Advertising Planning

What is an advertising strategy?

Deciding strategy before starting to create advertising is common practice. But the definition of strategy is far from commonly agreed upon. Is it strategy to use a celebrity spokesperson? To compare one product with a competitor? To use a popular song as a theme? No, these are executional decisions. But I've often heard these described as strategic decisions.

To be meaningful, a strategic plan must:

...define a course of action about the future. It is not a reaction to events but a deliberate attempt to influence them.
...set parameters. Strategy implies a deliberate willingness to ignore certain business targets in favor of pursuing of others. The essence of strategic positioning is sacrifice.

Advertising works by causing people to respond to a brand in ways that will be beneficial to the advertiser: try it, buy it, use it, keep using it, use more, invest in it, pay more for it.

Advertising strategy involves three decisions:

HOW can advertising help the brand the most?

This is not as simple a question to answer as it may seem. You may decide the best way for advertising to help the brand is to focus on current customers, to get them to stay with the brand or use more of it. Or it may be better to focus on customers of competitive brands, to bring them to yours. Or it might be best to focus on people who are new to the product category, to convince them to use it for the first time.

Each of these choices will lead the advertising in a different direction. And it requires careful study and information to make a wise choice.

WHO is the target?

The "target audience" for advertising can be defined in several ways: demographically (age, income, occupation), psychographically (lifestyle, interests, hobbies, values), attitudinally (benefits sought from the product/service, perceptions of the brands), behaviorally (frequency of use of the product or service, brand switching, brand loyalty, price level).

Defining the target with some precision helps in knowing how to communicate with them and how to reach them.

WHAT do we want people to notice, think and feel?

Advertising, or any marketing communications, is a series of stimuli which produce a response from people.The strategy should define what response is desired. The creative process will determine how best to get it.

Successful advertising will cause people to notice something about the brand (a sensory response), to think something (a rational response), and to feel something (an emotional response). This combination of sensory, rational and emotional responses is a key part of an advertising strategy.

Deciding what they should be before creating advertising will save a lot of time and increase the chances of success. While the marketer is selling a product or service, people are buying benefits. As Theodore Levitt reminded us, people don't want a 1/4" drill bit, they want a 1/4" hole. Good advertising will make the case for how and why a person will benefit from choosing the advertised brand over any others.