Integrated marketing communications test notes

Chapter 1

IMC is a strategic marketing process specifically designed to ensure that all messaging and
communication strategies are unified across all channels and centred around the customer

The IMC process emphasizes identifying and assessing customer prospects, tailoring messaging to
customers and prospects that are both serviceable and profitable, and evaluating the success of
these efforts to minimize waste and transform marketing from an expense into a profit-centre.

IMC objectives
Companies have a variety of general objectives for their marketing communication programs:
 Informing customers to about their products, services, and terms of sale;
 Persuading customers to choose certain products and brands, shop in particular stores, go
to certain websites, attend events, and other specific behaviours; and
 Inducing action (eg: purchase behaviour) from customers that is more immediate than
delayed in nature.

Marketing and the marketing concept

Marketing (Kotler 1980): human activity directed at satisfying needs and wants through exchange
processes.

The idea of the marketing concept is to adapt the company’s offering to the needs and wants of the
customer.

Communications and marketing communications

 Communications: the process where individuals share meaning and establish a commonness of
thought.
 Marketing Communications: the collection of all elements of a firm’s marketing mix that
facilitate exchange by establishing shared meaning with the firm’s customers.
o Marketing Communications -> B2B, B2C, non-profits
o Marketing Mix: specific collection of certain levels of elements of a brand’s 4Ps –
product, price, place and promotion.

Elements of promotional mix

 Advertising
 Public relations
 Sales promotion
 Online/Social media marketing
 Personal selling
 Direct marketing
Branding
 Brand: A name, term, sign, symbol, or design intended to identify the goods and services of one
seller or groups of sellers and differentiate them from those of competition.
 Brand equity: The goodwill that an established brand has built up over its existence.

IMC and Synergy

The payoff from IMC is that brand managers achieve synergy. The integration of multiple
communication tools and media yield more positive communication results than the tools used
individually

Five key features of IMC

1. Start with the customer or prospect
 Media-neutral approach-> Identify Marcom program goals -. Determine best way to locate
marketing budget
 Learn the media preferences and lifestyles of your customers/prospects so you know the best
contexts in which to reach with your brand message. Recognise and adapt to the fact that
consumers are increasingly control of their media choices for acquiring information about
brands
 Consumers in control
 Reduced dependence on mass media
2. Use any form of relevant contact or touch point (e.g Hershey foods)
 Touch points and 360-deree branding: touch point and contact is any message medium that is
capable of reaching target customers and presenting and presenting the brand in a favourable
light
 Not all touch points are equally engaging
3. Speak with a single voice
 Achieve synergy
 Brand positioning statement must:
o Present a clear idea of the brand in its target market mind
o Consistently deliver the same unified message across all media channels on all
occasions
4. Build relationships
 Cost more to acquire a new customer that to keep one
 Loyalty programs promote long-term relationships between customers and brands that lead to
customer retention
 Experimental marketing programs can create brand experiences that make positive and lasting
impressions on customers
5. Affect behaviour
 Don’t lose focus on the ultimate objective: affect behaviour
 IMC must be more than just influence brand awareness or enhance consumer attitudes- the
objective is to move people to action

Making brand-level marcom decisions and achieving desired outcomes

Chapter 2

A firm based perspective on brand equity

The firm-based viewpoint of brand equity is focuses on outcomes extending from efforts to enhance
a brand’s value to its various stakeholders

Enhancing brand equity

Three general ways to enhance brand equity:
 All brand to speak for itself
o Quality
o Sustainability
o Desirability
 Create message drive associations: appealing messages
o Repeated claims about the features a brand possess
 Leveraging current meaning or associations
o Positive associations that are already contained in the world of people, places and
things.

