Continuing our examples of different types of advertising, this commercial that includes both Doritos and Mountain Dew is a good illustration of a reminder advertisement. When a brand reaches the preference or insistence stage of brand familiarity, reminder advertisements can become useful. These advertisements are there to reinforce previous messages or simply to reinforce the brand image (as is the case here). Both of these commercials introduce a new product (Doritos Blaze and Mountain Dew Ice) but the bulk of each commercial has nothing to do with the new product and is instead built around maintaining their established brand image.
Indirect Competitive Advertising
Here’s another current commercial that illustrates another category of advertisement, indirect competitive advertising. This Progressive commercial focuses on highlighting a product feature – their Home Quote Explorer. Beyond simply showing commercials like this I often ask the class to dissect the commercial and look at what tactics were used to support the message. In this case humor is used to grab and maintain the viewer’s attention, the phrase “it’s easy” is used, and the product description is provided very succinctly (less than 4 seconds) – “you just answer some simple questions online and you get coverage options to choose from”.
Direct Competitive Advertising
Continuing the theme from our last post, our next example will be an example of direct competitive advertising, specifically this fits in the category of comparative advertising. This Blue Buffalo commercial is focused on highlighting the differences between their dog food and that of Iams.
Pioneering Advertising
I’m always on the lookout for current content that can be used to illustrate the concepts discussed in my marketing classes. Students especially enjoy video clips so when I can find commercials or other video clips that fit with class content that feels like a home run. Advertising is often taught at this time in the semester so our next few blog posts will focus on current advertisements that illustrate the various forms of advertising covered in Chapter 15 of Essentials of Marketing.
This post covers pioneering advertising. As we explain in the textbook, pioneering advertising is more focused on creating primary (or category) demand rather than selective demand. This is most applicable in the earliest stages of the product life cycle and helps educate customers about the existence and potential value of a product they might be unaware of. This advertisement for Google Home does a great job of illustrating that concept. It doesn’t talk about advantages versus competing products, instead it focuses on various uses of the product.
Selling via Instagram
Social media is great but the platforms have to find some way of generating revenue. The primary mechanism has been advertising revenue but those platforms are always on the lookout for additional opportunities. According to USA Today article, “Picture this, entrepreneurs: Selling via Instagram“, Instagram has been experimenting with a sales platform. This new feature allows followers of a company to buy a product if they see it in a company’s feed. The article states that 200 million users visit at least one business profile each day so there’s a lot of potential traffic to capitalize on.
A class exercise could be to ask your students to read this article before coming to class and then in class have them develop an Instagram plan for their favorite retailer. They could choose a clothing boutique, a bike shop, an electronics store, etc.
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