Advertising Principle & Practice - Project 1; Insights

 

Ashila Putri Sandi [0332938]

Advertising Principle & Practice

Lecture 1

On the first lecture, Mr Vinod told us about advertising. First, he asked us what is advertising based on our own understanding. Then, he explained to us that advertising is derived from the Latin Adverter. Ad means ‘toward’ and vertere means ‘turn on’ so adverter is ‘to turn toward’ or ‘turn towards’. Furthermore, advertising is actually a tool of marketing. Advertising seeks to  make aware, persuade, communicate or create an image/brand for product, service, organisation, government or even an individual. Moreover, from The American Marketing Association (AMA, 2015) defines Advertising as, “The placement of announcements and persuasive messages in time or space purchased in any of the mass media by business firms, nonprofit organizations, government agencies, and individuals who seek to inform and/ or persuade members of a particular target market or audience about their products, services, organizations, or ideas.”A more simplified definition by AMA is, “Any paid form of non-personal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods or services by an identified sponsor.”

After talking about the brief of advertising Mr Vinod told us about Basic Advertising Principle. Principles are essentially the fundamental rules or beliefs that underpin a certain profession. However,  there are many blogs and websites that will suggest a whole range of basic principles in advertising. Then Mr Vinod talked about William Bernbach’s 10 principles in advertising. Berncach is one of the three founders of advertising agency Doyle Dane Bernbach or bette known as DDB ®.

Fig 1. The Iconic VW Beetle and Polaroid advertising campaign by DDB ®

Bernbach's Principles

Fig 2. Bernbach's Quotes

1. State the product essence in the simplest term

Go to the essence of the product. State the product’s essence in the simplest terms of its basic advantage. And state this both tangibly and memorable.

  

2. The product is the actor of the scene

Where possible, make your product an actor in the scene; not just a prop. This makes for a tremendously effective method of getting your product remembered. Because the provocative element in your advertising is also the element that sells your product. This is so simply stated, so difficult to execute.

  


3. Art and copy must be fully integrated

They must be conceived as a unit, developed as a unit  



4. Advertising must have vitality

Advertising must have vitality. This exuberance is sometimes called “personality”. When advertising has a personality, it is persuasively different; and it is the one because of the other. You must fight to get “bounce” in your advertising.

  


5. It is little less than useless to employ gimmick in advertising 

-- unless the gimmick itself tells the product story.

  

6. Tell the truth

Trust is important because if you lose trust you'll lose the consumer.

7. Be relevant 

A wonderfully creative execution will get the big “So what” if it isn’t meaningful to their life, family, business etc. And always opt for an ad that’s relevant to one that’s exciting and irrelevant.




8. Be simple

Not simpleminded but single-minded (having one driving purpose or resolve.

9. Safe ideas can kill you 

If it’s been done before, your competition will be ready for it. Your only chance of beating the competition is with advertising they’ve never seen before.  Which means you’ve never seen it before either! 




10. Stand out. Be brave 

One that is prominent or conspicuous especially because of excellence

Fig 3.  Forum Question

Answers :

1. We can see a lot of different perceptions and point of view for today's advertisements. In my opinion, I think nowadays advertisement is not quite relevant, because advertisers want to make something new and different from others so they tend to make a new point of view or new trend by making something that is irrelevant become relevant (somehow), or maybe not. In addition, there are actually a lot of irrelevant advertisement that has been done by a famous company.

2. Three principles that I felt strongly about

• Stand out and be brave, because there are a lot of competitors and a lot of ads there. We need to produce fresh and creative ideas. The uniqueness of our ad and the new things that we bring could be the strong point.

• Tell the truth, because people will trust you if you tell them the truth and when they trust you (company, etc.) there will be trust. Trust can be built by telling the truth to the people. Moreover, it could create an opportunity to spread the good things about your company, or else from word-of-mouth promotion.

• Safe ideas can kill you, save ideas can be meaning we’re out of ideas so instead, we’re choosing the safe idea that might be acceptable for people (consumer, buyers). That is why we should explore more and be unpredictable.

Lecture 2

10/4/18 (Week 3)

A market is where buying and selling happens. It could expand geographically weather its statewide, nationwide, or internationally. The term marketing originates from Latin words, Mercari and Mercatus, which means "buy or trade". The American Marketing Association defines marketing as the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large. Marketing involves research, strategy, development, placement and promotions. 

Advertising, on the other hand, is one aspect of the marketing processes, where advertising involves communication and persuasion. It is also the most expensive aspect of marketing.

In short, marketing is about developing a demand for a product and fulfilling the customer's needs while advertising seeks to communicate convincingly to this customer that this should be his/her choice amongst the range of products available. 

"The management process through which goods and services more from concept to concept."

