Content-Type: text/html Running Head: Corporate Advertising A Content Analysis of Corporate Advertising Claims in Magazine Advertisements: A Longitudinal Approach Jung-Gyo Lee* Doctoral Student [log in to unmask] 573-817-3234 School of Journalism University of Missouri-Columbia Columbia, MO 65211 Jae-Jin Park Doctoral Student [log in to unmask] 573-446-6033 School of Journalism University of Missouri-Columbia Columbia, MO 65211 Fritz Cropp Assistant Professor [log in to unmask] 573-882-1930 School of Journalism University of Missouri-Columbia Columbia, MO 65211 A manuscript submitted to the Advertising Division of AEJMC for possible presentation at the convention to be held in Miami Beach, FL, August 7 - 10, 2002. *All correspondence to the first author: Jung-Gyo Lee 3705 Forum Blvd. #513 Columbia, MO 65203 E-mail: [log in to unmask] Tel: 573-817-3234 A Content Analysis of Corporate Advertising Claims in Magazine Advertisements: A Longitudinal Approach Abstract This study documents advertisers' application of corporate advertising in popular magazines over time. A content analysis of 773 corporate advertisements in Time magazine revealed that there were significant differences in the usage of corporate advertisements among different industry groups across four time periods. The results indicated that corporate advertisements appearing in Time magazine between 1970 and 2000 were overwhelmingly dominated by image advertisements rather than advocacy advertisements. Further, time trends present a stark contrast between image and advocacy advertisements in terms of frequency changes. The corporate identity advertisements were found to be the prevailing form of image advertisements, whereas the issue position advertisements dominated other types of advocacy advertisements, such as counterargument advertisements. Financial and chemical industries were found to be heavy users of corporate advertising. Implications for the results are discussed. Running Head: Corporate Advertising A Content Analysis of Corporate Advertising Claims in Magazine Advertisements: A Longitudinal Approach Introduction Corporate advertising, designed to promote a firm's favorable image or viewpoint on social/environmental issues rather than its product or service, has become an important marketing and public relations tool (McLeod and Kunita 1994). Such advertising, started from the early of 20th century, has evolved into a variety of forms to communicate with various audience groups such as consumers, government agencies, stockholders, employees and special interest groups. Corporate advertising, initially focused on providing a company's favorable image and goodwill, expanded its boundary to issue/advocacy presentations as a firm's social/environmental responsibility has been reinforced (Schumann et. al., 1991). Recently, corporate advertising, "while not selling a specific product or service, is sales-related in some way" (Garbett 1983). As the 1977 Yankelovich, Skell, and White' (see Garbett, 1981, p.92) study implies, corporate advertising may work for benefits of a company in some way as much as typical brand advertising. Yankelovich, Skell and White surveyed 700 corporate executives and managers and found that corporate advertisers perceived that they achieved higher awareness, familiarity, and favorable attitudes (e.g., the quality of their product, the competence of their management, the attractiveness of their stock, their performance in the area of social responsibility) than non-corporate advertisers. Consequently, corporate advertising spending and the number of companies that use corporate advertising continuously increased to that point (Schumann et al. 1991). There is anecdotal evidence that corporate advertising has increased dramatically since Schumann's work. However, academic research on corporate advertising has been limited. Most studies in this area have either surveyed corporate advertisers or presented taxonomies of corporate advertising. No effort has been made to trace trends in corporate advertising, particularly, in terms of ad claims (i.e., image and issue/advocacy advertising) and industry types. Most researchers agree that although the size of a company is a significant predictor in explaining the adoption of corporate advertising, the nature of a company (e.g., an industry type) appears to play a more important role. Although Schumann et al. suggest that industrial goods companies and service companies are more likely to run corporate advertising than packaged goods or convenience products companies (Schumann et. al., 1991), empirical research on this issue has also been limited. The value of further research on the effectiveness of corporate advertising seems incomplete without empirical documentation of its actual use in advertising. The primary purpose of this study is threefold. First, this study attempts to explicate general usage patterns of corporate advertising for the last three decades. In particular, the emphasis is placed on examining if there have been changes in the frequency of usage of corporate advertising over time. A second goal is to compare frequencies of different types of corporate advertising over time. Two general types (i.e., image and advocacy) and six subcategories of corporate advertising (i.e., goodwill, corporate identity, financial, issue position, ideology articulation, and counterargument) were examined longitudinally. Finally, this