Advertising scenario in uk

Advertising is considered to be an important aspect of marketing and it is a form of communication that actually persuades potential customers to buy a product, service or a brand. In today’s world advertising is of utmost importance and organizations invest a lot in advertising because in nearly all the scenarios advertising increases the sales of organizations (Pricken 2008).

The history of advertising is wide and varied and organizations stress a lot on advertising. As far as the types of advertisement are concerned there are different types and mediums of advertising. These mediums and types are discussed below:

1)    TV commercials

2)    Infomercials

3)    Celebrity advertising

4)    Covert advertising

Money spent on advertising has increased dramatically in the recent years and the spending on advertising in the United Kingdom has reached a staggering figure $120 million. However, the phenomenon of advertising globally is increasing and organizations are spending a lot on advertising because they believe that advertisement can benefit them in both the short and the long run.

In the current era different companies are progressing just through advertising. An online organization in United Kingdom Rightmove, www. rightmove. co. uk, reported that its profits are increasing just because of the fact that they invested heavily in online advertising (Goodman 2009).

This organization of UK experienced growth and still is in its growing phase. Strategists suggest that rightmove is not alone and another organization www. emarketer. com is growing quite rapidly and statistics suggests that online advertising in the United Kingdom has increased to 30% as compared to the previous years.

These statistics depict that the growth of organizations that stresses on advertising would be double-digit by the end of 2010 (Felton 2006). In this paper we will discuss different aspects of advertising and would evaluate the advertising scenario of United Kingdom.

Advertising Scenario of United Kingdom

Like other countries advertising has played its role in UK too and brands of UK are transformed into successful brands just because of powerful advertising campaigns. Different aspect and major scenarios of advertising in UK are discussed below:

Change of strategy

The supremacy of Anglo-Saxon group over the advertising arena is slowly and gradually decreasing and newer countries are developing effective strategies that are beneficial for different organizations in both the short and the long run. In the current era the advertising hype is moving from US and UK to Latin countries. Organizations are looking beyond London and North America for ad agencies.

Spain, Argentina and Brazil are the countries that provide creative help to multinational organizations in developing their campaigns. The famous mobile roaming campaign was created by the ad agency of Tapsa across 19 European markets. Similarly another giant Unilever appointed Lowe Worldwide to handle their ad affairs to magnum (ice-cream). Lowe is basically a Madrid based organization (Benady 2008).

The ad agencies of UK and Latin America are collaborating with each other and they are opting for a combined strategy. The top creative shop of Argentina Santo is opening up in London and this is first time when a Spanish agency has launched its subsidiary in UK.

The advertising scenario of UK is changing rapidly and they are opting for a creative strategy unlike the previous ones. Powerful campaigns are developed with the coordination of Latin agencies and “ Latin wave” in advertising is in full swing. But we can say that this Latin wave is a longer term shift away from the UK’s creative domination.

Similarly, besides being creative and attractive the advertising strategy of UK has shifted towards more consumer friendly attitude and elements of deception and sexual appeals are minimized in UK’s ads. Advertisers are developing campaigns to attract customers by depicting the fact that they are more people friendly.

The most apt example of this scenario occurred when a UK ad campaign claims the videogames causes death. A health oriented ad campaign was designed in the UK which claimed that if you are playing video games then you are quite close to you “ death”. This ad was approved by the UK government and the British Hearth Foundation and diabetes center also approved it.

This ad was basically a part of change 4 life campaign. The concept of the ad goes like this that a boy who looks extremely sad when he is holding a Play station controller. The attractive slogan of the ad says that “ Risk an early death, just do nothing.”  This ad was targeted to various newspapers and magazines and it mainly focused on young adults that are internet savvy (Softpedia 2009).

Although it is not that clear on what data the ad is based on. However, people criticized this ad and they believed that this is not the right way to address and one should not be such skeptical towards video games. Similarly the government and the advertisement bodies of UK have changed their policies regarding controversial products.

The advertisement that offers advice on pregnancy which actually includes abortion is allowed by the British government and the government has allowed companies to promote their products through television and radio. This can be considered as a 360-degree change in the strategy of UK advertisement.

This was allowed because the rates of teenage pregnancy and the sexually transmitted diseases were increasing in the United Kingdom (Wither 2009). Government has allowed the ads of condoms to be aired anytime.

Therefore one can easily say that the traditional trends of advertising in the United Kingdom have changed and organizations are stressing on ads that are helping the community and the environment. Moreover the elements of creativity in UK’s add is diminishing that is the reason why major multinationals are shifting to Latin America.

New modes of advertisement are changing the traditional methodologies of advertising and corporations are now shifting towards internet, bill boards and cinema advertising. These new trends of advertising are discussed below.