The Marketing Book 5th Edition

CHAPTER 17

Promotion

KEITH CROSIER

Introduction

The idea that you can merchandise candidates

for high office, like breakfast cereal, is the

ultimate indignity of the democratic process.

Adlai Stevenson

Advertisements contain the only truths to be

relied on in a newspaper.

Thomas Jefferson

In this chapter we turn to the question of
promotinga product or service that has already
been developed (Chapter 12) and priced (Chap-
ter 13), and will concurrently be sold (Chapter
14) and distributed (Chapter 19). What exactly
is involved in the management of this partic-
ular element of the marketing mix?

The promotional mix

As Figure 17.1 shows, using McCarthy’s useful
‘four Ps’terminology, this chapter is concerned
with deploying and controlling a mix within a
mix. Following his lead, we call it the promo-
tional mix, but many recent textbooks prefer a
different description of the activities it embra-
ces: for instance, Marketing Communications:
Principles and Practice(Kitchen, 1998), Marketing
Communications: An Integrated Approach(Smith

and Taylor, 2001), Marketing Communications: a

Critical Introduction(Varey, 2001) and Marketing

Communications: Frameworks, Theories and Appli-

cations (Fill, 2002). This rapidly developing

fashion for a holistic approach to treatment of

the promotional mix, which its advocates call

‘integrated marketing communications’, may

well result in the permanent replacement of

‘promotion’ as the generic term during the

lifetime of this edition of The Marketing Book,

though McCarthy’s legacy is proving to be

remarkably robust.

Within the confines of a single chapter, it is

impossible to take each of the nine ingredients

identified in Figure 17.1 in turn, and discuss

their implementation in any real detail. Instead,

the following working definitions are proposed,

demonstrating the close family similarities

among them while emphasizing fundamentally

important points of difference.

 Advertising is promotion via an advertisement

in a chosen advertising medium, guaranteeing

exposure to a general or specific target

audience, in return for an advertising rate

charged by the media owner plus the cost of

producing the advertisement.

 Publicity is promotion via a news release to

chosen news media, delivering exposure to a

known target audience if newsworthiness

earns an editorial mention, in return for the

cost of producing and distributing the release.