Advertising is nothing but a paid form of non-personal presentation or promotion of ideas, goods or services by an identified sponsor with a view

to disseminate information concerning an idea, product or service. The message which is presented or disseminated is called advertisement. In the present day marketing activities hardly is there any business in the modern world which does not advertise. However, the form of advertisement differs from business to business. Advertisement has been defined differently by different persons. A few definitions are being reproduced below: According to Wood, "Advertising is causing to know to remember, to do." According to Wheeler, "Advertising is any form of paid non-personal presentation of ideas, goods or services for the purpose of inducting people to buy." According to Richard Buskirk, "Advertising is a paid form of non-personal presentation of ideas, goods or services by an identified sponsor." According to William J. Stanton, "Advertising consists of all the activities involves in presenting to a group, a non-personal, oral or visual, openly sponsored message regarding disseminated through one or more media and is paid for by an identified sponsor." The above definitions clearly reveal the nature of advertisement. This is a powerful element of the promotion mix. Essentially advertising means spreading of information about the characteristics of the product to the prospective customers with a view to sell the product or increase the sale volume. The main features of advertise are as under: It is directed towards increasing the sales of business. Advertising is a paid form of publicity It is non-personal. They are directed at a mass audience and nor at the individual as is in the case of personal selling. Advertisement are identifiable with their sponsor of originator which is not always the case with publicity or propaganda. Objective / Functions of advertising

The purpose of advertising is nothing but to sell something -a product, a service or an idea. The real objective of advertising is effective communication between producers and consumers. The following are the main objectives of advertising: Preparing Ground for New Product New product needs introduction because potential customers have never used such product earlier and the advertisement prepare a ground for that new product. Creation of Demand

The main objective of the advertisement is to create a favorable climate for maintaining of improving sales. Customers are to be reminded about the product and the brand. It may induce new customers to buy the product by informing them its qualities since it is possible that some of the customers may change their brands. Facing the Competition Another important objective of the advertisement is to face to competition. Under competitive conditions, advertisement helps to build up brand image and brand loyalty and when customers have developed brand loyalty, becomes difficult for the middlemen to change it. Creating or Enhancing Goodwill: Large scale advertising is often undertaken with the objective of creating or enhancing the goodwill of the advertising company. This, in turn, increases the market receptiveness of the company's product and helps the salesmen to win customers easily. Informing the Changes to the Customers Whenever changes are made in the prices, channels of distribution or in the product by way of any improvement in quality, size, weight, brand, packing, etc., they must be informed to the public by the producer through advertisement. Neutralizing Competitor's Advertising Advertising is unavoidable to complete with or neutralize competitor's advertising. When competitors are adopting intensive advertising as their promotional strategy, it is reasonable to follow similar practices to neutralize their effects. In such cases, it is essential for the manufacturer to create a different image of his product. Barring New Entrants From the advertiser's point of view, a strongly built image through long advertising helps to keep new entrants away. The advertisement builds up a certain monopoly are for the product in which new entrants find it difficult to enter. In short, advertising aims at benefiting the producer, educating the consumer and supplementing the salesmen. Above all it is a link between the producer and the consumer. Benefits or Importance of Advertisement

Advertising broadens the knowledge of the consumers. With the aid of advertising, consumers find and buy necessary products without much waste of time. This speeds up the sales of commodities, increases the efficiency of labor in distribution, and diminishes the costs of selling. It is an accepted fact that without market stimulus of heavy advertising, consumers might have waited another sixty years for the product evaluation that took place in less than ten years - it took after all over sixty years from the invention of the safety razor before the first acceptable stainless steel blades appeared

