Media of financial advertising

23. Media of financial advertising

Choice of media will depend on the target audience. Building societies appeal to small savers and therefore use the mass media of the popular press and television. The big national banks with branches everywhere also use the national press and television. Investment advertising will appear in the middle-class and business press. Prospectuses for share issues, which usually occupy two or more pages, appear in newspapers like The Times and Financial Times. Banks may take stands at exhibitions. They also produce sales literature about their services, as do insurance companies especially in the way of proposal forms.

24. Special characteristics

Financial advertising in the press, and especially the business press, tends to occupy large spaces and contain detailed information necessary to explain schemes and achieve confidence. The emphasis is generally on benefits which are usually represented by figures such as interest rates and returns on investments. Profit, benefits, security, confidence, credibility and reputation are the keynotes of the copy appeals.

Recruitment advertising

25. Introduction

This form of advertising aims to recruit staff (including personnel for the police, armed forces and other services) and may consist of run-on classified advertisements or displayed classified, although other media such as radio and television are sometimes used.

26. Different kinds

Recruitment advertising is mainly of two kinds, that inserted by employers whether identified or using box numbers, and that placed by employment or recruitment agencies which have been commissioned to fill vacancies.

27. Media of recruitment advertising

Except for the occasional recruitment advertisement on radio and television, the media are mainly made up of the following categories of press.

(a) National newspapers. Different newspapers appeal to different target groups, e.g. the managerial advertisements in the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Times and the teacher advertisements in the weekly education feature in the Guardian and the Independent.

(b) Trade, technical and professional journals. These are the more obvious market-places for recruitment advertising addressed to those with special skills, qualifications and experience.

(c) Regional press. Local dailies and weeklies are used to advertise jobs offered by local employers.

(d) Free publications. A number of freely distributed publications gain their revenue chiefly from recruitment advertising, e.g. those which are distributed in the street to office workers such as secretaries. Recruitment advertising is also featured in the free newspapers delivered weekly to homes.

28. Special characteristics

The art of recruitment advertising is to attract the largest number of worthwhile applications at the lowest possible cost. The advantage of using a recruitment or selection agency is that applications can be obtained discreetly and they can be screened to provide employers with a short list of the best candidates. Two skills have to be applied. The advertisements must be so worded that they both sell the job and attract the best applicants, while correct choice of media will bring the vacancy to the notice of the largest number of good applicants as economically as possible.

The Higher Purpose of Marketing

What is the higher purpose of marketing? What should an enlightened marketer try to accomplish?

This question is raised because managers sometimes lose sight of their ultimate goals and settle for short-term gains of dubious benefit to themselves and others. When they lose a sense of higher purpose, their work becomes unsatisfying and their attitude cynical.

The most common view is that the marketer's goal is to maximize the market's consumption of whatever the company is producing. In this view, the marketer is a technician who engineers sales gains. Marketing success means selling more and more gum, cars, and ice cream bars as if the consumer were a huge consumption machine that must constantly be stuffed with goods and services. Even if consumers don't want this much consumption, it is good for the economy and creates jobs. Yet Adam Smith observed that hunger is limited by the size of the human stomach. More generally, people will eventually run out of time to consume all that they could buy. They may rebel against overeating and overdressing, and start thinking "enough is enough" or even "less is more." Frederick Pohl wrote a science-fiction short story, "The Midas Touch," in which factories are completely automated and the goods roll out continuously and people consume as much as they can in order not to be buried under the goods. In the story, ordinary people are given high consumption quotas, while the elite are excused from having to consume so much. Furthermore, the elite are given the few jobs that are still left to do, so that they don't have to face the bleakness of no work.

A sounder goal for the marketer is to aim to maximize consumer satisfaction. The marketer's task is to track changing consumer wants and influence the company to adjust its mix of goods and services to those that are needed. The marketer makes sure that the company continues to produce value for the target customer markets.

