Advertising Strategy and Media Planning

Creative Strategy - Positioning…6

Percy and Elliott’s Five Steps…

Select the target audience

Understand target audience decision making

Determine the best positioning

Develop a communications strategy

Setting a media strategy

Percy and Elliott, 2009

Brief the creative team (in conjunction with agency

account management and account planning)

Agency will believe in the idea… their job is to persuade the client

to agree with them… and this doesn’t always happen!

Advertising manager’s job

Will have already been approved by Creative Director of agency

and Account Management/Planning

Evaluate the ideas they come up with and approve the

ad or campaign for production and media scheduling

The creative process

Creative brief

Evaluation

Evaluation

Pre-production testing

Post-production testing

Advertising strategy

‘The Big Idea’: creative concept, creative platform, advertising idea

Detailed copy and layout, scamp or storyboard

Client approval

Appearance and then measuring effectiveness

Production

Creative brief sets objectives

For a specific ad or campaign…

Category need objective… not always needed

Brand awareness objective… always an objective

Brand attitude objective… always an objective

Purchase intention objective… not always a specific

objective for advertising but is for a promotion

Percy and Elliott (2009)

Who - and what they do

If advertising agency used…

creative department

If done in-house…

write copy in-house and use freelance graphic artist

get the media to do it

freelance copywriter and freelance art director/designer

in-house creative department

copywriter and art director team

working under creative director

What the creatives do…

Art director and copywriter team…

Develop the concept into detailed copy and layout or script

Present draft work to client for approval (but not always)

Come up with ‘the big idea’ (creative concept)

Brief those providing production estimates

Make client amendments

Commission and direct production

and the client responds…

and the client responds…

Essentials of copywriting

Headlines should…

Copywriters should…

Use active language

Complement the image

Be part of the story

Push the reader into the body copy

Add meaning to the image

Avoid clichés (and be careful with puns)

Use everyday language that fits the audience and the brandTalk about the consumer not the brand

Keep it as short as possible

Avoid jargon, flowery language, long words

(Burtenshaw, Mahon and Burfoot 2006)

Essentials of art direction

Decisions…

What goes where? (We read from top to bottom and left to right)

What usually works…

Photography or illustration? Proportions

Simple, clean layout

Digital manipulation?

Which typeface?

Strong, dominant image

Use of white space

Apt and carefully crafted typography

Logo in bottom right corner

(Burtenshaw, Mahon and Burfoot 2006)

The future?

Less use of network television

More use of ambient media

Rejection of the hard sell

User generated content

Rapid changes in what’s fashionable

Advertising as entertainment

Global campaigns to culturally diverse audiences

More use of targeted direct communications

Combination of ‘old’ and ‘new’ media

what is positioning?

“Positioning refers broadly to the values and associations, both tangible and intangible, that are linked with a given brand. The positioning differentiates the brand from its rivals.”

Hackley 2010 p70

what is positioning?

A key insight summed up in a positioning statement

which is part of the advertising strategy document and

the creative brief.

Needs to consider…

Who it’s for…

Reason to buy…

Product category…

Benefit(s)…

They vary wildly…

It is “…so much more intimate than a laptop, and it’s so much

more capable than a smartphone with its gorgeous screen.”

For families concerned about safety, Volvo builds a vehicle

with state-of-the-art safety features that give you peace of

mind when driving

Designed to provide internal agreement and clarity for specific

value offered to specific markets against competition

Gospe, 2012

Other points for consideration…

Competitive environment

Target consumers

What makes the brand distinctive

Consumer benefits (tangible and intangible)

Why/how consumers see the brand as different to its competitors

Adapted from Percy and Elliott, 2009

Brand values and personality

Why consumers believe and trust

Also important…

What the product does… functional positioning

What the product means… emotional positioning

Yeshin, 2006

what is a brand?

“A brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer’s decision to choose one product or service over another. If the consumer (whether it’s a business, a buyer, a voter or a donor) doesn’t pay a premium, make a selection or spread the word, then no brand value exists for that consumer.”

Godin, 2011

what is a brand?

Fill, 2011, identifies that a brand has two main attributes…

intrinsicextrinsic

functional…designperformanceingredients/components

size/shapeprice

meaning…valuebrand imageimages of stores where soldperceptions of users of the brand

Advertising Manager decisions…

Two decisions the manager must make…

Two questions about the brand… what is it and what does it offer?

how should the brand be positioned within the category

whether the brand’s position in relation to other brands should be in terms of product users or the product itself

Percy and Elliott (2009)

Central or differential?

Central positioning…Delivers all the category benefits, Brand “owns” the category,

Best and most loved brand in category, Must already have a

large/majority market share

Differential positioning…

Delivers a specific category benefit better than the leading

brand, Different to the leading brand in an important way,

Different in a way sufficient consumers want, Occupies a

worthwhile niche or is a new entrant

User or product benefit

User-oriented position…

The user is the focus (“for the serious athlete”)

Underlying benefit is social approval (“for the discerning”)

User benefits drive the message (“because you’re worth it”)

Product-oriented position…

The product is the hero (“there’s no better”)

Product benefits drive the message (“the best a man can get”)

Selecting the appropriate benefit

Reflects the motivation that drives purchase behaviour

Important to the target audience

What distinguishes the brand from competitors in a way that is

important to the target audience

Must be…

Believable to the target audience

Deliverable by the brand better than the competition

Link to advertising content…

L’Oreal - because you’re worth it

Tesco - every little helps

Lloyds - for the journey

Positioning then becomes a key component of the creative brief

Once this far in the strategy process, can brief the creatives to come

up with the advertising message/content

Positioning sometimes reflected in the advertising tag line…

BMW - the ultimate driving machine

References and reading

Burtenshaw, K., Mahon, N. and Barfoot, C. (2006). The Fundamentals of Creative Advertising. Switzerland: AVA Publishing.

Percy, L. and Elliott, R. (2009) Strategic Advertising Management. Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Shimp, T. (2007) Integrated Marketing Communications in Advertising and Promotion. USA: Cengage.

Yeshin, T. (2006). Advertising. London, Thomson