If I look back on the past 25 years, I choose two key words: linear development and time competition, gap and difference.
From 65438 to 0979, the advertising industry in China grew from scratch. As a linear development process, it must be from simple to complex, and 25 years is too short to allow an industry to expand its scale calmly. However, there is another time dimension to interpret the advertising industry in China, and that is * * * * timeliness. Due to the gradually open competitive environment, the most primitive advertising industry in China is facing highly mature global competition. It is impossible for China's advertising industry to enter the next stage naturally when each stage is fully developed, and it can only grow by leaps and bounds. How to describe the changes that are taking place? Explore emerging trends? I want to sum it up with these four key words.
brand
China's economic upgrading has led to a higher demand for advertisements. Competition in China market is intensifying, from channel competition to brand competition. For enterprises, advertising has always been the main tool to communicate with consumers, but it plays a different role. It should be said that advertising has always been very important, but it has never been so important. Because when the shelves are filled with dozens of similar products, it becomes very important who can have their own place in the minds of consumers. No matter how it changes, advertising is definitely the core tool to establish a brand. Therefore, the golden age of advertising in China is actually coming, because in a higher level of competition, advertising competition is not an auxiliary means, but a life-and-death strategy.
speed
The development speed of China's advertising industry has attracted worldwide attention. Since 2 1 century, although the speed is average, one is that the existing development speed is still very high in the global scope, and the other is that the advertising industry in China has begun to accelerate on a higher platform. It took China advertising industry 25 years to reach the first scale of 654.38+000 billion yuan. According to various forecasts and analysis, it may only take about 6 years to increase the current base by 654.38+000 billion yuan. The increase of 654.38+000 billion yuan, concentrated in six years, means incredible opportunities.
force
The cake is getting bigger and bigger, and there are more and more opportunities, but the competition in the advertising industry has also entered a new stage. The competition in the future advertising industry must be the competition of strength. Product strength, cultural creativity, consultation and integration are the core competitiveness of the advertising industry. The service of advertising industry appears in the form of products that can be distinguished from competitors, and the refining and packaging promotion of products are the survival foundation of advertising industry; The integration of advertising and entertainment is the mainstream trend. For the advertising industry, the ability to penetrate into the cultural and creative industries will open a huge new space for its own development. An advertising company with consulting power can become an irreplaceable expert in a certain industry and field by relying on the long-term accumulated professional ability of in-depth research. The ability to integrate various resources is also the embodiment of the future competitive strength of the advertising industry.
One change that needs attention is that with the fierce competition in the advertising industry, the concentration will be higher and higher. Grouping is the main body of advertising industry. The cake is getting bigger, but the opponent who divides the cake is getting stronger and stronger. Multinational advertising groups are accelerating their entry into the China advertising market. The contest between the four groups will have a great impact on the direction of the advertising industry, and their share in the advertising market in China may reach a high proportion.
change
Changes in the advertising industry should be seen in the near future. Great changes in the communication environment and market environment make it necessary for the advertising industry to make adjustments. In particular, the change of communication environment is entering a dramatic stage, and various variables will have an impact on the advertising industry. Therefore, the coming stage is full of changes, with many unknown variables. Opportunities and challenges coexist. China advertising industry must face up to changes, get used to living in changes, meet challenges in changes, look for opportunities and create its own development space.
Development Status and Future Trend of Advertising Industry in China
Background: The healthy development of macro-economy has promoted the overall promotion of advertising industry.
In 2003, the national economy maintained a high growth rate of 83%. With the macro-economic growth, the advertising industry has reached a new height, with a growth rate as high as 19.44%, accounting for 0.92% of the gross national product. Since 1998 (only16a%) fell below the bottom line of% for the first time, the growth rate of advertising industry has continued to decline (1999 15.6%, 2030 14 _ 5%, 200/kloc). The growth space of advertising market in this year mainly comes from two aspects: one is the adjustment of China's industrial structure, and the other is the structural breakthrough of national consumption pattern. Advertising is characterized by a substantial increase in advertising and a steady change in industry structure.
In 2003, the top five product categories of advertising were still real estate, medicine, food, household appliances and cosmetics. The continuous demand for residential consumption and automobile consumption continues to support the growth momentum of real estate advertising and automobile advertising. The "dark horse" of this year's advertisement is clothing, with a total investment of 4.423 billion yuan, up 79.50% year-on-year, ranking ninth.
