THE IMPACT OF ADVERTISING ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MEDIA (A CASE STUDY OF THE PUNCH NEWSPAPER, LAGOS)

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY

The attitude of people towards promotion differs. Some people are of the opinion that promotional activities particularly advertising paints a distorted picture of reality because it provides the consumer with only the selected information about the product or service. In view of this, repetition of similar themes in advertising has brought changes in social value such as materialism among others. Advertising brings about promotions which act as a medium of communication with individuals, groups or organization with the aim of facilitating exchange by informing and persuading the audience to accept the firm’s product or service.

However, the relevance of advertising to the department cannot be over emphasized. Advertising is one of the essential elements used for promotion of activities in an organization with other components like personal selling, sales promotion. Public relations and publicity act to accomplish their goals.

It is also a truly exciting challenge to misunderstand advertising and its importance to business organizations. In other words, advertising is preoccupied with purpose of giving information about products, services and to show its importance and its quality.

Most Nigerians are exposed to different products through advertisement on radio, television; newspaper etc this then serves as a source of communication to consumers or customers which also helps in the selling of goods and services through persuasion and dissemination of information. In fact, advertising is regarded as one of the materials or mechanism used by the media to call the attention of the public to a particular product or services. That is, when an industry is located in a particular area, advertising serves as a tool of development for the organization.

In brief, what we shall be examining is how the media makes use of their style of advertising in achieving the organizational goals with reference to the Punch Newspaper.

HISTORY OF THE PUNCH NEWSPAPER

The punch is a Nigerian daily Newspaper. It is second largest newspaper in the country in terms of circulation with 80,000 copies published daily in 1999.

The Punch Newspaper was founded by two friends, James Aboderm, an accountant and Sam Amuka, a columnist and editor at the Daily times. Sam Amuka became the first editor of Sunday Punch. In November, 1976, a few years after the first print of its Sunday Edition, the duo started printing its trademark daily newspaper. Both editions were designed to favour a friendlier approach to news reporting, combining footages of social events with everyday political news. The paper sustain itself by delving into broad issues that interest a myriad of people.

However, during the twilight of the second Republic exigencies had introduced conflicts to it original intention. Aboderm and Amuka parted ways due partly to political conflicts. Aboderin later secured the supports of its former foe, Mko Abiola after the later left the NPN. The paper began to take on a political stance mostly against the Shagari regime.

The Punch has been growing from strength to strength despite surreptions tendency of limitation of the study.

STATEMENT OF RESEARCH PROBLEM

There is a cogent reason for researching into any subject. In most cases, the reason could be to discover problems and therefore suggest a pragmatic solution to it. Therefore the purpose of this study is to investigate into the impact of advertising on the development of the media.

It is also to examine and know what would be the outcome of the media if peradventure advertisement were not placed on it. The question then is this, what are the impacts of advertising on the development of the media? This in a nutshell is the problem, which this study seeks to investigate.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

1. Is advertising relevant to the growth of the Punch newspaper?
2. Does the Punch newspaper have good advertising strategies that attract advertisement?
3. To what extent has advertising influenced more customers to punch newspaper?
4. How often has advertising helped the development of the Punch newspaper?
5. Does the advertisements published by the Punch, contributed to the organization’s economics survival?

PURPOSE OF THE STUDY

Having discovered that only programmes on radio and television are normally sandwiched between the programmes and commercials, likewise newspapers and magazine normally earmark a target position of several columns for advertisements Thus, the primary objective of this work is to beam a search light on the media and to know how important advertising is to it.

Secondly, it is to examine the reasons for placement of advertisements in the media and its effect on the readership of the organization.

Thirdly, it is to know about what it readily entails to advertise in the print media viz; the price charges, the system of payment and what follows.

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

This project would aid the development of media with reference to the punch newspaper and how it disseminates information to the consumers and general public about the product or service, so that people will be able to purchase goods and services.

This study will also improve knowledge in the area of advertising. This study will create employment opportunity to employ more staff.

Also, the study would make all current media houses set their eye on all factors that are capable of affecting advertising. It will also help the advertisers (i.e. client) to also know the best medium suitable for their kind of advertisement.

LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY

The likely problems to be encountered in the course of investigating into this research work are:-

1. Lack of adequate finance to do a thorough investigation on the research problem
2. Lack of sufficient time.
3. Unreliable data from respondents.

DEFINITION OF TERMS

Advertising: - Advertising is a professional field of study and practice concerned with various activities in the areas of research, planning setting of informative or persuasive message or both about a product, idea, service, individual or organization; the placement of such messages in appropriate or selected non-personal media of communication for consumption by pre-determined publics of an identified sponsor (s) and further research into the advertising effort.

Development: - According to the Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary (2006), Development is the gradual growth of something so that it becomes more advanced and stronger.

Impact: - According to the Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (2006), Impact is the powerful effect that something has on somebody or something.

Media: - The media are various channels through which information is being passed or disseminated to a mass audience. Such medium are Radio, Television, Magazines, and Newspaper etc.

Marketing: - According to American Marketing Association (1972) “Marketing is concerned with the people and the activities involved in the flow of goods and services from the producer to consumer”. It can also the management process responsible for identifying anticipating and satisfying consumer/consumer requirement profitability.

Marketing is overall term covering product conception, planning, production and distribution through promotion, designed to stimulate consumption.

It is however important to note that advertising is a special form of marketing communication.

Personal Selling: - Personal selling is a face to face communication with one or more persons with the intent of making an immediate sales or development of a long term relationship that will eventually result in sales. The main aim of personal sales is to increase profitable, persuasion and by offering satisfaction to the market and even at the doorstep of the consumers/customers.