Read on

The Economist is particularly good on the airline industry. For the most recent information check their website at www.economist.co.uk

There are also regular surveys on the airline industry in the Financial Times. Their website is at www.ft.com

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4. Advertising

Whether or not you agree with Marshall McLuhan that advertising is the greatest art form of the 20th century, it is a big part of modern culture. Shared references feed into it and it in turn feeds into daily life: advertising catchphrases turn up in TV comedy sketches and everyday conversation. And we become 'ironic' about advertising, perhaps to show that we think we are able to resist it.

TV advertising is the most glamorous, but the other media are not to be ignored: radio, cinema, and the press, while hoardings (Br E) and billboards (AmE) are a characteristic part of the urban landscape. All these will be around for some time, despite Internet advertising and its promises of online shopping. While there are still shops there will be point-of-sale displays designed, among other things, to prevent last minute changes of mind about what brand to buy.

Advertising can be continued by other means with sponsorship of particular events, or product placement in films, where the product's makers negotiate for their products to appear and be used by the film's characters. A related phenomenon is product endorsement, where a celebrity is used in advertising a particular product. This can be dangerous if, for whatever reason, the celebrity falls from favour.

Some very creative minds come up with seductive combinations of sound, image and words, but tests show that we often don't remember the brand being advertised. Quantifying the effect of advertising is very difficult and there has been a backlash against it in favour of other, supposedly more targeted, forms of communication. This usually means direct marketing, otherwise known as direct mail, but as those living in apartments who receive mailshots for gardening products know, the targeting can still be ludicrously imprecise.

Advertising agencies may offer to run direct mail campaigns, but what they are best at is creating traditional advertising campaigns. When a client becomes dissatisfied and the agency loses the account this is major news in the advertising industry and means a big loss of revenue (and self-esteem) for the agency.

Until recently, agencies took 15% of the advertiser's budget, and what they did not spend on advertising (designing ads and media buying: buying time on TV and space in the press for the ads to be run) they spent on 'free' services in pack design, corporate identity (a unified look in all of a company's communication, from its advertising to its letterhead, perhaps with the use of a logo), market research, and even strategic advice. These ancillary activities are below-the-line activities. Today, most of these are undertaken by specialist organisations, leaving agencies to concentrate on their core activity, creating advertisements.

Despite all these activities and all this expenditure, the ultimate in advertising is word of mouth: mends and colleagues are often our most reliable sources of information. This form of advertising is usually free. All the advertiser can do is hope that it is positive.

Read on

David Ogilvy: Confessions of an Advertising Man, National Textbook Company, originally published in 1963 and 'still the best book on advertising ever written' according to one agency head. Written by a co-founder of the agency Ogilvy and Mather, it recounts the heyday of Madison Avenue, the centre of the US advertising industry.

David Ogilvy: Ogilvy on Advertising, Prion Books, 1995

Winston Fletcher: Advertising, Advertising, Profile Books, 1999

For a more academic approach:

Rajeev Batra, John Myers, David Aaker: Advertising Management, Prentice Hall, 1996

Philip Jones: The Advertising Business, Sage Publications, 1999

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