Benefits result from enhancing brand equity

 Increased consumer loyalty
 Long-term growth and profitability for the brand
 Maintain brand differentiation from competitive offerings
 Insulate brand from price competition

A customer-based perspective on brand loyalty

A brand possesses equity to the extent that people are familiar with the brand and have stored in
memory favourable, strong and unique brand associations

Brand recognition: reflects a relatively superficial level of awareness

Brand recall: deeper form of brand awareness

Brands and their management

Brand concept and brand concept management
 Brand concept: the specific meaning that the brand managers create and communicate to the
target market
o this is accomplished by appeals to functional, symbolic and experimental needs
 Brand concept management: the analysis, planning, implementation and control of a brand
concept throughout the life of the brand

How brand concepts can be developed

 functional needs (solving problems): products that attempt to fulfil the consumer’s
consumption-related problems
 Symbolic needs (associating the brand with symbolic objects): directed at the consumers’
desire for self-enhancement, role position, group membership, and belongingness
 Experimental needs (sensory pleasures, personal experience): products that provide sensory
pleasure, variety, and/or cognitive stimulation

Five personality dimensions that describe most brands:

 sincerity
o down to earth
o wholesome
o honest
o cheerful
 excitement
o daring
o spirited
o imaginative
o up-to-date
 competence
o reliable
o intelligent
o successful
 sophistication
o upper class
o charming
o luxury
 ruggedness
o tough
o outdoorsy

Co-branding and ingredient branding

 Co-branding: a partnership between two brands
 Ingredient branding: inclusion of one brand within the other

Models of brand equity

Chapter 3

Marcom and brand adoption

 Product adoption
o The introduction and acceptance of new ideas, including new brands
 o Essential to long-term market success
 Marketing communications
o Facilitate successful new product introductions
o Reduce the product failure rate (potentially 35-45%)

Brand characteristics that facilitate adoption

 Relative advantage
o This represents the degree to which consumers perceive a new brand as being better
than existing alternatives with respect to specific attributes or benefits.
 Compatibility
o The degree to which an innovation is perceived to fit into a person’s way of doing things
 Complexity
o An innovation’s degree of perceived difficulty
 Trialability
o The extent to which an innovation can be used on a limited basis prior to making a full-
blown commitment
 Observability
o The degree to which the positive effects of new-product usage can be observed by
users and others

Brand naming
Brand: A company’s unique designation or trademark, which distinguishes its offering from the other
product category entries.

Power of brand naming

 Effects of brand naming
o Speed of brand awareness
o Overall brand image
o Brand equity formulation

What constitutes as a good brand name

 Distinguishes the brand from competitive offerings
 Facilitates consumer learning by describing the brand and its attributes (“Healthy Choice,”
“Diehard)
o Associations and memory cues
 Brand Name Suggestiveness.
 Made up brand names
 Sound symbolism
 Achieves compatibility with a brand’s desired image and with its product design or packaging
 Is memorable and easy to pronounce and spell
 Is suitable for global use

Brand naming process

1. Specify objectives for the brand
2. Create candidate brand names
3. Evaluate candidate names
4. Choose a brand name
5. Register a trademark

The role of logos

 Logo
o Is a graphic design element related to a brand name
o Not all brand names are associated with a distinct logo
 Good logo designs
o Are natural—neither too simple nor too complex
o Are readily recognized
o Convey same meaning to all target market members
o Evoke positive feelings
o Are suited for periodic updating
 Update logos
o To be more attuned with the times
o V- visibility
o I- information
o E- Emotional appeal
o W- Workability

Chapter 5

All marketing communications should be:

 Directed to a particular target market,
 Clearly positioned
 Created to achieve a specific objective
 Undertake to accomplish the objective within budget constraint

The market segmentation process and targeting audiences can be considered the starting points for
all marcom decisions
Major steps in the market segmentation process
 Market segmentation
o Identify bases (e.g., behaviour, demographics) to segment the market
o Develop profiles of resulting segments

 Market targeting
o Develop measures of segment attractiveness
o Select the target segment(s)

 Market positioning
o Develop positioning for each target segment
o Develop marketing mix for each target segment

