The strong versus weak theory debate in the UK advertising industry

Abstract:Advertising is a really important element today and its importance has been growing in the past few years. There are two schools of debate regarding the nature of advertising: the strong theory and the weak theory. This essay will discuss different opinions between these two schools in three main aspects, namely, the effectiveness of advertising, how advertising works and how to measure it. During the discussion, some examples from the UK advertising industry such as Virgin Trains, BT, Starbucks, Apple Inc. and so on would be considered. This essay proposes that each advertising theories can be explained in particular situations and no one can always be right. It would make more sense when cases are considered in both sides.

Key words:strong theory, weak theory, the UK advertising industry, measurement

Introduction

The United Kingdom advertising market generated total revenues of $3.9 billion in 2007, representing 13.8% of annual growth from 2003 to 2007. Due to the robust financial performance in advertising industry, the relative power of advertising has been debated by academicians and practitioners for almost four decades. The Strong Theory which was developed in the United States and supported by the authors such as John Philip Jones, considers advertising as a dynamic force for sales and the change of consumers' attitudes. In contrast, there is another theory developed by Andrew Ehrenberg of the London Business School taking advertising as a weak force.

The effectiveness of advertising

Traditionally, the role of advertising is considered as four main ways, including creating awareness, providing essential information, helping to build a relevant brand image and reminding consumers to try, buy or use the brand after the brand establishment. Advertising effects may be divided into two categories: intermediate like consumer beliefs and attitudes; purchasing behaviour such as brand choice.

For the strong school, first of all, they believe that advertising can influence sales to some degree. The research which covered the leading brands in 12 major categories of repeat-purchase packaged goods carried by Jones (1997) revealed that there were 70% of cases supporting that advertising had an immediate effect on sales, with more than doubled market share for some brands. Jones (1998) also found that this increase would occur in the two weeks after advertising exposure, which is called Short-Term Advertising Strength (STAS) effect. Therefore, it could be argued that due to the strong relationship with sales, advertising is usually conducted with an unspoken assumption that the process of selling results in sales. For instance, the TV campaign 'Return of the Train' launched by Virgin Trains won a significant success that the Aerial volumes between London and Manchester fell by 6% and rail volumes rose by 96% in 2005 when the consumers lose heart to the train service because of its low speed. Another example is Marks & Spencer which won gold award in IPA 2006. The continual sales declines and consecutive negative press coverage left Marks & Spencer facing a difficult situation in spring 2004. However, their 'Your M&S' advertising campaign helped them in recovering the business, which led to a rise in UK sales of 9.1% in a fourth-quarter of 2006. The evidence here, thus, suggests that advertising does have an influence on the sales. If the advertising could not cause increased sales or at least improved sales for a brand, it could be said that this advertising has failed. Otherwise, there would be no necessity for the UK government to spend large sum of money in restricting the advertising in fast food industry, tobacco industry and those targeting children. In addition, Jones (1998) continued to claim that although many cases indicated that the high level of short-term effect was not sustained and the year-end effect was less than the immediate one, in his research there were still 46% of all brands whose advertising produced short-term sales results showing positive results in the long run.

However, the academics and practitioners in the weak school of advertising argue that there is little empirical evidence supporting the notion of advertising as a strong force. Ehrenberg et al. (1998) stated that less than five percent of new brands failed with sound market share. However, the unsuccessful launches normally cost the same large sum of money as those successful ones. According to the data collected from a number of different countries, only around 30% of advertising campaigns had an immediate effect on sales, even smaller proportion in long term. Indeed, although there are many successful advertising contributing to the positive business performance or even winning the IPA Effectiveness Awards every year, they are still not adequate compared to the rest in the advertising industry, and therefore these cases are not representative enough to convince that all the advertising can affect the sales. Interestingly, when the relationship between advertising and sales is discussed as a hot topic, it should be noticed that few cases indicate market growth is a business objective in the advertising. According to Peter Field's research on IPA dataBANK, only 1.7% of the cases cite market growth as an objective. Therefore, it could be argued that advertising has more to do with supporting brand equity, preserving price premium and maintaining business rather than increasing sales. Also, if the advertising works, the benefits from advertising would decrease over time. It has been reported that only about 25% of advertisements produce sales improvement for small brands or maintenance for large brands over a year. Furthermore, the business improvement may not be solely attributed to advertising but the integrated marketing communication or even marketing mix. In fact, almost no organization can separate or isolate advertising from other promotional elements. Take Starbucks as an example. Starbucks allocates only about 1% of their total revenue for advertising while more money is spent in clustering and locating itself in many various places, constantly reminding the customers of the brand and products. Also, they build strong brand image and provide premium products and services to attract and retain the customers. From the cases discussed above, like Marks & Spencer and Virgin Trains, although they won a significant success in the advertising, they still made great efforts alongside with other promotional techniques such as direct marketing, public relationship and events. In particular, it has been reported that most of the small business rely on word of mouth but not advertising, especially considering the cost of it. In that case, therefore, it could be suggested that it might not make sense if only considering the effectiveness of advertising alone.

How Advertising Works

Advertising research especially in the early age, is dominated by the persuasive hierarchy effects models of which the first one was AIDA (Attention-Interest-Desire -Action), variously attributed to St. Elmo Lewis in 1890 and Strong in 1925. This and subsequent similar models continue to dominate the notion about how advertising works, which are also known as the strong or persuasive theories. The sequential pattern of AIDA illustrates two roles to advertising: an informational role and a persuasive role. Take Virgin Trains again as an example. Under the pressure that many other competitors provided modern ways for transportation, Virgin Trains launched 'Return to the Train' TV campaign in order to arouse the attention of the customers. Then they provided a modern take on the 'golden era' of rail travel to obtain interest from customers because UK was nation of train lovers. This was back up by the new services such as increased speed and timetable changes, with a result that customers had desires to purchase it and their sales increased accordingly. In terms of AIDA, it could be argued that advertising provides information to arouse attention and gain interest from customers, after which the customers would have desire of this product and then purchase it.

