John works as a junior marketing executive at Frontloop Corporation. Frontloop Corporation manufactures guitars and other stringed instruments. It designs a new guitar, the Loneway, customized for the folk music genre

Question

The company plans to attract both folk artists and folk music lovers with its advertising campaigns and decides to exclusively use mass-media marketing techniques to advertise the Loneway guitar. What arguments can John use if he wants to convince Frontloop to adopt digital media instead of television advertising?

Answer 1

(Students' answers may vary. The answer given below is indicative.)
The Loneway guitars are specifically designed for folk music lovers, who form a niche market in music. Marketing these guitars through mass-media outlets like television will not help the company reach its target customers efficiently. The costs of mass media are rising, and their audiences are reducing in number. Though mass media have good coverage, they provide low audience selectivity. In contrast, the digital media, like the Internet, are relatively inexpensive and highly customer selective. They are also highly interactive. The Loneway guitar ads could be placed at strategic Web sites that folk music enthusiasts frequently visit. The ads can be uploaded on sites like YouTube, or Facebook, which are very apt at reaching target customers and niche markets. On the other hand, television advertising is highly cluttered and provides fleeting exposure to potential customers. Using the Internet also saves time as compared to television, which may have a higher ad purchase lead time. Hence, advertising the Loneway line of guitars through online advertising is the cheaper, more audience selective, and customer interactive outlet that the Frontloop Corporation can adopt, especially when compared to television advertising.