A Communications Campaign to Help Starbucks Overcome the Negative Publicity - Assignment Example

ID] You have just been appointed as a Marketing intern at Starbucks UK. The company recently suffered some media setbacks regarding its non-payment of taxes in the UK. Design a communications campaign to help the company overcome the negative publicity. Reputation builds over long period of time; it is not something which is built overnight rather it takes years to build reputation. Egan (2007) referred to reputation as process-based trust since it takes an entire process to build reputation. However the time it takes to build reputation is too long as compared to the time it takes to destroy it. Warren Buffet, a popular investor stated that “it takes twenty years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it” (cited in Ansell 2010). Starbucks, UK has made a mistake by non-payment of taxes and media has been too quick in making headlines out of this mistake. The best remedy suggested by the literature is to accept the mistake, apologize and suggest remedy (Foley and Kendrick 2006) while remaining consistent on the specific course of action that has been decided upon. Foley and Kendrick (2006) stated that the more quickly the mistake is accepted the more likely the company is to save its reputation. The objective of the communication in the time of crisis should be to accept the mistake and design a plan to ensure the mistake is not repeated and making your action visible so that the stakeholders may know you are concerned about your actions and their possible impact on each and every party involved. Following suggests a communications plan for Starbucks to overcome the negative publicity. Starbucks must instantly call a press conference and accept that the mistake has been made on the part of the company and it has already issued show cause notices to the relevant departments asking the reasons for this negligence. This is called reactive public relations when a company does ‘damage control’ in response to the negative publicity experiences it has faced (Percy & Rosenbaum-Elliott 2012). Next step is to have a sitting with the tax collecting authority in order to clear the tax and publicize the same on the media; while doing this it should be ensured that those media channels which have publicized the non-payment must give coverage to this payment of taxes. Then the company must call a meeting with the board to clarify the matter and ensure such mistake will not happen in future. Last but not the least, Starbucks, UK must ensure such event will not take place in the future. It must work on the crisis management plan to put in practice in case the company faces any such similar situation in the future. The company must keep in mind that once tarnished it takes time, consistency, good work and trust to rebuild the reputation; the quicker the remedy is put in place the sooner the company can recover its reputation. 2. What is promotion mix? How would you differentiate between marketing mix and promotion mix? Marketing mix is one of the core concepts of marketing (Brown et al 1991); while introducing any marketing activity the first task is defining ones marketing mix (Kumar 2010). There are four basic elements of marketing mix namely product, price, promotion and placement and as can be seen from these elements promotion is a subset of the marketing mix. In general parlance, as explained by Madaan (2009) promotion mix means designing and implementing a comprehensive communication plan to communicate with both current and potential customers. Promotion mix is also known as marketing communications mix (Egan 2007). Like marketing mix, promotion mix also have four elements that is, advertising, sales promotion, personal selling and public relations. All these elements should be designed in a way so that they communicate a similar message to the customer while balancing the strengths and weaknesses of each other (Trehan & Trehan 2010). Differentiating marketing mix from promotion mix is simple. Both these mixes are aimed at communicating with the customers. However, the elements of marketing mix other than promotion i.e. product itself, price and placement of the product are communicating to the customers indirectly; Lidstone and MacLennan (1999) call it implicit communication whereas promotion element of the marketing mix suggest the channels used to communicate with the customers and it is a sort of direct communication with the customers. Taking the example of an organization that communicates with its customers indirectly through its price and placement but to inform and persuade customers on the same elements of marketing mix, the organization will require the use of specific channels and those specific channels are offered by promotion mix elements. Hence we can say that to reinforce consumers about the other elements of marketing mix (say, quality of a product or the justified price of the product), the organization may require using one of the promotional mix elements. 