Panasonic Advertising and Promotion Essay Example

justify">Panasonic focuses its resources to market its product to educated, trending and status conscious and generous spending consumers. Consumers in the 3D television market are looking for a television that offers the best, newest capabilities and full HD quality at the reasonable price. The price range of the Panasonic Smart VIERA 3D television series are around RM3500. 00 to RM8000. 00, which mainly targeted for consumers with a higher income. Besides that, Panasonic Corporation focuses on technology-savvy consumers who are proficient in using technology.

Panasonic’s new line of televisions has more amazing features than any other television set on the market. It will help to motivate trendy technology-savvy consumers to make the purchase and create brand awareness. Panasonic 3D TVs are the most desirable 3D TVs on the market due to its high quality at a reasonable price. Consumer can enjoy ultimate 3D experience by using the Panasonic 3D TVs. While the biggest feature is being 3D capable, there are many other amazing features too.

Some of these features include having Wi-Fi capabilities, consumers can have a large screen web browsing with their family or a group of people. It’s allowed the whole family or a group of people to comfortably view a wide variety of content. Panasonic 3D TV is not known as the expensive or the cheapest product among the electronic product market, rather than an average price 3D TV that still delivers full HD quality to the consumers. This help to increase Panasonic’s brand awareness by telling consumers that Panasonic Corporation has good quality product at an affordable price to the consumers.

As technology is growing rapidly day by

day, Panasonic also wants to position their Smart VIERA 3D television series into the consumer’s mind easily as a machine as of the ideas of their life. They want to make sure that all the specifications provided in the television are as of the demands and needs of their consumers in their daily life. The Communication Process Communication can be defined as the activity of conveying information through the exchange of thoughts, messages, or information, as by speech, visuals, signals, writing, or behaviour.

Meanwhile, process is a series of actions or steps taken in order to achieve a particular end. Therefore, communication process can be explained when an idea or message is trying to send to the receiver through any transmission devices, communication automatically takes place when the receiver is able to understand the information send by the sender. In the communication process, the first step have to perform is the sender. Sender means the company that manufacture and sells products or services to their customer.

In another word, they make use of symbols (words or graphic or visual aids) to convey the message and produce the required response. For Panasonic, the sender will be the Panasonic Corporation worldwide. Based on the advertisement, we found there are Panasonic’s slogan and the product name appearing on the bottom right corner to create awareness in public that Panasonic is the corporation that manufactures the Smart VIERA 3D TV. The sender generates thoughts to be conveyed. The second step, sender involves in the encoding process.

In order to convey meaning, the sender must begin encoding which means translating information into a message in the form

of symbols that represent ideas or concepts. The symbols can take on numerous forms such as languages, words, or gestures. These symbols are used to encode ideas into messages that others can understand. It is important for the sender to use symbols that are familiar to the intended receiver because it is a good way for the sender to improve encoding their message is to mentally visualize the communication from the receiver's point of view.

For example, advertisement of Panasonic Smart VIERA 3D TV in television is considered as encoding process. The Panasonic Corporation transforms the idea of Smart VIERA 3D TV into marketer’s message for transmitting to customers. Based on the printed advertisement we had chosen, we can visualise someone wanting the dinosaur to go back to its own world after all of the action happens in the room. A picture is worth a thousand words. The message is trying to tell everyone that the effect of Smart VIERA 3D TV is so real as if we are in the movie or video that is being played.

The dark surrounding is used as the background colour so it contrasts with Smart VIERA 3D TV to show their main product they try to promote to their targeted customer. Dark surrounding is used more commonly to bring up the classy and grand look. This shows that Panasonic wants their customers to perceive the television as a superior and classy product. The Panasonic Company transforms the idea into an effective message to be transmitted to customers. This provides the consumers a clear message and builds confidence in their purchasing process of their product.

The

company also encode their message by inserting their slogan “Idea for Life” on the bottom right of the printed advertisement to create awareness in customer mind that Panasonic is one of the world’s most trusted home appliance manufacturers. The third steps in communication process, messages are transmitted to customers through various transmission devices. The sender must choose an appropriate medium for transmitting the messages to the customers so it can be conveyed. On another hand, the appropriateness is essential to ensure the effectiveness of message can correctly interpret by the customers.

The choice of communication medium varies depending upon the features of communication. For example, television, newspaper and billboards deliver message to customers in the form of marketing mix elements such as place, price, distribution and promotion. In Panasonic Corporation, they use the television advertising as one of their transmission devices. They paid for the time spends on their product advertisement. This is to promote and dissembles the information about Smart VIERA 3D TV to the mass audiences who are watching the advertisement on television.

