Integrated Marketing Communication at Ford Company - Essay Example

Integrated Marketing Communication Integrated Marketing Communication at Ford Company Integrated marketing communicationis defined as “an approach to achieving the objectives of a marketing campaign through a well-coordinated use of different promotional methods that are intended to reinforce each other” (Online Busines Dictionary, 2010). This is reported to have come from American association of advertising agencies. This phenomenon has been defined from so many different perspectives including the 4As of marketing mix and the 7Cs in the compass model. The 4As definition takes into account the advertising itself, public relations and sales promotions as well as the people with intention to have a major positive effect on the people decision and perception when they are combined together. IMC is also referred to as “a strategic marketing process specifically designed to ensure that all messaging and communication strategies are unified across all channels and are centered on the customer” (JIMC, 2011). It is done in a way that allows one medium’s weakness to be offset by the strength of another medium it is used together with. This process according to the journal of integrated marketing process emphasizes that customer prospects should be identified and assessed so that messages are tailored towards such customers in a way that is profitable and can allow for evaluation of its success to minimize waste. This, they propose can be done in five steps beginning with customer identification from behavioral data, evaluation of customer prospects, creating and delivering messages and incentives, estimating returns on customer investment and finally to budgeting, allocation, evaluation and recycling. The process is cyclic. This paper is going to look into how Ford motor vehicle manufacturer has been if true been using IMC to do its marketing while reflecting on the impact of this marketing tool to the overall strategic goals of the company. It is also going to look into the company’s success story from the use of this marketing strategy. Ford’s business strategy is based on its plan which was adopted in 2007 and has guided the company since then (Ford, 2014). It is indeed true that Ford motor company is adopting the use of integrated marketing communication as a strategy of winning more customers and increasing their market presence and revenue in overall. According to the definitions of the integrated marketing and communications discussed above, it is possible for a company to succeed in it by creating their strategy from the basis of their business while centering on the customer needs/demands. In line with this arguments, Ford’s strategy seems to reflect this going by their actions that reflect social media presence, public relations by sponsoring different events, and the creativity they stitch in their model they create. Creativity can be seen the recent renewal of their vehicle’s design by adding interesting technological features and trying to make and publicize eco-friendly vehicles (Rodriguez, 2015). The four point business plan included; Aggressive restructuring to operate profitably at the then demand and changing model mix Accelerating development of new products their customers needed and valued Financing their plan and improving their balance sheet And finally, working together as a team. Ford in an attempt to build on this plan, embraced teamwork while, aligning employee’s work towards a common purpose of success. In fact ford encourages working together as a team to be the automotive leader something that they claim is measured by the satisfaction of customers, investors generally all stakeholders. Ford aims to build great products of all classes with high quality while economizing fuel consumption. They aim to create proper designs that can lead to strong business based on the balanced portfolio of products with global presence. This they believe will contribute to a better world (Ford, 2014). It is for this ambitious plan that Ford Company has come up with IMC to help them stay on top of the competitors. Ford has embraced the 4Cs to politely replace the 4Ps to reflect the customer centric nature of the plan. Instead of targeting general mass with their advertisements, ford has changed its marketing system to specifically target certain niche of customers like the case of gay and lesbian target market. Just like Subaru Motor Company, ford also targeted gays and lesbians in addition to their other customers now being a decade from now. This was however opposed strongly by many stakeholders including the conservative American family Association (AFA) and numerous gay organizations (Subaru, 2010). The gay group according to the case study is reported to have started by employees of ford writing to the then vice president of Ford to ask for permission to form a gay/lesbian and bisexual employee group to which they were granted. “Then later in 1995, Ford expanded its corporate diversity definition to include sexual orientation and ran ads during NBC’s viewing of “Serving in silence’’, a made for TV movie about the life of a lesbian Army colonel Margarethe Cammemeyer, discharged under the military’s Don’t ask, Don’t tell policy in 1992’’ (Subaru, 2010). In the subsequent year (1996), Ford developed a site on the company’s intranet publicizing its efforts to internal stakeholders. The site can now be accessed at http://fordglobe.org. This resulted in people holding parades around GM and Chrysler as a way of showing solidarity with the gays and lesbians while on the other hand supporting the initiative of the Ford Company. This is because the two said companies had not showed any sign of initiating such activities within their companies. This resulted in Chrysler, GM and Ford in conjunction with Auto Workers (UAW) in the year 2000 extending same sex healthcare benefits to employees and also giving other benefits like financial planning, legal services and vehicle programs just to mention a few. They were then awarded the HRC’s corporate equality award in the same year. In fact in 2000, Ford’s concern for the gays, transgender and lesbians was taken a notch higher by its involvement in corporate sponsoring of events like working out, national coming out day, parents and friends of lesbians and gays, lesbians and gays conference, Michigan, Jaguar Gay Pride month in new jersey, lesbians and Gay alliance against defamation (GLAAD) and many others. In 2003, Ford was named the top company for diversity (Subaru, 2010). The ads were in Europe, however, this was not true for USA GAY media and the advertising that took place in 2001 was short lived (Mike, 2002). However, this was to be short