How Advertising Works and Types of Advertising
In modern times advertising prevails in all walks of life. It has acquired the distinction of being the most visible and glamorous method of marketing communication. You would recall that advertising was defined as any paid form of non-personal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods, or services by an identified sponsor.
Some of the major marketing and communication functions performed by advertising today include informing, entertaining, persuading, influencing, reminding, reassuring, and adding value to the product or service advertised.
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How Advertising Works
To perform the various marketing and communication functions listed above, according to Paul E.J. Gerald, advertising moves through the following stages before accomplishing its purpose:
- It gets planned and brought into existence
- It is reproduced and delivered and exposed to people
- It is received and assimilated
- It affects ideas, intentions, and attitudes
- It affects buying and the buying process
- It responds to time (situation and repeated exposure)
- It affects trade efforts and supply
- It changes sales and profits
- it changes the market (size, quality mix, the intensity of competition, trade relations, consumerism, etc.)
Types of Advertising
Depending upon the nature of the task involved, the type of product represented, or the focus of activity transacted, advertising efforts are grouped into various types. Let us take a few examples.
Advertisements for machinery and machine tools form part of industrial advertising, and the ones for footwear, cornflakes, or edible oil, form consumer advertising. The advertisements aimed at improving the corporate image are forms of institutional advertising and ones promoting a company’s products, and product advertising.
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Likewise, advertisements promoting the consumption of tea or carpets are called primary demand-creating advertisements whereas those relating to say spare parts and coffee are selective brand advertising.
Advertisement aimed at effecting the immediate sale of the product advertised is called direct advertising, and the ones performing tasks like announcing the launch of the new product, building purchase intentions, creating interest in customers, or changing their attitudes towards the product, are termed indirect action advertising.
The advertisements which are sponsored and paid for by the manufacturers are manufacturer advertising, and such advertisements whose costs are shared by the manufacturer and wholesales or retailers are cooperative advertising.
Co-operative advertisements aim at increasing the demand for a specific product of a manufacturer through a particular wholesale or retailer. On the other hand, when a retailer advertises for his shop entirely on his own, to attract traffic to his shop it is retail advertising.
In short, the major types of advertising are: industrial and consumer, product and institutional, primary demand and brand demand, direct (sales) demand and indirect (awareness, intentions, and attitudes) action advertising, and manufacturer, co-operative and retail advertising.
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