As advertising continues to evolve across digital platforms, a Chinese media expert is exploring ways to better make an advertisement noticed and make its message meaningful to the people it is intended to reach.
"How does advertising move beyond attracting attention to creating meaningful communication? This question has become a recurring focus in my work in advertising planning and marketing communication," Zhao Yi said.
"As advertising continues to evolve across digital platforms, the distinction between visibility and understanding remains significant. The question is not simply how to make an advertisement noticed, but how to make its message meaningful to the people it is intended to reach," she added.
Zhao said that in a media environment where consumers encounter commercial messages across social platforms, digital channels and everyday content, capturing attention is only one part of the communication process.
As a professional engaged in advertising planning and creative communication, Zhao has approached this question from both practical and research perspectives. Her work does not treat advertising as a matter of producing attractive content alone. Instead, she pays attention to the relationship between the message being conveyed, the context in which it appears and the way audiences respond to it.
"An advertisement may be visually striking and widely seen, yet that does not necessarily mean its message has been understood, accepted or remembered. This distinction is central to how advertising should be planned and evaluated," she said.
This perspective is particularly relevant to social media advertising. Unlike traditional one-way communication, social platforms allow audiences to comment, share, interact with and sometimes reshape the circulation of advertising content.
"The presence of these interactions, however, does not automatically indicate effective communication. What matters is whether the content gives audiences a reason to engage and whether that engagement contributes to a clearer understanding of the message," she stressed.
Zhao's research has examined this relationship between advertising communication and audience participation. The same concern informs her approach to creative expression. "Digital media have expanded the formats through which advertising can reach consumers, but a change in format does not, by itself, guarantee that a message will become more effective," Zhao said.
She said visual appeal is not an end in itself. It is one means of helping audiences recognize, interpret and connect with the information being presented.
This also helps explain why Zhao pays attention to coordination across communication channels. When a brand communicates through multiple platforms, audiences may encounter different versions of its message at different points in their daily lives. If those messages lack consistency, the overall communication can become fragmented.
Another dimension of this question is persuasion.
"Advertising does not operate independently of the knowledge, experiences and social environments that shape how consumers interpret information," Zhao said, noting that her research, drawing on social cognitive theory, examines advertising persuasion in relation to audience cognition and changes in attitude.
Han Yue, a manager at Beijing Yaxian Advertising Co Ltd, said that Zhao's research on green marketing brings this issue into a more specific communication context.
"When advertising promotes environmentally oriented products, creative language and visual presentation need to be considered alongside the accuracy and clarity of the information being communicated. Consumers must be able to understand what a product claims and what those claims mean," Han said.
"For Zhao Yi, this makes the relationship between advertising expression and audience understanding especially important," Han said.
Across these areas, a consistent professional concern emerges: advertising should be considered from the perspective of the people receiving the message, not only from the perspective of the organization delivering it.
"This does not mean that creativity, media placement or communication efficiency are unimportant. Rather, their value needs to be understood in relation to the communication purpose they serve," Zhao said.
Zhao's professional experience and research interests have developed around this intersection of creative planning, audience response and marketing communication, reflecting her effort to examine advertising not as an isolated creative product, but as a communication process in which content, channels and audience interpretation are closely connected.
Please contact the writer at hanjingyan@chinadaily.com.cn
