Week 4 EOC

Marketing vs. Advertising

There is a distinction between marketing and advertising. In the show Mad Men… it was quoted that “Advertising is about happiness.” Advertising is about making your product sell with catchy slogans and simple pictures that will stick to the average consumer’s mind. Their goal is to make the general public just walk into the store and remember the ad they saw while sifting through a magazine or while they were driving down the road and purchase that particular product. Advertising is aimed at the fact that they need to sell that product by making people think that that product will make them happy. Advertising is about making the general public happy and has no specific target audience. Advertising has a goal and that is to sell the product as quickly and as much as possible. Marketing is taking the next step to advertising… it is about taking a strategic approach to advertising. Marketing targets a specific group of people to make their products sell. Marketing also involves making the customers happy about the products they just purchased and not making the customers feel that they will be happy if they purchase it. For example, it was mentioned in the show Mad Men that tobacco may be hazardous to your health, but they didn’t take that consideration seriously. All they wanted to do was to sell their product despite what Reader’s Digest says. It was quoted on About.com that “Knowing the difference and doing your market research can put your company on the path to substantial growth.” (Source: http://marketing.about.com/cs/advertising/a/marketvsad.htm). Basically, advertising is a temporary feeling to making a product sell, whereas marketing is about knowing who your customers are, keeping your customers happy and actually keeping them as customers in the long run.