ADVERTISING PLANNING FRAMEWORK

Plans are nothing, planning is everything?

- Dwight D. Eisenhower

The advertising management is mainly concerned with planning and

decision making. The advertising manager will be involved in the development, implementation,
and overall management of an advertising plan. The development of an advertising plan
essentially requires the generation and specification of alternatives. Decision making involves
choosing from among the alternatives. The alternatives can be various levels of expenditure,
different kinds of objectives or strategy possibilities, and kinds of options with copy creation and
media choices. Thus, the essence of planning is to find out the feasible alternatives and reduce
them to decisions. An advertising plan reflects the planning and decision – making process
and the decisions that have been arrived at in a particular product and market situation.

Planning Framework
Advertising planning and decision making depends on internal and external factors. Internal
factors are situation analysis, the marketing program, and the advertising plan.
Let us discuss these factors one after another.
Internal Factors
1. Situation Analysis
It involves an analysis of all important factors operating in a particular situation. This means that
new research studies will be undertaken on company history and experience.
AT&T, for example, developed a new strategy for its long-distance telephone services – based on
five year of research. The research encompassed market segmentation studies, concept testing, and
a field experiment. The field experiment increased on testing a new advertising campaign called
“Cost of Visit”. An existing “Reach Out” campaign although successful, did not appear to get
through to a large group of people who had reasons to call but were limiting their calls because of
cost. Research based on annual surveys of 3,000 residential telephone users showed that most did
not know the cost of a long-distance call or that it was possible to make less expensive calls in off-
peak periods.
Five copy alternatives were subsequently developed and tested, from which “Cost of Visit” was
chosen. This campaign was credited with persuading customers to call during times that were both
cheaper for them and more profitable for AT&T and, overall, was more effective that the “Reach
Out” campaign. One estimate was that by switching 530 million in advertising from “Reach Out”
to “Cost of Visit”, an incremental gain in revenue of $22 million would result in the first year and
would top $100 million over five years.

This example highlights that a complete situation analysis will cover all marketing components
and involve finding answers to many questions about the nature and extent of demand,
competition, environmental factors, product, costs, distribution, and the skills and financial
resources of the from.

2. Consumer and Market Analysis.

Situation analysis begins by looking at the aggregate market for the product, service, or cause
being advertised, the size of the market, its growth rate, seasonality, geographical distribution.
Whereas Consumer and Market analysis is concerned with the following factors:
 Nature of demand
 How do buyers (consumer and industrial) currently go about buying existing products
or services?
 Can the market be meaningfully segmented or broken into several homogeneous groups
with in respect to “what they want” and “how they buy”?
 Extent of demand
 What is the size of the market (units and dollars) now, and what will the future hold?
 What are the current market shares, and what are the selective demand trends?
 Is it best to analyze the market on an aggregate or on a segmented basis?
 Name of competition
 What is the present and future structure of competition? 20
 What are the current marketing programs of established competitors?
 Why are they successful of unsuccessful?
 Is there is opportunity for another competitor? Why?
 What are the anticipated retaliatory moves of competitors?
  Can they neutralize different marketing programs we might develop?

 Environmental climate
 What are the relevant social, political, economic, and technological trends?
 How do you evaluate these trends? Do they represent opportunities or problem?

 Stage of product life cycle

 In what stage of the life cycle is the product category?
 What market characteristics support your stage-of –life-cycle evaluation?

 Cost structure of the industry

 What is the amount and composition of the marginal or additional cost of supplying
increased output?

 Skills of the firm

 Do we have the skills and experience to perform the functions necessary to be in the
business?
 How do our skills compare with those of competitors?

 Financial resources of the firm

 Do we have the funds to support an effective marketing program?
 Where are the funds coming from, and when will they be available?

3. Competitive Analysis:
Advertising planning and decision making are affected by competition and the competitive
situation facing the advertiser. Competition is such a pervasive factor that it will occur as a
consideration in all phases of the advertising planning and decision making process. It should
include an analysis of what current share the brand now has, what shares its competitors have,
what share of a market is possible, from which competitors the increased share of a market is
possible? The planner also has to be aware of the relative strengths and weaknesses of the different
competing companies and their objectives in the product category. It is important to look at
competition as a precursor to the planning process.

