Advertising and promotion chris hackley

Advertising & Promotion

2

This book is dedicated to Dulciebella Caitlin

3

Advertising & Promotion 4th edition

Chris Hackley and Rungpaka Amy Hackley

4

SAGE Publications Ltd

1 Oliver’s Yard

55 City Road

London EC1Y 1SP

SAGE Publications Inc.

2455 Teller Road

Thousand Oaks, California 91320

SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd

B 1/I 1 Mohan Cooperative Industrial Area

Mathura Road

New Delhi 110 044

SAGE Publications Asia-Pacific Pte Ltd

3 Church Street

#10-04 Samsung Hub

Singapore 049483

© Chris Hackley and Rungpaka Amy Hackley 2018

First published 2005

Second edition published 2010

Third edition published 2015

Fourth edition published 2018

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and

5

Patents Act, 1988, this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form, or by any means, only with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017955134

British Library Cataloguing in Publication data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-47399-798-1

ISBN 978-1-47399-799-8 (pbk)

Editor: Matthew Waters

Editorial assistant: Jasleen Kaur

Production editor: Sarah Cooke

Copyeditor: Gemma Marren

Proofreader: Audrey Scriven

Indexer: Silvia Benvenuto

Marketing manager: Alison Borg

Cover design: Francis Kenney

Typeset by: C&M Digitals (P) Ltd, Chennai, India

Printed in the UK

6

Contents List of Photos About the Authors Preface Online Resources 1 Advertising and Promotion under Convergence

Why study advertising and promotion? The changing media landscape for advertising and promotion The challenges for advertising agencies What is advertising? Studying advertising – consumer, managerial and socio-cultural perspectives The role of advertising in brand marketing Brands and integrated marketing communication Chapter summary Case study Useful journal articles Further reading Notes

2 Advertising Theory Why theorise advertising and promotion? Practice-based advertising theory Cognitive information processing theory in advertising Socio-cultural theory in advertising Levels of explanation in advertising theory: cognitive, social and cultural Chapter summary Case study Useful journal articles Further reading Notes

3 Brands and Promotional Communication Branding basics: origins and conceptualisation What advertising and promotional communication can do for brands The strategic brand management process and communication planning IMC planning

7

Limitations to IMC Chapter summary Case study Useful journal articles Further reading Notes

4 The Creative Agency Model Advertising agencies as cultural intermediaries The advertising agency in evolution Advertising agencies and the pitch process Account team roles and responsibilities Chapter summary Case study Useful journal articles Further Reading Notes

5 Strategy and Creativity The creative advertising development process Developing a communication and advertising strategy Strategy and IMC planning Creative development The creative brief Campaign evaluation Chapter summary Case study Useful journal articles Further reading Notes

6 Media and Audience Planning Media, messages and readers Media planning – key tasks Media planning terms and concepts Media strategy The media mix – channel characteristics Chapter summary Case study Useful journal articles Further reading Notes

7 Non-Advertising Promotion Non-advertising promotion in IMC

8

Branded content Sponsorship Product placement Public relations Other elements of non-advertising promotion Celebrity marketing Chapter summary Case study Useful journal articles Further reading Notes

8 Global Advertising Strategy Advertising and the global economy Cross-cultural communication Standardisation or localisation of advertising and promotion? Cultural tensions around global brand advertising Advertising management in non-domestic economies Chapter summary Case study Useful journal articles Further reading Notes

9 Brands on the Defensive – Ethics and Regulation for Advertising Brands and ethics Ethics and controversy over advertising International advertising regulation Applied ethics and advertising regulation Chapter summary Case study Useful journal articles Further reading Notes

10 Advertising Research Role and purposes of research in advertising Types of advertising research Uses of advertising research Research ethics Chapter summary Case study Useful journal articles Further reading