In short, the good situation of the national economy has directly promoted the healthy development of the advertising market. Judging from the current development trend of various industries in the national economy, the development of automobile, real estate, medical equipment, tourism, communication products and other industries is quite sustainable, and this good development momentum is the basic condition for the growth of the advertising market. With the escalating competition in the industry, the competition for the consumer market by advertisers will also become fierce. Advertiser research shows that the interviewed enterprises first emphasize the importance of strategy combination, and secondly, among the most important marketing strategies of the interviewed enterprises, the selection rate of promotion strategy is second only to product strategy. In other words, in order to stay ahead in the competitive landscape, besides product strategy, promotional campaigns such as advertising will also be used as important marketing means by competitors, and the total amount of advertising will increase.
Driving force: the large-scale survival of advertising companies
After 1996, the development of advertising industry in China mainly benefited from the following two driving factors: First, the pursuit of economies of scale promoted the adjustment and upgrading of advertising structure. Second, the dominant position of advertisers has become increasingly prominent, which has promoted the adjustment of advertising business entities. Among them, there are two typical driving factors in the near future:
First, the advertising subject accelerates the pace of integration in various fields and pursues large-scale survival.
1. The large-scale survival of advertising companies
In 2002, two things attracted people's attention in the field of advertising companies. -is the disappearance of Delta High School; One is a joint venture between Shanghai and Guangzhou. Behind the two events, there are two trends: first, international advertising groups have carried out larger-scale mergers and alliances on a global scale; Second, the international advertising group "incorporated" local advertising companies. In the middle and late 1990s, multinational advertising companies devoted themselves to seeking a place in the mainland advertising market by integrating media resources. These large advertising companies are not only large in scale, but also have businesses all over the world. "Scale expansion" is the supporting force for their strong growth.
According to the WTO service trade concession table, after 65438+February 10 in 2003, China joint-venture advertising companies were allowed to hold foreign shares, and after 65438+February 10 in 2005, wholly foreign-owned advertising companies were allowed to be established. The advertising industry in China will also undergo great changes. On the one hand, overseas advertising companies represented by 4A advertising companies will accelerate the process of "localization"; On the other hand, it will speed up the acquisition and control of local advertising companies.
According to the 2003 annual advertising ecological survey, 80% of the companies surveyed said that they have expansion plans in the coming year, and more than half of them plan to adopt the expansion mode of "establishing strategic alliances with other advertising companies". The cooperation between advertising companies will be carried out in various ways, including business cooperation, equity cooperation and regional alliance.
According to the 2003 ecological survey of advertising industry, advertising companies generally agree with the following three modes: first, collectivization with the goal of business complementarity or upstream and downstream cooperation; Secondly, it is collectivization with the scale of media resources as the main goal; Third, collectivization with regional integration as the main goal.
2. Capital operation and scale expansion
Like the development of other industries, when it comes to scale expansion, it is necessary to talk about capital operation. At present, the capital operation forms of advertising industry mainly include investment and financing between advertising companies, investment by advertisers and media outside the industry, and financing by advertising companies through listing. In just one month from the end of 2002 to the beginning of 2003, Tom, Baima and Bole were listed in Hong Kong. Hongzhi advertising also successfully listed on the backdoor.
Obtaining funds is an important prerequisite for advertising companies to expand mergers and acquisitions. As for the source of development funds for advertising companies, according to the 2003 advertising ecological survey, only 3% of the advertising companies interviewed came from listing financing; The development funds of most advertising companies come from the self-accumulation of the company. In this regard, multinational advertising companies have obvious capital advantages and strong desire to expand, and the trend of large-scale mergers and acquisitions and equity participation in local advertising companies will intensify, which will remain the leading force in the capital operation of China advertising market for some time to come. In order to strengthen the strength against multinational companies, local advertising companies will also raise more development funds and expand the company scale through equity cooperation, foreign investment absorption and listing. Capital operation is regarded by advertising companies as an important way to achieve breakthrough development and has high hopes.
Strategic adjustment of advertising management
Second, with the increasingly clear dominant position of advertisers, advertising companies and the media will take providing professional services as their core concepts and efforts to further adjust and cultivate their core competitiveness.
A series of studies on advertisers' marketing activities and investigations on advertising ecology show that the advertising dominant position in the advertising market has gradually developed from "symptom" to "dominant position". With the gradual completion of this "homing", advertisers will play a role in the upstream and core position of the advertising industry. As the "rice squad leader" of the advertising industry, advertisers will promote the consolidation of the advertising market.
