The strong versus weak theory debate in the UK advertising industry

Abstract: Advertising is a really important element today and its importance

has been growing in the past few years. There are two schools of debate

regarding the nature of advertising: the strong theory and the weak theory.

This essay will discuss different opinions between these two schools in three

main aspects, namely, the effectiveness of advertising, how advertising works

and how to measure it. During the discussion, some examples from the UK

advertising industry such as Virgin Trains, BT, Starbucks, Apple Inc. and so on

would be considered. This essay proposes that each advertising theories can

be explained in particular situations and no one can always be right. It would

make more sense when cases are considered in both sides.

Key words: strong theory, weak theory, the UK advertising industry,

measurement

Introduction

The United Kingdom advertising market generated total revenues of $3.9

billion in 2007, representing 13.8% of annual growth from 2003 to 2007. Due

to the robust financial performance in advertising industry, the relative power

of advertising has been debated by academicians and practitioners for almost

four decades. The Strong Theory which was developed in the United States

and supported by the authors such as John Philip Jones considers advertising

as a dynamic force for sales and the change of consumers' attitudes. In

contrast, there is another theory developed by Andrew Ehrenberg of the

London Business School taking advertising as a weak force.

The effectiveness of advertising

Traditionally, the role of advertising is considered as four main ways, including

creating awareness, providing essential information, helping to build a

relevant brand image and reminding consumers to try, buy or use the brand

after the brand establishment. Advertising effects may be divided into two

categories: intermediate like consumer beliefs and attitudes; purchasing

behaviour such as brand choice.

For the strong school, first of all, they believe that advertising can influence

sales to some degree. The research which covered the leading brands in 12

major categories of repeat-purchase packaged goods carried by Jones (1997)

revealed that there were 70% of cases supporting that advertising had an

immediate effect on sales, with more than doubled market share for some

brands. Jones (1998) also found that this increase would occur in the two

weeks after advertising exposure, which is called Short-Term Advertising

Strength (STAS) effect. Therefore, it could be argued that due to the strong

relationship with sales, advertising is usually conducted with an unspoken

assumption that the process of selling results in sales. For instance, the TV

campaign 'Return of the Train' launched by Virgin Trains won a significant

success that the Aerial volumes between London and Manchester fell by 6%

and rail volumes rose by 96% in 2005 when the consumers lose heart to the

train service because of its low speed. Another example is Marks & Spencer

which won gold award in IPA 2006. The continual sales declines and

consecutive negative press coverage left Marks & Spencer facing a difficult

situation in spring 2004. However, their 'Your M&S' advertising campaign

helped them in recovering the business, which led to a rise in UK sales of

9.1% in a fourth-quarter of 2006. The evidence here, thus, suggests that

advertising does have an influence on the sales. If the advertising could not

cause increased sales or at least improved sales for a brand, it could be said

that this advertising has failed. Otherwise, there would be no necessity for the

UK government to spend large sum of money in restricting the advertising in

fast food industry, tobacco industry and those targeting children. In addition,

Jones (1998) continued to claim that although many cases indicated that the

high level of short-term effect was not sustained and the year-end effect was

less than the immediate one, in his research there were still 46% of all brands

whose advertising produced short-term sales results showing positive results

in the long run.

However, the academics and practitioners in the weak school of advertising

argue that there is little empirical evidence supporting the notion of advertising

