International Encyclopedia of Communication Online

Extract

Marketing communication is often equated with mass → advertising using media such as → television , → radio , and print (→ Marketing ). This is often referred to as above-the-line advertising. Besides these media, organizations can also use more directly targeted media, which include direct mail, telephone, email, mobile messaging, interactive consumer websites, online banners, → social media , etc. (→ Electronic Mail ). This is referred to as below-the-line advertising or direct-to-consumer advertising. Spending on below-the-line advertising exceeds above-the-line advertising by 35% in the US ( Winterberry Group 2011 ). Moreover, below-the-line advertising spending increases by 5.8 percent per year, while spending on above-the-line advertising decreases by 1.7 percent. These figures emphasize the importance of below-the-line advertising. Traditionally, direct marketing has been the field that mainly focused on the use of direct-to-consumer advertising. In the early days, direct marketing was mainly associated with firms almost solely relying on direct media, such as Reader's Digest . The US-based Direct Marketing Association (DMA) defines direct marketing as an interactive system of marketing that uses one or more advertising media to effect a measurable response and/or transaction at any location. According to McDonald (1998) , there are three key issues in this definition: ... log in or subscribe to read full text