Even consumer satisfaction, however, is not a complete goal for the marketer. The act of creating "goods" to satisfy human desires also creates some "bads" in the process. Every car that is produced satisfies a transportation need and at the same time contributes to the level of pollution in society. The economist Kenneth Arrow noted that high gross national product also means high gross national pollution. The sensitive marketer has to take responsibility for the totality of outputs created by the business. First, the marketer is a member of the public and therefore victimizing himself to some extent. Second, the society has spawned consumerists, environmentalists, and other public-action groups, who make life difficult for those firms that are indifferent to the "bads" they create in the process of pursuing profits.

Ultimately, the enlightened marketer is really trying to contribute to the quality of life. The quality of life is a function of the quantity and need-satisfying quality of goods and services, the quality of the physical environment, and the quality of the cultural environment. Too often the firm rests its case on its ability to produce great quantities of goods and services and does not pay enough attention to its impact on the other components of life quality.

Marketing

Marketing is the cornerstone discipline of some of the most successful companies in America and a discipline of growing interest to companies and nonprofit organizations throughout the world. All organizations face the problem of how to increase value for target markets that are undergoing continuously changing needs and wants. Organizations must thoughtfully define their products, services, prices, communications, and distribution in a way that meets real buyer needs in a competitively viable way. That is the task of marketing.

Although selling is a very old subject, marketing is a relatively new subject. It represents a higher-order integration of many separate functions - selling, advertising, marketing research, new-product development, customer service, physical distribution - that impinge on customer needs and satisfaction. Many organizations at first resist marketing because it threatens vested interests within the organization and their own concepts of how to manage the organization effectively. Marketing gradually gets established, however, first as a promotion function, later as a customer service function, still later as an innovation function, then as a market positioning function, and ultimately as an analysis, planning, and control function. Few companies understand and install marketing in its full form when first considering it. Even after marketing is effectively implemented in an organization, there is a tendency for many managers to forget its main principles in the wake of success.

Marketing's task in the organization is not only to help it recognize business opportunities and serve the various publics but also to harness the organization's energy to enhance the quality of life in society.

Marketing is human activity directed at satisfying needs and wants through exchange processes.

 

Human Needs and Wants

The starting point for the discipline of marketing lies in human needs and wants. Mankind needs food, air, water, clothing, and shelter to survive. Beyond this, people have a strong desire for recreation, education, and other services. They have strong preferences for particular versions of basic goods and services.

There is no doubt that people's needs and wants today are staggering. In one year, in the United States alone, Americans purchased 67 billion eggs, 250 million chickens, 5.5 million hair dryers, 133 billion domestic air travel passenger miles, and over 20 million, lectures by college English professors. These consumer goods and services led to a derived demand for more fundamental products, such as 150 million tons of steel and 3.7 billion pounds of cotton. These are a few of the wants and needs that get expressed in a $1.3 trillion economy.

A useful distinction can be drawn between needs, wants, and intentions, although these words are used interchangeably in common speech. A need is a state of felt deprivation of some generic satisfaction arising out of the human condition. People require food, clothing, shelter, safety, belonging, esteem, and a few other things for survival. People actually need very little. These needs are not created by their society or by marketers; they exist in the very texture of human biology and the human condition.

Wants are desires for specific satisfiers of these ultimate needs. A person needs food and wants a steak, needs clothing and wants a Pierre Cardin suit, needs esteem and buys a Cadillac. While people's needs are few, their wants are many. Human wants are continually shaped and reshaped by social forces and institutions such as churches, schools, corporations, and families.

Intentions are decisions to acquire specific satisfiers under the given terms and conditions. Many persons want a Cadillac; only a few intend to buy one at today's prices.