3. Ethical considerations are becoming key when making advertising decisions. Discuss the role of ethics in advertising. Are the ethical considerations different from legal considerations? Ethics play a major role in advertising and the companies must realize their responsibility towards the audiences not only because not doing so will put a bad name on their reputation but also because it is their moral and social responsibility. There are many ethical considerations which the companies advertising their products must pay attention to. OGuinn et al. (2011) classified ethical considerations in advertising in three segments as truth in advertising, advertising controversial products and advertising to children. Truth in advertising suggests that advertising should be true and must not made false promises; it must not use deception or puffery to sell the product; for example showing extra ordinary long hair in shampoo ads or extra slim physique in slimming pills ad. Advertising controversial products like tobacco and alcohol etc. obviously raises ethical concerns. Advertising to children raises ethical concerns because children being vulnerable consumers may not be able to distinguish between the right and wrong and hence whatever is advertised to them must pass ethical test (OGuinn et al 2011). Besides these considerations companies also have to look into the fact that they must not promote ideals which result in disheartened feelings in less privileged consumers. In addition to this, advertising must also not directly hit the product of the competitor; this is unethical as it demotes fair competition. Though ethical issues are not legal per se, however ethical considerations may result in legal implications for the companies, as stated by OGuinn et al. (2011, p. 134) “many of the ethical aspects of advertising border on and interact with both the social and legal considerations of the advertising process”. For example, law against unfair competition 1909 (Germany), Advertising laws in UK and Lannham Act which not only protects against unfair competition but also has provisions for puffery, exaggeration and other similar unethical acts. There are also laws restricting cigarette advertisements or sponsorships (Egan 2007). The companies which may use any of the unethical forms in advertising may be taken to the court by their competitors or consumers who have faced the negative consequences of those ads. 4. When designing communications campaigns, barriers to communication have to be taken into consideration to ensure that the message is not impeded. Using relevant examples identify typical barriers that can affect a marketing communication campaign. Means (2009, p. 11) defines communication barriers as “the things or conditions that interfere with communication”. Jones (2012) has identified several barriers that can affect successful communication; these barriers include distortion, noise, information overload, perceptual bias, and pace of speech, language barrier, contradictory messages and use of jargon among others. Then there are some typical barriers affecting communications campaigns; Trehan and Trehan (2010) identified these typical barriers to communication campaigns as wrong choice of media, wrong message design, wrong message encoding, wrong message decoding, media clutter, wrong media scheduling, long message, language barriers, and use multiple meaning words. Following examples show how these typical barriers may weaken the communications campaigns. One of the typical barriers that may impede effective delivery of a message in a communication campaign is the use of inappropriate message channels. For example, for niche marketing using mass media advertising may be inappropriate as compared to direct marketing (directly marketing the product to the relevant segment). Another example how wrong media selection may weaken the communications campaign is given by Barefoot and Szabo (2009), when they mentioned that while marketing a new book selecting a social media, such as ‘youtube’, might be an inappropriate choice as no one would like to sit in front of PC to listen someone reading for 20 min however distribution of a short reading via a podcast would work (Barefoot & Szabo 2009). Another barrier that may weaken the communications campaign is wrong message design; for example there is a decline in the sales of Benetton – an Italian clothing group when the new art director at Benetton designed its communications campaign that doesn’t matches brand’s present image. Being inconsistent with Benetton’s image, Benetton becomes the most controversial brand after the campaign since new messages related brand with HIV aids where consumers were confused what a clothing brand has to do with these messages (Floor, 2006). Next barrier is wrong message encoding and decoding; the most common example of occurrence of this is when the designer of the communication campaign resides in a different country than the recipients of the message. For example, Esso’s slogan for an advertising campaign designed for Taiwan says “to put a tiger in your tank” where people of Taiwan has religious associations with tiger which caused problems when message was decoded; it failed to communicate the message the campaign designer aimed to give. Media clutter is another barrier and companies use different ways like silence, shock and fear advertising to minimize the effect of media clutter. For example, Benetton advertisement as discussed earlier or Calvin Klein’s advertisement where kids’ images in underpants were used to hit moralists and at the same time to give the brand a bold and on-the-edge image (Rutherford 2007). Another barrier is wrong media scheduling in which the time the ad is placed on air and the time audiences are available to see or listen to it doesn’t match. For example, a Kellogg’s ad for breakfast cereal is run on TV from 10:00 am to 1:00 or 2:00 pm cannot be quite effective as its target audiences, the children, might not see it as they are in schools at that time rendering the campaign ineffective. Other barriers such as long message, language barriers, and use multiple meaning words are obvious that they are sure to render communications campaigns ineffective. 