4. The Advertising Plan

As pointed out earlier, advertising plan and decision making focus on three crucial areas;
objectives and target selection, message strategy and tactics, and media strategy and tactics. Let
us elaborate on these points:

 Objectives and Target Selection

Objectives in advertising can be understood in many ways. An important part of the objective is
the development of a precise, disciplined description of the target audience. It is often tempting to
direct advertising at a broad audience; but everyone is a potential customer. It is best to consider
directing the advertising to more selected groups to develop stimulating copy. It is quite possible
to develop several campaigns, each directed at different segments of the market, or to develop one
campaign based on multiple objectives.
 Message Strategy and Tactics
Messages strategy must decide what the advertising is meant to communicate – by way of benefits,
feelings, brand personality, or action content. Once the content of the campaign has been decided,
decisions must be made on the best-most effective-ways of communicating that content. The
decisions, such as the choice of a spokesperson, the use of humor or fear or other tones, and the
selection of particular copy, visuals, and layout, are what we call “message tactics”
 Media Strategy and Tactics
Message strategy is concerned with decisions about how much is to be allocated to create and test
advertising copy, media strategy concerns decisions on how many media rupees to spend on an
advertising campaign. Media tactics comprise the decisions on which specific media (television,
radio magazines, etc.) or media vehicles (Reader‟s Digest, etc.) to spend these dollars.
EXTERNAL FACTORS

The external factors in the planning framework are environmental, social and legal considerations.
To a considerable extent, these exist as constraints on the development of an advertising plan and
decision making. In developing specific advertisement, there are certain legal constraints that must
be considered. Deceptive advertising is forbidden by law. What is deceptive is often difficult,
because different people can have different perceptions of the same advertisements. Thus, an
advertiser who attempts to provide specific, relevant information must be well aware of what
constitutes deception in a legal and ethical sense and of other aspects of advertising regulation.

Even more difficult consideration for people involved in the advertising effort is broad social and
economic issues as stated below.
 Does advertising raise prices or inhibit competition?
 Is the use of sex or fear appeals is appropriate? Women and minority groups are exploited
in advertising by casting them in highly stereotyped roles.
 Is it more irritating than entertaining?
 Is an intrusion into an already excessively polluted environment?
 Advertising directed at children.

Advertiser and the Advertising Agency interface

From a situation analysis point of view, the advertiser needs to know what kinds of facilitating
agencies exist and the nature of the services they provide. From a planning point of view much
local advertising is done without the services of an advertising agency or a research supplier. On
the other hand, a national advertiser may have under contract many different agencies and
research suppliers, each serving one or more brands in a product line. Many advertising decisions
involve choosing facilitating agency alternatives.

 What advertising agency should be chosen?

 What media should be used?
 What copy test supplier will be best for our particular situation?

Concerning the question of agency selection, characteristics such as the quality of personnel,
reputation, integrity, mutual understanding, interpersonal compatibility and synergism were very
important.

Advertising Industry

The advertising industry consists of three principal groups:

A. Sponsors;
B. Media ; and
C. Advertising agencies or advertising departments. Advertising agencies are of two
basic types, viz., Independent; and House.

An independent agency is a business that is free to compete for and select its clients. A house
agency is owned by its major client. A house agency is not completely free to serve other clients.
The advertising department an integral part of the organization it serves.

The advertising agency provides for the client a minimum of:

(i) Media information, such as the availability of time and space ;
(ii) Creative skills, such as “campaign planning” and “appeal planning” and
(iii) Research capabilities, such as providing brand preference data.

What is an Advertising Agency?

An advertising agency is an independent organization set up to render specialized services in
advertising in particular and in marketing in general. Advertising agencies started as space brokers
for the handling of the advertisements placed in newspapers. Over the years, the function of the
agencies has changed. Their main job today is not to aid media but to serve advertisers.

Working with Advertising Agency

Some organization does not employ advertising agencies because they may be eligible for the
media discount. Others feel that they can accomplish the advertising objectives more effectively
than the agencies themselves. These marketers often employ their own advertising specialists.
Various organizations use captive agencies that work primarily or solely for the organization.
Those organizations which do employ agencies are well-advised to establish a strong working
relationship with them. It is especially important that the marketer fully inform the agency
personnel of his marketing strategy and advertising objectives.

