Message Content Strategies of Commercial Advertising Campaign: Identification, integration, and validation

Designing or developing an appropriate message strategy is one of the most important factors affecting the effectiveness of advertising campaigns. However, there is no study in the literature to categorize the message content strategy. Accordingly, the current research identifies and categorizes message content strategies, and evaluates them using a sequential mixed methods study. Thus, in the qualitative part of the research, the data obtained from the meta-synthesis literature and interviews with advertising campaign specialists were thematically analyzed. The results of this part put message content strategies into 24 themes, 11 sub-strategies, and 4 main strategies. In the quantitative part of the research, using the survey strategy, the relationship between the product type, level of product involvement, the product position in the life cycle, competition intensity, and the competitive position of the brand with each of the four main message content strategies were investigated. A questionnaire was distributed among the target population for 8 samples of the advertising campaigns selected based on some criteria. Finally, the collected questionnaires were analyzed using multiple linear regression method. The results of this part showed a significant relationship between the variables of product position in the life cycle, competition intensity, and brand competitive position with each of the message content strategies. Also, there is a significant relationship between product type and objective differentiation strategy, credibility strategy, and encouragement strategy. In addition, there is a meaningful relationship between the product involvement level with the objective differentiation strategy and the subjective differentiation strategy.