Advertising Principles

and Practices

Strategic Planning
 Questions We’ll Answer
• What is the difference between objectives,
strategies, and tactics in strategic planning?
• How is a campaign plan constructed, and
what are its six basic sections?
• What is account planning and how is it
used in advertising?
• In what ways does an IMC plan differ
from an advertising plan?

Prentice Hall, © 2009 7-2

 Strategic Planning
• For marketing communication, strategic planning
is the process of identifying a problem that can be
solved with marketing communications,
determining objectives, deciding on strategies, and
implementing tactics.
– Objective—a goal you want to accomplish.
– Strategy—means, design, or plan for
accomplishing objectives.
– Tactics—actions that execute the plan, such as
how an ad is designed or written.

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 Strategic
Planning from
Top to Bottom
The business plan and
marketing plan
provide direction for
advertising planning
and other areas.

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Strategic Planning: the Business Plan
• May cover an SBU (strategic business unit) which is a
line of products or all offerings of a brand.
– The objective is profit or Return-on-Investment (ROI).
– ROI is revenue earned above the amount invested.
– Business planning starts with a a mission statement; an
expression of goals and policies.

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 Sample Mission Statement
• This mission statement
for Tom’s of Maine helps
its managers develop
specific business
objectives and goals. It
also guides all of
the company’s
Visit the
marketing Site
communication
efforts.

Prentice Hall, © 2009 7-7

Strategic Planning: the Marketing Plan
• Developed for a brand or product line, usually annually.
• Parallels the business strategic plan and contains many of
the same components.
• A market situation analysis assesses the environment
affecting marketing.
• Objectives are focused on sales levels and share of market.

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 Strategic Planning: the
Advertising or IMC Plan
• Advertising or IMC plan
also includes objectives,
strategies, and tactics (like
business and marketing
plan).
• The focus is on the
communication program
supporting a brand.

Prentice Hall, © 2009 7-8

 A Campaign Plan
• More tightly focused on Typical Campaign
solving a particular Plan Outline
problem in a particular
time frame. I. Situation analysis
• Includes a variety of II. Key strategic
messages carried in decisions
different media and III. Media strategy
sometimes targeted to IV. Message strategy
different audiences. V. Other tools
VI. Campaign
management
See pg. 197 for detail.
Prentice Hall, © 2009 7-9
 Campaign Plan:
Situation Analysis
• Backgrounding
– Research and review the state of the business that is
relevant to the brand and gather all pertinent information
– A problem statement identifies the problem to be solved
• SWOT Analysis
– Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats

Principle:
Analysis of SWOT means finding ways to
address the weaknesses and threats and
leverage the strengths and opportunities.

Prentice Hall, © 2009 7-10

 Campaign Plan:
Situation Analysis
• Key problems and opportunities
– Analyze the market situation for communication
problems that hinder successful marketing and find
opportunities advertising can create or exploit.
– Advertising can’t solve problems related to price,
availability, or quality; but it can address the perception
of high prices or portray limited distribution as
exclusivity.

Principle:
Advertising can only solve message-related or
perception problems.

Prentice Hall, © 2009 7-11

 Campaign Plan: Objectives
• Objective—formal goal
statement outlining what the
message is supposed to
achieve and how it will be
measured
• The six categories of effects
or facets can serve as a basis
for common consumer-
focused objectives.
– Perception, emotion, cognition,
persuasion, association,
behavior

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 Campaign Plan: Objectives
• Some objectives are tightly
focused on a single effect;
others require a complex set
of effects. Special K Ad 2
– A campaign to create brand
loyalty must have both cognitive
(rational) and affective
(emotional) effects, and it must
move people to repeat buying
(behavioral).
• Advertising is effective if it
creates an impression,
influences people to respond,
and separates the brand from
the competition.
Prentice Hall, © 2009 7-13
 Campaign Plan: Objectives
• Objectives must be measurable so advertisers know
if the campaign or advertising is effective.
• Five requirements of a measurable objective:
– Specific effect that can be measured
– A time frame
– A baseline (where we are, where we begin)
– The goal (realistic estimate of change to be created)
– Percentage change (subtract the baseline from the goal;
divide the difference by the baseline)
• Sample Objective: “The goal of this campaign is to
increase customer awareness of Kodak’s digital
products from 20% to 25% in 12 months.”

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 Campaign Plan: Targeting
• Marketing communications strategy is
based on accurately targeting an audience
that will respond to a particular message.
• Targeting is identifying and profiling an
audience.
• Targeting is also getting inside the heads
and hearts of the audience to find out what
kind of message will motivate them.