study attempts to identify industry types that frequently run such advertising over time. Findings should shed some light on understanding industry trends of corporate advertising from a longitudinal perspective. Literature Review Definition of Corporate Advertising Business advertising is generally classified as either corporate or commercial advertising (Waltzer 1988). Unlike commercial advertising, which directly deals with the characteristics or images of a firm's products or services to increase awareness or sales, corporate advertising has its emphasis on creating or maintaining a favorable image of the corporation and its management. In short, while commercial advertising is sales-related, corporate advertising is for the direct benefit of the firm itself rather than its products or services. Based on the results of three previous studies, Schumann and his colleagues (1991, p.37) identified six goals of corporate advertising: "1) enhancement of the company's reputation, 2) support for products and services, 3) enhancement of business interests, 4) representation as a corporate information source, 5) advocation of a position or the counteracting of other's advocacy, and 6) public communication of the company's social and environmental actions." To achieve these goals, corporate advertising delivers a variety of messages (e.g., the history, values, activities, interests, and performance of a company and corporate programs related to a company's main constituents) and appeals to a large variety of groups than commercial advertising (Sethi 1977; Waltzer 1988). Audience groups of corporate advertising include consumers, financial groups, special interest groups, shareholders, employees and government agencies (Patti and McDonald 1985). Based on its goals, corporate advertising can be defined in many ways. For example, using a sample of the 800 U.S. companies, Patti and McDonald (1985) noted that marketers defined corporate advertising in the following order: "image," "identity," "institutional," "issue," "advocacy," and "goodwill." In general, corporate advertising can be divided into image and issue/advocacy advertising. These two categories will be employed in the following sections to classify types of corporate advertising in a more detailed way. This study defines corporate advertising as advertising "to establish, alter or maintain the corporation's identity," which is different from product or service advertising that typically "functions to solely promote the sale of the company's product" (Schumann et. al. 1991, p.37). Origin of Corporation Advertising Corporation advertising has a long history. The first example of modern corporate advertising was the AT&T campaign in June 1908 (Garbett 1981). Corporate advertising, which few firms run before World War II, was frequently used during the World War II (Sethi 1977). However, most researchers agree that contemporary corporate advertising hit its stride during the oil crisis of the early 1970s (McLeod and Kunita 1994; Schumann et. al. 1991). Based on several previous surveys, Lipset and Schneider (1978) asserted that consumers' confidence in business leadership dramatically fell from around 50 percent to around 20 percent between the middle of 1960s and the 1970s. At that time, leading firms needed to improve their images with "goodwill" messages. As the business environment has become competitive and public concerns about the environment increased during the 1980s, firms perceived the necessity to respond to social or environmental issues to enhance their images. As a natural result, image-oriented corporate advertising broadened its boundary to issue or advocacy advertising, "providing a means for companies to promote political, social and /or economic ideas and eliciting public support for corporate positions" (Schumann et. al. 1991, p.36). As corporate advertising extended to "hybrid," "umbrella," or "market prep" advertising (Garbett, 1983; Schumann et. al., 1991) and later to other forms that combine both messages about products/services and the company, there appears to be increased evidence of corporate advertising (Biehal and Sheinin 1998; O'Guinn et al. 1999). Who Frequently Runs Corporate Advertising? Historically, spending on corporate advertising has been meager relative to total advertising expenditures (see Schumann et al. 1991). Garbett's 1981 book, Corporate Advertising, provides detailed information about corporate advertising expenditures of Fortune's 500 largest firms. He identified that 277 of the 500 firms were using corporate advertising in 1978 and that the larger the company, the more it tends to adopt corporate advertising. However, Chasen and Sachs (see Garbett 1981) asserted that the main predictor of engaging in corporate advertising was not size of the firm but the nature of the business. Industrial product or service companies were more likely to participate in corporate advertising campaigns. In the study of a comprehensive literature review of corporate advertising, Schumann et al. (1991) also supported this view. Waltzer (1988) analyzed corporate advertising in three print media (the New York Times, the Washington Journalism Review, and the Columbia Jour nalism Review) from January 1985 to June 1986. He found that such advertising was dominated by petroleum refining companies (33 percent), aerospace firms (18 percent), forest products (paper) manufacturers (14 