Integrated Marketing Communication Program for Zamda Motors - Research Paper Example

? ………………………….. College ……………………………… ……………….. MARKETING Integrated marketing communication program for Zamda Motors Wordscount: 1437 Introduction Marketing communication is one of the most critical aspects of a company’s overall marketing mission and a major determinant of its success in the market. It plays pivotal role as a vehicle for transmitting the information related to brand, company, products, values and services to the prospective customers. Out of various means and methods available for this communication, IMC has recently gained considerable attention among the companies due to that it helps companies achieve competitive advantage, brand equity and effective marketing through better brand communication. Purpose of this paper This paper is a report to be submitted to Isla Driver, the North American Marketing VP of Zamda motors, a Japanese auto company, about the Integrated marketing communication project for the company to market its new variant of car the ‘2.2’ ‘two seated’ new small car in the Eastern Canada sales region. This report describes the marketing perspectives of IMC and examines the pragmatism of the IMC strategy for Zamda’s new market project with proposed budget and plan. Zamda has long been lagging behind the major market players Honda and Toyota, but the company hopes to improve its market performance with the IMC program. Integrated Marketing Communication Integrated marketing communication is the process of developing and implementing various forms of persuasive communication programs with customers and prospects with a view to influence and directly affects the behavior selected market audience (Percy, p. 6). IMC refers to a careful coordination of various promotional messages including traditional advertising, sales promotions, personal selling, event marketing, public relation etc for marketing a particular product or service with a basic objective of maintaining consistency in information to be conveyed to the prospective customers. Yeshin (p. 14) emphasized that the underlying requirement of integrated marketing communication is to ensure maximum consistency in message being communicated to the public as it forces all aspects of communication programs to deliver a single-minded and unified message to the audience. Weiss stressed that the marketer needs to have graphic consistency and message consistency throughout every communication emanating from his organization. Integrated marketing communication is a strategic tool that helps a marketer plan, design and develop coordinated, systematic and measurable brand communication program with customers, employees and other important stakeholders to ensure short term financial benefits as well as long term brand value. Marketing mix and IMC In an attempt to prepare an IMC project for Zamda motors, it is worth explaining the concepts of marketing mix to illustrate how various marketing elements of the company are coordinated. Traditionally, the marketing mix comprises of four marketing elements; product, price, place and promotion. Many literatures have suggested adding people, process and physical evidence (Palmer, p. 259). IMC is related to the promotion mix of marketing mix. Promotion, the fourth element of marketing mix, consists of five sub-elements; they are advertising, consumer promotions, personal selling, direct marketing and public relation. While planning for an effective marketing communication program, it is highly important to consider evaluating all the four marketing mix and sub-elements of the company in order to carefully coordinate the message to be conveyed to the targeted audience. IMC plan for Zamda Motors 1- Planning the IMC for Zamda Motors Planning is essentially a critical stage in implementing any strategy. In order to plan the IMC, predict the potential and estimate the costs and profits, Zamda motors has to review the marketing objectives, recognize the prevailing marketing situations through both internal and external situation analysis. For this purpose, Zamda needs to carry out SWOT, Pestel and other strategic analysis to find internal and external strengths and weaknesses. For carrying out various functions involved in planning the IMC, Zamda Motors may use different agencies or specialists for clear delineation of duties and responsibilities for accomplishing certain tasks. Masterman and Wood (p. 11) pointed that implementation of an IMC program requires cross functional tem in the firm complemented by use of agencies and external specialists. 2- Determining the Budget for the IMC Zamda Motors has fixed a gross budget of $ 1 million for its IMC. The television and print advertising will likely to cost $ 3,50,000 and public relation will cost around $1,00,000. Sales promotion will cost $1,80,000 and email and web-marketing to cost $70,000. Office and other administrative activities will cost around $ 2,20,000 and other activities including a reserve fund will cost $80,000. 