Advertising: Promoting a Business Using Multimedia Arts
Whether it’s a giant billboard or a listing in the newspaper, advertisements are sure fire business techniques to spread the word about a particular business’ goods and services. Even in the Internet, there are millions of ad banners found in social media websites. But what exactly is the meaning of advertising?
The word comes from the Latin word ad vertere, meaning “to turn forward.” It is defined as a form of marketing communication to entice the public or a specific audience into taking notice of a product or service. This is also the subject of creating the most distinct and unique ways of communicating with audiences through multimedia and creative arts.
Advertising is a special subcategory under marketing, dispelling confusion and misconceptions among people that marketing is its twin. While marketing is a general business category that also involves conducting market research and implementing other forms of business communication, advertising involves the creative sector of marketing, wherein people use multimedia such as photography, videography, and graphic design. In almost all cases, companies and small businesses greatly depend on ad strategies among all forms of business communication.
For one, it comes in prints and displays such as brochures, pamphlets, signboards, and billboards. This method is the conventional approach to advertise a product or a service. Besides print and displays, there are other ways companies, organizations, and even political parties advertise, and the results of these techniques may vary.
The first of the traditional forms of advertising, and one of the oldest, is through radio. This began as early as the 1920’s when the first radio stations were established. In this form, radio stations allow businesses and organizations to purchase small minutes of airtime to broadcast their products, services, or causes. This kind of advertising also introduced the usage of music ads or “jingles” in radio shows, as this kind of ad strategy flourished.
Television is the second traditional form. This began upon the invention and commercial production of the television in the the late 1940’s and early 1950’s. Like radio ads, businesses and organizations purchase a segment of airtime from various TV schedules to air their advertisements. Due to the commercial appeal of the television to the masses, this form is considered very effective in reaching out to millions of people.
Branding or brand awareness is the third alternative form which also involves media diversification. In this form, companies and organizations rely on the name or brand of their entities to attract audiences. It means these entities invest in creating company logos and slogans to build awareness among people. Branding is a powerful strategy, as the biggest and most successful companies have trademark logos and slogans which customers easily recognize.
Internet advertising flourished in the 1990’s, after the invention of the World Wide Web. As the Internet introduced internet marketing for retailers and sellers, businesses and organizations saw it as a big opportunity to broadcast their products to larger audiences. Indeed, the Internet allows them to reach out to anyone in the world, any time with a reach potentially much larger and cheaper than offline marketing.