marketing communications mix— consists of the specific blend of advertising, public

relations, personal selling, sales promotion, and direct marketing tools that the company
uses to engage consumers, persuasively communicate customer value, and build customer
relationships.

o Advertising: Any paid form of nonpersonal presentation and promotion of ideas,

goods, or services by an identified sponsor (includes broadcast, print, Internet,
mobile, outdoor, and other forms). Advertising can reach masses of
geographically dispersed buyers at a low cost per exposure, and it enables the
seller to repeat a message many times.
o Sales promotion: Short-term incentives to encourage the purchase or sale of a
product or service. (Includes discounts, coupons, displays, and demonstrations)
o Personal selling: Personal customer interactions by the firm’s sales force for the
purpose of making sales and building customer relationships. (Includes sales
presentations, trade shows, and incentive programs) ersonal selling is the most
effective tool at certain stages of the buying process, particularly in building up
buyers’ preferences, convictions, and actions. It involves personal interaction
between two or more people, so each person can observe the other’s needs and
characteristics and make quick adjustments.
o Public relations: Building good relations with the company’s various publics by
obtaining favorable publicity, building up a good corporate image, and handling
or heading off unfavorable rumors, stories, and events. (includes press releases,
sponsorships, events, and Web pages)
o Direct and digital marketing: Engaging directly with carefully targeted
individual consumers and customer communities to both obtain an immediate
response and build lasting customer relationships. (Includes direct mail, catalogs,
online and social media, mobile marketing, and more)

The new marketing communications model

Customers are changing. In this digital era, consumers are better inform and more
communicated with other customers. They can use the Internet, social media and
other technologies to find information on their own. As customer change so are he
marketing strategies. Now, these strategies are designed to build closer relationships
with customer in more narrowly defined micro markets.

Brand content management: Creating, inspiring, and sharing brand messages and
conversations with The new classification identifies four major types of media: paid,
owned, earned, and shared (POES):

Paid media—includes promotional channels paid for by the sponsor, including traditional
media (such as TV, radio, print, or outdoor) and online and digital media (paid search
ads, Web and social media display ads, mobile ads, or e-mail marketing).
Owned media—includes promotional channels owned and controlled by the company,
including company Web sites, corporate blogs, owned social media pages, proprietary
brand communities, sales forces, and events.
Earned media—includes PR media channels, such as television, newspapers, blogs,
online video sites, and other media not directly paid for or controlled by the marketer but
that include the content because of viewer, reader, or user interest.
Shared media—includes media shared by consumers with other consumers, such as
social media, blogs, mobile media, and viral channels, as well as traditional word of
mouth.
Integrated marketing communications (IMC) Carefully integrating and coordinating the
company’s many communications channels to deliver a clear, consistent, and compelling message
about the organization and its products.

Promotion mix

There are to basic promotion mix strategies: Push promotion or pull promotion.

Push strategy: involves “pushing” the product through marketing channels to final
consumers. The producer directs its marketing activities (primarily personal selling and
trade promotion) toward channel members to induce them to carry the product and
promote it to final consumers.
Pull strategy: the producer directs its marketing activities (primarily advertising,
consumer promotion, and direct and digital media) toward final consumers to induce
them to buy the product.

Some companies use only Push strategy, some direct marketing companies use only puss
strategies but most part use a combination of both. For example, Unilever spends more
than $8.5 billion worldwide each year on consumer marketing and sales promotions to
create brand preference and pull customers into stores that carry its products.

Business-to-consumer companies usually pull more, putting more of their funds into
advertising, followed by sales promotion, personal selling, and then public relations. In
contrast, business-to-business marketers tend to push more, putting more of their funds
into personal selling, followed by sales promotion, advertising, and public relations.
Setting advertising objectives:

An advertising objective is a specific communication task to be accomplished with a

specific target audience during a specific period of time. Advertising objectives can be
classified by their primary purpose—to inform, persuade, or remind.

Informative advertising is used heavily when introducing a new product category. In this
case, the objective is to build primary demand.
Persuasive advertising becomes more important as competition increases. Here, the
company’s objective is to build selective demand. .Such advertising wants to engage
customers and create brand community. Some persuasive advertising has become
comparative advertising (or attack advertising), in which a company directly or indirectly
compares its brand with one or more other brands.
Reminder advertising is important for mature products; it helps to maintain customer
relationships and keep consumers thinking about the product. Expensive Coca-Cola
television ads primarily build and maintain the Coca-Cola brand relationship rather than
inform consumers or persuade them to buy it in the short run.

