Campaign Critique

Contents 1.0 Executive Summary 2 2.0 Introduction 3 3.0 ASA Holidays 3 4.0 Demographics and Psychographic of The Target Market 4 4.1 Demographics 4 4.2 Psychographic 4 5.0 Communication Objectives 4 6.0 Critique of the Advertisement 4 6.1 Advertisement’s Strengths 4 6.2 Advertisement’s Weaknesses 5 6.3 Recommendations 6 7.0 Media Used 7 7.2 Media’s Strengths 7 7.2 Media’s Limitations 7 8.0 Media Recommendations 8 9.0 Conclusion 8 10.0 Appendix 9 Appendix 1: ASA Holidays newspaper advertisement 9

The brand image strategy has been applied as ASA Holiday brand logo and slogan was placed at the top left-hand corner of the advertisement. It is an element that communicate the brand value and differentiation against the competitor and transform into recognition from the message to the target market. In the advertisement, ASA Holidays has included information such as grand prize for the holiday win lucky draw, giveaway, highlights of the travel packages and price point for each of the featured tour packages. The information provides positive consequences to the target market. The options of the travel destinations include several parts of China and travel packages to other places such as Japan, Australia, Korea and Malaysia. However, ASA Holidays has failed to communicate the emphasis in China traveling in the advertisement. This would result in drawing wrong attention and minimize the effectiveness of communicating the advertisement to the target market. The overloading of information in the advertisement could be a determinant that turn the attention of the target market away. It is recommended to include colours to enhance the overall marketing communications in the ASA Holidays advertisement. Another recommendation for ASA Holidays to include testimonials and images of past celebrity or influencer who have engaged the services and deem to be influential to the target market featured in the advertisement.

ASA Holidays has adopted newspaper as the media and The Straits Times as the vehicles to advertise the marketing communications to the target market. The reach of the newspaper can be virtually anyone and details of the product and services and brand information that allows the target market to make comparisons. Print media such as newspaper has an important role in advertising as it creates durable awareness, advertisement and brand recall, and credibility not restricting to the target market. Newspaper has been rated as the trusted source of information in a European survey. The scarce of space in advertisement has always been an issue that lead to clutter. Technology advancement has gradually changed the deployment of marketing communication as the target market are having more control and personalizing their choice in consuming commercial content. It is recommended that ASA Holidays continue using newspaper advertisement for its strengths on flighting schedule while extending the media coverage into digital marketing platforms. Instagram is one of the social media platforms that ASA Holidays could extend its existence in digital marketing to connect with the target market.

Air Sino-Euro Associates Travel, better known for ASA Holidays, is a Singapore founded travel agency established in 2006. Mr. Albert See, the founder of ASA Holidays has expanded the travel market from both Singapore and Malaysia to China by using all the resources available back in the early 90s. Over the years, to gain awareness and popularity, ASA Holidays invested a huge sum of money for its branding. As results, ASA Holidays successfully built up a solid foundation with potential for further expansion. ASA Holidays has been organizing travel fairs with affordable and competitive pricing as well as grand draw prizes to be won.

ASA Holidays recognised the fashion of seeking experiences through travelling and would encourage travellers to participate in meaningful historical global events such as Beijing Olympic Games by chartering flights and provide with reasonable price. ASA Holidays will continue to persevere its motto “Travel made available to all” and “Lifetime of Joy Travel” (ASA Holidays n.d.). The ASA Holidays newspaper advertisement (see Appendix 1) was featured in The Straits Times section C3 on January 3, 2019.

ASA Holidays provides an end to end travel services from itinerary planning, travel and accommodation coordination, flight booking, travel insurance as well as guided tour.

Hassle-free traveling with a piece of mind, leave the tedious itinerary planning and bookings with the experienced travel professionals at ASA Holidays, enjoy the travel.

The offerings provided by ASA Holidays are largely meant for personal or household consumption is classified as consumer products. The type of product that ASA Holidays offered to its target market requires them to make substantial amount of comparisons for the same product or alternatives before the final purchase is made. The target market would invest more time in searching and evaluating the products during the decision-making process and the frequency of purchasing the product is less often. The type of consumer products is classified as shopping products (Zhou, et al. 2010, 46).

The demographics of the target market:

The target market can be described as Conventional Family Life segment as they tend to seek value of money and not a brand loyal in their purchases according to Roy Morgan Values Segments (Chitty, et al. 2018, 126).

To achieve an increase of 20% top of mind brand awareness by 31 July 2019.

To achieve an increase of 60% sales quotation by 31 July 2019.

To achieve an increase of 15% new customer by 31 July 2019.

To achieve an increase of 30% sales revenue by 31 July 2019.

