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Persuasive communications

Broadly, there are four different types of messages: product, service, planned and unplanned.

• Product message – what the product tells us (i.e. our experience with the product)
• Service message – what organisational representatives tell us about the product
• Planned message – what the organisation or advertising tells us
• Unplanned message – what everyone else tells us.

Some types of messages are more controllable than others. While unplanned messages may be relatively uncontrollable, they are becoming increasingly important given the rise of consumer-generated media. Marketers can monitor these consumer sentiments via blogs and message boards and take corrective action if required.

Integrated marketing communications attempt to ensure that all messages are consistent. For instance, internal marketing may be required to ensure that service personnel and customer contact staff are aware of the implied promise delivered by advertising messages.

Ensure Strategic Consistency

Three points at which messages come together to ensure strategic consistency.

1. Say messages – the organisation’s promise
2. Do messages – what the organisation does (in terms of product and service) to deliver on the promise
3. Confirm messages – positive or negative confirmations about what other people say about the product (unplanned messages)

The campaign theme is a central or unifying idea around which a campaign is built, and exists across all marketing communications.

Order of presentation

The advertiser must make decisions about whether to present the most important message arguments first or last. For low involvement products, it is advisable to present the strongest selling points early while for high involvement goods they may be presented later.

Conclusion drawing

Other issues to consider include whether the audience should be left to draw an explicit conclusion. Well-educated audiences tend to draw their own conclusions and may be annoyed by having inferences forced on them. Some research findings suggest that open-ended messages can be more effective.

Message sided-ness

A one-sided message mentions only positive product attributes or benefits and is used when the audience already holds a favourable opinion. A two-sided message presents both positive and negative features and is used when the audience holds a contrary view.

Universal Message standards

1. Does this advertising position the product simply and with unmistakable clarity?
2. Does this advertising bolt the brand to a clinching benefit?
3. Does this advertising contain a power idea?
4. Does this advertising design in brand personality?
5. Is this advertising unexpected?
6. Is this advertising single-minded?
7. Does this advertising reward the prospect?
8. Is this advertising visually arresting?
9. Does this advertising exhibit painstaking craftsmanship?

Our sandbox theme contains alot of things we may need like:

• Jquery (plus a stack of plugins like tabs, accordions, image slider, light boxes, smooth page scroll etc)
• The Blueprint CSS already setup (blueprint is great!)(everyone should use it)(yep)
• Favicons and apple-touch-icons all ready
• Page titles and Credit links formatted consistently
• Wordpress custom settings set up (such as custom logo, categories page imports etc)
• A few different page setup ups – wide columns, gallery, archives, single pages side bar pages etc

Advantages and Disadvantages

Advantages:

• Pre-built settings to save developing and searching for new and old ones respectively
• Time saving! Some times things don’t work as they usually do, or different versions of things (i.e jQuery) don’t function with others
• Saves remembering the names of items like the tabs javascript you use
• Saves learning how new plugins work because you’re consistently using the same
• Adds some consistency to your design firm’s output and general design
• Ensures a consistent quality of your markup
• There’s no need to remember exactly how that last fade in script (for example) you used worked, as it’s built in to your sandbox

Disadvantages:

• It may be relied upon too much, and creativity may be limited in terms of not wanting to go ‘out of bounds’
• Uhmm no more?

Why code from scratch when a lot of projects really do require similar items?

A sandbox is different from a purchased theme!

You coded this bad boy yourself, you can claim it as your own work. Another advantage over purchased templates is that each template is coded by different people, therefore you spend up to half an hour sometimes figuring out how they work.

Have I convinced you of the importance of Sandbox..es? Let me know what you think and give a comment.

Here are some resources to perhaps get your own started:

• Wordpress Sandbox
• Joomla Skeleton/ Sandbox
• Drupal Sandbox

A word often confused, we define ethics as the moral principles and values that govern actions and decisions of an individual or group in comparison to laws which are the formal, codified rules that are recognised as binding. Regulations on the other hand are the internal rules to an organisation or even nations that govern the behaviour of the confining group.

In Australia for example, we’re governed by systems of self-regulation (quasi-regulation) – which include industry associations, government agencies and general members of the public. Self regulation is more flexible and is more responsive to both industry needs and public opinions. Industries such as the Australian Advertising Standards Council, Australian Standards Bureau, Advertising Claims Board and the ACCC all speak into the government to ensure laws such as the Trade Practices Act (Section 52 and Section 53) are up to date.

Advertising has constantly been the object of substantial condemnation regarding its social and economic impact. There are two sides to marketing, with each holding valid arguments, I’ll list them below:

For:

• Marketing provides information which encourages higher standards of living
• It creates jobs and helps new firms enter the market
• Promotes healthy competition which is good for the consumer

Against:

• It ‘creates’ needs and wants
• Promotes materialism, insecurity and greed
• It’s more propaganda than information

Although we can see both positive and negative beliefs on marketing, we it must be understood that it is a legal requirement that marketing is to be truthful, which means that it should be primarily informative and that there needs to be a reasonable basis for making claims. When advertising is misleading, it is usually caused inadvertently, and not on purpose as this breaks codes of conduct.

Distaste is a big issue within different societies, with three main causes of distaste which causes a balancing act with advertising creatives. Objections to certain products, sexual appeals and shock appeals are three sources which can be effective in essence, yet if not balanced correctly, can cause high objections.

Advertising and children

Children between 2 and 11 watch on average – 22 hours of television per week and may see 40 000 commercials per year. 80% of children targeted advertising fall into the categories of cereals, toys, fast food and confectionery. Consumer advocates will argue that children are vulnerable to advertising because of the lack of knowledge to evaluate claims, and they are not able to differentiate television programs from commercials. Marketers on the other hand argue that children must learn through the solicitation process, and that they need to acquire skills to function in our diverse marketplace. The ACMA have guidelines which recognise both points of view, which include:

• Advertising is banned on preschool programs
• No alcohol advertising
• Restriction on competition advertising
• Restrictions on the number of times a commercial can be broadcast during a children’s program