Module 1

Chapter 1: Integrated Marketing Communications and Brand Equity Enhancement

- Marketing communications is a critical component of effective marketing
- Marketing consists of the marketing mix strategies that organisations develop to
transfer value through exchange to their customers
- Communication is a process that conveys shared meaning between individuals, or
between organisations and individuals
- Together, marketing communications represents all the elements in an
organisation’s marketing mix that facilitate exchanges by targeting the brands, and
sharing the brand’s meaning and unique differences with their product’s target
audience
- Marketing communications is a critical aspect of a company’s overall marketing
mission and a major determinant of its success in its chosen market
- It has been claimed that marketing and communications are virtually inseparable –
marketing is communication and communication is marketing
- The major types of marketing communications include:
o Traditional mass marketing advertising (e.g. broadcast/print), social media
channels (e.g. FaceBook/Twitter/Youtube/LinkedIn)
o Outdoor advertising (e.g. billboards/bus shelters/public transport)
o Sales promotions (e.g. samples/coupons/rebates)
o Store signage
o Point-of-purchase displays
o Product packages
o Direct-mail literature
o Opt-in emails
o Marketing public relations
o Event and cause sponsorships
o Presentations by salespeople
- Collectively, these types of communication – and the associated media – constitute
what has been traditionally labelled the promotion component (the aspect that
promotion management deals with specifically) of the marketing mix
- The marketing communications mix consists of the primary marketing
communications methods for meeting consumer needs and moving them towards
action. This has changed since the dawn of the digital age
o Advertising – a form of either mass (non-personal) communication or direct-
to-consumer communication that is paid for by an identified sponsor; be it an
organisation or individual (i.e. the advertiser). It involves at least one of the
following:
 Mass Marketing – communication via print and broadcast media
 Digital Marketing – communication via the Internet and social media,
and other media such as billboards and cinema
 Direct Marketing – communication targeted at each B2B customer or
ultimate consumer
o Point-of-purchase Communications – includes in-store displays, posters, signs
and other materials that are designed to influence consumer buying decisions
at the time of purchase
 o Direct Marketing – uses several types of media to reach consumers and
encourage them to purchase or take some form of immediate response, such
as contacting the originator of the marketing message. As such, it is an
interactive process rather than a one-way impersonal form of communication
 Database Marketing – provides companies with information that
allows them to profile their customers and to establish long-term
relationships, thus reducing the need for intuition
o Sales Promotion (Promotional Inducements) – attempt to stimulate buyer
action or immediate sales of a product. One the other hand, advertising aims
to accomplish communication objectives, such as creating brand awareness
and influencing consumer attitudes
 Trade-oriented Sales Promotions – include the issue of various types
of allowances to encourage wholesaler and retailer responses
 Consumer-oriented Sales Promotions – include using price reductions,
free samples and contests or sweepstakes to encourage consumers to
buy
o Personal Selling – based on person-to-person communication, where the
salesperson informs, educations and persuades prospective buyers to
purchase the company’s products or services. Often include providing
retailers with introductory discounts and ensuring them that company
promotion will move the products and increase retailers’ sales revenue
o Sponsorship Marketing – the practice of promoting the interests of a
company and its brands by associating them with a specific event
o Marketing Public Relations (MPR) – involves non-personal communication to
a mass audience, but unlike advertising, an organisation does not pay for
media time or space. It usually consists of favourable news items or editorial
comments because journalists consider the information pertinent and
newsworthy to their audiences, thus being perceived as an unbiased report
o Digital and Social Media Marketing – digital marketing is the promotion of
products and services over the Internet, whereas social media marketing is a
form of electronic communication through which user-generated content can
be shared within the user’s social network. Spending on digital marketing
communications is increasing while mass marketing communications is static
 Growth of mobile technology has mean that mobile marketing
(promotional activity deliver to smartphones, tablets and other
handheld devices) is now an important tool in the IMC toolbox
- Marketers gave found that digital media are less costly, less cluttered and potentially
more effective than traditional media. Digital advertising, it is argued, provides
consumers with almost total control over what advertising material they choose to
receive, as well as empowering them in terms of information search
- Brand functions as a convenient and appropriate label used to describe the
organisation’s products. It is everything that one company’s particular offering
stands for in comparison to other brands in a product category
- A favourable brand image performs strategic roles by differentiating one company’s
product from competitive brands and by enabling a manufacturer to gain leverage
vis-à-vis retailers and other marketing intermediaries.
