Managing The Power Of Synergy

Conference Paper

Managing the Power of Synergy:

An Exploration of the Combined Effects between Television, Print and Web Advertising

Ms. Li Minyan Lyann

School of Communication, Hong Kong Baptist University

Add: RRS631, Ho Sin Hang Campus, Hong Kong Baptist University,

Waterloo Road, KLN, Hong Kong

Tel: (852) 6206-3301

Email: 04415574@hkbu.edu.hk

New media, predominantly the Internet, has apparently become an indispensable source of information among members of our information society today. And partly because of this trend, advertisers all over the world eye covetously at the expanding opportunities provided by the webs, seeking more effective communication channels with their target markets. Online advertising spending, including Web ads, is constantly on the rise. Though not much substantial economic return was reported, people feel optimistic about web ads, especially its power of synergy with Television and Print advertisements.

However, laboratory or field setting experiment testing the synergistic effect of Web and Print advertising was scarce, not to mention comparing it to that of the synergy of Web and TV advertising, which would be quite useful for professional media planning as well as new media theory conceptualization. In light of this, the current study aimed to investigate several issues concerning the synergy effects by an experiment design.

Literature review

Advertising synergy

The concept of synergy is not new for communication researchers and advertising professionals. It is defined as "the interaction of two or more agents or forces so that their combined effect is greater than the sum of their individual effect" (American Heritage College Dictionary 1997). As a matter of fact, advertisers frequently use multiple communication tools (e.g., advertising, public relations, etc.) or channels (e.g., television, press, the Web, etc.) within a single campaign at the ultimate goal of integrating multiple communication vehicles to create the optimal persuasive effect (Chang & Thorson, 2004).

Synergy is the fundamental concept of Integrated Marketing Communication. It differs from simple repetition in that it is believed to bring in integrated increment rather than just simple addition of different components. As Chang and Thorson (2004) elaborated:

"An advertisement is usually viewed more than once. The effect resulting from repeated exposure to the same advertisement is called the repetition effect and is assumed to be the incremental effect of each additional advertising exposure. The effect resulting from exposure to coordinated advertisement is called the synergy effect."

As observed, advertising synergy could be operated into content level and medium level. The former is usually seen within a single medium, using a series of ads with slight difference in image, sound or stories, to convey a consistent persuasive message. While the latter, going one step beyond, employs several media at a time for the same purpose.

TV, Print and Web ads

Conventional advertising, predominantly TV-commercials and print ads, still dominates today's advertising market. However, a diversity of new advertising formats emerges. One major "threat" comes from the Internet, which advertising investment is constantly seen to be on the rise (Janoschka, 2004). As Leong and his colleagues (1998) suggested, "the phenomenal growth of consumers and businesses connected to the Internet indicate a viable audience for advertising and promotional messages for many companies".

The Internet is the latest developed electronic mass medium of the 20th century. With its decentralized, internationally operating network and multimedia functions, this new communication tool has soon captured the attention of provident advertisers and became the 4th largest advertising medium (Janoschka, 2004). Some researchers estimated that online advertising would begin to get surpluses this year, and the share of advertising expenditure for webs would increase from 3.5% to 6.5% by the year 2009 (Ads4cn.com, 2005) , U.S. websites will see a triple in their advertising revenue.

There are various types of online advertising, including "emails, newsletters, screensavers, e-sponsoring, asynchronous and synchronous chat groups, infomercials, online games, and web sites" (Janoschka, 2004: 43). Provided the scope of the current study, spotlight will be given to web ads, which encompass a variety of hypermedia formats, such as "banners, buttons, and pop-up windows, etc." (Janoschka, 2004: 43).

Similar to other types of advertisements, web ads are paid or unpaid form of communication aim at informing the existence of a product or service and/or persuading consumers to take actions. And Janoschka (2004: 49) found one major difference is that web ads are hyperlinks in nature, which enable activation by their users. They not only contain promotional messages on themselves which tries to attract consumers' attention, but also embedded with hyperlinks and then point to a much greater information pool, such as the corporation's website.

This inherent difference enables a lot of unique features of web ads. As Leong, Huang and Stanners (1998) summarized in their study with advertisers, web ads were perceived to be:

1). Excellent for conveying information and detail.

2). Cost-effective.

3). Rational and not effective in stimulating emotions.

4). Effective in precipitating action.

5). Effective for both short- and long-term promotional objectives.

6). Less effective for changing and maintaining attitudes.

Two conceptual maps may further contribute to our understanding of the characteristics among TV, print and web as advertising media.

First is Hoffman and Novak's (1996) conceptual typology based on objective characteristics (Figure1) of 35 media. The horizontal