Businesses use advertising to accomplish varied goals, and companies place those ads in diverse media to further business goals.
1. Product Introduction and Awareness - when a business introduces a new product, advertising provides a means to make a large market aware of the product. Ads often focus on the product's solution to a common problem, such as a new cell phone's touted ability to solve the "dropped call" problem.
2. Product Sale Events - advertising provides an effective way to inform the market about limited-time product sale events. Sale-based ads can be generated by local retail outlets, or can originate from the product's national manufacturer. In many cases, the national manufacturer shares the cost of the ad with the local retailer. This type of advertising is called co-op advertising, and commonly uses manufacturer-supplied graphics and ad templates. The local retailer's name appears as the local product outlet.
3. Product Differentiation from Competitors - businesses frequently use advertising to show how their product has more benefits, or is more effective, than similar competitors' products. In some cases, the retailer feels it's necessary to advertise because the competition is blanketing newspaper pages or television airwaves with its own ads. Unless other market retailers that aggressively highlight their own products, they are likely to be overlooked in the minds of consumers.
4. Product Breakthroughs and Advancements - advertising is used to communicate dramatic product breakthroughs. Institutional Advertising to Promote a Good Image - type of advertising isn't really designed to increase sales, but is structured to promote a good image of the company or product. This perception will hopefully translate into future sales. even if the consumer doesn't buy the product right now, the company will have kept its name in front of its consumer market.
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Ad success: Define. Evaluate. Activate. Repeat
Content distribution plans have never been more important than today. A content distribution plan is a strategic guide that helps an organization disseminate its content, whether it’s promoting the latest blog post or sharing a new ebook. Publishing content can only take you so far; a content distribution plan makes sure that content is seen by the world. Content distribution plans are increasingly important because of the amount of data that individuals and brands are creating each minute.
89% of marketers say awareness is their brands #1 goal therefore there’s a whole lot of content being produced each minute and it’s pretty damn noisy. To cut through the noise and grab their attention, you not only have to produce quality content consistently but also do a killer job distributing it.
Producing content is one thing - distributing it is another. Without distribution, your content won’t reach your target audience. They won’t know about your product, what it does and how it can help them reach their goals. They’ll have no clue why they should park their marketing dollars with your brand rather than your competitor. You won’t have enough leads to sell your product to.
But content distribution has always been regarded as the Achilles’ heel of content marketing. Not everyone knows how to do it right. For most businesses, content distribution means dumping links on social media, spamming forums, and running ill-planned ad campaigns in hopes of generating leads. They forget that not every content distribution channel is suited for their business, and that even if a channel works, it won’t give them the same results each time. To get consistent sales leads from your blogs, ebooks, email newsletter, podcasts, webinars, and any other content assets, you not only need exceptional content but also a solid content distribution plan. We are talking about the kind of stuff that drives brand awareness, generates leads, and opens the door to conversations with your prospects.
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Early to bed, early to rise. Work like hell and advertise
Without advertising of any kind, businesses DO fail all the time.
They may resist for a few years, in the state of a “financial zombie” - nor dead, or alive - and then quietly disappear.
Because THIS is true: One can have the best product or service on the face of the planet, but if no one knows about it, it’ll make no difference - they might as well have the WORST product or service.
Why do you think Coca Cola - the company with the highest “awareness level” in the world - spends hundreds of millions of pounds a year on advertising?
To stay relevant and top-of-mind… and to make you reach for a bottle just to “taste the feeling”. We live in a busy world.
We ourselves are busy and keep endless to-do lists.
That makes it easy to forget about a product or service unless we need it right away. (The hospital is not top-of-mind unless we get hurt and need to make a trip to Emergency. And when we do, we go to the closest one available…) By advertising, you “engrave” your product or service in the mind of your prospects and clients, so when they DO need it they reach for yours, instead of the competition.
Questions / Enquires - hello@RadkaAdvertising.com
Fit is not a destination. It's a way of life
That's the suggestion of a short but intriguing video on Big Think recently featuring New York University neuroscientist Dr Wendy Suzuki. In it, she explains what her work is uncovering about the benefits of exercising in an unexpected new domain - creativity.
