Advertising in the Post Digital Era

Advertising in the Post Digital Era Introduction The digital era has made it easy for people from all around the world to interact through social media and digital forums. While this has made communication easier, faster, and relatively cheaper, it has also led to a decrease in politeness in online behavior. Internet users should engage in behavior that does not cause harm to other users. Online violence causes public humiliation and is continuous such that the victim does not feel safe anywhere.

An advertisement is an effective way of creating awareness of the importance of politeness in online behavior.

Advertising is a tool of marketing communication that is used to create consumer awareness, influence their perception of the product being advertised, and motivate them to purchase the product. As a result of advancements in technology, digital media has increasingly become integrated into the marketing communication and everyday life. Digital advertising involves advertising using the internet and display devices. In the context of creating awareness on the importance of politeness in online behavior this paper analyses how advertising is transforming in the post-digital era, and how advertising firms can use digital technologies to enhance the effectiveness of their adverts.

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1. Account Team Organization To create the advertisement advocating for politeness in online behavior, different members of the advertising agency provided their input. An advertising agency is an organization that creates ads for companies for viewing by the public through various forms of mass media. Modern advertising agencies perform four essential functions. These are; creating an advertising strategy, making a production plan for the advertisements, selecting and purchasing the media in which to run the ads, and communicating with the client.

Advertising firms need the right structure to function optimally. Creating the proper structure involves integrating the various tasks involved in advertising into a structure that ensures that they are performed effectively. Modern advertising companies are divided into six departments. These are; management, account management, account planning, creative, media, and production departments (Bains, 2011).

The management of an advertising company is responsible for ensuring that all aspects of the business are well coordinated. Senior managers are also responsible for spearheading the formation of mergers and coalitions with other organizations.

The role of the account management department is to maintain client relationships and act as the client representatives of the organization. In a typical advertising form, the account management team comprises of account directors, account executives, and assistant account executives. The team is responsible for meeting with clients to discuss their requirements, creating a budget based on these requirements, and preparing a brief. The account planning department receives the advertising brief from the account management team and researches the best advertising strategy and channels to execute the advertising campaign. In an

organization where the organization hierarchy is flat, the account management and planning departments can be merged. The creative department consists of creative directors, designers, and copywriters and is responsible for creating advertisements that are in line with the client's brief. When creating the ad, the creative team must ensure that it is compatible with the media channel to be used (Jugenheimer, Kelley, & Monroe, 2014). The media planning and buying department selects and buys advertising time or space in the media where the advertisement is supposed to be placed. These include; billboards, radio, television, social media platforms, and the internet. The team ensures that the advertising channel used reaches the right target audience at the lowest cost. The production department liaises with printers and production companies to ensure that the advertisements are in their final form and ready for broadcast by the date agreed upon with the client.

The digitization of advertising has made the industry fast-paced and highly competitive; therefore, a flat organization structure is most suitable for modern advertising firms because they facilitate effective communication (Percy, Rosenbaum-Elliott, & Elliott, 2012). A flat structure inspires a culture of innovation, teamwork, and creative thinking in the organization. It also reduces the levels of management between the management of the firm and its employees, hence motivating employees, and also making communication clearer and faster between the highest and lowest levels of the firm.

In the future, advertising campaigns will be primarily digital due to advances in technology that have made the internet accessible at a place and time of the customers' convenience, unlike the more traditional forms of media. Advertisements will also focus on using experiential techniques such as story-telling and interacting with customers, as opposed

to merely communicating the advertising message. This will help to make the brand more memorable to customers.

2. Advertising strategy development Creating the advertisement on politeness in online behavior requires an effective advertising strategy. An advertising strategy is a plan used to roll out an advertising campaign. The advertising strategy should be compatible with the firm's marketing strategy to facilitate its success. An effective strategy is one that involves analyzing who the firm's target market is and selecting the media channels that are most likely to be effective for them. It also involves creating a suitable ad schedule to ensure that customers see the ad frequently enough to stimulate their interest in the product (Taylor, 2013). In the case of the advert advocating for politeness in online behavior, the target is teenagers and youth; therefore, the most appropriate media to use is digital platforms and social media. For maximum effectiveness, it is crucial to select a variety of media for the ad campaign.