Advantage of Using Agencies

1. The marketer gains a number of benefits by employing agencies. An agency generally has
an invaluable experience in dealing with various advertising and marketing issues.
2. The lessons which agency learned in working with other clients are useful inputs for the
marketer.
3. An agency may employ specialists in the various areas of preparation and implementation of
advertising plans and strategies.
4. The personnel are not members of the marketer‟s management team. They bring objective
and unbiased viewpoints to the solution of advertising and other marketing problems.
5. The discounts that the media offer to agencies are also available to advertisers. This is a
strong stimulus to them to use an agency, for the media cost is not much affected thereby.
6. The company normally does not have as many types of specialists as a large or medium-
sized advertising agency has because an agency can spread the costs or its staff over many
clients. It can do more for the same amount of money.
7. The company can also get an objective, outside viewpoint from an agency, assuming that the
agency representatives are not acting as “Yes man” in order to keep the advertiser‟s account.
 8. A related point is that the company can benefit from the agency‟s experience with many
other products and clients.
9. Another advantage is that agency feels a greater pressure than the company‟s own
department to produce effective results. The relations between an agency and a client are
very easy to terminate; but it is difficult to get rid of an ineffective advertising department.
10. The manner in which agencies are compensated, the use of an agency may not cost the
advertiser a single paisa.

Making the Final Decision

When you judge the final agency work, keep the following points in mind :
If, despite your instructions, an expensive and glossy presentation has been produced, it is clear
that the agency is desperate for business and is prepared to curt down on the service to existing
clients in the hope of netting a new account. Would you wish to join the ranks of those clients ?
A good example of glossy presentations going adrift was reported in Advertising Age, October 9,
1967. Trans World Airlines (TWA) decided to remain with Foote, Cone & Belding after hearing
presentations from 17 other invited agencies. The magazine states : “An executive from one of the
losing shops said he was prepared fir the gamble, but not for the reaction of one of his clients. The
Client, believing reports that the TWA presentations set back the contending agencies by as much
as one million dollars, asked his shop to invest a proportionate amount of money in a new campaign
for his top product.

“He said, in effect, that we are spending this money to make a presentation for another account,
and now we should spend some of his money to improve his advertising,” the advertising executive
said.
Lastly, ask yourself, and if necessary, ask the agency, too :
Is the team the produced the advertising really made up of the people who are going to handle your
account afterwards? Or was it produced by the agency‟s star performers who spend most of their
time on new business presentations and the rest of it on a few favoured accounts?
Selecting an Agency
While selecting an advertising agency, the importance of compatibility should be borne in mind.
An agency takes a long time to grasp the problems and accumulate the facts that are necessary for
the smooth functioning of a client.
Though this investment period is long, it pays rich dividends. Therefore, an agency should not be
frequently changed.

Here are some points that can help the advertiser to:

(i) Choose an agency ; and

(ii) Get the best out of an agency.

(i) Choosing an Agency

The agency should be able to think independently on various problems, and not solve them by pre-
conceived notions which it is unwilling to change.
The agency should have experience in selling goods and ideas. It should be able to bring in more
results than anticipated.
The company should be financially sound and should be able to cover both local and national
advertising campaigns.
The size of the agency should not be seriously taken into account. A big agency is not necessarily
a better than a small agency.
The agency should not be one that hesitates to correct the advertiser if it feels that he is wrong.
The agency should be able to use both research and brains to solve problems.
An agency that plans to make a profit on an account should be chosen, rather than one that
maintains that it will work on a no-profit-no-loss basis.
Getting the Best Out of an Agency

 The agency should be given all possible information if good service is expected from it.
 The advertiser should go as far as possible to keep the agency on its toes.
 The agency should be challenged to produce results.
 Criticism, when it is handed out, should not be only unfavourable. It should also be
favourable.
 Unnecessary details should not be fussed over.
 The advertiser should appoint a special person for liaison work between his company and
the agency, and not expect the agency to contact the junior staff.
 The advertiser should allow the agency, where necessary, to break away from convention
in its presentations.
 The agency should be paid extra, if it does any extra work.
 The advertiser should examine the work his agency does for other parties to get new ideas.

It is about time that the top management looked upon advertising as a basic capital investment –a
long-term investment –which does not necessarily always bring in immediate returns. The
management should realize that advertising has two functions to perform. It has to sell products
today and sell the name of the company, so that tomorrow‟s products, too, will sell.