---
title: "The Calculation and Consideration Between \"Expensive\" and \"Cheap\" in Advertising"
description: "Advertising costs are never a small expense. Entrepreneurs and brand managers rack their brains to make advertising spending more efficient, even hoping to \"achieve great results with small money,\" but it seems that most successful and shrewd entrepreneurs do not give the answer of saving money. Why do many brands, regardless of sales fluctuations, never cut their investment in CCTV? Why do some top brands spend lavishly to dominate popular variety shows rather than cheaper alternatives? Why is Focus Media elevator advertising always a battleground when internet giants are in fierce competition?"
author: "国家广告研究院"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2021-11-06"
language: "en"
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# The Calculation and Consideration Between "Expensive" and "Cheap" in Advertising

> Advertising costs are never a small expense. Entrepreneurs and brand managers rack their brains to make advertising spending more efficient, even hoping to "achieve great results with small money," but it seems that most successful and shrewd entrepreneurs do not give the answer of saving money. Why do many brands, regardless of sales fluctuations, never cut their investment in CCTV? Why do some top brands spend lavishly to dominate popular variety shows rather than cheaper alternatives? Why is Focus Media elevator advertising always a battleground when internet giants are in fierce competition?

Advertising costs are never a small expense.
Entrepreneurs and brand managers rack their brains to make advertising spending more efficient, even hoping to "achieve great results with small money," but it seems that most successful and shrewd entrepreneurs do not give the answer of saving money.
Why do many brands, regardless of sales fluctuations, never cut their investment in CCTV? Why do some top brands spend lavishly to dominate popular variety shows rather than cheaper alternatives? Why is Focus Media elevator advertising always a battleground when internet giants are in fierce competition?
It is not that these entrepreneurs do not pay attention to advertising ROI, but because they find that while advertising on top media is indeed costly, if they choose to save money by switching to similar but lower-tier media, the hidden cost will far exceed the "savings."
Many companies that try to "save" advertising costs actually waste their advertising budget in these attempts to save.

**The Pattern of Successful Brands: Choose the Most Authoritative and Influential Media**
If we must use the simplest expression to tell a brand how to quickly enhance its mindshare potential, it might be: in every media category, always choose the most authoritative and influential one.
Looking at the history of Chinese advertising over the past two to three decades, we can find a law: there is a strong coupling between successful brands and high-quality media, and when this strong coupling is maintained, the result is often the solidification of market structure.
This phenomenon exists in every category and every era, that is, **excellent brands are naturally attracted to media that lead the trend and hold authoritative and advantageous positions, forming a strong coupling relationship.**
If we take 30 years as a unit and sort out the advantageous media of each era, we will find a large amount of factual support.
The first golden period was when television became the center of family entertainment and information.
If we observe the public brands that used television to step onto the hottest and most eye-catching public stage during this period, the conclusion is surprising: except for some enterprises that fell into trouble due to decision-making errors, poor structural adjustments, and blind expansion and mergers, most of the other competitors are still doing well today.
For example, Wahaha, which produced the richest man; Mengniu and Yili, the two peaks in the dairy industry; P&G and Unilever, which still hold strong positions in the FMCG market; and BBK, which evolved into OPPO and vivo...
In the second vitality cycle of television media, television may have ceded its position as the information center, but it remained the entertainment center. The golden programs of local satellite TV stations such as Hunan Satellite TV and Zhejiang Satellite TV, which could attract younger audiences, had prices starting from at least 100 million yuan.
For example, in 2011, the company that won the naming rights for "Day Day Up" with 130 million yuan was Xtep, which had also won the naming rights in 2010; and JDB won the first three seasons of "The Voice of China" with 60 million, 200 million, and 250 million yuan respectively.
With the rise of the internet era, online content has become fragmented and dust-like. Numerous internet app platforms and their built-in precise tags have constructed countless information islands, making centralized ignition extremely difficult.
The few hit online variety shows inherited the mantle of television media and became the entertainment centers of the internet era. We have seen Amasi long-term bound to "Running Man," and Snowbeer bound to "Street Dance of China," with naming fees rising even higher compared to the television era.
Media that can "resist decentralization" and achieve broad ignition are rare and valuable. For example, Focus Media, which can deploy offline ignition facilities along the daily routes of 400 million urban residents, has been involved in almost every major internet giant battle since 2010. And from Focus Media, a large number of rising traditional national brands and new consumer brands have emerged, such as Feihe, Bosideng, Qiaqia Little Yellow Bag, Genki Forest, Miaokelanduo...
This result often gives us an illusion that it is money that makes brands win, and any brand that can afford to spend money can thrive. But is that really the case? Actually, no, and this is a typical reversal of cause and effect.

