ABSTRACT
Advertising consists of persuasive messages sent by identified sponsors to targeted consumers through controlled media. Modern advertising faces severe challenges. Professors Sandra Moriarty and Bruce Vanden Bergh note that advertising may be the only profession in which some people actually have the word creative in their job titles. Two of the most important documents people encounters in advertising are the strategic message planner and the creative brief. Different advertising professionals have different names for these documents, including strategy statements and creative platforms. A strategic message usually focuses on a benefit that a product offers to the target audience. Benefits can build brands. Although benefits usually are essential to successful advertising, they occasionally play only a small role in so-called image advertising. Generally, image advertising—also known as identity advertising and reminder advertising—promotes a brand whose benefits are so familiar that they don’t need to be restated in the ad.
