Comprehension

Ex. 1. Decide which of the following statements are correct.

1. It is legal to make untrue statements about goods.

2. Adverts influence all people.

3. Advertising creates an extra demand.

4. The manufacturers want their revenue to exceed their costs.

5. The mass media used in advertising include only radio and television.

6. A sponsor may be anyone who has money.

7. Advertising is generally accepted as a short-run investment.

8. There are two main types of advertising.

9. The British Code of Advertising Practice exists to protect the consumer from being deceived by ads.

Ex. 2. Answer the following questions.

1. What is advertising?

2. What kinds of mass media are used in advertising?

3. In what way does advertising differ from news and publicity?

4. Why might it be fairer to compare advertising with the purchase of capital equipment?

5. What does the evaluation of advertising still rely on?

6. What is the difference between the descriptive advertising and the persuasive one?

7. What is meant by informative advertising?

8. What is persuasive advertising criticized for?

Ex. 3. Logically organize the following sentences to summarize the text. The first sentence is given to you.

1. Any paid form of non-personal communication through the mass media about the product by an identified sponsor is advertising.

2. There are two main types of advertising: descriptive and persuasive

3. That’s why the essence of advertising is persuasion.

4. The types of mass media used in advertising are different.

5. Advertising is accepted as a long-term investment but setting its budgets remains an art.

6. Advertising should be legal, decent, honest and true being to protect the consumer from being deceived and misled by ads.

7. Advertising is used when sponsors can’t reach people they want to communicate with.

Text 2

Read the text and do the tasks that follow.

How Companies Advertise

Large companies could easily set up their own advertising departments, write their own advertisements, and buy media space themselves, but they tend to use the services of large advertising agencies. These are likely to have more resources, and more knowledge about all aspects of advertising and advertising media than a single company. The most talented advertising people generally prefer to work for agencies rather then individual companies as this gives them the chance to work on a variety of advertising accounts (contracts to advertise products or services). It is also easier for a dissatisfied company to give its account to another agency than it would be to fire its own advertising staff.

The client company generally gives the advertising agency an agreed budget; a statement of the objectives of the advertising campaign, known as a brief; and an overall advertising strategy concerning the message to be communicated to the target customers. The agency creates advertisements (the word is often abbreviated to adverts or ads), and develops a media plan specifying which media – newspapers, magazines, radio, television, cinema, posters, mail, etc. – will be used and in which proportions. (On television and radio, ads are often known as commercials.) Agencies often produce alternative ads or commercials that are pre-tested in newspapers, television stations, etc. in different parts of a country before a final choice is made prior to a national campaign.

The agency's media planners have to decide what percentage of the target market they want to reach (how many people will be exposed to the ads) and the number of times they are likely to see them. Advertising people talk about frequency or 'OTS' (opportunities to see) and the threshold effect – the point at which advertising becomes effective. The choice of advertising media is generally strongly influenced by the comparative cost of reaching 1, 000 members of the target audience, the cost per thousand (often abbreviated to CPM, using the Roman numeral for 1, 000). The timing of advertising campaigns depends on factors such as purchasing frequency and buyer turnover (new buyers entering the market).

How much to spend on advertising is always problematic. Some companies use the comparative-parity method they simply match their competitors' spending, thereby avoiding advertising wars. Others set their ad budget at a certain percentage of current sales revenue. But both these methods disregard the fact that increased ad spending or counter-cyclical advertising can increase current sales. On the other hand, excessive advertising is counter-productive because after too many exposures people tend to stop noticing ads, or begin to find them irritating. And once the most promising prospective customers have been reached, there are diminishing returns, i.e. an ever-smaller increase in sales in relation to increased advertising spending.

Ex. 1. Find the terms in the text, which mean the following:

1) companies that handle advertising for clients;

2) a contract with a company to produce its advertising;

3) the amount of money a company plans to spend in developing its advertising and buying media time or space;

4) the statement of objectives of an advertising campaign that a client works out with an advertising agency;

5) the advertising of a particular product or service during a particular period of time;

6) a defined set of customers whose needs a company plans to satisfy

7) the people who choose where to advertise, in order to reach the right customers;

8) the fact that a certain amount of advertising is necessary to attract a prospective customer's attention;

9) choosing to spend the same amount on advertising as one's competitors;

10) advertising during periods or seasons when sales are normally relatively poor.

Ex. 2. Be ready to discuss the following questions.

1. Why do most companies use advertising agencies?

2. When a company hires an advertising agency, what are the roles of both parties?

3. What is a media plan?

4. Why does advertising become ineffective after a certain point?

Ex. 3. Use the terms in the box to complete the paragraph.

Advertising tells people about products through a variety of media types, e.g. TV, _____, billboards etc. An _____ may use more than one media type, with TV ads supported by a _____ advertisement in a magazine, for example. Most campaigns are designed and managed by _____, or more specifically by an account executive. The cost of using an advertising agency comes out of the company’s _____. Agencies are often asked to design a global advertisement that can be used in various countries. They will often tailor advertisements, or adapt them to a market’s particular needs. Agencies need to take care when designing an _____ that it meets each country’s _____.

Text 3

Read the text, make the plan of the text and get ready to speak on the history of advertising in short.