Chapter I I Communicating customer value: Advertising and public relations e

But Coles content marketing strategy does not stop with its magazine.
Sources: Randall Rothenberg, What is advertising any.A<ay?', M Week,
The supermarket has its own YouTube channel, ~t Home with Coles', which
is hosted by celebrity chef Curtis Stone, as well as social media platforms on
Facebook, lnstagram and Twitter. Not stopping there, Coles have established
an online partnership with taste.com.au, thereby solving another customer
problem: filling the shopping list. By managing content across multiple
platforms, Coles is able to reach out to millions of Australians with valuable,
relevant content, creating consistent brand messages and conversations that
impact brand loyalty and company performance.
So, wecan't just call it 'advertising' anymore.Today'sshifting and sometimes
chaotic marketing communications environment calls for more than simply
creating and placing ads in well-defined and controlled media spaces. Rather,
today's marketing communicators must be marketing content strategists,
creators, connectors and catalysts who manage brand conversations with
and among customers and help those conversations catch fire across a fluid
mix of channels. That's a tall order, but with today's new thinking, anything is
POES-iblel
16 September 2013, p. 15; Peter Himler, 'Paid, earned & owned: Revisited', The Flack,
21 June 2011, <http /lftatiroocomm.comipaid-eamed-owned-revisitedl>; <http II
contentmarketinginstitute.com>; 'Customer-driven content at Coles', Maiketing,
2 September 2016, <WWW.marketingmag com.aulhubs-c/content-marketing-colesl>;
'Why Coles mag?', Coles, <httpJ/coles.mediumrarecontent comM rj/>; as well as
various social media sites, including <WWWfacebook.comicoles>, <WWW.youtube.com/
coles>, <https /ltwittercom!Coles>, <WWW instagram.com/colessupermarketsi> and
<www.taste.com au>; accessed October 2016.
Questions
0 Take a look online, and class fy the content marketing efforts of Coles
by the four main types of media: paid, owned, earned and shared.
f) When advertisers develop content marketing strategies, one of the big
challenges is to make the content relevant. Take a look at the websites
of a few of your favourite brands. How are these marketers making
content relevant?
8 Television advertising is still a considerable part of total advertising
expenditure. How can television be used to support content marketing
efforts ?

carefully integrates its many communications channels to deliver a clear, consistent and compelling message
about the organisation and its brands.
Often, different media play unique roles in engaging, informing and persuading consumers.
For example, a recent study showed that more than two-thirds of advertisers and their agencies are planning
video ad campaigns that stretch across multiple viewing platforms, such as traditional television, and digital,
mobile and social media. Such video convergence combines television's core strength - vast reach - with
digital's better targeting, interaction and engagement.4 These varied media and roles must be carefully
coordinated under the overall integrated marketing communications plan.
Coles Supermarkets' content marketing shows the benefits of a well-integrated marketing
communications effort (see Marketing in action 11.1). The company pays great attention to integrating
its traditional media use with its content marketing, internet and mobile media strategies and its visual
identity. In-store, the market experience brings the integrated media strategy to life with strong visuals,
as well as links to online and magazine content. Everything is coordinated down to the smallest detail
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- on a recent Australia Day, the in-store soundtrack was drawn from the top-10 Aussie songs. Through
its integrated communications, Coles Supermarkets continues to do well in the highly competitive
grocery market.'

II Shaping
•
the overall promotion
mIX (pp. 347- so)
The concept of integrated marketing communications suggests that the company must blend the
promotion tools carefully into a coordinated prorttotion mix. But how does the company determine what
mix of promotion tools it will use? Companies within the same industry differ greatly in the design of their

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 e Part 3 Designing a customer- driven strategy and mix

promotion mixes. For example, Avon spends most of its promotion funds on personal selling and direct
(catalogue) marketing, whereas competitor I.JOreal spends heavily on consumer advertising. We now look
at factors that influence the marketer's choice of promotion tools.

The nature of each promotion tool

Each promotion tool has unique characteristics and costs. Marketers must understand these characteristics
in shaping the promotion mix.

Advertising
Advertising can reach masses of geographically dispersed buyers at a low cost per exposure, and it enables
the seller to repeat a message many times. For example, television advertising can reach huge audiences.
Over 3.2 billion people are estimated to have tuned in to watch the 2014 World Cup live; in Australia, over
4 million Aussie rules fans watched the 2016 AFL Grand Final; and each week around 1 million people tune
in to watch reality television shows such as The Block, Married at First Sight and The Bachelor. For companies
that want to reach a mass audience, television is the place to be.6
In addition to the size of the potential audience it can reach, large-scale advertising says something
positive about the seller's size, popularity and success. Because of advertising's public nature, consumers
tend to view advertised products as being more legitimate. Advertising is also very expressive - it allows
the company to dramatise its products through the artful use of visuals, print, sound and colour.
On the one hand, advertising can be used to build up a long-term image fora product(such as Coca-Cola
ads). On the other hand, advertising can trigger quick sales (as when Forty Winks advertises weekend
specials).
Advertising also has some shortcomings. Although it reaches many people quickly, advertising is
impersonal and cannot be as directly persuasive as can company salespeople. For the most part, advertising
can carry on only a one-way communication with the audience, and the audience does not feel it has to pay
attention or respond. In addition, advertising can be very costly. Although some advertising methods, such
as newspaper and radio advertising, can be done on smaller budgets, other forms, such as network television
advertising, require very large budgets.

