426 The Marketing Book
partners of a predecessor in Scotland had
witnessed the conditioned reflex in favour of an
advertising-led strategy while working as a
team at a full-service advertising agency hand-
ling the promotion of the National Garden
Festival. It is abundantly clear in hindsight that
the nature of the event demanded a multi-
disciplinary strategy, but the agency in fact
recommended spending most of limited pro-
motional funds on press and television adver-
tising. The partners were later reported in the
business press to have said they were ‘frankly,
not absolutely convinced that we were right’,
and the prospectus of their new agency
declared: ‘We operate with a total disregard for
the line. We are neither above-the-line special-
ists, nor [do we] concentrate on below-the-line
activity. Basically, we ignore the line.’ This is a
clear expression of the ‘integrated marketing
communications’ approach vigorously advo-
cated in such recent British textbooks as
Kitchen (1998), Smith and Taylor (2001), Varey
(2001), and Fill (2002).
A genuinely integrated, through-the-line
promotional strategy must begin with methodi-
cal and thorough situational analysis under-
taken without prejudice. Consider this
hypothetical case in point: you have been
briefed by the manufacturer of a material for
dental fillings which is white and costs less
than either gold or silver amalgam. What key
ingredients of such an analysis might form the
basis of decisions to allocate promotional effort
among the available elements of the mix?
Your answer may perhaps include such
factors as: the explicability of the product; its
newsworthiness; potential controversy; the
accessibility of at least two key audiences;
questions of image; budget; controllability of
feasible options. Sufficiently detailed explana-
tion of the product to dentists might be thought
to demand an advertisementin a professional
magazine, provided they can be depended on
not to ignore it altogether, or a carefully
constructed direct marketinginitiative, if they
have not been made resistant by the sheer
volume they receive.
Generating the complementary demand-
pull among dental patients would seem to
require a much less complex but far more
emotionally loaded message directed at family
decision-making gatekeepers, the delivery of
which could perhaps be best accomplished by
means of publicitytargeted at women’s maga-
zines. On the other hand, it might be thought
desirable to maintain a vaguely mysterious
high-technology aura around the product. The
product’s newsworthiness is self-evident, but
the details could contain the germ of a con-
troversy, placing particular emphasis on the
issue of control over publicity initiatives. It
could be reasoned that consumer sales promo-
tionsare a feasible option only once the patients
have been brought to the point-of-sale by other
forces, but dentist incentives could be a fruitful
if high-risk ploy.
Whatever the outcome of your personal
analysis, a dominantly above-the-line strategy
would be hard to justify even if you did happen
to be employed by an advertising agency.
Likewise one based largely on sales promotion
or concentrating heavily on packaging, even if
those were your home disciplines. For this
particular product, a through-the-line solution
seems inescapable.The promotional budget
Decisions about the allocation of effort above
and below the line cannot be made, of course,
until it has been established how much money
is available to be spent on media buying, the
distribution of news releases, telemarketing
costs, sponsorship deals, the designing and
production of packaging, point-of-sale and
sales promotion materials, and so on. This
amount is formally defined as the promotional
appropriation, reflecting the fact that it is appro-
priated from the total funds allocated to the
marketing effort. In Britain, but less so in
America, it is more likely to be called the
‘promotional budget’.