The Organizational Structure of Advertising Agencies and New Directions

The acceleration of globalization caused transformations in the area of communication, as in many other areas, and innovations brought about by information technologies have diversified operation methods and management, as well as organizational understandings of business companies within the global competition environment. Evolving towards post-modern structuring, companies have gravitated to customer-oriented business management strategies, where companies see their customers and market environment from different angles while conducting their advertising activities. The mass marketing sense, which was effective for a long period of time, was gradually alienated, and particularly with the intense utilization of social media and digital environments, the understanding of personal marketing (which more quickly connects products with their target audiences) was adopted in order to influence customers, who now have a multitude of choices. This chapter focuses on introducing the new organizational structures of advertising agencies in the social media age.

From Internal Branding to Cultural Transformation

The primary objective of this paper is to explore internal branding as a corporate philosophy: assess the relevance of its values, evaluate the tactics implemented, the nature of the internal communications involved, the outcomes thereof and its role as critical bridge over vision, culture and image gaps. It also aims at bringing awareness on failure possibilities and risks involved when internal constituencies do not fulfill their role as brand ambassadors. Following an overview of the internal branding methodology and literature, perceptions of employees on internal brand communication practices are captured and matched to aspirations, missions and values in different companies. Internal communication and branding outcomes are organically attached to the nexus of corporate identity; alignment of values and beliefs promotes brand identification, integrates practices, boosts loyalty and helps the organization speak in one voice. While some companies have managed to exemplify this strategy through honest and consistent efforts, it is unsafe to generalize the assumption across different industries that normally fail to undertake effective internal branding initiatives through their corporate communication department to strengthen their brands. It is therefore worth evaluating methods that can align theory, intentions and practice.

How Advertising Beauty Influences Children's Self-Perception and Behavior

The authors investigate (1) whether the physical attractiveness stereotype applies to children, (2) whether children's self-perception is influenced by the attractiveness of an advertising model, (3) whether children's buying intentions are influenced by the attractiveness of an advertising model, and (4) whether age, gender, and materialism affect (1), (2), and (3). Results of an experimental research (N=185) confirm the presence of the “what is beautiful is good” stereotype in children. Attractive (versus less attractive) models were also perceived to be less likely to follow the rules. Contrary to expectations from research in adult samples, the presence of an attractive (versus less attractive) model has a positive influence on perceived physical appearance for both boys and girls and also a positive influence on general self-worth for girls. The authors also found that attractive (versus less attractive) models increase attitudes and buying intentions for boys, but not for girls. No effects of age and materialism were found.

Advertising Deceit

Deceptive advertising denotes a producer's usage of mystifying, deceiving, or blatantly untrue statements when endorsing a product. There are several illegal methods for attempting to deceive consumers. This can be done through concealed fees or the usage of surcharges. Deceptive advertising can also take place when “going out of business sales” charge consumers more for products that had already been marked down. Advertising law identifies the manipulation of standards as dishonesty under customer law. Undefined terminology is also considered a violation under consumer law. Marketing deceit is a practice that can equate to a crime. Thus, a marketer should not get involved in deceiving their potential customers for this manipulation would lead to various harms: it erodes one's self-confidence and hinders the development of responsible advertising. Big companies make big mistakes, this is to say that trust associated with big companies holds severe uncertainties. This chapter explores advertising deceit.

Country of Origin Effects

This chapter develops the concept of the county of origin effect, and explores how linkages between place and product may impact upon it. Country-of-origin research has tended to focus upon how geographical associations may assist the marketing of certain products (halo effects) and indeed protect brand images from negative place-based associations (shield effects). We seek to develop these ideas by investigating the existence of branding spillovers in the opposite direction i.e. from product to regional image. Thus we argue in favour of a more ‘holistic' view of country-of-origin effects. This is done using the illustrative case of Wales. The chapter then seeks to explore the resulting implications for city branding practitioners and policy-makers, and to speculate upon how the observed linkages between place and product can also lead to broader insights in terms of city branding in the international context. Finally how the findings presented might contribute to future research attempts on city branding is considered.

