Features of Advertising
American Marketing Association has defined advertising as “any paid fönn of non-personal presentation and promotion of id, goods and services of an identified sponsor”. This definition reveals the following features of advertising:
1. It is a paid from of communication. Advertisements appear in newspapers, magazines, television or cinema screens because the advertiser has purchased some space or time to communicate informatioi to the prospective customers.
2. It is non-personal presentation 9f message. There is no face-to-face direct contact with the customers. That is. why, it is described as non-personal salesmanship. It is a non-personal form of presenting products and promoting ideas and is complementary to personal selling. It simplifies the task of sales-force by creating awareness in the minds opotential customers.
3. The purpose of advertising is to promote idea about the products and services of a business. It is directed towards incieasing the sale of the products
and services of a business unit.
4. Advertisement is issued by an identified sponsor. Non-disclosure of th€ name of the sponsor in propaganda may lead to distortion, deception and manipulation. Advertisement should disclose or identify the sources of opinions and ideas it,presents.
Publicity and Public Relations
Publicity is a part of marketing and customer relations. Unlike advertising, publicity is not paid for by the organisation. Publicity comes from news reporters, columnists and journalists. It comes to the receiver as the truth rnther than as a commercial. Public relations and publicity taken together are one of the four major ingredient of promotion-mix. These activities are, however, not controllable by the firm. Every from tries to create a good public relations so as to get good publicity through press and electronic media. Publicity has a peculiar feature that it is not a paid form of communication. Publicity refers to the mention of company/product in any, published or non-published media. For example, a new product is launched, and due to its unique feature, the product may become a point of discussion among various groups. This mention adds to the promotion and hence, the product gets pubicised. This publicity is mainly due to good response of customers, or due to quality or can be even due to some controversies. Any way, such public exposure of a product forms a crucial part of promotion mix. If a product is able to draw a lot of attention by the media, the firm will have to spend less on advertisement and sales promotion actWitiss.
