Climate change - Research Paper Example

 Climate Change Media Plan It goes without saying that the proposed communication and awareness drive is subject to budgetary constraints. So it intends to compensate for the obvious budgetary constraints by focusing on the communication characteristics of the targeted customers and by being innovative and creative in its approach. The overall approach behind the planned media campaign is to assure that the combined impact of the varied communication media used in harmony is exponentially greater than the individual impact of each isolated media.1 Focus of the Media Campaign The focus of the media campaign is to enhance awareness amongst the target audience and to solicit their participation and cooperation in the pro-climate change campaign. The media campaign will certainly take into consideration the characteristics of the target market that are university students aged 18 to 24. The target market has a high predilection for learning new things and possesses a fundamental knowledge about climate change. Besides, this market is impressionable as compared to the more mature audience and resorts to a prolific usage of the internet and online social networking. This profile of the target audience makes it immensely possible to be more innovative and ingenious with the choice of IMC tools and to select such media as is cost effective and in consonance with the characteristics of the intended customers. 2 The Overall IMC Approach The primary objective of the intended INC approach is to enhance the awareness of the target customers that are the university students aged 18 to 24 about the issue of climate change by 15 percent within a period of six months. The intended IMC campaign is educational in its approach and intends to educate the university students about the long term and short term consequences of climate change and what is its long-term prognosis for the Australian environment, economy, and growth. It is a salient objective of this media campaign to help the targeted audience understand as to what small steps and lifestyle changes they can resort to, to dilute and mitigate the impact of climate change and to predict and quantify the influence these measures could have in ameliorating the short term and long term impact of climate change. This campaign also intends to augment the overall traffic on the "Be the Change you want" website and to secure at least 75,000 hits during the six-month period over which the campaign spans. There is no denying the fact that this campaign tends to heavily exploit the social networking portals like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. So one important goal is to secure a minimum of 15,000 followers for the "Be the Change you want" page of the Facebook in the six-month period for which the campaign lasts. The overall campaign objective is to solicit the loyalty and commitment of the target audience for the cause of climate change3. These young audiences being university students will certainly be the opinion makers of tomorrow. So the pivotal target of the campaign is to make the optimum use of the scarce resources to run an IMC plan that achieves results with a lasting shelf life. Media Plan- A Timeline Sensitive Choice of Media Tools Being subject to a budgetary limit of 1, 00,000 AUD and extending over a period of six months, the choice of media tools will be such as to blend with the schedule of the target audience4. Based on the assumption that all the universities affiliated to the Curtin academic calendar, the campaign will be initiated in the first week of the semester 2012 (Monday, February 27). The campaign will last for 6 months and will culminate in week 3 of semester 2. The campaign intends to focus on one university each in 5 states that are VIC, WA, NSW, QLD, and SA. At the very start of the campaign, the selected customers and guilds will be emailed pamphlets to get them interested in the awareness drive. Once the campaign is initiated, the customized pamphlets will be emailed every week, containing event details and the links to appropriate websites and social media portals, which they can approach to get the latest updates. The campaign intends to start with a bang to attract the target audience. So all the visual media tools like mobile billboards and banners will be strategically positioned during the first week to accrue heavy customer awareness. All the internet-based media tools that are the website "Be the Change you want", the Facebook page of the proposed website, blogs, forums, games and the supporting websites of the like-minded organizations will remain active throughout the 6 month period for which the campaign lasts. The target audience could be expected to be relatively inaccessible during the semester breaks. The campaign will use radio to keep in touch with the target audience during this hiatus. Going by the fact that considering the immense interest of the student community on the issue of climate change, the guilds are expected to extend a free ad space in the university magazines. Considering that the university magazines get published once a month, the magazine ads will carry all the highlights of the approaching weekly activities. The campaign will post 50 posters per month at the select sites. These posters will be refreshed every week. During the semester break, the poster campaign will be discontinued, be resumed during the start of the fresh session. Budget Expenditure incurred on outdoor ads like billboards, banners, and posters = AUD 51,075.00 Expenditure incurred on radio promotions = AUD 21, 407.00 Expenditure incurred on online multiple channel networking like e-pamphlets, websites, blog and forums management, games, etc. = AUD 19,875.00 Miscellaneous expenses = AUD 6,000.00 Total = AUD 98357.00 Reference List Blakeman, Robyn, Integrated Marketing Communication, Rowman & Littlefield New York: Publications, 2007. Clow, Kenneth E & Bauck, Donald, Integrated Advertising, Promotion and Marketing Communications, New York: Prentice Hall, 2009. . Ries Al & Trout, Jack, Positioning, New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000. Schultz, Dan E, Tannebaum, Stanley I & Lauterborn, Robert E, Integrated Marketing Communication, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1993. Read More