Introduction-Advertising

Advertising is a form of communication that typically attempts to persuade potential customers to

purchase or to consume more of a particular brand of product or service. “While now central to the
contemporary global economy and the reproduction of global production networks, it is only quite
recently that advertising has been more than a marginal influence on patterns of sales and
production. The formation of modern advertising was intimately bound up with the emergence of
new forms of monopoly capitalism around the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century as
one element in corporate strategies to create, organize and where possible control markets,
especially for mass produced consumer goods. Mass production necessitated mass consumption,
and this in turn required a certain homogenization of consumer tastes for final products. At its limit,
this involved seeking to create ‘world cultural convergence’, to homogenize consumer tastes and
engineer a ‘convergence of lifestyle, culture and behaviors among consumer segments across the
world’.

A recent advertising innovation is "guerrilla marketing", which involve unusual approaches such as
staged encounters in public places, giveaways of products such as cars that are covered with brand
messages, and interactive advertising where the viewer can respond to become part of the
advertising message. This reflects an increasing trend of interactive and "embedded" ads, such as via
product placement, having consumers vote through text messages, and various innovations utilizing
social network services such as My Space.

Types of Advertising

Commercial advertising media can include

-wall paintings, billboards, street furniture components, printed flyers and rack cards, radio, cinema
and television adverts, web banners, mobile telephone screens, shopping carts, web popup,
skywriting, bus stop benches, human billboards, magazines, newspapers, town criers, sides of buses,
banners attached to or sides of airplanes ("logo jets"), in-flight advertisements on seatback tray
tables or overhead storage bins, taxicab doors, roof mounts and passenger screens, musical stage
shows, subway platforms and trains, elastic bands on disposable diapers, stickers on apples in
supermarkets, shopping cart handles (grabertising), the opening section of streaming audio and
video, posters, and the backs of event tickets and supermarket receipts. Any place an "identified"
sponsor pays to deliver their message through a medium is advertising.

Covert advertising

Covert advertising is when a product or brand is embedded in entertainment and media. For
example, in a film, the main character can use an item or other of a definite brand, as in the movie
Minority Report, where Tom Cruise's character John Anderson owns a phone with the Nokia logo
clearly written in the top corner.
Television commercials

The TV commercial is generally considered the most effective mass-market advertising format, as is
reflected by the high prices TV networks charge for commercial airtime during popular TV events.
The annual Super Bowl football game in the United States is known as the most prominent
advertising event on television. The average cost of a single thirty-second TV spot during this game
has reached $3 million (as of 2009).

The majority of television commercials features is a song or jingle that listeners soon relate to the
product.

Infomercials

There are two types of infomercials, described as long form and short form. Long form infomercials
have a time length of 30 minutes. Short form infomercials are 30 seconds to 2 minutes long.
Infomercials are also known as direct response television (DRTV) commercials or direct response
marketing.

The main objective in an infomercial is to create an impulse purchase, so that the consumer sees the
presentation and then immediately buys the product through the advertised toll-free telephone
number or website. Infomercials describe, display, and often demonstrate products and their
features, and commonly have testimonials from consumers and industry professionals.

Celebrities

This type of advertising focuses upon using celebrity power, fame, money, popularity to gain
recognition for their products and promote specific stores or products. Advertisers often advertise
their products, for example, when celebrities share their favorite products or wear clothes by
specific brands or designers. Celebrities are often involved in advertising campaigns such as
television or print adverts to advertise specific or general products.

Media and advertising approaches

Increasingly, other media are overtaking television because of a shift towards consumer's usage of
the Internet as well as devices such as TiVo. Advertising on the World Wide Web is a recent
phenomenon. Prices of Web-based advertising space are dependent on the "relevance" of the
surrounding web content and the traffic that the website receives.E-mail advertising is another
recent phenomenon. Unsolicited bulk E-mail advertising is known as "spam".

Some companies have proposed placing messages or corporate logos on the side of booster rockets
and the International Space Station. Controversy exists on the effectiveness of subliminal
advertising, and the pervasiveness of mass messages.

- turning it into a generic term which means that its legal protection as a trademark is lost.

As the mobile phone became a new mass media in 1998 when the first paid downloadable content
appeared on mobile phones in Finland, it was only a matter of time until mobile advertising
followed, also first launched in Finland in 2000. By 2007 the value of mobile advertising had reached
$2.2 billion and providers such as Admob delivered billions of mobile ads.
Trends

With the dawn of the Internet came many new advertising opportunities. Popup, Flash, banner,
Popunder, averaging, and email advertisements (the last often being a form of spam) are now
commonplace.

The ability to record shows on digital video recorders (such as TiVo) allow users to record the
programs for later viewing, enabling them to fast forward through commercials. Additionally, as
more seasons of pre-recorded box sets are offered for sale of television programs; fewer people
watch the shows on TV. However, the fact that these sets are sold, means the company will receive
additional profits from the sales of these sets. To counter this effect, many advertisers have opted
for product placement on TV shows like Survivor.