Lecture 3

13/4/18 (Week 3)

On this session, Mr Vinod told us more about creativity and how to create an effective advertising message for a specific target audience. Creativity is the use of imagination or original ideas to create something. It involves two processes: thinking, then producing. If you have ideas but don't act on them, you are imaginative but not creative. Creativity in the context of advertising requires creative ads to make a relevant connection between a brand and its target audience, present a selling idea, and be unexpected.

Moreover, there are important parts of how are we going to produce our advertising. There should be a connection (elaborating connection) such as emotional connection or rational connection. it presents the selling idea, and it is better to be unexpected. Advertising can manipulate people coming up with inception idea. 

In order to create an advertising message that's effective, it's crucial to understand who you're speaking to. Market segmentation is a strategy of identifying groups of people with certain shared needs and characteristics within the broad markets for the consumer of business products and aggregating these groups into larger market segments according to their mutual interest in the utility of the product. Any social media utilize analytics to provide data. A consumer market can be segmented into four categories: behaviouristic, geographic, demographic, and psychographic.

Fig 4. Week 3 Forum Question

Answers

1.  For me, creativity is the ability to transform any ideas, rules, patterns, relationship, and so on to actually create meaningful new ideas or thoughts.

2. Sometimes marketing can be evil, in this case, marketing attempts to manipulate the consumer, buyers, or customers into spending on something by making a tricky advertisement. However, marketing is a worthy activity, it helps a company develop more useful product and help potential customers learn about a product or service that's worth considering.

INSTRUCTION

 


PROJECT 1

I chose SPCA (Society For The Prevention Of Cruelty To Animals) as my topic of study for the first project. There are several things to do, primary research (interview and survey) and secondary research (collecting data from sites, brochure, magazine, etc.) to get insight for an effective advertising strategy.

Brand and Service Insights

Primary Research

I made a group with 3 other friends who chose SPCA as their topic. We went to SPCA Selangor and strolled around the shelter and play with the animals there. Also, we did an interview with the Education Officer which is Ms Pyo in order to gain insight from the staff there.

Fig 5. Documentation with Ms Pyo

Fig 6. Interview Transcript

Fig7. Documentation of the Shelter

Secondary Research

This was done by going through their website, social media (Facebook, Instagram), brochures, and magazine (annual review).

Fig 8. Annual Review

Fig 9. Anual Review Magazine and Brochure

Fig 10. Facebook Page

Fig 11. Digital Poster

Fig 12. Website

Base on the primary and secondary research, I could be able to conduct a SWOT analysis on SPCA.

Organisation	SPCA
Category	Animal Welfare Organisation
Sector	Non-Governmental Organisation
USP/SMP	Adopt, don’t buy
Target Audience	Gen X and Y
Other Shelter (Category)	PAWS Malaysia

                                         Fig 13. SPCA Insight

Strength :

• Well organised structure
• Helping other NGOs and other organizations by sending their vets and staff
• Highly trained and efficient staff

Opportunities :

• Can work with government bodies in order to build a trustworthy image and reach as much market as possible (in order to gain funds to make the shelter better)
• Improve educational programs for children to plant ideas of empathy/sympathy

Weaknesses :

• Not enough funds to provide good advertisements
  
• Too many senior dogs that haven’t been adopted

Threats :

• Normal civilians who believe its possible for one organization to cover all strays
  
• They don’t have much competition, due to the fact that they are an NGO and they don’t aim to compete with other shelters

Target Audience Insight

Generation Y (also known as Millennials or Echo Boomers) refers to specific generation born between the 1980’s to the mid 1990’s. Until late 2000’s The term was given after proceeding the generation before them, Generation X.

Fig 14. Demographic

The graph exhibits the population of Malaysia of approximately 32 million in 2017. It shows that the working population (or known as Gen Y) has the highest percentage of population among all.

Behaviouristic

Gen Y is Tech/Web Savvy

Gen Y is Family Orientated

Gen Y is Ambitious

Gen Y are Team Players

Gen Y are Communicators

Gen Y is more comfortable with working among a multi-diversed group

Other Category Insight

PAWS Malaysia

PAWS (PAWS Animal Welfare Society) is a non-profit animal shelter in Petaling Jaya that has been in operation since 1987. We receive the surrender of unwanted dogs and cats which we will vaccinate, deworm, neuter/spay, and put up for adoption.

