Piaras Kelly PR - Public Relations in Ireland

I don’t believe advertising is dead or anyway near close to dying. In reality, it’s evolving like all communications disciplines. I firmly believe that it still holds its place in the communications mix, although its goals are often different than other tools. Having witnessed the capabilities of advertising to help a business achieve its commercial objectives, I think a large amount of the debate between advertisers, marketers and PR practitioners is due to getting a big slice of the overall budget.

Here are some examples of some advertising which has drawn my attention over the past couple of weeks.

I’m a big fan of movies. One of the best films I saw last year was a British film called, The Business. I recently received my copy of the film on DVD after months of patiently waiting for it to be released. After watching the film, I was putting the DVD back into the case when I noticed something out of the ordinary in the inserts. It was an ad by a clothing company. The film was set in the 80s and the clothing company’s range is largely drawn from the fashion of the era.

Instead of just putting an ad into a fashion magazine, the company decided to put an ad into the DVD. So instead of going down the route of the scattergun effect of traditional advertising whereby companies hope the target audience is exposed to their ad, the company put the advertisement somewhere potential customers were more likely to see it. On top of that, because they had purchased the DVD those potential customers are also more likely to purchase from the clothing range because they have been influenced by the movie. I’m a good example because I went out and bought the songs that featured in the soundtrack because I liked the movie so much.

Another twist to this is the growth of advertising which is influenced by its environment. For example, a number of companies have taken to creative advertising in toilets or using the shape of the advertising boards to stand out. I have been particularly impressed in the improvement of advertising on Dublin Bus. The company has opened up its vehicles and expanded upon the traditional advertising opportunities on the back and side of its buses. Dublin Bus also allows companies to do full vehicle wraps and has also incorporated internal advertisement slots. Companies have taken advantage of this and used the shape of the boards to create advertisements which tell more of a story, thereby increasing the chance they will be noticed by consumers. (Unfortunately I’m still waiting on my new cameraphone so I couldn’t take any photos to illustrate this )

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