TYPES OF LOCAL ADVERTISING

1.1 TYPES OF LOCAL ADVERTISING

The two major types of local advertising are produce and institutional. As its name implies product advertising is designed to sell a specific product or service and to get immediate action institutional advertising, on the other hand, attempts to obtain favorable attention for the business as a whole not for a specific product or service the store or business sells. The effects of institutional advertising are intended to be long term rather than short rang.

1.2 OBJECTIVES OF LOCAL ADVERTISING

The objectives of local advertising differ from the objectives of national advertising in both emphasis and time. National manufacturers tend to emphasize long-term objectives of awareness, image, and credibility. On the local, retail level, the advertiser's needs tend to be more immediate, as shown in the checklist of Local Advertising Objectives. The emphasis is on keeping the cash register ringing - increasing traffic, turning over inventory, and bringing in new customers among other things. As a result on the local level, there are constant promotions, sales and clearances, all designed to create immediate activity. The trade-off, of course, is that the day after the promotions or sale the traffic may drop. So to increase traffic again, the merchant may plan another sale or another promotion. Then another and another. This can result in a cycle of sporadic bursts of activity followed by inactivity, sharp peaks and valleys in sales, and the image of a business that should be visited only during a sale. Long-term and short-term objectives work against each other when one is sought at the expense of the other. Successful local advertisers must there fore think of long-term objectives first and then develop short-term goals to help achieve their long-term objectives. This usually increases the emphasis on institutional and regular price-line advertising, improves customer service, and reduces the reliance on sales and clearances for creating traffic.

1.3 PLANNING THE ADVERTISING EFFORT

The key to success in any advertising program, local or national, is adequate planning. Planning is not a one-time occurrence, however, but a continuous process of research evaluation, decision, execution, and review. On the local level, more advertising dollars are wasted because of inadequate planning than for any other reason. The success of Rebio's was due to the fact that Ralf Rubio made planning a continuous, flexible process that allowed for change, improvement, new facts, and new ideas. Several steps are involved in planning the local advertising effort: analyzing the local market and the competition, conducting adequate research, determining objectives and strategy, establishing a realistic budget, and planning media strategy. However the small advertiser will often profit from a bottom-up planning approach. Rubio's success, for example, can be attributed to his starting with a tactic- the fish taco- and then building a complete strategy around it, from the bottom up.

1.4 CREATING THE LOCAL ADVERTISING

One of the most competitive businesses in any local market is the grocery business. Characterized by high overhead, low profit margins, heavy discounting, constant promotion, and miser doses of advertising, food retailing is a difficult and highly competitive business at best. The Tom Thumb Page grocery stores in Dallas had an additional problem. They had elected to avoid price competition whenever possible and to compete instead on the basis of quality and service. This policy made it potentially difficult to attract new customers and create store traffic, because grocery customers tend to be very price-oriented.

The Tom Thumb Chain had been doing " maintenance advertising " in routine food-day newspaper sections for about four years. When they hired a new Charles Cullum explained their situation and their objectives. They asked the agency to develop a campaign that would show that Tom Thumb was, in fact, very competitive in giving top value even though the prices might be slightly higher. Barbara Harwell and Chuck Beau, the agency's creative directors, responded by developing a local institutional compaign that made grocery advertising history. They suggested opening the campaign with a television promotion for Thanksgiving turkeys. They convinced the Cullums and Tom Hailstone, the Chain's president, that to present a truly quality image they would have to create an absolutely outstanding commercial in terms of production quality. Furthermore, to communicate that Tom Thumb's policies truly warranted higher prices, they pervaded the clients to make a bold, risky statement that would impress the viewing public. Hairston and the Cullums agreed two weeks before Thanksgiving, the campaign began.

The Commercial Opened with a tight close-up of a live turkey. As the off-camera announcer spoke, the camera pulled slowly back, and the turkey rested to the copy with an occasional" gobble ". The announcer said: At Tom Thumb we stand behind everything we sell... And that's a promise. It's always been that way. Even when we started, Mr. Cullum said, "We want our customers to be happy with every thing they buy in this store. If a woman buys a turkey from us and comes back the day after Thanksgiving with a bag of pones and says she didn't like it we'll give her money back or give her another turkey." The moment he said that, the turkey reacted with a big " gobble " and ran off-camera.

The commercial closed on the company lag with the announcer saying, "That's the way we do business at Tom Thumb... we stand behind everything we sell, and that's a promise." The company merchandised the campaign by printing the slogan " We stand behind everything we sell... and that's a promise". On grocery sacks, on red lapel buttons for employees, and on outdoor billboards. The audio portions of the commercials were aired as radio spots. Most important employee-orientation meetings were held to explain the concepts to the company's personal and to make absolutely sure that any customers returning merchandise received a friendly, cordial smile from the employee handling the transaction. The reaction to the campaign was astounding. First, it became the topic of local conversation. Then people began to wonder how many turkeys' people began to talk about the campaign and showed the commercial in their newscasts. Finally, the top disk jockey in Dallas sponsored a contest inviting listeners to guess how many turkeys would be returned to Tom Thumb. The day after Thanksgiving, the local TV film crews waited at the stores to count and interview people carrying in bags of bones. One customer said she returned a turkey and got her money back with no questions asked. Another said she was given her money immediately but that she then gave the money back. She had just wanted to test them to see whether they were telling the truth.

The final score was 30.000 turkeys sold and only 18 returned - a fantastic marketing, advertising, and publicity success. Since then, the store has been reported in numerous grocery and advertising trade journals, and Tom Thumb Page successfully continued the " we stand behind everything we sell " advertising campaign theme.

This " talking turkey " example shows that creativity in developing an ad campaign is just as important at the local level as it is on the national level, Local advertisers often fail to realize that their print and broadcast messages the budgetary constraints of local businesses, creativity becomes even more important in grabbing the consumer's attention. The final section of this chapter addresses elements that go into creating local ads, and the kinds of creative assistance available to local advertisers.