AVE can help for success campaigns!

Hi all!

The past weeks I have been working a lot on AVE (Advertising Value Equivalent). At the beginning I really didn’t like it as I had a lot of newspaper to look in and calculate the price of each adverts. It is quite difficult to calculate as each newspaper has its own price and the columns are sometimes different and you also have to take care of the period. I will admit I sometimes made some mistakes at the beginning and I also took some times to read articles. But now I like doing it I’m not saying I would like to do it forever but I understood its importance. We learn at school the basic theory why we need to do it etc however when u actually do it you realize that it is very important for PR practitioner. It is true you will know the cost of the advert but at the same time you understand which companies or organizations make more adverts and on which day. After one month I realize which company is always advertising and in which newspapers. Some companies will advert only in two newspapers and competitors will choose different one. I also realized that it is true that these companies will only advertise in the media outlet depending on its target audience. When you read newspapers you never realize that you are also expose to certain companies. Another thing is the number of adverts in each newspaper some of them will have only six adverts while some will have 30 adverts. The number of adverts also depends on the days sometimes at the end of the week you will get more adverts.

Last week when I was doing the AVE I almost made a big mistake thinking that two different adverts were from only one company and why? The two companies were advertising for special sales for grocery and the page was divided in two for each advert however they were in the same color and the names of the supermarkets were very similar. The worst is that the advert on the top has the name of the supermarket in big however the one down you didn’t realize that there was the name. I found it very interesting. It is a common mistake that some companies make and which can ruin your campaign and make you waste a lot of money knowing that adverts in newspapers are very expensive. If I made such mistake am sure that customers will also not realize that these adverts are not from only one company.

This is why as future PR practitioners we need to be careful we have to know our competitors and know when, where and which kind of adverts they make to be able to differentiate from others. Just a different in color or even the front of the advert can ruin your campaign. It is essential to make a lot of research before a campaign and it will to be more effective. Now I understood why last semester we have been working a lot to know each media outlets because it helps to know our audience and know where to advert to reach our target audience.

I also help to do AVE on radio which was quite interesting it is so different from newspapers. I remember last semester saying to my lecturer that 30 second it not enough to pass a message and I was amaze to see that actually most of the adverts on the radio were only during 30 seconds with a maximum of 35 seconds and a minimum of 10 seconds. I never realized that adverts were so short and how much information you can pass during such a limited time! Here also you have to be careful when you will pass your advert and the price will depend on the pic time.

Hope your internships are OK for all of you and good luck for the ones who have just started!

See you soon!

Aurélie Fleurie

15570543

CTI