Brand Advertising
Brand Advertising as Creative Pubiicity
ANDREW EHRENBERG South Bank University ehrenba@sbu.ac.uk NEIL BARNARD South Bank University RACHEL KENNEDY University of South Australia HELEN BLOOM Consultant HelenBloom@ compuserve.com
Our view of brand advertising is that it mostly serves to publicize the advertised brand. Advertising seldom seems to persuade. Advertising in a competitive market needs to maintain the brand's broad salience—being a brand the consumer buys or considers buying. This turns on brand awareness, but together with memory associations, familiarity, and brand assurance. Publicity can also help to develop such salience. This publicity view of advertising should affect both the briefs that are given to agencies (e.g., that cut-through is more important than having a persuasive selling proposition) and how we then evaluate the results. But since few advertisements seem actively to seek to persuade, how much do the advetisements themselves have to change, rather than just how we think and talk about them?
seems io work mainly by creati\ely publicizing the brand, without trying to persuade people that tlie brand differs h'om t)ther brands, or \s better or best. Fairly tew advertisements actually feature pofentially pcrsuasi\'e inducements tor flu'ir brand. \ o r do they USUCTIIV appear to change people's opinions.
BKAND ADVERTISINC; THREE KEY CONCEPTS
Publicity is often highly creative, to achie\e impact. Some publicity is iVee. Much is paid for. Publicity need not claim or imply differentiating \'alues for the brand (although it may do so): "1 saw you on tele\'ision but can't remember what you said." I he publicizing function of good brand advertising is all-pervasive. But it is seldom discussed nowadays. Hence this paper.
Persuasion
Three key terms used hero are now briefly outlined, namely; Publicitv, Persuasion, and Salience. They are discussed later in more detail. Implications tor sales are noted, and there is a concluding
ANDREW EHRENBERG South Bank University ehrenba@sbu.ac.uk NEIL BARNARD South Bank University RACHEL KENNEDY University of South Australia HELEN BLOOM Consultant HelenBloom@ compuserve.com
Our view of brand advertising is that it mostly serves to publicize the advertised brand. Advertising seldom seems to persuade. Advertising in a competitive market needs to maintain the brand's broad salience—being a brand the consumer buys or considers buying. This turns on brand awareness, but together with memory associations, familiarity, and brand assurance. Publicity can also help to develop such salience. This publicity view of advertising should affect both the briefs that are given to agencies (e.g., that cut-through is more important than having a persuasive selling proposition) and how we then evaluate the results. But since few advertisements seem actively to seek to persuade, how much do the advetisements themselves have to change, rather than just how we think and talk about them?
seems io work mainly by creati\ely publicizing the brand, without trying to persuade people that tlie brand differs h'om t)ther brands, or \s better or best. Fairly tew advertisements actually feature pofentially pcrsuasi\'e inducements tor flu'ir brand. \ o r do they USUCTIIV appear to change people's opinions.
BKAND ADVERTISINC; THREE KEY CONCEPTS
Publicity is often highly creative, to achie\e impact. Some publicity is iVee. Much is paid for. Publicity need not claim or imply differentiating \'alues for the brand (although it may do so): "1 saw you on tele\'ision but can't remember what you said." I he publicizing function of good brand advertising is all-pervasive. But it is seldom discussed nowadays. Hence this paper.
Persuasion
Three key terms used hero are now briefly outlined, namely; Publicitv, Persuasion, and Salience. They are discussed later in more detail. Implications tor sales are noted, and there is a concluding