Advertising encompasses both creative and analytical aspects. And, advertising management is the art and science of marshaling organizational resources to effectively communicate with the firm’s target segments to promote the company and its brand messages and to position the company and its products for long-term success in the marketplace. A range of tools are available in Enginius to support advertising decision making, include segmentation (to identify the characteristics of targeted segments that lead to effective advertising programs to reach them), positioning analysis to articulate competitively advantaged communication strategies, and for managing ad campaigns so they are cost effective.
To effectively communicate the company and brand messages, a central tenet of good advertising is to understand the market segments to whom the messages are targeted. To fine-tune their advertising strategy, managers need to identify the characteristics of the targeted segments, and to understand how their needs and values differ from the rest of the market. And there is nothing better to drive that point home than a good segmentation case study. In particular, the Pacific Brands case provides a relevant context for identifying target segments and developing an advertising and promotion strategy to reach those segments.
Positioning analysis enables firms to understand how individual customers and customer segments view their brand relative to competition. Such an understanding is useful for developing positioning statements which forms the basis for developing an effective strategy to communicate that position in the target segments. Cases like Heineken, BlackBerry Pearl, and Infiniti G20 provide rich contexts for developing advertising strategies and plans.
Managing advertising spend is a critical aspect of advertising management. There are two key decisions: (1) What should be the total advertising spend? and (2) How that total spend should be distributed to different channels or entities? One case study to consider here is the Braincell Internet advertising case study, with budget allocation to different countries.
When it comes to allocating online advertising to various keywords, the data available has often the structure of panel data, that is, data tracked over long periods of time, where time trends need to be properly accounted for. A great case study to address this point is the ABCDEmail case for paid search campaign management where students have to justify both the total spend, and its allocation to various keywords.