These distinctions shed light on the frequent charge by marketing critics that "marketers create needs" or "marketers get people to buy things they don't need." Marketers do not create needs; needs preexist marketers. Marketers, along with other influentials in the society, influence wants. They suggest to consumers that a particular car would efficiently satisfy the person's need for esteem. Marketers do not create the need for esteem but try to point out how a particular good would satisfy that need. Marketers also try to influence persons' intentions to buy by making the product attractive, affordable, and easily available.

Products

The existence of human needs and wants gives rise to the concept of products. Our definition of product is very broad:

A product is something that is viewed as capable of satisfying a need or want.

A product can be an object, service, activity, person, place, organization, or idea. Suppose a person feels depressed. What might the person do to get out of his or her depression? What products might meet the need to feel better? The person can turn on a television set (object); go to a movie (service); take up jogging (activity); see a therapist (person); travel to Hawaii (place); join a Lonely Hearts Club (organization); or adopt a different philosophy about life (idea). All of these things can be viewed as products available to the "feeling depressed." If the term product seems unnatural at times, we may substitute the term resource or offer or satisfier to describe that which may satisfy a need.

In the case of physical objects, it is important to distinguish between them and the services they represent. People do not buy physical objects for their own sake. A tube of lipstick is bought to supply a service: helping the person look better. A drill bit is bought to supply a service: making a needed hole. Every physical object is a means of packaging a service. The marketer's job is to sell the service packages built into physical products.

Exchange

Marketing exists when people decide to satisfy needs and wants in a certain way that we shall call exchange. Exchange is one of four ways in which a person can obtain a product capable of satisfying a particular need.

The first option is self-production. A hungry person can relieve hunger through personal efforts at hunting, fishing, or fruit gathering. The person does not have to interact with anyone else. In this case there is no market and no marketing.

The second option is coercion. The hungry person can forcibly wrest food from another. No benefit is offered to the other party except the chance not to be harmed.

The third option is supplication. The hungry person can approach someone and beg for food. The supplicant has nothing tangible to offer except gratitude.

The fourth option is exchange. The hungry person can approach someone who has food and offer some resource in exchange, such as money, another good, or some service.

Marketing centers on that last approach to the acquisition of products to satisfy human needs and wants. Exchange assumes four conditions:

1.    There are two parties.

2.    Each party has something that could be of value to the other.

3.    Each party is capable of communication and delivery.

4.    Each party is free to accept or reject the offer.

If these conditions exist, there is a potential for exchange. Whether exchange actually takes place depends upon whether the two parties can find terms of exchange that will leave them both better off (or at least not worse off) than before the exchange. This is the sense in which exchange is described as a value-creating process; that is, exchange normally leaves both parties with a sense of having gained something of value.

Market

The concept of exchange leads naturally into the concept of a market:

A market is the set of all actual and potential buyers of a product.

An example will illustrate this concept. Suppose an artist spends three weeks creating a beautiful sculpture. He has in mind a particular price. The question he faces is whether there is anyone who will exchange this amount of money for the sculpture. If there is at least one such person, we can say there is a market. The size of the market will vary with the price. The artist may ask for so high a price that there is no market for his sculpture. As he brings the price down, normally the market size increases because more people can afford the sculpture. The size of the market depends upon the number of persons who have (1) an interest in the object, (2) the necessary resources, and (3) a willingness to offer the resources to obtain it. These three things make up the level of demand.

Wherever there is a potential for trade, there is a market. The term "market" is often used in conjunction with some qualifying term that describes a human need or product type or demographic group or geographical location. An example of a need market is the relaxation market, which exists because people are willing to exchange money for lessons on yoga, transcendental meditation, and disco dancing. An example of a product market is the shoe market, so defined because people are willing to exchange money for objects called shoes. An example of a demographic market is the youth market, so defined because young people possess purchasing power that they are willing to use for such products as education, bikinis, motorcycles, and stereophonic equipment. An example of a geographic market is the French market, so defined because French citizens are a locus of potential transactions for a wide variety of goods and services.