9

Notes Abbreviations Glossary References Index

10

List of Photos

1 VW Bug (5)

2 Lynx (25)

3 Strand Cigarettes (44)

4 Guinness (61)

5 Omega Watches (63)

6 Silk Cut Cigarettes (73)

7 Daz Soap (78)

8 Marlboro Man (81)

9 Snickers (106)

10 Gillette (115)

11 Always (138)

12 David Beckham and Armani (161)

13 BMW (165)

11

14 Labour isn’t working (197)

15 Wraparound Bus (199)

16 Wonderbra (202)

17 Nike (216)

18 Lucky Strike (226)

19 Samsung Galaxy Note 3 (234)

20 De Beers (256)

21 Levi’s (262)

22 Adidas (265)

23 Benetton (284)

24 Simply Be (300)

25 Diesel (321)

26 Dove (328)

12

About the Authors

Chris Hackley was the first Chair in Marketing to be appointed at Royal Holloway University of London, in 2004. Prior to that he was head of the Marketing subject group at the University of Birmingham, UK. His PhD from Strathclyde University (AACSB), Scotland, focused on the creative development process in top advertising agencies. He teaches and researches in advertising, marketing, and consumer cultural policy. Chris has published his work in some 200 books, research articles, features, reports, conference papers and presentations. He has consulted on UK alcohol policy with the UK government Cabinet Office and the Department of Health, and with commercial organisations such as ITV, Sky Media, Channel 4 TV, New Media Group and the Huffington Post on topics including product placement and native advertising. Professor Hackley is a regular contributor to print and broadcast media on marketing and consumer policy topics with more than 100 media appearances and mentions. He has been interviewed on alcohol policy and media policy for BBC TV, ITV, BBC Radio 4 and Channel 4 TV, and his joint research has been mentioned in most UK national newspapers, and also in some overseas publications such as the Melbourne Age, Harvard Business Review and The Times of India.

13

Rungpaka Amy Hackley is Lecturer in Marketing at Queen Mary, University of London. Prior to that she was Lecturer in Marketing at Durham University, and before that, she lectured in marketing at the University of Surrey. Dr Hackley’s teaching and research focus on advertising, branding, marketing and consumer culture theory research. Her PhD entailed a cross-cultural study of young consumers’ experiences of TV product placement, and her first publication from her PhD research was the only UK paper cited by the ITV companies in their response to the UK government’s first consultation on UK TV product placement regulation. She also holds a first degree in Mass Communication and a Master’s in Marketing. Dr Hackley has presented her research at international conferences in Asia, North America, Australasia, Europe and the UK, and her work has been published in journals such as the International Journal of Advertising, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Marketing Management, Marketing Theory, Asian Journal of Business and Proceedings of the Association for Consumer Research, among others.

14

Preface

We are grateful to the many students, teachers, researchers and practitioners who have contributed in different ways to make this text a successful resource for courses worldwide since it was first published. The fourth edition continues the main themes of the first three. At the time the first edition was published, in 2005, the writing already seemed to be on the wall for advertising and advertising agencies. As digital media changed the world of marketing, and everything else, advertising agencies had to adapt or die. They are adapting, albeit in a business environment that now sees them competing head-on with media agencies, brand consultancies and multi-functional media content producers, all of whom want to eat the advertising agencies’ breakfast by taking their core business. Digital is rapidly becoming the largest category of adspend worldwide and agencies are recruiting new skill sets from across the cultural and communication industries to adapt the creative advertising development process to multi-platform, multi-media executions. Agencies are also building strategic skills in the orchestration of campaigns that utilise multiple marketing communication specialists hired in for the job. Amidst all these strategic changes, the guiding theme of the book remains the same. This is the conviction that the foundational skills of creative advertising development continue to lie at the core of the best work in advertising and promotional communication, and across the connected marketing communication disciplines.

A second major theme also continues in the fourth edition, and this is that distinctions between the advertising and promotional disciplines are blurring in the era of convergence. New, hybrid promotional techniques are emerging that further extend advertising’s logic across the promotional mix. The book therefore takes a thoroughly inclusive perspective on advertising to include any form of promotional communication whatsoever, reflecting the broadening scope and cross- disciplinary ethos of advertising work and practices. It does not include personal selling and merchandising, and therefore is not a book on marketing communications. It focuses on mediated communications, those typically construed by consumers as having a promotional motive, even if that motive may be very subtle.

One of the intentions of the book was and remains to bring out the

15

creative/account planning perspective more strongly than is typical in managerial advertising and marketing communications texts that approach the topic from a client/account management position. In addition, it offers a broader intellectual treatment of the subject that attempts to bridge the divide between the managerially oriented texts and the socio- culturally oriented texts. In pursuing this aim the text draws on research perspectives from anthropological and sociological consumer culture research, and from media, cultural and sociological studies, as well as from management perspectives and cognitive science. The fourth edition retains this synthesis and is selectively updated with examples, new writing in each chapter to elaborate on particular themes, and new references to cutting-edge research. It aims to be a comprehensive introduction to advertising promotion for students of advertising and promotion, of marketing and all forms of marketing communication.

