Integrated Marketing Communications - Essay Example

Executive Summary Marketing communications are known as the most visible aspect of the marketing mix that helps enhance the brand awareness of the company. In order to prosper in the long term, any company needs to develop an effective marketing campaign to maintain the interest of the existing customers as well as to attract the potential buyers (Cai & Huang, 2011). Mass marketing is a highly effective tool to catch the attention of the million buyers, however, it will not help construct the relationships with them. Therefore, the more personal communications needed, such as direct marketing, to understand the consumer’s needs. Nevertheless, the integration of communication tools helps overcome both challenges, as the mix helps create the brand awareness and enhance the brand recall as well as enhances the brand recall. Introduction Companies use different communication tools also known as the promotional mix such as: PR, sales promotions direct marketing and personal selling (Luxton & Mavondo, 2008). These communication tools differentiate among each other; however, the companies use them for the same reasons, such as to maintain the brand awareness, as well as to enhance the relationships with its stakeholders (Fill, 2009) The following report will evaluate the functions of the various marketing communication tools and compare the effectiveness of them. The report will also construct the marketing campaign for Cadbury corporation in order to deeply understand how those tools are used in practice. Part 2: Advertising is one of the effective methods to promote the increase awareness of the brand in the mass media (Egan, 2007) (Table 2). The main advantage of the advertising is that the numerous channels are able to reach large audience, such as TV or print ads in magazines (Baines & Fill, 2011). Fill (2009) suggested that people who show a positive response to advertising are more likely to purchase a product than those whose attitude is neutral. Therefore, advertisers are particularly interested in creating an extraordinary with the “wow effect” message in their campaigns in order to make the customer’s experience memorable (Jo, 2004). Advertisers are able to use numerous features to enhance the appeal of the advertising, for example, some brands decide to use logical appeals that simply explain the “reason-why” its product outshines everything else in the market and attract the customer by functional reasoning (Miller, 2011). However, mass marketing is not useful for creating the long term relationships with the customer, as the messages sent are not personal, comparing to the direct selling. This suggests that advertising is not able to interact with the customer, therefore, it is not able to fully influence the customer’s decision to buy. For example, the attention for the TV ad is lower as the viewer can switch the channel when watching, but in personal contact, the customer will fully listen to the salesman (Bamossy, 2010) Percy (1998) states that around 70% of customers exposed to heavy advertising will go and make a trial purchase of the product. It can be argued that advertising will not be effective, if the company will not provide a product that gives a positive experience to the customer. According to “ATR” model, the greater part of buying is rooted in the past experience, therefore the companies need to give the promised experience to the customer because the purchased product will show the brand’s “moment of truth”(Löfgren, 2005). On the bright side, advertising can include the role -model in order to influence the customer. Celebrity endorsements are particularly helpful when the target audience is identified and the correct person to endorse is chosen. Additionally, celebrities are also used in ads to help the brand associate with them and rebrand the product (Kumar, 2013). However, The controversial star can also bring the negative product association, the main drawback of celebrity endorsement is that it cannot be controlled; therefore the company needs to be highly careful when choosing who will represent its brand (Fill, 2009). Also, the sponsorship events are more helpful to re-change the product association. (Egan, 2007). For example, McDonalds sponsored the Olympics games in London with an aim to rebrand itself as a healthy and with hope to associate itself as a high quality company (Pennington, 2012). It was a good chance for McDonalds, especially when 81 % participants in Sponsorship Research associate Olympics with high standards (Britcher, 2004). This shows that sponsorship evens are memorable and motivating than a more passive brand message tools (Baines & Fill, 2011). On the other hand, advertising is only useful when the aim is to inform, however it is not able to give the customer something extra as the sales promotions do (Smith, 2012). Sales promotions are highly useful to persuade the consumer to repurchase the product, for example, to get a discount code for the next few weeks, which will encourage the customer to keep buying the promotional products (Court, 2004). Sales promotions also encourage a high brand switching results, especially when it comes to supermarkets or the products that are bought on-the-go because 70% of buying decisions are made in shops (Egan, 2007. p 226). In order to maximize the customer’s purchase behavior, the two discussed communication tools can be integrated. The combination of advertising and sales promotions will create a ‘ratchet effect’, especially the most positive effects when price or creative promotions are involved (Egan, 2007). For instance, K-mart understood that their customers were “deal- hunters”, therefore the price value proposition ads on TV as well as the product discounts in the supermarkets were introduced with the aim to satisfy the target market’s needs (McGovern & Court, 2004). The following marketing strategy has helped the K-mart to achieve profit maximization, which shows that the companies will be more successful when used more than one communication tool (Ang, 2014 p 63). Digital marketing has become an essential communication tool since the growth of the World-Wide-Web (Percy, 2008). Nowadays, companies use digital marketing as an integrated platform to develop digital customer relationships using ads and promotional strategies (Kim, 2011). According to Tiago (2014) in order to improve digital marketing engagement, marketers must now focus on direct marketing and relationship-based interactions with their online customers. Direct marketing is a personalized communication tool with the main goal to better target and develop closer customer relationships, (Percy, 