growth advertising

The most widely accepted definition is one which is given by the American Marketing Association, according to which is any “any paid form of non-personal presentation of ideas, goods or services by an identified sponsor” Put in other words, it is a sales message directed at a mass audience, that seeks through persuasion to sell goods, services or ideas on behalf of the paying sponsor. The distinct characteristics of advertising relative to overall marketing activity are: It is a competitive Act. It is not part of the product. It is the act of persuasion. It is the part of the total benefit that the consumer derives through use of product or service. It is paid for and is done by the identified sponsor.

In a nutshell, advertising is a mass communication process of persuading the prospects by convincing them to buy products or services with increased satisfaction to the consumers and profits to the sponsors.

IS IT SAME AS ‘PUBLICITY’ AND ‘PROPOGANDA’?

In our daily talks we use the words ‘advertising’, ‘publicity’ and ‘propaganda’ in a very loose sense so much so that we hardly make any difference between these. A layman can be excused for the same, but not the students of his highly developed science, art and profession. Each word has its own clear cut meaning and is to be used with the finest shade of meaning. Following is an attempt to distinguish each from one anther.

Publicity Vs Advertising

‘Publicity’ is an effort to make available certain information to the public. It is the sum total of all those activities that are directed to the flow of information to the knowledge of public. Perhaps the best definition is one given by the Association of Teachers of Marketing and Advertising of America. According to its terminology, “publicity is any form of non-personal presentation of goods, services or ideas to a group; such presentation may be or may not be sponsored only by the one responsible for it and it may or may not be paid for”. In this sense, advertising is only a type of publicity. That is, the term publicity is more comprehensive than the word advertising itself. Therefore, it can be said that all advertising is publicity but all publicity is not advertising.

Both the words are similar in three respects. First, they deal with the conveying the information regarding the goods or services or ideas. Secondly, both are the attempts to present the information impersonally. Third, both being the components of mass communication, they use mass-communication media. However, these terms can be distinguished clearly at least on seven grounds.