The concept of a market also covers exchanges of resources not necessarily involving money. The political candidate offers promises of good government to a voter market in exchange for their votes. The lobbyist offers services to a legislative market in exchange for votes for the lobbyist's cause. A university cultivates the mass-media market when it wines and dines editors in exchange for more publicity. A museum cultivates the donor market when it offers special privileges to contributors in exchange for their financial support.

The Marketing Concept

The marketing concept is a management orientation that holds that the key task of the organization is to determine the needs and wants of target markets and to adapt the organization to delivering the desired satisfactions more effectively and efficiently than its competitors.

In short, the marketing concept says "find wants and fill them" rather than "create products and sell them." This orientation is reflected in various contemporary ads: "Have it your way" (Burger King); "You're the boss" (United Airlines); and "No dissatisfied customers" (Ford).

The underlying premises of the marketing concept are:

1.    Consumers can be grouped into different market segments depending on their needs and wants.

2.    The consumers in any market segment will favor the offer of that organization which comes closest to satisfying their particular needs and wants.

3.    The organization's task is to research and choose target markets and develop effective offers and marketing programs as the key to attracting and holding customers.

The selling concept and the marketing concept are frequently confused by the public and many business people. Levitt draws the following contrast between these two orientations:

Selling focuses on the needs of the seller; marketing on the needs of the buyer. Selling is preoccupied with the seller's need to convert his product into cash; marketing with the idea of satisfying the needs of the customer by means of the product and the whole cluster of things associated with creating, delivering and finally consuming it.

The marketing concept replaces and reverses the logic of the selling concept. The selling concept starts with the firm's existing products and considers the task as one of using selling and promotion to stimulate a profitable volume of sales. The marketing concept starts with the firm's target customers and their needs and wants; it plans a coordinated set of products and programs to serve their needs and wants; and it derives profits through creating customer satisfaction

Among the prime practitioners of the marketing concept is McDonald's Corporation, the fast-food hamburger retailer.

In its short, twenty-year existence, McDonald's has served Americans and citizens of several other countries over 27 billion hamburgers! Today it commands a 20 percent share of the fast-food market, far ahead of its closest rivals, Kentucky Fried Chicken (8.4 percent) and Burger King (5.3 percent). Credit for this leading position belongs to a thoroughgoing marketing orientation. McDonald's knows how to serve people well and adapt to changing needs and wants.

Before McDonald's, Americans could get hamburgers in restaurants or diners, but not without problems. In many places, the hamburgers were poor in quality, service was slow, decor was poor, help was uneven, conditions were unclean, and the atmosphere noisy. McDonald's was formulated as an alternative, where the customer could walk into a spotlessly clean outlet, be greeted by a friendly and efficient order-taker, receive a good-tasting hamburger less than a minute after placing the order, with the chance to eat it there or take it out. There were no jukeboxes or telephones to create a teenage hangout, and in fact, McDonald's became a family affair, particularly appealing to the children.

As times changed, so did McDonald's. The sit-down sections were expanded in size, the decor improved, a very successful breakfast menu featuring Egg McMuffin was added, and new outlets were opened in high-traffic parts of the city. McDonald's was clearly being managed to evolve with changing customer needs and profitable opportunities.

In addition, McDonald's management knows how to efficiently design and operate a complex service operation. It chooses its locations carefully, selects highly qualified franchise operators, gives them complete management training and assistance, supports them with a high-quality national advertising and sales promotion program, monitors product and service quality through continuous customer surveys, and puts great energy into improving the technology of hamburger production to simplify operations, bring down costs, and speed up service.

A marketing orientation is also relevant to nonprofit organizations. Most nonprofit organizations start out as product oriented. Thus many colleges facing declining enrollments are now investing heavily in advertising and recruitment activities. These organizations begin to realize the need to define their target markets more carefully; research their needs, wants, and values; modernize their products and programs; and communicate more effectively. Such organizations turn from selling to marketing.

