Advertising...Oh Advertising

Frankly, I am not a great fan of winter. This is because it requires me to dress like a bloody penguin to combat the unbearable cold weather. Summer, however, is like heaven for me. I can sun bask on the beach while enjoying the amazingly beautiful Australian nature and of course the bikini babes.

Another major attraction in Australia during summer is the Australian Open – one of the greatest sporting events in the nation. With millions of fans around the world, companies such as IBM, Garnier, KIA Motors and Medibank Private are willing to sponsor the event. These sponsors would be heavily and exclusively advertised both on the venue and on TV during the vents. Huge banners were displayed and TV ads were repeatedly broadcasted during the matches. Looking at all the advertisement, a question suddenly popped up in my mind. Are these advertisements effective? Are these sponsors paying too much for their campaign? How much sales can these advertisements generate?

Honestly, I have not bought any products from these sponsors before. Besides, people that I know of have not dealt with these sponsors either. In addition, I barely able to recall which advertisements actually appeared on TV nor I can remember what was on the huge banners displayed around the courts. How many of you have reacted to actually purchase products based on advertisement? When was the last time that you actually bought any product as a result of bumping into an advertisement broadcast?

I personally think that sometimes advertising has lost its value in communicating information of the product or service to the potential customers. Often advertisements are so creative that it could not be understood. Often we see advertisement which does not even put the wonderful values of the products in it. In my opinion an advertising dollar should be able to bring at least a dollar in sales to the company. The problem is the majority of marketers who I assume understand marketing simply define marketing as putting big advertisements to publicize their company. Surely marketing means more than throwing our money.

Classic marketing which means putting ads and waiting for customers to come was a real success more than a decade ago. In fact, this method turned Procter&Gamble, Coca Cola, and American Express to be the great leaders in their industry. However, this method is no longer applicable in the modern society. According to Al Ries in his book “The Fall of Advertising and The Rise of PR”, a person meets at least 300 advertisements daily. This number then creates an immune system in our brain towards the conventional advertising. Marketing should be energetic which means communicating actively with the potential and existing customers rather than waiting for them to come.

Google has not advertised its company even a single time. Their fame simply comes from the word of mouth. They basically focus on delivering what the customers are looking for which is the reliable information from their search engine. Before their success they asked their customers how google.com could be improved in order to be more effective and efficient. However a lot of marketers forget about this fact. They only concentrate on obtaining mind set of their potential customer. Mind set is nothing. You could remember how funny and creative an advertisement is without having any desire to buy the product. You could talk about an advertisement with your friends, but it does not mean that the advertisement create stimuli for you to purchase the product.

A supermarket in Australia conducted the good will marketing instead of merely throwing advertising dollars. At the beginning of January they dedicated a day profit for charity purposes. This marketing method is really creative since it allowed customers to participate in the charity as well as creating a chance to be impressive with their customer service. Moreover, for this particular event their company was then freely publicized by the mass media and the society due to their good will. It was a huge successful marketing campaign. Therefore, they managed to create a cause for their customers to come to their store and experience the customer service. These examples show that we have to be creative in our marketing not in our advertising.

In order to generate a great marketing strategy the combination of both advertising and Public Relation (PR) should be in harmony. Therefore, please do not ignore your PR department and merely depend on advertising in order to obtain publicity.

Welcome to the public relation age.

Comments, questions and opinions will be truly appreciated.

David Herlambang
MarketingFirst