Advertising

Advertising, to put it simple is a way of creating awareness about a product and its features so that it creates an interest in a consumer. The one question I wanted to explore was “Can advertising persuade a consumer to buy a product?” If so which form of advertising is much better? When it comes to form of advertising the number of forms is huge. Advertising through Press releases, print ads in magazines, billboards, ads on T-shirts of sportsmen, TV advertisements etc. I did not do a thorough research to point out that so and so is the best advertising tool. But I am writing about the form, which I found was very effective, after talking with a host of people.
I interacted with around 20 customers and found out that most of them will buy a product if its features are appealing. So an Ad should bring out the best features of a product. In many marketing situations TV Ads do not work that well. For example take B2B marketing or technology sale. We rarely see television ads. A TV ad is of a limited duration (around 30 seconds at max normally) and it is not possible to create the kind of awareness and talk about product features that would result in a customer inquiring about the product. Intel is one of the technology companies that do a TV ad. But its brand name and the customer mind share it already has makes it easy. Intel doesn’t have to explain its technology in depth. But can simply say which is the new chip they have come up with. They could be sure a customer buying a new computer would end up enquiring whether it has the new Intel chip. I talked with over 20 people to get an idea about the influence of advertising on products that they are already aware of. Lets take Coca Cola and PepsiCo. Many of their products are very similar and are perfect substitutes. Many people don’t care whether they are drinking Maaza or Slice. It comes down to availability and which name is easy and kind of flashy to say. PepsiCo has Nimbooz and Coke has NimbuFresh. If both are available then people preferred Nimbooz to NimbuFresh as the name is catchy and cool.
As the cost of a product increases awareness amongst target market also increases. I conducted a small survey and found out that consumers who shop (mostly consumers going to supermarket to shop) go through the features of the product. An ad itself will not result in consumers buying a product. A well made Ad (and Ads which use celebrities) will get the attention of consumers but won’t guarantee a sale. But majority of respondents agreed that once they know about a product an Ad on the same gets them to stick with the product. Either because the product, with repeated ads, is now more popular or they don’t trust brands which don’t carry any form of advertising.
One of the interesting things that I found during this small survey is many people try a product if friends recommend it. This is one of the things I too found out from my interaction with CIOs and IT heads during my internship (in technology marketing). I did have the opportunity to listen to Chethan Bhagat (he was called for an event by Fortinet, company I interned in). When somebody asked him a question on how he markets his books, his answer was he doesn’t spend anything on marketing. He simply believes in word of mouth. I do think word of mouth is the strongest form of advertising. If a company can get its consumers to vouch for its products then it simply doesn’t have to worry about advertising. Look at Apple if it comes out with an Iphone 4 a lot buzz is already created. Newspapers pick up the release. From social networking to casual talks over coffee people start talking about the new gadget. Look at social networking sites like twitter and Facebook they need little advertising. I for one moved away from Yahoo messenger to Gtalk because all my friends recommended that. In the end it was like I wouldn’t find any of my friends in Yahoo messenger.
In this day and age where consumers are well informed I don’t think there is any better way than having customers themselves as the brand ambassadors. Companies who want market share should make the customers talk…