Institutional advertising promotes a business rather than a specific product, enhancing its reputation and image. It can discourage sales to some extent and may promote a particular brand or industry. It can be difficult to track its effectiveness on sales.
Institutional advertising is marketing designed to promote a business rather than a specific good or service. It can be designed to make the public more aware of a company or to enhance the reputation and image of an existing company. Depending on the company, this can be a form of brand advertising.
Many forms of advertising involve the promotion of products. This may involve promoting a new product in such a way that the public is aware of its existence or trying to get the public to buy more of an existing product. Institutional advertising, on the other hand, promotes the company itself. An example would be a chain store that ran advertisements emphasizing the general quality or low prices of its food products, rather than detailing the specific offerings it was running.
Some forms of corporate advertising are so geared towards promoting a positive image that they effectively discourage sales of a product to some extent. For example, alcohol companies may run commercials warning not to drink or drive excessively while under the influence. Such advertisements are usually designed to enhance the company’s image, making it more trustworthy or accountable.
In some cases, corporate advertising is the same thing as brand conscious advertising. This is where advertising promotes a particular brand rather than the product itself. For example, a banking group might run commercials promoting one of its banks as dynamic and exciting, while promoting a subsidiary that is particularly helpful to customers. In both cases this is different from promoting a specific service, for example by advertising a low interest rate on loans to new customers.
It is also possible for institutional advertising to promote an industry rather than a particular company. This will usually be done by an industry association. It happens very often in industries where many companies are small businesses without the budgets to make major advertisements, especially in the national media. To take a hypothetical example, most wills prepared by lawyers are done by small law firms with few offices. A trade association for probate attorneys could do this type of publicity by putting together a television commercial promoting the importance of obtaining a will, then listing a website that refers viewers to attorneys in their area.
Institutional advertising can cause problems for marketing analytics. Where an advertisement targets a specific product, marketers can track the effect on sales and see the effectiveness of the advertisement. With institutional advertising, the link between advertising and business effect is much weaker and it may take longer to show the effects.
Protect your devices with Threat Protection by NordVPN
