Developing IMC Plan for Tween Mobile Phone - Essay Example

? Developing IMC plan for Tween Mobile phone Table of Contents Executive Summary 3 Background Information 4 Communication Objectives 5 Developing Brand Awareness 7 Promotion for Products 7 Building Product Image 8 Developing attitude of consumers 9 Creative Advertising Strategy Selection 9 Media Plan 12 Print Media 14 Electronic Media 15 Online Media 15 Physical Media 16 Conclusion 16 References 18 Executive Summary The company Owl and Pussy Cat Company is a medium sized company based in Australia. The main product offerings of the company comprises of developing high level applications exclusively to cater to the needs of the technology based mobile industry. The company has recently identified that a large market exists for their highly innovative and extremely advanced kind of technology based mobile applications that will provide and generate a high level of interest as well as response from the young consumers falling within the age group of 6 to 13 years, which essentially comprises the Tween group of consumers. For the last two years, this young company, which has the credit of designing some of the most innovative applications in the mobile industry, was experiencing a dearth in the sales of its products. Further analysis revealed that the sales of the company depreciated as a direct response to the saturation of the adult mobile users while the market for new mobile applications is increasing exponentially due to the emergence of a new category of young consumers. This led to the company feeling the need to design a new marketing communication plan which will increasingly focus on the various communication objectives, selection of advertising strategy on a creative note, and finally a highly effective media plan. Background Information The world today has become a highly digitized and connected world. The reason for this extreme level of digitization as well as consecutiveness can be attributed to the increasing advancements of technology with regards to the communication needs of human being and human controlled processes of automatic and automated that has emerged all over the world. Keeping pace with the rapid advancements of communication technology, the mobile phones have emerged as the most primary form of human communication all over the world, more effectively in the emerging as well as the economically established countries and markets around the world. In Australia, the consumption of mobile phones has gone up tremendously. Various market researches on consumers have identified that the young group of child consumers, who increasingly fall in the age group of 6 to 13 years are one of the most active and avid customers, who display highly attractive and strongly influential consumer behavior. Researches further show that the young consumers hold significant power in terms of influencing the consumer behavior of their parents in a direct and indirect manner (Global Trade Marketing, 2005). Talking in terms of various categories of consumers, the consumers falling within the age group of 6 to 13 years, which comprises around a total of 11 percent of the Australian population, have acquired the needs of owning a cell phone (Telstra, 2007). Talking in terms of statistical data, it can be said that the around ? of the total consumers falling in this category from the Australia region already have individual possession of cell phones (Downie and Glazebrook, 2007). While the sole purpose of being provided with cell phones has been cited as the logic of being able to stay connected with their parents, yet this young group of consumers have increasingly developed a significantly different category of consumer behavior which is itself unique in nature (Roy Morgan Research’s Young Australians Survey, Summary). It has been increasingly decoded that the young group of consumers increasingly sees the mobile phones as a symbolic representation of their status and a high percentage of them state that the brand of the mobile phones that are being used by them is increasingly important to them. Communication Objectives The main idea for the preparation of a marketing communication plan is to communicate the values of a particular product or service to the consumers who fall in the specified target market, as intended and purposely targeted by the manufacturers of the product or the related service providers. A communication plan is essentially designed and developed on the guidelines of the AIDA model which essentially comprises of the Awareness, interest, desire and action factors. The main objective behind the development of the communication plan is to make the consumers aware of the product or service by providing relevant information to the intended target audience and thereby provoking a considerable amount of interest amongst them. The end point or the converging point of the communication plan is to generate more sales for the product or service or the intended packaged combination of both the product and the service and thereby going for the process of increasing the revenue generation for the company. It has been often noticed that in order to have a highly effective marketing exercise, it is very important the communication objectives of the marketing campaign, irrespective of whether it is an integration of online or offline efforts needs to have a clear message. The designing of the message is very crucial and extremely important as it forms the platform of creating an arousal of need amongst the consumers with regards to the product or service. It forms the base of creating a connection of the product with the intended consumer. It has to be increasingly taken into account that the language and the tone that will be used for the purpose of designing the message is highly dependent on the category as well as age group and segment of the consumers. While designing the communication objectives, it has to be increasingly taken in to account that the content of the communication message needs to be designed with regards to the intended and desired group of consumers, to whom the message will be delivered. The consumers’ age group also determines the timing of the communication age as well as the media and the related brand ambassador who will be responsible for acting as a bridge of delivering the communication message to the intended group of consumers using the organization or agency’s chosen and preferred platform (Kotler & Armstrong, 2008, p. 376). The communication objectives in the purpose of communicating the value to the target group of consumers resorts to a variety of techniques. The message that has to be used for the purpose of value communication is designed while taking into consideration, the kind of response that needs to be generated from the target market and the audience in order to boost the consumers’ demand for the product or services. It can be said that the buyers’ emotions in regards to the message