The Changing World of Advertising and Promotion

The Changing World

of Advertising and Promotion

Nearly everyone in the modern world is influenced to

some degree by advertising and other forms of promotion.

Organizations in both the private and public sectors

have learned that the ability to communicate effectively

and efficiently with their target audiences is critical to

their success. Advertising and other types of promotional

messages are used to sell products and services as well

as to promote causes, market political candidates, and

deal with societal problems such as alcohol and drug

abuse. Consumers are finding it increasingly difficult to

avoid the efforts of marketers, who are constantly

searching for new ways to communicate with them.

Most of the people involved in advertising and promotion

will tell you that there is no more dynamic and fascinating

a field to either practice or study. However, they

will also tell you that the field is undergoing dramatic

changes that are changing advertising and promotion forever.

The changes are coming from all sides—clients

demanding better results from their advertising and promotional

dollars; lean but highly creative smaller ad

agencies; sales promotion and direct-marketing firms, as

well as interactive agencies, which want a larger share of

the billions of dollars companies spend each year promoting

their products and services; consumers who no

longer respond to traditional forms of advertising; and

new technologies that may reinvent the very process of

advertising. As the new millennium begins, we are experiencing

perhaps the most dynamic and revolutionary

changes of any era in the history of marketing, as well as

advertising and promotion. These changes are being

driven by advances in technology and developments that

have led to the rapid growth