Setting the advertising budget:

Advertising budget: The dollars and other resources allocated to a product or a

company-advertising program.

Affordable method: They set the promotion budget at the level they think the company
can afford. Small businesses often use this method, reasoning that a company cannot
spend more on advertising than it has. They start with total revenues, deduct operating
expenses and capital outlays, and then devote some portion of the remaining funds to
advertising. This method of setting budgets completely ignores the effects of promotion
on sales. It tends to place promotion last among spending priorities, even in situations in
which advertising is critical to the firm’s success.

Percentage-of-sales method, setting their promotion budget at a certain percentage of

current or forecasted sales. Or they budget a percentage of the unit sales price. It is simple
to use and helps management think about the relationships between promotion spending,
selling price, and profit per unit. It wrongly views sales as the cause of promotion rather
than as the result.

Competitive-parity method, setting their promotion bud- gets to match competitors’

outlays. They monitor competitors’ advertising or get industry promotion spending
estimates from publications or trade associations, and then set their budgets based on the
industry average. (This is not a very effective method)

Objective-and-task method the company sets its promotion budget based on what it
wants to accomplish with promotion. This budgeting method entails (1) defining specific
promotion objectives, (2) determining the tasks needed to achieve these objectives, and
(3) estimating the costs of performing these tasks. The sum of these costs is the proposed
promotion budget. (the most logical budget-setting method)

Developing Advertising Strategy

Advertising strategy consists of two major elements: creating advertising messages and
selecting advertising media. The decision about which media to use for an ad campaign,
is now sometimes more critical than the creative elements of the campaign. Now day
people don’t really enjoy all the advertising, since there are too many (Like the ads on
tv). Know, in marketing, they got to come up with some new ideas.

Branded entertainment (or brand integrations) involves making the brand an in-
separable part of some other form of entertainment.

Message Strategy. The first step in creating effective advertising messages is to plan a
message strategy—the general message that will be communicated to consumers. The
purpose of advertising is to get consumers to engage with or react to the product or
company in a certain way. People will engage and react only if they believe they will
benefit from doing so. Thus, developing an effective message strategy begins with
identifying customer benefits that can be used as advertising appeals.

Creative concept The compelling “big idea” that will bring an advertising message
strategy to life in a distinctive and memorable way. At this stage, simple message ideas
become great ad campaigns. At this stage, simple message ideas become great ad
campaigns. The creative concept will guide the choice of specific appeals to be used in an
advertising campaign. Advertising appeals should have three characteristics. First, they
should be meaningful, pointing out benefits that make the product more desirable or
interesting to consumers. Second, appeals must be believable. Consumers must believe
that the product or service will deliver the promised benefits. Also it should be be
distinctive. They should tell how the product is better than competing brand.
Message Execution. The advertiser now must turn the big idea into an actual ad
execution that will capture the target market’s attention and interest. The message can be
presented in various execution styles, such as the following:

Slice of life: This style shows one or more “typical” people using the
product in a normal setting.
Lifestyle: This style shows how a product fits in with a particular lifestyle.
Fantasy: This style creates a fantasy around the product or its use.
Mood or image: This style builds a mood or image around the product or service,
such as beauty, love, intrigue, or serenity. Few claims are made about the product
or service except through suggestion
Musical: This style shows people or cartoon characters singing about the product.
Personality symbol: This style creates a character that represents the product. The
character might be animated or real.
Technical expertise: This style shows the company’s expertise in making the
product.
Scientific evidence: This style presents survey or scientific evidence that the brand
is better or better liked than one or more other brands.
Testimonial evidence or endorsement: This style features a highly believable or
likable source endorsing the product. It could be ordinary people saying how
much they like a given product.

The advertiser also must choose a tone for the ad. The advertiser must use memorable
and attention-getting words in the ad. Finally, format elements make a difference in an
ad’s impact as well as in its cost. A small change in an ad’s design can make a big
difference in its effect.

Consumer-Generated Content. Taking advantage of today’s digital and social media

technologies, many companies are now tapping consumers for marketing content,
message ideas, or even actual ads.

Selecting Advertising Media The major steps in advertising media selection are
(1) determining reach, frequency, and impact; (2) choosing among major media types;
(3) selecting specific media vehicles; and (4) choosing media timing.