- A successful brand can enable economies of scale through branded products to
satisfy consumer demand at the lowest possible unit cost, or by creating competitive
barriers to other organisations that may consider entering the product category.
- Strong favourable brands offer an assurance of consistent quality and performance.
They also offer the particular features and benefits that consumers seek, which
reduce the financial and functional risks associated with buying other brands in a
particular category
- A brand creates expectations about what it will deliver in terms of consistent quality,
convenience, reliability and status
- Those responsible for advertising sometimes fail to sufficiently coordinate their
efforts with those in charge of sales promotions or publicity
- Integrated marketing communications (IMC) is the integration of all marketing
activities associated with planning, developing, implementing and evaluating brand
communication programs. It encompasses ongoing brand communication activities
that speak with one voice to a number of disparate audiences using elements of the
traditional promotion mix as well as digital communications e.g. corporate websites
and social media platforms
- The rationale of IMC is that marketing communications should build profitable
relationships between a company and its customers
- IMC is a strategic process that integrates the elements of the promotion mix with the
brand’s marketing mix to optimise the long-term value of an organisation’s brands,
and so build an organisation’s brand equity. On the other hand, traditional marketing
communications strategies are generally focussed on short-term financial gains
- IMC consists of three components:
o Concept – relies on delivering the marketing message to all stakeholders that
have some form of contact with the organisation
o Synergy – when marketing communications are coordinated and consistent,
they have a greater impact on enhancing the customers’ brand knowledge
than individual marketing messages
o Process – requires the marketing department to profile the customer or
prospect segment and then determine what types of messages and media
channels will best achieve the communication objectives of informing,
persuading, reminding and encouraging action from that market segment
- IMC has been given various definitions by theorists spanning from 1989-2016
- Overall, IMC is about delivering consistent brand messages that are relevant to the
targeted consumers and prospects, with the aim of directly influencing their buying
behaviour and building profitable relationships
- There are five key features of IMC:
o Profile the Identified Target Market – IMC planning begins with profiling the
consumer or prospect segment to determine the most appropriate messages
and media for informing, persuading or reminding these consumers and
prospects to respond positively towards the organisation’s brand.
 It is widely acknowledged that a key reality governs marketing
communications: the consumer increasingly wants to be in control
 Profiling a target market also involves collecting demographic data,
determining the values and lifestyles and analysing their buying
behaviour
 o Use the Relevant Media Channels – IMC uses all forms of marketing
communications and the appropriate media as potential message delivery
channels. Other communication methods must receive careful consideration
before mass media advertising is automatically assumed to be the solution
o Achieving Communication Synergy and Use of Touch Points – Synergy is an
inherent component of IMC. The different types of marketing communication
must present the same (or very similar) brand message and convey that
message consistently across diverse message channels, or points of contact.
These are referred to as touch points, and every point that a brand can
‘touch’ customers’ needs to be in line with the brand positioning. Marketing
communications for a brand, therefore, must speak with one voice to achieve
a strong and unified brand image, to move consumers to action and prevent
confusing customers
 A positioning statement is the key idea that, when compared to its
competitors, defines what a brand represents in the minds of the
target market. It is essential that this delivers the same idea every
time the target audience encounters the brand
o Influence the Target Market’s Behaviour – The goal of IMC is to positively
influence the behaviour of the target market, thus requiring that the
communication effort encourages some form of behavioural response e.g.
visit a store, go online, post in an online forum and, hopefully, purchase the
product. An IMC program is ultimately evaluated in terms of whether it
influences a consumer’s purchase behaviour. This may include discontinuing
a practice, as seen through anti-smoker ads. Consumers must be informed
about the brand and its benefits and then encouraged by persuasive
marketing messages to develop a favourable attitude towards it prior to
purchasing a new brand
o Build Customer Relationships – Successful marketing communications
requires an organisation to build a relationship between the brand and its
customers. Customer relationships are an enduring link between a brand and
its customers that leads to repeat purchases and generates stronger
customer loyalty towards the brand. These are created by positive brand
experiences that make strong, favourable and lasting impressions, and
ensure the long-term viability of the company e.g. loyalty programs provide
customers with rewards. Customer relationship management (CRM) relies on
having relevant customer data to satisfy customers’ needs and wants
- There has been reluctance to change from a single-function, specialist model to IMC
due to managerial parochialism and for fear that change might lead to budget
cutbacks in their areas of control and reductions in their authority, perceived
expertise and power
- Experienced managers are more likely than novice managers to practise IMC.
