Name of the College : Northern India Engineering College
University : Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University
Degree : MBA
Subject Code/Name : MS214 Advertising & Brand Management
Year : 2nd
Semester : 4th
Document Type : Question Bank
Website : niecdelhi.ac.in
Download Model/Sample Question Paper :https://www.pdfquestion.in/uploads/niecdelhi.ac.in/3264-ABM%20Solution%20Set%202013.docx
NIEC Delhi Advertising & Brand Management Question Paper
Q.1 Answer any three out of the following :
a.) DAGMAR approach :
DAGMAR Approach – Defining Advertising Goals For Measured Advertising Results
DAGMAR suggested that Clear Advertising objectives need to be set for measuring the result of an ad campaign.
Acc to DAGMAR approach, Advertising objective involves a communication task that is specific and measurable. It is based on a hierarchical model with four stages.
Related : NIEC Delhi MS244 Global Competitiveness & Strategic Alliances MBA Question Bank : www.pdfquestion.in/3266.html
These steps are also known as ACCA advertising formula. ACCA/DAGMAR is a descendant of AIDA advertising formula and considered to be more popular and comprehensive than AIDA. Developed for the measurement of advertising effectiveness it maps the states of mind that a consumer passes through.
Important parts of the DAGMAR model are definitions of target audience, (people whom the advertising message is addressed to) and objectives (goals of advertising message).
** Awareness : Making target audience aware of the existence of brand
** Comprehension : To develop the understanding among the audience of what the product is
and What it would do for them.
** Conviction : To stimulate target audience to buy the product
** Action : To motivate the target audience to purchase the product
Characteristics of objectives
1. Concrete and measurable :
The communications task or objective should be a precise statement of what appeal or message the advertiser wants to communicate to the target audience. Furthermore the specification should include a description of the measurement procedure
Concrete, Measurable Tasks To Be Achieved :
** Strengthen The Brand Image
** Maximize Brand Presence
** Increase In Sales And Sales Promotion
** Re-Positioning
** Attract Competitor’S Customers
** Communicate Improved Quality
** Generate High Awareness
2. Target audience :
a key tenet to DAGMAR is that the target audience be well defined. For example –if the goal was to increase awareness, it is essential to know the target audience precisely. The benchmark measure cannot be developed without a specification of the target segment.
3. Specified time period :
A final characteristic of good objectives is the specification of the time period during which the objective is to be accomplished, e.g. 6months, 1 year etc. The time period should be appropriate for the communication objective as simple tasks such as increasing awareness levels can be accomplished much faster than a complex goal such as repositioning a brand.
Criticism of DAGMAR
1. Problems with the Response Hierarchy :
It is based on hierarchy of effect model. And it is not necessary that consumers follow the same sequence of communication effect
2. Sales objectives :
Advertising is just one of among many factors (Packaging, Price, Brand Image, Competitor’s, Distribution channel Management, Product Quality etc) influencing sales and it is difficult to isolate the influence of it on sales
3. Practicality and costs :
Implementation of DAGMAR approach is difficult
4. Inhibition of creativity :
The DAGMAR model is a planned and rational approach to setting advertising objectives. It imposes to much structure and may restrict the creativity
b.) Social Effects of Advertising :
Advertising also stimulates the development of new and better products, gives us a wider choice, holds prices down, encourages competition, subsidizes the media, supports freedom of the press, and provides means of dissemination of information for health and social issues as well as for products. Although advertising sometimes is misused, the Federal Trade Commission has reported that 97 percent is satisfactory. It is up to both advertisers and consumers to ensure that advertising is used intelligently and responsibly.
Advertising is bound by laws, but it also is tempered by ethical responsibility and the canons of good taste. You can act unethically without breaking any laws, but the community may impose its own informal sanctions for such violations. Most advertisers claim today to maintain high ethical standards and socially responsible advertising practices, but the sins of the past haunt them. Still, the pressures to make a strong and innovative impression are so intense that the temptation to strain limits of good taste and even morality often becomes too strong to resist. Ethical considerations tend to be an afterthought in the planning of most advertising campaigns.
Previously free of formal restrictions, advertising is now a heavily regulated profession, due to earlier excesses and shortcomings. Consumer groups, specially interest groups and government, can review, check, control and change advertising. In the United States, federal regulation of advertising imposes strict controls on advertisers through law. There are a number of institutional bodies which look after the rules.