Developing an effective advertising strategy is a four-step process. The first step is to design a positioning statement that describes the product, its functions, and how it is different from other products or services in the market. The positioning statement should be designed in a manner that specifically targets the intended customers of the products. An effective advert should be easy to understand and persuasive. The second step in developing an advertising strategy is identifying the target customers (Rodgers, & Thorson, 2017). To create a successful brand, it is essential to understand that there are three categories of consumers; firstly, the person who purchases the product, for example, in an organization this is the procurement officer. Secondly, the person who decides that the product will be bought; in an organization, this can be the person who needs to use the product, such as an intern who does

not have a laptop. The third category of the target customer is the person who influences the purchase of the product. In the same example, this can be a manager who has heard that a certain brand of laptops is better than others, thus influences the procurement to purchase it.

Once the target customers have been identified, and the right positioning statement has been created, the third step in developing an advertising strategy is to determine the communication media that is most effective for delivering the right message to the right audience. The most common communication media are print, audio, audio-visual, digital, direct mail, and outdoor advertising (Young, 2018). It is essential to determine the right mix to ensure that the ad campaign reaches and influences the largest proportion possible of the target market. The final step in the process of creating an effective advertising strategy is implementing the campaign. The advertisement should be rolled out consistently across all media channels to maximize its impact, coherence, and memorability.

In today's digital world, modern technologies have made it possible to target customers at a more individual level and also collect their responses to the product faster.

Social media platforms, websites, internet advertising, and influencer endorsements have proven to be the most effective methods of digital advertising. Digital platforms achieve a higher conversion rate than the more traditional media because they engage customers in ways that are more timely, personal, and emotionally stimulating.

3. Creativity in Digital Marketing The advert advocating for politeness in online behavior has been creatively designed to attract the attention of its target audience; this is because there are many brands all competing for the attention of the target audience, thus it has to stand out. Injecting creativity into digital advertising can differentiate an advert from its competitors and draw attention to

the brand. Brands should, therefore, ensure that their digital advertisements are just as interesting as their ads in other media (PARQA Marketing, 2019). The primary role of creativity in digital is to differentiate the brand.

Consumers use the internet for entertainment, information, and communication. As such, a digital advertisement should deliver these three aspects; it should entertain the customer enough to draw and maintain their interest in the product or service, provide all the relevant information about the product and enable customers to engage with the brand.

Creating an effective digital ad campaign involves reaching the right people at the right time with the right message (Abtahi, Behboudi, & Hasanabad, 2017). While various techniques are used to drive traffic to the digital platform, the most effective one remains to create an advertisement that interests and engages people. A lackluster ad is likely to be unsuccessful.

In digital advertising, a creative idea requires a combination of clarity, simplicity, and humor. Creativity in digital facilitates brand building and customer engagement because it gets people talking about the product or service. It involves investing time and effort to develop content that will facilitate the creation of relationships with the target market, and spark conversations about the product. Users of digital platforms see tens or hundreds of advertisements in a day, depending on the degree of their social media usage. It takes a creative ad for the average consumer to stop scrolling and view the advertisement in its entirety. Digital advertisements are different in two main ways; firstly, there is a shorter time frame to capture the customer's attention (Smith & Zook, 2019). A TV or radio advertisement lasts 30 seconds, in digital advertising, the brand has three to nine seconds on average to draw

the interest of the customer before they scroll past to something else. It is only through creative thinking that the brand can capture the customer’s attention within this short period.

Creativity in digital advertising lies in selecting the audience for the ad, dissecting their behavior, and creating exactly the right message that is delivered at the right time.

Various elements can be used to differentiate the brand from the rest. When utilized creatively, these can make an advertisement stand out. They are; video, photography, illustrations, engaging content, color, and audio (Smith, & Zook, 2019). Regardless of the creative element used, creativity will ensure that it engages the audience enough for them to want to know more about the product and eventually purchase it. As technology becomes more advanced, consumers will expect their relationship with brands to become tailored to their specific needs and personalized. Digital marketing will need to be more creative in targeting, understanding customers at a deeper level, and creating advertisements that are most suitable for them.

4. Media Convergence For maximum effectiveness of the online politeness advertisement, it is essential to converge different types of media. Media convergence is the interconnection of traditional and digital media to deliver a consistent and impactful advertising campaign. The rapid rate of technological advancements cannot be overlooked in advertising. There are mobile phones, smart TVs, tablets, laptops, and many more gadgets, giving advertisers a wide variety of platforms to choose from. While this can be of great benefit to advertisers, it can also increase the complexity of media planning, the ad development process, and selecting the right mix of media to use (Parnell-Berry, 2016). The main role of media convergence is to integrate different media platforms in the running of an ad campaign to keep consumers engaged.

When performed effectively, media convergence draws the customers' attention and creates an interesting, interactive experience for them.