percent), pharmaceuticals (8 percent), and commercial banking services (6 percent). The study also revealed that consumer goods and convenience products companies did not largely employ corporate advertising. Typologies of Corporate Advertising The primary goal of corporate advertising is to build, change or maintain the corporation's identity (Schumann et. al 1991). To achieve these goals, various kinds of strategies are taken according to communication objective, theme and target audience. For many business corporations and associations, "the purpose of corporate advertising frequently becomes the definition of the term" (Patti and McDonald 1985). Goodwill, issue, advocacy, image, cause-related, financial, and identification are typical terms describing the type of corporate advertising. Different researchers present different typologies for corporate advertising (Cowles 1985; Heath and Nelson 1985; Rothschild 1987; Sethi 1979; Waltzer (1988). For instance, Rothschild (1987) classified corporate advertising as four general categories: image, financial, special opportunity messages, and issue/advocacy advertising. Boyd and Schonfeld (1982) attempted to incorporate different types of corporate advertising into a single marketing-decision model and suggested direct corporate advertising (e.g., financial corporate ads) and indirect corporate advertising (e.g., issue oriented corporate ads). Garbett (1983) suggests three forms of corporate advertising including issue or advocacy advertising, image or identity advertising, and financial or investor relations advertising. Waltzer (1988) divided corporate advertising in two broad categories: image and advocacy advertising. According to him, image advertising takes the form of corporation identification ads, goodwill ads, responsible corporate citizen ads, and public service ads, while advocacy advertising includes ideological ads, corporation defense ads, right-to-reply ads, position-taking ads, and ally recruitment ads. Although there are various conceptualizations and taxonomies of corporate advertising, it can generally be divided into two types: image and advocacy/issue advertising. Corporate Image Advertising Corporate image advertising is designed to create "an image of a specific corporate personality in the minds of the general public and seek maximum favorable images amongst selected audiences" (Sethi 1979, p. 70). Target audiences usually involve present stockholders, potential investors, consumers, employees, suppliers, financial communities, government agencies, and special interest groups (Patti and McDonald 1985; Schumann et. al 1991; Sethi 1979). Favorable images of a corporation can be established by building a good recognition or awareness of the corporation's name and activities, identifying the corporation with worthy causes and values, and differentiating the corporation from other similar companies. Different from corporate advocacy advertising, corporate image advertising is not concerned with social issues and problems. Instead, it seeks to establish good public relations by demonstrating "the human face of the corporation" (Waltzer 1988). Heath and Nelson (1985) categorized corporate image advertising into direct and indirect image advertising. According to them, direct image advertisements denote "ads which carefully and clearly differentiate a company, its products, or services from its competitors", whereas indirect image ads concern "social, financial, or economic matters" (p. 65). Sethi (1979) proposed three types of corporate image advertising including goodwill, name identification and activity identification. Some researchers provide more detailed ramification of corporate image advertising. For instance, McLeod and Kunita (1994) present five types of corporate image advertisements on the basis of various advertising objectives including: goodwill, charity, financial, employee recruitment and awareness. Based on previous studies of corporate image advertising, we suggest four general categories of corporate image advertising: goodwill, corporate identity, financial and employee recruitment advertising. First, goodwill advertisements attempt to improve a corporation's reputation and image by praising and supporting socially desirable values and causes such as altruism, patriotism and voluntarism (Waltzer 1988). Sometimes a company promotes its aid or contribution to a community's well-being, education, health, environment and culture, or informs about individuals', communities' and other organizations' good deeds. Waltzer (1988) conceptualized such a type of corporate communication as "responsible corporate citizen advertisements." Causes such as the Red Cross, welfare and philanthropy are typical subjects of goodwill advertising. Although this type of advertisements is designed to generate goodwill and conveys a low level of corporate identification (Sethi 1979), the ultimate goa l is to lead selected audiences to identify a corporation or its activities with praiseworthy causes and values, which in turn help to establish a favorable attitude toward the company as a whole. Second, corporate identity advertising, often referred to as corporation identification advertisements, is aimed at building and increasing the awareness of a company and its business areas by bringing the corporation's name, logo, and symbols to the attention of selected audiences (Sethi 1979; McLeod and Kunita 