The Future Of Advertising

II. CONTENT PAGE

page

I. Cover 12

II. Content 13

III. Abstract 14

IV.i Research question 15

IV.ii Methodology

- primary 16

- secondary 16

V. Introduction 17

V. i The Basement: Advertisings' Childhood 18

V. ii The Status Quo: Advertisings' Teenage Years 19 - 21

V. iii The Future: Adulthood of Advertising 22 - 23

V. iv Conclusion: Advertisings' Death and Rebirth 24

VII. Bibliography 25

III.

ABSTRACT

The investigation is concerned with the role of advertising in the future. Advertisings' history goes back to ancient times and altered through the centuries enormously. Currently, the advertising industry worldwide is bigger and multifarious than ever.

After reading sarcastic fictionist books such as "Ђ19.99" by Frederic Beigbeder and non-fiction books by David Ogilvy, the "father of modern advertising agencies" or by Oliviero Toscani about his controversial campaigns for United Colors of Benetton and going through a lot of internships in the advertising business myself, I fell in love with the profession of a creative director. Every passionate creative director should be up to date with new trends, ideas, concepts in advertising. However the advertising business itself happens so rapidly, that it is almost impossible to remain relevant.

A lot has been said or written about upcoming campaigns, changes or studies, but there is no explicit summary, analysis and forecast about the future of advertising. Hence the need for this research paper.

IV.i

RESEARCH QUESTION

Communication itself has been defined as a "transactional process between two or more parties whereby meaning is exchanged through the intentional use of symbols" .

Communications is an ever-changing field - new theories, new techniques, cultural changes, technological advances all combine to create a dynamic environment.

The objective of the research will be to prove or disprove the thesis that classic advertising is transforming more and more into communication, especially into integrated marketing communications - which is a method that initiates from customer needs, which affect the chosen marketing strategy - a mix of advertising, public relations, direct marketing and any other communication form.

IV. ii

METHODOLOGY

- PRIMARY

For the purposes of this investigation, communication products, such as the profile and offers of a representative advertising agency were analysed, as well as one of their pitch campaigns for an image campaign for a client. Moreover, in order to obtain a representative voice about the current state of mind of agency bosses, an interview with the CEO of an advertising agency was conducted.

- SECONDARY

As the goal of this investigation was to prove the thesis of the increasing importance of integrated marketing communications, various studies and new paper articles found online with the help of news server EBSCOHost , interconnected with the topic were analyzed. Additionally marketing dictionaries were used for definitions, specialized literature for theories and market studies of advertising clubs for obtaining professional opinions about the branch.

V.

INTRODUCTION

This investigation starts off with a short but necessary termination of the very beginnings of advertising, so to speak its childhood, for the reason that it is crucial for the understanding of following current and future developments. Pure advertising can be found even before ancient times, in the form of word-of-mouth, but gained its very commercial relevance only since the age of industrialization, which was the overall beginning of individualization. The first advertising agencies began as space brokers, i.e. selling advertising space to clients, but further down the road adapted to economic and technological developments and changing demands: from functional promotion (whereas the branch was perceived to be a very glamorous one), to a TV, internet, new media revolution, to multifarious synergies communications:

V. i

THE BASEMENT: ADVERTISINGS' CHILDHOOD

In the beginning there was advertising which was not marketing.

Advertising was a part of marketing, it was rather a pushy product promotion. Hence traditional advertising was all about promoting functional feature and benefits . That includes that it operated in quite narrow definitions of product categories and competition, as customers were considered being rational decision makers. This of course lead parallel to use of methods which were analytical and more quantitative. Nevertheless it can be argued that it was quite uni-dimensional , it already had methodological sophistication:

At that time agencies services or departments already included the following: personal selling, direct marketing (including mail order, direct response advertising, direct mail, telesales, exhibitions and trade fairs, literature and visual material (point of sale material), sales promotion with planned specials of money-off, self-liquidating premiums, free premium offers, free samples, user competitions, personality promotions,