Although this model has been used for more than 100 years, it is still imperfect when considering the process of advertising. Another hierarchical model is Lavidge and Steiner's model which includes six steps of advertising process: awareness, knowledge, liking, preference, conviction and purchase. Lavidge and Steiner state that the consumers would do purchase the brand only when all of these stages have been achieved. This implies that if any of the steps fails, the desired outcome will not come true. If it were right, Virgin might not get increased sales if they had no unique selling points to develop a liking for the services or those selling points could not meet the real needs of the consumers. Take TV Licensing for students in the UK as another example. Only if TV License could illustrate clearly the knowledge, specifically, why students need to buy TV License, will the students show preferences and purchase it.

Since all the stages are important, it becomes crucial to have a good plan and measure for advertising. DAGMAR (Defining Advertising Goals for Measured Advertising Results) proposed by Russell Colley is a new approach to advertising planning. It provides a precise method for the selection and quantification of communications tasks, emphasizing the comprehension of the messages. Also, it was the first hierarchy model that considers the target audience. For instance, in the campaign of TV Licensing towards students, they selected all the messages that can be made to appeal to students directly, rather than the whole potential users. Nevertheless, DAGMAR model is still criticized because it implies that consumers are passive in the marketing communication. Based on this, Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) considers different levels of involvement for individual consumer when it explains how cognitive processing and attitude change occur. For example, computer companies like Sony, Apple would provide detail information such as item codes, product specialties and usage instructions for their customers who expect to see high quality of arguments while some low level of involvement industries like clothing, would spend much money on celebrities to influence attitudes positively. In 2006 Nike spent more than ?240m in the UK to recruit celebrity athletes such as Tiger Woods in order to persuade the purchase from the customers. The evidence here, therefore, has suggested that advertising should adopt different specific ways to target different kinds of consumers according to the ability and motivation to process information.

Although the hierarchy effects models vary from time to time and have different explanations of the advertising process, they all support persuasive theories. Whereas, these notions are rejected by the scholars and practitioners in the weak force school of advertising. Ambler (1998) claimed that feelings and thought happen simultaneously. This is one of the strikes for the persuasive theory. But Ehrenberg accepted that advertising can create and strengthen brand awareness, contributing to the trial purchase. In this stage, it is vital to consider consumers' experience. To enable the consumers have a satisfied experience, Apple Inc provides free trying experience in London stores and teaches customers how to use their systems. Also, in Ehrenberg's ATRN model, he indicated that advertising had a defensive role as reinforcement by repeated exposure. This power of advertising has been confirmed by the experimental research using various qualities of orange juice samples. One possible reason might be the advertising can work when the messages get into and repeat in the mind and memory of the target customers. In this case, Advertising can retain existing customers by reinforcement, which is an important marketing strategy for many brands, in particularly, large brands which have large user base. Furthermore, he developed a further role for advertising as nudging that is the constant reminder of the existence of the brand.

In addition, brand-buying behavior and buying intentions are normally very stable according to the large amount of databases over long period of time. For example, BT launched an advertisement in 1996 in order to obtain more men users. However, the result was that women continued using much as before but no increased usage in men. One possible reason should be that some consumers may not be interested in reading or hearing advertisements with a result that the role of advertising in communication has been restricted. Another reason might be the consumers have different opinions with what is claimed in the advertising and therefore it is difficult for the advertising to convince them of purchasing.

How to Measure

Last but not the least, the measurement of the advertising effectiveness is also a controversy between these two schools. For the one thing, the strong school believes that the effectiveness of advertising is measurable. DAGMAR provides basis for measuring advertising performance by identifying a series of benchmarks. Also, Young & Rubicam's BrandAsset Valuator (BAV) model uses the concept of hierarchy effects models in terms of a natural order for the accumulation of consumer brand equity. For another one, Ehrenberg et al. (1998) argued that it was difficult to measure the effects of advertising. One possible reason is that most marketing organizations prefer to use advertising in combination with other communication activities rather than solely rely on advertising. Therefore, it is probably incorrect to parse out individual functional promotional elements. Another reason might be consumers have their own basic knowledge and experience and therefore it should be more likely to start with consumers rather than starting with advertising.

Conclusion

In summary, this essay has identified the strong theory and weak theory according to the effectiveness of advertising, how advertising works and how to measure it. It could be argued that each theory can be correct or wrong when considered in different particular situations, so that they cannot be only considered either. However, while debating the strong theory and weak theory, it should be argued whether it is or not advertising is the right sole thing to discuss and measure. It is proposed that the focus should be shifted to the brand communication program but not just advertising. Furthermore, it is likely that the advertising strategies should consider more about the consumer aspects.

References:

［1］Ehrenberg,A.,Barnard,N. & Scriven, J. (1998) 'Justifying our advertising budgets'. WARC.

［2］Green,L.(2006) Advertising Works 15: IPA Effectiveness Awards 2006. Biddles Ltd.: Oxfordshire.

［3］Jones, J. P. (1997) 'Is Advertising Still Salesmanship?'. Journal of Advertising Research. 37(3).

［4］Yeshin,T.(2006) Advertising. Thomson Learning: London.