Marketing

In recent years marketing has become a driving force in most companies. Underlying all marketing strategy is "The Marketing Concept", explained in this diagram:

THE MARKETING CONCEPT (We must produce what people want, not what we want to produce) - This means that we PUT THE CUSTOMER FIRST (We organize the company so that this happens) - We must FIND OUT WHAT THE CUSTOMER WANTS (We carry out market research) - We must SUPPLY exactly what the customer wants.

We can do this offering the right MARKETING MIX "The Four P's". The right PRODUCT at the right PRICES available through the right channels of distribution: PLACE, presented in the right way: PROMOTION.

Nowadays, all divisions of a company are used to "Think Marketing". To think marketing we must have a clear idea of:

what the customer needs,

what the customer wants;

what cruses them to buy.

What the product is to the customer: functional, technological, economical, aesthetic, emotional, psychological aspects.

"FEATURES" (what the product is) + "BENEFITS" (which means that a company that believes in marketing is forward thinking and doesn't rest its past achievements: it must be aware of its strengths and weaknesses as well as the opportunities and threats it faces in market (remember the letters "SWOT")).

More about "The marketing Mix" and the "Four P's"

PRODUCT: the goods or service that you are marketing. The product is not just a collection of components, but includes its design, quality and reliability.

Products have a life cycle, and forward-thinking companies are continually developing new products to replace products whose sales are declining and coming to the end of their lives. A "total product" includes the image of the product as well as its features and benefits (see below). In marketing terms, political candidates and non-profit-making public services are also "products" that people must be persuaded to "buy" and packaged attractively (see Promotion below).

PRICE: making it easy for the customer to buy. The marketing view of pricing takes account of the value of a product, its quality, the ability of the customer to pay, the volume of sales required, the level of market saturation and the prices charged by the competition. Too low a price can reduce the number of sales just as significantly as too high a price. A low price may increase sales but not as profitably as fixing a high, yet still popular, price. As fixed costs stay fixed whatever the volume of sales, there is usually no such thing as a "profit margin" on any single product.

PLACE: getting the product to the customer. Decisions have to be made about the channels of distribution and delivery arrangements. Retail products may go through various channels of distribution:

1. Producer - sells directly to end users via own sales force, direct response advertising or direct mail (mail order).

2. Producer - retailers - end-users.

3. Producer - wholesalers/agents - retailers - end-users.

4. Producer - wholesalers - directly to end-users.

5. Producer - multiple store groups/department stores/mail order houses - end-users.

6. Producer - market - wholesalers - retailers - end-users.

Each stage must add, "value" to the product to justify the costs: the middleman is not normally someone who just takes his "cut" but someone whose own sales force and delivery system can make the product more easily and cost-effectively available to the largest number of customers. One principle behind this is "breaking down the bulk" the producer may sell in minimum quantities of, say, 10000 to the wholesaler, who sells in minimum quantities of 100 to the retailer, who sells in minimum quantities of 1 to the end-user. A confectionery manufacturer doesn't deliver individual bars of chocolate to consumer: distribution is done through wholesalers and then retailers who each "add value" to the product providing a good service to their customers and stocking a wide range of similar products.

PROMOTION - presenting the product to the customer. Promotion involves considering the packaging and presentation of the product, its image, the product name, advertising and slogans, brochures, literature, price lists, after-sales service and training, trade exhibitions of fairs, public relations, publicity, and personal selling's, where the seller develops a relationship with the customer.

Every product must process a "unique selling proposition" (USP) - features and benefits that make it unlike any other product in its market.

In promoting a product, the attention of potential customers is attracted and an interest in the product aroused, creating a desire for the product and encouraging customers to take prompt action ("AIDA").

