Advertising and Promotion

As an IMC marketer it’s important to identify all stake holders connected to a brand in order to deliver a consistent and concise message that achieves results. However, it is just as important to “…[look] at all available communication options and using those which best help effectively and efficiently meet a brand’s marketing communication objectives,” says Larry Percy in his text Strategic Integrated Marketing Communications. In week two of our IMC class we discussed the Elements of IMC, which are Advertising, Promotion, Direct Marketing, Personal Selling and others.

From week two I learned that the primary purpose of advertising is to build brand awareness and brand attitude, while promotions are intended to drive short-term sales or product usage. Our text discussed the Latin root of the word advertising (advertere), meaning ‘to turn towards.’ This Latin root explains the role advertising plays within an IMC message strategy, which is to turn consumers toward a brand. This process of turning consumers toward a brand through advertising takes time and is therefore executed as a long term IMC goal. On the other hand, the Latin root for promotion (promovere), meaning to ‘move ahead,’ is designed to produce an immediate or short-term response to a brand in the form of sales or some specified action that benefits the respondent. While the objective of both advertising and promotion are to build brand awareness and attitude, a promotion, from a tactical standpoint, is really designed to accelerate the decision process of a consumer. Whether we are using advertising or promotion to build brand awareness or attitude we need to know how they function differently and how best to use them to achieve our IMC objectives.