Promotional Effectiveness of an Advertisement Essay Example for Free

Promotional Effectiveness of an Advertisement Essay This paper will examine the effectiveness of an advertisement for Giorgio Armani’s fragrance for men found in Men’s Health magazine. Focusing on the specifics of the ad, analysis will be done to depict the ins and outs of how the advertisement is conveying its message to the reader. To understand how marketers exploit their products to the consumers, the dynamics of an ad can be studied. Assessing the advertisement on a few important characteristics such as how the product is differentiated from the competitors, is there a need for redesign to obtain a more universal appeal, or are there any triggers which might evoke some negative emotions towards the product. The ad is a full page, double sided ad in the magazine. This is one of many fragrance promotions which are found throughout the magazine. To assess the characteristics of the ad, a number of questions can be asked to depict if there is room from improvement to effectively relay the marketer’s promotion. Promotional Effectiveness of an Advertisement Assessing the characteristics of an advertisement can lead to an understanding of how marketers promote their products to the consumer in effective or not so effective ways. Thumbing through Men’s Health magazine there are numerous ads. In fact, there seems to be an ad on every other page screaming out at the reader. To differentiate their product from other competitors, marketers have the task of effectively appealing to a universal customer without sacrificing the effectiveness of the target segment. In some cases there is a glaring need for a possible redesign or some other way to improve the advertisement. The strategies used by marketers to promote the Giorgio Armani’s fragrance can be assessed through a number of questions focusing on the effectiveness of the advertisement. According to Mullins and Walker Jr. (2010), identifying and having a clear understanding of the target market is essential for the planning and implementation of an effective promotional program (p. 368). By asking whether or not the ad effectively communicates the products benefits is a basic start and exactly what marketers want to relay to the reader. The target market is men who are reading through Men’s Health who come across this ad to see a young, attractive looking man in black and white photo with the fragrance bottle in the corner. On the other side a clear, bright picture of a wave crashing with a bottle of the fragrance in front of the wave. The marketers want the reader to see the benefits of being in the elite class of young, sleek looking men who wear the Armani fragrance. Marketers push a message of distinguished men wear our product. The wave gives the reader a feeling of clean, cool, and refreshing emotions and benefits from wearing the fragrance. Marketers use these pictures to convey the message of the products benefits. For marketers, differentiating from the competition is an important factor in promoting a product. In a magazine specifically for men, marketers of all big name brands take out full page ads to promote their individual product. Mullins and Walker Jr. (2010), mention that print media is much different than broadcast media because the reader selects the advertisement they want to read and take as much time as they want to read it (p. 354). With the Armani ad, there is a simple shot of a young man starring at the camera and a bottle in the corner. The back side has a flip up part to sample the fragrance. Thumbing through the rest of the magazine there are nine other, full paged fragrance ads located in the front of the magazine and most have a flip up sample on the back. All of them have a young attractive man looking at the camera in some similar variations of the Armani ad. Of course the fragrances all have their unique smell and that is a matter of taste in the consumer’s mind, but esthetically, the ad is not different at all. Improvements to better their uniqueness and elite class could be made. The market segment targeted in the ad is based on the person who is most likely to pick up a Men’s Health magazine, men. This might mean young or old but typically a young man in his twenties, thirties, forties, and maybe fifties. Marketers for Armani already have an advantage in knowing who are most likely to be the readers of Men’s Health and can narrow down their strategies to direct them towards the appropriate market segment. The ad is basically designed to have a universal appeal without sacrificing its effectiveness at the targeted segment and there really is not enough visual or literate information on the advertisement to trigger any real negative emotions towards the product, however, there could be room for improvement in some marketing strategies to improve the advertisement. The advertisement for Armani’s fragrance is clearly based around the sample of the fragrance on the back side which serves as the hook to get men craving that smell. There is not much that a marketer can do if the consumer does not enjoy the smell of the fragrance. However, to differentiate the product from the competitors’ products, a possible change in the typical shot of a man starring into the camera could improve the advertisement by creating interest in the uniqueness of the ad. The ad is in black and white which is different than the rest, but a change in the esthetics of the ad might separate Armani from the completion. An article in the Journal of American Academy of Business (2011) describes the importance of evaluating the marketing strategy. Possible improvements can be made in the advertisement for Armani by evaluating how effective there ad is with selling their product. Selecting and placing more importance on the pricing strategy might improve the effectiveness of the ad. The company could run a bundle deal with the different sized bottles. If the market segment is men, an attractive woman might get readers to stop more often. Celebrities always seem to push products well so maybe an endorsement could help. In the end, setting a clear and measurable objective can only be effective if it is evaluated right. Marketing managers for Armani face strategic decisions about how they can create a need and want for their fragrance. In the medium of print, marketers can narrow down their targeted market to exploit their product further and analyze what gets readers to select their promotional advertisement to read. Communicating the benefits, differentiating the product form competitors, identifying the market segment targeted, and analyzing the appeal of the product are ways to analyze the effectiveness of the promotion and find room for improvement if any. The Armani advertisement conveys a clear benefit through the use of their product by appealing to a targeted segment, but could use improvements in differentiating their strategies from the competition.