As a small-business owner, you will naturally want to advertise your business and products to potential customers, but advertisement often comes with negative social consequences, both intended and unintended. By being aware of such potential negative effects, you can tailor your advertisement campaign to be a more positive influence on your community as part of making your business more socially responsible.
Children and Advertisement :
According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, children under 8 are not able to understand advertisements as attempts to sell them products, and will accept any claims advertisements make without scrutiny. This makes them exceptionally vulnerable as targets of ads. The socially responsible move would be to target your advertisements at parents instead of directly to children. This will get knowledge of your product or service out without taking advantage of children’s lack of defense.
Control of Media :
Advertisers choose media to place ads in that they believe will attract their demographic. Additionally, advertisers are concerned about any content that may reflect poorly on their brand, such as questionable content. The media must cater to this concern because they are dependent on advertisers for revenue, which sometimes results in a subtle censorship of mass media
Materialism :
Advertisements promote materialism in several ways. The first is by creating new needs and desires among people. Advertisements also encourage people to compete with each other by purchasing more and better objects. Finally, advertisements often encourage consumers to replace their old possessions by purchasing the newest and best model.
Stereotypes :
Advertising campaigns can promote stereotypes by portraying groups, such as women and minorities, in their traditional or stereotypical roles. Such stereotypes include linking specific groups to products, such as women with cleaning supplies and men with computers. These types of ads tend to foster generalized and often false beliefs about who members of these groups are and should be.
c.) Brand Vs. Generics :
Generic brands of consumer products (often supermarket goods) are distinguished by the absence of a brand name. It is often inaccurate to describe these products as “lacking a brand name”, as they usually are branded, although with either the brand of the store in which they are sold or a lesser-known brand name which may not be aggressively advertised to the public. They are identified more by product characteristics.
They may be manufactured by less prominent companies, or manufactured on the same production line as a ‘named’ brand. Generic brands are usually priced below those products sold by supermarkets under their own brand (frequently referred to as “store brands” or “own brands”). Generally they imitate these more expensive brands, competing on price. Generic brand products are often of equal quality as a branded product; however, the quality may change suddenly in either direction with no change in the packaging if the supplier for the product changes.
d.) Brand Pyramid :
A brand is not a product : it is the product’s source, its meaning and its direction, and it defines its identity in time and space. Too often brands are examined through their component parts: the brand name, its logo, design, packaging, advertising or name recognition. Real brand management, however, begins much earlier with a strategy and a consistent integrated vision. Its central concept is brand identity, which must be defined and managed. A brand identity is the message sent out by the brand. A model of brand pyramid is suitable for analysing and understanding the concept of brand identity. The pyramid model consists of three tiers. The fundamental and upper part of the brand pyramid is the brand core, which remains fairly fixed over time.
The middle tier of the pyramid is called the brand style. It articulates the brand core in terms of the culture it conveys, its personality and its self-image. The base layer of the pyramid comprises the brand themes. These themes indicate how the brand currently communicates e.g., through its advertising, press releases, and packaging. Brand themes include the physique of the brand (e.g., colour, logo, packaging), its reflection (e.g., type of spokesperson used to advertise the brand) and the relationship expressed (e.g., glamour, prestige). Brand themes are more flexible than the brand style and brand core, and will change easier with fashion, style or technology. The set of brand style and themes can be described as a six-sided identity prism.
The identity prism emphasises the brand’s identity as a structured whole of six integrated facets of culture, personality, self-image, physique, reflection, and relationship. The first three facets of culture, personality and self-image are incorporated within the brand itself and the last three facets of physique, reflection and relationship are the social facets which give the brand its outward expression. These outward facets are communicated explicitly and they are visible and material. The emotional and representational components in the identity prism are more valuable, because the component of physique only forms the first stage in brand building. The intangible elements refer to the beliefs and meanings created in the minds of consumers. These intangible and symbolic elements include the brand personality, the way brands reinforce consumers’self-images and brands’ abilities to represent consumers to others.
The concepts of the brand pyramid and identity prism are effective in use. First, they enable management and their agencies to understand the brand, its strengths and opportunities. Second, they help to develop brand strategy and the formulation of the brand’s positioning in the market. Third, they enable the brand team to develop consistency in the message being transmitted through packaging and design, advertising, below-the-line activities and through potential brand extensions. Finally, understanding the brand’s core and style helps to determine how far the brand can be meaningfully stretched to other products and market segments.
e.) Persuasive Advertising :
A type of product promotion that attempts to influence a consumer in favor of a purchasing particular good or service. A business might engage in informative or persuasive advertising to encourage first time customers to try its product, in addition to reminding customers to purchase a product they have previously bought.