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 Campaign Plan: Positioning
• A brand’s position its place in consumers’ minds
where the product or brand stands in comparison to
the competition.
• Factors that define the competitive situation:
– Product features and attributes, both tangible and
intangible.
• Feature analysis is used to assess features relative to
competitors’ products.
– Competitive advantage is where 1) the product has a
strong feature, 2) in an area that is important to the
target, and 3) where the competition is weaker.
– Differentiation is a strategy that focuses attention to
product differences that distinguish the company’s
product from all others in the eyes of consumers.
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 Campaign Plan: Positioning
• Two factors used to locate the brand position:
– Psychological factors
• Volvo = safety, Coke = authentic, Hallmark = quality, Avis
= underdog
– Consumer decision factors
• Features or attributes such as fashion, price, quality
• Planners use a technique called perceptual mapping to
plot competitors on a matrix based on two important
decision factors

Principle:
The goal of positioning is to establish a product in
the consumer’s mind based on its features and
advantages relative to its competition.
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A Perceptual Map for Cars

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Campaign Plan: Repositioning
• Repositioning can only work if the new position is
related to the brand’s core concept.
• Although advertising shapes the position, the
position is anchored in the target audience’s minds
by their personal experiences.
• The role of advertising in repositioning is to relate
the new position to the target market’s life
experience and associations.

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Brand Communication Strategy
How consumers respond to marketing communications
messages creates a brand perception.
Consumer Response Advertiser’s Objective
Perceive Creates brand identity
Feel Cue brand personality
Think Cue brand position
Associate Cue brand image
Believe Create brand promise and
brand preference
Do Inspire brand loyalty

Insert Harley-Davidson discussion about brand

Video Snippet
Noted on Video Snippets sheet. Harley-Davidson talks
about its brand.
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Brand Communication Strategy
• Brand identity
– Must be distinctive and familiar in terms of name, logo, colors,
typeface, design, and slogan
• Brand personality
– Human characteristics like loving, trustworthy, sophisticated
• Brand position
– The soul or essence of the brand; it stands for something
that matters to consumers
• Brand image
– The mental image consumers construct for a product based on
symbols and associations that customer link to a brand
• Brand promise and brand preference
– Believing the promise that a brand will meet your expectations
leads to brand preference
• Brand loyalty
– A connection built over time that leads to repeat purchases

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Campaign Strategic Approach
• Determining how to achieve objectives requires a
general strategy statement.
– May focus on branding, positioning, countering the
competition, or creating category dominance
– Change customer perceptions, price perceptions, or the
price-value relationship
– Increase “share of wallet,” launch a new brand or brand
extension, or move brand to a new market
– Create excitement about a brand promotion
• Strategies are designed to create a particular
consumer responses.
– Those responses can be tied to the six facets

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 Campaign Implementation
and Management: Budgeting
• Historical Method
– Last year’s budget plus inflation; not based on goals
• Objective-Task Method
– What do we want to do and what will it cost?
– Based on goals
• Percentage-of-Sales Method
– Compares total sales with total advertising to get ratio
• Competitive Budgets
– Use competitors’ budgets as benchmarks and relates to the
product’s share of market
• All You Can Afford
– Whatever is left over; not a strategic approach
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 Campaign Implementation
and Management: Evaluation
• The process of determining the
effectiveness of a campaign.
• It’s impossible without established,
measurable objectives.

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 Account Planning
• Account planning is the research and analysis
process used to gain knowledge of the consumer
and uncover key consumer insights about how
people relate to a brand or product.
• An account planner is the agency person who uses
a disciplined system to research a brand and its
consumer relationships to devise messages to
effectively address consumer needs and wants.

Principle:
The account manager is seen as the voice of the
client, and the account planner is seen as the
voice of the consumer.

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Account Planner’s Mission

• Who? Who are you trying to reach and

what insight do you have about how they
think, feel, and act? How should they
respond to your advertising message?

• What? What do you say to them? What

directions from the consumer research are
useful to the creative team?

• Where? How and where will you reach

them? What directions from the consumer
research are useful to the media team?

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Account Planning: Research
• Account planners use
consumer research to get
inside the target’s heads,
hearts and lives.
• The key to effective
advertising is a powerful
consumer insight.
• Account planners are
information integrators
who bring all the info
together; and synthesizers
who express what it all
means in one simple
statement.

Prentice Hall, © 2009 7-27

 Consumer Insight:
the Fuel of Big Ideas
• Account planners look at advertising as an
“insight factory” instead of an “idea factory.”
• Consumer insights provide fuel for the big
ideas.
• Account planners use strategic and critical
thinking to interpret consumer research to
find relevant consumer insights that explain
why consumers will care about a brand
message.