as a strong force. Ehrenberg et al. (1998) stated that less than five percent of

new brands failed with sound market share. However, the unsuccessful

launches normally cost the same large sum of money as those successful

ones. According to the data collected from a number of different countries,

only around 30% of advertising campaigns had an immediate effect on sales,

even smaller proportion in long term. Indeed, although there are many

successful advertising contributing to the positive business performance or

even winning the IPA Effectiveness Awards every year, they are still not

adequate compared to the rest in the advertising industry, and therefore these

cases are not representative enough to convince that all the advertising can

affect the sales. Interestingly, when the relationship between advertising and

sales is discussed as a hot topic, it should be noticed that few cases indicate

market growth is a business objective in the advertising. According to Peter

Field's research on IPA dataBANK, only 1.7% of the cases cite market growth

as an objective. Therefore, it could be argued that advertising has more to do

with supporting brand equity, preserving price premium and maintaining

business rather than increasing sales. Also, if the advertising works, the

benefits from advertising would decrease over time. It has been reported that

only about 25% of advertisements produce sales improvement for small

brands or maintenance for large brands over a year. Furthermore, the

business improvement may not be solely attributed to advertising but the

integrated marketing communication or even marketing mix. In fact, almost no

organization can separate or isolate advertising from other promotional

elements. Take Starbucks as an example. Starbucks allocates only about 1%

of their total revenue for advertising while more money is spent in clustering

and locating itself in many various places, constantly reminding the customers

of the brand and products. Also, they build strong brand image and provide

premium products and services to attract and retain the customers. From the

cases discussed above, like Marks & Spencer and Virgin Trains, although

they won a significant success in the advertising, they still made great efforts

alongside with other promotional techniques such as direct marketing, public

relationship and events. In particular, it has been reported that most of the

small business rely on word of mouth but not advertising, especially

considering the cost of it. In that case, therefore, it could be suggested that it

might not make sense if only considering the effectiveness of advertising

alone.

How Advertising Works

Advertising research especially in the early age, is dominated by the

persuasive hierarchy effects models of which the first one was AIDA

(Attention-Interest-Desire -Action), variously attributed to St. Elmo Lewis in

1890 and Strong in 1925. This and subsequent similar models continue to

dominate the notion about how advertising works, which are also known as

the strong or persuasive theories. The sequential pattern of AIDA illustrates

two roles to advertising: an informational role and a persuasive role. Take

Virgin Trains again as an example. Under the pressure that many other

competitors provided modern ways for transportation, Virgin Trains launched

'Return to the Train' TV campaign in order to arouse the attention of the

customers. Then they provided a modern take on the 'golden era' of rail travel

to obtain interest from customers because UK was nation of train lovers. This

was back up by the new services such as increased speed and timetable

changes, with a result that customers had desires to purchase it and their

sales increased accordingly. In terms of AIDA, it could be argued that

advertising provides information to arouse attention and gain interest from

customers, after which the customers would have desire of this product and

then purchase it.

Although this model has been used for more than 100 years, it is still

imperfect when considering the process of advertising. Another hierarchical

model is Lavidge and Steiner's model which includes six steps of advertising

process: awareness, knowledge, liking, preference, conviction and purchase.

Lavidge and Steiner state that the consumers would do purchase the brand

only when all of these stages have been achieved. This implies that if any of

the steps fails, the desired outcome will not come true. If it were right, Virgin

might not get increased sales if they had no unique selling points to develop a

liking for the services or those selling points could not meet the real needs of

the consumers. Take TV Licensing for students in the UK as another example.

Only if TV License could illustrate clearly the knowledge, specifically, why

students need to buy TV License, will the students show preferences and

purchase it.

Since all the stages are important, it becomes crucial to have a good plan and

measure for advertising. DAGMAR (Defining Advertising Goals for Measured

Advertising Results) proposed by Russell Colley is a new approach to

advertising planning. It provides a precise method for the selection and

quantification of communications tasks, emphasizing the comprehension of

the messages. Also, it was the first hierarchy model that considers the target

audience. For instance, in the campaign of TV Licensing towards students,

they selected all the messages that can be made to appeal to students

directly, rather than the whole potential users. Nevertheless, DAGMAR model

is still criticized because it implies that consumers are passive in the

marketing communication. Based on this, Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM)

considers different levels of involvement for individual consumer when it

explains how cognitive processing and attitude change occur. For example,

computer companies like Sony, Apple would provide detail information such

as item codes, product specialties and usage instructions for their customers

who expect to see high quality of arguments while some low level of

involvement industries like clothing, would spend much money on celebrities

to influence attitudes positively. In 2006 Nike spent more than 240m in the UK

to recruit celebrity athletes such as Tiger Woods in order to persuade the

purchase from the customers. The evidence here, therefore, has suggested

that advertising should adopt different specific ways to target different kinds of

consumers according to the ability and motivation to process information.

