Task 4

Marketing & PR
Task 4 – Issues requiring marketing
or public relations solutions
Patrick Gouldsbrough

By leaving the price out, Audi want to focus on selling the
actual product through quality alone. As well as this, the
clean layout, along with the lack of text, builds on this idea
that the German car manufacturers are trying to target the
quality end of the car market. While you would think the lack
of text would be a disadvantage to a company when selling a
car, the inclusion of ‘The new aerodynamic Audi A5’ gives the
consumer just enough to be interested in the car, while
enough enigma to make them want to find out more about
the product, therefore, fulfilling the feature that the
company wanted to do when deciding on the text to include.
Quality and image
The white background along with the white car shouldn’t
work as a concept, yet, with the subtle black features on the
car, this advert has become on of the moist effective adverts
for cars, which is evident through the sale of this car. These
sales don’t just reflect on the advert, they also reflect on the
quality of the product, which is what the company have been
building on over the past years.
Another reason why Audi have cut the text from this advert
is due to the fact that, through the proven quality and
luxurious nature of their cars, they don’t need all the car
features and prices, instead, they just need a slogan for the
particular product and the company tag-line that has been
continuously used in products for a long time. Through this
company ideology, consumers are reminded about how
highly regarded Audi are in the car industry.
While some car manufacturers decide to put a slogan on
their products but don’t fully elaborate on these. However,
on this advert, the tag-line ‘the new aerodynamic Audi A5’ is
teamed with the aerodynamic stripes going over the car
which doesn’t link to quality but does add to the aesthetics
and imagery evident on this piece.
Market and competition
The car market is a tough market to
break, due to the tough competition
between Audi, Mercedes, BMW and
Jaguar. All of these manufacturers have
to consistently produce top level cars,
which also involves the advert, due to
the fact hat this is the main source of
making profit in most markets,
including this one.
As you can see from this Jaguar
advertisement, Audi’s competition are
employing similar techniques to sell
their cars and while it would be
impossible to establish who it was that
first came up with the idea that car
adverts should have little text and just
the main product and a tag-line, which,
if the company are a big name, should
sell itself without much persuasion
from the manufacturer.

Price and Value
Not all car manufacturers can be like Audi however and
this includes the way they are advertised. In car adverts at
the bottom end of the spectrum have the price sated on
them, while the features and additional information also
adds to make a busy nature to the layout. This feature is
due to the fact that these companies can’t rely on quality
to sell their product range and must instead rely on things
like price, slogans and for Kia, a 7 year warranty on their
vehicles. These added extras are the car manufacturers
equivalent of giving away freebies with their products,
which many companies choose to do in various markets.
As well as the amount of text and the mention of price,
Kia also try and incorporate a quote and an award for
their product. While this isn’t to do with either value or
cost, these features definitely exhibit how Kia aren't solely
relying on quality to sell their products. The award and
quote give the advert a more believable element, while
the car manufacturer almost use expert power to sell their
product on this particular advert.
While on the topic of aesthetics of this advert, the
addition of the background helps to take some attention
from the product and instead makes the consumer focus
on the background image, which is another feature where
Kia aren’t relying on just the quality to sell their product.
“A dream to drive” if not anything else is an example of
where the manufacturer has thought about how to make
it personal to customers and make it seem valuable to
them, without the cost of luxury cars, such as Audi. The
tag-line suggests that you can skimp on price but the
quality does not suffer or that’s the message that Kia are
trying to convey in this advert anyway.
Market and competition
I stated on the Audi advert about
how hard it was to compete in the
quality car manufacturer market
and maintain your position there.
However, it’s probably just as
difficult, if not more so, to try and
compete in the lower ranks of the
car industry. This is due to the fact
that a lot more car companies
want to try and break into the
middle category of the industry
but only a handful can get there,
whether this is due to the quality
of product, or lack of it, the
financial status of the company or
the demand for cars, all these
factors can add together to be a
reason why these companies can’t
get to the category they want to
be in.
Kia are competing with the likes of
Skoda, Citroen and Peugeot
amongst others and while all have
enjoyed stints above each other,
they are all on a similar level
currently. As you can see from the
Citroen example, companies in a
similar category in the car industry
employ similar techniques; a busy
layout and plenty of mention of
the price on the advert.

