By Jennifer Stewart

You hear a great deal these days about information processing - it usually has "technology" tacked onto the end of it and it refers to the revolution that has occurred using computers to communicate.

This involves sorting all the information into categories according to types of brands - the cheapest brand; the most popular brand; the brand driven by a celebrity / friend / relative; the brand used in a TV show. This avoids the more difficult task of evaluating the brands according to criteria such as price, performance, workmanship, engine specification or whatever.

If you're marketing products to customers who make these sorts of choices, you need to provide plenty of visual hooks - colourful ads that attract attention, bright packaging; symbols that associate your product with some pleasurable experience - and also music, jingles and slogans.

The customers who make decisions based on brands are usually more informed - these are the people who are knowledgeable about the product and who can evaluate different characteristics between brands. So the informed buyer looking for a car might evaluate the cars on the basis of three characteristics regarding engine capacity, six regarding braking systems, four regarding fuel economy and so on. A less informed buyer might just compare general considerations of engine capacity, brakes and economy.

Generally the more expensive the purchase, the more likely it is that the consumers will use the more complex brand strategies to evaluate the products.

Gear your advertising to these guidelines - if you market high cost items:

• provide plenty of information for your customers
• organise it for them into categories so they can make their comparisons more easily e.g. list different attributes of each similar product; give unit price information

If you market lower cost items:

• concentrate on the consumer benefits associated with your product
• use attractive packaging and symbols

Even though you might think your product is the best thing since sliced bread and be happy to discuss it and think about it all day, sadly your customers won't share this fascination. So you have to find a way to make sure that it's your product that springs to mind when they're ready to buy.

How?

Studies have shown that the information that is most likely to be retained is the information that is used frequently - your advertising should serve to remind the customer about your product.

Frequency of advertising has been shown to assist retention of information - it's a simple case of "tell 'em and tell 'em often."

It's better to spread your advertising over a longer period, instead of waging a blitz campaign because retention decreases over time. A little often is better than a lot all at once!

Make sure that your advertising can be understood by your target group - there's no point in presenting highly technical, detailed information about corn chips - all the customer wants to know is that they taste good. Information that is too complex or ambiguous will be ignored - or worse, misunderstood - so keep it simple.

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She has undertaken a variety of assignments - writing articles for ezines and the print media; preparing award submissions for business clients; copy writing and proof reading works of non-fiction; editing web pages and ebooks; writing press releases and much more.

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