Advertising Models

Text 1 “Advertising models”

Advertising's job purely and simply is to communicate, to a defined audience, information and a frame-of-mind that stimulate action. Advertising succeeds or fails depending on how well it communicates the desired information and attitudes to the right people at the right time at the right cost.

Perhaps a more succinct version would be:

A paid for communication vehicle that is intended to inform, influence and/or persuade one or more individuals.

However Colley (1961) raises several interesting points that involve both the potential customer's mindset and the need to target customers via the most appropriate media.

It is important to realise that advertising is not for free - it is a commercial transaction between those who want to place the advertisement and the media owners. This links to the channels the advertisers use to most effectively communicate their message to their intended audience. The media owners are providing the communications channels.

Basically, advertising has three overarching functions or objectives: to inform, persuade and sell. Various models have been created to demonstrate a sequential learning pattern that has been called, over time, the Hierarchy of Effects. Barn- (1987) suggests that the development of the hierarchy of effects, to date, has encompassed three phases: early development, modern development and the challenge and defence phase. What has to be clear from the outset is that since the turn of the 19th century numerous models and adaptations of these models have proliferated. For the purpose of this text a selection has been made to cover the major developments. This in no way negates the value of the other models, but space limits further examination.

Early development phase

An American salesman, St Elmo Lewis, developed the first of these hierarchy models in 1898, now commonly known as the AIDA model (see Figure 10.7).

Lewis used this linear process as a means of explaining to...