Week 9 discussion
MT1: Marketing
Communications Mix
Companies have a broad choice of marketing communications
choices. The 8 major tools of communication are advertising, sales promotion,
public relations and publicity, events and experience, direct and interactive
marketing, word-of-mouth marketing, and personal selling. Companies opt for
different marketing communication tools depending on their brand objectives.
Suppose you have the contract to market two brands of
laundry detergents, Ultra (an established brand) and FreshX (a new brand) in
the US East Coast region. Both brands belong to Company A. The combined
advertising budget available to you for both products is about $500,000. The
target market for Ultra is the budget-conscious customer segment while FreshX
is targeted towards younger, upwardly mobile professionals. Design specific
communication tools for each of the products (i.e., for Ultra and FreshX) with
regard to the following:
Message strategy: What specific themes or ideas will you
adopt for Ultra and FreshX – keeping in mind the respective target demographic
types?
Creative strategy: What kind of appeal – informational or
transformational – will work best for each brand? Please explain.
Message Source: What kind of spokespeople will you choose
for each of the products? Please bear in mind the demographics of the target
area.
Discuss how you can use experiential marketing tools for the
brands (especially for FreshX). What tools will you use to measure outcomes
from such events?
MT2: The Changing
Communications Environment
Emerging media technologies have vastly empowered customers
to decide whether or how they want to receive commercial content. Consumers are
no longer passive recipients of marketing communications and the real challenge
for a marketer is how to regain the customers’ attention through the clutter.
Web-based technologies can be combined with traditional
media to build a successful marketing communication campaign. Cite two specific
examples of companies/brands using this combination approach and discuss what
made these campaigns successful. Did the two use similar techniques?
With the help of relevant examples, can you describe how
modern technologies can be used to promote interactivity between the product
and the customers? In this context discuss the use of social media to generate
excitement around a brand. Can you cite any recently launched new products that
have managed to achieve this?
MT3: Sales
Promotion
Promotions work hand in hand with advertising to stimulate
awareness and/or trial of a product or a service. Companies use a variety of
promotion tools to get their message across ranging from sample giveaways to
rebates to loyalty incentives. Think
back to the last time you participated in a promotion. What kind was it? Did it succeed in raising your awareness of
the product? Why? Did it shift your purchasing behavior over
the long-term? Why or why not? If you were CEO of the company, how would you
change the promotion to make it more impactful and more effective?
MT4: Social Media
Marketing
In recent years, social media has been a rapidly growing
marketing communications vehicle. In
your view, how well has social media performed in helping companies achieve
their marketing communications objectives?
Provide an example of a company/brand that uses the medium effectively
and an example of one whose social media initiatives need improvement. What separates the peak performing brands
from the “also-rans” in this medium?
MT5: Marketing
Communications and Ethics
What criteria will you use to distinguish ethical
advertising from unethical advertising?
Many large firms are investing in Behavioral Targeting i.e.,
tracking online activities of the target customer (the pages or sites users
visit, the content they view, the search queries they enter, the ads they click
on, the information they share on social internet sites) and combining it with
the time, length, and frequency of visits. Do you think Behavioral Targeting
(BT) is ethical and conforms to market research standards? How can companies
gather customer data without infringing individual rights to privacy?
Week 9 discussion Personal
Application
Personal Application
Provide a detailed overview of your organization’s marketing
communications program.
What media and messages are the most prominent? Why?
How would you change the program to make it more
successful?
Would you change some elements of the messaging?
Would you shift dollars from one medium to another, or try
to gain additional budget and add new media to the mix?
Try to apply the learning from this week to inform your
discussion