After the appropriate channels are selected, the message enters the decoding stage which is the fourth step of the communication process. Decoding is conducted by the receiver. Once the message is received, customers will start to interpret the message to their own understandings in order to make the symbols meaningful encoded by marketer. A successful marketing communication occurs when the receiver correctly interprets the sender's message. An ineffective marketing communication arises when receiver wrongly interprets the message due to noise.

Decoding takes place when the message reaches one or more of the receiver’s senses. For instance, customers

can see, hear and read from television advertisement and smell a message such as perfume sample. Based on our print advertisement, customers can see picture printed on the advertisement. From this advertisement, customers will presume that the Smart VIERA 3D TV can produce an effective 3D effect. It helps in improving excitement while watching any movie from the Smart VIERA 3D TV. From the advertisement, customers can gain information such as the manufacturer and the Smart VIERA 3D TV design.

This information plays an important role in influencing their purchasing decision. The final step in the communication process is receiver. Receiver is the targeted customers of the product. All interpretations by the receiver are influenced by their experiences, knowledge, skills and perceptions. Some customer might misinterpret about the advertisement. In the Smart VIERA 3D TV advertisement by Panasonic, the receiver will understand it is a 3D television based on the name of the product and the picture message try to send to its customer. Effectiveness of the advertisement

In this technological advanced era, people easily exposed to different kind of advertisement, either through traditional media or other new media such as social media. However, it is not easy for an advertisement reach to every audience hearts and minds, some audiences even tend to avoid advertisement in their daily life. This is because the advertising clutter, which refers to large volume of advertising message that the consumer is exposed to on their daily basis, advertiser that unaware of this problem may lead to a failure of an advertisement.

In order to overcome this problem, well design advertisement is critical. Unique and creative advertisement

that different from others will be able to capture audience’s attention and create awareness of the product. In this case, Panasonic create their advertisement effectively, they applied the fantasy technique into their Panasonic VIERA 3D TV advertisement, where a dinosaur become alive and jump out from a 3D TV. This sound so fantastic and illogical, but this will able to lift audiences beyond the real world to make-believe experiences, at the same time, audience will easily remember and recall the advertisement.

Although this advertisement is only a picture and did not stated any information about the 3D TV, but the details will make the audience wanting to know more about the message that advertiser trying to deliver. Different from testimonial advertisement that provide a lot of information and data, fantasy advertisement able to appeal the emotions of audience to arouse interest in the product, for those customer who are curious or interested about this product, they might put some effort to do research about this product such as the features or function through retail store, internet or other method.

Above all is just some general and basic ideas to evaluate the effectiveness of an advertisement, but in today’s marketing communication there are more and more criteria to measure the effectiveness of an advertisement. It is important for a company or firm to measure the results of the advertisement to make sure the advertisement able to achieve the objectives such as increase sales, market share or brand awareness, at the same time company or firm can also make improvement base on the feedback or results of the advertisement.

Therefore, there are 7 principles

of effective advertising to guide a company to have an effective advertising campaign, which is visual consistency, campaign duration, repeat taglines, consistent positioning, simplicity, identify selling point and create an effective flow. First, visual consistency, a strategic that advertising team apply specific image or visual display, such as brand or logo into the advertisement to help the audience embed into their long-term memory after seeing these visual repeatedly.

In this case, Panasonic 3D TV advertisement had fulfilled these criteria as we can see most of the Panasonic advertisement had included their brand name, logo and the name of the product. Next, repeated taglines in the advertisement share the similar function as visual consistency which is to help consumers understand the advertisement better with their current knowledge and perception about the brand or company that already exist in their mind. Usually company will combine visual consistency and taglines in their advertisement to gain better result.

For example, Panasonic had included their taglines ‘Ideas for life’ into their advertisement, so that consumer will relate these taglines to the company and have a general idea about the product quality. Furthermore, consistent positioning a product into an advertisement will lead consumer to place the product in cognitive map, at the same time consumer will easily recognize and remember the brand and company. For example, Panasonic position their product as a high end and innovative product in most of their advertisement.

Next, an effective advertisement should have identifiable selling point. In other words, the unique selling point such as benefits or features of the product in the advertisement is easily identified by the audience. We can then

refer to the Panasonic 3D TV advertisement, Panasonic emphasize on the main features of the 3D TV, which is giving a great 3D watching experience to the customer making them to feel as if they are in the movie or video. Besides, the advertising campaign duration is also important to make sure that the advertisement reaches most of the target audience in a given period.

