What is external communication?

What is External Communication?
External communication is the phenomenon by which we can observe how a company, organization or institution announces messages or ideas from the same organism to a specific audience, which can be users, clients or public stakeholders. To achieve these goals people who are in charge of communications may use advertising, public relations, techniques on social responsability and social communication, among other methods.

How it works?
For efficient external communication, we must know the elements that come into play in the communication. The issuer must know deeply, who is speaking, to know exactly the tone and corporative politics the message must be attached to. Then it must be know what is wanted to be said, if we are going to release a brand new product, a variant of a known product, an idea of public safety, etc. Finally it must be known to whom you speak to, e.g. the receiver, as this will indicate how to be configured the message, help you choose correctly the signs and symbols that best communicate the central idea and will build a coded message just for those who can decode it.

What is it used?
It serves to disseminate messages and ideas to people who are not internal members of their organizations but remain important for the operation or for the purposes thereof.

Picture
Cerradura

Recommendations
SANDRA MORIARTY et al, Advertising (8th edition)
GARY DAHL, Advertising for Dummies.
JOHN PHILIP JONES, How Advertising Works: The Role of Research

¿Qué es comunicación externa?

¿Qué es comunicación externa?
La comunicación externa es el fenómeno mediante el cual observamos cómo una compañía, organización o institución da a conocer a un público específico, que pueden ser usuarios, clientes o públicos interesados, mensajes o ideas del mismo organismo. Para transmitir dichos mensajes, se utilizan: la publicidad, técnicas de responsabilidad social, la comunicación social y las relaciones públicas.

¿Cómo funciona?
Para obtener una comunicación externa eficiente, hay que conocer los elementos que entran en juego en la comunicación, es decir, debemos conocer profundamente al emisor, que es el que habla, y es quien le da el tono al mensaje; debemos conocer qué se quiere decir, si vamos a dar a conocer un producto completamente nuevo, una variante de un producto conocido, una idea de seguridad pública, etcétera; finalmente se debe conocer a quién se le habla, es decir, el receptor, pues esto nos indicará cómo debe ser configurado el mensaje, ayudará a elegir correctamente los signos y símbolos que comunicarán mejor la idea central y permitirá construir un mensaje codificado precisamente para las personas que pueden decodificarlo.

¿Para qué sirve?
Sirve para dar a conocer mensajes e ideas a personas que no son miembros internos de sus organizaciones pero que siguen siendo importantes para el funcionamiento o para los objetivos de éstas.

Fotografía

Cerradura

Recomendamos

SANDRA MORIARTY et al, Advertising (8th edition)

GARY DAHL, Advertising for Dummies.

JOHN PHILIP JONES, How Advertising Works: The Role of Research

What is visual communication?

What is Visual Communication?

The Italian artist Bruno Munari states that visual communication is itself the act that occurs with visual messages and where the human eye is the essential tool in the process. Each of the senses has only a relative percentage of effectiveness: the taste, smell, touch and hearing, together, get 20% of information, while the sight captures the remaining 80%. He also affirms the existence of a source emitting such messages and a subject who receives it. However, there is a fundamental characteristic that distinguishes the original and communicative process: the specification of the visual message and the existence of specific filters in each receiver.

How it works

It may divide the visual message in two parts:

1. Information: or different types of data that might be contained in the message.

2. Support: either the set of elements that is visible to the naked eye the message that is through color, texture, form, perspective. The information takes shape and materializes.

So that a human being who will communicate visually will first need to have information on the head, this information can be simple or complex messages. Once the subject or issuer information has processed and abstracted it, and then it makes the idea into real, through visual resources and the leveling of these elements in a defined space.

To perform this equalization the personality of the sender (its context and cognitive filters, historical, social, personal, cultural, spiritual and physical) and of the recipient must be taken into account, since the first is the one who will print his personality to the message and the latter one will be responsible for decoding this information previously organized in order to understand the idea that is supposed to be inside.

What is it used?

As mentioned previously in this article, the human being receives the largest percentage of information through the sense of sight, which means that any message received through the eyes, have increased uptake in the brain that other messages that could be captured through hearing, smell or touch, turning the latter into mere companions of visual information.

This does not mean that important information is received by the other senses studied and scientifically accepted. In fact, the data captured through these other parts of the body can establish relationships and define the meaning of the information that is recorded by the view.

Returning to the fact that the eye captures 80% of the information, we find sense to the semiotic theories of signs that maintains that the most important meanings can be lectured through visual symbols or signs. So that to make a message is grasped more easily and quickly by using graphic symbols, such as colors or shapes previously equipped with conventional meanings.

This is one reason why advertising is the most hackneyed plot when creating advertising strategies, because the message will go directly and quickly to the chosen target audience.

