Master of Business Administration- MBA Semester 4 MK0016 Advertising management &sales promotion - 4 Credits Assignment Set -1 (60 marks)

) Question1. Describe the types of Advertising copy. Answer:- Types of Advertising copy The primary job of advertising is to sell. If it is done with high literary skill and captivating visual beauty, that is great. But the trend now is to keep it as simple and brief as possible, making the offer or benefit as irresistible as possible, to rise above the clutter of competition. And that takes unusual ideas presented with fascinating treatment, or what the advertising industry calls THE IDEA. Consumer advertising: These are the prima donnas of advertising, the most visible, expensive, lavish, most frequently repeated in multiple media and the most entertaining of the genre, and naturally attracts the best of the professional creative talent. Since they have to be repeated endlessly to beat competition, the copy is designed to withstand the boredom of repetition. They attempt to influence the target either to switch brand or to continue to use the advertised brand. Corporate advertising: These ads do not try to sell the brands manufactured by the company, but build equity and image for the company itself. These are created when a company feels that it has reached a status when it is bigger than the sum total of its products. They talk about the integrity, quality consciousness, welfare programmes, social responsibility of the company, etc., and hope some of the prestige will rub off on its brands anyway. Public service advertising: It is a corollary of corporate advertising and flourishes when economy does well. These are also released when a company can afford to talk about things other than its products. This genre gives information not ordinarily available to common man, such as where to find help or support group for alcoholism, cancer or HIV, polio vaccination, basic health care, domestic violence, government funded services, addiction, educational information, etc. Cooperative advertising: In this, several parties with same brands or products share the advertising expense. It is an excellent tool for malls, busy shopping areas that sell similar products, cosmetics or garment brands for instance. Or distributors and service providers for expensive machinery, where the product ad itself is paid for by the stakeholders. In return, the paying entities are allowed to insert their detailed contacts for potential customers.

Question2. Discuss the Innovative use of media in rural areas. Answer:- Innovative use of media in rural areas In spite of fundamental differences in urban and rural psychology and buying patterns, marketers use most of the true and tried mass media for rural marketing also. The immense diversity of rural cultures and low literacy just make it more challenging. A successful campaign mixes the traditional and modern media cleverly to get the best results. Television: Due to the government supplying free televisions in rural areas for broadcasting educational and farming programmes, actual community television sets are common. But there may not be power supply, the sets may not be well maintained, and are usually kept in the house of a powerful or affluent village leader where people gather in the evening. In such places women rarely join and are thus out of reach for commercials. Yet, due to its combination of music, speech, colour and movement, it remains a powerful tool to reach less educated people. Radio: Although radio, especially transistor radio had been wildly popular in rural areas, it has lost it hold in the past decade. But its power as a medium remains it is portable, excellent medium for the illiterate and jingles make a brand unforgettable. Perhaps more attention should be paid to building back the power of radio as an advertising tool. Cinema: Not many rural areas have movie halls and shows have to be paid for, which pretty much takes it out of the means of rural families. Separate sitting for men and women is still prevalent, which may be as unattractive to a rural family as an urban one. However, the larger than life impact of cinema advertising remains timeless. Print: Men of Indian villages have the age-old tradition of gathering at village centres or tea shops to discuss everything from politics to plane crashes they read about in newspapers. Vernacular newspapers or newspapers that are published in local languages are read by some 24% of village folks. These men are the opinion creators, influence their families and take all the buying decisions. Literacy is much higher in south India and newspapers and magazines can be as useful as for urban advertising. Question3. Briefly discuss about Advertising Objectives. Answer:- Advertising Objectives A company does not release entertaining television commercials or colourful press ads spending millions of rupees for some entertaining or artistic reasons. It approaches an advertising agency because it has an urgent need in hand, often a serious problem. An advertiser usually has one or several of the following objectives:

Increase brand awareness: Sometimes even a brand selling well may have poor brand awareness, especially in FMCG products. The users may be habitual buyers with no great awareness of the distinctive features of the brand. The campaign may aim to sharpen brand awareness by creating a focused brand personality and keep reinforcing it over a period of time. Enhance brand image: Even a successful brand may come under severe pressure from either new brand competition or another old brand introducing new features. The campaign objective may be to strengthen the clients brand image as the brand stands now, by reminding the target all its relevant benefits. Introduce new features or improved version: In a competitive market, each producer is constantly working to incrementally improve his product just to stay ahead of competition and only then to serve his customers better. When a successful new feature or a new version altogether of the brand is introduced, a major campaign is necessary. Increase sale: As mentioned earlier, advertising is only one component of the marketing mix and in itself cannot increase sale. But it does play a huge role. Therefore, the agency has to define clearly its role in this process. Sale may even decrease for the moment due to poor supply chain, bad after-sale support, indifferent salesmanship, or as it is happening in 200809, global economic downturn. In such a situation, the job of advertising is to keep the brand in front of the target and not necessarily expect immediate increase in sale. Besides, advertising is a long term tool and often is not even designed to increase sale immediately. Increase profit: Increasing profit is different from increasing sale. Especially in FMCG products, the top line may keep growing due to many promotional activities and price wars, yet the bottom line can tank, due to thinning margins. The campaign may try to create better prestige or reliability for the brand, so that it will need less promotional expense and thus increase profit. Question4. Describe the Tools and Techniques of Sales Promotion in brief. Answer:- Tools and Techniques of Sales Promotion Consumer sales promotions are aimed at the end users of the product typically individual shoppers in the local market. But the same techniques can be used to promote products sold by one business to another, as is done in trade fairs, which target resellers and wholesalers. These are designed to sell more of machinery, capital goods, intermediary industrial products, etc. over the competitors. These are some of the standard tools used for sales promotions. Price-offs: the most common price deals are: Discounts

