In: Root » Business » Advertising » Communications and advertising objectives
A common source of difficulty or inaccuracy is the very easy confusion between two kinds of objective: - marketing - communications. If the chairman says to the advertising manager, ‘Our sales are down. Go out and do me a £20,000 advertising campaign to sell 10,000 more units by early summer’, this is likely to lead to confusion between the two kinds. Marketing or corporate objectives specify what the whole organisation is setting out to do, often expressed in commercial terms: - to sell X amount of goods - to achieve Y amount of turnover or income - to gain Z percentage share of the market - to achieve some sort of profit return. These are not in themselves communication goals. They are wider than that. Communications or advertising objectives set out to state what the advertising is required to do in its own terms, which is usually a particular kind of effect on a selected target audience, such as: - to create awareness - to build demand - to create a favourable opinion - to bring in customer enquiries. It does not of itself sell goods (unless the subject area is direct marketing) but it creates the conditions for selling goods. Therefore, the advertiser must be aware of the distinction between these categories of objective, and resist being saddled with objectives that do not properly lie in the advertising area, and so cannot properly be met. TIMESCALEAgain, advertising works over time. The timescale is crucial. Many organisations work both by long-term and short-term objectives. In many, short term is equated with the current financial year or even perhaps just one limited sales force journey cycle. Here, too, it is necessary to be clear about objectives. An example of appropriate objectives might be: - short term: to obtain a high awareness and recognition of the product - long term: to have the product regarded as the best quality in the market, and to make it be perceived as being more satisfying than any other. Some advertising can only work over time; other results may be achieved more quickly. Moral: set specific objectives, rooted in communications effects, and which can be practically achieved in a given campaign from financial year to financial year. TYPES OF OBJECTIVEAdvertising aims to meet a need. The cardinal requirement at the outset, therefore, is to define what that need is: to identify it and make it specific. In many instances, advertising is a tool for problem solving, in which case setting objectives becomes an exercise in evaluating what the problem really is. Solutions are only as strong as the problem evaluation. In the next financial year, where do the problems lie? Is it a matter of: - low awareness of the product, or its name or its specification? - poor understanding of its features and its benefits, hostile or indifferent attitudes to it? - confusion between the product and its competitors? - weaknesses in certain sectors of the market, such as one worse performing region or weaker category of customer? or - good awareness, but low actual use of the product? THE BRIEFThe advertising objectives that emerge may now be formed into a ‘brief’, which the advertiser can use for internal purposes, or which can be transmitted to outside advertisers, such as advertising agencies, for action. The format for a brief will vary; no two are alike. |
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