5. In marketing communication, the print media offers different opportunities when compared to say the electronic media. Citing relevant examples, discuss some of the advantages and disadvantages of the electronic media in today’s communication campaigns. Electronic media as the name shows comprise of communication channels that use electronic means to communicate a message to the client. Being electronic channel of communication, message passed using this media are delivered fast and it is overall cost effective as well. Electronic media has several advantages over print media but the advantages and disadvantages are also dependent upon the type of electronic or print media in question. For example, television which is a form of electronic media may give a wide coverage (Egan, 2007), however, clutter is high and hence attention diversion is quite possible resulting in low effectiveness of advertisement run using this media. On the other hand, newspapers are good to target local audiences however given the fact that newspapers are for wider population it doesn’t have the ability to target a specific group. This can be easily understood using the example of a product which is to be targeted to a specific audience for example businessman or children; television can target this audience easily by scheduling advertisement for a specific time period when businessman or children are more likely to watch television however on the other hand newspaper doesn’t have this ability to target specific audiences. Another form of electronic media is internet; there are several advantages of this form of electronic media first one being its unique nature which allows interactivity (Haugtvedt et al., 2005), hence, generating e-WOM which can travel even faster than conventional WOM. This advantage is not offered by any form of print media. In addition to this, internet is inexpensive and caters for the audiences worldwide whereas on the other hand print media do not have this advantage. Another advantage of electronic media is that the advertisement on this media may last for a longer period of time and can be updated and republished whereas print media do not have this facility; the advertisements published in newspapers or magazines are short lived and expires as soon as the readers have gone through it for the first time. It is rare that they refer back to it or refer someone else to have a look at it. On the other hand, advertisements that are creative are talked about among friends and family. Hence both print and electronic media have their advantages and disadvantages however this fact cannot be denied that electronic media is superior to print and other media as it offers more opportunities comparatively. Outlining best opportunities of electronic media over print media it can be stated that electronic media is more dynamic, cost effective, interactive, have wide reach, easy to update and constantly feeding where all or some of these opportunities are missing in print media. 6. Discuss the difference between marketing communication objectives as opposed to marketing objectives (if any). Marketing communication objectives are aimed at running a campaign to promote the product to the target audiences to improve the product sale. The basic features of marketing communication objectives is to publicize the company and promote its products, to build brand image, to retain customers and build loyalty, to encourage the targeted group to give preference to the company’s product over the competition, to increase the number of new customers, to expedite the product sales, to get positive consumer feedbacks and to create sales leads. On the other hand, marketing objectives provide overall goals for all of the marketing activities done by the organization including the communication ones, as stated by Kenneth (2007, p. 123) “communication objectives are derived from marketing objectives, which tend to be general because they relate to the entire marketing plan”. An example of marketing objective as presented by Gerber (2008, p. 57) is “to increase our sales over the next 6 months by 10%”. Now the marketing communication objective complementing this marketing objective will suggest a way to achieve this objective, for example marketing communication objective would suggest “using variety of communications channels to reach target audiences in order to increase awareness and increase sales”. Therefore, where marketing objectives are general and suggest overall marketing plan of the organization, marketing communication objectives are specific to communication activities planned to achieve certain marketing related goals. Now when the difference between marketing objectives and marketing communication objectives is clear it is important to outline the different marketing communication objectives that an organization could have. Dahlen et al. (2010) suggest that marketing communications objectives “act as means of assessing how best to build ongoing dialogues with audiences”, hence an organization’s communications objectives may target any of the mental stages of consumer from DAGMAR to AIDA. According to Smith and Taylor (2004), DAGMAR is “Defining advertising goals for measuring advertising responses”, whereas AIDA is “attention, interest, desire and action”, hence, starting from unawareness to awareness and then to building conviction and forcing action, marketing communications objectives may be formulated based on any of these dimensions. Concluding we can say that, communication objectives though a part of marketing objectives suggest specific communication related activities unlike the marketing objectives which talks about overall marketing plan. References Ansell, J 2010, When the Headline Is You: An Insiders Guide to Handling the Media, New York: John Wiley & Sons. Barefoot, D & Szabo, J L 2009, Friends with Benefits: A Social Media Marketing Handbook, Sans Francisco: No Starch Press Inc. Brown, S W, Gummesson, E, Edvardsson, B & Gustavsoon, B 1991, Service Quality: multidisciplinary and multinational perspectives, New York: Lexington Books. 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