radio.
Video—Promotional videos, infomercials.
World Wide Web.
Direct mail.
Outdoor advertising—Billboards, advertisements on public transportation (cabs, buses).
After deciding on the medium that is 1) financially in reach, and 2) most likely to reach the target audience, an advertiser needs to schedule the broadcasting of that advertising. The media schedule, as defined by Hills, is "the combination of specific times (for example, by day, week, month) when advertisements are inserted into media vehicles and delivered to target audiences."

ADVERTISING MESSAGE An advertising message is guided by the "advertising or copy platform," which is a combination of the marketing objectives, copy, art, and production values. This combination is best realized after the target consumer has been analyzed, the product concept has been established, and the media and vehicles have been chosen. At this point, the advertising message can be directed at a very concrete audience to achieve very specific goals. Hiam and Schewe listed three major areas that an advertiser should consider when endeavoring to develop an effective "advertising platform":

What are the product's unique features?
How do consumers evaluate the product? What is likely to persuade them to purchase the product?
How do competitors rank in the eyes of the consumer? Are there any weaknesses in their positions? What are their strengths?
Most business consultants recommend employing an advertising agency to create the art work and write the copy. However, many small businesses don't have the up-front capital to hire such an agency, and therefore need to create their own advertising pieces. When doing this a business owner needs to follow a few important guidelines.

COPY When composing advertising copy it is crucial to remember that the primary aim is to communicate information about the business and its products and services. The "selling proposal" can act as a blueprint here, ensuring that the advertising fits the overall marketing objectives. Many companies utilize a theme or a slogan as the centerpiece of such efforts, emphasizing major attributes of the business's products or services in the process. But as Hiam and Schewe caution, while "something must be used to animate the theme …care must be taken not to lose the underlying message in the pursuit of memorable advertising."

When writing the copy, direct language (saying exactly what you mean in a positive, rather than negative manner) has been shown to be the most effective. The theory here is that the less the audience has to interpret, or unravel the message, the easier the message will be to read, understand, and act upon. As Jerry Fisher observed in Entrepreneur, "Two-syllable phrases like 'free book,' 'fast help,' and 'lose weight' are the kind of advertising messages that don't need to be read to be effective. By that I mean they are so easy for the brain to interpret as a whole thought that they're 'read' in an eye blink rather than as linear verbiage. So for an advertiser trying to get attention in a world awash in advertising images, it makes sense to try this message-in-an-eye-blink route to the public consciousness—be it for a sales slogan or even a product name."

The copy content needs to be clearly written, following conventional grammatical guidelines. Of course, effective headings allow the reader to get a sense of the advertisement's central theme without having to read much of the copy. An advertisement that has "50% Off" in bold black letters is not just easy to read, but it is also easy to understand.

ART WORK AND LAYOUT Small business owners also need to consider the visual rhetoric of the advertisement, which simply means that the entire advertisement, including blank space, should have meaning and logic. Most industry experts recommend that advertisers use short paragraphs, lists, and catchy illustrations and graphics to break up and supplement the text and make the document both visually inviting and easy to understand. Remember, an advertisement has to capture the reader's attention quickly.

ADVERTISING BUDGET The advertising budget can be written before or after a business owner has developed the advertising strategy. When to make a budget decision depends on the importance of advertising and the resources available to the business. If, for instance, a business knows that they only have a certain amount of money for advertising then the budget will tend to dictate what advertising is developed and what the overall marketing objectives will be. On the other hand, if a business has the resources available, the advertising strategy can be developed to meet predetermined marketing objectives. For small businesses, it is usually best to put together an advertising budget early in the advertising process.

The following approaches are the most common methods of developing an effective budget. All the methods listed are progressive ones that look to perpetuate growth:

Percentage of future or past sales
Competitive approach
Market share
All available funds
The task or objective approach
The easiest approach—and thus the one that is most often used—is the percentage of future or past sales method. Most industry experts recommend basing spending on anticipated sales, in order to ensure growth. But for a small business, where survival may be a bigger concern than growth, basing the advertising budget on past sales is often a more sensible approach to take.

METHODS OF ADVERTISING
Small business owners can choose from two opposite philosophies when preparing their advertising strategy. The first of these, sometimes called the push method, is a stance wherein an advertiser targets retail establishments in order to establish or broaden a market presence. The second option, sometimes called the pull method, targets end-users (consumers), who are expected to ask retailers for the product and thus help "pull" it through the channel of distribution. Of course, many businesses employ some hybrid of the two when putting together their advertising strategy.

PUSH METHOD The aim of the push method is to convince retailers, salespersons, or dealers to carry and promote the advertiser's product. This relationship is achieved by offering inducements, such as providing advertising kits to help the retailer sell the product, offering incentives to carry stock, and developing trade promotions.