Organisations involved in marketing services (rather than products) and B2C (rather
than B2B) are more likely to practise IMC. More sophisticated companies also are
likely adherents to IMC
- IMC is a goal worth pursuing because using multiple communication tools in
conjunction with one another can produce greater results than tools used
 individually and in an uncoordinated fashion. There is a synergistic effect of using
multiple well-coordinated marketing communication tools
- The following interrelated events have been influential in changing how marketing
communications have traditionally been practised:
o A shift in marketing spend on mass media advertising
o Growth and reliance on databases and focused communication methods
o Increased demands on communication suppliers
o Increased efforts to assess marketing communications’ accountability and
return on investment
o Ethical changes to marketing communication practices
o Changing consumer work lifestyles
o The Internet and social media channels
o Rise of digital disruption and on-demand everything
o Decreasing relevance of the 4 Ps
- SIVA is a concept that takes the focus away from the product and looks at providing
a solution, as the solution may in fact be a service, and is therefore the 4 Ps turned
upside down
o Solution – consumers don’t require products, but instead need a solution for
everyday problems
o Information – consumers don’t necessarily want promotional deals, but
instead want information, such as those found in websites, blogs and forums
o Value – promotions and price-offs only go so far, and thus consumers want
benefits that marketers call value e.g. free delivery, online assistance, 24/7
assistance and free parking
o Access – allowing customers and stakeholders access to your brand is both
important and necessary in this age of transparency
- A conceptual framework to evaluate the various types of brand-level marketing
communications decisions and outcomes consists of:
o Fundamental decisions – relate to positioning, targeting, setting objectives
and budgeting
o Implementation decisions – involve the integration of communications
elements and the choice of messages, media and momentum
o Program evaluation – measures the results of marketing communications,
provides feedback and suggests possible corrective actions
- Fundamental decisions influence implementation decisions regarding the mixture of
communications elements and the determination of messages, media and
momentum. The expected outcomes from these decisions are enhancing brand
equity and affecting behaviour. Program evaluation measures the results of the
marketing communications efforts, provides feedback and suggests possible
strategies for taking corrective action.
- All marketing communications should be:
o Clearly positioned – a brand’s position is the key feature, benefit or image
that it represents in the target audience’s collective mind
o Directed to a target market – targeting allows marketing communicators to
deliver their messages more precisely and so prevent wasted coverage to
consumers who do not fit the target audience profile. Meaningful marketing
 segments generally represent consumers who share a combination of
characteristics and demonstrate similar buying behaviour
o Created to achieve a specific objective – the common objectives of each type
of marketing communications are to facilitate the successful introduction of
new brands, build sales of existing brands by increasing the frequency on use,
the variety of uses or the quantity purchased, inform intermediaries and
consumers about brand improvements, enhance a brand’s image, generate
sales leads, persuade the intermediaries to stock the manufacturer’s brands,
stimulate point-of-purchase sales, develop brand awareness, acceptance and
insistence, increase customer loyalty, improve corporate relations with
special-interest groups, counter any bad publicity about a brand, create good
publicity, reduce the effectiveness of competitors’ communications efforts,
and to provide consumers with reasons for buying immediately, instead of
delaying a purchase choice
o Undertaken to achieve the objective within budget constraints –
Organisations use different budgeting procedures in allocating funds to
marketing communications managers and other organisations units
 Unilateral methods:
 A top-down budgeting approach is used when senior
management decides how much each brand will receive
 A bottom-up budgeting approach determines how much is
needed to achieve the objectives at the product category level
 Combination methods:
 In the bottom-up/top-down process, product managers submit
budget requests to the general manager of marketing, who
coordinates the various requests and then submits an overall
budget to top management for approval
 The top-down/bottom-up process reverses the flow of
influence: top managers first establish the total size of the
budget and then divide it among the various product divisions
 Research suggests that combination budgeting methods are used
more often than unilateral methods, with the BUTD process being the
most frequently used
- The fundamental communication decisions are conceptual and strategic, while the
implementation decisions are practical and tactical. Strategic decisions have long-
term effects, generally lasting two or more years, while tactical decisions are based
on a budget period, usually no more than twelve months
- The guiding structure is the framework for marketing communication decisions
representing the points of intersection among a brand’s target market,
communications objectives and budget availability
- The term push and pull are used to capture how marketing communication funds
should be allocated:
o Pull – a forward movement from a manufacturer to the trade (wholesalers
and retailers) and on to the consumer; personal selling to the trade is the
primary push technique
o Pull – a manufacturer promotes directly to consumers, in the expectation
that the consumers will pressure retailers to stock the promoted product
- In reality, manufacturers use a combination of pull and push techniques. These often
complement one another and are not perfectly substitutable. The issue is often
based on how much to allocate to advertising and how much to sales promotion as
there is no optimum mixtures of expenditures
- Firstly, mass advertising, online marketing communications channels and sales
promotions are somewhat interchangeable, thus making it difficult to measure
which element is best for every marketing situation. Secondly, these elements
produce a synergistic effect because their combined results are greater than what
each would achieve, making it difficult to determine the exact results that different
combinations of advertising, digital marketing and sales promotion might produce.
