Perreault−McCarthy: Basic
Marketing: A
Global−Managerial
Approach, 14/e
- Advertising and Sales
Promotion
Text © The McGraw−Hill
Companies, 2002Advertising and Sales Promotion 459459Exhibit 16-4 shows some pros and cons of major kinds of media and some exam-
ples of costs. However, some of the advantages noted in this table may not apply
in all markets. In less-developed nations, for example, newspapers may notbe timely.
Placing an ad may require a long lead time if only a limited number of pages are
available for ads. Direct mail may not be a flexible choice in a country with a weak
postal system or high rate of illiteracy. Internet ads might be worthless if few target
customers have access to the Internet. Similarly, TV audiences are often less selec-
tive and targeted, but a special-interest cable TV show may reach a very specific
audience.^13Before you can choose the best medium, you have to decide on your promotion
objectives. If the objective is to increase interest and that requires demonstrating prod-
uct benefits, TV may be the best alternative. If the objective is to inform—telling a
long story with precise detail—and if pictures are needed, then Internet advertising
might be right. Alternatively, with a broad target market, print media like magazines
and newspapers may be better. For example, Jockey switched its advertising to maga-
zines from television when it decided to show the variety of colors, patterns, and styles
of its men’s briefs. Jockey felt that it was too hard to show this in a 30-second TV
spot. Further, Jockey felt that there were problems with modeling men’s underwear on
television. However, Jockey might have stayed with TV if it had been targeting con-
sumers in France or Brazil—where nudity in TV ads is common.^14To guarantee good media selection, the advertiser first must clearlyspecify its tar-
get market—a necessary step for all marketing strategy planning. Then the
advertiser can choose media that are heard, read, or seen by those target customers.
The media available in a country may limit the choices. In less-developed
nations, for example, radio is often the only way to reach a broad-based market of
poor consumers who can’t read or afford television.
In most cases, however, the major problem is to select media that effectively
reach the target audience. Most of the major media use marketing research to
develop profiles of the people who buy their publications or live in their broad-
casting area. Generally, media research focuses on demographic characteristics rather
than the segmenting dimensions specific to the planning needs of eachdifferent
advertiser. The problem is even worse in some countries because available mediaSpecifc promotion
objectivesMatch your market with
the mediaDoes Advertising That’s Everywhere Get Us Anywhere?It’s everywhere. You get to the beach, look down,
and huge versions of the Skippy peanut butter logo
are embossed in the sand. You roll your eyes in dis-
may and catch a view of a plane pulling MCI’s
100-foot-long banner with Mr. T demanding “Call
home, fool.” You go in the bathroom to change into
your swimsuit, but the walls are adorned with posters
for Good Humor ice cream bars. Forget that. Maybe
you should just eat your picnic lunch. Oops, the
whole back of the bench you’re going to sit on is an
ad for a check-cashing service—and just for good
measure the banana you pull out of your lunch bag
has a sticker advertising Florida oranges. So you
jump in your car to escape the onslaught. But when
you stop to pump gas a miniature video screen by the
credit card slot urges you to get a Visa debit card
from a local bank (first in English and then in
Spanish). The billboards you ignore along the way
seem pretty civilized compared to the towering truckswhose trailers are rolling billboards. Back at the
ranch, at last, you know you can watch the Grammy
Awards show in peace because you taped it on your
VCR—so you can zap past the ads. But no, you can’t
see the celebrities arrive without staring at virtual
logos digitally superimposed on the entry canopy and
sidewalk by the front door. So there’s no alternative
but to pull the plug on the VCR and check for e-mail
from your sweetie. Wrong move. A pop-up ad for a
video cam covers half of the screen—and why can’t
you make it go away? You can drag it to the side, but
then there’s so much spam in your mailbox that
you’ve run out of disk space.
There are certainly many cases where promotion
benefits both the consumer and the firm, and after all
it is revenues from advertising that cover the cost of
lots of great stuff consumers get for free. Yet some-
times you can’t help but wish that you were not the
target that somebody else is aiming at!^12