Marketing Communications

and Promotion
Business Practice Explored
 Marketing Communications
• ‘Promotion is the element of an
organisation’s marketing mix that
serves to inform, persuade and
remind the market of the organisation
and/or its products.’
 MC and how it works
• Role of MC
– Differentiate, Reinforce, Inform and Persuade
audiences to think or behave in a particular
way.
Marketing Communications
• ‘The role of promotion is to communicate
with individuals, groups or organisations so
as directly or indirectly to facilitate
exchanges by differentiating, reinforcing,
informing and persuading ….’
• Aspects of DRIP
– MC enables individuals to progress
through the decision-making process
(Fill, 2009).
• Ultimately the role of MC is to engage
audiences
The interrelationships between tools, media and audiences
 Instruments of the marketing
communications mix
• Advertising
• Sales promotions
• Sponsorship
• Public relations
• Point-of-purchase communications
• Exhibitions and trade fairs
• Direct marketing communications
• Personal selling
• E-communications
 Marketing Communications
• ‘The role of promotion is to
communicate with individuals,
groups or organisations so as
directly or indirectly to facilitate
exchanges by informing and
persuading ….’
 Communications Model
Developing
SENDER advertising

Encoding noise
noise
noise noise Interpreting
MESSAGE advertising
noise
noise
Feedback noise noise Decoding

Feedback RECEIVER
 Integrated Marketing
Communications
• Kotler (1991): the concept under which a
company carefully integrates and co-ordinates
its many communications channels to deliver
a clear, consistent and compelling message
about the organisation and its products
 Advertising
“A paid, non-personal communication
from an identified sponsor (brand,
organisation, cause etc.) using mass
media to persuade or influence an
audience”

Richards and Curran (2002)

 Successful Communication
• Message must be:
– Meaningful to the recipient
– Targeted to the right audience
– Capable of gaining attention
– Understandable
– Relevant
– Acceptable

Fill, Hughes, De Francesco (2013)

Strong and weak theories of
how advertising works
Strong (AIDA) Weak (ATR)

Awareness Awareness

Interest Trial

Desire
Reinforcement
(or conviction)

Action
Which is more relevant today?
Strong theory
• Persuasion happens on a
rational decision-making level
• Advertising can create loyalty
over time and increase sales
• Consumers are passive in
the process
Weak theory
• Brand image is reinforced
through advertising
• Focuses on a more
emotional, symbolic, and
intuitive view of products
• Purchase behaviour is based
on habit
• Advertising can improve
knowledge and reinforce
existing attitudes
• Consumers are active
problem solvers
 Dual Processing
• System 1:
– Automated, non-conscious processing
(emotional-based thinking)
• System 2:
– Cognitive, reflective, more conscious
processing (rational thinking)

Both systems can be effective at delivering desired brand

outcomes depending on the advertising context.
 System 1 Processing
• Automated, non-conscious processing
(emotional-based thinking)
– Intuitive, fast routes (short-cuts/heuristics) to
decision making.
– Allows processing of large amount of
information.
– Helps us decide which information requires
cognitive thinking
– (Brand) Associations stored in memory
• Thoughts, feelings, images, colours, sounds,
symbols, memories
 Emotional Advertising
• Emotion in the form of story-telling performs
three key functions:
– Emotional stimuli can capture attention with
novel and engaging ideas
– Emotional messages can be processed
automatically at lower levels of conscious
attention (lower cognitive load)
– Emotional advertising creates emotional
connections that are easier to retrieve from
memory
 Emotional campaigns
• Lean Cuisine
• Always#LikeAGirl
 Creativity – A Definition
There is a wide measure of agreement that
to be creative, an advertising idea needs: to
be in some sense original and
different; to be relevant and appropriate for
both the brand and its target audience; and
to be suitably crafted, which may or may not
make it artistic in character (White, 2005)
 Priming Effect
Priming is exposure to something that influences
behaviour later on

What is this advertisement trying to

communicate?
Slowing down information
processing
POE Integration
Definitions and roles