Marketing Communication
(3037 words)
Marketing is not about finding a pot of gold in the end of the rainbow and get sacked by a Leprechaun but it’s the strategy to get that pot of gold. One of the strategies would be the Marketing Edge, developed by who was developing plans for a travel club at Mountain One Financial Partners, which is the parent company of Hoosac Bank (assets size: $322 million), North Adams, Mass. This popular online service allows marketers to interchange useful work-related information with each other. It is a membership benefit of the ABA Marketing Network. Through the Exchange, which is e-mail Listserv, marketers can swap marketing ideas and other helpful information with each other. In addition, they value the quality of products rather the quantity of it. Good quality merchandise means an increase of sales.
Marketing ( 2006) is defined as activities that direct the flow of goods and services from producers to consumers. In highly developed industrial economies, marketing considerations play a major role in determining corporate policy. Once primarily concerned with increasing sales through advertising and other promotional techniques, corporate marketing departments now focus on credit policies, product development, customer support, distribution, and corporate communications. Marketers focus their production on the needs and desires of their customers, the motivation to captivate their attention they must have the edge or the spice in style to get the clientele’s interest.
One approach that has been evolving and will always be shaping the trends in world economy is the Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC), according to (1998), it is a set of empirically derived guidelines, which not unlike the practice of medicine, are designed to yield predictable results using proven theory, concepts and procedures. And, by virtue of ongoing controlled testing (much like medical clinical studies), along with advances in technology, IMC is also a catalyst in developing new and revolutionary techniques and variables that further expand and enhance the process of targeted marketing communication. Let’s take a look at Coca Cola and Pepsi Cola Company both offers the Coca Colored soft drink.
The Coca-Cola has an outstanding vision for how to make the most of its priceless historical assets. It is one of the first corporations to move an entire advertising and brand history to an online Digital Media environment,” said , general manager, Digital Media Solutions, IBM. “This type of advanced enterprise content management technology enables corporations to repurpose valuable assets, as well as improve efficiency, speed, continuity and collaboration in a way that gives them a competitive advantage. Their collaboration with IBM is their way of preserving its rich history at the same time the publicity of the said article would open new ideas for customers though, the said project benefits mostly their employees with that for the continual of their support, the stronger their workforce the better the production of their goods. It does prove that through IMC with the sophistication of technology would escalate the mass sales. Going back to the history of the Coca Cola Company, in May 1886, Coca Cola was invented by Doctor a pharmacist from Atlanta, Georgia. concocted the Coca Cola formula in a three legged brass kettle in his backyard. The name was a suggestion given by bookkeeper . Being a bookkeeper, also had excellent penmanship. It was he who first scripted “Coca Cola” into the flowing letters, which has become the famous logo of today. Advertising was an important factor in and success. After the death of the fountain soda, which was housed in the drug store, the soda fountain counter served as a meeting place for people of all ages; comes the bottled soft drinks to update their product, in April 23, 1985, a new trade secret the release of the “new coke”.In 1969, The Coca Cola Company and its advertising agency, , ended their popular “Things Go Better With Coke” campaign, replacing it with a campaign that centered on the slogan “It’s the Real Thing.” Beginning with a hit song, the new campaign featured what proved to be one of the most popular ads ever created. Since, the consumer’s preference is widely varied, they are able to adapt and even make a statement. Through, the IMC the company was able to integrate public relations, advertising and sales promotion, direct, database, eCommerce marketing in one blow. Thus, today, products of the Coca Cola Company are consumed at the rate of more than one billion drinks per day.
Pepsi Cola the competing company of Coca Cola Company has brought advertising in a strategic way just like in the year of 1996. They introduced the Pepsi Stuff program, which kicks off in most markets, is simple: consumers drink Pepsi, collect “Pepsi Points” and redeem them for Pepsi Stuff — a wide array of high-quality t-shirts, hats, sweatshirts, denim and leather jackets, sunglasses, kick sacks, mountain bikes, beach chairs, duffel bags and other Stuff that active people use and enjoy throughout the summer. Two years after, to compete the rival company’s diet Coke; Pepsi launched Pepsi One nationally in October 1998, Pepsi-Cola Co. turned to its longtime Omnicom Group agency, BBDO Worldwide, New York, and spent more than $26 million in measured media for just a fraction of the year. Launch ads featured Oscar-winner . of the film “Jerry Maguire.” Their unique innovation through the use of a movie is one big scheme that communicates to the public especially to the fanatics to purchase their product. Market communication is not just about proving the quality of the product sold at affordable prices, it is being ingenious to speak between the advertisement and the likes and it’s in IMC where it has the all – in –
one concept where its flexibility enables one to choose what fits best in the occasion. Knowing that the movie was a success, it has escalated the sales then it has to keep going, ABC and Pepsi look to make television history during the Pepsi ‘Play for a Billion’ Game Show on Sunday, September 12 with a Potential $1 billion prize; ABC Stars and to co-host with a special performance by Destiny’s Child. Pop stars are famous thus, made Pepsi prominent too. In addition of the prize money at stake in the said game show, the effect was it promoted two companies, the ABC Television Network where people would watch continually and at the same time honor the products of Pepsi. Through the years, they have accumulated vast popularity; those strategies kept them standing ‘till the present.
