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It is generally recognised that companies spend approximately 50% of their marketing budget on promotional activities. Advertising belongs to the most visible areas of a company’s activity. Therefore, it should not be surprising that the average recipient associates marketing with advertising, competitions and leaflets about new promotions delivered to houses or offices. Advertising, especially Internet advertising, is one of the most effective forms of marketing and one of the fastest developing areas of business. New channels of communication are emerging all the time – the Internet, digital television, mobile telephony; accompanied by new forms, such as the so-called ambient media. Advertising benefits from the achievements of many fields of science, that is, psychology, sociology, statistics, medicine and economics. At the same time, it combines science and the arts – it requires both knowledge and intuition. Contemporary advertising has different forms and areas of activity; yet it is always closely linked with the operations of a company – it is a form of marketing communication.

The indices of marketing communication presented in this chapter are generally known and used not only by advertising agencies but also by the marketing departments of many organisations. Brand awareness, advertising scope and frequency, the penetration index or the response rate belong to the most widely used indices; others, like the conversion rate or the affinity index, will get increasingly more significant along with the process of professionalisation of the environment of marketing specialists in Poland and with increased pressure on measuring marketing activities. Marketing indices are used for not only planning activities, but also their evaluation; some of them, such as telemarketing, mailing and coupons, provide an extensive array of possibilities of performance evaluation.

This monograph presents a thorough examination of the phenomena of “threshold” levels of advertising activity and the “wearout’ of advertisements and/or campaigns. These are seen as corresponding to the management questions “How little can we spend/How infrequently can we advertise?” and “How much is too much/How infrequently is too little?” In the first section the relevant literature on, or related to, the two issues is reviewed. Section 2 describes a survey aimed at establishing current beliefs in the existence of the phenomena, the practices resulting from these beliefs, and the data which support them. Finally, Section 3 offers an overview on the managerial issues involved in decisions concerning threshold or wearout risks in advertising. It is suggested that wasted expenditure may be occurring in advertising because the believed levels of threshold and wearout are both too high.

It seems that the Internet boom, which started at the end of the 1990s and finished with the spectacular collapse of the so-called dotcoms, is probably over. We are currently enjoying a period of fast and stable growth. This is manifested by the growing number of both Internet users and companies which – to an ever-increasing extent – use the Internet as a form of communication (both internal and external), promotion, sales etc. Expenditures on Internet advertising are growing continuously and now constitute more than 25% of all advertising expenditure. A natural consequence of this development is the need for the standardisation and organisation of the world of the Internet. These activities will result in a greater awareness of the benefits which this medium provides, increasing the possibilities of its use, and – most importantly – the opportunity to evaluate the return on investments made on the Internet. Nowadays, it is clear that many companies are striving to increase the quality of their activities on the Internet or to improve the effectiveness of such activities. As a consequence, the number of companies that look for indices which would enable the making of more precise and effective decisions in the scope of online operations is growing.

This chapter is dedicated to the phenomenon of the increasing role of the Internet in business, including the scale of its use by Polish and international companies. We present the most commonly used measures of marketing activities on the Internet and in social media. This group includes the indices which make it possible to determine whether a company actually needs a website. Other measures allow for the improvement in the effectiveness of the activity on the Internet, whereas others specify the costs of activities on the Internet and often serve as the basis for settlements between a company and advertising agencies or companies specialising in website design. It is worth emphasising that the Paid, Earned, Shared, Owned (PESO) model, worked out by Don Bartholomew,¹ is the basis for creation and description of indices concerning social media. This model has gained certain popularity in the social media industry. It does not, however, specify how individual indices should be named and calculated. It maps already existing indices and adapts them to specific levels of marketing communication measurement. All the measures indicated by the author of the model have been grouped into five major areas: exposure, engagement, brand awareness, action and recommendations. This model– similarly to all models of performance measurement – inspired by the sales funnel concept, adjusts certain standard indices and proposals of measurements for specific levels. Additionally, the measures are divided into four types, depending on who the owner of the content is: Paid (P) – refers to all forms of paid content; Owned (O) – all websites and web properties controlled by a company or brand; Earned (E) – the contents about a given brand created spontaneously by Internet users; and Shared (S) – the contents shared by Internet users.