One of the manifestations is the adjustment of media advertising management strategy.
1. Adjustment of media advertising business strategy
With the spread and expansion of the media for several times in the past 20 years, the situation of tight media resources has been improved; In this process, with the maturity and differentiation of the consumer market, the "media view" of advertisers has also changed greatly. They tend to use a variety of media comprehensively, actively develop new media, and change the situation of relying on four traditional media. All these have directly led to the weakening of the leading position of the media as the "boss" of the advertising market. Since 1996, the media has changed from "business-oriented" to "business-oriented", emphasizing customer orientation and professional services, which reflects the strategic adjustment of media advertising management.
The second performance is the professional survival of advertising companies.
2. Professional survival of advertising companies
Competition in most industries, especially in fast-moving consumer goods, is becoming more and more fierce. Advertisers are becoming more and more mature in the fierce competition, and have accumulated rich marketing experience on the basis of "spelling" the market, and have higher and higher professional requirements for advertising companies. Both multinational advertising companies and local advertising companies are facing the challenge of being selected and cooperating in a short time, which is also the direct result and performance of advertisers mastering the right to speak. Most international advertising companies in China claim to be good at integrated marketing and communication services. However, with the understanding of enterprises and markets in China, they will also emphasize their advantages in a certain link in order to meet the needs of local advertisers, and look forward to cooperation in some individual fields. However, local advertising companies present two typical ecosystems: one is a business structure that has reached a considerable scale, making a fortune with a special service, such as media agency, and gradually entering multiple service fields to provide additional functions, thus forming a comprehensive service; The other is represented by new advertising companies, which are limited by their own resources. In order to survive, they will focus on a certain service field, or provide offline services, or base themselves on the development of new media advertising resources. In short, emphasize a special service function and strive for further development in a certain field. In short, no matter what kind of "ecology" it is, providing professional services is its purpose and attitude towards survival.
Trend: the characteristics and influence of advertising marketing promotion trend
Among the many trend characteristics of advertisers' marketing promotion, the following two points have a far-reaching impact on the advertising industry:
1. The trend of paying equal attention to advertising and terminals.
The data of advertising research in recent two years show that advertisers pay as much attention to promotion, personal promotion, public relations and direct marketing as online advertising. "Online" and "offline" always echo each other and complement each other. Advertisers' expected investment in "advertising expenses" and "terminal promotion expenses" is increasing. Among them, 70.2% of enterprises are mainly engaged in investment promotion activities, which is almost the same as that of enterprises mainly engaged in advertising.
2. Advertisers should implement more flexible and forward-looking media strategies and tactics.
The higher level competition among advertisers requires advertisers to innovate and integrate the use of media at a higher level. First of all, advertising tends to use a variety of media comprehensively. On the one hand, single and extensive media delivery can no longer meet the ever-changing and developing market and increasingly mature consumers; On the other hand, the traditional media advertising environment is fiercely competitive and the communication effect is declining. In the media selection of the surveyed enterprises, besides TV media and newspaper media, outdoor advertisements, store pop, exhibitions and other media have a strong momentum, professional industry magazines, transportation and other media are also used by a considerable number of enterprises, and the media selection of enterprises presents a diversified trend.
Secondly, advertisers seek differentiated media use strategies and actively develop and use new media. It is found that the Internet, outdoor media, direct mail advertising and new forms of niche media are the advertising resources that advertisers are keen to develop. In addition, in 2002-2003, advertisers frequently used various communication methods such as "event advertisement" and "sponsorship activity", which not only showed the progress and maturity of advertisers in marketing promotion strategies and tactics, but also reflected the service upgrade of media and advertising agencies, which marked that marketing agencies such as public relations set foot in the field of customer service and impacted the traditional advertising marketing services.
Trend and confusion of advertising company's positioning and business adjustment
With the "homing" of advertisers among the three major relationship subjects, the trend change of advertisers' marketing promotion directly leads to the complexity and diversification of their demand for advertising company services.
First of all, the "end" trend of agency system in the transitional period challenges the media agency service of advertising companies.
