Fixing the Advertising Platform
These are the basic aims of the advertising platform. There will be other subsidiary themes, of course, tacked on to the main one -and these will depend on the particular needs of each product. One aim may be, for instance, to shift the product on to a higher social level, and this may involved changing the image of the product in the consumer`s mind.
In fixing the advertising platform, a good advertising agency will be able to help the client by bringing to bear expert knowledge and a background of experience will in many product fields. This experience will be especially important in two aspects of the task.
a) Firstly to ensure that the advertising platform is appropiate to the client company`s long-term development plans. For clearly, if the company intends to diversify in the future into certain indicated product fields, the resulting “product mix” may cut across the advertising platform for one of the products. For example, a company with a well-established image in the toiletries field, might have to re-cast its advertising platform for these products if it diversified into, say, the pet-food business, or the shoe-cleaning business!
Obviously, the “family image” of the company constitutes a valueable goodwill, and it could be unwise to have to discard it, or radically shake confidence in it, in order to achieve recognition for the new interests of the company concerned. Such damage can be avoided, or at least minimized, by the creative skill of a good agency, if brough into consultation at an early stage in planning.
b) The agency can also help at this stage by drawing upon its knowledge of trends in selling and promotion methods in other fields. Advertising agency are very much on the alert to sense changing trends in ideas and techniques in promotion and in the selling impact of various methods. It is part of their business to be in a position to provide this kind of comparative thinking, in working out a client`s approach to promoting his company and his products.
The agency can, therefore, help the client to hammer out an advertising selling platform that is progressive, does not conflict with other advertising themes, does not blur the image of the company or product in the consumer`s mind and -extremely important- fits into all the methods of promotion and selling likely to be used in the future.