The Effectiveness Of Mass Media Advertisements Marketing Essay

For many years mass media advertising was seen as the strongest form of creating awareness to a companys brand. However, the 21st century brings with it the decline of traditional mass media. As humans are being exposed to more and more advertising on a large scale, it is only inevitable that the effectiveness of the mass communication will greatly diminish. Magazines and newspapers are losing readers, radio is losing listeners, and most importantly television is losing viewers. What’s driving this trend is that consumers are drifting more towards digital media driven by online content – typified by social media sites and online gaming, as well as more and more homes having access to broadband internet connectivity  and its capability to provide an ever-growing and an ever-higher quality of video content. Marketers also face a general proliferation of media and distribution channels, with declining trust in advertising, multitasking by consumers, and digital technologies that give users more control over the their media time. These trends are simultaneously fragmenting both the audience and the channels needed to reach them. The danger for marketers is that this change will render the time honoured way of getting messages to consumers through TV commercials less effective at best and a waste of time and money at worst. Therefore, companies must be intuitive in seeking alternative marketing communications to increase their brand awareness and therefore utilise this now wider scope of tools. Tools that companies already acquire can be utilised and modified into an effective medium of communication. Promoting public relations and accompanying it with one of the reasons for the decline in the effectiveness of television advertising (social media). Companies are able to generate an effective, yet efficient means of delivering a brands message through a two way relationship. Accompanying an advertising industry that is in decline with the economic downfall, consumers have little confidence towards brands and therefore developing a medium that can deliver a message that is portrayed through a story enables brands to once again deliver effective brand awareness.

Brand awareness refers to the ability of the consumer as to whether they can recall or recognise a brand, that is, whether consumers know about the brand (Keller, 2008). Brand awareness must be established before building brand equity. The brand name develops the memory nodes in consumers’ minds (Aaker, 1991). Brand awareness consists of two factors: brand recognition and brand recall performance (Keller 1993). Consumers tend to link related brand knowledge to the brand name, this ultimately constitutes in the end product of brand equity (Aaker, 1991 and Keller, 1993). Hence, brand awareness evokes an important learning advantage for the brand (Keller, 2008). Consumer decision making is also affected by brand awareness, especially for low-involvement packaged goods. Brands that consumers know are more likely to be included in the consumers’ consideration set (Hoyer and Brown, 1990 and MacDonald and Sharp, 2000). Consumers may use brand awareness as a purchase decision heuristic (Hoyer and Brown, 1990 and MacDonald and Sharp, 2000). Therefore, brand awareness amplifies brand market performance.

The decline of mass media advertising

In its prime, network television was seen by marketers and ad agencies as the benchmark to successful brand awareness campaigns. This was due to the sheer number of consumers that tuned into the most popular television shows. The emphasis of these marketers was mass messaging of the brand to the consumers as company’s based their television spending on the ‘share of voice,’ that is making sure your market share, expenditure of competitors and the company’s growth expectations of the brand was in line with the advertising budget. However, fragmenting media and shifting behaviour by consumers are revealing the traditional models limits due to the following trends.

Media propagation. In the United States, what used to be a handful of stations has developed and evolved into 1,774 full power TV stations.

Multitasking. With the development of the internet, more and more people are multitasking. According to Ulla G. Foehr, the average US teenager engages in an average of two other activities, one of these activities in homework. Therefore, as students are studying they have the ability to selectively listen to the television. Meaning that they can zone out when advertisements are aired and back in when the program returns. The same concept is applicable with the multitasking of surfing the internet and watching television.

In a similar concept that supports multitasking. ‘Switching Off’ is the process of consumers being selective of what they watch and the advertisements they trust. Yankelovich Partners state that 65% of consumers believe that they are ‘constantly being bombarded with too much advertisement,’ with 65% saying they would be interested in products and services that would help block marketing,’ and 54% saying that they ‘would avoid purchasing products that engulf with advertisement and marketing.’

What Communications should be exploited?

As Brand awareness is scrutinized as being the focal point towards the succession of a brand, and therefore the company, it is essential that marketers develop efficient and effective messages in a communication that ultimately would increase the recognition and recall of the brand. Therefore, as the decline in the effectiveness of mass media continues, it opens a Pandora box of opportunities throughout other communications for marketers to develop and exploit. Marketers need a more meticulous approach to a fragmenting world, one that dismisses mentalities and norms from mass media advertising’s golden age and understands the investment it really is. In other words, it will be necessary to boost marketing’s return on investment (ROI). Academicians and practitioners have debated the merits of integrating the related yet distinct functions of marketing and public relations (PR) for decades to develop an alternative route in developing brand awareness (Kotler and Mindak 1978.)

Public relations is commonly related with communication activities that are designed to craft and maintain an organisations image with its publics (Kitchen P & Proctor R, 2010) The role of organisational public relations is expanding with the changing times: “PR doesn’t just focus on your business product; it also assists in shaping strategic messaging .”(Anonymous, 2010, p. 28). Traditionally, this meant that public relation professionals would meet and work with members of the news media to build a favourable image by publicising the brand throughout newspapers and broadcast media. However, with the development of web 2.0 defined as “a platform whereby content and applications are no longer created and published by individuals, but instead are continuously modified by all users in a participatory and collaborative fashion” (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010, p. 61), Winchell (2010) states that brands are being dismissed, measured and documented in real time and should therefore ‘join the conversation in social media.’ American Airlines, one of the world’s largest air carriers, believes that public relations can help to maximize shrinking advertising budgets in tight economic times (Bush, 2009). It is therefore seen in modern society that the role of public relations can be two fold. As creator of the story, such as the conversation towards the consumer, and, as the curator of the medium to use, ie., social media.

