Chapter 15 Blog

Designing and Managing Integrated Marketing Communications

The means by which firms inform, persuade, and remind consumers about the products and brands they sell is known as Marketing Communications (MCs) Through MCs a company is able to establish a dialogue and build relationships with consumers. MCs show consumers how and why a product is used, by whom, where and when: lets consumers know who makes the product and what the firm and brand stand for; and offer an incentive for trial or use. They allow companies to their brands and other people, places, events, brands experiences, feelings and things. They can contribute to brand equity-by establishing the brand in memory and creating a brand image-as well as strengthen customer loyalty, drive sales, and even affect shareholder value. In light of this marketers have to really be creative in using technology without intruding in consumers’ lives.

The effectiveness of mass media has changed tremendously due to the fact that there is a rapid diffusion of multipurpose smart-phones, broad band and wireless internet connections, and ad skipping digital video recorders. Technology and other factors have deeply changed the way consumers’ process communications.

The marketing communications mix consists of eight major modes of communications:

1. Advertising: Is a paid form of non-personal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods or services by an identified sponsor.

2. Sales promotion: Is used when encouraging trial or purchase of a product or

service.

3. Event s and experiences: company sponsored activities and programs designed to create brand-related interactions.

4. Public relations and publicity: programs directed internally or externally or promote or protect a company’s image or its individual product communications.

5.  Direct marketing: Use of mail, telephone, fax, email or internet to communicate directly with or solicit response or dialogue from specific customers and prospects.

6. Interactive marketing: online activities and programs to engage customers or prospects and directly or indirectly raise awareness improve image or elicit sales.

7. Word-of –mouth marketing: People to people oral, written, or electronic communications that relate to the merits or experience.

8.  Personal selling: Face to face interaction with one or more prospective purchasers for the purpose of making presentations, answering questions and procuring orders.

Developing effective communications requires eight steps:  (i)Identifying the target audience (ii) Determine objectives (iii) Design communications (iv) Select channels (vi) Establish budget (vii) Decide on media mix (viii) Measure results

  Manage integrated marketing communications

The process must start with a clear target audience in mind: potential buyers of the company’s products, current users, deciders or influencers and individuals, groups, particular publics, or the general public. The target audience critically influences the communicator’s decisions about what to say, how, when, where and to whom.

Determine the communication objectives

Category need

Establish a product or service category as necessary to remove or satisfy a perceived discrepancy between a current motivational state and a desired emotional state.

Brand awareness:

Foster the consumer’s ability to recognize or recall the brand within the category, in sufficient detail to make a purchase. Recognition is easier to achieve that recall, but brand recall is important outside the store, whereas brand recognition is important inside the store. Brand awareness provides a foundation for brand equity.

Brand attitude:

Help consumers evaluate the brand’s perceived ability to meet a currently relevant need. Relevant brand needs may be negatively oriented (problem removal, problem avoidance incomplete satisfaction, normal depletion) or positively oriented (sensory gratification, intellectual stimulation, or social approach.

Brand purchase intention:

Move consumers to decide the brand or take purchase related action

Design the communications

Formulating the communications to achieve the desired response requires solving three problems: what to say (message strategy), how to say it (creative strategy), and who should say it (message source).

Message Strategy:

In determining message strategy, management searches for appeals themes, or ideas that will tie in to the brand positioning and help establish points-parity or points- of -difference. Some of these may be related directly to product or service performance (the quality, economy, or value of the brand), whereas others may relate to more extrinsic considerations (the brand as being contemporary, popular, or traditional).

Creative strategies are the way marketers translate their messages into a specific communication. We can classify them as either informational or transformational appeals. An informational appeal elaborates on product or service attributes or benefits assuming that consumers will process the communication very logically. A transformational appeal elaborates on a non product related benefit or image. It might depict what kind of person uses a brand or what kind of experience results from use.

Takeaway

Although Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) requires a lot of effort it delivers many benefits. It can create competitive advantage, boost sales and profits, while saving money, time and stress. IMC wraps communications around customers and helps them move through the various stages of the buying process. This ‘Relationship Marketing’ cements a bond of loyalty with customers which can protect them from the inevitable onslaught of competition. The ability to keep a customer for life is a powerful competitive advantage.

IMC also makes messages more consistent and therefore more credible. This reduces risk in the mind of the buyer which, in turn, shortens the search process and helps to dictate the outcome of brand comparisons.

Finally, IMC saves money as it eliminates duplication in areas such as graphics and photography since they can be shared and used in say, advertising, exhibitions and sales literature.

Chapter 10

A product is anything that can be offered to a market to satisfy a want or need, including physical goods, services, experiences, events, persons, places, properties, organizations, information and ideas.