1994). Corporate identity advertising sometimes involves informing the public about corporate philosophy, history, anniversary, business expansion, business interest, the latest business accomplishment or technological innovation. Third, financial advertising can be defined as corporate advertising that is particularly targeted toward financial communities such as present stockholders and potential investors (Cowles 1986; Garbett 1983; Schumann et. al 1991). It is designed to attract or maintain the investment community by establishing or improving a company's image and trying to build reliable relationships with investors. Finally, employee recruitment advertisements are designed to attract prospective employees by promoting a company as a good work place (McLeod and Kunita 1994). These advertisements often emphasize a company's concern with equal opportunity, individualism, diversity, and open-mindedness. Corporate Advocacy Advertising The emergence of corporate advocacy advertising can be traced to the early 1900s when AT&T confronted issues on establishing monopolistic telephone network with a multipurpose campaign (Cutler and Muehling 1989; Roland 1987). Before the 1970's, corporate advocacy advertising was not widely used because "few corporations seemed willing to take the risk of making unnecessary enemies by sponsoring advocacy ad campaigns" (Schumann et al. 1991, p. 41). However, with a growing concern for protection of the environment and energy conservation in the 1970s, companies needed to protect themselves from public criticism, media attack and government regulation. Since then, the use of advocacy advertising has become increasingly popular among business organizations and associations worldwide (Waltzer 1988; Cutler and Muehling 1989). Business organizations' extensive uses of advocacy advertising can be in part attributable to the belief that "the traditional corporate response of ignoring unwar ranted and uninformed attacks, or defending one's own position only when called for, has been ineffective" (Seith 1987, p.10). Advocacy advertising, often referred to as issue advertising, is aimed at influencing public opinion by presenting corporations' viewpoints on current controversial issues or defending their positions from criticism and attack (Fox 1986). Cutler and Muehling (1989, p. 40) defined advocacy advertising as "a special type of advertising in which organizations express their opinions on controversial issues in hopes of swaying public sentiment." Seith (1987) notes that advocacy advertising "is concerned with the propagation of ideas and the elucidation of controversial social issues deemed important by its sponsor in terms of public policy" (p. 5). The success of advocacy campaigns is in making a positive change in the attitudes, opinions and beliefs of the target audience toward the advertiser's issue position (Waltzer 1988). Sometimes, it requests selected audiences (e.g., policy decision-makers) to take a supportive stand for the advertiser's position or ask them to take a specific action (e.g., write a letter to a government agency). Waltzer (1988) conceptualized such advocacy advertisements as "ally recruitment advertisements." Typologies of Advocacy Advertising A variety of typologies for advocacy advertising have been suggested by researchers. For instance, Waltzer (1988) categorized advocacy advertising as five types: ideological advertisements, corporate defense advertisements, right-to reply advertisements, position-taking advertisements, and ally recruitment advertisements. McLeod and Kunita (1994) divided advocacy advertising into issue position and counter ads based on advertising objectives. According to them, issue position ads advocate "a specific position on issues of importance to the organization, its industry or business in general," whereas counter ads attempt to correct "misunderstanding or news coverage of the organization by presenting the corporation's position" (p. 143). Some researchers categorized corporate advocacy advertising in terms of the degree of directness or overt persuasion (Boyd and Schonfeld 1982; Cowles 1985; Sethi 1979). For instance, Sethi (1979) made a distinction between indirect and direct advocacy advertising. According to him, indirect advocacy advertising describes "company activities in terms that they suggest serving public interest thereby indirectly advocating these activities as preferred solution," whereas direct advocacy advertising offers "a specific viewpoint or approach to societal problems" (p. 72). In proposing a categorization scheme for corporate advertising, Cowles (1985) also applied the dimension of directness to his taxonomy of corporate advertising and suggested indirect or disguised persuasion and direct/overt persuasion. Based on the categorizations and definitions of previous research on corporate advertising (e.g., McLeod and Kunita 1994; Waltzer 1988), we present three categories of advocacy advertising: issue position advertisements, counterargument advertisements and ideology articulation advertisements. First, issue position advertisements express a specific position or viewpoint of a company on current public issues and societal problems. These advertisements impart "the corporation's definition of the issue, structure of facts and argument, and preferred policy alternative" (Waltzer 1989, p. 44). Issue position advertisements typically convey messages that