Measurable consumer characteristics

 Behaviour segmentation
 Psychographics
 Demographics
 Geodemographics

Behaviour segmentation issues

 Behaviour segmentation
o Describe how people behave with respect to a particular product category or class of
related products
o Assume that the best predictor of the future behaviour is past behaviour
 Online Behavioural targeting
o Tracks the online site-selection behaviour of users so as to enable advertisers to serve
targeted ads
 Privacy concerns
o Technological advances increase the ability to serve consumers at the risk of invading
their privacy
Online ad process

Psychographic segmentation
 Psychographics: Describe aspects of consumers’ psychological make-ups and lifestyles as they
relate to buying behaviour in a particular product category
o Attitudes
o Values
o Motivations
Types of psychographic profiles
 Customised psychographic profiles
o Are typically customized to the client’s specific product category
o Contain questionnaire items related to the unique characteristics of the product
category
 General purpose of psychographic profiles
 o Can be purchased as “off-the-shelf” psychographic data from services that develop
psychographic profiles of people independently of any particular product or service

8 VALS Psychographic Segments

 Innovators
o Successful, sophisticated, take charge people with high self-esteem
 Thinkers
o Motivated by ideals.
o Mature, satisfied, comfortable and reflective people who want value order, knowledge
and responsibility
 Believers
o Motivated by ideals
o Conservative, conventional people with concrete beliefs based on traditional,
established codes, family, religion, community and the nation
 Achievers
o Motivated by desire of achievement
o Goal orientated lifestyles and a deep commitment to career and family
 Strivers
o Trendy and fun loving, motivated by achievement out of concern about the opinions
and approval of others
 Experiencers
o Motivated by self-expression, young, enthusiastic, and impulsive consumers; quickly
become enthusiastic about new possibilities, but are equally quick to cool
 Makers
o Motivated by self-expression; express themselves and experience the world by working
on it, and have enough skills and energy to carry out their projects successfully
 Survivors
o Live narrowly-focused lives with few resources with which to cope, often believe the
world is changing too quickly, are comfortable with the familiar, and are primarily
concerned with safety and security

Demographic Segmentation
 Major demographic aspects
o Age structure of the population
o Change in the household composition
o Ethnic population development

Demographic trends
 World population growth’
 Changing age structure

African Americans
 Are of an average age that is considerably younger than that for Caucasians
 Are geographically-concentrated, with three-fourths of all African-Americans living in 16 states
 Tend to purchase prestige and name-brand products in greater proportion than do Caucasians 
 Have spending power that totals nearly $1.1 trillion annually

Geodemographic Segmentation
 Geodemographics
o Consumers who reside within geographic clusters such as zip codes or neighborhoods
and also share demographic and lifestyle similarities
 Typical clusters (PRIZM NE)
o PRIZM – Potential Rating Index by ZIP Markets, NE – new evolution of Nielson Claritas’s
original segmentation system
 Small pond
 Country Clusters
 Suburban pioneers
 City roots

Market targeting
The 5 Criteria for effective segmentation
1. Measurable
2. Substantial
3. Accessible
4. Differentiable
5. Actionable

Positioning
A brand’s position represents the key feature, benefit, or image that it stands for in the target
audience’s collective mind. Brand communicators and the marketing team in general must decide on
a brand positioning statement, which is the central idea that encapsulates a brand’s meaning and
distinctiveness vis-à-vis competitive brands in the product category.

Benefit positioning
Appealing to consumer needs
 Functional needs:
o Positioning communicates that the brand’s benefits are capable of solving consumers’
consumption-related problems
 Symbolic needs:
o Positioning attempts to associate brand ownership with a desired group, role, or self-
image
 Experimental needs:
o Positioning promotes brand’s extraordinary sensory value, or rich potential for cognitive
stimulation

Attribute positioning
 Product related
 Non-product related
Chapter 6

General communication objectives

1. Build category wants
2. Create brand awareness
3. Enhance brand attitudes
4. Influence brand purchase intention
5. Facilitate purchase

Communication and communication process

 Communications: the process of establishing a commonness or oneness of thought between a
sender (e.g., an advertiser) and a receiver (e.g., a consumer).
 Encoding: the process of putting thought into symbolic form (e.g., words, sentence structure,
symbols, non-verbal cues).
 Decoding: the process of transforming message symbols back into thought.

