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Belch: Advertising and
Promotion, Sixth Edition
IV. Objectives and
Budgeting for Integrated
Marketing
Communications Programs
7. Establishing Objectives
and Budgeting for the
Promotional Program
emphasizes identifying the sequence of decision-making steps that apply in a buying
situation. 19
• Sales objectives. Another objection to DAGMAR comes from those who argue that
the only relevant measure of advertising objectives is sales. They have little tolerance
for ad campaigns that achieve communications objectives but fail to increase sales.
Advertising is seen as effective only if it induces consumers to make a purchase. 20
The problems with this logic were addressed in our discussion of communications
objectives.
• Practicality and costs. Another criticism of DAGMAR concerns the difficulties
involved in implementing it. Money must be spent on research to establish
quantitative benchmarks and measure changes in the response hierarchy. This is
costly and time-consuming and can lead to considerable disagreement over method,
criteria, measures, and so forth. Many critics argue that DAGMAR is practical only
for large companies with big advertising and research budgets. Many firms do not
want to spend the money needed to use DAGMAR effectively.
• Inhibition of creativity. A final criticism of DAGMAR is that it inhibits advertising
creativity by imposing too much structure on the people responsible for developing the
advertising. Many creative personnel think the DAGMAR approach is too concerned
with quantitative assessment of a campaign’s impact on awareness, brandname recall,
or specific persuasion measures. The emphasis is on passing the numbers test rather
than developing a message that is truly creative and contributes to brand equity.
© The McGraw−Hill
Companies, 2003
Problems in Setting Objectives
Although the DAGMAR model suggests a logical
process for advertising and promotion planning,
most advertisers and their agencies fail to follow
these basic principles. They fail to set specific objectives for their campaigns and/or do
not have the proper evidence to determine the success of their promotional programs.
A classic study conducted by Stewart H. Britt examined problems with how advertisers
set objectives and measure their accomplishment. 21 The study showed that most
advertising agencies did not state appropriate objectives for determining success and
thus could not demonstrate whether a supposedly successful campaign was really a
success. Even though these campaigns may have been doing something right, they
generally did not know what it was.
Although this study was conducted in 1969, the same problems exist in advertising
today. A more recent study examined the advertising practices of business-to-business
marketers to determine whether their ads used advertising objectives that met Colley’s
four DAGMAR criteria. 22 Entries from the annual Business/Professional Advertising
Association Gold Key Awards competition, which solicits the best marketing communications
efforts from business-to-business advertisers, were evaluated with respect to
their campaigns’ objectives and summaries of results. Most of these advertisers did not
set concrete advertising objectives, specify objective tasks, measure results in terms of
stages of a hierarchy of effects, or match objectives to evaluation measures. The
authors concluded: “Advertising practitioners have only partially adopted the concepts
and standards of objective setting and evaluation set forth 25 years ago.” 23
Improving Promotional Planners’ Use of Objectives
As we have seen, it is important that advertisers and their agencies pay close attention
to the objectives they set for their campaigns. They should strive to set specific and
measurable objectives that not only guide promotional planning and decision making
but also can be used as a standard for evaluating performance. Unfortunately, many
companies do not set appropriate objectives for their integrated marketing communications
programs.
Many companies fail to set appropriate objectives because top management has
only an abstract idea of what the firm’s IMC program is supposed to be doing. In a
study by the American Business Press that measured the attitudes of chairs, presidents,
and other senior managers of business-to-business advertising companies, more than
half of the 427 respondents said they did not know whether their advertising was
209
Chapter Seven Establishing Objectives and Budgeting for the Promotional Program