Persuasive advertising is a component in an overall advertising strategy that seeks to entice consumers into purchasing specific goods or services, often by appealing to their emotions and general sensibilities.. With persuasive advertising, the assumption is that the consumer already understands the basic nature of the product, but needs to be convinced of the desirability and the benefits that set a particular product apart from the competition.
The persuasive strategies used by advertisers who want you to buy their product can be divided into three categories :
Pathos, logos, and ethos.
Pathos : an appeal to emotion.
An advertisement using pathos will attempt to evoke an emotional response inthe consumer. Sometimes, it is a positive emotion such as happiness : an image of people enjoying themselves while drinking Pepsi. Other times, advertisers will use negative emotions such as pain: a person having back problems after buying the “wrong” mattress. Pathos can also include emotions such as fear and guilt: images of a starving child persuade you to send money.
Logos : an appeal to logic or reason.
An advertisement using logos will give you the evidence and statistics you need to fully understand what the product does. The logos of an advertisement will be the “straight facts” about the product : One glass of Florida orange juice contains 75% of your daily Vitamin C needs.
Ethos : an appeal to credibility or character.
An advertisement using ethos will try to convince you that the company is more reliable, honest, and credible; therefore, you should buy its product. Ethos often involves statistics from reliable experts, such as nine out of ten dentists agree that Crest is the better than any other brand or Americas dieters choose Lean Cuisine. Often, a celebrity endorses a product to lend it more credibility : Catherine Zeta-Jones makes us want to switch to T-Mobile.
Q.2 Why is Creative Strategy Development important in advertising? Taking a real life example, explain the importance of Creative Strategy Development :
Creative strategy includes Message strategy and media strategy. Creative strategy is the Ability to Generate fresh, unique and appropriate ideas that can be used as solutions to Communications Problems.
Creative Strategy : Determining what the advertising message will say or communicate.
** Creative strategy is based on several factors (OUTLINE OF A COPY PLATFORM) :
** Identification of the target audience
** The basic Problem issue
** Opportunity that advertising must address
** The key benefits the message needs to communicate
** Any other supportive information that needs to be include in the ad
Advertising agencies determine this in the form of a document called CREATIVE PLATFORM or COPY PLATFORM or CREATIVE BRIEF or CREATIVE BLUEPRINT
Creative Strategy is essential to any marketing plan or new website, and good Creative Strategy should address the following five foundations that impact business growth :
1) Identify needs / determine goals :
The only way to get a clearly defined answer is to ask clearly defined questions. A well thought out Creative Strategy will uncover the most pertinent business/brand needs to address and leverage consumer/industry insights to illustrate a custom solution.
2) Figure out a roadmap :
Solutions are a great starting point – but how do we get there? It’s the job of a Creative Strategist to determine the most effective way to get from Point A to Point B. What threats stand in the way and how can they be avoided? What mistakes have other businesses made and how can they be learned from? Creating a roadmap that addresses these questions is essential to mobilize your team with a bird’s eye view of clear next steps.
3) What’s happening?
Simply put, a Creative Strategy must be informed. What’s going on in your industry? What is the competition doing? What new technology is on the horizon? What’s going on in the digital and social space? A roadmap can’t weave through the complexities of the business world without being well informed on what’s happening…everywhere.
4) Tell a story :
Content drives online success, but what drives content? A brand’s point of view – their story – should set the foundation for all communication efforts. What is your brand’s unique perspective and position? This will determine your messaging strategy and visual vocabulary. Every audience loves a story. What’s yours?
5) Influence behavior :
Great – the goals are now determined and the plan is in place. Now, what is the desired action we want the end user (the audience) to take? The more specific the action, the more effective the conversion will be. By establishing direct calls to action and intuitive online pathways for users, the strategy will translate into consumer-focused terms that are both relatable and relevant.
In the interest of long-term brand success, it’s important to set a stable foundation and not take short cuts. It’s not always directly measurable, but a sharp Creative Strategy is evident along every brand touch point, and can set the tone for messaging, design and marketing for years to come.