**Why Do Brands That Master Top Media Win?**
The author believes that behind "Why do brands that master top media win?" there are 4 key logics:

**1) Building social consensus for the brand requires large-scale ignition**
First, most brands that invest in brand advertising and persist will find that before the advertising takes effect, there is a quite painful and difficult-to-quantify stage: the early stage of advertising.
During this stage, brand owners will feel that a lot of money seems to be burned without direct results, as if pouring gold into water... until a turning point suddenly arrives, and brand advertising seems to magically drive sales and market share to soar rapidly overnight.
In middle school chemistry class, we learned that an explosion is an extremely rapid physical or chemical energy release process. In this process, substances in a space release their internal energy at an extremely fast rate, converting it into mechanical work, light, heat, and other energy forms, which is what we call "ignition."
Thus, the prerequisite for ignition is to gather a large amount of combustible material in a limited space and make it reach the ignition point. The same principle applies to advertising.
**When a group of people goes from unfamiliar to familiar with a piece of information, a product, or a brand, from watching to consuming, from owning to comparing, it indicates that the penetration of that information has reached the ignition threshold.**
However, because the digital space we live in today is too vast, and digital information is overly fragmented and even dust-like, it is difficult to ignite an explosion in the digital space. Even if ignited, it is consumed too quickly due to the disorderly scattering of energy.
On the contrary, only in real life spaces can the best media create enough penetration to ignite an explosion. Here, the best media refers to TV programs with ratings above 4%, or media like Focus Media that penetrates the daily necessary spaces of 400 million mainstream people.
You will find that choosing the most authoritative and high-quality media and providing matching product strength is the most important choice for brand upgrading—when a circle begins to notice, talk about, consume, and even imitate a certain consumption, the final moment of ignition arrives...
But please note, just like TV programs with 0.4% ratings, even investing in 10 of them cannot build a brand. This is not like combining the gunpowder from ten firecrackers into one large firework, because buying 20 garbage time slots on local satellite TV can never equal buying one CCTV ad with 4% rating, even if the reach is exactly the same.

**2) High-frequency reach breaks through the blood-brain barrier**
The so-called blood-brain barrier refers to the barrier formed by brain capillary walls and glial cells, which prevents certain substances from entering brain tissue from the blood. Penetrating the brand awareness of core consumer groups relies on "natural immersion," which is difficult to break through their mental threshold. This requires sufficient frequency and targeting.
Having been tempered by the commercial society and repeatedly trained by excessive commercial information, we have long formed a "blood-brain barrier" to similar information. To penetrate this barrier, two tools are needed: **advertising design with sufficient sharpness, and high-frequency repeated oscillation...**

**3) Who you keep company with reflects brand grade and status**
If we pay a little attention, we will find that first-line brands often have a consensus in media selection: Mengniu is always accompanied by Yili, Midea always competes with Gree, Volkswagen always compares with Toyota, and Dell always fights with Lenovo.
From the consumer's perspective, it is another picture: **people will subconsciously think that only brands of the same caliber appear in equally excellent media.**
So for new brands, they will crave automatic endorsement effects, which may not be directly purchasable. But appearing on the best media is equivalent to buying a ticket to the quality brand club that is marked as "not for sale." The value of this ticket lies in its powerful endorsement effect.
Correspondingly, second- and third-tier brands in the industry often appear in second- and third-tier media. If you appear there, consumers will also mentally classify you into the second- and third-tier brand camp. As your advertising budget flows away, the brand you own moves further away from the advantageous perception you want to establish.

**4) Inspiring internal confidence to accelerate overall victory**
Brand communication mainly affects external consumers, but to truly win a battle and complete the rise of a brand, it also requires the coordinated efforts of internal teams and partners.
Brand advertising does not take effect immediately. At this moment, **the combat effectiveness of the internal team is very important. Whether the operational actions of the overall campaign can be executed properly will be an important factor determining external customer perception and sales conversion effects.**
As the clarion call of battle, advertising greatly affects the confidence of the enterprise and related parties. The more people have the power of "belief," the more they can see because they believe, and the more determined and resolute the charging force will be.
We often see that after a brand wins the naming rights for a hit variety show or forms a strategic cooperation with Focus Media, it holds a strategic launch conference. The confidence-inspiring effect of such strategic cooperation cannot be ignored.

**Cheap advertising is the biggest cost**
The ignition theory, blood-brain barrier, endorsement effect, and internal activation actually deconstruct the erroneous perception that "success comes from having money." Making the right choices is the most important thing. Top media and sufficient ignition resources are part of the right choices, and this is the only way to enter the best brand circle.
When a media uses "cheap" as a differentiating reason for selection, entrepreneurs and brand managers should instead calm down. Cheap advertising is often the biggest cost.
Scattered exposure cannot form the ignition effect of social consensus; low-frequency reach cannot break through the blood-brain barrier to form memory; it cannot endorse, and even lowers the brand image; advertising launch cannot inspire internal team confidence, leading to hesitant operational actions and reduced combat effectiveness.
When a battle fails and the time window is missed, the price the enterprise pays is the most expensive.
**Although the best media may seem to require huge investment, it can bring more certain results. As long as ignition succeeds, it is a one-time success.**
Those enterprises that continuously invest hundreds of millions and name top hit variety shows are buying certainty in brand communication.
Those enterprises that have long-term strategic cooperation with Focus Media are also buying certainty in brand communication.
These enterprises calculate well, because more valuable than advertising costs is the certainty of brand success.

**Are you "watching" me?**


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