Expert Advice Adds Up
Illawarra Mercury
Tuesday September 25, 2001
A strong response from the Illawarra business community has prompted the University of Wollongong's marketing department to consider organising more seminars on making advertising effective.
Last week's How to Make Your Ads More Effective seminar, presented by Dr John Rossiter, one of the world's foremost authorities on advertising, attracted about 40 business people.
Dr Rossiter is the Research Professor of Marketing at the University of Wollongong (UOW) and has previously worked at the University of NSW, University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University in New York and the University of Technology in Sydney.
He has been a marketing and advertising consultant to companies in North America, Europe and Australia and is the author of widely-used textbooks such as Advertising Communications and Promotion Management, and Strategic Advertising Management.
UOW's head of marketing Phillip Scott said it was the first time Dr Rossiter had conducted the seminar in Wollongong and he was likely to conduct another at UOW in February.
The seminar dealt with highly practical real life topics and the development of ideas and skills to help businesses improve the effectiveness of their advertising programs.
Small business owners and managers, and marketing managers of larger companies, heard how to position their companies or brands to better target customers, select specific communication and action objectives for advertisements, create appropriate tactics for different advertisements, how to inexpensively pre-test advertisements, set budgets and determine a media reach pattern and effective frequency.
The effects or commercial length, print and size, colour and page position were also discussed.
Many of the business people present were interested in how to go about creating and writing an advertisement.
During an evaluation of a local advertisement, questions were raised about what it should have said and how it should have been written.
© 2001 Illawarra Mercury