Difference Between Informative and Persuasive Advertising

Informative vs Persuasive Advertising

For any company making products for mass consumption or specializing in any service, advertisement is a must. Advertisement is a part of the overall marketing strategy though it is in itself divided into many types. This article will confine itself to two forms of advertising, that is informative and persuasive advertising that both have an objective of producing more sales though having different approaches. Here is a closer look at these forms of advertising that are quite popular among companies all over the world.

Kotler, the marketing genius, has said that there are three main purposes of advertisement and these are to inform, persuade, and to remind. While remind function is present in both informative as well as persuasive advertisements, we will concentrate on the differences between the inform function of informative advertising and persuade function of persuasive advertising.

Informative Advertising

As the name implies, the major emphasis in this form of advertising is to pass as much information about the product to the consumer as is possible through advertisement. This includes the working principle behind a product, construction of brand image, and trying to rectify mistaken or false impressions about the product. Here, information is presented in a light manner so as to make it look interesting and palatable rather than making it dull and dreary like a tutorial. Informative advertising has been seen to help create awareness about a product and also lend credibility to it in the eyes of the public.

Sometimes, there are rumors about a product that can harm its sale potentially. The company comes out with an advertisement with full information trying to negate the propaganda proving it to be a case of false impression about the product.

There are advertisements coming from governments warning public about the dangers of smoking and drinking. These are examples of informative advertising

Persuasive advertising

Persuasive advertising, as the name implies, adds an element of persuasion apart from providing information about the product. A perfect example is an advertisement about a product that shows a celebrity using that product. In this case, the appeal of the celebrity assumes much more significance than the product itself and the goodness of the product becomes secondary to the lure of using the same product that is used by one’s idol or a famous person. Comparing the qualities of a product with similar product made by another company is another form of persuasive advertisement that lures many consumers towards the product.