advertising

Women in advertising

2010-11-11T05:39:00.000-08:00

Men and women are different. It was designed by nature like this and there is nothing wrong about it as they perfectly supplement each other. There are stable images of men and women roles in the society, which are very difficult to change or overcome. Men are usually regarded as strong and resolute, clever and quick. Female roles are reduced to pretty and sexy objects. Advertising not only reflects the situation on the world market, but also the tendencies of the modern society and thing, which are in requisition. Gender plays in important role in advertising and gender stereotypes very often define the advertising style.

Men generally carry more important social roles, with very few exceptions, and this is reflected in the advertisements. Men play roles of authorities in the advertisements who either give examples of express their professional opinion in the contrast to women, who mainly play submissive roles of users of the products.

Advertisement can be called a measure of social opinion as it expresses the needs of the society but at the same time it also forms it. It plays a vital role in promoting labels and stereotypes. Certain ads are targeted to certain social groups. Ads, which display different female characters, appeal to different social groups.
In my paper I would like to study different approaches to woman in advertising, such as treating women as sex object, housewife, submissive, mother, professional, dumb blonde, in order to analyse social position of women and their perspectives.
Lets focus on each type of advertisements in order to study the social role it gives to women.

Women in advertising

First, and most traditional category of advertisements depicts women as typical housewife, fulfilling the major gender stereotype of the mankind. These characters radiate sweetness, warm-heartedness and passion to house holding. For example, the advertisement of commercially laundry “Bryza”, underlines the laundry to be totally women occupation. In the advertisement man is singing about children and stains and then addresses women with the words “Now You have Bryza”. Such an attitude implies that only women can and must be interested in laundry and other issued connected with house holding. Another bright example of such an attitude is an ad of Virginia Slims. This advertisement states “The sexiest move that a guy can make [in the house] is cleaning up.” Such an attitude presupposes that cleaning is fully women’s occupation and men, who help their women about the house, are doing the heroic deed and should be treated as heroes.

Examples are multiple and we can calculate up to a dozen of advertisement, where women act as typical housewives during one commercial block. Such an attitude humiliates female dignity and strengthens social stereotype about the woman as a housewife. There is nothing bad in being a good housewife or taking care about husband and children. It’s bad when all the life is artificially and intentionally centred all around this aspect. In order to understand the accordance of this category to ethical norms, we should define on the ethics first. Ethics, or moral philosophy is defined as a set of regulation, which define right or wrong behaviour. From the ethical point of view, popularising the ideal of house keeping can not be regarded as something wrong. We should look deeper into the root of the problem to see another ethical problem here. Such kind of ads can limit female rights. Voluntary or not, but with the help of these ads socials role of the woman is reduced to the role of typical housewife. All the actions should be agreed with the ethics of the profession.

The role of submissive mother originally arises from the role of housewife. Motherhood is one of main destinations of all women. We all know about this from the childhood. Unfortunately, fatherhood isn’t considered to be one of the main social roles of the man. Rising children is considered to be mainly female prerogative. Such an attitude is reflected in the advertisements, where all children are accompanied by their caring and submissive mothers. These are mothers, who make the children ready to school, cook them breakfast, take care about their health, appearance, toys, etc.

The chances to see a man in the role of loving father is very small or equals zero. These stereotypes about the role of woman as submissive mother are reflected in ad of Chewi-Quaker. Small girl is worried about new surrounding after moving to another school, but becomes popular when finds Chewis and messages from her loving mother in her lunch box. Another very bright example is a Cheetos advertisement, where the mother of four children is driving a family van around the city. These are typical ad when loving and caring mother helps her kids. It’s hard for us to imagine any man on the place of the woman in the ads about children.

These ads are light and touching, but they serve a bad service persuading the society that taking care about the children is fully feminine responsibility. The social role of woman is changed nowadays and the range of her responsibilities goes much further than housework or raising children. In many families women work on a par with men or even more, but old social stereotypes are still alive and still give the perverted idea about the female role in the society. Same as the first category, the ads which include the patters of the submissive mothers don’t contradict any ethical norms directly as they don’t include any lies or violence, but the result can break the ethical norm, breaking the balance between social and personal life of the women.

Targeted Marketing

2010-11-11T05:37:00.000-08:00

business strategies

Occasionally I read some really compelling information regarding business strategies and I'd like to share with you a concept in the power of targeted marketing that has really caught my attention. The idea in this concept is for a person to focus his/her marketing efforts toward a specific audience who holds an interest in the very product/service being sold. When marketing strategies of this nature are applied, the results are exceedingly more beneficial than when a more generally targeted strategy is used. For example, if marketing to a general audience who holds interests in a wide range of products/services as apposed to a targeted, specific

product/service, the results in sales generated from this effort would be greatly diminished compared to the results in sales realized through focusing on a concentrated interest among an audience. The reason for this is because within an audience of people with a large range of interests only a few of the people will find interest in the product/service offered to them. Conversely, when marketing to an audience of people who all hold the same interest in the product/service being offered, every single person in your audience is much more apt to respond to the marketing efforts.