Organisation Insight

Organisation	PAWS Malaysia
Category	Animal Welfare Organisation
Sector	Non-Governmental Organisation
USP/SMP	ANIMALS. LOVE. HOME.
Target Audience	Gen X and Y
Other Category	SPCA Selangor

Fig 15. Demographic

Strength :

• A well-established organisation
  
• Geographically well-known
  
• Has a good platform and advertisements
  
• It has more than 1 office staff in the region
  
• Have a partnership with the government 

Opportunities :

• Improve educational programs for children to plant ideas of empathy/sympathy

Weaknesses :

• Not maximizing their social media potential
  
• There are not a lot of people who are not willing to adopt because most of their animals are seniors 

Threats :

• They don’t have much competition, due to the fact that they are an NGO and they don’t aim to compete with other shelters
  

Fig 16. PAWS Website

Fig 17. PAWS Website

Fig 18. PAWS Digital Poster

Fig 19. PAWS Facebook Page

SLIDES 

FEEDBACK

Week 1

Introduction to the module, brief of the first project and exercises, Lecture 1 about Advertising (10 Bernbach’s Principles of advertising), and also giving feedback from the lecture in Times Forum

Week 2

Making a poster for School of Engineering, all the students were divided into 3 groups and required to bring a camera for poster picture. We managed to do 1 poster each group, but my group decided to do 2 posters for options. On the following session, we were told to bring our first ten sketches about the chosen topic. In this case, I chose SPCA. I drew 10 sketches, but most of them consisted of twisted lines. Mr Vinod asked me to show more visual aspect because as a design student I should be able to practice my self more on the visual content.

Week 3

Got the feedback for the Insights project. Mr Vinod gave us the printed out slides and we needed to fix the mistakes and complete the missing parts. For general feedback, Mr Vinod told us to give a credits and references list for the insights. Each picture, table, and information that we’ve got from any resources must be sited.

REFLECTION

Experience :

It was challenging to do SPCA as a topic for this project when most of the class doing TDS as their topic. Making an appointment with the organisation office and actually went there to do the interview was a new thing, finally dealing with people outside the campus for a project. It was also tiring, gathering the information. My friends and I who chose SPCA didn't get the statistic data and we were confused about the structure of the presentation slide. Moreover, analyzing the data and synthesizing it in to come up with an advertising strategy was quite challenging and it was kind of hard for me to summarize the data and finally came up with a conclusion. 

Observation :

I thought I was going to be able to do this project within a week, but turns out I needed more time to actually gather the information, do the structure, and come up with an advertising strategy. There were plenty of things that needed to be considered when we want to do a research. For example, from approaching other people, asking question/ favour, collecting information, come up with a fresh idea, analyze the data, and so on.

Findings : 

From this project, I learned that it's hard to come up with a good advertising campaign and strategy. Advertising, well, in this case, the creative side of a marketing is very important and it requires a lot of thoughts to actually come up with a different, fresh, and unpredictable campaign or ads. Now, I know that doing a research, planning, and insights are really important in order to understand the consumer, buyers, or customers well and sell the product or service to them.

Further Reading

ADVERTISING IS DEAD, LONG LIVE ADVERTISING!, Thames & Hudson

This book tells about how the advertising industry has gone mad nowadays and also gives information about developing a good advertisement by choosing techniques and media, also through finding inspiration.

The most decent way to make sure you reach your goal is by having an in-depth knowledge of the available routes. Conventional advertising channels — television, radio, magazines, newspaper, billboards — are blocked because too many advertisers are using the same channels to reach the same people at the same time. This book tells that over the last few years, there has been an explosion of alternatibe routes in the communication industry. The new ways in which companies are connecting with consumers have four driving forces in common: the desire for proximity, exclusivity, invisibility and unpredictability.

Proximity—getting up close and personal
It says on the book that one of the crucial motivating factors in the relationship between brands and their customers in the desire for proximity. Many companies want to get as close as possible to the point of purchase, to the moment of purchase, to the consumer’s natural environment, to their inner circle. However, conventional media such as television, radio, newspapers, and magazines, only allow consumers and brands to meet each other ‘in the middle’.

Exclusivity —going where the competition is not
For any brand, the ultimate fantasy is to have some time alone with consumers without competing messages stealing their attention. The less you have to share the attention of consumers with fellow advertisers, the more power you can exert over consumers. Although exclusivity is a powerful factor in choosing media, there are exceptions to the rule. It can without a doubt be worthwhile for two brands to work hand in hand, either for long-term causes or on a particular occasion, as long as both parties gain from the collaboration.

Invisibility—moving the brand to the background
This book tells that invisibility is a mighty weapon. Whereas traditional warfare is an open, face-to-face confrontation, guerrilla warfare cherishes the art of disguise and surprise. What smart product placement, cleverly devised guerilla tactics, branded content and word of mouth all have in common is that they are harder to trace and label as advertising. And, something that is harder to trace is also harder to ignore.

Unpredictability—catching consumers off guard
The more unpredictable campaign, the more chance it has of gaining people's honest and immediate attention. Consumers should not be expected to have to fit into categories predefined by the brand. Brands should fit in with the unpredictable behaviour of the consumer.