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 Insight Mining
• Finding the “a-ha” in a
stack of research reports,
data, and transcripts is the
greatest challenge for an
account planner.
• Account planners use
strategic and critical
thinking to interpret
consumer research to find
relevant consumer insights
that explain why consumers
will care about a brand
message.

Prentice Hall, © 2009 7-29

The Account Planning Group
• Founded in 1979, The APG is the longest-established
organization representing the interests of account
planners worldwide. A non-profit-making members’
organization with around 700 members, APG is open
to account planners, communications strategists and
anyone with an interest in these areas. Its activities
include training, meetings, seminars, social events,
publications, and every second year, the APG Creative
Planning Awards.
Visit the
Site

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 The Communications Brief
• The outcome of research, the communication
brief (or creative brief) is a document that
explains the consumer insight and
summarizes the basic strategy decisions.
• The first step in the creative process, it is
designed to spark creativity and serve as a
springboard for ideas.

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Communications Brief Outline
• Problem: What’s the problem that communication can solve?
(establish position, increase loyalty, increase liking, etc.).
• Target audience: Who do we want to speak to? (brand loyal,
heavy users, infrequent users, competition’s users, etc.) .
• Consumer insights: What motivates the target? What are the
“major truths” about the target’s relationship to the product?
• The brand imperatives: What are the important features and
competitive advantage? What’s the position? Also, what’s the
brand essence, brand personality and/or image?
• Communication objectives: What do we want customers to do in
response to our messages? (perception, knowledge, feelings,
symbolic meanings, attitudes and conviction, action).
• The proposition or selling idea: What is the single thought that
the communication will bring to life in a provocative way?
• Support: What is the reason to believe the proposition?
• Creative direction: How can you best stimulate the desired
response? How can we best say it?
• Media imperatives: Where and when should we say it?
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 What is IMC planning?
• Integrated Marketing Communications
(IMC) planning is similar to advertising
planning but is broader in scope and
involves more marketing communication
areas.
• The objective is to most effectively use all
marketing communications tools and
functions and to control the impact of
other communication elements.
• Effective IMC leads to profitable long-
term brand relationships.

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Differences in IMC Planning
• Stakeholders
– The target market in IMC is not just
consumers, it’s anyone who has a stake in the
company’s success (employees, shareholders).
• Contact points (touch points)
– IMC maximizes all contacts stakeholders have
with the brand; where a message is delivered.
• IMC objectives
– IMC uses interrelated objectives with specific
strategies for different tools (e.g., PR to
announce, sales promotion to drive action).

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Table 7.3 Types of Stakeholder Audiences

Corporate Level Marketing Level Marketing Communication Level

Employees Consumers Target audiences

Investors, financial Customers Target stakeholders
community (analysts, Stakeholders Employees
brokers, and the Market segments Trade audiences
financial press) Distributors, dealers, Local community
Government bodies retailers, and others in Media (general, special interest,
and agencies the distribution channel trade)
Regulatory bodies Suppliers and vendors, Consumer activist groups
Business partners including agencies groups
Competitors General public
Opinion leaders

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Table 7.3 Marketing Communication Objectives

Marketing
Communication Area Typical Objectives

Public Relations Announce news; affect attitudes and opinions; maximize credibility and
likeability; create and improve stakeholder relationships

Consumer Sales Stimulate behavior; generate immediate response; intensify needs,

Promotion wants, and motivations; reward behavior; stimulate involvement and
relevance; create pull through the channel

Trade Sales Build industry acceptance; push through the channel; motivate
Promotion cooperation; energize sales force, dealers, distributors

Point-of-Purchase Increase immediate sales; attract attention at decision point; create

interest; stimulate urgency; encourage trial and impulse purchasing

Direct Marketing Stimulate sale; create personal interest and relevance; provide
information; create acceptance, conviction

Sponsorship and Build awareness; create brand experience, participation, interaction,

Events involvement; create excitement

Packaging Increase sales; attract attention at selection point; deliver product

information; create brand reminder

Specialties Reinforce brand identity; continuous brand reminder; reinforce

satisfaction; encourage repeat purchase

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 Synergy in IMC Planning
• IMC planning involves many messages delivered
through multiple media at many different contact
points.
• The planner’s biggest concern is creating
consistent messages.
• Synergy means that the brand impact of all
messages together is greater than what any one
type of message could deliver.
• Synergy requires cross-functional planning—
everyone involved in creating and delivering
messages should be involved in planning to
ensure consistency.

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