Two days ago I blogged about the TOMA research and advertising presentation. One new-to-me point in the presentation was the reasonableness of SALE, price reductions and the like.
If a company is selling something that has a long ownership, renewal cycle they are not served as well by having sales as is the shorter-cycle company. The person building houses, something most people keep for many years, should be building awareness through name recognition, the street signs, ads in the paper, etc. This is the constant drip, drip of over and over again seeing a name and then, hopefully when someone says who should I have build my house? you say Joe, he builds a lot. Often in fact, it is not the person who saw the ads over and over and remembers the name but it is their REFERRAL that becomes as important. If Joe the builder indeed advertises bargains over and over, he is likely to be thought of as the cheap builder.
If the company’s product is on a short cycle, e.g. toothpaste, they may want to advertise a sale but the caution is that routine advertising of a sale puts you in a classification you can not pop out of. For instance if Walgreens decided to sell pretty dresses (which apparently they did once) it is not likely to fly. Do I want to buy my little black dress where I buy my toothpaste on sale?
I think not!
Interesting stuff this research and advertising methodology of TOMA.