- New brands ideally require larger investment in promotions to generate trial
purchases, whereas mature brands may need proportionately greater mass media
and online advertising investment to maintain or enhance the brand’s image. Brand
equity considerations also play a role in evaluating a satisfactory combination.
- Creation of messages in the form of advertisements are major decisions that stem
from who are the target audience, and how they choose to receive their messages.
Systematic (versus ad hoc) decision making requires the message to be centred on
the brand’s positioning strategy and aligned with the communications objective for
the target audience
- All marketing communication messages require some form of media to reach the
target audience. This is relevant to all marketing communications tools
- Whether or not to incorporate digital media is a major decision for a company.
Understanding the target audience and what times they go online or other
behaviours that they display when using their mobile phones are important
- The word momentum refers to an object’s force or impetus. Simply developing an
advertising message, a personal sales presentation or a marketing PR release is
insufficient to build momentum. Effectiveness requires both a sufficient amount of
effort and continuity of that effort to sustain the marketing communications
- The outcomes of a marketing communications program are twofold: enhancing
brand equity and affecting behaviour. Each outcome influences the other
- Program evaluation involves the measurement of the results of the marketing
communication campaign against the marketing and communication objectives. This
is critical as there is increased company demand for accountability. Measures include
brand awareness, message comprehension, attitude towards the brand, and
purchase intentions. Failure to achieve the targeted results requires prompt
corrective action
- Brand equity is the goodwill (equity) that an established brand has built up over the
period of its existence. A brand is a name, term, sign, symbol, or design, or
combination of them, intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or
group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of competition
- From the organisation’s perspective brand equity focuses on outcomes extending
from efforts to enhance a brand’s equity, such as achieving a higher market share,
increasing brand loyalty and being able to charge premium prices
- From the consumer’s point of view, a brand possesses equity to the extent that they
are familiar with the brand and hold favourable, strong and unique brand
associations about that brand. Therefore, it consists of two forms of brand
knowledge: brand awareness (brand recognition and recall) and brand image
 o Brand Awareness – relates to whether a brand name comes to mind when
consumers think about a particular product category, and the ease at which
that name is evoked. From an individual consumer’s perspective, a brand has
no equity unless she or he is at least aware of the brand
 Brand Recognition – reflects a relatively superficial level of awareness
where the consumer may be able to identify a brand if given prompts
 Brand Recall – a deeper form of awareness where a brand is so well
known that any consumers can recall the brand without prompts
 Top-of-Mind Awareness – occurs when a company’s brand if the first
brand that consumers recall when thinking of a particular product
category
o Brand Image – the types of associations (thoughts and feelings that a
consumer has about a brand) that come to mind when a consumer is
deciding whether to purchase a particular brand. These brand associations
can be conceptualised in terms of type, favourability, strength and
uniqueness
- A brand’s favourable, strong and unique associations can be shaped, and the brand’s
equity enhance, by leveraging its positive associations with other brands, places,
things and people. This may allow brand loyalty to increase
- Co-branding refers to the entering of an agreement by two brands to enhance the
equity and profitability of both brands. For this to be successful, the brands should
possess a common fit
- For entertainment brands, it is all about content experience and not delivery
platforms. Consumers want on-demand content that is relevant and convenient to
them
- World-class brands possess high equity because they are well-known and possess
strong and favourable associations in consumers’ minds