How Primary Advertising Works

When brands find themselves faced with falling demand, primary advertising helps to increase consumer awareness. Milk is a common product that often receives primary advertising. While there are many brands and even milk types, promoting milk can increase the demand for milk.

Creating awareness helps highlight the benefits of the entire class of products; each brand under generic advertising enjoys the benefit of increased demand among consumers. Primary advertising works in two ways;

  • It educates the general public about the benefits of your product, for example, milk. Instead of focusing on a specific milk brand, primary advertising will highlight the benefits of introducing milk to your diet.
  • Primary advertising creates collective demand for one type of product. For instance, when you advertise the advantages of including milk in your children's diets, consumers may start buying milk or buy more of it.

Real-World Examples of Primary Advertising

Primary advertising has helped to promote various products with great success. Some of the most memorable primary advertising campaigns are;

It's What's For Dinner.

When the American beef farmers noticed their beef sales were dwindling in 1992, they came together to fund an advertising campaign. The advertising campaign's main agenda was to position beef as a staple on any American's dinner table. It highlighted the benefits of eating farm-raised beef by giving consumers a glimpse into the farm-to-table process.

While this huge advertising campaign received funding from the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, its benefits trickled down to every butcher in the nation. That is the power of primary advertising.

The Other White Meat.

The National Pork Board created this primary advertising campaign in 1987. They were pushing pork as the alternative white meat alongside chicken and turkey. Some of the memorable slogans they used included, 'Don't be blah.' Thanks to this ad campaign, pork became synonymous with the title 'lean white protein.'

Got Milk?

When dairy producers realized that their sales were declining, they came together and launched the Got Milk? campaign. If there was a universal ad campaign that grabbed everyone's attention, it has to be this one. Got Milk? was synonymous with celebrities flashing a milk mustache in print and TV advertisements.

These advertisements made milk more appealing, and it became a staple on any breakfast table. This primary advertising campaign worked wonders for the dairy industry in America and remains memorable 25 years later.

The Fabric of Our Lives.

Back in the '70s, when synthetic fibers started becoming popular, cotton farmers faced a crisis. The sales of cotton garments and clothes declined with the rising demand for synthetic fibers. They had to do something, and they had to do it fast.

Cotton farmers and importers came together to form an organization. They hired a group of advertising executives to run a primary advertising campaign. The campaign highlighted the benefits of cotton fibers, including comfort and durability, which synthetic fibers could not boast.

Primary Advertising vs. Selective Advertising

Primary advertising is often confused with selective advertising. Yet, the difference between the two is stark. They may have the same outcome: increased sales of a particular product, but the approach to advertising in the two categories is different.

Primary advertising takes the concerted efforts of businesses that fall under the same category to create a generic advertising campaign. The campaign aims at growing the collective demand for the product they all produce without highlighting the different brand names. In return, all businesses involved share the cost of the advertising and the ROI from the campaign.

Selective advertising focuses on promoting a particular brand or product. For example, a business producing yogurt will create an advertising campaign to promote its brand of yogurt. The business bears the cost of advertising, and the ROI belongs to that business alone.