Particularly since the rise of "entertaining" advertising, some people may like an advertisement
enough to wish to watch it later or show a friend. In general, the advertising community has not yet
made this easy, although some have used the Internet to widely distribute their ads to anyone
willing to see or hear them.

Another significant trend regarding future of advertising is the growing importance of the niche
market using niche or targeted ads. Also brought about by the Internet and the theory of The Long
Tail, advertisers will have an increasing ability to reach specific audiences. In the past, the most
efficient way to deliver a message was to blanket the largest mass market audience possible.
However, usage tracking, customer profiles and the growing popularity of niche content brought
about by everything from blogs to social networking sites, provide advertisers with audiences that
are smaller but much better defined, leading to ads that are more relevant to viewers and more
effective for companies' marketing products. Among others, Comcast Spotlight is one such
advertiser employing this method in their video on demand menus. These advertisements are
targeted to a specific group and can be viewed by anyone wishing to find out more about a
particular business or practice at any time, right from their home. This causes the viewer to become
proactive and actually choose what advertisements they want to view.

In freelance advertising, companies hold public competitions to create ads for their product, the best
one of which is chosen for widespread distribution with a prize given to the winner(s). During the
2007 Super Bowl, PepsiCo held such a contest for the creation of a 30-second television ad for the
Doritos brand of chips, offering a cash prize to the winner. Chevrolet held a similar competition for
their Tahoe line of SUVs. This type of advertising, however, is still in its infancy. It may ultimately
decrease the importance of advertising agencies by creating a niche for independent freelancers.

Advertising Trend in Telecom

Telecom advertising is a very specific industry in many ways different from conventional advertising
mostly due to the nature of the beast (it is a media within itself that is constantly expanding to
include more and more industries) and constant evolution. Advertising agencies rarely have such
experts though, due to the high turn-over of people on the accounts, mostly due to the reasons
mentioned in the first paragraph.

Despite their differences all telecom operators require the same campaigns, usually in the following
order from launch date (I will use a mobile operator for the sake of the example as they do the most
advertising):

1. A teaser / announcement to indicate their launch date

2. A brand launches campaign

3. Corporate Social Responsibility campaigns

4. Core Product campaigns (usually prepaid and post-paid)

5. Coverage Campaign (to show that their networks are now complete)

6. Payment methods campaign (listing the channels in which can pay their bills)

7. 3G campaign (focusing on their innovative technology, and claiming first to market)

8. Roaming campaign (mentioning how many operators they have roaming agreements with)

10. Store opening campaigns (indicating that new stores are opening and mentioning their locations)

11. International call rate reduction campaign

12. Tariff reduction campaign

13. Mobile Content campaign (focusing on the mobile portal and what content it includes, mostly
music, ring tones, ring back tones, news etc.)

14. Value added services campaigns (these are dispersed throughout the communication plan
depending on when a new service is rolled out)

15. Mobile Internet campaign (on both accessing the internet through your phone, or data cards that
plug into your laptop)

16. Customer service campaigns

17. Business campaign (launching their business services division)

18. Business product campaigns (mostly data-cards, push email, and closed user groups)

19. Focusing on the Youth segment (through universities, and hip music)

20. High end packages (special numbers / elite services etc)

21. Loyalty programs

22. Bundling of products and services

23. Bouquet ads mentioning all of the offerings of the operator

Usually due to urgency, wanting to communicate so many messages at the same time, and the need
to claim first-to-market (because innovation is a key platform); these operator end up with badly
managed campaigns that are not fully integrated (mostly newspaper ads and mentions on their
website and in stores), and sacrifice on the creative quality of their communications. All of the above
results in a confused customer who knows that an operator has many services but cannot indicate or
quantify them.

Several global learning can be made from the above, these include:-

1. Ideal campaign roll-out plans (starting with print and moving to ambient media, online ads etc)

2. Touch points management (deciding on what to communicate at which touch points)

3. Simple communications (mentioning the key benefit of a service and not listing all of its attributes)

4. More focus on PR and making most announcements through press releases that induce viral
support

5. Update bulletins on new products and services

6. Developing more target advertising to specific segments

7. Focusing more on direct marketing and database building

8. Creating online forums in which customers can better express their views and usage patterns

9. Creating simple template ads that can be adapted and published as soon as new products and
services are developed and need to be instantly rolled-out for claiming first-to-market.

10. Media management (deciding on what are the best media for each campaign and where each
product is most likely thought of by the customer – i.e. mobile payment at cash registers)

11. Giving autonomy to marketing-communications departments at telecom operators separating

engineers from creative communications

 Concentrate on management and managerial perspective in order to increase the market

share.
 They should be cost conscious
 Innovation & new product development.
 To ensure Network to impress customer.
 To roped Film star, Cricketer to developed brand image.
 To focus rural areas to increase subscriber.
 Enhance the internal control system by emphasizing on fixing duties and responsibilities