portray the advertiser's position positively and the opponent's position negatively (Sethi 1979). Second, counterargument advertisements can be defined as corporate advertisements that try to correct public misunderstandings of a company or its activities and defend its positions from criticism and attack (Fox 1986; McLeod and Kunita 1994). In line with this, Cutler and Muehling (1989, p. 41) note, "the majority of advocacy campaigns have been in reaction to criticism." The main purpose of counterargument advertisements is to prevent the negative publicity from hurting the image of a company and its brand. Such advertisements can be considered as a part of reactive public relations strategy when a company is faced with an environment or events that generate negative publicity. Finally, ideology articulation advertisements are designed to promote such values and principles as democracy, freedom, capitalism, free enterprise system, equal opportunity, diversity and individualism (McLeod and Kunita 1994; Waltzer 1988). Sometimes these advertisements "criticize the arguments of those who challenge or oppose it, and argue against government interference with business" (Waltzer 1989, p. 45). Research Questions Although corporate advertising has become a significant marketing and public relations tool with over approximately $ 9 billion expenditures (Biehal and Sheinin 1998), there has been little research on examining how it has been executed and the frequency with which it has appeared in past and current advertising. The value of further research on the effectiveness of corporate advertising would be questionable without empirical documentation of its actual use. To broaden our understanding of advertisers' application of corporate advertising from a longitudinal perspective, the following research questions were generated on the basis of the literature review: Q1 How often has corporate advertising appeared in a sample of magazines? Q2 Are there any changes in the frequency of usage of corporate advertising over time in terms of type? Q3 What type of corporate advertising has been most frequently used (i.e., image vs. advocacy)? Q4 In corporate image advertisements, what kind of image advertisements has been used most often (i.e., goodwill, corporate identity, financial and employee recruitment)? Q5 In corporate advocacy advertisements, what kind of advocacy advertisements has been used most often (i.e., issue position, ideology articulation, and counterargument)? Q6 Are there any variations in the use of corporate advertising among different industry groups in terms of the frequency and type of ad claims? Method This study necessitated a method for enumerating the past and current application of corporate advertising in the content of popular magazines. Content analysis was employed because it has been conceived of as an appropriate method for providing " a scientific, quantitative, and generalizable description of communications content" (Kassarjian 1977, p.10). Magazine advertisements were selected for the analysis "because they are one of the most popular media for corporate advertising" (McLeod and Kunita, 1994, p.145). Schumann et al. (1991, p. 41) also project that "spending on corporate advertising in some form will increase with a continued emphasis on print promotion." In order to assess longitudinal trends, the sample for the content analysis was drawn from four time periods: 1970, 1980, 1990, and 2000. As previously noted, corporate advertising was widely used beginning in the 1970s. Thus beginning in the 1970s seemed to be adequate to project trends (if any are present). In addition, ten-year intervals are sufficiently long enough to capture the trends. Time magazine, which has been very popular to both general consumers and business/financial community, was selected for this longitudinal content analysis. Only full-page corporate advertisements were analyzed. The sample included all corporate advertisements that appeared in all issues of Time magazine published in 1970, 1980, 1990 and 2000. The advertisements in special sections in any issues were excluded from the analysis to minimize potential for multiple advertisements from a single advertiser or industry group. A total of 208 issues were analyzed for the study. Particular attention was paid to establishing the objectivity of the design that confirms the reliability of content analysis (Kassarjan 1977). The requirement of objectivity stipulates "minimizing the possibility that the findings reflect the analyst's subjective predispositions rather than the content of the documents under analysis" (Kassarjan 1977, p. 9). Two coders were employed and trained to establish the objectivity of the study. Training began with a general explanation of the content analysis method. Then, the unit of analysis and coding scheme were explained with exemplar ads. After finishing the training session, a pretest was conducted with 85 ads from magazine issues not included in the sample. Printed coding scheme and definitions of different corporate ads were offered and explained in detail. Then, the judges were instructed to code a practice set of advertisements independently. Any disagreements between the judges were resolved by discussion. Sufficiently high levels of inter-coder reliability (Cohen's Kappa Coefficient = .81) gave the researchers confidence in the main data analysis. After finishing the pretest, two judges