Current Issues in Advertising - Essay Example

Current Issues in Advertising (Marketing Communications) The marketing communication practitioner faces some unique challenges managing database marketing. In the world of advertising and marketing communications, this is of utmost significance since it establishes the need of understanding what customers indeed require and how the organization would go all out to solve their issues. One such issue therefore chosen for this paper is of database marketing and how the same poses as an important subject of interest for one and all. There are a number of challenges that arise in the wake of managing the database marketing few of which include the statistical techniques that need to be properly fitted in to the equation, the usage of proper rules and methodologies for selecting the right target audiences, the manner in which they are segregated on the basis of their roles and positions in the society and not to forget the buying patterns of them as well, their decision making abilities in the market, the manner in which economical changes are shaping up the whole society and the drifts that are happening as a result, the changing consumer lifestyles with the advent of technological options and grouping all of these in a single database or a combination of databases which would make the work of the marketing communication practitioner easy. Rather the other way around has been seen, where the practitioner has been running from one end to another in the wake of devising the best possible database which will target the right people at the right time with the right offering. It is a difficult proposition that has to be managed day in day out by the marketing communication practitioner but one that needs to be in place so as to enable growth on the part of the company and the link that is present between the business (company) and the customers that are being targeted upon by it. Database marketing is one of the most powerful tools that look at building a strong rapport between the company and its stakeholders, not only the customers but also the ones who have invested in its stocks, though in an indirect manner. The challenges thus faced account to problems ranging from handling all these records and files on not only a sequential basis but also that correlates with each other and thus comes up with results which precisely target the exact individuals (prospective or otherwise, customer) that have to be sent the newsletters, direct mail, brochures and so on and so forth. This also means that database marketing looks at revolving the glitches that may arise at some point in time within the whole matter of managing the database marketing subjects. Another challenge that can be had by the marketing communication practitioner lies in the fact that he might not be able to fathom who actually accounts for as a ‘hit point’ within the channel and who just falls out of the targeting technique. This provides a rationale for the understanding of the issues which actually hold a customer responsible depending on his actions, abilities and behaviors with respect to different buying undertaking and the like that would make the marketing communication practitioner’s job so very easy in the first place. This puts his position in a clear and lucid manner as he just has to jot down the name of the people who buy a certain product and hence these would form up as the ones who will be sent the message through. However it is easier said than done since there are problems in the wake of precisely finding out what are their likes and dislikes with regards to a product, under which situation they bought a product and whether or not would they be able to buy the offering of the company under discussion given they have the same resources and buying capital. Thus the economic tilt is also present in the whole matter nonetheless. Furthermore, moving on the same tangent, the marketing communication practitioner needs to find out the exact mechanisms through which the database is enacted and thus play upon the rationale that the common aspects of different customers within the database are linked up with each other while the dissimilar ones are also taken into consideration to study their buying habits, preferences and different things that have to be taken in consideration when we speak of maintaining and managing the marketing databases. Another such challenges includes the update process on the part of the database since the customers increase with each passing day and it is difficult to track down each and everyone’s basis for likes and dislikes, the manner in which a customer will react when he receives direct mail (direct marketing aspect) or would he not like to have it in the first place at all. Apart from this, there are the issues of maintaining the customer records and having proper backups as system crashes are pretty normal in present times. Then there is the issue of properly providing the information and the data to the right people so they can exercise their target messages to the individuals that we are talking about here. These people include the channel members like the marketing middlemen, manufacturers, distributors and so on. An important point of concern is the fact that unethical practices are rampant since the customer information is open to one and all and anyone can literally disturb an individual merely because his data is present on the marketing database. This could mean that the customer be bombarded with all sorts of irrelevant messages coming his way and it can also account for a number of potential hiccups in the line of proper and smooth functioning of the company that we are talking about here. The manner in which all these problems could be overcome is to prioritize things and put the database in an order to start with. Also there should be strict concerns with regards to the leakages which could happen with regards to the database and the data that is contained within it, should only be made available to the company’s internal resources and external entities must be kept away no matter what happens. All said and done, it is the duty of the marketing communication practitioner to ensure that there is fair play at all ranks and no discrepancies arise come what may. Bibliography Allenby, Greg M. Statistics and Marketing. Journal of the American Statistical Association, Vol. 95, 2000 Aulakh, Preet S. Multinationality and Firm Performance: The Moderating Role of R&D and Marketing Capabilities. Journal of International Business Studies, Vol. 33, 2002 Bradley, Frank. Strategic Marketing: In the Customer Driven Organization. Wiley, 2003 Dunn, Mark. 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