The Main Purpose of Advertising from a South African Perspective

The main purpose of advertising in the business world is to promote sales in order to boost profits. As such, advertising has three basic aims:

To inform To persuade and To remind

One of the most underestimated points is to REMIND. The cost of advertising is extremely high. One may therefore wonder if it is not a waste of money to advertise a product which is widely known and which has a good slice of the market. Take Coca-Cola for instance. It is known and is readily available in almost every city in the world and yet the company continues to advertise it. Why is this so, and is the company wasting profits?

As i have already said, advertisers aim to inform the public about new or improved products and services and to persuade them to buy or use them. However, once the company has a slice of the market, it needs to remind the public that the products or services are still available, or it may well lose out to its competitors. I would be willing to bet anything if Coca-Cola stopped informing the public about their products a company like Pepsi would be the next giant.

Many large companies have fallen into this trap, once they have their market they automatically assume people will carry on buying the products or services they offer. The ability to constantly inform consumers of a companies products and activities is an ongoing commitment that keeps major share holders in a specific line at the top.

People (consumers) are highly complex creatures and do not always behave or react as rationally as one would expect. Advertising and marketing companies realise that consumers DO NOT BUY COMMODITIES, there are only two things they buy, 1. good feelings 2. solutions. One does not need a degree in psychology to know that everyone wants to be accepted, that people fear rejection, and that most of us wish to be successful, wealthy, attractive and one step ahead of the Jones'es. Take for example toothpaste, the fact that oral hygiene is the most important 'feature' this alone won't sell the product. Constant advertising to inform consumers of the fact that toothpaste makes you 'nicer to be near', 'keeps your mouth tingling fresh', and gives you advanced breath freshness are the 'sell ilnes' used to sell toothpaste. Don't just sell me a suit, sell me a sleek look, a tailor made fit and custom label that will turn heads.

A product or service that has been around for a long time has to find new an innovative ways to sell their 'wares' as well as emerging products. How to inform potential customers of what they should be buying, or why they should be buying are as varied as mass of different products for sale on the global market.

The advertising industry is, of course aware of our desire to be as good as, if not better than, others and exploits this to their own advantage. By using all they know about consumer behaviour, advertisers manage to persuade the public to buy the products they are promoting. Powerful appeals to human nature are often hidden within the advertisment. The subtle way in which these messages are used to inform the consumer is what makes advertising such a fascinating study.

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Advertising Is Dead. Long Live PR

Although I still believe there is a place for advertising as a brand maintenance or brand affirmation tool, I am convinced that to build a brand today, you need PR. At one time advertising did build brands. But this was in a simpler America. That America, sadly, is no more.

Ive been re-reading The Fall Of Advertising & The Rise Of PR, by Al and Laura Ries, and it is their book that has moved me from suspicion of advertisings demise as a brand-builder to conviction.

As the Ries say, Publicity is the nail, advertising is the hammer. What does this mean? It means that your PR effort helps make your message believable so that your advertising will have credibility when it hits.

Typically, companies want to hit the market hard and make a lot of noise. Advertising allows you to launch quickly, control the message, and have your message in as many media as you have the money for. However, that does not mean your message will be believed. The louder advertisers yell, the less likely I am to believe them. How about you?

PR takes time and does not necessarily work on your schedule. Planting new ideas or changing minds is a slow process. When your PR program rolls out over a longer period of time, prospects have time to adjust their attitudes. Brands that take this approach are longer lasting, too.

Chevrolet, for years the number one auto brand, was still number one in ad spending in 2001. It spent $819 million dollars 39 percent more than Ford spent. That year, Ford outsoldevrolet by 33 percent. Since 1997, Chevrolet has outspent and undersold Ford. Chevrolet spends $314 per vehicle and Ford spends $170 per vehicle. Do you think advertising is working for Chevrolet?

Kmart, embroiled in financial difficulty for years, had revenues of $37 billion and spent $542 million on US advertising in 2001. Wal-Mart spent $498 million and garnered four times the revenue: $159 billion split between its Wal-Mart and Sams Club stores. The average Wal-Mart store does $46 million in sales each year while its Sams Club average store sells $56 million. Sams Club does almost no advertising.

Those are old brands, youre saying. What about some newer brands, Harry?

OK, lets look at Pets.com. Remember the dog sock puppet that starred in their commercials? It won awards, but not sales. In six months Pets.com had $22 million in revenues and spent four times that much on advertising. Off-base advertising creativity at work.

The Body Shop was built totally by publicity. No advertising at all. Starbucks, until recently, did virtually no advertising. It has built a brand through good PR efforts. Starbucks annual sales are around $1.3 billion, while advertising expenditures over 10 years, have totaled less than $10 million.

Finally, what advertising agency do you know that has built its brand with ads? Things that make you go hmm.

Harry Hoover is a partner in My Creative Team. He has 30 years of experience in crafting and delivering bottom line messages that ensure success for serious businesses like Bank of Commerce, The Bray Law Firm, Brent Dees Financial Planning, CruisingTheICW.com, Duke Energy, Focus Four, Levolor, North Carolina Tourism, TeamHeidi, Ty Boyd Executive Learning Systems, VELUX, and Verbatim.

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