MGT and MGP 242, Spring 2002

Integrated Marketing Communications

Prasad A. Naik, Ph. D.
AOB IV, Room # 151
Call 754 9834 or email panaik@ucdavis.edu

Class Meetings:
Day-MBA Wednesday 9:00-11:50 a.m., AOB4 # 261
WP-MBA Wednesday 6:00-9:00 p.m., OCM 2

Office Hours: Wednesday 2:00 - 4:00 p.m.

Students can meet me in my office any time without appointment.

Course Outline

Course Description

Advertising transforms commodities (e.g., cars, chips, and computers) into brands
(e.g., BMW, Intel, Dell). It performs a central role in building strong brands, enabling
firms to charge price premiums, gain competitive advantage, and sustain long-run
profitability. Consequently, leading American companies typically spend multi-million
dollars on marketing communications, and collectively spend over $200 billion every year
on advertising  a sum that exceeds the gross domestic product (at purchasing parity) of
85% of the nations of the world, including developed economies like Switzerland, Hong
Kong, and Singapore.

In this course, we will cover the main issues in designing and implementing
advertising and promotional plans. Topics include institutional aspects of advertising,
consumer behavior, assessing ad effectiveness, budget determination and allocation,
creative strategy, and use & abuse of consumer and trade promotions. In addition to
advertising and promotion, the course will introduce the concepts of Database Marketing,
sometimes called as Customer Relationship Management (CRM), which is becoming an
important aspect of marketing due to advances in information technology. We will also
discuss the role of “integrating” the various communications alternatives (i.e., TV, print,
Internet, Direct Mail) to achieve synergistic impact. The course focuses on managerial
decision-making aspects of building strong brands profitably.

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Class Objectives

1. To learn institutional aspects of advertising: agency structure, functions,

compensation, evaluation, and agency-client relationship
2. To understand consumer behavior and decision-making process
3. To set advertising objectives, budgeting methods, measuring ad effectiveness
4. To study various creative styles, and when to use which ones
5. To know various types of consumer and trade promotions, when to use which ones,
and potential problems and abuse
6. To familiarize with the concepts and methods for effective database marketing
7. To understand how to act differently when planning for “integrated” campaigns versus
the classical marketing communications strategy

Class Administration

Classes consist of lectures, cases, discussions, position papers, and projects.

Lectures provide concepts and principles of advertising, promotions, database marketing,
and IMC. Cases are used to develop the skills in problem-solving. Students are expected
to carefully read and thoroughly analyze the assigned case, consider information available
at the time of the case event, identify the relevant issues, generate alternatives, and
recommend actions. Discussions are based on assigned reading materials and cases.
Position papers, which are brief write-ups, help develop critical thinking on important
economic, social, legal, or ethical issues related to marketing communications strategy.

Project . A small group of five or fewer students will form teams, and each team
will identify a topic of interest related to advertising, promotion, or database marketing.
For example, what characteristics of commercials such as humor, music, or computer
animation make them memorable? Or, what current practices are used to measure
effectiveness of Internet advertising? To not constrain your creativity in topic selection, I
do not provide further examples here. The teams will do research on their chosen topic,
and thus provide information, fresh perspectives, and/or new insights. A final report and
its presentation will summarize your findings.

Grading

20 points Class participation and quality of discussions

20 points Case presentation and discussions
20 points Position papers
20 points Project
20 points Final Exam

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Course Content and Tentative Schedule

Week Date Topics

1 April 3 Overview; Role of advertising & promotion in marketing.
Institutional aspects; Agency structure, functions and
compensation, evaluation and selection.

2 April 10 Consumer decision-making and response

Creative aspects; creative process; appeals and execution
styles.

3 April 17 Gillette Case A: Presentation and discussions

Gillette Case B: Presentation and discussions

4 April 24 Determining Ad Effectiveness

Media planning and strategy; Evaluation of broadcast and
print media

5 May 1 Determining advertising budget

Sales promotion; types of consumer & trade promotions

6 May 8 Database Marketing

Database Marketing

7 May 15 Business-to-Business; Buyer behavior; Applying IMC

Branding Hi-Tech products: Intel case

8 May 22 Global Branding: Nike case

Ethical, social and economic issues

9 May 29 To be announced
Review; miscellaneous topics; project-related questions

10 June 5 Project Presentations

11 Week of Final exams as per the administrative schedule

June 8-14

Required Text: Belch and Belch (2001), Advertising and Promotion: An IMC
Perspective, 5th Edition, Irwin: Chicago, Illinois.

Course Packet: A selection of reading materials and cases.