2008). Through the online channel, interesting PR stunts can be spread across the network and influence the buzz around the company. Comparing to other tools, PR stunts are free, however, can influence maximum brand awareness if creative enough. The Word of Mouth can help spread it online and, therefore, it is an important aspect in online marketing, since people are highly loud online. However, brands can’t control or censor what customers say about them, but online comments are highly important for the brand reputation (Egan, 2007).The online tracking tool such as “Brandwatch” is essential to keep the brand’s name in control and therefore with the WOM companies can learn more about their latest communication errors and improve their message (Mangold, 2009). For example, by reading the review on blogs, companies that spot negative opinion, can directly reply or send personalized apology to affect customers through email (Ang, 2014). Cadbury Schweppes is a multinational corporation that believes that their success is based on three factors: quality, value for money and good advertising (Vrontis & Vignali, 2001). Cadbury is recognized by core functional characteristic such as quality taste the customer expects to buy due to company’s unique flavor offer and specific creamy aroma that appeals to all (Fill, 2009). However, in the recent years the UK market has become more health conscious, therefore, the Cadbury is now focused in creating the chocolate bars for the healthy diets (Mintel, 2014). Due to Cadbury’s market research, the company has noticed the changes in the consumer needs therefore the mini-sized chocolate bars were introduced to allay with people’s health eating concerns (Poulter, 2012). Cadbury also plans to keep innovating and by the year of 2015 the company will have “first mover advantage”, as the company will release the lowest calorie chocolate bar in the market which will automatically enhance the Cadbury’s brand and differentiate itself from the competitors (Wallop, 2007). However, once this innovation will be published in the upcoming years, the correct target market needs to be chosen and effective marketing communication campaign needs to be created in order to gain the attention and prosper. Cadbury’s halo characteristic, such as logo and associations has played one of the key roles in building the differentiation brand for the worldwide market (Egan, 2007). Cadbury contains the same name and standardized products across all international markets. Bengtsson & Barhi (2010) supported the idea of name and product standardization and stated that consumers need consistency and trust recognizable products therefore they prefer to buy home and experienced products than unrecognizable ones. Therefore, the extension low-calorie product should remain as Cadbury, in fact, the brand can add the new feature in their original “Dairy Milk” products, only introduce it in the new light, as a healthy innovation. This will help the company to keep its loyal consumers who already trust the brand and attract the new ones who are looking for the healthy chocolate bars. 3.2 Target Audience The new campaign will be aimed at the youth consumer market aged 17-25 because it is a second highest population in the UK (Mintel, 2014). The young market is always looking for the convenient and affordable products, therefore the Cadbury will release a simple chocolate bar for the affordable price. According to Mintel (2014), 95% of UK chocolate eaters prefer to purchase traditional type of chocolate bars, this suggests that Cadbury should maintain the original “Dairy Milk” chocolate bar design. Another reason of choosing the younger population is considering these buyers as a primary target segment in the UK that is already loyal followers of the brand, therefore the company should constantly enhance their brand recall (Mintel, 2014). The consumers of 21st century are now much more conscious and knowledgeable about health related concerns. Moreover, the consumers of this decade are highly careful about the products they buy, especially the young consumers (Martinez, 2006). Therefore, the communication strategy needs to include the health improvement of Cadbury’s products in order to match the young customer’s cautious buying decisions. This buyer segment is also “self-centered” therefore the need to contain the emotional benefits is essential, because all consumers, still buy chocolate products due to the need of sweet taste and self-reward and the chocolate reward (Bush, 2000). Younger market is also vulnerable to peer pressure from friends, therefore Cadbury will promote the new product on social networks to interact with the customers, who then will share their experience with others (Montgomery, 2009). This also suggests that the opinion leaders will be useful to include in promotion for this type of segment because the two- step flow communication model suggests that convincing role model will positively effect the youth buyer purchase decision (Solomon, 2010. p 407). 3.3 Marketing Communications Objectives The primary objective of the campaign is to enhance brand awareness. Though the company contains a high number of loyal consumers, it is important to release new products to stay at the top position. Due to the high competition in the UK market, Cadbury needs to innovate new products to attract even more consumers to the brand (Reid, 2008). According to Smith (2012), companies need to maintain a prominence in the public space and remind the customers of the brand for the brand management purposes. Secondly, it is necessary to introduce the new healthy product of Cadbury and include the education of health improvements in chocolates, especially in the UK market when not many choices of healthy chocolate bars available. Another objective is to increase the profits and get the return on investment (Fill, 2011). Simply because it is a B2C company and the earnings are highly important in order to prosper in the long-term. 3.4 Creative strategy The new campaign will use a number of communication tools, including the traditional and digital marketing tactics, in order to achieve the set objectives (Baines & Fill, 2011) (Table 3). Based on Egan’s (2007) hierarchy model of effects, in order to bring the awareness of the new product, the traditional advertising tactic will be used. The main advantage of using advertising campaigns is their ability to convey the intended message to the target group (Raju, 2013). The emotional appeal will be used to emphasize that even thought the chocolate is low-calories, it maintains the exact same and everyone’s favorite taste like before. This appeal is important the customer