As evidenced in this issue, IMC remains a controversial theoretical concept in terms of generalizing what it is and what it does. However, if IMC is viewed from a different paradigmatic perspective on theory, namely that of poststructuralism, then we might consider it as a set of contingently framed practices and discourses where localized, particular practitioner interpretations are just as important as general theoretic ones. When viewed this way, IMC emerges as a powerful tool that guides practitioners in developing and implementing marketing communications programs even if they apply it in disparate ways according to their own specific understandings and circumstances.

Advertising is in an odd position. Its extreme protagonists claim it has extraordinary powers and its severest critics believe them. Advertising is often effective. But it is not as powerful as is sometimes thought, nor is there any evidence that it actually works by any strong form of persuasion or manipulation.

Instead, the sequence, awareness/trial/reinforcement, seems to account for the known facts. Under this theory, consumers first gain awareness or interest in a product. Next, they may make a trial purchase. Finally, a repeat buying habit may be developed and reinforced if there is satisfaction after previous usage.

Advertising has a role to play in all three stages. But for frequently bought products, repeat buying is the main determinant of sales volume and here advertising must be reinforcing rather than persuasive.

This article documents the approach that Unisys has taken to design, develop, and implement a robust marketing measurement system—the Unisys Marketing Dashboard. On a global scale and a real-time basis, this system is tracking marketing programs and activities, and reporting results to drive operational effectiveness and support major business decisions.

In September 2002, Unisys launched the dashboard initiative. This project is one key phase of an overall Marketing Excellence Architecture initiated by the Unisys chief marketing officer. Throughout 2001 and 2002, the marketing organizational framework was developed and delivered. Today, the Unisys Marketing Dashboard serves as the vehicle for addressing the challenge of marketing accountability via a robust, integrated system that has brought additional validation to the importance of marketing within the corporation.

The elusive notion of brand equity is operationalized in a “share tiering” framework with a combination of multiple constructs: (1) relative barrier or brand price, (2) brand quality perceptions, (3) brand purchase loyalty, and (4) self-report future brand purchase trend. This general measurement framework for “true” brand equity when applied longitudinally permits the evaluation of markerting ROI. Recommended measures for the “share tiering” approach to brand equity measurement are illustrated using the cola category as an example.

Super Bowl advertising receives considerable media attention each year, in part, because of the large TV audience the event attracts. Since 2000, advertisers have spent an average of over $2 million to run 30-second advertisements in these games. The question is often asked: “Are these ads worth it?” This study examines Super Bowl advertising effectiveness from the Hollywood movie industry's perspective. Results indicate that the average Super Bowl promoted film achieved twice as much first weekend, first week, and total U.S. box office revenue than its average non-Super Bowl promoted movie counterpart for the years 1998–2001. When all movies with production budgets of $35 million or more and U.S. release dates within 7 months of the 1998–2001 Super Bowls were considered, Super Bowl promoted movies grossed nearly 40 percent more than non-Super Bowl promoted movies. Conclusions are drawn and future research directions are outlined.

The article highlights the importance of brand evolution as a necessary component of successful marketing strategy. In particular the article emphasizes the decision to revitalize the core brand. Three key constructs are used as a framework for analyzing rebranding decisions, namely brand vision, brand orientation, and brand strategy implementation. It is proposed that the key to successful rebranding is the need to build each of these three components as well as ensuring that they are tightly linked and coordinated. The normative framework was applied to a major Canadian retailer, Canadian Tire, and found to be helpful in analyzing their rebranding. Lessons have been drawn from the case study, including the important role of advertising.

Perceived brand parity is the belief in the consumers mind that major offerings in a product category are similar. The current article presents the results of a study indicating that high parity perceptions inhibit a company's ability to develop loyal customers. Whether that is good or bad depends on the type of competitive strategy a firm has chosen. With a differentiation strategy, advertising should be used to fight parity perceptions. However, with a low price strategy, parity perceptions should be fostered in an attempt to discourage brand loyalty. Thus, a starting point for many advertising campaigns should be a clear understanding of both the parity perceptions in the marketplace and the need to either develop or fight brand loyalty.

In each of two recent talks, to the AMA Attitude Research Conference in Las Vegas and to the ANA Media Workshop in New York, I pointed out the limitations of recall as an indicator of memory and tried to reposition the concept of perception. In Las Vegas I reviewed the implications of the new brain research on the theory of low involvement; in New York I reinterpreted some earlier data which suggested that three advertising exposures represented an optimal frequency. That two so different talks converged on a common focus suggests that there may be some value in looking at them together.

This study measured to what extent consumers used the internet to displace or reinforce the use of other media as sources of advertising information. The sample was 2,032 households from 5,031 households randomly selected from a midwestern state. The results showed that although internet advertising provided many unique features, it has not displaced most media as sources of advertising information. Many consumers found that internet advertising was a complementary medium based on their favorable attitudes or frequent use of other media advertising. The research also indicated that the reinforcement effects will be likely more evident for the future use of internet advertising associated with the use of billboards, direct mail, magazines, and television. However, the displacement effects may continue to occur for the future use of internet advertising associated with the future use of free community papers and weekly paid papers as advertising sources.