Pics

Vision

Eye

Recommendations:

BRUNO MUNARI, Design and Visual Communication: Contribution to a teaching method, Ed Gustavo Gili.

GUILLERMO DE LA TORRE AND RIZO, The Language of Symbols Graphics: Introduction to Visual Communication, Limusa.

JACQUES AUMONT, Image, Paidós.

PETER BONNICCI, Visual Language: The hidden face of the communication, Index Books.

What is advertising?

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

Ads and images

Today I will discuss advertising, specifically of images.

Imagine that we drive through the city, by wide avenues, intersections, traffic lights, etc.

Most of the information we receive (about 70 per cent) comes through the sense of sight followed by hearing, smell, touch and finally taste.

Colours, lights, signs, "continue", "stop", caution!, Buy!, And now!, And a huge parade crosses through our eyes in seconds. And this is only when we travel down the street.

Think of the number of ads that captures consciously or unconsciously throughout the day, heading to the office, magazines, newspapers, television, billboards, and on, and on!

Throughout this stage, the most important player is the image that lives within an ad.

Seeing an ad for dog food, we (probably) identify some sort of race. Almost literally see a German shepherd, but sorry to disappoint... this is not a dog.

What we really appreciate is ink of different colours which is arranged to the distance so the viewer can assimilate that image like an animal. Again, not a dog.

In the brain happens that the images refer to a reality. What enters the eye has the ability to "activate" something in our mind, something that looks into our files until you find that thing that exists in everyday life.

This is the power of images... and the advertising appeals to it.

Brands and products, depending on target who are attacking and a preliminary analysis of it, seek to create connections between what they sell to the potential buyer. This means that the image is more suitable to generate such a link.

Take one example:

An adult male approximately 45 years old driving his car by a well known street in Mexico City. Is unlikely to turn to see the announcement of a mobile phone that is targeted at six-teen-years-old girls. Unless andropause generates a hormonal imbalance in this adul male, the announcement along with its colors and design will be completely indifferent to his mind because it is not "receptive" to that message.

Conversely, if a spectacular of the magazine Maxim crosses his eyes, he in fact turns around and see it (and who does not?)! The picture as a whole acts as a magnet for his eyes. Besides the content is exclusive to the male audience, has topics of interest and, above all, advertising aimed straight at him... and do not missed.

Print advertising in whatever canvas, seeks to "click" with your target audience, this is achieved, based on the interests and needs of each market segment, of each person.

To be satisfied with the product that captures our attention.

So the next time you surprise your boyfriend taking a quick look to a Victoria Secret's ad you should not worry, most likely, is his natural attraction to the opposite sex who is acting right there, not because he's looking for lingerie.

Pics taken from:

Pedigree Strong

Motorola China

To Search before To Communicate

When we started with this consultant, the first thing that jumped to many of our customers was the word research. Either they thought their ad agency did that work before seting their creative ideas on paper, or simply neglected the investigation as if it were an extra cost that simply end up being an expense. Nothing could be farther from reality.

The importance of research is not limited to market research or to profile the target audience they'll "attack". Its scope is to research the symbols and signs that they perceive and how they should be mixed to cause a specific impact. Usually what happens in many design firms and advertising (without neglecting his work as creative or triggers of ideas that break the linearity of the conventional and allow ads to be memorable) is that they tend to follow trends.

riesgos en la comunicación

Risks in the communication

When investigating the symbols and signs and how to structure it in a message managed to reduce errors, waste of time and money and increase the possibility of impact. Take the notorious case by case brand grilled hamburger (because it tastes better grilled) Burger King in Spain. A harmless television campaign that showed the friendship of a Mexican and an American raised in Mexican society swirling thanks to graphic advertising expressed what I got no television advertising.

True, the society to which the message was directed society was neither Mexican nor American, was a neutral Spain who simply had the opportunity to test the Texican. However, returning to action, if the TV spot expressing friendship (and really is a good TV ad), would it not have been more appropriate to place the Mexican and American, shaking hands or drawing in a way that be more obvious?

In contrast, the U.S. position is selfless, looking to one side and the Mexican is terribly low. A shaking hands, a fraternal embrace had succeeded better convey the message that it achieved its television version.

This is known as culture research both in society that will be taken as "target" and societies that engage in the message (as above it is clear this distinction because it general society and the society represented-representation are the same) and never be unnecessary. What is sought with this type of desk research and field is not obstructing the creativity of advertising geniuses far more obstacles to confront the idea is to make announcements to support highly creative and highly understandable.

Finally, let us share another graphic ad, showing hindu godess Lakshmi Mittal inviting us to eat a processed beef cow, eventhough cow is sacred to hindu...