This text is designed as a comprehensive introduction to the subject for students of advertising and promotion, marketing, communication and management at advanced undergraduate, postgraduate and MBA levels. Publishing moves too slowly, and advertising and marketing practice too quickly, for any textbook in the area to be fully contemporary. However, the text does include numerous references to books and research papers and links to case examples so that students can follow their own lines of interest to investigate particular topics more deeply. The fourth edition is selectively updated throughout the text to include more research perspectives and an updated and broadened range of references and case examples.

Chris Hackley and Rungpaka Amy Hackley, Oxfordshire, 2017.

16

online resources

This Fourth Edition of Advertising and Promotion is supported by a wealth of online resources for both students and lecturers to aid study and support teaching, which are available at https://study.sagepub.com/hackley4e

For Lecturers Discuss chapter by chapter examples using the PowerPoint slides prepared by the authors. Explore the book further with this chapter-by-chapter Tutor Guide that also includes exciting additional materials for teaching.

For Students Watch over 35 videos aligned with the aims of each chapter. They will help you grasp concepts quickly, digest content according to your learning style, and contextualise topics in practical, real-world examples for you to apply to coursework and exams. Each video comes with critical thinking questions to help you extend your knowledge of a topic. Support your reading with some extra knowledge and free open access to SAGE Journals Online. The authors have selected the articles that will help you engage with the relevant research and discussions in Advertising and Promotion, Fourth Edition.

17

https://study.sagepub.com/hackley4e
Don’t just read, watch! Author Chris Hackley provides links to some of the most exciting and innovative ads and real-world examples discussed in the coming pages. Surf the net through these links to find relevant websites and helpful links to the industry and different agencies. Remember to reference them in assignments!

18

1 Advertising and Promotion Under Convergence

Chapter outline Chapter 1 sets the scene for the fourth edition by noting the key themes of the book. It opens by outlining continuing changes taking place in the advertising environment, especially the convergence of media channels via the internet, the rise in importance of digital media for advertising, and the consequent changes in media funding models. As a result of these changes, advertising practices are also changing, with a shift in emphasis from traditional broadcast ‘spot’ and print display advertising towards brand storytelling, branded ‘content’, ‘native’ advertising and other forms of hybrid promotional communication designed for sharing on social media. The chapter discusses some of the major challenges facing the industry in the convergence era.

Key chapter content Why study advertising and promotion? The changing media landscape for advertising and promotion The challenges posed by digital media for the advertising agency model The blurring boundaries between advertising and promotional techniques Studying advertising: consumer, managerial and societal perspectives Advertising and brand symbolism

Want a primer? Go to https://study.sagepub.com/hackley4e and watch...

1. Advertising and Society to learn

How to define advertising

How promotion differs from advertising 2. Implicit Advertising to learn

19

https://study.sagepub.com/hackley4e
What place advertising occupies in the new media landscape

What is shaping the media landscape

The techniques agencies and brands use to stay relevant 3. Implicit Advertising (2) to learn

Additional techniques to exploit the area in between advertising and promotion

… to tackle the video questions at the end of the chapter.

Why study advertising and promotion? The point of departure for this book is the advertising agency and its practices in creating the kinds of promotional communication that have become closely identified with brand marketing and consumer culture under late capitalism. In this chapter, we emphasise the uncertainty that the future holds for the agency model, but we maintain that the advertising agency remains an important institution for several reasons. Since they began as space-brokers selling classified advertising in the (then) new printed publications some 200 years ago, advertising agencies have been behind much of what passes for marketing practice today. Market research, branding, opinion polling, strategic planning and, arguably, public relations (PR) were formalised into disciplines and developed within advertising agencies. Advertising agencies worked hand-in-hand with media owners, manufacturers and other producers to develop today’s promotional culture. During the post-war period, ad agencies in the UK and USA developed ever more persuasive techniques that transformed the realm of consumption (Ogilvy, 1963, 1983; Fletcher, 2008; Griffiths and Follows, 2016). They did not do so in a one-sided application of corporate power, but with the fascinated acquiescence of consumers whom the ad agencies learned to understand (Hackley, 2002). Meanwhile, the various marketing professions bureaucratised as markets grew and they developed their own professional bodies, techniques of expertise, professional examinations and career pathways. Some disciplines that had begun in ad agencies, such as media planning and buying, opinion polling and market and consumer research, were hived off to become independent businesses. Eventually, many sub-disciplinary fields of marketing and promotional communication emerged, each with their own special skill sets, agencies and career paths, such as direct mail and direct response, digital marketing,

20

PR, packaging, sponsorship, out of home (OOH) advertising, brand consulting and more. Today, under media convergence we are seeing the circle turn and advertising agencies are once again under pressure to offer an inclusive set of skills and knowledge to brand clients who demand fully integrated campaigns across multiple media channels (Jenkins, 2008).