who are buying Cadbury’s products are looking for the self reward and by stating that it stays the same, but healthier will influence the impulse purchase of the target audience (Reid, 2008). The British sportsperson with status, such as Tom Daley or Jessica Ennis, who is the same age as the target audience, will endorse the new product in the ads explaining their positive view about the new Dairy Milk product. Agrawal (1995) suggested that young consumers trust the role model in promotion campaigns and especially, celebrities will help generate a greater likelihood of customers choosing the endorsed brand. Miller (2011) adds that celebrity athletes carry the status of trustworthiness, attractiveness and expertise that positively influence the product purchase of their fans. However, if the customer’s view of that celebrity is negative, their attitude towards the product will play an important part (Baines, & Fill, 2011). Cognitive response model states that if the customer’s attitude towards the brand is optimistic than the purchase will happen as the customer has the previous experience with the brand (Egan ,2007. P 196) Another ethic of celebrity endorsement is the unpredictability of the person’s behavior, for example, the crisis involving the star may affect the brand. However, the PR crisis management tool will be used in order to solve the crisis and help to attain the reputation of both celebrity and the brand (Miciak & Shanklin, 2001). The marketing targeting tool “CisionPoint” will help identify the key media channels, which are popular among the youth. For example, the tool can identify the magazines or TV channels that target the same audience that are willing to spread the awareness of the new product (Chester, 2009). Target audience is known for being the constant users of Internet, therefore Cadbury can use the digital marketing to spread the advertising, sales promotions or personal sales (Fill, 2009. p.77) Therefore, it is important to include the product campaign and its profile on popular social network sites such as twitter in order to reach the target market. The consumers will be able to join the Cadbury’s online profile in order to develop a community and share their comments and experiences (Kim & Ko, 2012). The valuable feedback from the customers will help the company in the future run and enhance its campaigns and communication tactics. Another advantage of the digital marketing is the ability to interact with the customer, for example, the company may invite the consumers to their events. Cadbury can also influence to share their photographs or videos with the products and use the “#” to spread the awareness, and give out the rewards publically or privately of sales promotions to the winner (Faulds, 2009).This will also influence the WOM among the customer and can be spread onto different blogs which will help in increasing the awareness. By following to operant conditioning theory states that positive reinforcements influence repurchase, therefore the sales promotions, such as 20% off will be introduced to the highly engaged in comments and photo- sharing online users. (Groonroos, 2009). The target market is also influential by peers, WoM by peers will motivate the customer to participate due to their social benefit of being “the part of the group” (Walsh, 2004). Baldus (2014) added that online customers will participate on comments sections or forums, because of the factors such as social status enhancement, learning more about using the product and having fun. Therefore, Cadbury will be a part of the internet phenomenon, especially when the campaign is to increase the awareness and sales and aimed at the youth market. 3.5 Measuring Effectiveness As advertising campaign is the communicational process, the effectiveness of campaign can be measured by its usefulness in motivating the consumers to purchase the product. The communication objectives for this campaign, such as enhance the brand recall, increase product awareness, can be measured by online and offline research, opinions and mathematical models (Kumar, 2004). There are numerous ways to measure the effectiveness of the campaign. The online social networking can help to track how many “followers” the company have gained since the published campaign. Also, “Google AdWords” or PPC able to precisely show the company’s when customers searching for the things that Cadbury offers, and then count the effectiveness by how many views on official website the company grown. Further tracking software programs such as Webalizer, Urchin and WebTrends will able to show the campaign effectiveness. 4. Conclusions The report aimed at evaluating numerous marketing communication tools used to connect with the customers. These tools mostly used for spreading the awareness of the new products, enhancing the recall of the brand but mostly for increasing the number of sales as the company needs profits to survive in the long term. The report has deeply looked at the communication tools in practice when the creative strategy for the new Cadbury product was set. The paper analyzed in what situation it is better to use advertising, PR or direct marketing for the Cadbury brand, therefore the advantages and disadvantages of the tools were found. For example, it has been identified that advertising is one of the useful tool for brand promotion, because it is able to reach a wider audience within the shortest possible time frame (Egan, 2007. P 194). The message appeals are also important as it will highly influence the attitude of the viewer and affect the buying decision. However, the company should consider the importance of the relationships marketing, therefore, the direct marketing tools such as mobile marketing can be used to get more personal effect with the consumer. The online social networking is a create tool that is able to encourage the consumers to engage with the brand, especially when the target audience is the youth, because they are the highest users of the Internet. However, in order to achieve the maximum success the companies must integrate the marketing tools, for example, the sales promotions can be used digitally to persuade the consumer to repurchase the product, for example, get a discount code for the next few weeks online, which will encourage the customer to buy the product (Court, 2004). In conclusion, marketing communications are highly effective when the brand needs to create competitive advantage, attract the clients and boost sales. The integration of these tools can help the company reinforce its core image and messaging, because each marketing channel works together as parts of the unified whole. Read More