can increasingly fall under awareness, knowledge of the product, liking and preference for the product. The message can even act as a teaser in order to provoke the consumers to move ahead of their emotions related to the product and to go ahead in making their own product purchase (Kotler & et.al, 2010, p. 349). The communication objectives mainly include various essential factors starting from the process of developing brand awareness for a particular product or service. It also includes the process of promotion for products and services as well as building the image of the product and developing the attitude and mindsets of the consumers in relation to a particular product or service. Developing Brand Awareness The process of communication of value for a particular product or service is done with the main aim of making the consumers aware of a particular product or service that is available in the market, thereby generating a considerable amount of interest in the minds of the consumers with regards to the product or service of particular brand and finally getting them to purchase the advertised product or service of the particular brand. The development of a brand in regards to the product or service helps in creating a distinguishing factor or unique selling point in the market for the product or service with regards to that of similar product or service offerings of the competitors. The positive establishment of a brand in the minds of the consumers helps the company to introduce new products in the market under the same brand name, thereby creating a high level of competitive advantage for the newly launched products in terms of gaining easy entry and acceptance in the minds and lives of the targeted consumers (Kotler and Keller, 2007, p. 158). Promotion for Products A significant purpose for participating in exercise related to the communication of values of a product or service to the consumers is mainly to make the consumers aware about the availability of a particular product or service in the market of particular geographical area or location. Besides that, the promotion of products also contributes in a major way towards the purpose of educating the masses or the target consumers at large regarding the various features that are present in the product and the processes in which, it is going to fulfill and cater to the various as well as specific needs of the consumers who belong to the desired target market. The process of communicating the values of a particular product to the minds of the consumers through the process of promotion automatically leads to the exposure of the product manufacturing company, thereby helping the company to gain a significant amount of familiarity in the minds of the consumers. While going for promotional activities, the company can always opt for either utilizing the pull or push strategy. In case of a push strategy, the consumers are made aware of the product by the process of using a sales force that essentially uses the word of mouth marketing techniques as well as various other marketing techniques, besides the company sponsored advertisements in various media platforms like the physical, print, digital or online media. In the case of a pull strategy, the company tries to generate a considerable level of curiosity and demand in the minds of the consumers by promoting the products in the online or digital media platforms and thereby creating an elasticity of demand for the newly launched and advertised products in the open market (Kotler and et.al, 2010, p. 356). Building Product Image The process of value communication for a particular product helps in a significant way to develop an image of the product in the minds of the consumers. This process is further facilitated as well as triggered by the process of delivering quality products to the consumers and thereby building up a significant amount of reputation in the market. However, it has to be increasingly taken into consideration that the process of building of a product image is highly dependent on the company’s ability to deliver quality products to the consumers along with the required after sales service that is considered necessary for the product from a time to time manner. While the exercise of building a positive image for a particular product can take a significant amount of time, yet the company can increasingly capitalize on the product image by launching various versions of the product for a comparatively longer period of time. The company can increasingly introduce various features in the products which can be termed as product development with respect to the already existing product that is available in the market. Developing attitude of consumers The objective of a designing a highly effective communication plan also involves the responsibility to develop a positive attitude in the minds of the consumers in response towards the product of a particular brand. The development of positive attitude amongst the consumers towards a particular product leads to the high degree of involvement amongst the consumer which essentially increases the chance of consumer opting to buy the particular product. However, it has to be increasingly taken in to account, that the attitudes of consumers are highly human in nature and are very much resilient to change (Kotler and et.al, 2010, p.129). As a matter of fact, changing the consumers’ perception for a particular product may require a significantly high amount of time. Attitude of consumers are highly variable in nature and companies have to take a high measure in order to maintain and preserve the positive attitude that is being built in the minds of the consumers with regards to the delivery of quality products and associated services (Kotler & Armstrong, 2008, p. 141). Creative Advertising Strategy Selection In simple terms, it can be said that advertising is the form of educating the consumers about a particular product or service. Though advertising can take various forms and can be communicated and propagated to the consumers across multiple platforms, yet the sole point, however, is surrounding the delivery of the communication message to the consumers. Advertising has a tremendous need to be highly creative in nature. The creativity characteristics of the advertisements with regards to the platform of propagation is highly important in the face of availability of multiple media platforms like the online format like the internet, the electronic format like the television and radio as well as the physical format like the books, magazines and newspapers. Creativity in the advertisements helps in generating consumer interests by increasing the degree of involvement with the consumers. Through the increased degree of involvement with the consumers, the process of advertising helps in gaining the mindshare of the consumers as well as increasing the power of retention of the consumers on particular brands, products or services. Advertising