Price and competition
Among supermarkets, it is common to show price
comparisons between two or more supermarkets and
the money that you can save on these products. Where
a clothes company might get customers through quality
of products or continuation of using this brand,
consumers look for value and low cost when they go
food shopping and want their favourite branded goods
at the lowest prices, regardless of the supermarket they
have to go to.
While Tesco are normally the most expensive of the big
four, a new establishment of a higher level above Tesco
has been formed. This has then prompted the
supermarket to make an advert, which they don’t do
usually, due to them been more expensive than the likes
of Asda and Aldi for products. However, when
comparing themselves to the likes of Waitrose and
online retailer Ocado, they are cheaper and displaying
this in the form of comparisons on common items is a
good way of showing how they can still be of service to
the consumer.
With the choice of Waitrose, Ocado, Tesco, Morrisons,
Aldi, Asda and Sainsbury, all these competitors have to
make sure they have the lowest prices of them all and
not only this, they have to outdo their rivals in
adverting, which may include a lot of comparisons
(individual products or average shop statistics).
However, when you are the top retailers, like Tesco,
Waitrose and Ocado, you can afford to have your prices
high, due to consumers realising that you get a more
quality product than the others. In short then, instead of
supermarkets lowering their prices, they may have to
increase on quality before producers like Asda and Aldi
can compete with the bigger companies.

Value
Commonly in adverts, companies will aim to sell their
brand and products through displaying the price or the
quality. However, John Lewis have become synonymous
for putting another element in their Christmas adverts
during recent times. The high street retailer uses family
values to draw on the fact that Christmas is all about
family and the use of their products suggests that
Christmas would be a lot better if you bought from john
Lewis and had this big, extravagant John Lewis Christmas.
In this particular advert pictured, they used a child to
employ the sympathy element to the advert, therefore
swaying people to buy their products or at least buy into
the family values element of the advert.
Despite John Lewis also been known for quality goods,
they didn’t want to take this path when making these
adverts, due to the fact that so many companies use this
technique around Christmas. By subverting the
conventions of an advert, John Lewis have been able to
stand out from their competitors, which is the whole
purpose of an advertising campaign.
Since the retailer brought these adverts out, they have
made a whole unexplored concept for adverts and have
inspired M&S and Debenhams to make similar adverts to
promote their brand and products.

Price
Even though plenty of companies use prices on their adverts to
promote their products, there aren’t many as consistent at doing
this as Primark. Through the use of price in their adverts, they are
able to target the mass market and commercial heights that the
big companies achieve, despite the fact that they are operating
on a cheaper and less quality assured level.
Known for their bad quality, Primark have to rely on techniques
such as very cheap prices which they display on their adverts, as
well as huge adverting campaigns because while they target a
lower level of clientele than M&S and Debenhams, they have
plenty of money to spend on their advertising campaigns.
While this particular advert plays on the family values of children
fashioning the products of the high street retailer, it’s not kept
this value at a similar intensity as John Lewis have and instead
concentrate on price of product above all.
Competing against brands like H&M and TK Maxx as well as
others isn’t easy competition, due to the growing quality element
of many of these brands products, which means Primark must
slowly improve the quality of their products year by year while
keeping the price down, due to this element been their company
ideology.

Quality
There are plenty of designer fashion brands on the high street
and apart from the same categorisation they share, they also
have another notable similarity between them; they all use a
suggestion of quality to sell their products, whether it is on the
adverts or their brand logo or brand image, there is usually a
significant sign to distinguish these sorts of brands from the high
street Primark’s and Topshops.
In the case of pretty Green, it is an element of all three that
distinguishes this brand from a commercial chain and to some
extent, other designer clothing brands. The owner of the
clothing brand, former oasis front man Liam Gallagher, has
thought about the ideologies and styles he wanted to employ on
his clothing brand and has used them to make Pretty Green a
success on the high street.
The logo shows that creativity is one of the main features of the
company, while this design is used on every piece of clothing
from the brand, which tells you how key this is to the success of
Pretty Green. Since this advert pictured was shown, Liam and
the Pretty green have opened 25 stores in the UK and have
plans to expand later in the year, which shows this brand is a
rising force.
Not only does this advert suggest that it’s quality, due to the
fact that no prices appear on it, it also depicts one of the most
notable musicians in the past 30 years as the main endorser oft
his advert, indulging in a bit of self-promotion, Liam shows that
this brand is new, fresh, edgy and most importantly, British.
Despite most things been made in China these days, there is
something nice about finding brands that make and trade in the
UK, which, in turn, makes people want to buy these products
and help about a good patriotic brand like this one.