analyzed a total of 208 issues of Time magazine separately. The Cohen's Kappa Coefficient was computed to determine the degree to which agreement between coders was above that expected by chance (Cohen 1960). Inter-coder reliability was .88 for classification of image and advocacy ads, and .83 for the classification of subcategories. Results Uses of Corporate Advertising Table 1 presents frequencies of types of corporate advertising placed in Time for the four time periods. Time carried a total of 773 corporate advertisements. Companies placed corporate advertising most frequently in 1970 (N=243), followed by 1990 (N=195), 1980 (N=187), and 2000 (N=148). As shown in Table 1, corporate advertisements appearing in Time magazine were overwhelmingly image advertisements across the four time periods: 79.6 percent in total, 71.6 percent in 1970, 66.8 percent in 1980, 91.3 percent in 1990, and 93.2 percent in 2000. Corporate identity advertisements constituted almost two-thirds of the image advertisements, whereas advocacy advertisements were dominated by the issue position type (93%) during the four time periods. Interestingly, although dozens of financial and employee recruitment advertisements were placed in 1970, they had almost disappeared by 1980. Corporate ideology and counterargument types of the advocacy advertisements were seldom placed across the four time periods (5.7% and 1.3% respectively). As shown in Table 1, the results of x2 test revealed that there were statistically significant differences in the frequencies of each type of corporate advertising between the four time periods. Specifically, the number of image (x2 = 13.48, p < .01) and advocacy (x2 = 69.70, p < .001) advertisements placed in Time was significantly different across the four time periods. So were three sub-categories of corporate advertising (i.e., goodwill, corporate identity, and issue position). The remaining four sub-categories (i.e., financial, employee recruitment, ideology articulation, and counterargument) were excluded from x2 analyses because there were too few cases in each cell. [Insert Table 1 Here] Industry Types and Corporate Advertising Table 2 shows industry types that placed corporate advertising during the four time periods. In total, the 'financial services' (24.2 percent) industry released such advertising most frequently, followed by 'chemical, oil, and energy' (12.5 percent), 'automobiles' (9.3 percent), 'media and communications' (9.1 percent), and 'computer and software' (8.9 percent) industries. In addition, those industries placed the most corporate advertising across the four time periods. Table 2 also reports that the 'chemical, oil, and energy' and 'industrials' groups reduced corporate advertisements beginning in 1980, while the 'health care' industry dramatically increased such advertisements in 2000. [Insert Table 2 Here] Possible variations in the use of corporate advertising were also examined in terms of image and advocacy distinction. Table 3 demonstrates the cross-tabulation of ad types and industry groups. All industries except two (i.e., 'electronics' and 'agriculture, forestry, and paper') used image advertisements overwhelmingly more than advocacy advertisements. The industry that placed image advertisements most frequently was 'financial services' (22.9 percent), followed by 'chemical, oil, and energy' (12.4 percent), and 'computer and software' (10.1 percent). The industry that placed advocacy advertisements most frequently was also 'financial services' (29.1 percent), followed by 'chemical, oil, and energy' (13.3 percent), and 'media and communications' (12 percent). Interestingly, the 'health care' and 'transportation' industries had never placed advocacy advertisements during the four time periods. [Insert Table 3 Here] Table 4 reports which type of industry frequently used which specific type of corporate advertising. Almost all industries adopted goodwill, corporate identity, and issue position types. The financial industry placed the most advertisements in those three types; followed by 'chemical, oil, and energy' (15.3 percent) and 'automobiles' (14.3 percent) with regard to goodwill; followed by 'transportation' (11.9 percent) and 'computer and software' (10.7 percent) with regard to corporate identity; and followed by 'chemical, oil, and energy' (14.3 percent) and 'media and communications' (12.2 percent) with regard to issue position. Although the number of advertisements placed is not huge, unlike other industries, two industries (i.e., 'agriculture, forestry, and paper' and 'electronics') placed issue position advertisements as many as or more than corporate identity ones. [Insert Table 3 Here] Discussion This study documents advertisers' application of corporate advertising in magazine advertisements from 1970 to 2000. A content analysis of the 773 corporate advertisements in Time magazine revealed that there were significant variations in the use of corporate advertisements in terms of time periods and industry types. The trends indicated that the use of corporate advertising has decreased slightly in terms of frequency over time at least in the sample of Time magazine. Corporate advertisements appeared most frequently in 1970 but least frequently in 2000. The results can be attributed in part to shifts in advertising spending between media types with the emergence of new media. Since 1980's, corporate advertising spending