2.Give the summary of the text the promotional mix

A firm may use a variety of promotional devices^ to sell its products: advertising, personal selling, sales promotion, and publicity. Advertising is by far the most important modern promotional tool, but the other devices should not be over­looked.

Advertising

Advertising is a paid, nonpersonal sales presentation directed at potential customers by an identified producer or supplier of goods and services. Through the advertising media of newspapers, television, magazines, radio, direct mail, and outdoor billboards, firms battle to interest the public in their products, increase their share of market sales, or simply hold onto what they have. Advertising is an important element in the ordinary American's life. Con­sumers accept the fact that the television and radio broadcasts will be inter­rupted at regular intervals to deliver the sponsor's messages. The bulk of most newspapers and magazines is devoted to advertising rather than news or feature stories. In fact, commercial messages are so common that many people believe they are immune² to the advertising effort.

Most firms, however, believe otherwise. The growth of annual advertising expenditures in the United States is proof of business' faith that their message will be heard. U.S. advertising expenditures totaled $50 million in 1900. They were nearly $12 billion in 1960, $28 billion in 1975, and a staggering³ $71 billion in 1982. On a per capita⁴ basis, that's about $300 per year—more than the total annual income of most of the world's population. Putting it still another way, the combined gross national products of Israel, Chile, and Portugal would be approximately equal to the amount of money American firms spend on adver­tising.

Types of Advertising There are three basic varieties of corporate advertising:

selective demand, primary demand, and institutional.

The oldest and most common type of advertising is brand or selective demand advertising. It(emphasizes the name or virtues of a particular product or service. Service industries rely heavily on it. Two financial houses recently spent over $ 16 million in a head-to-head advertising competition to convince savers that Merrill Lynch was "bullish⁵ on America" and that people "listen when E. F. Mutton speaks." Even certain professional groups are getting into the act. Since 1977, lawyers, dentists, and even associations of doctors and medical services have gone to TV or the newspapers to establish a particular firm's or individual's prices or quality of professional service.

Selective demand advertising may take different forms. The most common approach is simply to proclaim the special virtues of the product, using various types of appeals to the audience: humor, personal testimony⁶, the good name of the manufacturer, and so forth. An increasingly popular technique is compara­tive advertising. For the TV watcher, some of the best known comparative advertising has been done by the wine industry. It all began when Coca-Cola decided to tout⁷ its Taylor wine as a prestige product. A series of advertisements featuring supposedly noted wine tasters all attested to the fact that Taylor was better than Almaden, Inglenook, or Sebastiani. Almaden took Taylor to court, and the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms tried to close down the comparative advertising approach. In 1982, after three years of battling, Taylor received court approval for its comparative approach. Gallo quickly fol­lowed with displays of its wine tasting awards, and Paul Masson prepared a series of commercials announcing—also after taste tests—that their wines were supe­rior to those of Gallo and Taylor. The comparative advertising approach has spread to other products and industries, but it is doubtful that it will prove any more informative than the old "buy my product" approach.

Primary demand advertising attempts to stimulate demand for an entire class of products without distinguishing a brand name. An individual firm may try to sell the general commodity rather than emphasize its brand. Usually this is the case when the firm already has a commanding share of the market. For example, Lever Brothers may try to sell the public on the special taste of and quality of its Lipton soups (brand advertising), while Campbell is content to point out that soup and sandwiches make a wholesome lunch (primary demand advertising). With about 90 percent of the soup market in its pocket, Campbell will grow if the overall market grows.

Producers frequently band together in a joint advertising effort. This is called horizontal cooperative advertising. The California Citrus Growers, the Cotton Council, the Wool Bureau, and other such associations use cooperative advertising to promote greater general use of their class of products or change consumer notions about the product. Because most consumers had a negative image of dried prunes⁸ and apricots ("dried," "shriveled," "associated with curing constipation"), the California Prune Growers enlisted comedian Stan Freeberg's help and developed the "funny fruit" radio commercials to create a different consumer image.

Institutional advertising attempts to create a favorable public image toward a company without necessarily selling any particular good. This is often called "goodwill" advertising. The object is to promote the company by showing that it is basically responsible. Although public television and radio accept no advertisements, Exxon's prominent appearance after 1973 as a pro­vider of grants for educational programs amounted to a goodwill advertising campaign. Moreover, Exxon bought advertising space on commercial television to announce its public television program sponsorship. Beginning at the same time, Exxon embarked on a series of TV and magazine advertisements aimed at giving energy conservation tips. The timing of the institutional advertising should not be overlooked.