Semiotics and meaning transfers

 Semiotics: the study of meaning and meaning producing events
 Meaning is a constructive process that is determined as much by the communication as by the
receivers of the message
 Meaning: Our internal responses (thoughts, feelings) when presented with a sign, stimulus, or
object.
 Sign: (in general at this point) represents something to someone in a given context. (I’ll have a
Coke”)
 Socialization: process by which people learn cultural values, form beliefs, and become familiar
with “physical cues” representing these values and beliefs.

Signals, signs and symbols

 Signal: the product is a cause or effect of something else (e.g., SUVs the result of large families)
 Sign: the product and referent belong to the same cultural context (e.g., SUVs part of upper
middle class, children, suburbs)
 Symbol: the product and object have no prior relationship, yet are now associated with one
another (e.g., Ford trucks and “tough guy” image/ads)

Figurative language
 Simile: a comparison using like or as
 Metaphor: Direct comparison
 Allegory: Extended metaphor
o Equates objects in a narrative with meanings lying outside narrative
o Personification
o Moral conflict
o Examples: Old Joe, Cavemen, Dinky, Mr. Clean

Implementing positioning: behaviour foundations of marketing communications

The Consumer Processing Model (CPM): behaviour is seen as rational, highly cognitive, systematic
and reasoned
 Stage 1: Being exposed to information
 Stage 2: Paying attention
 Stage 3: Comprehending attended information: create
meaning out of stimuli and symbols
 Stage 4: Agreeing with comprehended information
 Stage 5: Retaining accepted information in memory
 Stage 6: Retrieving information from memory
 Stage 7: Deciding from alternatives
 Stage 8: Acting on the basis of the decision

The Hedonic, Experiential Model (HEM): consumer behaviour is driven by emotions, pursuit of fun,
fantasies and feelings
The HEM model probably better explains how consumers process information when they are
carefree and happy and confronted with positive outcomes.
The HEM viewpoint recognizes that people often consume products for the sheer fun of it or in the
pursuit of amusement, fantasies, or sensory stimulation.

Chapter 8
Setting marcom objectives
 Achieving management consensus
 Guiding subsequent marcom decisions
 Providing standards

Why setting Marcom (advertising) objectives is important

 Expression of management consensus
 Guides the budgeting, message, and
 media aspects of advertising strategy
 Provide standards against with
 results can be measured

Marcom Objectives
 Who
 What (most difficult objective)
 Where
 When
 How often
The Hierarchy of marcom effects
 Advancing consumers unawareness to awareness
 Creating an expectation
 Encouraging trial purchases
 Forming beliefs and attitudes
 Reinforcing beliefs and attitudes
 Accomplishing Brand loyalty

Setting good marcom (advertising) objectives

 Include a precise statement of who, what, and when
 Be quantitative and measurable
 Specify the amount of change
 Be realistic
 Be internally consistent
 Be clear and put it in writing

Should marcom objectives be stated in terms of sales?

 Communication (indirect) Objectives
o Attempt to increase the target audience’s brand awareness, enhance their attitudes
toward the brand, shift their preferences from the competitors’ brand and so on.
 Sales (Direct) objectives

Practical budget methods

 Percent-of-Sales Budgeting
 Objective-and-Task Method
 Competitive Parity Method (match competitors’ method)
 Affordability Method

Integrated information response model?

Levels of involvement?

Chapter 9

B2C: companies that market their brands to final consumers undertake most advertising

B2B: companies that market to other companies rather than directly to consumers

The magnitude of advertising

Advertising expenditures in the United States were estimated to have exceeded $294 billion in
2008.This amounts to nearly $1,000 in advertising for each of the approximately 300 million men,
women, and children living in the United States. Ad spending in the United States has for many years
averaged approximately 2.2 percent of the country’s gross domestic product

Historical percentage breakdown: overall promotion dollar

 Trade sales promotion: 50.0%
 Consumer sales promotion: 25.0%
 Media advertising: 25.0%
Five basic functions performed by advertising