in TV (e.g., network/spot/cable TV) as well as other media (e.g., radio) has rapidly increased (Schumann et al 1991). The results showed that corporate advertisements appearing in Time magazine were overwhelmingly dominated by image advertisements rather than advocacy advertisements across the four time periods. This is consistent with previous literature suggesting that the primary purpose of corporate advertising is to build a good image or awareness of a company (Sethi 1979). It stands to reason that the use of advocacy advertising is not as popular as image advertising because advocacy advertising is usually used in a more specific context (e.g., reaction to criticism) and for special purposes (e.g., risk management) as a supplementary and reactive communication tool. Further, time trends present a stark contrast between image and advocacy advertisements in terms of frequency changes. Despite continuously decreasing trends in the frequency of corporate advertising, the appearance of image advertisements has steadily increased or remained constant from 1970 to 2000, whereas advocacy advertisements have experienced continuous decrease. Specifically, advocacy advertisements placed during 1990 and 2000 constituted less than 10 percent of the total corporate advertisements. The popularity of issue advertisements in 1970 and 1980 could be attributed to the heightened public concerns on environmentalism and energy conservation driven by oil crisis of the early 1970s. In addition, several studies demonstrated that public confidence in and support for private business were seriously declining during the 1970s (Garbett 1981; Cutler and Muehling 1989). For instance, Yankelovich, Skelley and White's study (see Garbett 1981) showed that public support for private business declined remarkably from 70 percent in 1968, to 33 percent in 1971, to 15 percent in 1976. The downward trend of issue advertising over time suggests that companies were less willing to take the risk of making unnecessary enemies and permitting possible negative publicity by taking a specific position on controversial issues or societal problems. In corporate image advertisements, the corporate identity advertisements dominated other types of image advertisements, such as goodwill, financial and employee recruitment, across all four time periods. This means that establishing a corporate identity among the public by promoting the corporation's name and activities has been a main communication concern among corporate advertisers for the last three decades. In advocacy advertisements, on the other hand, issue position advertisements dominated other types of advocacy advertisements (such as counterargument advertisements) during the four time periods. Uses of corporate ideology and counterargument ads appeared to be very rare in the sample of advocacy advertisements (5.7% and 1.3 % respectively). This implies that companies have tended to take a proactive public relations strategy rather than a reactive public relations strategy by expressing their viewpoints on current public issues. With regard to the variations in the use of corporate advertising among different industry groups, overall, the financial industry consistently dominated uses of corporate advertisements across the four time periods. This is consistent with the results of the prior studies (e.g., the National Geographic study, see Schumann et al. 1991) noting that service companies are the heavy users of corporate advertising among various industry groups. For instance, The National Geographic study predicted that 64 percent of service companies adopted corporate advertising, which was followed by industrial products companies (61 percent) and consumer products companies (41 percent). It is also interesting to note that the health care industry has dramatically increased corporate advertisements. This may be attributable to a growing concern among Americans for their health during the 1990s. Companies in the chemical and energy industries widely used corporate advertisements in 1970 and 1980 but their usage declined remarkably in 1990 and 2000. The popularity of corporate advertisements among chemical and oil companies in 1970 and 1980 can be in part explained by the social context in which public concerns on environmentalism and energy conservation were heightened. During that period, pollution related industries like chemical and petroleum refinery were the target of media attacks and public criticism. Also there were increased government regulations during 1970s (McLeod and Kunita 1994). Thus, it seemed inevitable for chemical and petroleum industries to defend themselves from damaging their images and reputations by promoting their social responsibility. In summary, this study explored longitudinal trends of corporate advertising in magazine advertisements. The results showed that there have been significant variations in the use of corporate advertising over time. This clearly suggests that corporate advertising is a variegated phenomenon. The results also imply that the employment of corporate advertisements may be influenced by not only the nature of advertisers but also social, political and economic contexts in which the ads appear. This study also has several limitations. First, the main challenge encountered in this study was the classification of each type of corporate advertising. Because an advertisement can often have more than