Product Level - is an important aspect in marketing that a marketer has to critically understand and address. There are five different product levels and each level adds more customer value, and the five levels constitute a customer-value hierarchy.

The basic level is the core benefit: the service or benefit the customer is really buying. A hotel guest is buying rest and sleep. The purchaser of a drill is buying holes. Therefore marketers in the first place have to see themselves as benefit providers.

At the second level, the marketer must turn the core benefit into a basic product. Thus a hotel room includes a bed, bathroom and towels. At the third level, the marketer prepares an expected product, a set of attributes and conditions buyers normally expect when they purchase this product. Hotel guests expect a clean bed, fresh towels, and bathing gel etc…

At the fourth level the marketer prepares an augmented product that exceeds customer expectations. In developed countries, brand positioning and competition takes place at this level. In developing and emerging markets, competition takes place mostly at the expected product level.

At the fifth level is the potential product, all the possible augmentations and transformations the offering might undergo in the future. At this point companies search for new ways to satisfy customers and distinguish their offering.

Basing on product augmentation, it is here that differentiation arises and competition increasingly occur which also leads the marketer to look at the user’s total consumption system: the way the user gets and uses products and related services. Each augmentation adds costs, however, and features and benefits to differentiate themselves. As some companies raise the price of their augmented products, others offer a stripped-down version for less.

Product classification is yet another aspect that marketers use to classify 

products on the basis of durability, tangibility and use (consumer or industrial).

Durability and tangibility:

Non-durable goods are tangible goods normally consumed in one or a few uses, such as beer and shampoo. Since such goods are frequently purchased, the appropriate strategy is to make them available in many locations.

Durable goods are tangible goods like appliances that survive many uses, require personal selling and service, command a higher margin and require more seller guarantees.

Services are intangible, inseparable and variable.

Consumer-goods classification:

These are classified according to shopping habits; these products include convenience goods such as soft drinks, which are purchased frequently, immediately and with minimal effort.

Industrial-goods- classification:

Materials and parts are goods that enter the manufacturer’s product completely.

Takeaway: One of the important elements of marketing mix is Product. Any firm is most known by the product it is offering. The other elements of marketing mix are based on it. Therefore it is of utmost importance that the firm develops a sound product policy.

As mentioned in chapter 8 am fascinated with the topic of branding, and in this particular chapter I see exactly where branding comes in at the augmented product (fourth level). This is where a customer expects to see more than a clean bed and more than a white towel. For emerging markets branding is done at the third level (expected product), its done even earlier in the product level. 

Companies tend to raise prices of augmented products and others offer a stripped-down version for less; this aspect shows me how China and other Asian countries are trying to imitate high quality products in the US and Europe and offer similar products but for less money.

Chapter 8

A brand strategy is how, what, where, when and to whom the firm plans on communicating and deliver brand messages. Where the firm advertises, the distribution channels are part of the brand strategy. What the company visually and verbally communicates is also part of the brand strategy.

A company’s branding strategy indicates the number and nature of both common and distinctive brand elements which would be (1) to develop new brand elements for the new products, (2) to apply some of its existing brand elements, or (3) use a combination of new and existing brand elements.

In this era, successful firms are those that know how to make decisions about how they want to brand themselves. A brand will distinguish one company from the other to be specific from its competitors. If a brand decides to brand its offerings, it must choose which brand name to use.

Three general strategies are:

Individual or separate family brand names:

If a product fails or seems to be low quality, the company’s reputation is not hurt because the brands are separate. Firms often use different brand names for different quality lines within the same product Class.

Corporate umbrella or company brand name:

Many firms such as Bralirwa (for beer and soft drinks) in Rwanda use their corporate brand as an umbrella brand across their entire range of products. In such an instance the development costs are lower and the sales are likely to be stronger if the manufacturer’s name is good.

A corporate umbrella strategy gives the firm a way of combining efforts in its branding. If a company achieves the goal of establishing a positive reputation for the umbrella, then it requires less effort to create a brand appeal for the individual brands. When a customer has a positive experience with an individual brand this can also help create a positive image of the umbrella brand in his mind.

Takeaway

Branding is one of my favorite topics in this course and I want to relate branding to the characteristics of a human being, all the way from their name, height, skin color, and temperament to mention but a few. The temperament may brand each person as an extrovert, introvert, melancholic and so on and so forth. The human traits will always distinguish us humans, no one is like another even twins. In the same way branding products brings a difference; a Gucci brand will never be the same as a Dolce Gabbana, branding will always differentiate the two. I am tempted to say that branding is that special name every person has on them.