 Bonus packs which have several units packed together with a price lower than that of units bought individually, usually FMCG products Refunds Exchange for bringing in the used product, usually for household consumer durable equipment Rebates Coupons issued in specific local media, which give a few rupees off when brought to the local shop, usually household FMCG products. Price discounts: intended to encourage trial use of a new or an improved and relaunched product to recruit new buyers for a mature brand or to convince existing buyers to use more of it. It also introduces a brand extension, when a new product is introduced in the same brand name in the same line of a very successful and established brand. For instance, a Lux shampoo. Here the shampoo will ride on the back of the phenomenal popularity of the Lux bath soap. Price-off works best when price is the customers foremost concern, as in daily use household goods where brand loyalty is extremely low. A housewife will buy another brand of cooking oil or detergent in the same class for just one or two rupees less. Refunds: It is an offer by a marketer to return a certain amount of money when a product is purchased. It aims to increase the quantity or frequency of use, to encourage customers to load up on the product. For instance, for X brand of cooking oil, Rs. 4 refunded in exchange of every empty packet. Offer valid for two weeks. An ordinary family may not use that much oil in two weeks, but the housewife will buy anyway and stockpile it. This strategy dampens competition by temporarily taking all consumers of that product category out of the market, especially in FMCG products. Question5. What is a full service agency? What are specialist agencies? Why are they needed? Answer:- Advertiser and Advertising Agency The advertiser is the company, individual, institution or government which places an advertisement in the mass media and pays for it. It may be a manufacturer who produces a product for mass or niche consumption. It can be a scientific or research institution which needs something, employees in a recruitment ad, for instance. Or wants to inform the public about its achievements. Or an educational institution announcing its specializations in an admission ad. It may be a government informing the citizens about facilities it offers or its achievements, especially at election times. Even an individual, which ranges from simple buy & sell to offering a service, such as Shakuntala Devis astrology and numerology ads. They and many other kinds are all advertisers in paid mass media who often employ advertising agencies for specific professional services.

Full service advertising agency An advertising agency is only one component of todays bewilderingly complex marketing mix, which, like in any other concerted activity, must act together to achieve a rising sales curve. Until the late 20th century, most good agencies were what were called full service agencies, meaning they offered almost all of the above services. Specialist agencies Now communication is so complex, specialized and fragmented that advertising services also have become so. Now there are agencies which do only the creative work or filming of commercials, or the still photography, or outdoor advertising. Media space and time buying and selling is a multi-million rupee business in itself, which in turn sells it back to smaller agencies who do not have the media clout to get good bargains and positions. Even full service advertising agencies themselves are specialized some do only FMCG products, or IT, technical, engineering, recruitment or tender advertising and carry a whole team of highly skilled and specialized professionals who are the tops in their business. It is a highly competitive world and considering the proliferation of products, services and explosion of media today, the specializations are necessary. Question6. Describe the Demographic influences on Advertising in brief. Answer:- Demographic Influences on Advertising Like in every other area of life, advertising also has not only grown in leaps and bounds and hasbecome far more effective, in some ways it has changed its character altogether. The most important factor that directly or even indirectly influencing advertising is the demographic factors or the characteristics of the population. Even if combined with other factors such as social, political or environmental, they could be associated with demographic indicators like age, gender, family structure, migration of people, education levels, so on. Demographic changes Demographic segments and the obvious changes in them are easier to define and analyse. Let us now see how these influence advertising. Lifestyle India always had different lifestyles in different parts of the country, marked by language, food, religion, etc. But there was uniformity within that segment at least. Not anymore. Whole new lifestyles are in the market now, which cut across ethnic and local traditions. Urban Indias lifestyle is changing very fast. Young handsome rock star gurus like Vikas Malkani who runs a hep MTV style Soul Centre in New Delhi presenting Indian philosophy in easy to follow contemporary language to tarot card reader, the interests are very different.

Technology India has an amazing capacity to adopt the latest technology available anywhere in the world. A country which did not have even television until late 1980s, today literally consumes the latest gadgets and gizmos with limitless appetite. In a 2007 survey carried out by Economic Times Dentsu on 3,000 correspondents across India, dependence on technology is clearly defined. Some 51% of urban Indians feel life will be difficult without a mobile, 93% feel life will be really tough without text messaging, 90% cannot do without television, and Internet dependency is universal. 32% in 18-25 years age group said life would be hard without the music and camera features on a mobile. But then, this was an online survey, so a biased one. Aggressive middle class Indian middle class has become the object of keen observation for everybody from MNC consumer products to political campaign planners. Whole books and furious research projects are being written on this phenomenon. It is a grossly over rated class, in numbers, consumption volume and desires. Rough estimate is that there are about 50 million families in India in middle class who really do buy branded products significantly.