one objective or target audience and employ multiple appeals (e.g., use of both image and advocacy appeals in a given advertisement), it's hard to dismiss the possibility that there were some gray areas in categorizing some advertisements. Second, although Time magazine has been the one of the most popular magazines among various audience groups, its audiences are not representative of the entire audiences for corporate advertising in the U. S. In particular, there is a possibility that the number of advocacy or financial advertisements could be underrepresented because sponsors for those types of advertising might use more specialized advertising vehicles such as trade publications, business magazines or newsletters to reach the financial communities and government agencies. Thi rd, the four time periods employed for the analysis were arbitrarily selected. Replication of this study with samples spanning a different time period might produce slightly different results due to different social, economic, and political contexts. The typologies of corporate advertising presented here may be useful to other researchers who wish to further investigate the incidence or nature of corporate advertising. In subsequent studies, it would be valuable to replicate the present study with more than one magazine so we can be assured of the generalizability of the results. It would also be interesting to examine corporate advertisements appearing in other media formats and other cultures. References Biehal, J. G. and D. A. Sheinin (1998), "Managing the Brand in a Corporate Advertising Environment: A Decision-Making Framework for Brand Managers," Journal of Advertising, 27 (2), 99-110. Cohen, Jacob (1960), "A Coefficient of Agreement for Nominal Scales," Educational and Psychological Measurement, 20 (1), 37-46. Cowles, L. D. 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(1986), "The Effect of Brand Advertising on Company Image: Implication for Corporate Advertising," Journal of Advertising Research, 26 (April/May), 54-59. Appendix Table 1 Cross-tabulation of image vs. advocacy advertising over time Year 1970 1980 1990 2000 Total Specific advertising type N=243 N=187 N=195 N=148 N=773 DF x2 Image ads 174 (71.6%) 125 (66.8%) 178 (91.3%) 138 (93.2%) 615 (79.6%) 3 13.48* - Goodwill 39 (22.4%) 12 (9.6%) 23 (12.9%) 24 (17.4%) 98 (15.9%) 3 15.06* - Corporate identity 98 (56.3%) 111 (88.8%) 155 (87.1%) 114 (82.6%) 478 (77.7%) 3 15.27* - Financial 21 (12.1%) 2 (1.6%) - - 23 (3.7%) - - - Recruitment 16 (9.2%) - - - 16 (2.6%) - - Advocacy ads 69 (28.4%) 62 (33.2%) 17 (8.7%) 10 (6.8%) 158 (20.4%) 3 69.70** - Issue position 67 (97.1%) 60 (96.8%) 11 (64.7%) 9 (90%) 147 (93%) 3 78.61** - Corporate ideology 2 (2.9%) 2 (3.2%) 5 (29.4%) - 9 (5.7%) - - - Counter-argument - - 1 (5.9%) 1 (10%) 2 (1.3%) - - Note: 1. * p < .01 2. ** p < .001 3. Four types of corporate ads (i.e., financial, recruitment, corporate ideology, and counter-argument) were excluded from x2 analyses because of too few cases. Table 2 Industry types placed corporate advertising over time Year 1970 1980 1990 2000 Total Industry type N=243 N=187 N=195 N=148 N=773 Agriculture, forestry, & paper 8 (3.3%) 11 (5.9%) 3 (1.5%) - 22 (2.8%) Automobiles 1 (.4%) 12 (6.4%) 44 (22.6%) 15 (10.1%) 72 (9.3%) Chemical, oil, & energy 33 (13.6%) 49 (26.2%) 7 (3.6%) 8 (5.4%) 97 (12.5%) Computer & software 16 (6.6%) 8 (4.3%) 22 (11.3%) 23 (15.5%) 69 (8.9%) Consumer goods 5 (2.1%) 8 (4.3%) 16 (8.2%) 7 (4.7%) 36 (4.7%) Electronics 7 (2.9%) 10 (5.3%) 2 (1%) 1 (.7%) 20 (2.6%) Financial services 53 (21.8%) 44 (23.5%) 48 (24.6%) 42 (28.4%) 187 (24.2%) General services 21 (8.6%) 2 (1.1%) 7 (3.6%) 6 (4.1%) 36 (4.7%) Health care 9 (3.7%) - 2 (1%) 29 (19.6%) 40 (5.2%) Industrials 50 (20.6%) 12 (6.4%) - 2 (1.4%) 64 (8.3%) Media & communications 28 (11.5%) 19 (10.2%) 12 (6.2%) 11 (7.4%) 70 (9.1%) Transportation 12 (4.9%) 12 (6.4%) 32 (16.4%) 4 (2.7%) 60 (7.8%) Table 3 Image and advocacy advertising placed by types of industry Image ads Advocacy ads Industry type N=615 N=158 Agriculture, forestry, & paper 12 (2%) 10 (6.3%) Automobiles 61 (9.9%) 11 (7%) Chemical, oil, & energy 76 (12.4%) 21 (13.3%) Computer & software 62 (10.1%) 7 (4.4%) Consumer goods 25 (4.1%) 11 (7%) Electronics 9 (1.5%) 11 (7%) Financial services 141 (22.9%) 46 (29.1%) General services 25 (4.1%) 11 (7%) Health care 40 (6.5%) - Industrials 45 (7.3%) 19 (12%) Media & communications 59 (9.6%) 11 (7%) Transportation 60 (9.8%) - Table 4 Types of corporate advertising placed by types of industry Image ads (N=615) Advocacy ads (N=158) Goodwill Identity Financial Recruitment Issue Ideology Counter Industry type N=98 N=478 N=23 N=16 N=147 N=9 N=2 Agriculture, forestry, & paper 2 (2%) 10 (2.1%) - - 10 (6.8%) - - Automobiles 14 (14.3%) 47 (9.8%) - - 10 (6.8%) - 1 (50%) Chemical, oil, & energy 15 (15.3%) 48 (10%) 9 (39.1%) 4 (25%) 21 (14.3%) - - Computer & software 7 (7.1%) 51 (10.7%) 1 (4.3%) 3 (18.8%) 4 (2.7%) 2 (22.2%) 1 (50%) Consumer goods 4 (4.1%) 20 (4.2%) 1 (4.3%) - 6 (4.1%) 5 (55.6%) - Electronics 2 (2%) 7 (1.5%) - - 11 (7.5%) - - Financial services 26 (26.5%) 104 (21.8%) 4 (17.4%) 7 (43.8%) 46 (31.3%) - - General services 7 (7.1%) 18 (3.8%) - - 11 (7.5%) - - Health care 2 (2%) 38 (7.9%) - - - - - Industrials 5 (5.1%) 33 (6.9%) 5 (21.7%) 2 (12.5%) 18 (12.2%) 1 (11.1%) - Media & communications 11 (11.2%) 45 (9.4%) 3 (13%) - 10 (6.8%) 1 (11.1%) - Transportation 3 (3.1%) 57 (11.9%) - - - - -