Effective, Privacy-First Display Advertising

This chapter addresses the problem of architecting display ad networks for online social media. The basic question behind this work is: Can display advertising in social media be effective while providing rigorous privacy guarantees? The chapter exposes the problems that display advertising faces in social media, introduces a display ad-network architecture organized around the goals of effectiveness and privacy enforcement, and describes a type of social media for which the architecture is ideally suited. To deliver high effectiveness in a social media environment, the ad network must function as an embedded component of the environment with ambient intelligence. Moreover, the architecture must constrain data and mechanisms in order to deliver rigorous privacy guarantees as a baseline and an additional set of choices to enforce even stricter views on privacy. Ambient social media sites, described later in the chapter, are the most appropriate form of social media for the proposed architecture.

Digital Advertising Practices and its Impacts on Students

The subject of this chapter is the universities listed on the website of the Council of Higher Education in Turkey. This study aims to reveal the importance of digital advertising in these universities. In this study, firstly, the websites of these universities were examined. Secondly, the social networking and mobile applications listed in these websites were examined. The results of the current study states those Turkish universities' efforts are inadequate. This is clearly seen in mobile application and video sharing tendencies. Although most of them use social networking websites, the contents of their profiles are not attractive enough to draw the attention of young people. Therefore, special interest has to be given to content management on social networking profiles.

Bidirectional Role of Accuracy and Recognition in Internet-Based Targeted Advertising

The effective media strategy in advertising is gradually becoming the premise of company that lives in the competition of marketing. Due to the rapid growth of new advertising media and technologies, it is possible for a firm to precisely target advertising to the potential consumer segment within a market. This research explores the extent to which an advertiser should regulate the quality of its targeting and effect on consumers' surplus and social welfare. The authors present a theoretic model measuring the targeting quality of internet-based targeted advertising with two measures termed accuracy and recognition. Accuracy measures the possibility of correct prediction in the target segment, while recognition is defined as the probability that any member of the targeted segment is identified. The authors demonstrate, within a monopolistic framework, the online targeted advertising might lower or increase both consumers' surplus and social welfare compared with mass advertising, which depends on different range of accuracy and recognition in the social media. The recognition of internet-based targeted advertising plays a positive role on equilibrium price, whereas the accuracy plays a negative role in the regulation of advertising intensity and equilibrium price. Therefore, it is believed that the accuracy and recognition of the online targeted advertising can be used as a lever for the strategic segmentation of a market.

The Role of Culture in City Branding

City branding means all types of image development studies for a city in order to attract more visitors, raise the quality of life and awareness of the city and provide development etc. Today, the increasing competition among the cities has made city branding a necessity. There are different strategies implemented for city branding. The mostly used strategy among those is the culture-focused branding studies. Culture has a critical importance for city branding and it is used as an international strategy for the economic, social and environmental renovation of cities. Marketing the cultural city sources and activities in an efficient way and branding the city accordingly have become increasingly important. In this chapter, the role and importance of culture which is one of the most important strategies used in city branding has been discussed in detail. Also, the cases of cultural cities which become successfully different from their rivals with their cultural heritage and the strategies implemented in these cases have been analyzed.

Advertising in Games

Traditional marketing communication techniques are of diminishing effectiveness and marketers have developed creative applications to attract consumers. Advergames can be seen as an attractive and new marketing tool that increases product, brand and company awareness. Advergames are a form of branded entertainment that features advertising messages, brand logos, brand products and trade character in a game format. The purpose of this chapter is to provide an understanding of the qualities and potentials of the advergames as an advertising and marketing communication tool for the tourism industry. First, an overview of the various definitions of advergaming is provided, as well as a review of existing literature regarding its effectiveness. The study next examines the advergaming applications in the tourism industry using SWOT analysis. The study concludes with a discussion of the needs, challenges and opportunities faced in marketing tourism products by advergaming.