Selective demand advertising involves the placement of advertising messages intended to persuade customers about the benefits of your specific brand. This is different from primary demand advertising, which involves messages promoting the benefits of a general product category. Companies typically pay for selective demand advertising outside of a few common situations.
Primary Demand
Before learning the details of selective demand stimulation, it helps to understand primary demand and what it is used for. Primary demand means the advertising campaign intends to drive interest in the product versus a particular brand. Associations often pool resources to generate interest when they collectively struggle. The "Got Milk?" campaign, for instance, was used to cause people to drink more milk as a habit. Another common purpose of primary demand stimulation is to introduce an entirely new product category by providing customers with basic information of what the product does.
Selective Demand
Outside of the aforementioned instances, most advertising campaigns involve selective demand stimulation. This term is so-named because each advertiser tries to present brand benefits that cause customers to selectively choose its product over that offered by a competing brand. This type of advertising correlates with the general purpose of business, which is to distinguish your company from competitors to get customers and earn profits over time.
Messages
Selective demand messages are fairly easy to identify relative to primary demand ads. Selective demand ads typically identify the brand through name mention verbally or in written copy, or show the brand's product clearly. They often involve comparative messages whereby the brand trying to distinguish itself is compared with another top competitor to point out strengths. Identification of unique benefits is a common strategy to indicate why customers should select the advertiser's brand over other options.
Timeframe
Another major distinction between selective demand and primary demand is that primary demand generally involves singular ad campaigns or short-term messages strategies. When delivered by industry associations, ad campaigns are used when the industry struggles. For new product innovations, primary demand is only needed initially. Once product categories become familiar, each competitor begins to use selective demand advertising to position itself to fight for market share and to build a customer base. This is a long-term process.
Businesses and their external advertising partners adopt different marketing strategies to promote a product oat different points in its life cycle. The approaches taken with new and well-established products will differ considerably. Pioneering advertising seeks to introduce a new idea to the marketplace for the first time.
Broad Definition
Pioneering advertising refers to the launch campaign of a new product category, as opposed to the marketing of a single product within a developed marketplace. The purpose of pioneering advertising is to inform consumers of the arrival of an entirely new concept and explain its benefits.
Product
Sony's campaign to launch its Walkman brand in the late 1970s or Apple's marketing drive when the first iPad was released in 2010 are two good examples of pioneering advertising. Both of these products had 100 percent market share when they launched and created new product categories that spawned many imitators.
Life Cycle
Pioneering advertising campaigns are launched early a product's life cycle--often while it's still in development through orchestrated leaks--and will always begin prior to a product's official release date. A good pioneering campaign combines focused advertising with a structured PR strategy to cement a new product in the public's imagination.
Message
The purpose of a pioneering advertising campaign is to introduce potential customers to a new concept and create a buzz around the launch of a new product that's unique in the marketplace. A well-constructed pioneering advertising campaign seeks to convince consumers that their lives will be fundamentally enhanced by purchasing a new product. Advertisers launching a new product category don't have to focus on how their product compares to the competition, so they can concentrate on explaining how their new concept works and what it means for the consumer.
Corporate Advertising
Advertising designed to win an audience over to a specific point of view is called institutional or corporate advertising.
Learning Objectives
Distinguish between product-oriented advertising and corporate or institutional advertising techniques
Key Takeaways
Key Points
- Institutional advertising use the same approaches and techniques that apply to product -oriented advertising: image, branding techniques, clear messaging, a call to action, and selling benefits as opposed to features.
- Corporate advertising can be national, regional or local, aimed at any type of audience, and delivered via any type of media.
- Related to institutional advertising is advocacy advertising. The difference is that in advocacy advertising, the sponsor pushes a point of view that may have nothing to do with selling the product or building an image.
Key Terms
- Image: an attitude or lifestyle advertisers attempt to link to a product.
- Passive Advertising: As it applies to corporate advertising, the call to action is implied, subtle, unconventional and never clearly stated.
- Advocacy Advertising: the sponsor pushes a point of view that may have nothing to do with selling the product or building an image.
Corporate Advertising
The primary purpose
of advertising is to sell products or services. The company pays a fee or expense to have a message that simultaneously explains its brand or product distributed to as many people as possible. But sometimes it is designed to do something else: to win an audience over to a point of view. Such advertising is called institutional or corporate advertising.
Advertising can be national or local; it can address itself to any kind of audience; it can use any medium. When designed it often
resembles editorial matter in the newspapers and magazines, offering an opinion or point of view. An obvious example of institutional advertising is a full-page ad in the Sunday New York Times urging some political action or appealing for funds. Often such advertising is an exercise in self-praise. It attempts to build a favorable image for its sponsor.