lived as Tupelo, MS-based American Family Association (AFA) announced its intentions to boycott Ford motor company in response to Ford pro-gay ideology (Alex, 2005). This action of playing favorable to these group of people in the society was being seen by a sector of the society as a marketing stunt that was going against the natural course of things as seen by the exit plan of the key customer which in turn changed the mind of the Ford Motor manufacturing company. These advertisements about gays and lesbians alone more than tripled between 1994 and 2007 from $53 million to $182 million respectively according to the data presented by the joint efforts of New York-based multicultural advertising agency Prime Access and New Jersey-based media placement firm Rivendell Media, Inc. Titled “The Gay Press Report” (Subaru, 2010). This was however, was affected later on by the great recession of the 2007. The year that marked the highest spending on media about the gay and lesbians was when MTV introduced a cable television channel that provided marketers with direct access to millions of gay men and lesbians in 2006 which was approximated at around $223.3 million. It is important to note that the spending above were not for the Ford company alone but for the whole USA motor vehicle industry. What is of interest here is that this did not lead to a direct change of yields from the sale to this target group. The change in percentages were a little inconsistent with the amount of money pumped to advertisements. These figures are illustrated in the tables below. Figure 1: gay and lesbian Media advertising revenue in millions Source: Prime Access, Inc. The above figure shows the amount in millions that were used for gay advertisements in U.S.A and Europe. Even though there was a resulting general increase in revenues, it is not easy to directly relate the increment to a particular increase in advertisement cost. This, in my opinion may not directly relate or associate the increase of media advertisement to gays or lesbians buying the automotive. In fact, it is not indicated whether the total sales resulted from gays buying more vehicles but just a general increase in revenue which could have originated from many people buying because the companies have been controversially present in the media or just other non-gay people showing solidarity with them. However, the target of a company is increase in sales and this was achieved. The resulting change in revenue was as in the figure below: Figure 2: Advertising revenues resulting from the percentage change over previous years. Source: Prime Access, Inc.2 5 It is important to note that in 2006 which swathe highest expenditure in advertisements yielded relatively low revenue in the subsequent year. In fact it is 2006 that saw a negative increase in revenues at -5.8% thereby supporting the above argument. The gay advertisements were all controversial from the onset as witnessed by the MAZDA advert, a company owned by the Ford tried running advert in 1994 that featured two same sex couples kissing. This received harsh criticism from the conservative viewers prompting a pull down of the advertisement (Jean, 2002). In 1999, Jaguar sponsored GLAAD annual media awards then land rover followed later. During the campaigns jaguar began offering $1000 donations to the HRC for every car purchased or leased. This was explained by Ford’s vice president Mr. Jan Valentic as an act of reciprocity so that people should know whenever ford products are bought, the buyers in a way are giving back to the community (Solis Diame, 2003). The trend was also continued by the Volvo in Genre Magazine specifically targeting gays. The same thing prompted a protest by the AFA as indicated above. Ford then cut down on such advertisement in USA but continued the Adverts in Europe something that did not go well with the AFA group. However, few days later fuelled by the protest of pro-gay organizations, Ford changed the plan and announced it would promote its eight brands in corporate in gay media to show their long standing relationship with the group which again prompted the protest by AFA for one month thereby affecting the company’s stock price negatively and hence leading to a decline in sales according to Reverend Wildmon (Anonymous, 2005). Ford then issued statement claiming that whatever the reverend was alleging about the decline in sales was false but without addressing the issue with facts. Ford faced mass protest on its gay relationship due to the fact that it is a mainstream brand targeting a wide variety of consumers, both liberal and conservative and either would not want to be excluded from its plans. Ford’s availability in social Media Ford is heavily present in the social media not only for the sake of it but majorly for marketing purposes. In fact by now, it is easier to navigate the different social networks from the company’s websites as links are provided to connect one to such sites without having to log off. Ford uses these sites to engage their customers on various issues concerning their production and products. According to Monty whose formal title is a multimedia communications manager became part of Ford in 2008, “Ford has integrated social media into its marketing mix through a hub and spoke model wiping out silos as it goes’’ (Fletcher, 2001). According to Fletcher, when Ford reveals a new model, the most consumers can do is build and price one for themselves without being able to purchase any from the site directly. This on one hand becomes a weakness for the site as they should be able to develop the site in a way that one can order and pay on the same site. The vista movement that was launched on the social media does show sales figures resulting from just social media efforts aside from the 7 million video impression on you tube, 75,000 photo impression and more than 40 million twitter impression.. Monty reported that more than 130,000 consumers registered at Fiestamovement.com to receive more information about the vehicle when it came to the market. This translated to ten times more orders for Ford vehicles than before (Fletcher, 2001). For this reason it is possible to say social media has helped a lot to increase revenue. Monty however admits that it is something that is still evolving. He explained that social media is something that does not live in any one unit. He asserted that “communication has a piece of it, marketing has a piece of it” said Monty (Fletcher, 2001) . Monty explained that they found that as they work together as one Ford, it should be good if they coordinated between communication and marketing. Ford is working on how to fine tune the relationship between earned, owned and paid media like @FordFocus, Ford.com/Focus and paid media like display advertisements on publisher sites. This should provide a better chance in getting a step ahead of the completion like Subaru since customers will be able to access the different sites by just logging on a single site. This will also increase their ability to reach many people and thereby increasing their social network presence and hence revenue. Ford operates and actively updates Facebook, twitter handle, Instagram and others. In fact according to Rodrguez, it is one of the companies that post consistent information on their social media accounts without contradicting any account. The contents are all up to date making customers feel associated with the company going by the interaction they have with the company on social media. By creating a successful integrated marketing and communication strategy, it is important to not only post the same message repeatedly on all channels but rather tailor-make the message to suit the target audiences one is aiming to capture. In her article on seven ways to create a successful integrated marketing campaigns, Jennifer Lonnoff Schiff explains how important it is to be clear, consistent and adaptable and easily suitable information to specific media channel. She explains that more information could be part of what the audience of the target is looking for in Instagram but not what the twitter fans are looking for hence the need to customize messages according to the audience (Rodriguez, 2015). Public relations Ford has not been left out on this either. Integrated marketing communication is all about involving customers and being present in the mind of customers. This should embrace any allowed procedure that can allow this to happen while combining or using a strategy. This may involve delivering brand messages across traditional and non-traditional marketing channels. Special events, interviews, conference speeches, industry awards, press conferences, testimonials, news releases, publicity stunts, community involvement, charity involvement & events all reflect positively on a company’s presence in people’s minds. This is the same thing that Ford was trying to do by sponsoring gay events which though attracted controversies but at least increased sales and media presence (Mike, 2002). Factors that motivated a move from the traditional advertising methods to integrated marketing communications by Ford are: The growing number of commercial messaging and their credibility made it increasingly more difficult for a single message to have a lasting impact on consumers and hence the increasing need by Ford to dominate prompting the use of methods with wide outreach like social media. Decreasing costs of databases: The cost of storing and retrieving names, addresses and information from database has overtime reduced probably due to advancement in technology. This decline allowed marketers to reach a wide range of customers faster, effectively while keeping records of them and making follow-ups on them. Clients of marketing and public relations of Ford Company are experienced and more educated in their professional areas thereby contributing to the success of the company. Example is the employment of Finley from Toyota Company to spearhead the marketing of the company. It is during his time that marketing stunts that allowed users of other motor company to try riding the Ford( swap my ride) was introduced to help change the opinion of these potential customers to which was successful with increase in sale being witnessed. Increasing media and audience fragmentation: it is only print media that has been decreasing. However, so many people are available on net on social media and these need capturing. Increasing number of overall products: Ford filled the market with many brands, many of which had little differences in terms of their operation mode apart from their names. This necessitated the use of a unique marketing and branding approach to attract customer attention and increase sales. It is however necessary that this marketing strategy goes hand in hand with the organization culture. An organization needs to examine its culture before adopting and if necessary, align its culture with this integrated marketing and communication. This however did not bar Ford from hiring a person who was from a company with different culture to head the marketing section. Jim Farley at the time of his hiring at Ford from the rival Toyota Company, was quite hesitant about joining the company citing a difference in culture at Ford from the one he is used to. It took the encouragement of his hirer here being Allan Mulally the then CEO of Ford in 2007. He instead of trying to fit in the culture of Ford, changed it to match his resulting to sale revenue increasing by almost 17% per year. This figure was the highest in the motor vehicle industry by then and is quoted to be more than double the industry-wide gain of 8.4%. Ford got a profit of $4.7 billion that year something that had not been achieved since 1998 (Annonymous, 2010). Challenges Management Support and Resources- There is need to be supported both financially and by any possible means. This should be by all stakeholders yet for Ford, the company’s target market is comprised of both liberal and conservative clients. This challenge of meeting the needs of all the customers is quite a big challenge as many customers can’t be satisfied all at the same time. Cross-media Uniformity- There needs to be uniformity of creativity in the print media, TV adverts, and social media content. Information that is available to the consumers should be the same but varied according to the audience that is available in a given account. The company therefore needs to ironies these information accordingly. Customer Data/collected Customer Concerns- Ways and how to use customer information is proving quite a challenge. Different customers have different suggestions on what to include in different brand bringing in the problem of co-creation. Dealing with these information once captured without compromising the company image pose a bigger challenge. Conclusion Many firms are increasing competition in the line of advertisements to target audience especially with gay/lesbians. For this reason, Ford will need to retain its competitive advantage and this has to happen through the use of both advertising and public relations tactics. Competition without thinking integrally may not prove important at this twenty first century. In fact, it is evident from the facts that this marketing strategy is successful due to the profits garnered from its adoption by Ford and hence should not be discarded. Bibliography Alex, J., 2005. 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