This study aims to explore which media 9- and 10-year-old children and 12- and 13-year-old teenagers encounter and which campaign elements (media, spokesperson, appeal and message) are most appreciated by these target groups in awareness campaigns to raise their advertising literacy.

The study applies a methodology that is commonly used in design sciences to the field of advertising. Co-creation workshops with minors and professionals are used for the development of awareness campaign stimuli. In the first study, four co-creation workshops with 19 children (11 girls and 8 boys) of the fourth grade and four co-creation workshops with 16 teenagers (10 girls and 6 boys) of the seventh grade were organised. In the second study, nine professionals who work for and/or with minors or have experience in product design or marketing participated in a co-creation workshop.

Children are best approached though traditional media, whereas social media are used best to reach teenagers. Children prefer cartoons, whereas the results for the most appealing spokesperson in teenagers are mixed. Humoristic campaigns with a short message are preferred by both target groups.

The results offer implications for practice and public policy with respect to awareness campaign building and social media marketing campaigns targeted at children and teenagers. To further corroborate the findings of this study, more pupils from different schools and different age groups should be studied. Moreover, the method used in this study can be applied in future research on awareness campaigns aimed at minors for other causes.

The methodological contribution of the study is the application of co-creation tools and techniques on the development of advertising campaigns for minors.

The purpose of this historical paper is to examine arguably the most controversial advertising campaign of all time. Critics have condemned tobacco marketer George Washington Hill's “Reach for a Lucky Instead of a Sweet” campaign in the late 1920s and early 1930s for its explicit attempt to encourage smoking among women by linking cigarettes with themes of slenderness and youth.

The paper relies on primary sources obtained chiefly from the important advertising trade journals Printers' Ink and Advertising and Selling. Many sources, in turn, pointed to historically significant advertisements from the “Reach for a Lucky […]” campaign, some of which are included among the findings. Tentative themes of analysis were: the strategic motives behind the “Reach for a Lucky […]” campaign and the campaign's outcomes and consequences, both positive and negative.

Hill aggressively pursued the female smoker of the 1920s, as did other cigarette marketers of the period. However, the paper's findings support a conclusion that Hill had additional motives for attacking “sweets,” other than merely encouraging women to smoke with a slenderness appeal. Hill's primary strategic concern must have been how to address the extraordinarily competitive situation he faced with the other “big four” cigarette brands.

Focusing on the strategic intent of the campaign and its outcomes and consequences, findings strongly suggest that prior perspectives and conclusions found in advertising history texts regarding this infamous campaign often fail to reveal its significance as an historical event.

A number of scholars have explored the US Government’s postwar efforts, often in collaboration with the business community, to “sell America” to Americans themselves; others have documented the means through which such information was aimed at audiences behind the Iron Curtain. Few scholars have explored the use of the US “propaganda” to secure political loyalty and financial markets among Western allies, and fewer still have studied the government’s use of commercial marketing methods for this purpose. Attempting to fill a void, this paper aims to explore the US State Department’s postwar collaboration with the Advertising Council, a non-profit organization funded and organized by American business, to “sell” the 16 countries that were receiving aid under the Marshall Plan on “the American way of life”.

Drawing primarily from archival sources, the underlying research here is heavily based on various State Department collections housed at the National Archives in Washington, DC, and College Park, Maryland, as well as documents from the Harry S. Truman Library in Independence, Missouri, and the Advertising Council Archives at the University of Illinois.

In contrast to its many successes during the Second World War, the Advertising Council’s first international project was plagued by erroneous assumptions and unforeseen problems, making the “Overseas Information” campaign far less successful than its previous projects. Thus, the case study holds lessons for the US Government in any future attempts to use the assistance of commercial advertisers in attaining its “soft power” objectives.

The study explores the “Overseas Information” campaign from an institutional perspective only. Future research should focus on public perceptions of the campaign and possibly a rhetorical analysis of the actual advertisements.

The case study holds lessons for the US Government in any future attempts to use the assistance of commercial advertisers in attaining its “soft power” objectives.

The study reveals interesting, and heretofore, unrevealed information about collaborations between the government and US business in the postwar era.

Up till this point, the Advertising Council’s “Overseas Information” has received very scant scholarly attention and few, if any, have recognized its importance in the ongoing quest for government “soft power” in the postwar era.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between successful brand advertising campaigns in China and various factors such as message/creativity, media selection, market research, competition, market share, product uniqueness, and agency/client relationships.