Corporate Advertising: Corporate advertising can be found everywhere and in different forms.
When Wells Fargo Bank in California merged with American Trust Company, company officials were ready to go with the name "American Trust," but designer Walter Landor convinced them that "Wells Fargo"
would give them a more distinct image as the bank of the West. With an easily recognized symbol – a stage coach encased in a diamond shape – and some skillful advertising infused with an Old West flavor, the bank tends to appeal to newcomers, who pick it simply because it seems to come with the territory.
Image is particularly important among organizations whose products or services are relatively uniform. How a company advertises projects that image. The image must be concise, express
the mission of the company, and its delivery must be consistent each time it is used.
If an attempt to sell a product creeps into institutional advertising, it does so in a passive voice. It can be aimed at a business, a consumer, or involve two businesses and slanted as a cooperative advertising. No matter its form, corporate advertising is meant to highlight and publicize the actions, products, or services of a company.
Corporate Advertising Techniques
Media such as
direct mail, TV, radio, print, and online delivers advertising from corporations and institutions to the public or a targeted consumer group. Conventional ads, such as those seen in newspapers or magazines, banner ads online, and commercials heard and seen on TV and radio, communicate corporate messages to the public in the hopes that the desired action is taken; a sale, an enrollment, an inquiry, etc. Corporate advertising can take the form of advice, offer helpful information in times of
crisis, congratulate a public or political figure, or announce a special event or occurrence that is of interest to a well-defined group or demographic. It is passive advertising that guides with an implied called to action that is subtle, unconventional, and never clearly stated, but the desired results is always the same; to get someone to take action or pay attention to something that is advantageous to the corporation or institution.
Institutional advertising use the same approaches
and techniques that apply to product-oriented advertising: image, branding techniques, clear messaging, a call to action, and selling benefits as opposed to features. These characteristics are applicable to commercial as well as to social marketing activities. It is part of the "promotional mix" that exists within the discipline of marketing.
Advocacy Advertising
Advocacy advertising is related to institutional advertising. The difference is that in advocacy advertising, the
sponsor pushes a point of view that may have nothing to do with selling the product or building an image.
According to Professor Robert Shayon of the University of Pennsylvania Annenberg School of Communications, corporations have taken to advocacy advertising because they feel they are not getting a fair shake from what they believe to be a generally hostile press; and because they are convinced that the business world can make significant contributions to public debate on issues of
great importance-energy, nuclear power, conservation, environment, taxation, and free enterprise, among others.
Some state legislatures have drafted laws to restrict this kind of advertising, and the Internal Revenue Service does not regard the advertising as a necessary business expense. However, it is difficult to identify the difference between advocacy advertising and institutional advertising, which is a tax-deductible expense.
Product Advertising
The stage of the Product Life Cycle [PLC] often determines the type of advertising that is used by advertisers for a particular product.
Learning Objectives
Define pioneering, competitive, and comparative advertising
Key Takeaways
Key Points
- Pioneering advertising is heavily used in the introductory stage of product life cycle when a new product is launched.
- The goal of using competitive advertising is to influence demand for a specific brand.
- Comparative advertising compares two or more competing brands on one or more specific attributes, be it directly or indirectly.
Key Terms
- product life cycle: The stages through which a product or its category passes. From its introduction onto the market, growth, maturity, to its decline or lack of demand in the marketplace.
Product Advertising
The stage in the Product Life Cycle [PLC] of which a product is in often determines the type of advertising that is used by advertisers. The types of product advertising that marketers can choose from are:
- Pioneering
- Competitive
- Comparative
Product Advertising: The type of product advertising a company chooses depends on where the product is in its life cycle.
Pioneering Advertising
This form of advertising is designed to stimulate primary demand for a new product or product category [McDaniel et al, 2006]. It is heavily used in the introductory stage of product life cycle when a new product is launched.
This type of product advertising provides in-depth information of the benefits of using a
product or service. It is often used to create interest and to increase the public 's awareness.
Competitive Advertising
The goal of using competitive advertising is to influence demand for a specific brand [McDaniel et al, 2006]. The advertisers usually provide information regarding a product's attributes and benefits which may not available from competing products [Yeshin, 1998]. Even when other brands own the same attributes or benefits, advertisers often create an impression that their products are somehow ‘much better' than other, similar products available in the marketplace.
Comparative Advertising
Comparative advertising compares two or more competing brands on one or more specific attributes, be it directly or indirectly [McDaniel et al, 2006]. Comparative advertising gives consumers a logical decision factor as most of them do not want to make decisions [MacArthur and Cuneo, 2007]. This way, by comparing
one company's brand with other competing brands in the advertisement, the company most likely helps the consumers to choose which brand they would prefer to use.
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