Do you want to know what is advertising, examples and the comparison between advertising and marketing? Read this full article with what you need to know about the subject.
It is present in our day today!
Advertisements have an important role: they serve to disseminate products, services and brands, with the aim of stimulating business relationships.
However, they invade our routine – and many times, we do not agree with that. Who never lost patience with that ad on YouTube? It seems that there is always disturbing publicity, wanting to sell something all the time.
But is it that it’s so horrible like that? I bet you already laughed loudly watching commercials on TV.
You must have already run into ads that thrilled you, entertained you, made you laugh and cry, and that you were able to report on a new store in the city or on a promotion that you can not miss.
In this post, we will analyze everything about advertising, from its definition to its dilemmas, to understand how it works and what its role is. Let’s go?
What is publicity?
Advertising is a marketing strategy that involves the purchase of a media space to disclose a product, service or brand, with the aim of reaching the target audience of the company and encouraging them to buy.
However, that is a limited definition of advertising, which involves much more than the purchase of a product.
Advertising
is also an area of knowledge, within social communication, which studies not only the technique of the activity, but also its function in social and cultural relations. In the end, it is present in our day to day and participates in our lives.
It is not by chance that publicists are always aware of the cultural and behavioral tendencies of society, so that the advertisements generate an identification with the consumer.
Therefore, advertising can also be understood as a reflection of the society of its time, because it reproduces the current behaviors and values.
Despite this, many people believe that advertising does not simply reflect society, but rather encourages and shapes behaviors.
For this reason, advertising needs regulations to avoid abuses, as we will see below.
Therefore, advertising is controversial. Sometimes, she is seen as a villain for encouraging consumerism, influencing behavior and invading our routine.
At other times, she may have been the favorite and is not to blame for the ills of society and still fulfills the function of informing and entertaining with creativity.
The meanings of advertising
Acceptation is each of the meanings of a word according to the contexts in which it appears; advertising has three meanings in the dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy .
advertising
1. Quality or state of the public.
2. Set of media that are used to spread or spread the news of things or events.
3. Disclosure of news or advertisements of a commercial nature to attract potential buyers, viewers, users, etc.
We can see here that only the third meaning of the word is that which has a direct link with the market. This is because advertising is prior to the market, which makes all the definitions that characterize it as a sales technique, refer to the third meaning.
Why do I tell you this? Because what matters most about advertising is its know how to disclose, that is, the second meaning. Therefore, if you really want to learn to advertise, first of all, you must separate advertising from the market.
First you must understand the energy of wanting to reach the whole world and then begin to segment the audience that interests you.
You must understand advertising to its full potential, in all its meaning, and after that, apply it to marketing .
Companies are looking for us interested in the third meaning of the term, that is “to attract potential buyers, viewers, users, etc.”.
We, those who work with marketing, study the techniques of the second meaning, “set of media that are used to spread or spread the news of things or events.”
Finally, the first meaning is our goal, that our message acquires quality or public status.
Language
logistics and universality
Let’s talk a little bit about three features of advertising that make it so valuable. Language, logistics, and universality.
- Language because it creates ads and passes messages.
- Logistics because it manages distribution, media and spaces.
- Universality because it always aims to reach all the members of a pre-established group.
Logistics
The main transformation when the era of persuasive advertising began was the way to treat the form – content of the advertisements.
The message must be transmitted during the point of contact . In that period of time we have to establish a bond of proximity, be reliable and understood.
For that we will have to synthesize and condense ideas, an advertisement that lasts seconds, has, condensed within itself, hours of work to establish the best way of:
- get your attention,
- contextualize yourself on the subject,
- predispose you in favor of listening,
- make you recognize your need,
- inform you about the solution provided and, finally,
- persuade you to choose the product or service.
- The period of time may change, however, the structure is generally the same.
Logistics
Well, this does not have as much charisma, but to me it seems the most interesting. It’s like a superpower: that of invisibility, because she foresees mistakes, that’s why the less she appears the better.