3- Developing the IMC for Zamda Motors In order to develop the IMC, it is a very significant step to consider various modes of advertsing and promotion mix by evaluating and assessing the relative benefits and disadvantages of using them. Since the main targeted audience are males aged between 22 and 34 and females aged between 34 and 45, the selection of advertising media and modes need to consider the extent of market, flexibility, effectiveness, attraction, appeal etc. As depicted above, the IMC program for Zamda Motors comprises of five promotional elements; they are 1) broadcast media advertising, 2) print media advertising, 3) public relation, 4) sales promotion, and 5) email and web marketing. Broadcast and Print media advertising Television advertising campaign is a highly useful and powerful method for brand communication as it creates a very strong brand image and long term brand loyalty for the firm. Bitti reported that a television advertising campaign is very effective than an online or social media advertising campaign. Zamda motors selected TV ads because there are more than 250 TV channels in Canada and that translates in to a wider space making the cost less. Similarly, It can also use both newspaper and trade journals for print advertising as they both are found to be effective to reach a specific segment of customers. Radio is not considered since it is less effective for that it cannot give visual impacts to the audience. Similarly, hoarding, billboards, digital billboard etc were not considered since they have limited audience and are not appropriate advertising modes for giving ads of cars that are targeted for males and females between 22 and 34. Public relation Public relation, as an important element in the promotional mix, can evaluate public attitudes, identify issues that may elicit public concerns and execute programs to gain public understanding and acceptance (Lamb, Hair and McDaniel, p. 525). In order to compete with Honda and Toyota, Zamda requires to build strong brand image and to elicit public concerns about the new car it is going to launch. Zamda Motors selected public relation for its IMC program because it can help the company build stronger brand image through effective customer relationship. The company didn’t select event marketing for that it has limited market extent and is less flexible. Email and Web-marketing Internet marketing, including email, web and social media marketing, has become a powerful force in marketing in recent years and it accounts for an ever-increasing percentage of sales. Zamda motors selected email and web-marketing as it can certainly impact a large numbers of customers and build stronger marketing relationship with new generation customers especially to attract them to the new ‘two-seater’ small car. Sales promotion Sales promotion can be a very successful marketing communication strategy to effectively blend with public relation and internet marketing to meet sales and profit objectives. Sales promotion such as discounts, offers etc can be used as tools to be integrated with other ads campaigns (Hutt and Speh, p. 328). Zamda motors considered sales promotion for that it can promote customers to buy and even to change their buying-behavior and attitude. Sponsorship ads was not considered as it may not help the company build a long-term customer relationship. 4- Integrating various methods of promotion All the five advertising and promotion tools for Zamda’s IMC need to be coordinated and integrated in a way that all the messages delivered through different forms of advertising and promotion should be consistent. Torp (2008, p. 190) stressed that IMC is a notion that aligns symbols, information and procedures that a firm uses to communicate with consistency, coherence and clarity. According to Kotler and Keller (p. 558), IMC needs to be planned and developed by considering consistency and coherence in messages to be delivered to the public. 5- Evaluating the IMC program for Zamda Motors Once the IMC program has been planned, implemented and executed, it is critically important to monitor and evaluate the results of the program by assessing the performance in terms of effectiveness of information delivered to the customers and the brand awareness it is likely to result. It is also important to see the consistency in messages and to see how the IMC impacts business performance. The evaluation and monitoring resembles to the controlling function in management. Conclusion This paper has briefly explained the theoretical perspectives of IMC and addressed the basic principles of integrating various advertising and promotional tools in relation to the promotion mix element in the marketing mix. This report presented a six-step plan for the IMC program for Zamda Motors with a view to ensure maximum results in the marketing communication program. References Bitti, M.T., Television ads hit the spot, Entrepreneurs, Retrieved from http://business.financialpost.com/2012/07/02/television-ads-hit-the-spot/, 2012 Hutt, M.D and Speh, T.W., Business Marketing Management: B2b, Eleventh edition, Cengage Learning, 2012 Kotler,P & Keller, KL, Marketing Management, Twelfth Edition, Prentice Hall, Pearson education Inc, 2006 Lamb, C.W., Hair, J.F and McDaniel, C.D., Essentials of Marketing, Seventh edition, Cengage Learning, 2011 Masterman, G, and Wood, E., Innovative Marketing Communications, Routledge , 2012 Palmer, A., Introduction to Marketing: Theory and Practice, Oxford University Press, 2012 Percy, L., Strategic Integrated Marketing Communications, Routledge, 2012 Torp, S, Integrated communications: from one look to normative consistency, Corporate Communications: An International Journal Vol. 14 No. 2, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 2009 Weiss, E, Is Integrated Marketing Communications Essential for Branding? Retrieved from http://amabaltimore.org/2012/02/02/is-integrated-marketing-communications-essential-for-branding/ , 2012 Yeshin, T., Integrated Marketing Communications, Routledge, 2012 Read More