Business Communication

Scenario: Four members of a team are sitting in the conference room of an organization. They
are discussing the budgeting and advertising of their newly launched product. The members are

Marketing team:

1. Sunya Omar (Marketing manager)

2. Marium Raza (Product Manager)

Finance team:

3. Meryam Bakht (Finance Manager)

4. Maryam Shah Bano (Budgeting head)

The marketing team is in favor of aggressive advertising and marketing for the newly launched
product whereas the finance team is providing a word of caution that the marketing team is
exceeding the advertising budget. There is a conflict of decision making among the two teams
over the best course of action.
Role play:

Sunya Omar: Today this meeting has been called to discuss a very important issue regarding the
launch of our new perfume. We believe that massive advertising is what would position our
product into the minds of the customers as the best perfume so we would like to request the
finance team to increase our marketing and advertising budget.

Maryam Shah Bano: The budgeting details are provided and approved by all department heads
at the start of the year. Changing and altering them now will be an absolute chaos.

Marium Raza: We understand the predicament but it is beneficial in long-term to get ahead of
competitors. If we want to make our product famous and to ensure future sails, it is crucial that
we invest in advertising now.

Meryam Bakht: It's very hard for us to allocate more than what we already are on marketing,
because if we do that, we may have to compromise on other important departments like RnD
which would also be bad for the company in the longer run.

Sunya Omar: We second that but right now to maximize our future sales, profit margins and
revenues, it is mandatory that we use techniques like paid promotions, Free sampling, collabs,
social media marketing and other techniques of ATL and BTL.

Marium Raza: We are planning to hire a brand ambassador to represent our perfume to the
media. Hiring someone famous with a lot of fan following will definitely insure maximum sales.
All our competitors are doing it. We believe that it is as crucial as the other operations of the
organization.

Maryam Shah Bano: Absolutely not! Do you have any idea how much something this fancy
would cost us. We honestly can’t afford it at the moment. If you wished to do this, your team
should have discussed this with us at the time of budget allocation.

Meryam Bakht: A brand ambassador at this point in time would bankrupt us for sure. We can’t
afford to lose the company over one product. Make do with what you have please.

Sunya Omar: It is such behavior and attitude from finance teams that bankrupt the
organizations. We really have something here and rather than supporting us and providing help,
you are disregarding all our efforts and disapproving all our ideas.

Marium Raza: I bet you guys can’t do our job for a day if you had to do it.

Maryam Shah Bano: This discussion is pointless guys. We would never reach a conclusion if
we keep at each other throats like this. We have to find a common ground.

Meryam Bakht: I believe the best case of scenario right now is to for both of us teams to meet
each other half way. Otherwise this conflict would never resolve.
Sunya Omar: Agreed. So now we have limited resources to launch our perfume. So for that I
believe our best option is to divide our two teams to mix expertise, opinions and knowledge.

Marium Raza: Yes I think that is a great idea. I can work with Meryam Bakht and Sunya can
work with Maryam Shah Bano. A new group of this sort would give a better chance to both
teams to vocalize their thoughts and work with the best case scenario.

Maryam Shah Bano: Yes because the goal here is organizational success and we would achive
that by aligning our goals and establishing common grounds. Both the marketing and finance
team are crucial for the organization and our prime goal is to make our organization successful.

Meryam Bakht: Hahaha absolutely. Who knew selling a perfume would be so hard? I never
thought of it while purchasing one.

Sunya Omar: Yes thank you so much everyone. I believe with more research and figures on our
hand we will be complete this campaign very well.

The meeting is adjourned.

We used structural intervention to resolve a conflict between two groups by making new teams
and understanding both perspectives. We also used humor, and focused on the facts.