When the rest becomes invisible to the recipient and focuses solely on your ad, when nothing distracts you from your message, it means that there was impeccable logistical work.
To make information public, you must inevitably organize routes, means, spaces and resources to create the best point of contact with the receiver. The more effective the point of contact dialogue is, the more chances you will have to persuade.
Universality
If the first is charismatic and the second is invisible, the third is magical. Universality means that the nature of advertising is to reach everyone.
In that detail lies its strength. It doesn’t mean that you have to do it, it means that this nature gives you differentiated energy in what refers to distributing information.
Universality does not mean that the publicity will be oriented for the general public, NEVER! Always remember that the general public does not exist!
It means that once the target audience is established, all the data obtained will be crossed to create a strategy.
That has as a guideline to reach the most significant possible number of members of that group.
Universality means that our work will be to reach all the members of the target public, that forces us to refine our criteria to a segment highly.
Even though we know, it’s impossible, thinking like that improves our metrics, that’s why I told you it was magical!
Marketing X Advertising
There is a common confusion between marketing and advertising. In the end, the two activities are aimed at selling a product or service. Therefore, would they be the same thing?
No, there is a difference. To understand better, let’s take a traditional marketing concept: The Marketing Mix, better known as the 4Ps.
Price, place, product, and promotion are the four essential elements of a marketing strategy, and the balance between them makes a brand stronger with its target audience.
Price
In the P for Price, you should think about the costs of the company and the profit projections, but also the profile of the target audience, which should be willing to pay that value.
Square
The Plaza P refers to the places where you offer your products, such as the physical or virtual store, as well as the distribution and storage channels.
Product
Product P involves strategies on the physical attributes (color, shape, packaging) and intangibles (quality, reputation, status) of the product.
You may also be interested: Differences between Product and Service.
Promotion
But it is in the Promotion P that we want to focus on this article, because this is where advertising comes in.
Promotion is all strategies of product disclosure to reach the target audience.
Advertising is one of them, but it can also involve actions of press advisory, public relations, sponsorship’s, among others.
Therefore, advertising is a marketing tool. While marketing is concerned with understanding the target audience and developing strategies to serve it, advertising focuses on reaching it with persuasive communication.
To work, marketing needs alignment between the 4Ps. Can you imagine a campaign? You already imagined an advertising campaign that reaches your target audience, you are interested, but the online store is off the air?
The promotion worked, but the Plaza did not, and the brand did not reach the desired sales.
Deceptive and abusive advertising
Advertising manages to influence consumer habits and motivate the purchase of a product.
With that power in hand, many ads make an advertisement is misleading, that force the bar (or, we can say, lie) on the qualities of the product and can lead the consumer to error.
Another type of ads harmful to the consumer is abusive advertising, which encourages discrimination, violence, the environment, or disrespects children, the environment, health and safety of people.
But there are many outstanding people to avoid that kind of advertising among many other limitations to advertising activity. The Code of Consumer Protection defines that it is misleading and abusive advertising and provides for penalties to those who incur in those practices.
In addition to the consumer defense entities, the advertisers themselves are also concerned with that.
In the decade of the 70, in response to a project and law that proposed censorship price to advertising wing, the market created its own rules, gathered in the Code of Advertising Self-Regulation.
Advertising for children
Among the ads considered abusive, special attention is dedicat to children’s advertising.
Children have no discernment to know what is real or not, advertising manages to play lot with fantasy and imagination.
Therefore, for the law, children are considered vulnerable and need to protect from advertising practices.
In many countries, for example, merchandising is condemned in children’s programs and the use of imperative expressions such as: “ask for yours”, “enter now” or “buy X”.
In this type of ads there are also many outstanding people. In addition to the entities of consumer protection and regulation of advertising, advertisements aimed at children are also under pressure from laws and institutions for the protection of children.