What is Advertising?
Advertising is the use of paid media of mass communication to inform, persuade and to pre-sell.
There used to be a prevailing school of thought that said: “if you have good product it will sell itself”. Another school of thought, more recently has held that “advertising can sell anything.” Both of these beliefs are false -or, what is worse, only partly true.
Certainly it is true that the recommendation of satisfied customers is one of the most valuable benefits a product or business this esteem, the business will gain further customers in course of time. This is the difficulty, for meanwhile, competing products are in the field -possibly no better, but shouting louder and more persuasively, and they may gain more ground faster, than the over-modest businessman, who simply contents himself eith making a good product and providing a good service.
Growth is the logical aim of any business -partly for the obvious reason that profitability is the purpose of business, but also for another reason that is insufficiently appreciated. Growth is a safeguard againts the business being seriously endangered either by unforeseen risks or changes in the basic demands of the market. Shifts in the market, changes in taste, fashion, new attractions superseding older harbits -these are always taking place in the dynamic situation that every business is confronted with.
A business that is not growing, in one part of its activities or another, is in danger of having too little room to manceuvre. When confronted by effects of these changes in the market, if it is growing at a reasonable rate, then it will have the resources with which to re-plan that part of its activities no longer competitive, and possibly to change the product so that it will once more be `in step` with consumer demand, or, alternatively, go into some new product altogether.