Determining Reach, Frequency, Impact, and Engagement. To select media, the

advertiser must determine the reach and frequency needed to achieve the advertising
objectives. Reach is a measure of the percentage of people in the target market who are
exposed to the ad campaign during a given period of time. Frequency is a measure of
how many times the average person in the target market is exposed to the message. rs
want to do more than just reach a given number of consumers a specific number of times.
The advertiser also must determine the desired media impact—the qualitative value of
message exposure through a given medium. For example, the same message in one
magazine (say, Time) may be more believable than in another (say, the National
Enquirer). The advertiser wants to choose media that will engage consumers rather than
simply reach them. In any medium, the relevance of ad content for its audience is often
much more important than how many people it reaches
Choosing among Major Media Types. the major media types are television, digital and
social media, newspapers, direct mail, magazines, radio, and outdoor.

Selecting Specific Media Vehicles. Media planners must also choose the best media
vehicles—specific media within each general media type. For example, television
vehicles include Modern Family and ABC World News Tonight. Magazine vehicles
include Time, Real Simple, and ESPN The Magazine. Online and mobile vehicles include
Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and YouTube.

Deciding on Media Timing. An advertiser must also decide how to schedule the
advertising over the course of a year. Suppose sales of a product peak in December and
drop in March (for winter outdoor gear, for instance). The firm can vary its advertising to
follow the seasonal pattern, oppose the seasonal pattern, or be the same all year. Most
firms do some seasonal advertising.

Advertisers should regularly evaluate two types of advertising results: the communication
effects and the sales and profit effects. Measuring the communication effects of an ad or
ad campaign tells whether the ads and media are communicating the ad message well.
Individual ads can be tested before or after they are run. Before an ad is placed, the
advertiser can show it to consumers, ask how they like it, and measure message recall or
attitude changes resulting from it. After an ad is run, the advertiser can measure how the
ad affected consumer recall or product awareness, knowledge, and preference. Pre- and
post-evaluations of communication effects can be made for entire advertising campaigns
as well.

Advertisers have gotten pretty good at measuring the communication effects of their ads
and ad campaigns. However, sales and profit effects of advertising are often much harder
to measure. One way to measure the sales and profit effects of advertising is to compare
past sales and profits with past advertising expenditures. Another way is through
experiments.

In developing advertising strategies and programs, the company must address two
additional questions. First, how will the company organize its advertising function—who
will perform which advertising tasks? Second, how will the company adapt its
advertising strategies and programs to the complexities of international markets?

Advertising agencies originated in the mid- to late 1800s from salespeople and brokers
who worked for the media and received a commis- sion for selling advertising space to
companies. As time passed, the salespeople began to help customers prepare their ads.
Eventually, they formed agencies and grew closer to the advertisers than to the media.

Today’s agencies employ specialists who can often perform advertising tasks better than
the company’s own staff can. Agencies also bring an outside point of view to solving the
company’s problems, along with lots of experience from working with different clients
and situations. So, today, even companies with strong advertising departments of their
own use advertising agencies.
Public Relations
Another major mass-promotion tool, public relations, consists of activities designed to
engage and build good relations with the company’s various publics. PR
departments may perform any or all of the following functions:

Press relations or press agency: Creating and placing newsworthy

information in the news media to attract attention to a person, product, or service.
Product publicity: Publicizing specific products.
Public affairs: Building and maintaining national or local community
relationships.
Lobbying: Building and maintaining relationships with legislators and
government officials to influence legislation and regulation.
Investor relations: Maintaining relationships with shareholders and others in the
financial community.
Development: Working with donors or members of nonprofit organizations to
gain financial or volunteer support.

Public relations can have a strong impact on public awareness at a much lower
cost than advertising can. When using public relations, the company does not pay
for the space or time in the media. Rather, it pays for a staff to develop and
circulate information and manage events. If the company develops an interesting
story or event, it could be picked up by several different media and have the same
effect as advertising that would cost millions of dollars. What’s more, public
relations has the power to engage consumers and make them a part of the brand
story and its telling.

Major Public Relations Tools

special events, ranging from news conferences and speeches, brand tours, and
grand openings to laser light shows, multimedia presentations, or educational
programs designed to reach and interest target publics.
written materials include annual reports, brochures, articles, and company
newsletters and magazines
Audiovisual materials, such as DVDs and online videos.
Corporate identity materials can also help create a corporate identity that the
public immediately recognizes. Logos, stationery, brochures, signs, business
forms, business cards, buildings, uniforms, and company cars and trucks all
become marketing tools when they are attractive, distinctive, and memorable.
Finally, companies can improve public goodwill by contributing money and time
to public service activities.