Is Advertising an Expense or Investment?
Advertising – a singular word that conjures up all our existence today. It is what embodies us as persons. Brands define us. Our brand loyalty is framed with reference to the benefits we feel are accrued from it. Though advertising and branding are two different things they actually overlap to get people drawn towards a company or a product. And yet there are people and organisations out there who say, “Huh! Why spend on advertising?”. Sorry to say, not because we work in this industry but the fact is if you don’t stay up in the game you are game!
Money Spent on Advertising is an Investment, Not a Waste
Advertere to Turn Towards –
This is the original word from which the present day word ‘advertising’ emerged. To make the customers turn towards the products or the company needs tactics or tools to 1) grab attention and 2) engage the customers. If you do not shoutout how do you expect people to turn and notice?
Revenue Generation –
Consistent advertising across all platforms leads to increase in revenue by 23%. The statistic speaks for itself. You want to sell and sell ‘well’, therefore advertising is the key!
Look at it as ‘I’ and not ‘E’ –
Big brands allocate budget for advertising. Note the words we have used here in the sentence. ‘Budget’ means based on the company’s expected deliverables and collaterals, some amount of money is solely dedicated to advertising. These companies understand that advertising helps them stay in public memory and they get the advantage of being in market news. If you ask any of them, advertising is an investment and not an expense.
ROI –
Everyone loves ROI (Return of Investment). It is a magical word that spells dividends. However, the investment part has to be given importance in both attitude and monetary perspective. Brands that believe in investing in advertising “look” happy when engaging with customers. This happiness is factored in along with the returns when the advertising agency understands their requirements and gives them the best ideas to push forward.
Now put all these 4 points together and see the whole picture. Advertising and digital marketing today is not just putting up an advert and forgetting it. It is a cyclical process which with the help of a design agency gets your brand into loop all the time. For us the very foundation of the advertising is a sound first-hand brief followed by idea generation and then consistently maintaining it once approved. The returns are for you to enjoy and for us to reflect on and then you are back to investing in advertising again.
Here’s What We Believe about Advertising Investment
This is the core belief at BRIM. The more you look at advertising as an investment rather than expense, the more open you are to the possibilities of ideas being generated by us. We have often acted on this hesitation for advertising that some potential clients have. For us the returns of the investment are clear to see so as to give our prospective clients a good example. Here we take the example of our client, Fitness Point. Each time they gave us a brief, we followed up with them on ideas that stuck to their core expectations or in advertising language we say “actionable outcomes from target audience”.
At the time when we started working on Fitness Point, the perception of going to gym was that it was related to affluence and lifestyle. With our “Per Day 28/- “ Campaign and “Fat Clearance” designs, we were able to bring people to the acceptance of fitness as a way of life and not just related to wealth. You can see how we worked towards each campaign here. Each of the advertising campaign we made for them saw clear rise in their memberships. With that grew their opportunity to bring in better knowledge about fitness to the people. The result of this was that they were able to then diversity into different fitness programs for different age groups thereby creating a loyal customer base. For their campaign, BRIM only did one thing. Create singular concept driven designs that could be replicated across all online and offline advertising platforms thereby creating a holistic marketing atmosphere. Gradually, Fitness Point was everywhere and everyone knows Fitness Point.
This client diary example should give you a crisp picture of how strongly we believe in the role of advertising in day to day life. Also, it bears a heavy weight on how seriously BRIM takes into account the client briefs, expectations and the overarching goals to be achieved. This fact by Harvard Business will tell you another reality – every year more than 30,000 products (consumer products alone) are launched, 80% of them fail to make an impact – products and brands have limited shelf life and they remain in public memory till you make them work. Shocking, isn’t it? It is all up to you to decide how you want to take it ahead.
Say yes to advertising as an ‘investment’ and take advantage of being on the top of that 20% of successful brands. It is matter of perspective and giving your brand a tidy investment this season. Try us; you will walk out impressed!
