Marketing communication: principles and practice

assert
Command
Reminder which may be reinforced by an authoritative figure
Familiarize 
Friendly conversation with few facts, suggesting loyalty to, and 
the brand
trustworthiness of the advertiser
Symbolically 
Subtle presentation of a simple fact linking the product with a 
associate
person, event, or symbol
Imitate
Celebrity testimonial or person(s) with whom consumers can
readily identify due to recognized characteristics
Obligate
Offer of free gift or information for which the consumers will feel
grateful
Initiate a 
Offer a sample or introductory discount to start routine 
habit
behaviour
Figure 14.4
Advertiser’s communication act design tactics
Source
: Based on Simon, 1971

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Goal setting for advertising is contingent upon market conditions and
provider–product situation. Often, sub-goals have to be specified as means
of accomplishing the goals. We will examine goal-setting further in the next
chapter.
CREATIVE STRATEGIES
Message strategy or creative strategy is concerned with what is to be said in
an advertisement. Laskey 
et al
. (1989) produced a typology of informational
or transformational advertising concepts (Table 14.1).
Simon (1971) reviewed copywriters’ work to classify advertisements based
on the view that product–brand characteristics each require particular
methods of ‘activating’ the customer to buy through exposure to advertising.
Table 14.1 summarizes nine creative strategies.
EXECUTIONAL FORMATS
The executional format is the technique used by an advertiser for presenting
messages. This is concerned with how something is said to someone, i.e. the
content of an advertisement. McEwen and Leavitt’s (1976) framework for
describing television advertisements in terms of stylistic features shows a range
of ways of saying something that has been observed through content analysis
in TV advertising (Table 14.2).
Another typology of formats was developed by Hefzallah and Maloney
(1979) to classify TV advertisements (Table 14.3).
Advertising comes in many forms: some more obvious than others – see
Boxes 14.4–14.6 for contemporary examples.
Shimp’s (1976) typology of executional formats offers another way of
classifying advertisement content (Table 14.4).
Of course, we might expect that decisions about which format to use will
be related to the type of product and the market within which it is to be offered.