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Marketing Communication
Marketing (Encyclopaedia Britannica 2006) is defined as activities that direct the flow of goods and services from producers to consumers. The simultaneous use of media (advertising, branding, direct marketing, graphic design, marketing, packaging, promotion, publicity, public relations, sales, and sales promotion) in working their way out with the market is called Marketing communications.
One approach that has been evolving and will always be shaping the trends in world economy is the Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC), according to Ken Reich (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.
The Global Integrated Marketing Communication (GIMC) has two dimensions these are the vertical and horizontal integration. The vertical or the planning integration is the basis of IMC; this concerns the media marketing coordinating with the owner or corporate vision – mission in the promotion of the product and brand value minimizing wastage through the three varieties of vertical integration. These are the backward vertical integration wherein the company can set up subsidiaries than can provide the inputs for the production or supplements the mother company; the forward vertical integration, in here the subsidiaries act as the distributor of the product and lastly, the balanced vertical integration, the set-up subsidiaries act both as the supplementary and the one that distributes the said product. There is less wastage since, there is error proofing with efficient job lay-out and standardize instruction hence, there is maximization of effort on the product’s cost effectiveness. An example would be the Apple Company where it produces computer software, hardware and electronic gadgets and distribute it to the retailers for individual consumers. On the other hand, horizontal or executional integration is in contrast with the principles of vertical integration. The said integration sells a type of product covering a wide coverage market. A definite example is the Windows Company who sells mainly of the software system and distributes it to their subsidiaries for public disposal. Each subsidiary markets the product in strategic locations considering that there must be several branch offices in several places producing similar product.
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 globally and apparently the agencies that service their needs. Let’s take a look at Coca Cola and Pepsi Cola Company both offers the Coca Colored soft drink, the key product. Geographically speaking, their product is widely saleable in hot or humid areas such places would be found in the equator regions of the Earth; for an instance in the Middle East countries where water is limited. It is likely that they would increase by a minimum percent of production from the customary level since; people would want to quench their thirst more. There are also customers who are health conscious meaning they consider deliberately the ingredients of the soft drink, to gratify their demands diet sodas were made and for those, who are price conscious, for example in the Philippines; Coca Cola Company has introduced “Coke sakto,” wherein 200ml bottle could be bought at around five pesos. For thorough details of each company’s adventure towards the global market the details are the following:
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 Dick Anderson, 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 John Pemberton a pharmacist from Atlanta, Georgia. John Pemberton concocted the Coca Cola formula in a three legged brass kettle in his backyard. The name was a suggestion given by John Pemberton’s bookkeeper Frank Robinson. Being a bookkeeper, Frank Robinson 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 John Pemberton and Asa Candler’s 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, McCann-Erickson, 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 million in measured media for just a fraction of the year. Launch ads featured Oscar-winner Cuba Gooding Jr. 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 billion prize; ABC Stars Damon Wayans and Tom Bergeron 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.
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. Call centers are also a perfect example of IMC as an outsourcing supply of costumers. 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. 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.
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. 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 practicability of IMC in working strategic levels is that it never ceases impress us; in the advent of high end technology It is easier to manipulate mass media with the help of other functionalities such as the lean management and total quality management this enables them to incorporate management operations in increasing sales volume. How? Due to the fact, that these operational functions allows each member of the corporation work their way out to meet the standards that has been set in every aspect of operation and at lowest possible cost. In here meticulous inspection is done to maintain quality before the dispensing. As mentioned earlier, low-priced commodities or goods is a good invitation for the consumer to accommodate in their day-to day budget. When we say, individual workforce doesn’t literally mean that in order to save cost, there is a need to lay off some clients. However, it directly tells us to chart added value activities and non-added value activities and that those that belong to the latter must be eliminated to avoid time wastage. Ergo, this improves the throughput and quality of the product at the shortest possible time. All in all the strategy is cost effective and well-balanced.
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.
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