Therefore the advertising team is responsible to plan the appropriate period of time for an advertisement and replace a new designed advertisement before it becomes out-of-date. In this case Panasonic do not only design one advertisement that promote their VIERA 3D TV, but there are also different theme of advertisement that contain the same message (Refer appendix 2 & 3). Later on, creating an effective flow is one step forward to an effective advertisement. Allocate the printed advertisement in a right method will lead audience to the appropriate action.

For example, Panasonic advertise their advertisement through internet such as social network; at the same time provide a link below the advertisement so that audience that interested to the product will click in the link to the Panasonic homepage to find out more information. Lastly, an effective advertisement should be simplicity. In other words the advertisement should be simple but informative, so that the audience can easily get the message in the advertisement. In the Panasonic 3D TV advertisement, most of the people can immediately perceive it as something about the 3D technology when they see object appearing from the TV.

In conclusion, Panasonic’s VIERA 3D TV advertisement is considered as a successful and effective advertisement because it

contains most of the elements that needed. IMC Media Tools IMC media tools include some approaches such as traditional media channels, E-Active marketing and also alternative marketing. Media channel is a specific medium used in reaching intended audience, such as national cable television, national broadcast television, local broadcast TV, local cable TV, network radio, local radio, printed newspapers, and printed magazines and also out of home.

Traditional Media Channels Based on our advertisement chosen which “Panasonic 3D TV: Dino”, we will first evaluate it with the traditional media channels. Although technology tend to replace the effectiveness of the traditional media channels but there are still some people who would still prefer traditional media channels. Traditional media channels include the television, radio, outdoor, magazines and newspapers. We found out that Panasonic focuses on using television as their main traditional media channels.

We believe that this is because the product itself is a television and it will surely be effective to target directly on those who are watching television all the time. There are few advantages of television advertising that Panasonic captures. It is high reach where the television viewers are their main targeted group of customers. In the advertisement or commercial of the Panasonic TV, the features of the television are being showed to the audience. It can be directly seen that the consumer behaviour process used where Panasonic show all the best features to the viewers to build their strong need of recognition towards the product.

Marketers of Panasonic want the viewers to compare their current features of their television with the features of the newly introduced 3D television. Other than that,

it also has high intrusion value where Panasonic uses catchy musical tunes and also a situation where the person is in the motion clip itself. This can quickly grab a viewer’s attention. By using television advertising, Panasonic will have the advantage of low cost per contact. This proves that spending as much as $3million for a 30-second commercial, where a vast of over 90 million or even more of households may be watching it.

The cost per person the commercial reach by the advertisement becomes very low. Despite of that, there are some disadvantages of using the television advertising. Clutter is still a major problem for television advertising. Within a short 4-5 minutes commercial breaks there are around 5-6 or even more commercials. So it is not guaranteed that viewers will not skip it and some will even start surfing to other channels during commercial breaks. If this happens it will only lead to a low recall due to the clutter.

To avoid viewers perceive it as a clutter, Panasonic can come up with bombastic ideas for example they can black out the first few seconds for the commercial and then reappear again in an outer space then start advertising about the television. This idea helps a lot in grabbing attention especially when viewers got shocked why their television went black out. Other than that, Panasonic should also include some important information such as their websites and hotline numbers so that viewers will know where to know and understand more about the 3D TV.

Other than television advertising, we would like to propose the idea of using outdoor advertising also. Some famous

types of outdoor advertising are billboards, signs on public transports and even on some of the big and outstanding buildings. One of the advantages is able to select key geographic areas. For example, marketers from Panasonic can choose to put up the billboards in the urban areas at the centre of the city square where the places are always crowded with people rather than rural areas.

As we know that most of the Malaysian often caught themselves in the traffic jam everyday to their workplace. This is the time when outdoor advertising plays an important role. Usually when a person caught in the jam they tend to look around their surroundings for attractive stuffs to pass their time faster. It gives the advantage of broad reach when every person who passes by the billboards or advertisements on those buildings and public transports such as KTM, LRT, taxi and buses has the potential to being exposed to the message.

But of course the billboards need to be placed at the right spot or else it would be just be perceived as clutter once more. A major deficiency is that outdoor advertising has short exposure time. To improve this problem, the advertisement must not be too complicated, large enough to be seen and attractive enough. Messages must be short and simple yet seductive. E-Active Marketing E-active marketing combine two major components of the internet marketing that include e-commerce and also interactive marketing. Since internet are dominating the whole world, the trend to shop online and also interact online.