Most firms now realize that they have to integrate their marketing and communications program through the concept of IMC. IMC become the accepted norm of businesses and apparently the agencies that service their needs. Here we critically consider IMC in terms of (1) development, (2) impact on marketing communications, (3) barriers to further progress, and (4) current location identification and likely development in the future that are clearly in customer and consumer interests. Those issues are potentially related because, intuitively, from the point of view of the agency’s client, there would seem to be a logic in compensating agencies for communication achievements–for example, changes in or reinforcement of audience knowledge, attitudes, and/or behaviors, including purchase behaviors, as reflected in sales, revenues, and profits–rather than for professional activity–such as advertisements or stories produced and placed ( 1999).
Traditionally, advertising and public relations agencies have been compensated on the basis of their activities rather than on the basis of outcomes (1999). The legitimacy of the system of media commissions, based as it is on rates charged by media for space and circulation, is often argued based on the achievement of audience exposure to messages, though the appearance of messages only assures an opportunity for exposure and may fail to produce an outcome of value, even if exposure does take place.
Traditional methods of measurement and agency compensation may not be appropriate in the practice of integrated marketing communication, however. (2000) assertion that IMC’s “progression as a concept and discipline is entirely appropriate and in accordance with scientific theory insofar as a new emergent paradigm is concerned” () suggests that IMC may be presumed to be a developing nontraditional marketing communication practice–or at least to extend beyond traditional practices of marketing communication. It is therefore legitimate to investigate new or appropriate methods of measurement and their relationship to new or appropriate methods of agency compensation.
In its practical guise, IMC attempts to combine, integrate, and synergize elements of the communications mix, as the strengths of one are used to offset the weaknesses of others. In addition, many organizations have actively undertaken integration of their communications disciplines under the umbrella of one strategic marketing communications function, specifically IMC (1998; 2002). (2002) suggests, for example, that publicity and advertising support each other and create greater impact in a cost-effective manner.
There are quite a few examples where the IMC has worked well in the modern era. Is anyone familiar of E-bay, Amazon, or Yahoo buys? Well, that’s what we call eCommerce where one can go online shopping at home. In the advertisement phase where one can combine people support, customer care and product promotion, there had been outbreak of various tactics from food, gadgets, to leisure’s like travel agencies, the technique is to get a clear picture of what to market to drive the brand value. Industry and trade establishment like Coke and Pepsi that was mentioned earlier, the airline companies, and more importantly the media industries. Given (1) the explosive growth of new electronic media (1998), (2) the numerous and diverse means of communication and communication options (2001), (3) the speed, span, and reach of electronic communication, which is driving firms to adopt a global perspective ( 2003), and (4) the rapidly changing advertising environment ( 2004). This provide an outlook on how IMC works, accommodating yet stable enough to establish customer – based brand equity.
There are also establishments wherein they don’t advertise with the use of global concept of IMC, not because it’s not helpful to them but due to the reason that to a certain extent, it’s violating their code of ethical conduct. These are the hardware, architecture and the law firms. The means of building their name is by means of their competence or performance in their chosen career or job. They don’t build a brand name that needs publicity but their given name or the name of the firm itself. Its target is not the global market rather, an individual(s) who is need of their service. In putting up one’s name is by meeting the expectation, fulfilling the need and the satisfaction of their individual clientele(s), if they fail to do such their license would be at stake. They utilize one of concepts of the IMC’s which is known as the Personal Selling. Personal selling is using face – to – face communication between seller (architect, lawyer, and construction) and the buyer (client) wherein they are selling their services not some kind of branded goods. In order to attain the clientele’s trust, they have developed in them interpersonal communication skills that acknowledge their ethical principles in doing their business. Speaking of which, let’s take a look at the guidelines of the Architecture’s code of ethics, as an example. Building the ethics architecture:
Compliance and values. Ethics architecture starts by identifying all compliance and values drivers-items that create the need for a focus on ethics. They include compliance, laws, rules, regulations, principles, and best practices. An example is the U.S. Federal Sentencing Guidelines. But more than compliance, there needs to be a focus on values that the organization considers critical to success, such as trust and loyalty. These values originate from the industry, the company, the culture, and employees and can be operationalized in a clear code of ethics.
