AO1: Promotion
Introduction
What is promotion?
Promotion is action that a company takes intended to increase the demand for a product or service thus increasing sales and maximising profit. Examples of promotion are sponsorship such as Red Bull and F1 racing, sales promotions such competitions and a television advert of a new song/album release. Many products and services have a target audience of which they appeal to, if the product or service is to be promoted, the promotion and promotion strategy have to appeal to this target audience to make it successful. i.e. having the correct message, aesthetics, communication and fitness for purpose.
Aida and Dagmar
Aida:
This is an acronym used in a marketing strategy and relates to a conceptual theory of promotion of the process a consumer goes through before they buy a product. It stands for:
A – Attention/awareness; the attention of consumers have to be caught
I – Interest; the consumer needs to be interested with regards to product/service benefits
D –Desire; the consumer needs to be convinced that they desire the product to satisfy needs.
A – Action; consumer will then take action and use service/buy product
A successful promotional strategy will achieve the first 3 of ‘AIDA’ resulting in their target audience buying the product or using the service.
Dagmar:
Dagmar is a descendent of AIDA and stands for, ‘Defining advertising Goals for measured advertising Results’. It maps out the process that the mind goes through before purchase. This process involves:
Unawareness, Awareness, Comprehension, Conviction and Action
It measures the effectiveness of advertising and other promotional methods in changing the mind of the consumer and moving him or her towards purchase.
Various forms that promotional activity can take
Mass media – mass media includes TV and Radio promotion which are predominantly used by big brands that have the funds to pay for them. An example of this would be M&S – over the years they have had many large, successful TV promotions promoting products from food to clothes. To the right is a screen shot from an M&S television advert.
TV - A business will pay for the length of a spot they want to buy i.e. 15, 30, 60 seconds. The longer the spot, the more expensive the cost of advert will be. They are expensive because there are a high number of potential viewers especially when an advert is shown between a popular T.V shows. T.V adverts are successful because of the high amounts of views but also the T.V ad allows communication with its audience through use of sound and aesthetics which stimulates the senses and draws consumers in. I think a good example of a memorable T.V advertisement is the Cadbury’s Gorilla advert which features the Phil Collins song and the Gorilla plays the drums shown to the left.
As mentioned above costs vary due to the different programmes, and ratings and viewings of programmes, the area and how populated that area is also affects the costs. The table below shows some examples of the prices involved for UK advertisement spots:

Radio – radio adverts are not as expensive as television adverts, although still fairly pricey. The prices also vary according to the time of day and how popular the radio show is. They are also paid for in slots of 30 and 60 seconds.
Radio adverts are successful as although there is no aesthetic advertisement there is obviously sound which allows businesses to communicate using catchy music and slogans etc. to catch their audiences attention. Many people listen to the radio whilst commuting in their cars and whilst working – people do this everyday therefore the radio adverts are heard repeatedly. In my opinion from what I hear on the radio, a good advert is one that I find myself recalling/remembering a theme song hours after hearing the advert an example of this being the Bishop Burton radio advert that is played by local Hull radio shows.

Internet advertisement