Marketing communication: principles and practice

C
onnect
R
elate
I
nform
P
ersuade
C
onstruct
L
earn
I
nvent
E
xchange
Figure 4.9
An acronym for marketing communication
A
pprehend the environment
I
nterpret meaning
V
alue and judge
A
ct accordingly
Figure 4.10
Vickers’ appreciative system (as an acronym)
Source
: Based on Vickers, 1984

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MESSAGES
In pretty well every account of advertising and marketing communications,
a central concept is the ‘message’, i.e. the content of the ‘communication’
package or event. So, what is a ‘message’? We can make some sense of this
rather abstract idea by thinking of the message as an intended meaning for
a written, aural or visual text. But how can another person possibly ‘know’
what was intended? Only through interpretation can a meaning be given to
a communicative act, and of course this requires that the message was
apprehended in the first place.
The interpretation given to a message, and the act which provides it, will
depend on the reception environment of the apprehender. This is a complex
of linguistic and ideological codes of the producer and ‘viewer’, as well as
alternative information from other sources (including beliefs, memory,
various third parties, etc.). 
Hall (1961) identifies three components of a message. A set is a dis-
tinguishable combination of parts. For example, words can be combined into
a set (a sentence), and products offered for sale are a set (a product range).
The sets that are perceived in a given situation will depend upon the person’s
interests, expectations, and cultural background. Brazilians rank coffee highly,
whereas an Englishman may rank coffee low and tea high. Cultures rank
products as sets differently. Comparable sets in different cultures may have
different parts. Consider, for example, the set we call the midday meal. In
some places this comprises wine and bread. Elsewhere, this may be the main
meal of the day and have several courses and lots of social interaction.
Somewhere else, there may be no meal at this time of day, and the main
cooked meal will be at 7 p.m. (which is dinner in your culture?). The isolate
is a component part of the set. The sounds that make up the words in a phrase
are isolates. So are the package, parts, and other attributes of a product.
The pattern is the third message component. Sets are arranged through
implicit cultural rules so as to take on meaning. Grammar is such a formalized
pattern. A sales method is a pattern that arranges a group of sets in a
meaningful fashion. Of course, through marketing research the marketing
manager seeks to understand how patterns, sets, and isolates focus sense
perceptions into responses to products and promotional appeals. Viewing a
selected group of people in terms of culturally prescribed patterns may help
in designing marketing communication programmes of objectives and
activities. Patterns, sets, and isolates must direct appeals to the set of ideas,
attitudes, and habits of the buyers (Zaltman, 1965).
Another way of examining the concept of a message is to identify properties.
Content is the ideas, questions, and so on that are intended to inform, interest,
persuade, and motivate. Structure is the sequence in which items of content
are presented. Format is the physical presentation (personal, aural, written,
still or moving pictures, etc.). The source may be overt, implied, or assumed
and may be the product provider or an expert or celebrity endorser. More
will be said when we examine advertising design in chapter fourteen.