This concept can be likened to a ship at sea that is focused on a specific destination (or target.) If the ship maintains it's aim toward the specific target, the ship will effectively reach its target because of the concentrated effort. However, if the ship is aimed in a wide range of directions, the ship's target will in effect be missed and there will be a great deal of effort and energy wasted as the ship meanders here and there. Targeting a specific audience with a specific interest enables you to avoid wasted marketing efforts, time and money. And this is the true power that is found in targeted marketing.

thanks for Joe Clinton

How to Build a Survey

2010-11-08T00:42:00.000-08:00

Now lets look at what a good survey should contain.

1. First you need to look at what it is you are trying to discover or achieve with this survey. Or in other words, what's the point of the survey. Also, you should figure what action will be taken as a result of this survey.

3. With an idea of where your going, it's now important to figure out how your going to get there. So ask yourself "how easy is it going to be to get the appropriate information from my respondents?" If it's too hard, then you need to revise your questions or technique. You can do this by changing the question or the method.

4. It's time now to look at the questions your going to ask. Are the questions in the proper order? Does one question have an effect on the following question? Do the questions provide answers that are relevant to the survey as a whole.

5. Write down multiple versions on the same question. These questions make up the heart of the survey, make sure that you are using the right ones.

6. It's important to test your questions before coming up with your final survey. Pretest the survey on 20 or more people. This should give you an understanding of the abilities of the survey. Also, you should time your survey. A good survey takes only 10-15 minutes to administer.

7. After pretesting the survey, look at the respondents answers. When reviewing the responses ask yourself: Did the answers make sense? Were the respondents unsure about anything? Did the respondents have any questions about the survey? Were the questions understood? Was there anything surprising in the responses?

8. With this information in hand you're now ready to make the official survey. Once the survey has been re-tooled, pretest it again to make sure that the efficiency of the questionnaire is maximized.

However, creating a survey is only half of the story. Once you’ve put the right questions together and in the right order, you need to decide on how you’re going to administer the survey.

Each method of distribution comes with it’s own type of response. You need to look at all the different ways of reaching your respondents. Surveys by phone, email, mail, online, or in person can yield different types of responses. It’s worth your time to sit down and consider which of these methods would most likely suite the needs of your research.

Once you’ve settled on the method of delivery, and you’ve administered all of your surveys, it’s time to collect and sort through the mass of data you’ve received. How this is done, and with what technique you will accomplish this, is up to you. There are lots of options out there, but it’s important to look into the ones that will help you accomplish your overall goal.

It’s crucial with any survey to always keep in mind the big picture. Remember during every stage of development, distribution, and collection to make sure that your research needs are being met.

Effective Advertising Pointers

2010-11-08T00:39:00.000-08:00

Businesses often become known today through effective marketing. The marketing may be in the form of a regular news item or half column society news in the Sunday newspaper. The marketing may be in the form of a heart to heart talk with Mr. Brown on his prominent local television show. These are all advertising. Businesses cannot get away from the force of advertising. If they want to make their products known in the marketplace they have to use some form of advertisement. Advertising is being more and more known as a reasonable and desirable business force.

Let’s say you own a department store. The advertising manager of the store is like the managing editor of a daily newspaper with his group of reporters regularly bringing fresh matter to his desk and the different department heads acts as the reporters.

Take it on a Thursday or Friday, when the big Sunday advertisements are in process of construction, the scene is remarkably lively, and the man at the head of the advertising department has plenty occasions to exercise his ready cleverness and level-headedness. He must have very clear-cut and definite ideas as to what's what, and no matter what influence may be brought to bear upon him by the different managers the advertising manager must have a stamina to select what he considers the best and arrange the same as he thinks wise, while at the same time he must have sufficient tact and skill to do these things without hurting the feelings of buyers—who, after all, are the real powers in the department store.

The advertising manager soon knows the buyers. Of course, the manager has a pretty accurate knowledge of the products. He knows what the other stores are advertising. And he sees to it that the prices that go into print do not run higher than competing figures. Thus, every advertising manager should constantly study his market – which marketing material is best or which language is best – he should not shoot too high or too low. Likewise, his brain must constantly be devising new ideas and sales method to attract the public.