The brand image strategy has been applied as ASA Holiday brand logo and “Joy to Travel Smart Lifestyle!” slogan was placed at the top left-hand corner of the advertisement. The brand logo symbolizes the identity of ASA Holidays. It is an element that communicate the brand value and differentiation against the competitor and transform into recognition from the message to the target market (Müller, Kocher and Crettaz 2013, 83). Brand image creates emotions to its target market. The target market develop perception and creates memory that associate to the brand. When positive perception has been perceived, the advertisement delivers a strong positive influence on the target market (Lee, Lee and Wu 2011, 1092).  From the advertisement, ASA Holidays clearly presented themselves as a travel agency.

The moment the advertisement receive response to the target market, the target market has developed either emotional or cognitive responses. It is the consequences after evaluating the advertisement. That is, when the target market feels excited and has decided to enquire more about the advertisement, emotional and cognitive has been aroused. The triggered response refers to consequences (Juttner, et al. 2013, 741). In the advertisement, ASA Holidays has included information such as “BRAND NEW Mercedes-Benz GLA” grand prize for the holiday win lucky draw, “FREE Citi 20/28” Trolley Luggage”, “1N STAY IN PORT STEPHENS”, “SQ A380 THROUGHOUT 5* HOTEL” and price point for each of the featured tour packages such as “fr $388” for the travel companion. The information provides positive consequences to the target market.

The desired end-states of the advertisement from ASA Holidays to the target market was to evoke the desire for traveling. In the advertisement, ASA Holidays have made use of reputable airline logos such as “Singapore Airlines” and “SilkAir” along with the featured tour packages to various part of China. The packages include “6D Guizhou, Guiyang, Xijiang, Maotai, Zunyi, Chishui Tour”, “6D Guilin, Yangshuo, Li River, Guizhou Zunyi, Guiyang Tour”, “6D Wenzhou, Taizhou, Ningbo, Mt. Yandang, Shaoxing, Hangzhou Tour”, “6D Wenzhou, Mt. Yandang, Wuzhen, Shanghai, Hangzhou Tour” and “6D Wenzhou, Fuzhou, Xiamen, Quanzhou/Relative Visit” with the highlight of at least 4 stars hotel accommodations and several tourist attractions. Travel packages to other places such as Japan, Australia, Korea and Malaysia can be found in the advertisement as well. This is an evidence of benefits ASA Holidays have used to transform the means into the target market values (Torelli, et al. 2012, 93). According to the means-end chaining and laddering, the content of the advertisement has proposed traveling options to different parts of China and few other Asia countries as their product and service attributes that stimulate the target market’s consequences towards the advertisement and drives value to the target market (Juttner, et al. 2013, 741).

In the advertisement, ASA Holidays pay little attention in differentiating the range of product offering against the competitors. The information in the advertisement does not fully portray ASA Holidays’ capabilities in providing vast range of the products and services to the target market. It was not noted in the advertisement that ASA Holidays specializes in any particular market nor focusing on a specific traveling destination. However, from the advertisement, it was perceived that ASA Holidays has put their focus in promoting China as the “Chinese New Year” “special departure”. ASA Holidays has failed to communicate the emphasis in China traveling in the advertisement. This would result in drawing wrong attention and minimize the effectiveness of communicating the advertisement to the target market. An explicit generic strategy deployed by ASA Holidays would drive a more desirable business performance in delivering the marketing communication. The generic strategy consists of focus in the cost leadership and differentiation strategies (Brenes, Montoya and Ciravegna 2014, 848).

Communication occur when the sender sends through an intended message to the receiver that creates meaning to the receiver. In this case, the sender refers to ASA Holidays while the receiver refers to the target market. ASA Holidays has formed the communication objective to promote various travel destinations and packages to the target market through advertisement on printed newspaper. The outcome of the communication may differ from the ASA Holidays’ intention. The discrepancy was due to the communication process between the encoding of the message from ASA Holidays and the target market was uncertain of the message during decoding. Disruption such as overloading information in the message or target market attending to a phone call could interfere at any point of the communication process that breaks the communication. Elements that breaks the communication process refers to noise (Finne and Grönroos 2017, 448). The overloading of information in the advertisement could be a determinant that turn the attention of the target market away.

In an advertisement, elements such as colours, graphics would prompt emotions such as entertainment, enjoyment and happiness to affective purchase intention. Although ASA Holidays had included graphics element such as images of the scenery with some of the travel packages, an image of a Mercedes-Benz GLA as the grand prize for the holiday win lucky draw, and image of luggage for “FREE Citi 20/28” Trolley Luggage” in the advertisement, they were featured as monochrome. It is recommended to include colours to enhance the overall marketing communications in the ASA Holidays advertisement. According to the emotional strategy, positive emotional appeals generally attain higher attention to the message, enhance the decoding of the marketing communication that would encourage the target market to find out more about ASA Holidays advertisement which would improve the brand recognition and recall (Yoon 2013, 697).

