IELTS Listening Summary Completion | Example 4

Section 4 is a lecture on sales and marketing.

Good evening and welcome to the second class of our sales and marketing course. Tonight and in the next few weeks, I will be talking about advertising. To be specific about different types of advertising, different types of message all of which of course are supposed to make your company or your organization, the government perhaps, more successful. Now please note that I am not at this stage, going to talk about advertising media. There are various choices here, radio, newspapers, Television, billboards, magazine, and of course, the

internet. It’s almost impossible to go into Google or Yahoo or whatever and not find adverts on almost every page. But we’ll talk about the various choices of media later. First I will stress one thing, advertising can be expensive. Whether you are a small business or an NGO or a multinational corporation. So, it’s very important that what you spend on advertising is money well spent. Money that achieves your objectives. Whatever they might be. The ads must be cost effective. It is therefore essential that you use the right type of advertising with the right message that makes it effective. There are several types of advertising aiming to promote one, sometimes more of the following things; brand name, company image, a product, a service rather than a product, or a group like a manufacturers association or a cooperative. Can you think of anything else? Right, you might want to make people look after their health better and associate your company with things that can help them do this. But the common aim is that the advertiser wants to change or reinforce people’s attitudes and perceptions. And in most cases their behavior. Maybe their buying habits. Which type you choose depends on your objectives. All clear so far? Good. Okay. Let’s look at a very common type – advertising designed to promote a brand name. If you go out to buy many types of products, toothpaste, detergent, cheese, how many of you think of the name of the company that made it? Right, you don’t usually think of Procter & Gamble when you buy Tide laundry Detergent, or Cascade dishwashing powder, or the Craft Company when you buy Philadelphia cream cheese. Philadelphia cream cheese is a registered brand name. In fact, the name of the company, Craft, is hardly noticeable on the package. The point is, that these companies have successfully promoted the name of various products and consumers buy these products primarily because they recognize the brand name. They may not even know the name of the company that makes it. So, advertising to promote a brand name is designed to create and keep a strong image in the customer’s mind of the product, not the company. For example, would you buy Shell? You know, the big oil company? Would you buy Shell Beer? It’s the famous company or probably not. Imagine, but what if Shell had bought a brewery and marketed a beer called Granddad’s old ale. You can bet that the Shell company will be in

the smallest print possible and will never be mentioned in Granddad’s old ale advertising. But when you buy a can of Shell oil or some gasoline, the word Shell is big and everywhere. So, there is nothing better than a good brand name. Now, let’s look at another type of advertising – advertising that is designed to promote a company’s image. Imagine you’ve started a new company. You might want to start by getting the company name known first before you worry about advertising your products and services. One company that did this was in San Francisco = the San Fran Video store. The managers decided to promote the company name rather than promote the videos they rented out. They put small ads in local newspapers that simply said, “San Fran Video Store. A great selection of movies.” And they also had people handing out little cards with the same message on them plus a list of the store locations. So, they didn’t spend a fortune on advertising. They put most of their money into making sure they had a great selection of movies and it worked. They started with four stores in 1995 and now they have at last count, 27. Now, can you think of examples of companies advertising both a product and the company name in the same advert? Common, you must be able to think of one. That’s right, a good example – makers of luxury things like perfume and fashion. For example, when Chanel brings out a new perfume, the advertising message is always something like “Night light by Chanel”. This almost immediately gives the new perfume a good reputation because it’s by Chanel and also reinforces perception of the company name. So, the different types of advertising might not be mutually exclusive. The important thing is that the objectives must be clear. Mutually supportive and not contradictory. Another type of advertising is designed to promote a service rather than a physical product. But, our time is up, so we’ll leave that to next time. Goodnight everybody.

1. Various products
2. Brewery
3. Grandad’s old ale
4. Message
5. List 

“The point is, that these companies have successfully promoted the name of various products and consumers buy these products primarily because they recognize the brand name.” Also, look at how the question is paraphrased from the sentence in the passage. While the “the brand name” has been used in the passage, the question states “the name of the manufacturer.”

For the second question, it is clear from the talk which goes thus:

“but what if Shell had bought a brewery and marketed a beer called Granddad’s old ale.”

For the third question, it is clear from the talk which goes thus: 

“but what if Shell had bought a brewery and marketed a beer called Granddad’s old ale..”

For the fourth question, it is clear from the talk which goes thus: 

“ And they also had people handing out little cards with the same message on them plus a list of the store locations.”

For the fifth question, it is clear from the talk which goes thus: 

“And they also had people handing out little cards with the same message on them plus a list of the store locations.”