in the market. These words are more than enough to testify the potentialities of advertising in the field of modern marketing system. The main benefits of advertising may be narrated as follows: Benefits to Manufacturers It increases sales volume by creating attraction towards the product. It helps easy introduction of new products into the markets by the same manufacturer. It helps to create an image and reputation not only of the products but also of the producer or advertiser. In this way, it creates goodwill for the manufacturer. Retail price, maintenance is also possible by advertising where price appeal is the promotional strategy. It helps to establish a direct contact between manufacturers and consumers. It leads to smoothen the demand of the product. It saves the product from seasonal fluctuations by discovering new and new usage of the product. It creates a highly responsive market and thereby quickens the turnover that results in lower inventory. Selling cost per unit is reduced because of increased sale volume. Consequently, product overheads are also reduced due to mass production and sale. Advertising gives the employees a feeling of pride in their jobs and to be in the service of such a concern of repute. It, thus inspires the executives and worker to improve their efficiency. Advertising is necessary to meet the competition in the market and to survive. Benefits to Wholesalers and Retailers Easy sale of the products is possible since consumers are aware of the product and its quality. It increases the rate of the turn-over of the stock because demand is already created by advertisement. It supplements the selling activities. The reputation created is shared by the wholesalers and retailers alike because they need not spend anything for the advertising of already a well advertised product. It ensures more economical selling because selling overheads are reduced. It enables them to have product information. Benefits to Consumers Advertising stresses quality and very often prices. This forms an indirect guarantee to the consumers of the quality and price. Further large scale production assumed by advertising enables the seller to seller product at a lower cost. Advertising helps in eliminating the middlemen by establishing direct contacts between producers and consumers. It results in cheaper goods. It helps them to know where and when the products are available. This reduces their shopping time. It provides an opportunity to the customers to compare the merits and demerits of various substitute products. This is perhaps the only medium through which consumers could know the varied and new uses of the product. Modern advertisements are highly informative. Benefits to Salesmen

Salesmanship is incomplete without advertising. Advertising serves as the forerunner of a salesman in the distribution of goods. Sales is benefited the advertisement in following ways:

Introducing the product becomes quite easy and convenient because manufacturer has already advertised the goods informing the consumers about the product and its quality. Advertising prepares necessary ground for a salesman to begin his work effectively. Hence sales efforts are reduced. The contact established with the customer by a salesman is made permanent through effective advertising because a customer is assumed of the quality and price of the product. The salesman can weigh the effectiveness of advertising when he makes direct contact with the consumers. Benefits to Community or Society Advertising, in general, is educative in nature. In the words of the late President Roosevelt of the U.S.A., "Advertising brings to the greatest number of people actual knowledge concerning useful things: it is essentially a form of education and the progress of civilization depends on education." Advertising leads to a large-scale production creating more employment opportunities to the public in various jobs directly or indirectly. It initiates a process of creating more wants and their satisfaction higher standard of living. For example, advertising has made more popular and universal the uses of such inventions as the automobiles, radios, and various household appliances. Newspapers would not have become so popular and so cheap if there had been no advertisements. The cheap production of newspapers is possible only through the publication of advertisements in them. It sustains the press. It assures employment opportunities for the professional men and artist. Advertising does provide a glimpse of a country's way of life. It is, in fact, a running commentary on the way of living and the behavior of the people and is also an indicator of some of the future in this regard. Various media for Advertising

Advertising media are the means to transmit the message of the advertiser to the desired class of people. Channels or vehicle by which an advertising message is brought to the notice of the prospective buyer: Types of Media There is no dearth of media today. It may be direct or indirect. Direct method of advertising refers to such methods used by the advertiser with which he could establish a direct contact with the prospective hand involve the use of a hired agency for spreading the information. Most of the media are indirect in nature, e.g., press publicity, cinema, etc. The various media that are commonly used are being explained here under: Newspapers Newspaper (Hindi or English) (morning or evening editions) are bought largely for their news value as such they are most appropriate for announcing new products and new development of existing

products. The choice of a particular news paper for advertising depends upon many factors i.e., circulation of the newspaper, the type of readers it serves, the geographical region in which it is popular, the costs of space and general reputation of the paper etc. Magazines Another medium under press publicity is magazines and journals. They also offer good facility because magazine are read leisurely when the reader is mentally prepared to receive advertisements.
As a form of mass communication, advertising delivers relevant messages to target audiences and by changing mental states, it can perform a number of functions. Advertising movesconsumers from being unaware of a product or service to finally purchasing it. An ad is considered effective if it propels the consumer a step further in this process. This is how the function of advertising is viewed. The different functions of advertising are viewed as follows:

