Advertising and promotion of services

Abstract

What does the first decade of the new millennium hold for the advertising and PR industry in the country? ITdriven changes have ushered in a plethora of E-transactions.The Internet is touted as the medium of the millennium. How will this impact on the content and delivery systems of advertising and PR? Channels of information and communication are multiplying both in number and variety, reaching out to consumers across socio-economic lines. Never before have so many roads led to Rome. At the same time, the Indian consumer is much more demanding and market savvy. Paradoxically, even as products and communications go 'global', markets are becoming increasingly segmented. Are advertising and PR agencies accomplices in perpetrating this tyranny of choice or do they genuinely help the consumer? How far do they abide by their self-regulating code? In the interests of their own health, advertising and PR will have to expand their vision from a blinkered pursuit of profit to encompass the larger community of which they are a part. While public interest advertising will get built into the agency agenda, a more media savvy social sector will take recourse to advertising and PR for their own purposes. How will these developments challenge the agencies themselves - their size, structure and methods of operation? A cross section of people representing advertisers and advertising agencies, media space buyers, the social and legal sectors and academia discussed the future of the industry.

Developing further on the discussion Umesh Rajamani distinguishes the intrinsic characteristics of services to see how they influence advertising and promotion strategy.

In the changing scenario, S Seshadri studies how evolving public interest, financial relations and regulatory aspects and the digital media will push the frontiers of advertising.