Coordinating and controlling advertising strategy within contractual and administered vertical marketing systems (VMSs) can be a complex task given the number of channel members involved in the process. Quite often thousands of intermediaries are involved at different levels each with their own objectives and areas of responsibility. Conflict within a VMS can arise when dealers/distributors consider the advertising efforts of the sponsoring organization to be ineffective and vice versa. One of the major issues involves how to allocate the advertising budget throughout the VMS so as to generate the greatest return. To this end we report the results of a study comparing the current and lagged effects of national-sponsor advertising to that of local and regional sponsors within one of the more prominent contractual VMS in the United States—the automobile industry. Using a direct aggregation approach to model advertising carryover at both the industry and individual brand level provides useful information for making decisions regarding the allocation of advertising budgets.

With Large Resources and good research designs, we now can measure the sales effects of advertising campaigns (Wolfe, et al., 1962, 1963). But, except under very unusual circumstances, we cannot measure the sales effects of individual ads.

Without a real measure of sales effectiveness, advertisers have fallen back on other less obvious measures of an advertisement's worth. One of these is memorability, as measured by aided recall. Another is the recognition method used by Starch. And still another is direct rating of advertisements by consumers themselves.

In a study of the Double Jeopardy (DJ) phenomenon and the mediating effect of brand penetration between advertising and brand loyalty, we integrate a survey of 19,335 consumers on their buying behavior of 187 brands across two fast moving consumer goods categories, shampoo and detergent, and a database of advertising expenditures on these brands in four major cities in China. We find that (1) smaller brands are punished twice for being small, following the well-known DJ pattern, which says that brands with larger market penetration tend to enjoy higher repeated purchases and smaller brands attract fewer buyers who also buy less; (2) brand penetration plays a mediating role in the relationship between advertising and brand loyalty; and (3) there is an asymmetric effect of market penetration on brand loyalty for small and big brands.

This study examines the long-term effectiveness of multimedia advertising in a competitive setting and its implications for budget allocation decisions, using multivariate persistence methodology. Analysis of network TV, spot TV, and magazine advertising for the two major competitors in the U.S. SUV industry suggested that long-run advertising effectiveness differed considerably among media. These differences were attributed to the media lifespan, retrieval, and content of the message they convey. The authors propose that budget allocation decisions should consider the long-run effectiveness of the different media employed to increase the productivity of advertising campaigns. They also conduct a simulation experiment to further investigate long-run sales effects of alternative allocation strategy scenarios.

One of America's greatest inventors, Benjamin Franklin, once said “glass china and reputation are easily cracked, but never well mended.” A simplistic and thankfully outdated notion, yet with an element of truth.

Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) was a breakthrough concept when Don Schultz introduced it to marketers in the 1980s. But IMC, which is even more important today as the “marketing mix” has expanded to include many nontraditional activities, has had trouble moving from concept to practical application.

A research study was conducted to explore how joint branding affects consumer perceptions. Employing Young & Rubicam's BrandAsset Valuator model and research tool, the study evaluated the joint branding potential of 10 target brands and 10 partner brands with 10 different partnership scenarios. The scenarios represented joint branding activities related to promotions, sponsorships, new-product extensions or licenses, and websites. In this experimental setting, the study findings suggested that brand alliances can help build brand equity, but only under certain conditions and in certain ways. Specifically, joint branding campaigns helped to increase a brand's perceived differentiation but also sometimes harmed perceived knowledge and esteem in the process. For our study, cause-related partnerships had the most uniformly positive joint branding program effects.

For many years, advertisers and researchers have been debating over the issues of advertising wearm and advertising weavout.

The wearm proponents have held that the power of advertising builds over time and with repeated exposures; that there is a “wearing-in” process which occurs between the advertising and the consumer; and, that this effectiveness cannot be measured with a single exposure or at a single point in time.

There are at least two sides to the wearout debate. One side argues that the selling power of advertising declines, or wears out, over time and exposures; while others suggest that “world class” advertising does not.

This study examines the mixed-media strategy of advertising online and publicizing the web location in magazine advertisements. It also analyzes the extent of integration between websites and print advertisements in six major U.S. magazines. In creating an online commercial site, it is important to recognize that the internet requires different marketing and advertising practices than those used in traditional media. Mixed-media advertising necessitates coordinated efforts between those managing the website and those designing advertisements for other media. The findings suggest that marketers are not exploiting all possible benefits of their websites by not adequately integrating print and online advertising efforts.

This article is a tribute to Ernest Dichter, whose introduction of motivation research (MR) left a legacy of ideas that shaped advertising practice and study in the twentieth century. His pioneering contributions included turning attention to the consumer, adapting psychoanalytic concepts to research, and using therapy techniques to analyze marketplace behavior.

The purpose of this study was to answer the question: “What advertising executional devices influence the effectiveness of a television commercial?” This one question immediately raises two more questions: (1) What do we mean by an executional device and how many are there? and (2) What does the effectiveness of a television commercial mean? Answers to these two more fundamental definitional questions are necessary before the primary question can be answered. We would like to share with you our answers to the two more fundamental questions, and briefly introduce some of our findings with respect to the primary question.

The search for answers to the definitional questions began with a review of communication and advertising theory and an examination of previous studies on which this theory is based. Previous work has tended to progress along two rather independent tracts. There is work by academicians, and there is work by the industry. The paths of these two sets of researchers occasionally cross but, unfortunately, not very often.