Direct Mail and Direct Response

Direct Mail

Shopping without shops or direct marketing has become very big business, aided by direct mail, TV commercials and teletext, off-the-page selling, the telephone, the computer, and the credit card. Mail order nowadays better known as direct or direct response marketing. In Britain, direct mail takes third place to press and television and takes up 10 per cent of the total advertising expenditure. It is also an excellent medium for international advertising when it is more economical to airmail selected prospects than to advertise in the press which may be very limited anyway.

Confusion of terms can be avoided by remembering that direct mail is an advertising medium but mail order (or direct response) is a form of distribution, that is, trading by mail what­ever medium is used for advertising sales offers. Consequently, direct mail is not limited to direct marketing: a retailer can use direct mail to attract shoppers to his store.

Characteristics of direct mail

It is addressed to selected, named recipients or at least to chosen people at selected addresses whether they be householders or managing directors. The quantity can be controlled, the message can be varied to suit different groups of people, and the timing can be controlled or at any rate estimated within postal limits.

Because of the controls mentioned above, it is economical in the sense that even the selected lists can be culled of unwanted addresses. De-duplication can be applied when a number of lists are being used in which certain names are repeated. It is also economical because in a mail shot more copy and illustrations can be used than would fill a whole page broadsheet newspaper, and at a fraction of the cost.

Unlike any other medium, except possibly the telephone, it is a one-to-one personal medium, like a conversation on paper. Generally, people like receiving mail, and if the recipient is well-chosen the mail shot will be welcomed. This medium is also personal in the sense that sales letters and envelopes can be addressed by name (personalised). Using special techniques like laser printing, dramatic and colourful effects can be achieved with the recipient's name inserted at various points in the body of the letter itself.

A direct mail campaign can be mounted very quickly, in a few hours if necessary given the facilities to write and reproduce a sales letter, and pack and post it with or without an enclosure. It is therefore a very flexible medium which can be used in an emergency.

For those advertisers who (a) have or can hire a reliable mailing list and (b) need to supply considerable information, direct mail can be their first line or primary advertising medium. In fact, they may use no other, except perhaps sales literature as enclosures. Others may use press advertising to produce enquiries or initial orders which provide a mailing list for future use.

A direct mail shot is usually consists of sales letter and enclosures. A sales letter is not just a business letter. It is a special form of copywriting with its own techniques. The length of the letter will depend on the extent to which the reader's interest can be sustained The letter may present a complete selling proposition, or it can be a covering letter referring the reader to an enclosure. The latter should not laboriously repeat the contents of the enclosure but highlight special features of it. Writing a sales letter we have a pattern to follow.

The main parts of a sales letter.

1.    Introductory opening paragraph needs to capture reader’s attention.

2.    The proposition is the heart of the letter.

3.    Convincing the reader. There may be a price concession if the offer is taken up quickly, or the offer may have a time limit.

4.    Final paragraph consists of instructions on how to respond or order.

Adopting the above four-point formula, here is an example of how a sales letter might be written.

Dear Mr. Brown

What do you do when your wife says the lawn needs cutting? Do you turn over a new leaf in the book you are trying to read? Or maybe you take the dog for a walk? If you haven't got a dog perhaps you pray that it will rain?

That's if you have an old back-breaker of a lawnmower that's agony to push up and down the lawn on a hot day.

With the new Smith and Jones electric lawnmower you don't have to push. You simply steer! The machine does all the work. It's a pleasure, really.

Your wife will be surprised how willingly you take your Smith and Jones out of the garden shed. She'll probably have a drink waiting for you afterwards, not that you'll be hot and weary. It will just be nice to sit down with her in the deckchairs and admire that neat, trim lawn. Nice work, Mr. Brown!

You can see the new Smith and Jones electric lawnmowers at the New Town Garden Centre – open all weekend sо you can call in when it suits you. It comes in a box you can put in the boot, and it's very easy to assemble. Why not bring the wife along?