1. Informing
o Publicize the brand
2. Influencing (Persuading)
o Primary demand: creating a demand for the entire product category
o Secondary demand: the demand for a company’s brand
3. Reminding and Increasing Salience
o Enriching the memory trace for a brand such that the brand comes to mind
o in relevant choice situations
4. Adding Value
o Innovating
o Improving quality
o Altering consumer perception
5. Assisting Other Company Efforts
o Assist sales representatives

 Implementing Advertising strategy

o Strategy implementation deals with the
tactical, day-to-day activities that must
be performed to carry out an advertising
campaign.
 Measuring advertising effectiveness
o Assessing effectiveness is a critical aspect
of advertising management—only by
evaluating results is it possible to
determine whether objectives are being
accomplished.

The role of advertising agencies: Message strategies

and decisions most often are the joint enterprise of the companies that advertise (the clients) and
their advertising agencies.
Alternative ways to perform advertising functions
o In-house operation
 Necessities employing an advertising staff and absorbing the operation costs
 Unprofitable unless a company does a large amount of continual advertising
o Purchase services as needed (a la carte)
 Advantages
 Use services only when they are needed
 Availability of high-calibre creative talent
 Potential cost efficiencies
  Disadvantages
 Specialists approach client problems in a stereotyped fashion
 Lack of cost accountability
 Financial instability of smaller boutiques

o Use full- service advertising agency

 Advantages:
 In-depth knowledge and skills
 Obtaining negotiating muscle with the media
 Coordinating advertising and marketing efforts
 Disadvantages
 Some control is lost
 Larger clients are favoured over small clients
 Occasionally inefficient in media buying
Use full- service advertising agency
 Creative services
 Media services
 Research services
 Account manager

Chapter 10

What makes effective advertising

 Sound strategy
 Consumer’s view
 Persuasive
 Doesn’t overwhelm
 Deliver on promises
 Break clutter

Creativity: the CAN elements

 The CAN elements of creative ads
o Connectedness: addresses whether an advertisement reflects empathy with the target
audience’s basic needs and wants
o Appropriateness : an advertisement must provide information that is pertinent to the
advertised brand relative to other brands in the product category
o Novelty: unique, fresh and unexpected ads. They differ from consumer expectations of
a typical ad for a brand in a particular product category

Sticky messages: SUCCESS (getting messages to stick)

 Common elements of sticky ads
o Simplicity
o Concreteness
o Emotionality
 o Storytelling
o Credibility
o Unexpectedness

Advertising plan: Provides the framework for systematic execution of advertising strategies
(analogous to marketing plan: analysis, planning, implementation, control of marketing programs)

Advertising strategy: An advertising message that communicates the brand’s primary benefits or
how it can solve a consumer’s problem

5 steps of advertising strategy

 Step 1: Specify the key fact
o A Single- minded statement from the customer’s point of view that identifies why
consumers are or are not purchasing the brand
 Step 2: state the marketing problem
o State the problem from the marketer’s point of view
 Step 3: state communication objective
o What effect the advertising is intended to have on the target market and how it should
persuade consumers
 Step 4: implement the creative message strategy
o “creative platform”
 Define the target market
 Identify the primary competition
 Choose the promise
 Offer reasons why
 Step 5: establish mandatory corporate/divisional requirements
o It reminds the advertiser to include the corporate slogan or logo, headlines, claim
substantiation, any other regulatory requirements, etc.

Cont.
 Positioning
 Message and medium
 Nitty-gritty details
The MECCAS Model
 Means End of Conceptualization of Components for Advertising Strategy

Identifying means-end chains: the method of laddering

Laddering is a research technique that has been developed to identify linkages between attributes
(A), consequences (C), and values (V).

Practical issues in identifying means- end chain

Provides a systematic procedure for linking the advertiser’s perspective, with the consumer’s
perspective.