Another recommendation for ASA Holidays to enhance the marketing communication in the advertisement would be resonance strategy. To achieve, ASA Holidays is required to make prominent, establish the differentiation from the competitors and create positive emotional appeals. Resonance is a persuasive strategy that aid ASA Holidays to build traveling association to the target market that meets the needs and positive emotional responses (Keller 2009, 143).

Resonance is a strategy that reinforce the effectiveness of the marketing communication by sharing testimonial from an interested person to the target market. The most common seen for resonance strategy advertisement includes a visual and a verbal element. ASA Holidays could include testimonials and images of past celebrity or influencer who have engaged the services and deem to be influential to the target market featured in the advertisement (Keller 2009, 143).

ASA Holidays has adopted newspaper as the media and The Straits Times as the vehicles to advertise the marketing communications to the target market.

Research shows that newspapers medium is one of the best non-personalize mass media channels that has higher purchase intention than informed advertising such as generic mail or telemarketing (Danaher and Rossiter 2011, 10). The advertisement in newspaper provides details of the product and services and brand information that allows the target market to make comparisons (Batra and Keller 2016, 122). Newspaper advertisement that stands out by the size and colour of the advertisement (Wakolbinger, Denk and Oberecker 2009, 361).

The reach of the newspaper can be virtually anyone and the information acquire from the advertisement or reading refine the learning and recognition of the brand (Anthony 2008, 75).

Print media such as newspaper has an important role in advertising as it creates durable awareness, advertisement and brand recall, and credibility not restricting to the target market (Batra and Keller 2016, 122). The advertisement on newspaper is perpetual and the physical copy can be kept for future reference. Hence, the advertisement may be exposed more than once for that reason (Caemmerer 2009, 531).  

Newspaper has been rated as the trusted source of information in a European survey (Kozinets, et al. 2010, 73). In contrast to channels such as telemarketing, in-person and generic message and emails, one of the channel, newspaper is view as trustworthy in an analysis of channels in a research study (Danaher and Rossiter 2011, 10).

The scarce of space in advertisement has always been an issue that lead to clutter. The overflowing of information in the allocated space would result in negative advertising impact.  The issue of clutter occurs when there is too much information not only from the advertisement but also the medium of the advertisement affects the information processing of the target market. The attention span for the target market to digest the information varies from individual’s needs (Ha and McCann 2008, 570).

Technology advancement has gradually changed the deployment of marketing communication as the target market are having more control and personalizing their choice in consuming commercial content. Advertisements are leveraging on the convenience of technology to reach the target market. In the new communication generation, the freedom of accessibility to various medium and obtaining information has also resulted in commercial clutter (Keller 2009, 142).

Based on the media strategy ASA Holidays has deployed, ASA Holidays is already leveraging on “Singapore No.1 Newspaper”, The Straits Times, as the media vehicles that reaches more than 900k of Print Daily Readership (SPH Integrated Marketing n.d.). Despite the strengths with the media used, there is paradigm shift in how target markets preference in receiving information (Keller 2009, 141). The advertisement exposure does not necessary correspond to the reach of the media vehicle as the target market may be multitasking such as flipping through the newspaper while watching a television show (Assael 2011, 7)

Digitalisation has transformed the ways of communications and consumption. It is recommended that ASA Holidays continue using newspaper advertisement for its strengths on flighting schedule while extending the media coverage into digital marketing platforms. The demographics of the target markets are mainly working professionals with the age of 35 years and above with Conventional Family Life value segment seek value of money in their purchases. The extension into digital advertising not only allow ASA Holidays to reach its target market at a lower advertising cost compared to newspaper advertising, it increases the advertisement exposure in different media source.

The recommended medium that ASA Holidays could extend its existence in digital marketing is social media with the use of Instagram as the media vehicle.

It is recommended to apply short-term media scheduling methods, pulsing scheduling, maximising each advertising effect by breaking away from consistent exposure to the target market. Studies has also proved that pulsing scheduling engender higher brand awareness among the target market as compared to continuous scheduling (Byun, Song and Kim 2017, 207). The three-exposure hypothesis created by Herbert Krugman suggested that when a target market was exposed to the same message for the third time, it is when the purchase decision is likely form. The outcome of the media schedule will less desirable if the number of the advertisement exposure is less than three (Groeger and Buttle 2017, 1202).

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