There are mainly two types of e-commerce programs which is click-only operations that sells entirely online

and also bricks-and-clicks that supplement physical store operations with an online presence. E-commerce programs focuses on selling goods and services on the Internet. Panasonic is a well-established corporation and have their own websites from the global website till the personalised country website where every country have their own Panasonic website. Therefore, consumers could actually view the products sold internationally and also localised products.

A successful e-commerce program includes components such as catalogue, shopping cart, payment system, store locator, customization functionality and also customer reviews or feedback. Panasonic do not have a proper catalogue but instead they display all the products on their website and do not require customers to download any files to view the catalogue. However, Panasonic can improve better where they should complete the all the details of every particular products in the websites to let customer understand their products without referring to other websites.

It is found that information column such as overview and brochure for most of the Smart VIERA TV are not available for preview and the specifications are not as detailed as the details in Panasonic Malaysia website. This will bring inconvenience to customers as they are not able to view it in only one website. It is found out that components such as payment methods, store locators, customization and customer feedback are only available for preview when you are a member of CLUB Panasonic. This will let the potential customers feel that the website is not information-friendly.

It is understandable it would be easier for Panasonic to track their customers through the membership of the club. So they should make changes where customers can view

all the details easily and only require to log in to their club’s membership when they wants to buy the product. According to (Kenneth E. Clow, 2012), interactive marketing is the development of marketing programs that create interplay between consumers and businesses rather than simply sending messages to potential customers. The programs feature two-way communication and customer involvement.

There are few interactive marketing methodologies that are commonly used that include, online advertising, brand spiralling, blogs, online social networks, e-mail campaigns, and viral marketing. Online advertising is highly effective today especially for the Internet-savvy market. For high-involvement products such as television, consumers usually put the effort to search more information on it before purchasing it. Forums and blogs are some favourite sites that consumers usually visits to gather more information on the product.

Therefore, Panasonic can create a personalised blogs that gather feedbacks and comments from consumers all around the world. Panasonic can also take the initiative to promote about the attributes about the 3D television and also explain how the things work. Panasonic can also include some “how-to” videos for those consumers who face difficulty in handling the newly technology television with various types of new specifications. Other than that, online social networks are highly recommended to be used. Online social networks have become extremely popular with people and companies are seeking around the chances to communicate with consumers.

The percentage of people globally using social media is increasing day by day. Two of the most famous social networking sites are Facebook and Twitter. Facebook can be classified as the largest social media site with millions and millions of user worldwide. It

can be said that Facebook is one of the easiest way for the companies to reach its customers. Panasonic sees this trend and created a Panasonic Malaysia Facebook page. (Refer to appendix 4) They posted their latest photos and videos and also information about their latest products.

However, it is seen that the Facebook page focuses on promoting more to the contests, fairs and exhibition rather than the products. Therefore, they can improve by posting up few photos in their photo album and categorise it as the Smart Viera 3D TV for the Facebook users to view. Panasonic can also try putting on some photos that have 3D effects on it when viewed using the Smart VIERA 3D TV. On the description of the photo album, they must never forget to put their official website for consumers to refer for further information.

As for Twitter, software such as Tweetscan or Summize can help to locate a brand or company name mentioned in tweets. Companies can then choose to give immediate response or gather the information for further evaluation. Twitter helps a lot in providing information on how customers feel about the brand and what they are saying. Panasonic Malaysia does not have their Twitter page but instead the global Panasonic Twitter page that is managed by the headquarter of Panasonic in Japan. The page is named Panasonic Full HD 3D. Refer to appendix 5) Those followers can get quick updates daily in perspective languages about every single thing that is happening. This effort is to target on those regular Twitter users. Panasonic can also provide some short clips about their latest news about

the 3D television specifications especially on the VIERA connect. They can convey the message where Twitter is now available on the television and now they can surf on twitter with larger screens. They can also inform their target audiences by including the websites in their tweets.

As the technology is improving day by day, we have to constantly improve ourselves by identifying new trends that are emerging also. Consider how users will interact with the brand and then develop the brand that will lead to brand loyalty. Highly encourage consumer interaction via blogs, video conferencing, feedback applications or even customer reviews. Also maximise traffic through effective search engine optimization and also allow deep search results by grouping products around brands and common parameters.