In choosing the right marketing material to use, the manager should consider their audience, their product and their budget. A good ad is very important but if its cost and design does not complement the product you might as well receive poor sales. For this reason, it is important to carefully consider how to design the material, what to include in it and how to print it. There are a lot of affordable printing techniques today. The method that you will choose will depend on the material that you will produce. Thus, carefully weigh your options.

Indirect Advertising

2010-11-03T01:37:00.000-07:00

I am reasonably certain that anyone reading this article is familiar with all the free online advertising methods such as the all-too familiar Sp-m emails, Classified Ads, FFA pages, Banners, Text Ads, Traffic Exchanges, Newsletters, Guaranteed Visitors, Paid to Read, Paid to Join, Link Swaps, Pop-ups, as well as many other types of 'In-Your-Face' advertising, some of which may have been dreamed up since this article was written.

What I would like you to consider is this: What do you think when you see this kind of stuff yourself? More to the point, what is your 'Frame of Mind' at that moment?

My guess is you think, "Here we go again..." and your shields go up. You pull up your waders and trudge on through, oblivious to the thousands of messages ricocheting off your armor as you collect a few more hits for your own website promotion or product offer.

With Millions of would be online Millionaires doing this hour after hour and day after day, is it any wonder that the Internet slows down to a crawl and even stops at times?

Now consider the "Frame of Mind" of a visitor that came looking for you to see what you are doing. Maybe even to ask a few questions and give you permission to email them. Does this sound like a more productive environment?

The online equivalent to this scene is being played out today and every day and you can participate for free. It is called 'Social Networking' and more information on this is easily found with your favorite search engine.

Imagine if you are no longer perceived as another 'Salesman' but as a "Fellow Business Person" with similar problems and often good ideas for their solutions. Much like Napoleon Hill wrote about in his world renown-book, "Think and Grow Rich", you could be a team member of a virtual Mastermind Group. Chamber of Commerce Mixers have been an example of this approach for years and have been very successful for some who get it. Now you can accomplish nearly the same thing for your home business from your own computer.

Keep in mind, this should not be just another place to plaster your links. The strongest relationships are formed by giving first. Do a mental inventory and come up with something you know or have that would help others more than yourself. Find a way to offer it with no strings attached, no signup or email address required, just give it freely. I know it sounds crazy in this dog-eat-dog world, but trust me it works.

Alright, now it is all up to you. Continue contributing to the degradation of Internet bandwidth with the huge numbers of attempts required (many not even reaching their target) to get a single response, or try something that builds future relationships with new friends that are truly interested in what you are doing and not just trying to sell you something.

How to Build a Survey

2010-11-03T01:35:00.000-07:00

Anyone who has built a survey knows that it can be a hard, and arduous process. It takes an understanding of how research is done, to create a truly effective survey. The most important step in creating a good survey is knowing what it is that you want to understand, and building your questions around that.

Now lets look at what a good survey should contain.

1. First you need to look at what it is you are trying to discover or achieve with this survey. Or in other words, what's the point of the survey. Also, you should figure what action will be taken as a result of this survey.

2. Now you need to picture in your head what kind of visuals will this survey produce. Graphs, tables, charts should all be formulated to help you achieve your end result, or action. So think about what your final data will look like and how it can be used to achieve your desired outcome.

3. With an idea of where your going, it's now important to figure out how your going to get there. So ask yourself "how easy is it going to be to get the appropriate information from my respondents?" If it's too hard, then you need to revise your questions or technique. You can do this by changing the question or the method.

4. It's time now to look at the questions your going to ask. Are the questions in the proper order? Does one question have an effect on the following question? Do the questions provide answers that are relevant to the survey as a whole.

5. Write down multiple versions on the same question. These questions make up the heart of the survey, make sure that you are using the right ones.

6. It's important to test your questions before coming up with your final survey. Pretest the survey on 20 or more people. This should give you an understanding of the abilities of the survey. Also, you should time your survey. A good survey takes only 10-15 minutes to administer.

7. After pretesting the survey, look at the respondents answers. When reviewing the responses ask yourself: Did the answers make sense? Were the respondents unsure about anything? Did the respondents have any questions about the survey? Were the questions understood? Was there anything surprising in the responses?

8. With this information in hand you're now ready to make the official survey. Once the survey has been re-tooled, pretest it again to make sure that the efficiency of the questionnaire is maximized.

However, creating a survey is only half of the story. Once you’ve put the right questions together and in the right order, you need to decide on how you’re going to administer the survey.

Each method of distribution comes with it’s own type of response. You need to look at all the different ways of reaching your respondents. Surveys by phone, email, mail, online, or in person can yield different types of responses. It’s worth your time to sit down and consider which of these methods would most likely suite the needs of your research.