STIMULATES DEMAND By informing consumers about the availability of a product in the market, advertising stimulates latent needs, and reinforces the aroused needs. There is a general agreement that advertising has some effect on aggregate consumption. STRENGTHENS OTHER PROMOTION MIX ELEMENTS Advertising does the pre selling of the product and makes the job of the sales people easier. Advertising reaches a relatively large audience and makes them favourably predisposed. Ads carry the sales,promotional messages and often produce quick sales response. DEVELOPS BRAND PREFERENCE Consistent and persuasive advertising often induces brand trial or purchase. When the product delivers the promised quality, service and value, it creates satisfied customers who become instrumental in spreading a favorable word-of-mouth. Satisfied customers also develop brand preference, which gets reinforced by repeated ads. Products with strong brand franchise offer some protection against the competition. Retailers develop confidence and do not hesitate in stocking strong brands. Brand loyal customers are an important asset for the company and are less likely to be influenced by competitive moves. CUTS COSTS Advertising may be instrumental in cutting down production and selling costs. Increasing unit sales decrease unit costs. Selling costs also may decrease because there could be fewer wasted calls and less strain on sales people. LOWERS PRICES In any market based and competitive economy, when unit cost of a product goes down, there are external and internal pressures which compel companies to lower prices to the advantage of consumers. This often leads to deeper market penetration. COMPETITIVE WEAPON Advertising by itself and coupled with other promotion mix elements, may prove to be an extremely potent weapon to counter competitive moves.Advertising has an established role in creating brand personality and image. It helps differentiate a companys offer in a manner that the product may be considered as something with unique value having a definite identity of its own

Advertising agencies:
An advertising agency is an independent organization that provides one or more specializedadvertising and promotion related services to assist companies in developing, preparing and executing their advertising and other promotional programs. Advertising exposure model This represents another model of the advertising and persuasion process wherein the various processes that can occur after consumers are exposed to an advertisement.

First, exposure to the advertisement can create awareness about the brand, leading to a feeling of familiarity with it. Second, information about the brands benefits and the attributes on which the benefits are based can register with the consumer can also result from exposure to the ad. Third, advertisements can also generate feelings in an audience that they begin to associate with the brand or its consumption. Fourth, through the choice of the spokesperson and various executional devices, the advertisement can lead to the creation of an image for the brand, often called brand personality Fifth, the advertisement can create the impression that the consumers peers or experts- individuals favour the brand and groups the consumer likes to emulate.

This is often how products and brands are presented as being fashionable. These five effects can create a favorable liking, or attitude towards the brand, which in turn should lead to the purchasing action. Sometimes the advertiser will attempt to spur purchasing action directly by providing a reminder or by attacking reasons why the consumer may be postponing that action. The above model helps us to understand how and why consumers acquire process and useadvertising information. Its also important at the planning stage to develop a good understanding of where advertising fits into the total pool of information and influence sources to which a consumer is exposed. Understanding information processing invariably leads to the need for understanding a wide range of other important psychological constructs, such as perception, learning, attitude formation and chance, source effects, brand personality and image, cognitive and affective response and social factors such as group influence.

Role of Advertising Agency The major role as advertising agency is to work alongside the clients to develop and sustain the brands that they mutually serve, through consumer understanding and insight and through creative and media delivery skills to provide best advice and the best execution thereof to those clients for the advertising of those brands. Buildings age and become dilapidated. Machines wear out. People die. But what live on are the brands. Brands are much more than mere products and services. Brands, if successful, are clearly differentiated entities with which consumers can and do form a mutually beneficial relationship over time, because of the values rational and emotional, physical and aesthetic that consumers derive from them. The importance can be summed up as follows: A product is something that is made, in a factory: a brand is something that is bought, by a customer. A competitor can copy a product; a brand is unique. A product can be quickly out-dated; a successful brand is timeless.