The data for the study were collected by mailing a questionnaire to 283 advertising agencies executives who were selected from the All‐Asia Ad Agency Guide. A total of 1,086 questionnaires were sent out and 163 were returned for a response rate of 15 per cent. Factor analysis was first used to identify various success factors, and ANOVA was used to compare the means of each factor related to the degree of success of the campaign. Correlation analysis was then used to examine the relationship between successful brand advertising campaign and various success factors.

The results of the ANOVA indicate that there are significant relationships between some items in each factor and the degree of success of an advertising campaign. Correlation analysis further reveals that message/creativity, media selection, market research, market share, and product uniqueness are significantly related to the success of brand advertising in China. No significant relationship is found between brand success and competition or agency/client relationship.

The respondents may have been biased about the extent to which their advertising campaigns are successful or how creative an advertisement should be. Their perceptions of successful or creative advertising could be very different, especially in relation to those questions that asked respondents to critique their own work. All of these affect the rigor of the study. Another limitation of the study is the low response rate. If the sample size had been large enough, comparisons could have been made concerning the correlates of successful brand advertising across different regions in China.

In addition to providing researchers with further understanding of brand advertising in China, this study provides some insights about the ways in which multinational advertising managers contribute to successful brand advertising.

This selective annotated bibliography presents a snapshot of research published between 1990 and 1999 that has studied negative political advertising, primarily in the USA. Political scientists, psychologists, communication theorists and marketing scholars have used experiments, surveys, and case studies to examine the impact of this type of advertising on voter beliefs and behavior. The author categorizes the literature by broad themes such as typologies, effects of negative ads, media coverage of political campaigns, and actual candidate behavior, and provides descriptive annotations of representative articles in each category. In addition, several scholarly books that discuss negative political advertising are annotated. Since the focus of this bibliography is on social science research, articles from the popular literature are not included.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effectiveness of a national alcohol-prevention social marketing campaign in Thailand, investigating specifically the competing forces of the campaign vis-à-vis alcohol advertising.

Based on repeated cross-sectional, nationally representative data from the 2011-2014 Annual Survey of Buddhist Lent Campaign Evaluation (N = 10,133), a generalized ordered logit (partial proportional odds) model is used. The outcome of interest is self-reported alcohol consumption during the campaign period, compared to before. The main explanatory variables include exposure to the campaign and exposure to alcohol advertising.

Results show that exposure to the campaign and exposure to alcohol advertising positively and negatively influence alcohol consumption, respectively. Compared to those with one type of exposure and those without any exposure to alcohol-related messages, drinkers with exposure to both the campaign and alcohol advertising are estimated to have the highest probability of drinking reduction during the campaign period.

The paper highlights the importance of accounting for a countervailing force (in this case, alcohol advertising) in campaign evaluation studies. It also suggests that alcohol-control social marketing be continued and that the government should disseminate alcohol-prevention messages in a balanced manner, ensuring that both costs and benefits of alcohol consumption are well-understood by the intended audience.

The purpose of this article is to explore how the (War) Advertising Council organized the advertising community to assist the US government's home front campaigns during the Second World War. It aims to discuss how the council urged individual advertisers to use their product‐ads to instruct the civilian population about behavioral changes that the government deemed essential to the war effort. The task required great ambidexterity: paying a high level of attention to the government's wartime needs while coaching and encouraging advertisers into compliance. As such, the article also aims to discuss the council's challenge in weighing the government's wartime needs against commercial pressures. A case study of the Advertising Council's 1944 campaign to “Stamp out VD” seeks to illustrate the latter concern.

The article comprises an historical account of the US advertising industry during the Second World War. Applying a qualitative approach, it relies on archival sources, industry trade publications, newspapers accounts and existing scholarship for its information.

While publicly framing its wartime contribution as a patriotic gesture, the council's underlying rationale was that of serving the advertising industry in a public relations capacity. Unsure of its standing as America entered the war, the donation of time and talent to the government's war effort helped strengthen the advertising industry's economic position and social standing. As such, the council was not only a pioneer of “social marketing”, but also demonstrated a sophisticated use of “strategic philanthropy,” long before it became a common marketing practice.

Analyzing previously un‐explored sources, the article sheds new light on the US advertising industry's public relations strategies during the Second World War.