Integrated Marketing Communications - Essay Example

RUNNING HEAD PR CAMPAIGN PR Campaign Public relations help McBride Financial Advisors to penetrate the new market and create positive publi McBride Financial needs to change their information policies in dealing with customers from opaqueness to transparency. Industrial-Age marketers have thrived by making it difficult for customers to compare their offerings with competitors, and by not fully disclosing information that customers need in order to make better choices. Mattress manufacturers, for instance, create different brand names for the same products for different. PR campaign will help McBride Financial to reach its target audience and create a positive brand image of the company, inform about services and products proposed to target customers. Customers reverse the flow of consumer promotions by either soliciting promotions directly from marketers through intermediaries, PR has been traditionally pushed to consumers by marketers. But customers can now click on press releases that interest them, and request promotional information from manufacturers. PR is pulled by customers and is customerinitiated.. Customers can design and configure their own products, using their imagination and tools provided by marketers. The site's notepad lets would-be buyers scribble and save ideas about products as they browse. In traditional industrial firms, the new offerings often originated in the engineering department, and marketing would be given the task of selling the offerings after the design had been completed (Chitty et al 2005). PR messages will help McBride Financial to inform professionals who are purchasing either primary or secondary residenc and people who are guaranteed capable of paying the mortgage amortization about products and unique propositions available from McBride. More progressive firms have reversed this process, and the marketing department transmits the "voice of the customer" to the organization before the development begins. However, this marketing-led process still assumes a sequential process for designing offers and messages. Consumers make purchase decisions based on what they know about a brand, rather than on what they remember from press releases. Whereas explicit ad recall reflects what people can remember about information stated in an ad, advertisers are interested in what people know about their brand. Implicit measures of memory are useful in this regard. Implicit measures solicit what people know without making reference to the origins of their knowledge. For example, brand recall is an implicit measure because people are asked to tell what they know about a brand. The impact of exposure on brand recall is a more appropriate measure of the learning prompted by PR than is ad recall because brand recall is a reflection of what people know rather than what they can remember. While brand recall and top-of-mind awareness are useful indicators of what people know about a brand, advertisers are generally most interested in consumers' dispositions toward a brand as a result of advertising exposures. To some extent, these measures of learning are useful in making inferences about dispositions. For example, enhancing top-of-mind recall frequently is found to increase preference for a brand. However, because this measure is of limited diagnostic value in efforts to enhance brand purchase, measures specifically designed to reflect people's dispositions are considered (Chitty et al 2005). For McBride Financial, ethical considerations involve communication in the proper way with potential target audiences and fair information. Because many people perceive right and wrong from different angles, the objective of the company in the area of ethical and moral standards must be to establish what it will and will not tolerate. Once the level of integrity has been established, then the areas of vulnerability must be examined and limits established in each of these areas. Since not detecting or overlooking violations weakens the fear of punishment, a system of inspection must be implemented and strict levels of punishment enforced for violation of the code. Great care must be exercised in all of these areas. Expenses for implementation and control cannot get out of hand, and policing and enforcement cannot be done in a way that adversely affects the attitudes or the creativity of the employees. Complying or not complying with a law is fairly straightforward; however, great care must be exercised in assessing and evaluating the correctness or incorrectness of moral and ethical codes and philanthropic giving. Extensive value judgments and the personal desires of top management enter into these decisions. If it can be agreed on that ethical behavior is legal behavior plus some other element, then it is important that this additional element be identified, if possible. At first blush, many people will probably agree that this additional element is the collection of moral principles and values of what is right and what is wrong and what is good and what is bad, as determined by group behavior or by some member of the group. At this point of definition, it appears that one's behavior is ethical if it is legal and in accordance with group norms. Based on discussions and some recent philosophies expressed by the company, this is what many would have everyone believe. This definition is, however, short sighted and flawed in that it does not clearly define "group" or the standards and values upon which the "group ethical norms" are based. For proper business and social conduct, these ethical standards and values must be shared by not only individuals but by (Chitty et al 2005). Technological considerations involve innovative solutions to PR channels and information gathering. Pt campaign should involve the Internet medium and television as the main sources of communication about professionals. As the most important, this media will help to measure attitude and brand perception. These are typically implicit in nature, as no mention is made of prior advertising exposures to the brand. The message has an impact if those who were exposed to an ad for the brand exhibit more favorable disposition toward it than do those who have not been exposed. In addition, attitudinal measures offer some insight about why people have the preferences they do (Chitty et al 2005). In order to reach the global market, McBride should employ PR Company to gather information and develop a plan for market penetration. Global considerations involve new markets and opportunities, technological innovation and global consumers. The channel members now must implement the optimal channel design, and indeed must continue to implement an optimal design through time. The value of doing so might seem to be self-evident, but it is important to remember that a channel is made up of multiple entities (companies, agents, individuals) who are interdependent, but who may or may not all have the same incentives to operate in the desired manner. Creating and managing a marketing channel system is an enormous and strategic undertaking. Once created, it is often extremely hard to change or to dismantle. Particularly in developed countries, consumers are becoming more and more time-constrained. This trend has long been documented in the United States, with its increasing numbers of working women, single-parent households, and homemakers with part-time jobs. The responses by marketing channel managers to increasingly knowledgeable consumers can be many. It is crucial to recognize in what arenas the consumer is becoming more knowledgeable. If knowledge is in the area of product usage or ability to service, then the channel need not provide these educational and post-sale service functions, and the channel manager can decrease its prices by deleting these services from the channel. Indeed, if prices do not fall as a result of this increased consumer knowledge, lost sales are likely to result as consumers find other alternatives that offer appropriate service bundles at competitive prices. In such situations, the right response might involve not only divesting the channel of lower-valued services, but also adding other services that carry relatively higher value to the consumer and can differentiate the channel from its competitors. References 1. Chitty, B., Barrker, N., & Shimp, T. (2005). Integrated Marketing Communication - First Pacific Rim Edition. South Melbourne: Thomson Learning. Read More