The role of advertising and the advertising agency is to help effect this transformation from product or service to brand by clearly positioning the offering to the consumer its role and its benefits and by communicating the brands own personality. In short its role is to provide meaningful differentiation via the consumer connection. As one wise head in advertising once said, nothing kills a bad product faster than good advertising. Typically advertising is playing this role, along with other parts of what we call the marketing mix, in highly competitive market places. Most advertisers assign this job of informing the target audience and creating images to advertising agencies. Thus, the advertising agencies plan, prepare and place ads in the media. But even an advertiser can do all these things. The management can do planning of ad campaigns. For preparing ads, creative personal can be hires. And the advertiser for placing the ads can buy media space or time. So, why hire an advertising agency? The reason can be enlisted as follows: Expertise and experience- An advertising agency brings together people with the required expertise and experience of the various sub-disciplines of advertising. Thus, it has the copywriters, visualizes, researchers, photographers, directors, planners and people who get business and deal with clients working in ad agencies. An agency moulds all these people into a team and gives them a highly conducive work atmosphere. The agency makes the best use of their talents and experience to deliver rapidly, efficiently and in greater depth than a company or organization could do on its own. Objectivity and professionalism- Advertising agencies are highly professional. Objectivity is a major virtue of ad agency. They operate in a strange way. While they take up advertising for others, agencies hardly advertise themselves. Ad agencies being outside intermediaries can be objective. They thus will offer independent and detached viewpoints and suggestions based on objective analysis. Cost effective- If an organization wants to hire people to do its advertising, it can not provide them work all through the year. Also most experts in the fields of advertising like directors, musicians, photographers, charge huge amounts and are often not affordable. Moreover, hiring, organizing and managing all talents required to produce advertising campaigns is not an easy thing. And the fact that 98% of advertisers the worlds over hire as agencies is proof enough about the cost effectiveness of the agencies. Also the kind of consistent, powerful and compelling advertising that can be created by using the expertise, experience, objectivity and professionalism of ad agencies cannot be measured economically. Functions of Advertising Agencies Today advertising agencies are found in virtually every major city on the world and their role in stimulating economic growth is solidly established. To understand advertising, we need to examine the functions of an Ad Agency. These are: Talent & Creative productions: The basic function of an Ad Agency is providing talent. The creative efforts of the art director, the detailed analysis of the research director and the political understanding of

the campaign director, are just a few examples of the many abilities of Ad Agency personal have to offer. A business organization or person will contract the services of an ad agency to help market a product. This function involves processing the information collected from the client and through research and designing communication material in the form of advertisements and other publicity material. This also includes planning creative strategies, copy or script writing, visualization, designing, layout, shooting of films, editing, giving music, etc. Research: The second function of an Ad agency is research. In order to distribute the message to the public successfully, the agency must first know all that it can about the product. One of the first jobs is to research the product and the company, one must learn, one possibly can about both. The research must even take one close to the heart of the firms inner operations. Ad agencies use research as a tool to test consumer reactions to products and services. Distribution & Media planning: The third important function of an ad agency is distribution. Here you decide what type of message you will create for the company and what media will be most helpful in sending this message to the public. On the basis of the media habits (access and exposure) of the target audience, agency people prepare a media plan. This plan includes which media to be used, which part of the media to be used, when to place the ads and for how long to place the ads, etc. media planners keep track of the viewer ship, listener ship and readership of all kinds of media. Monitoring Feedback: By monitoring consumer feedback, a decision on whether to revise the message, the medium, the target audience or all of them can be made. Ad agencies are developing to reach the target audience. As information is the backbone of all advertising, to prepare ads, one requires information about the product, its competitors, the market situation and trends, information about the audiences (their likes and dislikes and media habits) also need to be collected. Some of the most effective advertising includes advertisement written in their native language. All of these specialized campaigns are creating new demands on agencies and are requiring new talents for people who work in advertising. In addition, many agencies also offer a variety of allied services. These include: Merchandising Public relations Organizing exhibitions and fairs Preparing all kinds of publicity material Planning and organizing special events (event management) Direct marketing