accompanied by the superior quality of the related product or service is highly instrumental in developing the brand as well as the product image for a particular product or service in a highly competitive market scenario. While selecting a advertising strategy on the borderlines of creativity, various vital factors like the development of localized advertising content, designing the right kind of message that will appeal to the target consumers, selection of the advertising media platform, generation of emotional content in the advertising etc (Trehan & Trehan, 2010, p. 50-52). There are various strategies that can be used for the process of engaging in the process of value communication for a particular product or service. The strategy can range from being either of functional orientation, or of symbolic orientation or category based orientation. Under the process of functional orientation, it can be increasingly said that the focus is on identifying the unique feature, which can be commonly termed as unique selling proposition or USP. The USP of a particular product or service often helps it to stand distinctively in a highly cluttered market. It is mostly identified as the unique advantage or the added benefit that the consumers can get by the process of purchasing of a particular product or service. It often tries to act on the basis of points of difference between the competitor’s brands as well as that of the featured product or service (Chitty & et.al, 2011, p. 137-138). Under the process of symbolic orientation, there are multiple strategies like developing image of the brand, resonance as well as usage of emotional tactics. In the case of development of brand image, it can be said that the development of the brand image helps to develop the distinguishing factor for all or most of the multiple product or sub brands that are launched under the same mother brand (Chitty & et.al, 2011, p. 138). The strategy of using a resonance type symbolic representation comprises of the process of drawing similarities of the product characteristics with regards to the characteristics or traits that are being displayed by the group of individuals belonging to the category of target audience. In this kind of advertising and value communication strategy, it can be increasingly said that the focus of communication is more on the connecting the traits and characteristics of the target audience with that of the product rather than building a new product image or demand for the product in an altogether new manner (Shimp, 2010, p.225). By the process of usage of emotional tactics, various brands attempts to develop the distinguishing factor related to their products on the guidelines of physiological needs and awareness (Chitty & et.al, 2011, p.140). While trying to build the creative advertising campaign on the guidelines of category based orientation, it can be increasingly said that the pre emptive or generic strategy can be used. Pre emptive strategy is essentially used on the basis of claims of superiority of products or services, which are highly homogeneous in nature with respect to the competitors’ offerings (Chitty & et.al., 2011, p. 143). Another form of strategy can be used while trying to communicate the value of a particular product to the consumers. This process involves the application of a new kind of creative advertising which unlike the previously mentioned strategy does not try to establish superiority of the product or of the brand as compared to that of the competitors, of domestic or of international status that are existent in the market. The important factor in the generic style of communication is the fact that the brand or the product that is trying to opt for this form of value communication to the intended target market must have a strong hold in the market as well as a tremendously powerful brand presence. It can be said that the generic style is highly applicable in the scenario of brand extension or the idea of inserting a new product variant for an already existing brand (Shimp, 2010, pp.225 - 226) In this context, it can be increasingly said that the developing of the brand image for the newly launched company will be a very effective move towards the selection of a highly rewarding and result generating creative advertising strategy. The research paper for Australia Institute termed ‘Mobile Phones and the consumer kids’ which was written by Christian Downie and Kate Glazebrook increasingly highlights the fact that the Australian kids who effectively fall in the age group of 6 to 13 years have a high tendency to get attracted and influenced by brands (Downie and Glazebrook, 2007). Hence in an attempt to capture the target audience comprising of these young group of consumers, it will be highly effective to go for brand building and image building exercises for the newly launched company which will in turn be highly instrumental and effective for the creation of the identity for all the products that will be launched under this brand. Media Plan With the advent of time, there has been a significant change in the media platform that is used by the marketers for the purpose of value communication in relation to their products and services. The consumers of today’s modern world are increasingly tech savvy in nature. With the smooth integration of Smartphone technology in the consumers’ lives coupled with the high penetration rate of the internet, more and more consumers are increasingly spending a lot of time on the social networking sites. As a matter of fact, these social networking sites have increased the buyers’ power while simultaneously acting as the people media. The development of media plan is a highly important factor for the purpose of the communication of value to the intended target market and the right target audience. In this case, it has to be increasingly taken in to account that the intended group of consumers are very young at age and in most of the cases are not allowed to have online presence through the social networking sites and individual profiles. As a matter of fact, various other platforms have to be taken into account which can be easily availed by the intended group of consumers. The various platforms that will be considered in this case for the purpose of advertising can range from the most traditional as well as conventional forms as well as the highly technology enabled digitized platforms. However, the marketers are free to choose from any kinds of media platforms ranging from newspapers, internet, television, radio, magazine as well as general form of physical media like the hoarding, posters, banners etc (Sissors & Baron, 2010, p. 39). The idea behind choosing a particular media and giving a significantly higher level of importance as compared to the other one however lays within the fact of the degree of preference and the level of penetration, the particular media has in terms of tapping the intended target consumers. In a simple term, it