{{B}}Is More Advertising Needed{{/B}}
The effectiveness of advertising is a hugely controversial area. Conventional wisdom in the industry is that sales may well increase for a Certain period even after the advertising of a product ends. But{{U}} (31) {{/U}}comes a point when sales start to decline and it then becomes extremely expensive to rebuild the brand. This supports the idea of continuous advertising. But some people in the industry believe the conventional wisdom is{{U}} (32) {{/U}}longer true. When America's big TV networks reached prime-time audiences of 90% of households, they were a powerful way to build a brand.{{U}} (33) {{/U}}that those audiences might be as low as one-third of households, other ways of promoting a brand have{{U}} (34) {{/U}}more competitive. Moreover, many clients never really embraced continuous advertising: when times get tough, just as they{{U}} (35) {{/U}}after 2000, one of the first things many companies cut is their ad budget.
Robert Shaw, a visiting professor at the Cranfield School of Management in Britain, runs a forum in{{U}} (36) {{/U}}a number of big companies try to monitor the "marketing payback" from advertising. The return from traditional media was, he says, "never terribly good". Generally nearly half of ads provide a return{{U}} (37) {{/U}}their investment. And there can be various reasons why ads influence sales, other{{U}} (38) {{/U}}their direct effect on consumers.{{U}} (39) {{/U}}instance, if a producer announces a multi-million dollar ad-campaign, then retailers are often persuaded to increase, deliveries. This can result{{U}} (40) {{/U}}a "distribution effect" that leads to additional sales.