There are three main types of media channels available to marketers; earned, owned, and paid media. Earned media is generated by what customers think and say about the brand.

It includes; word of mouth, Facebook, Twitter and blog posts about the products or service, and comments on social media platforms. Earned media has the most significant impact since consumers’ opinions of the brand are considered to be more truthful than what the brand says about itself (Smith, & Zook, 2019). Owned media includes the company's social media pages, mobile apps, website, and retail stores. Owned media is most effective in increasing the usage and popularity of the company’s products and services among its existing customers.

Paid media includes print, radio, television, magazines, and digital media adverts. It is most effective at converting strangers who did not know about the product or service into customers. An effective advertising campaign aims to combine the three forms of media and deliver a consistent message. In order to utilize these different media platforms to create an effective ad campaign, the brand should first define what it wants its return on investment (ROI) to be (Hough, 2019). For instance, it could be more sales, increase the market's knowledge about the product, or increasing customer traffic to the company's stores. The second step is to develop content that works across all platforms. The content should be creative and engaging to stand out from the competition. The third step is to execute the strategy uniformly, ensuring that the message is consistent to make it more visible and memorable. The fourth step in the process is to measure the success of the campaign through observing the customer analytics, and also requesting feedback from the market on their experience with the brand. Digital platforms enable brands to track return customers, the

number of views, and clicks on the advertisement and the platforms that gain the most attention. This information allows the brand to make changes promptly where necessary, and also develop advertising content that resonates with the target audience.

5. Online and Offline Advertising Ethics It is ethical to be polite in one’s online interactions. Failure to interact respectfully with internet users causes internet violence, which is a form of harassment that may cause anxiety, depression, and in extreme cases, suicide. Advertising is one of the most effective ways to create awareness about it. For the advertisement to be credible, it should be factual and adhere to the standards of advertising ethics. Advertising, by nature, involves influencing the audience’s opinion about a product or service with the aim of persuading their opinions on it (Snyder, 2016). Advertisements, therefore, present the product in a manner that is most attractive to the consumer. Ethical issues arise when brands fail to disclose full information about the product, especially its negative aspects, or where they exaggerate the features of the product.

Advertisements are expected to provide ample information about the product, and should, therefore, be honest and ethical. Marketers are expected to be especially cautious when advertising products that are harmful and also when advertising children's products.

Additionally, they are not supposed to use tactics that manipulate customers into purchasing the product. Ethical standards in advertising exist to ensure that customers are not misled when making purchase decisions about a product or service.

The ethical issues of advertising apply uniformly to both online and offline advertisements. The advertisement should adhere to the laws of a country and should not be offensive or discriminative (Almutairi, 2014). The message used in the ad should not contain

any misleading statements about the product. For instance, it is wrong for a product to claim that it is the best or number one if this has not been researched and proven. It should also disclose all the essential information that customers should know about the product, whether positive or negative. For example, if a drug has a significant side effect, it should be clearly outlined as one of the terms and conditions of the product's usage. Ethical advertising also applies to ensuring that advertisements are placed at a place, time, and media platform that targets the right audience. For instance, alcohol and cigarette adverts should not be aired during the day when children are likely to be watching television. It would also be inappropriate to air advertisements that feature adult content during the day or on media that is likely to be most viewed by children. Similarly, adverts that target women should be careful not to make it seem that women of a particular color, shape, or size are more attractive than others.

Online advertising poses a significant amount of ethical challenges. Most social media platforms track their consumers and use confidential consumer data to design optimal targeting metrics for businesses. Social media platforms such as Facebook should be transparent about how they handle users' information and provide an option for them to optout of their customer tracking systems. Digital advertising ethics also require that brands disclose whether information that is communicated about a product or service is a paid advertisement or is actual news. Lack of disclosure, especially when using online influencers, misleads customers into thinking that a paid-for advert is an honest third-party review (Almutairi, 2014). Failure to adhere to ethical standards of advertising causes consumer mistrust, which ultimately makes the advertising campaign ineffective.

Conclusion

Advertising is one of the most effective ways of delivering a message to a wider audience. In today's hyper-competitive environment, advertising firms can benefit from making their organizational structures flatter such that there is faster and more precise communication at all levels of the company. Additionally, they must design creative advertisements that stand out from their competitors and attract the attention of consumers.

Companies can also increase the effectiveness of their advertising campaigns by using both traditional and digital forms of advertising. This study finds that when properly utilized, digital technologies have the potential to make a company’s advertising campaign more effective and impactful. However, it is essential to adhere to standards of ethics to ensure that the advertising message is polite and credible.

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