Yours sincerely John Donaldson

Manager

When writing a sales letter it is necessary to use language which is appropriate to the medium, the product and the reader. The contents of the envelope should be kept to a minimum. Some mailings consist of so many items of different shapes and sizes that the recipient is bewildered and may well discard the whole lot! Good enclosures are those which supplement the sales letter. Some of the best examples of well-planned shots are the one-piece mailers which contain all the necessary information and the order form, making an accompanying sales letter unnecessary.

A printed envelope can be an advertisement just like the packaging of a retail product. It is the first thing people see. It can attract attention and invite curiosity about the contents, and if sufficiently interesting to the recipient the printed envelope could achieve priority over other correspondence received at the same time.

The size of envelopes can be controlled by the format of printed enclosures. Large leaflets in large envelopes can arrive in a very battered state whereas smaller leaflets in smaller envelopes are more likely to arrive in the same condition as when packed. So it’s better to use the small ones.

In order to send direct mail shots the company should create mailing lists. There are a lot of ways of creating or obtaining mailing lists. The information may be took from sales bills bearing the names and addresses of purchasers, from the response to advertisements, from yearbooks, annuals, directories and membership lists. They may be created by using a direct mail house or by hiring a list from list-brokers who specialize in this service. There are also firms which specialize in client's lists on computerized databases, adding and deleting names as requested, and so managing and maintaining a client's own list.

It is important to have an up-to-date mailing list, and it is bad policy to build a continuous mailing list which is never checked or revised. People do move, change their names or die. A mailing list of customers can be out-of-date after two years and in some cases in six months.

Not all direct advertising, or distribution of materials, is sent by post. A large volume is delivered door-to-door to houses, shops or offices. There are three types of mail-drop service:

1)    by specialist door-to-door distributors;

2)    by the Post Office;

3)    in conjunction with the delivery of free newspapers.

Direct Response Marketing

Direct response is a form of distribution as I’ve mentioned above. The reasons for its growth and success are lack of personal services in self-service stores and supermarkets, problems of car-parking and road congestion near shopping centres, popularity of credit and charge cards.

Today the variety of means by which 'armchair' shopping can be conducted are only limited by the ability of modern mail order traders to conceive yet another technique of what is now called direct response marketing. We have moved a long way from the mail-order bargains of the popular press or the mail order club catalogues, although both still exist. It is now a sophisticated business extending rapidly into the realms of alternative television, micro-computers and videodisc catalogues. At the same time, traditional media continue to be used, but this does now include commercial television, as with recorded music producers. The largest single user of direct response is insurance.

Direct response has become a very substantial area of agency business, conducted either by specialist agencies, or by specialist subsidiaries of well-known agencies. A major reason for the expansion of direct response marketing has been the demand from clients for 'accountable advertising' where they can measure the response in enquiries, sales leads or sales.

From small black and white ads in the popular press to full-colour, full-page ads in the weekend colour supplements, a huge variety of goods and services arc sold off-the-page. Most hobby and enthusiasts magazines carry ads offering goods by post, from foreign stamps to computer software. The business pages offer unit trusts, and even the popular papers offer life insurance, motor-car and private hospital insurance. Correspondence courses have long been sold this way. Even the sale of shares is conducted by prospectuses published in The Times and Financial Times.

A number of commercial and non-commercial organisations sell from catalogues which may be advertised in the press and on TV or sent to regular customers, members or donors, or direct mailed against selected mailing lists. Such catalogues are usually distributed annually or seasonally, but some are issued more frequently. They may be for specific products or services such as garden seeds, bulbs or roses; foreign stamps or coins; fashion goods; wines; pipes; or perhaps tour holidays.

There are two kinds of clubs, those for club agents who enrol a circle of members, with the agents earning commission on the sales; and clubs for individual members who usually undertake to buy a minimum number of books, records, cassettes or CDs a year. Some airlines operate mail order clubs for passengers.

The first group enrol agents by means of ads in the women's press and in family magazines like TV Times and Radio Times. The reader should note the special wording of the application coupons in these ads. Particular information is requested such as whether the applicant has a telephone, and there is generally an age limit and perhaps geographical limits.

