What are the features of Advertising? What are the advantages of Advertising? What is a Advertising Copy?

Advertising

It is a paid form of mass communication and can be traced to an identified sponsor. Nowadays Advertising plays a significant role in awareness creation and attitude formation. In a macro concept, it stands for the managerial function of an organization intending to send information to the other members of the society.
American Marketing Association defined it as, “Any paid form of non –personal presentation of ideas, goods, or services by an identified sponsor.”
In the words of Albert Lasker,” Advertising is salesmanship in print, driven by a reason why?”.

Features of Advertising:
1. It is a mass communication medium.
2. It is salesmanship in print.
3. It is a paid form of communication by an identified sponsor.
4. It is non-personal communication.
5. It helps to stimulate sales.
6. It may be written or spoken.

ROLE/ ADVANTAGES /IMPORTANCE OF ADVERTISING
Advertising is an integral part of our social and economic system,. As a powerful technique of promoting sales, it has been doing wonders in the domain of distribution. The role of advertising can be analyzed
from five distinct angles.
1. Manufacturers and Advertising(Advantages to Manufactures):
a. It maintains the existing market and explores the new.
b. It increases the demand for the product
c. It helps to build up or increase the goodwill of the company.
d. It controls product price.
e. It helps to introduce a new product into the market.

2. Middlemen and Advertising(Advantages to Middlemen):
a. It guarantees quick sales
b. It acts as a salesman.
c. It increases the prestige of the dealers.
d. It makes retail price maintenance possible.
e. It enables the dealers to have product information.

3. Sales-force and Advertising(Advantages to salesmen)
a. It creates a colorful background for a salesman to begin his work.
b. It reduces his burden of the job.
c. It helps to develop self-confidence and initiative among the salesmen.

4. Consumers and Advertising(Advantages to consumers):
a. It ensures a better quality product at a reasonable price.
b. It provides product-related information to the customers and thereby makes the purchasing an easy task.
c. It helps the consumers to save time by providing information related to the availability of the product.
d. Helps consumers in intelligent buying.

5. Society and Advertising(Advantages to society):
a. It helps to uplifts the living standards
b. It helps to generate gainful employment opportunities.
c. It provides new horizons of knowledge.
d. It upholds the culture of a nation.

THE ADVERTISING COPY
Ad Copy is the soul of any advertisement. An advertisement copy is all the written or spoken matter in an advertisement expressed in words or sentences and figures designed to convey the desired messages to the target consumers. A good ad copy has the following attributes:

1. It is brief: Being brief is not dropping words or chopping sentences, It is the work of eliminating and substituting the words without jeopardizing the meaning.
2. It is clear: A clear copy is one which is easily and quickly read and grasp by the readers.
3. It is apt: Writing an apt copy is the art of putting in the words that create a strong desire to possess the product where the product features to satisfy the consumer’s desire to possess.
4. It is honest: Credibility of an ad message is decided by the extent of honesty.
5. It is conforming: Every ad copy is to conform to standards, rules, and regulations acceptable to the advertisement media and the laws of the land.