What is it?
Advertising is an external communication tool that allows to spread the message, (commercial message on most times) of any firm, company, institution or agency to specific audiences placing the messages in special areas within communication vehicles of a variety of mass media.
By consensus, the advertising activities are defined in two ranges accepted: Above the Line (ATL) and Below the Line (BTL). ATL advertising refers to those selling expenses that can be placed within the budget by knowing exactly what they are going to spend running the ads in places that are meant to be designed for that specific, such as selling expenses by way of spots radio or television and advertising in print and electronic media, while the BTL advertising tends to be more flexible since it calls for the operation of other channels that are not regularly used to carry advertising.
What is it used?
Advertising usually seeks to provoke a reaction in the target audience, aiming for the consumption of services or products, but has also been used to reinforce or create awareness activities, such as water care or to understand the scope of diseases, to name a few.
Although as we have seen the advertising is used as a reactionary tool in order to origin the consumption or to establish an idea, etcetera, and it also can serve to reinforce an idea or position of mental associations, serving mainly to keep in the consumer's mind the presence of tags attached to meeting needs.
In short, advertising serves to create a link between the brand and a specific idea, and through impacts, or the number of times we contact this "relationship", it is reinforced in the brain, generating a specific learning.
How it works?
As noted above, advertising is a marketing tool used to spread messages and ideas developed by the marketing department. Its mechanism is simple because it must know who says what to whom, to determine how to say it. The way it operates can be viewed more easily through the following steps.
1. Research. It is about knowing everything about the issuer (who), as this will define the editorial tone and intent that we will communicate (very seriously if this is a company with a serious profile, and so on). Secondly we must know deeply the receiver as it will be the person whom the message has been designed for. At this point it is important to know not only an ideal profile of the receiver, but try to delve into the details, such as culture, history (if we refer to a society, for example, the German society), public areas, sites they visit, the jokes that have, in short, everything that seemed not to matter likely to take a central place when designing the message.
2. Design of the message. With the information has been compiled, you can start to work the design of the message as it is nothing more than establishing how it is to raise awareness about the central idea. It is divided into:
a) The concept. It is the idea on which rotate the elements used in the message, the concept gives unity to the ad and is the guide to layout and level the following elements.
b) The narrative line, which basically tells us the kind of rhetoric we use to convey the idea, that is if we direct (declarative or imperative sentence) or if we thought (or interrogative statements which contains the irony, humor, the pun, location, etc.). Usually there are three types of narrative to which all ads use: i) informative, ii) jokingly iii) or appealing to the feelings.
b) Design of the copy or text that will carry the announcement (the lack of copy also must be factored) referring to the phrases that carry the idea or strengthen the intension.
c) The type of image to accompany the ad (or lack thereof), the color scheme, typography, use of spaces (eg Mac ads are very clean because they have much space), and so on.
3. Measuring the impact of the message. Once the message is made to do tests to see if the idea behind the goals set really gets to show a group of people who meet the target receptor characterisitcs. Techniques for measuring this are varied, ranging from batteries of psychological tests to qualitative methods as focus groups or deep interviews, among many others.
Photo:
If you want to reach out to someone, send a letter
BTL for watches
Recommendations:
Crain, S. The real power of brands. Madrid: Eresma & Celeste, 1997.
UCEDA GARCÍA, M. The key to advertising. Madrid: ESIC, 1999.
VILLAFAÑE, J. Professional management of corporate image. Madrid: Piramide, 1999.
VV.AA. The essential marketing. The keys to success in marketing from A to ZI and II. Madrid: Eurolib, 1994.
BASSAT, L. The red book of advertising. Barcelona: Folio, 1993.
RUIZ PEREZ, M. A. Fundamentals of advertising structures. Madrid: Síntesis, 1996.
Oguin, THOMAS E., et al, Advertising and Integrated Brand Promotion, Thomson Southwestern, 2003