Also television, telephone and teletext may be used as the method of distributing. Advertisers quote the Teledata (ВНР) number to make enquiries or order goods. It is a 24-hour personalised telemarketing service, making it unnecessary for customers to mail coupons and for advertisers to handle them. All the sales information is held in a computer. For example, an advertisement for the Hyundai Stella 1.6 motor car, concluded with: 'phone Teledata 071-200-0200 for a brochure and the name and address of your nearest dealer'. The teledata receptionist gives the addresses of the nearest dealers, and note the caller's address in order to send the brochure, and asks where the advertisement has been seen and the make and year of the caller's present car.

Electronic mail is a system whereby mail is received on a Telex or non-Telex computer terminal with a modem which permits a print-out on a printer. This system is limited to recipients who have the necessary receiving equipment. But the growth of such office facilities is making electronic mail a viable direct response medium especially since there is the interaction facility to respond directly and quickly.

Direct marketing relies on trust. Customers have to send money in advance and do not see the goods until they arrive. That is why this form of trading is less common in developing countries. In Britain, the Mail Order Protection Scheme means that customers are protected by the publishers who do not wish to receive complaints from readers.

In Britain there are many laws which could concern the direct response marketer, and some may be of general application wherever the goods are sold. To these may be added the common law of contract. Most of these laws apply to off-the-page direct response, some apply to all forms of direct response marketing.

Exhibitions

I.          Importance of exhibitions

Exhibitions are popular throughout the world and have a long history, originating with old trading markets such as the 'marts' in what are today Belgium and the Netherlands, where British merchants sold their wool and woollens in the fourteenth century. The exhibition developed into the show attended by either the trade or the general public. London for many years became a major exhibition centre, to mention only the Great Exhibition of 1851, the Wembley Exhibition of 1924, and the Festival of Britain in 1951. In recent years the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham has rivalled London although many events are held at Olympia, Earls Court, the Horticultural Halls and the Barbican Centre in the City.

Throughout the world there are major exhibition centres, often government supported (unlike Britain!), the chief ones in Europe being Frankfurt, Basle and Milan. Many exhibitions are nowadays held in the Gulf states, an indication of the need to develop their emergent economies. Permanent trade exhibition centres exist in developing countries such as Malaysia and Nigeria.

 

II.         Types of exhibition

1. Public indoor

Usually held in specially built halls, the public show is based on a theme of public interest such as food, the home, do-it-yourself, gardening or holidays and travel.

2. Trade or business indoor

A more specialised type of exhibition, this will probably have a smaller attendance consisting of bona fide visitors who are invited, given tickets in their trade journal or admitted on presentation of their business card.

3. Private indoor

These are usually confined to one sponsor, but occasionally consist of a few sponsors with associated but not rival interests Venues are usually hotels, local halls, libraries, building centres or company premises if suitable.

4. Outdoor

Certain subjects lend themselves to outdoor exhibitions, for instance aviation, farm equipment (at agricultural shows) camping and large construction equipment. Exhibition stand may also be available at outdoor or tented events like flower shows and horse shows. In hotter countries exhibitions normally held indoors in the northern hemisphere will be held out-of-doors.

5. Travelling

Mobile exhibitions can be transported by caravan, specially built exhibition vehicles, converted double-decker buses, trains aircraft and ships. British Rail has its special Ambassador exhibition train which can be used by a single client and taken to a choice of railway stations throughout the country where visitors can be received. It can also be taken to European countries Mobile van shows are common in developing countries, travelling from town to town and village to village.

6. In-store

These are popular with foreign sponsors who organise weeks in different towns to display foods, wines, fabrics, pottery, glassware or tourist attractions. The displays are usually in appropriate stores, but a special entertainment evening may be organised for the public in a theatre or hall, when singers, dancers and/or films may constitute the programme.