Personal selling
Personal selling is the most effective tool at certain stages of the buying process, particularly in
building up buyers' preferences, convictions and actions. I t involves personal interaction between two
or more people, so each person can observe the other's needs
and characteristics and make quick adjustments. Personal
selling also allows all kinds of customer relationships to
spring up, ranging from matter-of-fact selling relationships
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to personal friendships. An effective salesperson keeps the

customer's interests at heart in order to build a long-term
relationship by solving customer problems. Finally, with
personal selling, the buyer usually feels a greater need to
listen and respond, even if the response is a polite 'No,
thank you'.
T hese unique qualities come at a cost, however. A salesforce
requires a longer-term commitment than does advertising -
advertising can be increased or decreased relatively easily,
Personal selling: With personal selling, the customer feels a greater
but salesforce size is harder to change. Personal selling is
need to listen and respond, even if the response is a polite 'No,
thank you'. also the company's most expensive promotion tool, costing
©Arne9001 1 Dreamstime.com US companies as much as US$600 on average per sales call,

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 Chapter 11 Communicating customer value: Advertising and public relations 349

depending on the industry.7 US and Australian firms spend up to three times as much on personal selling as
they do on advertising.

Sales promotion
Sales promotion includes a wide assortment of tools – coupons, contests, cents-off deals, premiums and
others – all of which have many unique qualities. They attract consumer attention, offer strong incentives
to purchase, and can be used to dramatise product offers and to boost sagging sales. Sales promotions invite
and reward quick response. Whereas advertising says, ‘Buy our product’, sales promotion says, ‘Buy it now’.
Sales promotion effects are often short-lived, however, and often are not as effective as advertising or
personal selling in building long-run brand preference and customer relationships.

Public relations
Public relations is very believable – news stories, features, sponsorships and events seem more real and
believable to readers than ads do. Public relations can also reach many prospects who avoid salespeople and
advertisements – the message gets to the buyers as ‘news’, rather than as a sales-directed communication.
And, as with advertising, public relations can dramatise a company or product. Marketers tend to underuse
public relations or to use it as an afterthought. Yet, a well-thought-out public relations campaign used with
other promotion mix elements can be very effective and economical.

Direct and digital marketing

Although there are many forms of direct marketing – direct mail and catalogues, online marketing, telephone
marketing and others – they all share four distinctive characteristics. Direct marketing is less public: The
message is normally directed to a specific person. Direct marketing is immediate and personalised: Messages
can be prepared very quickly and can be tailored to appeal to specific consumers. Finally, direct marketing is
interactive: it allows a dialogue between the marketing team and the consumer, and messages can be altered
depending on the consumer’s response. Thus, direct marketing is well suited to highly targeted marketing
efforts and to building one-to-one customer relationships.

Promotion mix strategies

Marketers can choose from two basic promotion mix strategies – push promotion or pull promotion.
Figure 11.2 contrasts the two strategies. The relative emphasis given to the specific promotion tools push strategy
differs for push and pull strategies. A push strategy involves ‘pushing’ the product through marketing A promotional
strategy using the
channels to final consumers. The producer directs its marketing activities (primarily personal selling and salesforce and trade
trade promotion) towards channel members to induce them to carry the product and to promote it to promotions to push
final consumers. the product through
marketing channels to
Using a pull strategy, the producer directs its marketing activities (primarily advertising and
final consumers. The
consumer promotion) towards final consumers to induce them to buy the product. For example, producer promotes
Copyright © 2017. Pearson Education Australia. All rights reserved.

Unilever promotes its Lynx grooming products directly to its young male target market using television the product to channel
and print ads, a brand website, its YouTube channel, and other channels. If the pull strategy is effective, members who, in turn,
promote it to final
consumers will then demand the brand from retailers, such as Woolworths and Coles, who will in turn consumers.
demand it from Unilever. Thus, under a pull strategy, consumer demand ‘pulls’ the product through
the channels. pull strategy
The producer directs
Some industrial-goods companies use only push strategies; some direct-marketing companies use only its marketing activities
pull strategies. However, most large companies use some combination of both. For example, Unilever (primarily advertising
spends nearly US$8 billion worldwide each year on consumer marketing and sales promotions to create and consumer
promotion) towards
brand preference and to pull customers into stores that carry its products.8 At the same time, it uses its own
final consumers to
and distributors’ salesforces and trade promotions to push its brands through the channels so that these induce them to buy the
products will be available on store shelves when consumers come calling. product.

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Adam, S., Denize, S., Volkov, M., Kotler, P., & Armstrong, G. (2017). Principles of marketing. Pearson Education Australia.
Created from curtin on 2023-05-14 17:36:12.