can be said that the rationale of choosing a particular form of media over the other ones depends on the cost per contact ratio as well as the penetration and acceptance levels, the particular media has when judging in terms of circulation and distribution among the intended target market (Surmanek, 1996, p. 55). The various media platforms are however, analyzed and measured from the points of audience sensitivity, potential of reach, rate of accumulation of audience as well as control of advertising exposure (Surmanek, 1996, p.2). In the context of choosing a media plan for the purpose of marketing a mobile phone by the Owl and Pussy Cat Company exclusively for the ‘Tween’ category of consumers, various media platforms can be used. Print Media The print media can be the most effective and efficient media platform for targeting the target audience comprising of the young consumers falling in the age group of 6 to 13 years. Assuming the fact, that almost all of the consumers within the target audience are mostly school going students in the junior classes, it will be highly effective to promote the brand by the process of printing colorful pictures and interesting snapshots related to the product on the cover of their notebooks. It will have the largest amount of visibility as well as penetration as compared to any other media for the connecting and establishing the brand within the minds of the audience. Apart from that, it can be essentially considered that the young consumers are avid lovers of various comic books as well as various kids’ magazines. These comic books and kids’ magazines can essentially act as an effective print media platform. The process of printing of pictures of the product on the inside pages of the comic books and kids magazines which are essentially read by the target audience in order to have some indoor entertainment can be a good media platform for establishing the brand image of the product in the minds of the consumers. Electronic Media The electronic media can be the next best platform for targeting the young consumer segment in this case. Since, a considerable amount of the consumers belonging to the intended target audience are avid lovers of various cartoon programs, it can be assumed that they spend a considerable amount of time watching various cartoon channels in the television. So launching various highly creative, attractive and child friendly television advertisements in these cartoon channels during the most popular show times can help in building up the image of brand of the mobile phone besides having high retention for the advertisements. Online Media The online media can be a very effective tool for the purpose of building the brand of the company as well as the product in the minds of the young consumers. The best way to promote the brand, besides providing information for the newly launched products to the desired target audience is by the process of placing highly interesting online advertisements in various websites which are frequently accessed by the young consumers. Care has to be taken in order to make the advertisements highly creative in nature by the process of designing them with various colorful characters that are highly preferred by the children within the age group of 6 to 13 years. The process of creating an online game based advertisement will also help to lure the attention of the young consumers and this will help to generate a considerable amount of interest as well as awareness among the young consumers in regards to the product as well as the company. However, while using the online media, care should be taken not to promote the brand in a highly exclusive manner in the social networking sites, as it quite evident that most of the consumers falling within the desired target audience will not be allowed to access the social networking sites as a result of various restriction arising from the parents as well as other sources. A mere presence of the brand in the social networking sites will however justify the brand’s presence in the highly regarded people media. This limited presence in the social networking sites will act as a point of influence for creating awareness about the presence of the brand in the minds of the parents who have kids and a significant access and presence in the social networking sites. Physical Media Another media platform that can be used for the purpose of creating and generating awareness as well as interest in the minds of the consumers of the target group is by the process of using the traditional physical media. The process of placing of hoardings, posters in front of various schools, kids’ stores, toy stores will help to create awareness about the brand and its product offerings in the minds of the consumers. A very favorable place for the purpose of communicating the values of the product as well as that of the brand is by the process of using the physical media in front of various amusement and theme parks which are frequently visited by the consumers falling in the desired target group. The process of placement of large hoardings and standing displays in front of the amusement parks and the theme parks will help to attract the attention of the young consumers, who have a significantly high power of influence in influencing the purchasing process of mobile phones by their parents. Conclusion On a concluding note, it can be said that the communication plan for the company which intends to tap the rising opportunities arising out of the Tween category of consumers have been prepared while keeping in mind the various communication objectives that are considered extremely critical for a communication plan. It can be increasingly said that the delivery of the communication message which will play a significant role in determining the needs of the young group consumers have been performed by identifying a highly popular icon with whom the young consumers can connect to. Significant amount of research has been dedicated to the purpose of identifying and selecting the right media platforms the young consumers are connected with. The reason for this purpose is simply to synchronize the delivery of the communication objectives to the intended group of consumers using the right platform. This will help to increase the rate of success of the marketing campaign, besides playing a prime role in generating higher rate of conversion for the intended service. Lastly, it can be said that the integrated communication plan has been designed with the sole purpose of generating the need of the young consumers as well as converting them in to effective sales for the purpose of boosting up the process of revenue generation for the Australia based company. References Chitty. W and et.al. (2011) Integrated Marketing Communications Asia Pacific Edition. (3rd Ed). USA: Cengage Learning. Kotler, P. and Armstrong, G. (2008) Principles of Marketing. (Twelfth Edition). 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