Once you’ve settled on the method of delivery, and you’ve administered all of your surveys, it’s time to collect and sort through the mass of data you’ve received. How this is done, and with what technique you will accomplish this, is up to you. There are lots of options out there, but it’s important to look into the ones that will help you accomplish your overall goal.

It’s crucial with any survey to always keep in mind the big picture. Remember during every stage of development, distribution, and collection to make sure that your research needs are being met.

Key Points to Branding

2010-11-03T01:32:00.000-07:00

Here are four things you should keep in mind as you build your company’s brand:

1) Own the “Significant Thing”: Dole tried to be all things to all people spend your time focusing on a single clear message. Mercedes-Benz owns “ Engineering “ in the car industry because it’s focused on that singular message for decades.

2) Consistency is key: consistent presentation will ensure that your customers recognize you. Be consistent in the use of logos, taglines, visual elements, tone, and ad copy. Coca-Cola it is one of the most recognized brands in the world because they haven’t changed in decades. Make sure your brochures, website, Direct mail, and all the other advertising have the same feel and message.

3) Make your message relevant: know your audience, know what they care about and how to speak to them. Make sure what you sell is what they need. Remember the conversation should always be about your audience, not you.

4) Use a strong offer to motivate: you want your audience to remember you and you want its members to buy from you. You need to move them to action. A strong offer should give them a reason to buy. Make the offer clear and appropriate for your brand.

Every time a customer comes in contact with your brand, they will have either a positive or a negative experience. Those experiences will add to their perception of your brand. Those experiences are recalled later when it’s time to make a purchasing decision. How do you want your brand to be remembered when the time comes for a prospect to buy? You need to start building that positive perception today and do whatever is necessary to maintain it.

Good luck.

Branding – the myths and the realities

2010-06-30T10:30:00.000-07:00

Branding is easier said than done. Advertising gurus the world over are still mulling over what exactly defines branding. Why does one brand score over others and why does one fail to generate customer confidence despite everything going supposedly right for it?

Is it the logo?

Is it the color?

Is it the design of your ads, your brochures, the packaging of your products/services, the look of your corporate office, etc?

Or is it the promise that a particular product or service conveys – the promise of quality, authenticity and credibility?

Hmm…….actually it is a combination of all this. But primarily, it is the 4th point which matters most – the promise! Why is it that some products or companies are able to build up high brand recall and brand loyalty in the minds of their customers?

Whereas for some others, no amount of big budget advertising and marketing expenditure can help register their product as a brand people may keep coming back to?

Quality + Marketing = Winner

It really depends on two vital things – one, the quality of your product/service and two, the promotional and marketing mix you develop to reach out to your customers.

First and foremost, if you have a good quality product with great performance, coupled with warranties and the right kind of value for money, you have the arms required to win the war. That’s step one.

Now for the ammunition, that is the promotional mix that will position it as a brand that assures reliability. It is not enough to have a slick-looking logo, a trendy color combination, a visually appealing packaging and some hip ads splashed all over the TV channels, newspapers and the internet to win over the customer.

You must first know, what exactly is required to build up brand equity for your product. As an internet guru explains, a brand is like the cherry on top of an ice-cream pie where it conveys the brand’s promise. In fact, how you brand your corporate identity goes a long way in establishing your product/service in customer conscience.

While the ice-cream scoops stand for your products and services, the apples represent your corporate environment and crust in the pie is actually your systems and how effectively they work and respond to customers.

How does a brand convey its promise?

That’s actually quite an interesting way to look at branding. This promise of the brand is conveyed through quite a few factors:

•   the product’s reputation (the company’s own reputation also goes a long way here),
•   its experience (particularly if the product has been in the market for some time – a perfect material for viral marketing),
•   the product’s name – a catchy, easy to remember name helps
•   its logo – though innocuous looking, a logo is a stamp of authority
•   its positioning in the market and accordingly its pricing
•   news and reviews about it – the web 2.0 world is all about sharing notes, information and experiences through social networking sites and what is written about has become vitally important
•   advertising – a good tag line or slogan can race into public memory
•   marketing collateral – depends upon your product/service and what media suits it best such as flyers, sales letters, direct mailers, and so on)

Developing a promotional mix depends on the character or features of the product/service. For instance for some products/services may just need a direct marketing campaign and not TVCs or print ads at all, such as home-based businesses.

Or some such as debt management services may bank on a well done corporate video production to create a brand presence in business fairs.

Watch out for my next article in which I discuss the vital ingredients needed for preparing an effective media mix, particularly in the context of interactive advertising.