We do not wish to overplay the role of advertising agencies in marketing – their influence has been greatly diluted as the marketing professions have expanded in the West during the past 100 years. However, they remain a key focal point for exploring the core skills, techniques and roles of advertising and promotional communication in brand marketing. A focus on the work of advertising agencies enables us to examine not only what advertising and promotion produces and why, but also how it is produced. This is important. The working practices of advertising have been neglected both by managerial writers, who focus on the intended ends of promotional campaigns, and by cultural sociologies of advertising, which tend to focus on the outputs, the finished ads (Cronin, 2004). This book is written primarily for students on advertising and marketing-related educational courses, many of whom might have an interest in the persuasive strategies and creative techniques of advertising and promotion, but it is also written for those with a more general interest in the topic and hence it draws on a wider range of cross-disciplinary concepts and literature than is found in some managerially oriented texts.

This chapter begins with some comments about the ways in which the changing media environment under convergence are influencing changes in the practices, techniques and organisational priorities for advertising and promotion. It then goes on to introduce the three perspectives of the book. These are the managerial perspective, the consumer perspective, and the socio-cultural perspective. Advertising and promotional communication constitute a set of managerial techniques and practices designed to manage demand for brands of all kinds. It, and they, frame the contemporary consumer experience to an extent which, according to some, places the advanced economic regions of the world within a thoroughgoing promotional culture (Wernick, 1991; Davis, 2013). The three perspectives allow us to critically examine the topic from the point of view, firstly, of management who have to rationalise and justify communication strategies within organisations. In the book, we ask questions such as what discursive resources do they draw on to do this, and are some techniques more effective than others? Secondly, we take the perspective of the consumer who has always been more closely implicated in consumption

21

practices and strategies than some theorists would allow, but now are deeply involved as production and consumption merge via the internet (Toffler, 1980) in a thoroughgoing participative economy (Jenkins, 2008). Consumers are active in co-creating consumption practices (Thompson et al., 1989; Xie et al., 2008; Pongsakornrungsilp and Schroeder, 2011; Seregina and Weijo, 2017). We do not simply passively receive advertising and promotional communication but we use it to negotiate a sense of location within the multiple branded identities offered to us by advertising (O’Donohoe, 1994; Ritson and Elliott, 1999). Astute brands and their advertising agencies do not simplistically impose their vision of the world upon consumers (Gabriel and Lang, 2008; Zwick et al., 2008). Rather, they tap into and develop and/or exploit consumer cultural myths and ideologies as Holt and Cameron (2010) demonstrate with their case analyses of Coca-Cola, Harley Davidson and many other iconic brands. Consumers can and do resist and re-frame the ideas of consumption that are presented to them in advertising by creating, in effect, consumption sub-cultures (Schouten and McAlexander, 1995; Kozinets, 2002; Hackley et al., 2015). Consumers are not dupes – and advertising effects are more complex than often presumed.

With these three perspectives in mind, the book aims to bring in creative and account planning perspectives that are typically excluded from both the socio-cultural work on advertising and the managerial ‘marketing communications’ texts, in order to re-frame the idea of a managerial treatment of the discipline.

The changing media landscape for advertising and promotion Advertising is undergoing a time of change and disruption as the industry tries to respond to new media funding models and changing patterns of media consumption. Digital is rapidly becoming the biggest category of adspend globally and advertising agencies are thinking laterally as never before to place their creative stamp on new forms of media content that add value for clients, and to retain their hard-earned position as the creative hubs of the marketing industry (Katz, 2016). The variety of creative solutions that agencies are expected to offer is greater than ever before as clients demand cross-media campaigns in many promotional genres. Social media marketing, especially, is a priority. Many brand clients expect advertising and media agencies to be able to extend creative

22

campaigns across social media with a huge variety of media content including video, blogs, viral, advergames and more (Ashley and Tuten, 2015; Armstrong et al., 2016). As a result, agencies are hiring a wider range of creative expertise including animators, bloggers, scriptwriters, comedy teams, digital creatives and planners, film producers, app designers and model builders, in addition to the traditional two-person creative team with their skills in word-craft and visualisation. Advertising remains an exciting profession for the very dedicated but there are enormous challenges facing practitioners.