Competition
It’s not often that adverting campaigns employ techniques like
BMW do here. Instead of promoting the features on their new
car, the car manufacturer mocks rivals Audi in the advert. Using
the bragging rights of a recent survey of cars, BMW show the
consumer that competition is fierce, while showing that they are
the top of that competition. On the other hand, the only thing
that lets this BMW advert down is the fact that they don’t go into
details about who had given either these awards, which deducts a
bit of the believable nature from this advert.
When trying to promote your products in this way, you always
have to have a source of award or something similar to this or the
expert power that you have employed in the first place will turn
against you and the consumer will believe that his advert 9s just a
way of getting one up on Audi.
In business, not many brand swill come out and say that they are
better than a particular brand, they are usually more subdued
than this and say they are the best, without mentioning any
names, however, when talking about the car market and all the
millions of pounds worth of revenue is at stake, you need to
advertise and sell products however you can, even if that means
using tactics such as BMW.
I still can’t establish whether this was a revolutionary adverting
idea from the German car company or if it’s an adverting
campaign gone wrong. To determine this, sales figures would
have to be analysed but can never truly be accurately determined.
In my opinion, it was a bad way of portraying the overall brand of
BMW and instead of this mass rivalry, they could concentrate on
selling their products through quality instead.

Image and competition
A memorable brand image is something that every company is looking for
and if they were to find it and it was proven to be a success, it would be
foolish not to continue to employ similar, if not the same techniques.
Over the years, there have been some very memorable adverts, slogans
and products but one that has stayed consistent throughout all their advert
range is the compare the market advert. The price comparison website use
a Meerkat to advertise their brand and since it’s introduction, has been a
success for the company. Not only has the demand for the website one up,
the company have managed to merchandise a product range attached to
the idea of Meerkats.
Despite looking like a clear brand image when the advert first came out,
this promotional campaign has grown with every advert and has become
one of the most recognisable campaigns on a broadcast platform.
Therefore, if a company find a clear image or message they feel works, they
will continuously and consistently use it on a range of their adverts across
all mediums. Other popular brand images include the “I’m lovin’ it” on
McDonalds adverts and the “Vorsprung Durch Technik” of the Audi advert,
which have become household slogans and brands.
From the adverts and a brief look at the company, it’s evident that
compare the market have made a service that in itself competes lots of
companies against each other, in terms of insurance. However, since
compare the market was established, lots of firms with the same idea have
been established also, which promoted competition to the comparative
websites. However, this just meant that compare the market had to
increase the amount of Meerkat advert they showed, which the consumer
seemed to respond well to, as oppose to the opera singer in the Go
Compare which they found annoying, therefore choosing to go with
compare the market as their insurance comparison site (it’s the little things
like adverts that can have a monumental impact on uses and sales of
products and services)
Price and value
When thinking about insurance groups and
insurance providers, you don’t really associate good
value, you think it’s pretty much there and there
about each other. However, many companies are a
lot more expensive than others. Despite compare
the market been a site that hones in on this
expense in the insurance market, they also show
great value themselves by offering all sorts of deals
front the consumers and even though this isn’t the
most important thing, they also provide a lot of
freebies to their customers that may sway their
decision, due to the fact that even when buying
insurance, that little free product or change to
benefit you in the contract can sway a consumers
mind on the company. In addition, since the early
sates of compare the market, big insurers and
expensive insurers have refused to be on the site,
due to the fact that this websites purpose is to find
the cheapest (price and really good value.

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