PULL METHOD The aim of the pull method is to convince the target consumer to try, purchase, and ultimately repurchase the product. This process is achieved by directly appealing to the target consumer with coupons, in-store displays, and sweepstakes.

ANALYZING ADVERTISING RESULTS
Many small businesses are distressingly lax in taking steps to monitor whether their advertising efforts are having the desired effect. Instead, they simply throw a campaign out there and hope for the best, relying on a general sense of company health when determining whether to continue, terminate, or make adjustments to advertising campaigns. These small business owners do not seem to recognize that myriad factors can influence a business's fortunes (regional economic straits, arrival of new competition, seasonal buying fluctuations, etc.). The small business owner who does not bother to adequately analyze his or her advertising efforts runs the danger of throwing away a perfectly good advertising strategy (or retaining a dreadful one) if he or she is unable to determine whether business upturns or downturns are due to advertising or some other factor.

The only way to know with any accuracy how your advertising strategy is working is to ask the consumer, the opinions of whom can be gathered in several ways. Although many of the tracking alternatives are quite specialized, requiring either a large budget or extensive advertising research expertise, even small businesses can take steps to measure the effectiveness of their advertising strategies. The direct response survey is one of the most accurate means of measuring the effectiveness of a company's advertising for the simple reason that it measures actual responses to a business's advertisements. Other inexpensive options, such as use of redeemable coupons, can also prove helpful in determining the effectiveness of an advertising campaign.

ADVERTISING AGENCIES
The decision whether or not to use an advertising agency depends both on a company's advertising strategy and its financial resources. An agency has professionals who can organize, create, and place advertising so that it will meet established objectives better than most small businesses can do on their own, but of course the expense associated with soliciting such talent is often prohibitive for smaller companies. Still, some small- and mid-sized businesses have found that agencies can be helpful in shaping and monitoring advertising strategies.

Because of their resources and expertise, agencies are useful when a business is planning a broad advertising campaign that will require a large amount of resources. An advertising agency can also help track and analyze the effectiveness of the advertising. Some criteria to consider when choosing an agency include size of the agency, size of their clients (small companies should avoid allying themselves with agencies with a large stable of big corporate clients so that they are not treated as afterthoughts), length of time that the principals have been with the agency, the agency's general advertising philosophy, and the primary nature of the agency's accounts (are they familiar with your industry and the challenges involved in differentiating your company's products or services from others in that industry?).

ADVERTISING LAWS
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) protects consumers from deceptive or misleading advertising. Small business owners should be familiar with the following laws, which pertain to marketing and advertising and are enforced by the Commission:

Consumer Product Safety Act—Outlines required safety guidelines and prohibits the sale of harmful products.
Child Protection and Toy Safety Act—Prohibits the sale of toys known to be dangerous.
Fair Packaging and Labeling Act—Requires that all packaged products contain a label disclosing all ingredients.
Antitrust Laws—Protects trade and commerce from unlawful restraints, price deception, price fixing, and monopolies.
Many complaints against advertisers center on allegedly deceptive advertisements, so small business consultants urge entrepreneurs and business owners to heed the following general rules of thumb:

Avoid writing ads that make false claims or exaggerate the availability of the product or the savings the consumer will enjoy.
Avoid running out of advertised sale items. If this does happen, businesses should consider offering "rain-checks" so that the consumer can purchase the item later at the same reduced price.
Avoid calling a product "free" if it has cost closely associated with it. If there are costs associated with the free item they need to be clearly disclosed in the ad.
Since advertising is a complex process, and business law undergoes continual change, business owners should consult an attorney before distributing any advertising.

FURTHER READING:
Adams, Bob. Adams Streetwise Small Business Start-up. Holbrook, MA: Adams Media Corporation, 1996.

Bovee, Courtland L., and William F. Arens. Contemporary Advertising. 3d ed. Homewood, IL: Irwin, 1989.

Cohen, William. The Entrepreneur and Small Business Problem Solver. 2d ed. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1990.

Fisher, Jerry. "Fast Pitch." Entrepreneur. August 1997.

Hiam, Alexander and Charles D. Schewe. The Portable MBA in Marketing. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1992.

Hills, Gerald E. "Market Opportunities and Marketing." The Portable MBA in Entrepreneurship. Edited by William D. Bygrave. 2d ed. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1997.

Keri, Jonah. "Doggone Creative." Washington Business Journal. November 27, 1998.

Nucifora, Alf. "Getting the Most from Your Media Purchase." LI Business News. October 23, 1998.

Shea, Barbara S., with Jennifer Haupt. Small Business Legal Guide. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1995.

Source Citation:"Advertising Strategy." Encyclopedia of Small Business. Eds. Kevin Hillstrom and Laurie Collier Hillstrom. Vol. 1. 2nd ed. Detroit: Gale, 2002. 26-29. 2 vols. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Thomson Gale. Wooster School. 27 February 2006
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