Custom «Advertising and Its Effectiveness» Essay Paper Sample

The advert of choice for this assignment is burger king's posters for their BK Super Seven Incher that was ran in Singapore. This advert leaves little to imagination or interpretation. As can be observed from the poster, the woman in the advertisement is about to go down on the Super Seven Incher with a suggestive tagline that uses the word "blow." The text at the bottom of the advert proceeds to take the whole thing even further: the text reads, "Fill your desire for something long, juicy and flame-grilled with the NEW BK SUPER SEVEN INCHER," "Yearn for more after you taste the mind-blowing burger that comes with a single beef patty, topped with American cheese, crispy onions and the A1 Thick and Hearty Steak Sauce" (Nedeau, 2009).

The advert in itself is quite clear and comprehensive in describing the product that is on sale. It clearly indicates the size of the burger which is seven inches long. It then goes ahead to give the details of other ingredients in the product which are the beef patty, the American cheese, the crispy onion rings and the steak sauce. This specification in the products size and ingredients is a way of differentiating the product from their competitors, for example, mc Donald's, whose burgers are a bit smaller than the BK Super Seven Incher. The advert also effectively communicates the product benefits, describing it as juicy and long. They further describe it as mind blowing (Nedeau, 2009).

The super seven incher advertisement is clearly targeting the male market segment. This can be deduced from the sexual innuendo on the poster. Its obvious references to "fill your desire" in the right corner, and the big heading with a clear sexual connotation, leave no room for doubt. The heading is: "it'll blow your mind away", which comes after a picture of a beautiful woman, who appears to be very sensual and is about to, it seems, give "oral sex" to the super seven incher. The advert further specifies the male segment to between the ages of thirteen onwards as they are the ones that can interpret this, specifically, young people, including college students and working professionals. It is the opinion of this writer that the advert is directed to the right market segment, which is, the young people.

However, the contents of this advert are controversial to some extent. It has been suggested and argued that the advert is very sexual sexist and demeaning to the value of a woman. Some people feel that it is offensive and sanction burger king to stop using these posters for advertising. They feel that is inappropriate since families with kids go to eat at their establishments. Another argument that has been put across is that sex is a reality and it is much publicised. Therefore it is only fair that corporations will utilize it to promote and try and attract clientele for their products. This aspect has resulted in many women protesting over burger king and the product, and has therefore refused to purchase the product.

Budget allocation decisions should consider the long-run effectiveness of the different media employed to increase the productivity of advertising campaigns. Burger King intends to raise its United States advertising expenditure so as to promote value offerings, marketing promotions and to hold up the launch of new "flame-broiled" fare. The company estimates between a twenty to twenty five percent raise in its 2010 national media presence from 2009. This will be through the incremental allocation of restaurant-level funds to the national level combined with the current deflationary media buy environment. The president said that they were confident that this increase should facilitate the brand to carry on its good positive comparable sales growth trend. The success of advertiser campaigns is determined, first and foremost, by adequate management. This has to do mostly with reach and frequency. A campaign's objectives can be more focused on brand development or direct response. In nearly all cases, it is in the advertiser's best interest to have the highest number of people see the campaign ("reach") at the best number of exposures to the advert per person ("frequency") (Mullins, Walker, & Boyd, 2010).

There is a proportional relationship between reach and frequency. Every advert impression in a campaign is directed either to a person who has not yet seen the campaign, thus increasing its reach, or to a person who has, rising the campaign's average frequency. The optimal frequency is the theoretical number of times consumers should be exposed to the campaign's adverts and is indefinite. This subject has not been well researched. However, results will differ according to the product, campaign objectives and other factors. Conventional wisdom has it that the ideal frequency for the majority of campaigns is between four to seven advert exposures. More exposure beyond that results in a point of diminishing returns for both brand and direct response objectives (Bruner & Gluck, 2006).

A major problem for advertising campaigns is that most agencies own one team, or a subsidiary company, which does the creative design of adverts, and another one that buys posts on media properties. This kind of division of labor is advantages in terms of concentrating fields of expertise and cost efficiencies. The down side however is that the creative is not always ideally suited for the target audiences and the setting in which they see it. Eliminating that difference and better presentation of creative executions to the appropriate segment and environments can have a huge difference on campaign effectiveness. Geo-targeting is an extensively used form of market targeting. Usually, geo-target is used by organizations whose products or services are consumed only in regional or local markets. Nevertheless advertisers should also evaluate what percentage of their untargeted advertising is made up of international audiences. It is very common for example, for many popular U.S. media companies to have twenty five percent or more of their market comprised of international audience (Bruner & Gluck, 2006).