For both established and growing businesses, advertising occupies the most prominent niche in a comprehensive marketing campaign. In 1998, an estimated $112 billion was expended in advertising in the U.S., along with a total of $88 billion in Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom and France (Nemec 26). Traditionally, businesses and advertisers had been primarily concerned with ensuring that the content of their message reach as large an audience as possible (Sutter 727). However, in the age of increasing globalization, the emergence of innovative businesses and the rapid advances in technology, companies are striving to discover innovative and effective ways pf promoting their products and services. The key to a comprehensive marketing campaign thus encompasses three key dimensions:
Marketing: the determination of the preferences and wants of potential consumers in order to provide them with the appropriate products and services;
Advertising: the employment of paid media to fulfill the above function; and
Public Relations: the focus on establishing long-term relationships with consumers and promoting brand awareness and loyalty.
Although these three dimensions have traditionally been separated into individual areas, the boundaries between them have become increasingly blurred in order to enable businesses to communicate to sophisticated consumers via a variety of media (Nemec 28).
The thesis of this paper is: Businesses are employing a variety of advertising strategies and media to reach target audiences in response to the radical transformation of the business environment and the lifestyles of consumers in contemporary society. The implications for enhancing the effectiveness of advertising are also explored. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to examine the following innovative advertising techniques: a) the establishment of relationships with audiences; b) the determination of the advertising disposition of ...