Corporate image and corporate issue advertising

 Corporate image advertising
o Attempts to gain:
 Name recognition
 Product goodwill
 Identification with meaningful social activities
 Corporate issue advertising “
o Paid communication concerned with propagating ideas and explaining controversial
social issues of public importance

Chapter 11, 13, 15

The role of humour in advertising
Advertisers also turn to humor in the hopes of achieving various communication objectives— gaining
attention, guiding consumer comprehension of product claims, influencing attitudes, enhancing
recall, and, ultimately, creating customer action.
 Positive effects
o Attracts attention
o Enhances liking of ad and brand
o Does not hurt comprehension
o Does not harm persuasion
o Does not harm source credibility
 o Nature of product affects the appropriateness of using humor (e.g., feeling-oriented;
under low involvement
 Negative effects
o Effective only when consumers’ evaluations of the advertised brand are already positive
o Effect of humor can differ due to differences in audience and geographical
characteristics
o Humorous message may be so distracting that receivers ignore the message content

Appeals to consumer fears

 Use of fear: physical or impending problems
 Appeals to fear can be effective as a means of enhancing motivation (yet ethical issues)
 Can identify the negative consequences of:
o Not using the product
o Engaging in unsafe behavior (drinking and driving)
 Can take forms of either
o social disapproval or physical danger

For fear appeals to be effective:

 Appropriate level of threat given the involvement of the target market
 Need a prominent solution (e.g., your brand or service) for the fear created

Celebrity endorsers
Endorser attributes: TEARS Model (credibility and attractiveness)
T: Trustworthiness
E: Expertise
A: Physical attractiveness
R: Respect
S: Similarity
The “No tears” approach (alignment with the brand)
 Celebrity and audience matchup
 Celebrity and brand matchup
 Celebrity credibility
 Celebrity attractiveness
 Cost consideration
 A working ease or difficulty factor
 Endorsement saturation factor
 Likelihood-of-getting-into-trouble-factor

Options for placing ads

 Banner ads
o Banner ads are typically small, static ads placed in frequently visited websites. Banner
ads, staple of online advertising, are static ads – somewhat analogous to print ads
placed in magazines and newspapers – that appear on frequently visited websites.
o Currently, this format is second (to search engine advertising) in ad expenditure spent
on-line and is expected to grow. Yet, this growth is tempered by recent arguments that
brand managers would prefer greater engagement via social media rather than the
static ad banners. Click-through rates (CTRs) to banner ads are very low, averaging less
than 0.3 percent. Banner ads for B2B companies receive somewhat higher CTRs than do
those for B2C companies
 Pop-ups:
o Appear in a separate window that materializes on the screen, seemingly out of
nowhere, while a selected Web page is loading. Pop-ups remain until they are manually
closed.
 Online video ads
o audio-visual ads that range in length from 15 seconds to several minutes
 Social media
o Share opinions and information, and create online communities of people who have
similar interests and wish to share their experiences with others.
o Advantages
o Disadvantages

Direct marketing
An interactive system of marketing which uses one or more advertising media to effect a measurable
response and/or transaction at any location.

Customer lifetime value

 Net Present Value (NPV) of profit that a company stands to realize on the average new
customer during a given number of years.
 Is valuing each present or prospective customer is viewed not as an address but as a long-term
asset
 5 ways to enhance customer lifetime values
 Increased the retention rate. The more customers a firm has and the longer they are retained,
the greater the lifetime value.
 Increase the referral rate. Positive relations created with existing customers can influence
others to become customers through the positive word of mouth expressed by a company’s
satisfied users.
 Enhance the average purchase volume per customer. Existing customers can be encouraged to
purchase more of a brand by augmenting their brand loyalty.
 Cut direct costs. By altering the channel of distribution via direct marketing efforts, a firm may
be able to cut costs and hence increase profit margins.
 Reducing marketing communication costs. Effective database marketing can lead to meaningful
reductions in marcom expenses because direct marketing often is more productive than mass
media advertising

Potpourri of alternative advertising media

 Post-it notes
 Stadium cup holders
 Sides of garbage trucks
 Restroom space
 Labels on fruits and vegetables
 Back covers of comic books (Levi 501 jeans)
 Skywriting
 Human body