One of the key drivers of these changes is the evolution in media funding models. The somewhat mythologised creative revolution that emerged around Bill Bernbach and New York agency DDB in the 1960s occurred in the context of a traditional media-funding model. In Bernbach’s day, paid- for advertising generated the revenue to fund media channels. The spot advertising paid for television or radio shows, while the classified and display advertising paid for print publications, with a small contribution from the cover charge. As circulation and viewing figures grew, so did advertising revenue. This funding model set the parameters for advertising, since advertisements had to fit particular genre conditions in order to be suitably differentiated from the editorial content in traditional media vehicles such as newspapers and commercial television or radio shows (Cook, 2001). Back in those days, the advertising agencies earned revenue from commission on the media space they bought, before their media buying departments were hived off as separate businesses. In the West, and especially in Madison Avenue, the epicentre of American advertising, the agencies grew fat on this system and the clients paid handsomely for what were seen as great creative ideas that could motivate and inspire the newly affluent consumers of the post-war period.

Today, the traditional media-funding model is no longer the natural order of things. In fact, the world of old media has been turned on its head by digital communications technology. Advertising agencies no longer earn commission on media that they buy (with their client’s money). Today, advertising work is usually billed as a professional service, by the hour. The reason is that mass media has been disrupted by digital communication technology. Media consumption now often occurs via a mobile screen since consumers can access information, news, entertainment and retail choices via a smartphone or other internet-enabled mobile device (Grainge and Thompson, 2015). What is more, consumers are by no means a passive audience to the circus of brand marketing: we

23

share, copy, discuss and critique the content we access on social media, and user-generated content (UGC) has become an important factor in advertising strategies (Berthon et al., 2008; Brodie et al., 2013). Media brands such as newspapers and TV and radio channels are struggling to generate sufficient funding through traditional spot and feature advertising sales. They have to seek new revenue streams by digitising their content, and we will discuss examples of how they are doing this throughout the book. For brand advertisers, buying traditional advertising remains as expensive as ever, but the audience reach is not what it was as sales of print publications, along with real-time TV and radio audiences, shrink under the huge magnitude of consumer choice in on-demand services and free-to-access online media.

photo 1 VW Bug

Image Courtesy of the Advertising Archives

Doyle Dane Bernbach of Madison Avenue, New York, produced what is regarded by some as the greatest print advertising campaign of all time when they took on the Volkswagen brief for their new

24

Beetle model. It was the late 1950s and the American public were used to big cars. They were not used to buying cars from Germans. The People’s Car was not an easy sell, but Bill Bernbach sold it using irony and self-deprecation in creative ways not seen before in American advertising. Bernbach was credited with starting a creative revolution in advertising that lasted for some twenty years.

Advertising agencies, then, along with brand consultants, media agencies and other emerging players, are renegotiating their relationships with the promotional industries by re-defining the practices of advertising. Hybrid forms of promotional communication that combine elements of sponsorship, advertising, advertorial, brand placement, celebrity endorsement and more are being brought within the scope of advertising campaigns, and advertising agencies are trying to broaden their skill sets to compose and orchestrate strategic campaigns that contain many elements. In addition to the ‘spot’ advertisement that is shared on social media, perhaps in cut-down or re-edited versions, a campaign might include brand-sponsored blogs, sponsored Facebook posts, tweets or Instagram posts, viral memes and videos, broadcasts on YouTube Channels, sponsored video blogs, sponsored sporting or entertainment and activation pop-up events, a native advertising feature article, or any of the many emerging forms of promotional communication. Digital promotion on social media is often linked with retail, payment and delivery by a click or two (Pantano et al., 2016; Srinivasan et al., 2016).

