MARKETING & ADVERTISING The aim of this tutorial is to help you learn to identify and evaluate marketing strategies and advertisements.

What statement is this man making? 2 © 2015, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Why has GEICO been so successful in its marketing and advertising? 3 © 2015, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Marketing in a consumer culture Marketing a product or service is an essential component of doing business in a consumer culture. A business’s success depends on its ability to determine what customers want and then provide it at a reasonable cost. To achieve these goals, businesses need to plan and implement effective strategies for marketing and advertising these products and services. This involves identifying target markets through marketing research. 4 © 2015, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Hot or Not? What do you see as today’s consumer “hot buttons”? 5 © 2015, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Approaches to marketing research There are several approaches to marketing research, including surveys, observation, and experimentation, each of which requires proficiency in critical thinking and inductive logic.  Survey research is used to collect information and opinions about a product.  Observation involves directly monitoring consumer buying patterns.  Experimentation measures cause-effect relationships between product purchases and selected variables such as packaging, logo, or price. 6 © 2015, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Marketing strategies After gathering information through marketing research, the next step is to engage in strategic planning. A strategic plan is a method by which an organization deploys its resources to realize a goal or objective. In business, strategic planning generally involves the use of a strategic model, defined as “a systematic list of policies that will guide the future specification of inputs, outputs, processes, and values of the complete operations of the business of the corporation.” 7 © 2015, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

For his Los Angeles Angels, Arturo Moreno used a marketing strategy that appealed to families and the Hispanic market. 8 © 2015, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Advertisements appear on television, in magazines, on the Internet, on billboards, store displays, buses, taxis, school bulletin boards, and even people’s clothing. 9 © 2015, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Advertising and the media  Advertising has three purposes:  To create product awareness  To inform customers about a product or service  To motivate customer demand and create brand loyalty  The ultimate aim of advertising is to make money, not advance truth.  Most advertising reaches us through the mass media and the Internet. 10 © 2015, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Hot or Not? Have you ever changed product loyalty as a result of an ad campaign? 11 © 2015, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Product placement  Product placement involves embedding advertisements of targeted products within television shows, films or streaming video. Often these product placements go unnoticed, especially by children.  Research shows children under the age of eight lack the cognitive maturity to recognize either the intent of advertising or the fallacious reasoning and rhetorical devices that are frequently used in ads. These problems persist through the teenage years. 12 © 2015, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

American Idol judges are seen here with their “favorite” beverage. 13 © 2015, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Young children are vulnerable to advertising images because of their undeveloped critical-thinking skills. 14 © 2015, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Evaluating advertisements  When evaluating advertisements, there are a number of questions we should ask.  Are scare tactics used to persuade us we need the product?  Does the ad provide credible evidence and\or statistics to support its claims?  Does the ad rely on our tendencies of peer and group conformity?  Does the ad set up a desirable image or lifestyle unrelated to the product?  Does the ad employ other informal fallacies, such as hasty generalization? 15 © 2015, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Evaluating advertisements (continued)  When evaluating advertisements, there are a number of questions we should ask. (continued)  Does the ad use emotive language, images, or euphemisms?  Is the grammar confusing or the wording misleading?  Is the language vague, ambiguous, or obscure?  Are the claims exaggerated?  Does the ad omit necessary information?  If the ad uses analogy, is the analogy relevant? 16 © 2015, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Snob appeal and the fallacy of false cause 17 © 2015, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Fallacy of appeal to inappropriate authority 18 © 2015, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

How does this ad use emotive words and images to evoke a positive feeling? © 2015, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 19

Conclusions Advertising influences a great deal of our buying habits and beliefs, often more than we are willing to admit. Because of this, we need to be constantly vigilant in using critical thinking skills to identify and evaluate advertising messages. Recognizing our tendencies and learning about advertising strategies makes us less susceptible to manipulative advertising. 20 © 2015, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All Rights Reserved.