ABSTRACT
The premise of this book is that no aspect of advertising can be understood in isolation. This is captured in Figure 1.1 in the introduction to this book. The nature and effectiveness of advertising is shaped by its interaction with the social, cultural, economic, legal, physical, and psychological context in which it is delivered. This is to say, advertising is an extremely complex phenomenon. Implicit in our approach is the fact that we can address its complexity by breaking it down into its constituent dimensions and identifying the theoretical principles by which these dimensions interact. This chapter will address the advertising “channel,” or the methods by which advertising messages are actually delivered to the people for whom they were intended (the “receivers” in Figure 1.1 of the introduction). Following the common parlance of advertising, we will refer to elements of the channel as advertising media. The chapter will begin by developing a general framework for understanding how interactions among the various advertising contexts affect the way consumers process information within a media channel. It will then draw on this framework as a basis for understanding media planning strategy, beginning with the broad concept of integrated marketing communications (IMC) and continuing to link it with conventional media planning. While the definition of IMC may vary in specifics from source to source, we will define it in terms of its most basic concept, that everything a company does must be considered part of its marketing communications program, and that it must all be carefully coordinated to service the company’s strategic marketing objectives (see also Chapter 32 by Moriarty and Schultz).
