2.2. Setting Advertising Objectives

The relations among target markets, objectives, and budgets are presented with the following mantra:

All marketing communications should be (1) designed with a particular target market in mind, (2) created to achieve a specific objective, and (3) undertaken to accomplish the objective toward the target market within budget constraints.

We now continue with this theme as it relates specifically to advertising objective setting and budgeting. These activities are the bedrock of all subsequent advertising decisions. Advertising strategy built on a weak foundation is virtually guaranteed to fail. Intelligent objectives and an adequate budget are critical for advertising success.

Advertising objectives are goals that advertising efforts attempt to achieve. Setting advertising objectives is possibly the most difficult task of advertising management, yet these objectives provide the foundation for all remaining advertising decisions. There are three major reasons why it is essential that advertising objectives be established prior to making decisions regarding the guts of an advertising program – that is, message selection and media determination:

1. Advertising objectives are an expression of management consensus. The process of setting objectives literally forces top marketing and advertising personnel to agree on the course advertising is to take for the following planning period as well as the tasks it is to accomplish for a specific brand.

1. Objective setting guides the budgeting, message, and media aspects of advertising strategy. Objectives determine how much money should be spent and provide guidelines for the kinds of message strategy and media choice needed to accomplish the objectives.

1. Advertising objectives provide standards against which results can be measured. Good objectives set precise, quantitative yardsticks of what advertising hopes to accomplish. Subsequent results can then be compared with these standards to determine whether the advertising accomplished what it was intended to do.

Who, what, where, when, and how often?

Several categories of advertising objectives guide advertising strategy: questions of who, what, where, when, and how often.

Who? The most basic consideration underlying advertising-strategy formulation is the choice of target market. Objectives related to the who question specify the target market in terms of demographics, psychographics, geodemographics, or other characteristics that influence choice behavior. For example, Chrysler’s Neon was targeted at the college-educated, under-30 buyers known as Generation X.

What? The what question involves two sets of considerations: (1) what emphasis? and (2) what goals? The emphasis issue relates to the features and benefits to be emphasized and the emotions to be evoked when advertising a brand. For example, Chrysler’s introductory marketing of the Neon evoked an image of a hip and fun automobile that would fare well against comparable foreign imports.

The goals issue deals with the specific communication or sales objectives that need to be accomplished at the present stage in a brand’s life cycle. Advertising may be designed to accomplish several goals:

1) to make the target market aware of a new brand,

2) to facilitate consumer understanding of a brand’s attributes and its benefits compared to competitive brands,

3) to enhance attitudes and influence purchase intentions,

4) to invite product trial, and

5) to encourage repeat purchase behavior.

Where? When? How Often? Which geographic markets need to be emphasized, what months or seasons are best, and how often the product should be advertised are additional issues that need to be addressed when setting advertising objectives.

Although advertising practitioners must take all of the preceding categories into consideration when setting objectives, subsequent attention focuses exclusively on defining the goals. This is because other considerations are all situation specific, but the goal issue is relevant to all situations and brands.

A full appreciation of how advertising goals (objectives) are set requires that we first look at advertising from the customer’s perspective. That is, advertisers establish objectives that are designed to move customers to eventually purchase the advertiser’s brand.

Requirements for Setting Good Advertising Objectives

An advertising objective is a specific statement about a planned advertising execution in terms of what that particular advertisement is intended to accomplish. That goal is based on the current, or anticipated, competitive situation in the product category and the problems that the brand must confront or the opportunities that are available for it to seek.

The specific content of an advertising objective depends entirely on the brand’s idiosyncratic situation. Hence, it is infeasible to discuss objective content without current details (such as market research information) about the advertising context. We can, however, describe the requirements that all good advertising objectives must satisfy. Let us first start by making it clear that not all statements of ad objectives are good. Consider the following examples:

Example A: The advertising objective this year is to increase Brand X’s sales.

Example B: The advertising objective is to increase by July 31 the target audience’s awareness of Brand X from 60 to 80 percent.

These extreme examples differ in two important respects. First, Example B is obviously more specific. Second, whereas Example A deals with a sales objective, Example B involves a nonsales goal.

Objectives Must Include a Precise Statement of Who, What, and When. Objectives must be stated in precise terms. At a minimum, objectives should specify the target audience (who), indicate the specific goal – such as awareness level – to be accomplished (what), and indicate the relevant time frame (when) in which to achieve the objective. For example, the advertising campaign for Rembrandt mouth rinse might include objectives such as these:

1) Within six months from the beginning of the campaign, research should show that 70 percent of all consumers who use mouth rinse are familiar with the Rembrandt brand».

2) «Within six months from the beginning of the campaign, research should show that at least 50 percent of the target audience know that Rembrandt is an alcohol-free alternative to the established brands».

Advertising objectives provide valuable agendas for communication between advertising and marketing decision makers and offer benchmarks against which to compare actual performance. These functions can be satisfied, however, only if objectives are stated precisely.

Example B represents the desired degree of specificity and, as such, would give executives something meaningful to direct their efforts toward as well as a clear-cut benchmark for assessing whether the advertising campaign has accomplished its objectives. Example A, by comparison, is much too general. Suppose sales have actually increased by 2 percent during the course of the ad campaign. Does this mean the campaign was successful since sales have in fact increased? If not, how much increase is necessary for the campaign to be regarded as a success?

Objectives Must Be Quantitative and Measurable. This requirement demands that ad objectives be stated in quantitative terms so as to be measurable, as are the hypothetical objectives given for Rembrandt mouth rinse. A nonmeasurable objective for Rembrandt would be a vague statement such as «Advertising should increase consumers’ knowledge of product features» This objective lacks measurability because it fails to specify the product features for which customers are to possess knowledge.

Objectives Must Specify the Amount of Change. In addition to being quantitative and measurable, objectives must specify the amount of change they are intended to accomplish. Example A (to increase sales) fails to meet this requirement. Example B (to increase awareness from 60 to 80 percent) is satisfactory because it clearly specifies that anything less than a 20 percent awareness increase would be considered unsuitable performance.

Objectives Must be Realistic. Unrealistic objectives are as useless as having no objectives at all. An unrealistic objective is one that cannot be accomplished in the time allotted to the proposed advertising investment. For example, a brand that has achieved only 15 percent consumer awareness during its first year on the market could not realistically expect a small advertising budget to increase the awareness level to, say, 65 percent next year.

Objectives Must Be Internally Consistent. Advertising objectives must be compatible (internally consistent) with objectives set for other components of the marketing communications mix. It would be incompatible for a manufacturer of packaged goods to proclaim a 25 percent reduction in sales force size while simultaneously stating that advertising’s objective is to increase retail distribution by 20 percent. Without adequate sales force effort, it is doubtful that the retail trade would give a brand more shelf space.

Objectives Must Be Clear and in Writing. For objectives to accomplish their purposes of fostering communication and permitting evaluation, they must be stated clearly and in writing so that they can be disseminated among their users and among those who will be held responsible for seeing that the objectives are accomplished.