What does advertising do?

To continue with my research, I decided to look further into what is advertising.

There is a difference between advertising and advertisements.
-Advertising is the process
-Advertisements are the end results of that process.

Within the media industry advertising is just one type of marketing communication. There are other types of marketing communication that generally are not normally defined as advertising which include: packaging, sales promotions ( money-offs, two-for-ones and competitions), catalogues, shop windows and in-store publicity, chimerical emails etc. All of the above are a few examples of marketing communications along with many more. These marketing communications are often used to increase the sale of things. However within the industry they are not defined as advertisements, nor as advertising.

What is advertising:

An advertisement is a paid-for communication intended to inform and/or persuade on or more people.

 
What does advertising do?
Advertisements are intended to 'inform and/or persuade'. Most advertisements aim to sell good and services. However, not all ads do the same.

What can adverts be used for:
-Launch a completely new brand
-Launch a new product into an existing brand- a 'line extension'
-Promote an improvement to an existing brand
- Make people who have not heard of the brand aware of it
-Persuade people to try a new brand of a product
- Persuade a different target market
-Persuade retailers to stock the brand so the target market can easily buy it

From this research I have been able to learn about the difference between the term advertising and the term advertisement. This has enabled me to also research further into what advertising does.

References:

1. Advertising- A Very Short Introduction