Although the hierarchy effects models vary from time to time and have

different explanations of the advertising process, they all support persuasive

theories. Whereas, these notions are rejected by the scholars and

practitioners in the weak force school of advertising. Ambler (1998) claimed

that feelings and thought happen simultaneously. This is one of the strikes for

the persuasive theory. But Ehrenberg accepted that advertising can create

and strengthen brand awareness, contributing to the trial purchase. In this

stage, it is vital to consider consumers' experience. To enable the consumers

have a satisfied experience, Apple Inc provides free trying experience in

London stores and teaches customers how to use their systems. Also, in

Ehrenberg's ATRN model, he indicated that advertising had a defensive role

as reinforcement by repeated exposure. This power of advertising has been

confirmed by the experimental research using various qualities of orange juice

samples. One possible reason might be the advertising can work when the

messages get into and repeat in the mind and memory of the target

customers. In this case, Advertising can retain existing customers by

reinforcement, which is an important marketing strategy for many brands, in

particularly, large brands which have large user base. Furthermore, he

developed a further role for advertising as nudging that is the constant

reminder of the existence of the brand.

In addition, brand-buying behaviour and buying intentions are normally very

stable according to the large amount of databases over long period of time.

For example, BT launched an advertisement in 1996 in order to obtain more

men users. However, the result was that women continued using much as

before but no increased usage in men. One possible reason should be that

some consumers may not be interested in reading or hearing advertisements

with a result that the role of advertising in communication has been restricted.

Another reason might be the consumers have different opinions with what is

claimed in the advertising and therefore it is difficult for the advertising to

convince them of purchasing.

How to Measure

Last but not the least, the measurement of the advertising effectiveness is

also a controversy between these two schools. For the one thing, the strong

school believes that the effectiveness of advertising is measurable. DAGMAR

provides basis for measuring advertising performance by identifying a series

of benchmarks. Also, Young & Rubicam's BrandAsset Valuator (BAV) model

uses the concept of hierarchy effects models in terms of a natural order for

the accumulation of consumer brand equity. For another one, Ehrenberg et al.

(1998) argued that it was difficult to measure the effects of advertising. One

possible reason is that most marketing organizations prefer to use advertising

in combination with other communication activities rather than solely rely on

advertising. Therefore, it is probably incorrect to parse out individual functional

promotional elements. Another reason might be consumers have their own

basic knowledge and experience and therefore it should be more likely to start

with consumers rather than starting with advertising.

Conclusion

In summary, this essay has identified the strong theory and weak theory

according to the effectiveness of advertising, how advertising works and how

to measure it. It could be argued that each theory can be correct or wrong

when considered in different particular situations, so that they cannot be only

considered either. However, while debating the strong theory and weak

theory, it should be argued whether it is or not advertising is the right sole

thing to discuss and measure. It is proposed that the focus should be shifted

to the brand communication program but not just advertising. Furthermore, it

is likely that the advertising strategies should consider more about the

consumer aspects.

References:

［1］Ehrenberg,A.,Barnard,N. & Scriven, J. (1998) 'Justifying our advertising

budgets'. WARC.

［2］Green,L.(2006) Advertising Works 15: IPA Effectiveness Awards 2006.

Biddles Ltd.: Oxfordshire.

［ 3］ Jones, J. P. (1997) 'Is Advertising Still Salesmanship?'. Journal of

Advertising Research. 37(3).

［4］Yeshin,T.(2006) Advertising. Thomson Learning: London.