Strategies. The combination of compliance and values drivers creates the need for strategies, which are company-specific expectations, practices, knowledge, skills, attitudes, procedures, and tools that help guide ethical behaviors among employees.
Practice areas. These are job activities or whatever HR job, task, or responsibility structures the company has in place. For each practice area, identify how each strategy and driver affect each employee’s activities and responsibilities. For example, the value of trust for an instructional designer might include this description: “Following up with subject matter experts helps build trust between HRD and production.”
In addition, practice areas include a description of how and how often an employee might be potentially exposed to a compliance or value driver. Under practice area, we could investigate to what extent the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, for example, affects instructional designers.
Knowledge, skills, attitudes make up each practice area; KSA’s support each strategy. An instructional designer, for example, working on building trust needs knowledge of negotiation, interpersonal skills, and a collegial attitude.
Procedures and tools. An organization must have those in place to encourage ethical behaviors. Procedures include such processes as performance appraisals to establish and reward ethical behaviors and means by which unethical behaviors are handled. Tools can be a written code of ethics, a mission statement that includes values, or ethics training.
Evaluation. Ongoing evaluation ensures that the ethics architecture is actually sustaining ethical behaviors.
In the statements above, it clearly shows that in order for an organization to function well and live harmoniously in the workplace one must follow set of rules and guidelines and in the observance of their code of ethics. These comprise the internal communication at every level of management. For an instance, in the top level of management where it is often handled by the CEO (Chief Executive Officer), President and the Vice – President, these people are mainly responsible in directing, controlling, organizing, and planning and evaluating the company’s resources. They, at the same time, think of the future of the company and set goals and objectives for them to base on their present and future dealings. In order to effectively function they delegate responsibilities to the middle level management. The middle level management comprise of the Plant Manager, Operations Manager and the Department Manager who are responsible in carrying out the top level managers decisions. They are in-charge of taking long –term goals and turn them into short term goals which they can easily be achieve by the first line managers. The first line managers are the Supervisors, Forman, and Office Managers who assigns directly or trains workers on the job. All levels of management follow a referral system from one department to another for a wide array of alternatives in order to handle situations effectively and efficiently. The end result would tantamount to an increase of upcoming projects.
The barrier of IMC not to function effectively in the different levels of management would be if there is an insufficiency of ideas. The inadequacy of resources would be hard enough to generate and innovation of new trends in the market that the market would definitely dig up. Creativity must be a passion and an on going thing not just a mood swing for that what makes the IMC concept grow. It learns, relearns and educates itself with the updates of technology.
Conclusion:
Promotion is an effort by marketers to inform and remind people in the target market and about products and to persuade them to participate in the exchange. The tools included are advertising (paid, non-personal communication through various media by organizations and individuals who are in some way identified in the advertising message.), personal selling (is the face-to-face presentation and promotion of products and services), public relations (is the management function that evaluates public attitudes, changes policies and procedures in response to the public’s requests, and executes a program of action and information to earn public understanding and acceptance) , sales promotion (promotional tool that stimulates consumer purchasing and dealer interest by means of short-term activities. An Example of consumer sales promotions include free samples, cents-off coupons, and prizes), and internet promotion (knowing that most people tend to ignore internet ads, companies continue to use them hoping to tap into the huge online marketing potential). The combination of promotional tools an organization uses is called its promotion mix. Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) is a technique that combines all the promotional tools into one all-inclusive and incorporated promotional strategy. In addition, it’s a process of developing and implementing swaying marketing communications to prospects and customers over time. The advantage of this concept is that when one is promote a brand value to capture a bigger market, it is easier, faster and widely reliable and available for the consumer to get hold of the product. Customers are easily attracted with discounts, freebies and most of all vibrant and playful advertisements matching with a well-known performer or model that would easy do the trick. It makes one wonder if the advertisements or commercials are true; given the curiosity this drives them to check the product out and if they get the satisfaction then, they would continually honor the product, much more they would eventually spread it with other customers thus, increasing the sales. This would also trigger them to invent or do refinements to catch the ardors of the customers. What makes IMC cost-effective it is because it works both ways; according to the Association of Advertising Agencies (1) recognizes the added value of a comprehensive plan that evaluates the strategic roles of communication disciplines (2) combines these disciplines to provide clarity, consistency and maximum communication impact. The different levels of management, there must be proper coordination with each department to promote consistency of efforts. To drive their will power there must be work appraisal in order to motivate them to work harder and even better. Human Resource Department would also play a vital role to prevent employees become workaholic for that would be a barrier in such a way, that they would not be able to function effectively socially. Social interaction is a key for effective communication to take place. If you are not effective in the work place then, how will one be operationally effective in advocating the product when the base itself is weak? That’s why the sturdier the foundation, through the individual efforts who by day to day strive to meet their responsibilities that has been delegated to them by a centralized or decentralized management.