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Biotech / Medical : GUMM - Eliminate the Common Cold -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hank who wrote (2289)	2/23/2000 8:53:00 AM
From: DanZ	Respond to of 5582

Kovel/Fuller's advertising is targeted primarily at women with children. This is why the bulk of the advertisements are aired during the day and why many advertisements appear in "Women's" magazines. This advertising strategy isn't unique to Gum Tech. Most cold remedies are advertised during the day and are targeted to women. I have a great deal of confidence in Kovel/Fuller, as they have proven themselves to be an effective advertising firm for many products.

To: Hank who wrote (2289)	2/23/2000 9:08:00 AM
From: Carl R.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 5582

Hank I actually am responsible for spending a sizeable advertising budget, and your answer "The largest viewing audience I could, obviously" is not a good answer to the question. In advertising there are several tradeoffs you have to factor in. Is it better to reach more people, or better to reach a smaller group, but reach them more often? Are all people equally likely to buy the product? The correct approach is to define a target market, which is a subset of the general population. Then you focus on what media reaches that sub-group the most cost effectively. Frequency is normally more important than reach. Thus a super bowl ad may have a lot of reach, but the frequency will be one. For that kind of advertising you need a truly remarkable ad that will be noticed and appreciated on a single viewing. The next step is to factor in the size of your budget, and define what portion of the target market you can afford to reach effectively. It is better to reach a smaller group effectively (i.e. with frequency) than it is to reach a larger group ineffectively. It sounds like GUMM has approached the problem correctly and reached a reasonable advertising approach. They decided that the most important group was mothers with children. Obviously fathers with children could also be an important group, and perhaps the day will come when they will try to reach that group as well. In the meantime, since you are not in the target group, you shouldn't be surprised to find that you haven't seen the commercials. The more important questions that will ultimately determine the success or failure of the ad campaign are: 1. Have they defined an appropriate target audience? 2. Are members of the target audience seeing the commercial? 3. Are they responding by buying the product? 4. Is the campaign cost-effective? If the answers to these questions are positive, then the campaign is working, and the fact that you or I haven't seen the spots are irrelevant. Carl