Literature review of IMC:

IMC is the approach to present a consistent persuasive message from different elements of the promotional mix
and IMC can be considered as the remarkable element in the success of the companies in the mid-20th century.
The changing marketing philosophies of this era have played an important role in the development of the IMC as
a concept. The Holistic marketing philosophy of today’s era has increased the importance of integrated marketing
as a preliminary need of marketing department of the modern organization.

Evolution of IMC concept:

IMC emergence in the 19th era:

Integrated marketing communication (IMC) has emerged in the last twentieth century and since then its
importance is increasing day by day. Some of the researches still believe that the IMC concept has been emerged
and can be traced back to 1970’s (Cornelissen and Lock, 2000). When we look at the literature regarding IMC,
we can find that first study has been conducted by Schultz, wan, and Caywood (1991) at the end of 1980s and
named as “Conceptual ideas” and was published in a book named as “Integrated marketing communication” by
Schultz et al (1993). Those researchers that are considered as the advocate of this concept of IMC believes that
emergence of this concept was according to the context of media development of that time like mobile phones,
digital technologies and the increase in global competition and advancements in technologies (Kliatchko, 2005:
Kitchen and eagle, 2000).
IMC emergence in the 20th century:
In an era of 2000s, IMC was considered as the strategic business process that is used to develop, plan, execute
and evaluate the communication plan with respect to the targeted audience that includes internal audience also.
The internal audience includes the stakeholders like employees, customers, suppliers, and directors, etc. In a 20th
era, the concept of IMC got much more strategic importance like never before in history. As according to
Kliatchko (2005), “IMC is the concept and process of strategically managing audience-focused, channel-centered,
and result-driven brand communication programs over time”. These definitions depict the change in IMC
approaches in the 20th century. This addition is also important due to the development of strategic marketing
concept in this era.
Shimp 5 significant features in differing definitions of IMC:
According to a critical literature review of the previous definitions and a general assessment of most recent IMC
literature describes that the definition of IMC can be reduced to five attributes by the researchers. These attributes
are as follows:
1. Communications efforts are directed to the customers to affect the behavior.
2. The utilization of the inside in approach in which starts off with the customer while the development of
the communication strategy.
3. Company and the customer should have a good relationship.
4. Coordination is required among the communicational elements to provide competitive advantages.
5. All communicational activity should be integrated to deliver the message correctly.

Reason for growth of IMC:

One of the top benefits of IMC and reason for its growth is that it helps the managers to combine its
communication to effectively plan through a coherent approach. Most of the marketing managers perceive IMC
as important for the message consistent as with the help of IMC, the consumer can interpret the valuable
information from a single contact point and in the absence of this approach. The increasing importance of
marketing mix from marketers’ point of view is one of the main reasons for growth of IMC. The shift from
transactional marketing to relationship marketing that has increased the importance of an IMC approach. The
excessive media fragmentation and clutters are one of the major reasons for the growth of the use of this concept.
Introduction of Staedtler as an organization:
Staedtler is the Germany based fine writing instrument manufacturing company and supplier of artist,
engineering and drawing instrument. John steadier laid the foundation of this company in 1985 with an ambition
to become the largest seller of pencils worldwide. The company manufactures a range of pencils includes
professional pens, drafting pencils, propelling pencil as well as standard wooden pencils. Staedtler is now world-
leading pencil manufacturing company having subsidiaries in 20 countries and have seven manufacturing
facilities. Major portion of the production takes place in the headquarters situated in Nuremberg and some of its
products are manufactured in Japan. This Staedtler group currently have 3000 employees working in an
organization that enables it to position successfully in more than 150 countries around the world.
Examples of Marketing campaigns of Staedtler from 2017 to present:
Staedtler are more than competent to position itself on the basis of reliability, quality and of design innovation.
Company is strongly committed to these principals in each of its product. This strong commitment to basic
principal helped the company to maintain the brand position among the top brands in the UK market of writing
instruments. This innovation and quality can also be seen in company innovation and promotional activities.
One of the most common significances of the advertisement and promotion strategy is the use of event-based
marketing throughout means company promotes its products with respect to events also. The example of event-
based marketing campaigns are as follows:
Product-based ad campaigns in Singapore:
Staedtler also launches a campaign according to product from time to time. The example given below is of the
social media post regarding litter pens that are new in the series having 10 brilliant colors and to promote this
product this campaign was carried out. Following is the perfect example of product-based ad campaigns by the
company:
Event Sponsorship campaigns from the year 2019:
Staedtler is actively engaged in the event sponsorship mode of promotion in Singapore. In 2019, Staedtler is
going to sponsor art competition and coloring contest to be held in the month of September. In this event, the
company would give free color pencils to the first 300 candidates. These events would increase the goodwill of
the company and also serve as brand awareness purposes. Following is the poster of this event and logo of the
company could easily be seen at the bottom of the poster:

