Introduction to advertising

Advertising is a general phase used for the announcements made by the sellers to promote the sales of their products. Advertising refers to the mass selling techniques used when direct face to face selling is not possible or is too time consuming and expensive. It is different from propaganda, publicity and public relations. Advertising can be simple as the classified advertisement and also complex depending on the media used. From the modest beginning in ancient times advertising has become complex depending upon the media, as TV ads are not the same as the press ads. Crores of rupees are spent each year on advertising to help sales to grow. In fact, 154 billion US dollar was spend in year 2007 on advertising before recession in United States itself and 365 billion dollar worldwide in the same year.

Advertising is mainly of two types, one for increasing sales to the consumer and to the trade, and other to build image of the firms, also known as Institutional Advertising. Other type of advertising is for promoting business to business sales (industrial sales). One other category of advertising is the cooperative advertising, where the manufactures and distribution channel members put joint campaign sharing expenses.

Advertising is the reflection of today’s civilization and cultural ethos of different countries to very extent. Besides its value in increasing sales volumes, it is also used to improve the brand equity of the firm. Since the middle of the twentieth century, advertising has been effectively used for the social causes and political campaigns. In India, advertising is being increasingly used for anti-drugs campaign, for containing the menace of AIDS and ecological problems including pollution.

In India, advertising has come of age only in the last decade of the twentieth century. With global marketing and influx of MNC’s in the country, decisions regarding creatively going for global audience or for local viewing are debated in each firm and for each product. With a wide range of market segments, targeting the right segment is all the more important since the advertising budgets have been touching skies and non performance of an advertising campaign can be truly disastrous for the advertisers.