It is almost impossible for a large number of advertising companies to profit from media agency services, and it is difficult to survive. At present, many enterprises have increased the trend of advertising directly to the media. In other words, advertisers have strengthened direct contact with the media and tend to put on the media independently. The research on advertisers shows that the advertising expenses of advertisers who directly put into the media without advertising agency account for 43% of the total media purchase expenses, which is a rather conservative estimate. In the choice of media, advertisers tend to take the evaluation and judgment of their own personnel or departments as the main decision-making criteria.
Enterprises go beyond advertising agencies and advertise directly through the media. First, consider the cost of advertising investment; Second, solve the problem of tax limit; Third, it can obtain lower prices and additional relationship resources, and enhance the enterprise's ability to resist risks. This trend is irreversible at present, that is to say, it meets the development needs of advertisers. Like the flattening trend of advertisers' logistics channels, advertisers' dominant attitude in "communication" channels is more "direct".
Secondly, advertising companies re-integrate resources according to the needs of advertisers, showing three trends.
The first trend is that the service content extends in depth, the boundary between advertising and marketing is blurred, and advertising companies are changing to consulting companies. Some advertising companies began to get more involved in the marketing and management fields of enterprises; Or while continuing to provide traditional advertising business, start to intervene in product research and development, channel design, brand management and other fields; Or directly choose the front end of marketing and advertising operations (consulting, planning, etc.). ), and basically no longer interfere with the specific implementation (production, release, etc.). ) At the end.
On the other hand, while the traditional advertising companies are proficient in their own industries, they also lack the understanding of the industry where advertisers are located, the experience of marketing practice and the corresponding professional qualities, which can not meet the needs of advertisers to formulate overall marketing plans, so this transformation is also facing great challenges.
The second trend is to focus on a certain field. Compared with some advertising companies expanding their business areas, other advertising companies gradually give up some of their original services.
According to the survey data of advertisers, in addition to comprehensive agencies, consulting and planning companies, professional design companies, media planning and purchasing companies, as well as professional production companies and public relations companies all have different degrees of selection rates among advertisers; According to the investigation of advertising ecology, in addition to providing traditional services, such as creativity, production, planning, media planning and purchase, more than half of advertising companies also provide promotion services, and a considerable proportion of advertising companies provide marketing consulting, planning and public relations services.
The third trend is to actively develop and integrate advertising resources. In order to meet the needs of advertisers for innovative use of media and development and utilization of new media, advertising companies have begun the integration of advertising resources, especially outdoor advertising. In a word, advertising companies are undergoing a process of repositioning, in which some problems and puzzles have emerged.
First, the confusion of how to develop.
The second is the confusion caused by the "end" trend of agency system in the transition period.
Third, how to form the confusion of core competitiveness.
But no matter how confused we are, one thing is certain: scale and specialization are the survival coordinates that advertising companies must reach in the process of transformation. This leads to two trends: on the one hand, advertising companies adapt to the changes of advertisers and advertising media and begin to integrate domestic and foreign resources, funds and technologies in an all-round way. Small and medium-sized advertising companies have also launched new joint ventures in the face of powerful advertising groups, and have taken the initiative to investigate and contact joint venture partners from their own needs. On the other hand, with the diversion of advertising business, small and medium-sized professional advertising companies seek to be good at a certain professional service, or be acquired by advertising groups, parasitic among them, or become partners of advertising groups to serve advertisers.
The trend and existing problems of media advertising management
1. The position of traditional media advertisements has been impacted, and the development of new media resources has been accelerated.
In 2003, the advertising turnover of the four major media increased by 10%. The advertising turnover of the four major media accounts for about 50.8% of the total advertising turnover in China.
Newspapers and magazines are the highlights of accelerating growth. Because of its strong timeliness, relatively cheap price and flexible use, newspaper media has become a media closely combined with promotional activities and the main position for advertisers to release promotional information and advertising information. Magazine media is welcomed by clothing industry, high-end cosmetics and luxury goods industry because of its clear audience positioning, distinctive personality and exquisite printing. At present, a major strategy for advertisers to put in media is that mass newspapers are widely played and professional magazines are deeply done.
From the trend point of view, market segmentation and rising costs have increasingly inhibited the way of marketing promotion through traditional mass media, and various forms of focus or niche media are promising. Nevertheless, the dominant position of TV and newspapers will not change for a long time. According to the advertiser's research in 2003, among the interviewed enterprises, 39.7% answered "very agree" and "very agree", and 33.4% answered "very disagree" and "very disagree".