Event Sponsorship campaigns from the year 2018:

This is another example of event sponsorship that is also a method of promotion and lies under the heading of
public relations. Staedtler sponsored a coloring contest by the name of “Take your break” and from this method
putted and effort to increase the sale of product like it is mentioned in the poster of event that to participate in
this contest a participant have to redeem a postcard that he get by purchasing 20$ Staedtler products and then
color and fill the blank space with creativity and at the final step take a picture of the art piece and send it to
steadier Singapore Facebook page and then the winners of the contest would get message through official
Facebook page of Staedtler Singapore. This is the best cost-effective method of spreading awareness and
increasecustomer awareness.
Critical evaluation of the marketing campaigns:
The marketing campaign carried out by the marketing department of the company are quite effective as according
to the examples given above. The company has always targeted events like Christmas and summer vacations and
also targeted the customer to use the products in these events. The marketing campaigns carried out by the
company are based on creativity and attractiveness. On every new product launch, the company comes up with
the advertisements with a unique message and attractive advertisements. These campaigns are well designed and
targeted to the target audience. One thing I have noticed that the company also encourages the customers by
sharing their artwork on social media platforms. Following mentioned is an example of such posts:

Evaluation of the promotional mix used by Staedtler Singapore:

Staedtler group is more than efficient in using the promotional tools and media for their promotional purposes.
The effective use of media is critical for spreading brand awareness through persuasive messages to the target
audience. Staedtler promotes its products to the customer with great care in selecting suitable media. It includes
high profile campaigns like TV advertisement and cinema advertising. Steadler as the company also uses sales
promotion by offering certain discounts, coupons and pricing. The use of sponsorship events is used by the
company on the regular basis as some examples are shown above and considered as best possible way to promote
the product in the presence of desired target audience. Internet marketing is used by steadler at its very best. The
company have used SEO (Search engine optimization) to rank website high on the search engine ranking and
ensure that customer finds it on the first page when he searches about the company. The social media presence of
this brand is phenomenal. Admins of social media pages and accounts are very active and update the pages regular
with new creative posts and ads about the products. The social media handling department have focused specially
on the customer engagement and involvement as when we go through the posts a lot of customer posted their art
pieces created by using Steadler and the admins specially admired them and acknowledge their participation.
References:
 Cornelissen, J.P. and Lock, A.R. (2000) Theoretical concept or management fashion? Examining the
significance of IMC. Journal of Advertising Research,40 (5), 7–15.
 Schultz et al, (1991) The customer and the data base are the integrating forces. Marketing News, 27 (24),
14.
 Kliatchko, J. (2005) Towards a new definition of integrated marketing communications (IMC).
International Journal of Advertising, 24 (1), 7–33.
 Beard, F. (1997) IMC use and client-ad agency relationships. Journal of Marketing Communications, 3
(4),217–230.
 Kitchen, P.J. and Eagle, L. (2000) Towards a Globalized communications strategy: perceptions from New
Zealand. Marketing Intelligence and Planning, 20 (3),174–184.
 https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=staedtler%20singapore&epa=SEARCH_BOX
 https://www.linkedin.com/search/results/content/?keywords=staedtler%20singapore&origin=SWITCH_
SEARCH_VERTICAL
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