As a result of the economic downturn, many consumers have lost trust and confidence in the business environment. In a 2005 Starcom study, it was stated that 65% of consumers believed that advertisers paid to have their products placed or featured in magazine articles (Starcom Study 2005). Therefore, marketers must attempt to instil a new sense of comfort and confidence between the consumer and the brand. This is where public relations can be extremely effective, as authenticity can illicit strong connections from brand to consumer through the means of storytelling (Allen 2005). Storytelling has a role throughout organisations and even throughout public forums, as word of mouth through ‘brand conversation’ is on the rise (Finchum 2010). Therefore, when consumers come into contact with a brand for the first time; strong, favourable and unique brand associations would have a higher probability of being evoked when an authentic story is ‘told by the product or service itself, or by the customer word-of-mouth or by a credible third party’ (Denning, 2006, p. 43). Schipul (2009) proclaims that since today’s society is centre of a conservative economy, the aim is to focus on an organisations relationship with its publics and social media is the communication medium for such a thing to transpire.

Social media, with its greater ROI and its two way communication with consumers is the solution to support public relations in creating brand awareness with positive associations. Extraordinary advances in technology are dramatically altering the way, speed and nature humans are communicating with each other (Bandura 2001). Moxham (2008) states that when an organisation is in conversation with a consumer they should tell the brands story and empower the consumer to also spread the word. This is ultimately delivered through storytelling in the communication of social media. This never used to be the case, as public relations was only seen a one way ‘sender-orientated’ approach to communication, whereby mass media such as television, newspaper and radio were used to address the public (Helder & Kragh, 2002). However, in the digital age, there is now what is known as ‘receiver oriented’ approach and this involves having two way conversations through the medium of social media. Therefore this polar opposite approach results in individuals shifting fluidly and flexibly between the role of audience and author. The creation of basic, easy to use software enables any consumer to comment, post, share content and form an online community around shared interest (Thornley 2008). McDonalds is an organisation that has successfully incorporated the sharing component through the social media communication of Facebook. They have achieved this by delivering a message, and encouraging its consumers to share it if it relates to their friends. This is where the traditional one way, ‘sender orientated’ communication protocol fails, as communication will only occur because the consumer sender wants it to. This message will only work if the consumer is able to ascertain the meaning that the advertisement was attempting to portray (Stidsen 1975). Nike’s 2012 Olympic Twitter campaign flourished as 16,000 people tweeted the hash tag ‘Nike’ during the event, demonstrating the audience that can be interacted. Public relations, as skilled relationship builders, therefore have the advantage over traditional advertisement as they are able to ensure the consumer has a deep understanding of the message that the brand was illustrating.

As the effectiveness of traditional mass media declines, organisations must be able to adapt their communications with the changing times to ensure that they have the greatest probability in creating consumer brand awareness whilst not only having a superior ROI but a communication that will reach the masses. Through the fusion of public relations and social media, brands have an opportunity to develop relationship between the brand and its publics, creating deep and meaningful stories that intend to divulge strong, unique and favourable brand associations with the consumer through online social networks. Companies then hope that these stories will continue to be shared by publics to other new consumers. These findings hold significant importance to the marketing communications industry, particularly companies who partake in mass media advertisement. A lot of uncertainty surrounds the issue of companies creating brand awareness and loyalty when consumers are becoming more immune to mass advertising effects. This is why public relations has been emphasised, as it attaches more credibility to the brand and emphasises to two way communication, which completes the communication cycle by ensuring feedback from customers to ascertain brand experience and value. Therefore integrating public relations with social media will be the new key to unlock the door of the consumers mind. As media’s golden age has come to a close, many marketers are frustrated and have limited agreement about what to do next. Some business managers are attempting to dissect marketing-mix models that exercise refined econometric methods to meticulously decipher the diverse effects of the marketing mix on business results. Managers should utilise public relations and ensure that they convey a strong and deep message to the consumer. This is a simplistic, yet effective proposal, and would be efficiently installed in most companies.

The consequences of not implementing this marketing strategy are for everyone to see. Mass media advertising was exceptionally effective in previous decades as it was able to target such a large audience, particularly television viewers. The reasons for this can be seen as the downfall of it today. In consideration to today’s amount, there were only a handful of channels, resulting in an increased target size. People do not watch television in the same manner as they used to. A majority of the population multi task and therefore disregard advertisements as it is being aired. Therefore, whilst advertisement expenditure increases it can only be predicted that companies that do not apply this strategy have the risk of not creating enough brand awareness and losing brand loyalty with its customers. It is therefore recommended that companies take advantage of these findings as it can only provide future benefits for the brand by accessing a wider audience, because it could be a consumer that is multitasking between television and social media only to take all attention away from the televised commercial and onto the social media page where they become aware and informed about a brand online.

Further research can deeper analyse the forms and methods that can be put incorporated in using this social media, such ways that take into account the costs and audience scope. Studies can also be partaken to evaluate the effectiveness of incorporating social media and public relations in developing brand awareness compared to other forms of communication.