Her research deals with an area of the brain called the hippocampus, which is associated with memory. Injure this area and you'll suffer from amnesia. But according to earlier research, those with damage to their hippocampus also struggle when it comes to imagination. “An experimenter back in 2007 tested amnesic patients on tasks of imagination. And she asked them can you imagine a situation that you've never experienced before. In this case, it was imagining a tropical beach. And she compared the responses to people age matched and education matched people without hippocampal damage,” professor Suzuki explains. “What she found was these hippocampal patients, these amnesic patients who had normal language abilities, we’re unable to imagine a future scenario.” The trouble with the hippocampus, therefore, doesn't just mean you can't recall that beach vacation you took, it also means you can't imagine a future one in any great detail. “There's multiple modes of evidence suggesting the hippocampus is not only involved in memory but is also important for imagination. A key component of creativity,” professor Suzuki summarizes.
How is this fact at all related to exercise? Apparently, the best way for healthy folks to stimulate the hippocampus and generate new brain cells in the area is to get up and get moving. “Because of those brand new brain cells in my hippocampus, I'm also enhancing my imagination. So the hypothesis that I'm working on in my lab is: Can exercise actually enhance creativity?” Suzuki says.
The idea that exercise is a creativity booster is still a hypothesis and more study is needed, but according to Big Think, Suzuki has “a wide array of research” backing up her idea. Gym haters might not love to hear it, but it looks like there could be one more huge benefit of getting a regular fitness workout.
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Design is not just aesthetics. It is much more than what we see.
Good design is not just what looks good. It also needs to perform, convert, astonish, and fulfil its purpose. It can be innovative or it might just get the job done.
1. Good design is innovative - it can both be a break-through product or service, and a redesign of an existing product or service. A break-through product adds a before unseen value and function to the market and the user, while a redesign improves an existing product. Innovative design always develops in tandem with innovative technology, and can never be an end in itself.
2. Good design is functional - useful design fills its intended function – and likely both a primary and secondary function. A useful design solves problems and through its design, it optimizes a given functionality.
3. Good design is aesthetic - an aesthetic product has an inherent power of being able to fascinate and immediately appeals to its user’s senses. Only well-executed objects can be beautiful. The aesthetic quality of a product is integral to its usefulness because products used every day have an effect on people and their well-being.
4. A good design is intuitive - it explains itself and makes a user manual unnecessary. A design makes how to use, perceive, and understand a product obvious. A good design explains its function. It clarifies the product’s structure. Better still, it can make the product clearly express its function by making use of the user’s intuition. At best, it is self-explanatory.
5. A good design is a good business - assuming a product is designed to sell, a good design does well in the competition and stands out in a competitive market. Good business means a positive profit, why a good design sells well.
6. A good design is long-lasting - in a society of over-consumption, a good design has an important objective. It builds on sustainability in the sense that design and materials are durable and not just a trend. Waste and over-consumption is not a part of good design. It avoids being fashionable and therefore never appears antiquated. Unlike fashionable design, it lasts many years – even in today’s throwaway society #innovate
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Branding Re-Branded
An evening of inspirational chat and a day sat on the other side of our ‘Dig’ process – we take a trip to Bristol for an evening with Michael Johnson of Johnson Banks to do just that.
A talk with the Johnson Banks founder took us through the highs and lows of the branding process in 5 steps, not forgetting step 2.5 – the space in the middle where we sit around trying to translate strategy into creative. We heard about some of the design guru’s best projects, some of which have pushed boundaries, and a few of his own personal targets, including raising £2 billion for Cambridge University. With over £800m already raised, the campaign seems to be working wonders to educate the next generation.
The workshop explored the process of brand and the balance between thinking and doing, something we believe in. A strong, well thought out brand enables you to engage with diverse audiences and ensures your message is clear, meaningful and delivered consistently. Effective branding can change customer perceptions and build long-term relationships. Bad branding, on the other hand, can mean being completely misunderstood, considered unsuitable or overlooked – something reiterated by examples of what some brands have achieved and where some have truly failed.
Working through a branding exercise allowed us to open a dialogue between our team and others in the industry about what works well and what doesn’t, identifying gaps in various markets and ways to build a brand around the gap including narrative, visuals and campaigns to promote it.
It was a great opportunity to turn the tables and approach this as a client – a very interesting experience!
A huge thank you to Michael for his energy and enthusiasm and giving our team the chance to meet fellow creatives at the beautiful studio.
We at Radka Advertising know how important developing and adopting the right branding can be. We also know it’s vital that all imagery should be formed around the true identity and individuality of the client. This is something that we take great pride in; getting to know our clients and understanding who they are, what they do and their unique message. We do this through our Dig process – it’s a key factor in why our branding is so successful.
If you’re looking to brand or re-brand why not get in touch and let us know who you are, what you do and how we can help you get your message across.
Questions / Enquires - hello@RadkaAdvertising.com