In this model, behaviours (the end effects) are a function of the individuals awareness of the issue, beliefs, and knowledge about the issue and based on these, their disposition or attitude toward the issue. A communications campaign (advertising, input) aims to facilitate a change in behaviour through changes to one or more of these intermediate effects. In this model, behaviours (the end effects) are a function of the individuals awareness of the issue, beliefs, and knowledge about the issue and based on these, their disposition or attitude toward the issue. A communications campaign (advertising, input) aims to facilitate a change in behaviour through changes to one or more of these intermediate effects.

Advertising agencies typically have creative departments where print ads, TV commercials, and other marketing communications are produced. These departments are staffed by writers who craft the words in advertisements, graphic artists who plan and construct visual layouts, and other specialists who help in the transformation of strategy into actual advertisements. Thecreatives (as they tend to be called by insiders) are the artists hired by advertising agencies to use their creative and expressive talents in the 1 service of producing advertisements. 1. What is Creativity? Creativity tends to be one of those you-know-it-when-you-see-it things that eludes a specific definition. Many people who others have considered highly creative have attempted to explain the creative process. Here are some of their ideas: C. G. Jung, Psychoanalyst The creative aspect of life which finds its clearest expression in art baffles all attempts at rational formulation. Any reaction to stimulus may be causally explained; but the creative act, which is the 2 absolute antithesis of mere reaction, will for ever elude the human understanding.

Nina DiSesa, Chairman, McCann Erickson New York I tell my creative people to use their talent and judgment to solve the problem, because if the advertising isn't uncommon and imaginative, no one will like it. Only your mother. And even she will get bored in 3 time. The reason people often say they think of things in the shower is that it's the only time we allow our brains to relax and open up. We're so intense. We're so driven. We also drink a lot of water. Because when you drink a lot of water, you go to the bathroom, and when you come back, you say to your partner, "Hey, I just got an idea. 2. Creativity in Advertising Today A typical creative team might consist of a writer, an art director, an account planner, and an account manager who work together to produce ads, commercials, and other marketing communications. The team begins with a strategy that has been agreed upon by the agency and the client. A strategy is a statement of the goal of a campaign, such as communicating a particular message about the brand to a particular group of consumers. The strategy, which operates at a general level, can be expressed in specificcreative briefs, or directives to creative teams about the specific message they need to communicate and to whom they are to direct it. It then becomes the work of the creative team to devise ways of communicating the message. The team, or possibly some portion of it, will begin conceptingin other words, brainstormingabout possible ways to communicate the message to the intended audience. For some of the team's best ideas, the art director will draw images or even storyboards and the writer will produce the headlines and words to accompany them. The account planner will attempt to keep the team focused and on mission by feeding in information about how consumers use the brand, what market research reveals, what the competition's advertising says, and so on. The account manager coordinates and oversees the team's work. Eventually, when a number of working ideas have been developed by the creative team, they are presented to the client, who responds to them. When the client and agency agree upon a proposal for consumer communication (that may take the form of a print advertisement, a TV commercial, a billboard, a website, etc.), the creative process moves into production. Throughout the production phase, the creative process continues as new words and images are revised and additional information helps tweak the final product. Before the creative idea is communicated through appropriately selected media (such as TV, outdoor, digital, etc.), various other steps may be taken. The communication may be tested, reedited, or otherwise adjusted to the point where both agency and client believe they have produced the best communication strategy for the bran