Spot advertising during commercial breaks on television or radio, classified and full-colour advertising spreads in press publications, OOH and cinema advertising all retain their high profile, audience reach and dramatic impact. But they are now ineluctably part of integrated, multi- media campaigns. The advertising landscape is becoming pitted with many new media vehicles as digital technology reduces start-up costs for print, internet and broadcast media. There are more magazines, television and radio channels than ever before, especially in digital formats. But the audience reach of each individual mass media vehicle has shrunk and this trend is evident all over the world as TV viewing figures and hard-copy newspaper sales plummet. These new media vehicles are not funded by the traditional model, social networking websites being the most striking example. Their business model has been to build ‘traffic’, that is, to elicit millions of users, without conventional advertising, and then to try to devise forms of paid-for promotion that fit the ways their users consume

25

the service. So, for example, you have the use of algorithms that monitor Facebook users’ patterns of use and target individualised promotions into their newsfeed, known as programmatic advertising. Successful bloggers who generate sufficient viewer traffic can sell advertising on their sites, as can YouTube channel owners (see Chapter 5 case study). Other digital media brands, especially news brands, are creating sponsored content that is ‘native’ to the page: called native advertising, it takes the conventional ‘advertorial’ and makes it even less easily distinguished from editorial. We will discuss all these techniques later in the book, especially in Chapter 7.

The fragmentation of media audiences Media audiences are ‘fragmenting’ across the vastly increased choice of media outlets and platforms. Mass media cannot compete with the potential audience reach of digital media brands as viewing, listener and readership figures for traditional television, print and radio fall. For example, in the UK and the USA, some iconic newspapers established for over 100 years may cease to exist in the not-too-distant future as advertising revenue falls to unsustainable levels because of the drop in hard copy sales. Underlying the reduction in advertising revenue for traditional media, fewer consumers are paying for print media and more consumers are viewing and interacting with free-to-access media content on mobile phones, PCs, laptops and other wireless devices such as netbooks, iPads and e-book readers. What is more, even when we do encounter ads in our media consumption, we can avoid them with ad- blocking software or simply by watching on-demand video or box sets (Kelly et al., 2010).

Equally problematic for conventional advertising, the internet offers massive potential audience reach for cheaply made and easily targeted ‘viral’ videos and other promotional content, which cost nothing to place on video sharing websites such as YouTube but can generate great reach in ‘earned’ media, that is, media space that is generated because of social media sharing and is free of charge to the brand. Mass media advertising remains important for generating profile and accessing particular groups, but a large proportion of under-35s in developed economies access all their news, information and entertainment via the internet. They rarely watch live TV or buy paper publications and, therefore, they are not in the habit of regularly watching traditional spot or reading display advertising (Bassiouni and Hackley, 2014, 2016; Williams, 2016). Millennial media

26

consumption habits are permanent – this generation will never consume media the way their parents did. The prospects for traditional mass media brands are alarming.

All these changes mean that what we understand by ‘advertising’ as a genre of communication is changing, and this has as yet uncertain implications for the advertising industry. Advertising has always been a fluid industry in which creative ‘hot shops’ and talented individuals could thrive, but the core organisational actors in the advertising environment have consistently been the major ‘full-service’ advertising agencies. Over nearly 200 years, since the development of mass consumption print publications in the Western world, advertising agencies have proved to be the most flexible and astute of organisational forms in adding skills and techniques to retain their central place in an evolving media environment (Lears, 1994; Nixon, 2003; McDonald and Scott, 2007). They are well used to having to explain exactly what it is they do to add value, and why the client ought to pay for that. But can they deal with the challenges of new media and the digital revolution? What will the top advertising agencies look like in 20 years? Will they still exist? Will they be hybrid media/advertising/promotion/digital agencies? Will there be fewer big agencies but hundreds of teams of specialists all working under in-house brand managers or specialist brand consultants? Will agencies re-organise to re-focus around creative, digital and integrated media planning, and strip away layers of account management? We are already seeing many of these changes come to pass. Or, on the other hand, will the big agencies expand to embrace a wider range of skills, including scriptwriters, animators, bloggers, novelists, film directors, PR and events specialists, digital creatives and more, to become all-purpose, multi-media branded content creators?

Snapshot 1.1 Convergence and visual social media

In marketing, visual images are immensely powerful (Schroeder, 2002; Campbell, 2013). The truism that a picture is worth 1,000 words is borne out by the huge popularity of Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr and many other visual social media platforms. Viral videos, infographics and other visualisations that capture a theme, meme or sentiment can be hugely powerful for advertisers. Visual imagery that is shared on social media can help advertisers in two ways. Firstly, it might incorporate the brand and act as a pseudo advertisement. For example, the ‘selfie that broke Twitter’ tweeted by Ellen DeGeneres at the 2013 Oscars was in

27

effect a visual ad for the Samsung smartphone, even though the phone was not seen in the selfie. Secondly, images attract likes, shares and views that give access to a wide audience for algorithm-driven wrap- around and programmatic ads.