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Advertising and brand awareness

Brand awareness, in general, means the extent to which a brand associated with a particular product is recognised by potential and existing customers either positively or negatively. It’s one of the main reasons people will chose one product over another, hence having a strategy in place is important. The objective of a successful brand awareness strategy is to gain trust and credibility with customers and end users.

Advertising forms a main part of any brand awareness strategy through the use of both passive and active advertising. Using the specifier market as an example the two different principles can be described as:

Passive advertising addresses the audience without regard for the specification process
Active advertising targets the audience at one or more stages of the specification process.

An advertisement in a trade journal is a typical example of passive advertising whereas a technical page in a product directory is active advertising.