Meaning of advertisement.

Meaning of advertisement?

You must also have come across ads that excited you, entertained you, made you cry, and managed to inform you about a new store in town or an unmissable promotion.

In this post, we are going to analyze everything about advertising, from its definition to its dilemmas, to understand how it works and what its role is. You can also download it in PDF below Shall we?

What is the publicity?

Advertising is a marketing strategy that involves the purchase of media space to promote a product, service or brand, with the aim of reaching the company's target audience and encouraging them to buy.

However, that is a narrow definition of advertising, which involves much more than the purchase of a product.

According to the Royal Spanish Academy, the word advertising has three main definitions:

Advertising is also an area of ​​knowledge, within social communication, which studies not only the technique of the activity, but also its function in social and cultural relations.

It is not by chance that advertisers are always aware of the cultural and behavioral trends of society, so that the ads generate an identification with the consumer, either from the colors and cultural references present in them.

Advertising can also be understood as a reflection of the society of its time, since it reproduces current behaviors and values. Despite this, many people believe that advertising does not simply reflect society, but rather encourages and shapes behavior.

What are the characteristics of advertising?

Now let's talk a little about three characteristics of advertising that make it so valuable. Language, logistics, and universality.

Language because it creates ads and conveys messages.

Logistics because it manages distribution, media and spaces.

Universality because it always aims to reach all members of a pre-established group.

Advertising x Marketing: what are the differences?

There is a common confusion between marketing and advertising. In the end, both activities aim to sell a product or service. Therefore, would they be the same thing?

No, there is a difference. To understand better, let's take a traditional marketing concept: the Marketing Mix, also known as the 4Ps of marketing or the marketing mix.

Price, place, product and promotion are the four basic elements of a marketing strategy, and the balance between them makes a brand stronger together with its target audience.

In the P for Price, you should think about the costs of the company and the profit projections, but also about the profile of the target audience, who must be willing to pay that value.

The P of Plaza refers to the places where you offer your products, such as the physical or virtual store, as well as the distribution and storage channels.

The P of Product involves strategies on the tangible (color, shape, packaging) and intangible (quality, reputation, status) attributes of the product.

But it is in the P of Promotion that we want to focus for this article, because this is where advertising comes in.

Promotion are all the strategies for disseminating the product to reach the target audience. Advertising is one of them, but it can also involve printing consultancy actions, public relations, sponsorships, among others.

Therefore, advertising is a marketing tool. While marketing is concerned with understanding the target audience and developing strategies to serve it, advertising focuses on reaching it with persuasive communication.

Misleading and abusive advertising

Advertising manages to influence consumption habits and motivate the purchase of a product.

With that power in hands, there are not a few ads that make advertising misleading, that push the bar (or, we can say, that lie) about the qualities of the product and can lead the consumer into error.

Another type of advertising that is harmful to the consumer is abusive advertising, which encourages discrimination, violence, the environment, or disrespects children, the environment, the health and safety of people.

But there are many people pending to avoid that type of publicity. among many other limitations to advertising activity. The Consumer Protection Code defines what is misleading and abusive advertising and provides penalties for those who incur in these practices.

In addition to the consumer defense entities, the advertisers themselves are also concerned about it.

In the 1970s, in response to a bill that proposed price censorship of advertising, the market created its own rules, gathered in the Advertising Self-Regulation Code.

advertising for children

Among the advertisements considered abusive, special attention is dedicated to children's advertising. Children do not have the discernment to know what is real or not, and advertising manages to play a lot with fantasy and imagination.

Therefore, for the Law, children are considered vulnerable and need to be protected from advertising practices.

In many countries, for example, merchandising in children's programs and the use of imperative expressions such as: "order yours", "enter now" or "buy X" are condemned.

In this type of ads there are also many pending people. In addition to consumer defense and advertising regulation entities, advertisements aimed at children are also under pressure from laws and institutions for the protection of children.

advertising history

Without the technology we have today, the only tool to promote a product or service was the pitch of the salesperson. But, a lot has happened from word of mouth to today's mobile ads.

The first great transformation for advertising was the invention of Gutenberg, in the fifteenth century. The mechanical press allowed the reproduction of texts in addition to manuscripts and also gave rise to one of the main media vehicles: the press.

In 1625, the English newspaper Mercurius Britannicus published the first advertisement.

There, advertising still did not have the persuasive character that it later did, since the objective was only to present the product or service.

Already in the Industrial Age, advertising assumed an important role: encouraging the consumption of mass-produced goods in urban centers. With that, the market became professional.

In 1841, Volney Palmet, who would negotiate space between newspapers and companies, created the first advertising agency in Philadelphia (USA).

In the first years of the 20th century, the automobile industry was a great impetus for advertising. Henry Ford said: "stopping advertising to save money is like clockwork to save time." Makes sense, right?

In the decades that followed, radio and magazines fueled the advertising industry, but it was television that revolutionized it.

In 1941, the first TV commercial, for the Bulova watch brand, aired at a cost of $9. You can see it at the link in this paragraph.

Audiovisuals gave wings to creativity and advertisements became more interesting and persuasive. Along with that, advertising became the subject of studies, searches and criticism, with the aim of evaluating its impact on society.

In recent decades, another resolution for advertising has emerged: the global computer network, better known as the Internet. Disclosure spaces in search engines, portals, blogs, emails and social networks represent a new and great opportunity for advertisers.

With digital marketing, it became much easier to reach the target audience and accurately measure the results of a campaign, something that until then, no vehicle allowed.

However, advertising is challenged by these new media, which question the traditional agency ad model.

Today, brands need to relate to consumers by offering good content and not invading their routine with ads. How, then, can advertising be more relevant?

In addition to that, the digital transformation in marketing democratized access to advertising: today, any company can create ads on Google or Facebook. And now, what is the usefulness of the agencies?

The market is reinventing itself. To accompany the changes, technological and consumer innovations cannot be lost sight of.

Currently one of the most effective segments of the advertising spin is that of online ads.