In addition, according to the research of advertisers, the average proportion of advertisers' media advertising expenses in the annual general factory advertising expenses is 54%, which is lower than the proportion of corporate media advertising expenses in our daily concept, indicating that the offline investment of enterprises is on the rise in the overall advertising expenses, which diverts some traditional media investment expenses of enterprises.
2. Deep integration of advertising resources and service innovation.
Faced with the rapid growth of traditional media such as newspapers and magazines, and the diversion and challenges of emerging media, one of the ways for TV media to enhance advertising value is to deeply integrate its advertising resources and optimize the advertising environment. On the one hand, TV stations have integrated and adjusted their internal advertising resources, such as the comprehensive revision of the central set and the launch of news channels, which has improved the publishing value of CCTV advertisements. In 2004, CCTV's gold advertisement bidding reached a new high, which was also related to this; On the other hand, the integration of local TV resources is the general trend in the future. No matter what the result is, the provincial satellite TV advertising network has accumulated experience for the horizontal integration of advertising resources between Taiwan. In 2004, the development of regional market and the effective development of regional media advertising resources became hot issues.
Under the impetus of newspaper reform, newspaper advertising resources are facing a new round of deep integration. In 2002, the news system reform plan of the General Administration of Press and Publication was introduced, and a large number of industry newspapers and periodicals will be transformed into commercial newspapers and periodicals with the intervention of foreign capital. The exploitable newspaper advertising resources will expand rapidly in a short time, and its advertising business will continue to grow rapidly.
The motivation to promote the integration of advertising resources is the basic concept of providing professional services for advertisers. In order to meet the needs of advertisers, the media has established a customer service orientation and adhered to the road of media marketing. From single product promotion to tailor-made advertising time and advertising form required by customers, the professional services of the media are remarkable. Media service innovation is a very important development strategy in the advertising market, whether from the perspective of advertisers' needs or from the perspective of media management itself. Starting from 2 1302, this trend is particularly obvious: the services of the media began to go beyond the scope of publishing and broadcasting, providing additional services for advertisers' market development. In addition to providing guidance and strategic consulting services closely related to media release, some media also help themselves to familiarize themselves with the unique advantages of the local market and local government, and provide marketing planning and market research services.
Nevertheless, for the media itself, real media marketing still has a long way to go. At present, the overall operation of the media still lacks customer orientation and service awareness. Customer service is more limited to some departments and some customer service personnel, lacking internal marketing awareness, and the coordination between departments can not meet the needs of deep-seated customer service in depth, breadth and flexibility.
In addition to meeting the needs of advertisers, competitive pressure is also an important driving force for various media to launch advertising business strategies. At present, media competition has changed from similar media competition and media competition in the same region to cross-media competition and cross-regional competition. However, the vicious competition caused by intensified competition has brought adverse effects to the whole industry. The most typical action is to reduce price competition. At present, while trying to move from disorder to order, the media also have to face the bitter fruit of over-reliance on price competition. The survey shows that in the next five years, 74.4% of the media will "weaken price competition and regard customer service as the core competitiveness of advertising management". In addition, another typical vicious behavior in media advertising competition is to implement media "privilege" and "demand" advertisements, or to give negative reports in other ways and other "sanctions" behaviors. In this regard, advertisers and the media play a game and finally reach a balanced state, which is also the place where some advertisers with insufficient financial strength are entangled.
In addition, advertising companies have the greatest opinions on the media, both referees and athletes. According to the investigation of advertising ecology, in 2003, on average, 58.2% of the media's advertising revenue came directly from advertisers rather than advertising agencies, which doubled from 29.5% in 2003. This not only revealed the respective actions of the three advertising subjects in this largest advertising campaign, but also "confessed" the fact that advertising companies were further "thrown away" from the media agency field.
The targeted action of the media against advertising companies is that the agency policy is unstable and short-term behavior is common. Some media often actively recruit collaborators when the advertising business is difficult, but once the business situation improves, it will change the original policy towards advertising companies. The lack of continuity in policies leads to an increase in short-term behavior and unstable cooperative relations.
However, the media also claimed that they had difficulties. The investigation of advertising ecology shows that, in the media's view, on the one hand, advertising companies can't really understand the value of the media, and blindly lower the price, which damages the image of the media; Secondly, advertising companies block the connection between the media and the final customer-advertisers, which makes the media unable to obtain sufficient information and increases the uncertainty of advertising activities.