Integrated Marketing Communication! This is a new acronym for IMC…… previously it was….. I am Confused
Jokes apart…. We had a lot of fun in the first few Marketing lectures…… we had a ‘joker’ who supposedly helped us learn about marketing segmentation. Sorry to say, but the professor we had was unbelievably weird!
I mean, making everyone sit according to roll numbers is still acceptable, but the kind of language he used during his sermon was simply-unbelievably-weird. There was just one good thing that happened from that lecture … err… I mean “sermon” was that the entire class got united, did a signature campaign, and in the process got our self an even more known-to-be-weird professor
When I first saw you at the lecture, I was confused (IMC I guess) whether to be happy or to be afraid. Happy because I knew we would finally learn something, infact something that will be enough for a couple of more trimesters and afraid because this trimester falls in the last quarter of the financial year.
And juggling with a demanding office, and a demanding college, and a demanding you! I know I AM IN TROUBLE!... but I guess that’s the commitment that I made, an option that I chose when we joined NMIMS, so I guess I can’t complain (at least I can whine)
So now all set to studies, I mean reflect to what we study and with a difference!
NOTE: The above is an attempt to show off that I managed to get the whole collection of Calvin and Hobbes since 1985 to 31st Dec 1995 (when it all ended). I will post some more whenever they seem to be in sync with the journal (Which I presume we are supposed to be writing one ;) )
We start with the very first word…. “Integrated”- the first very word is a telltale about the way marketing communication has to be…. It has to be integrated, and not aloof. Thereby, meaning that it is a method of carefully coordinating all promotional activities to produce a consistent, unified message that is customer focused.
We discussed about the live cases of how the Lux campaign of Sharukh Khan bombed!.... What the brand Lux wanted to portray was totally messed up
Another interesting dimension to this was also how it impacted the brand SRK.
I am not much of a bollywood follower, but from tidbits that I have seen (read as forced to see, thanks to my friends) there is an interesting reason why this might have happened.
Just before this campaign, SRK had portrayed as being a Gay in a funny manner in the movie “Kal Ho Na Ho” with Saif Ali Khan, this joke was pushed too far, and then they acted the same way in some award ceremony. In a country like India people tend to remember such ‘things’ a tad bit longer, SRK seems to have invited trouble by getting in this Lux campaign!
So the idea here is to ensure that the message heard by the end consumer is the intended message.
The message should be clear!
The message perceived by the end consumer should be intended message.
This definition also hints as to where IMC starts from.
In the 4E’s of Enlisting, Engaging, Empowering, & Enslaving, IMC starts at the later stages of the Enlisting phase, where the Segmentation and Targeting is already done. IMC here is a tool for Positioning of the product!
We also saw the 3C’s strategic triangle framework of the Customers, the Corporation itself, and the Competition.
Was just Googling about it and found that it was designed by a Japanese strategy guru, named Kenichi Ohmae… Oh my! ;) I guess I won’t forget that name ever! Oh my!
Basically this theory suggests what kind of strategies an organization plans.
From Corporation to Customer: The corporation by using ‘communication’ creates a brand image, an aura for, a legacy fro themselves.
From Corporation to Competitors: The corporation using ‘communications’ creates a brand differentiator, creates awareness of how their product or service is better than the competitor. Here the competitor can also try to competitively reposition of forcibly position the organizations product as inferior.
Time for my most favorite topic of examples: Bikes!
Specific to India:
Brand: Hero Honda,
Brand Image: Carries the image of being an Indo-Japan Joint venture. Hence carries the image of being Indian Bikes with foreign technology. They have “fill-it and forget-it” machines. Always portrays Value for Money in their campaigns, and reminds of being Indian and at the same time related to Honda (Duh!)
How they used it: They have used (read misused if you are a biker) the brand image to sell the same product atleast thrice with three different names in the market (and with success).
From CD100 to CD100 Deluxe to what not!
From ‘Splendor’ to Splendor deluxe, to Super Splendor, and what not!
From ‘Passion’ to Passion Plus, to what not!
From CBZ to CBZ*
You may call it a stop gap arrangement of Hero Honda to convert a ‘Cash Cow’ to a ‘Star’
The best part consumers fell for it every time
Brand: TVS… or TVS Suzuki,
Brand Image: Carries the image of being another Indo-Japan Joint venture. Also carries the image of being Indian ‘commuter’ Bikes with foreign technology.
Always portrays Value for Money in their campaigns, and decently powered bikes (thanks to Suzuki)
How they used it: Their Products are a rage down south and in villages, where the legendary Suzuki’s and Yamaha’s are heavy on demand.
Perhaps TVS played their cards bad as they were known for their commuterish bikes, and its range of mopeds. When Fiero was launched it was a desperate attempt to chip in to so called premium sector in India, the legacy of the company going against its brand image of being commuterish made the product to fail. All of a sudden TVS was sending its modified versions of Fiero’s to Biking rallies and suddenly its campaign carried TVS Fiero as a powerful machine and winner of xxx numbers of race titles etc.
A transition of the parent brand TVS to help its product.
However the product was still not so great, and so it bombed
What they did with the new Fiero f2 was just carrying it ahead and yet the product had some hiccups and the competitor Hero Honda took advantage with the CBZ and killed the products hands down!
What they are doing now is commendable! They are carrying the same image ahead! Infact far-far ahead with its Apache series.
The Bike is a fairly decent bike, and based on the same lines as the Fiero with all the hiccups removed. However the bike had some more problems as it was designed to be a Sporty look, but with a commuterish feel… this they have corrected in a hush-hush-yet-to-be-launched Apache RTR 160. (Sometimes it’s nice to have friends in different companies ;) the art of networking!)
If you check their website they have a dedicated site called nowornever.com which showcases a lot of sporty gear etc, clearly positioning the brand Apache of being a hardcore sporty bike, and still having its parent Brand TVS enjoy the same reputation of being commuterish as well as having mean machines.
Brand Bajaj has now moved ahead to an image of being ‘Distinctly Ahead!’ which is helping them a lot in all segments of their products. (Thank god they moved out of Definitely Male image )
The biking industry of India, has shown that when the noise is at its highest, how the showcasing the USPs helps.
Effective communication helps
What we saw next was the types of advertising campaigns (not sure if we can call them as types, but this is the what, the when, the how, the where, and the why of the campaign)
We saw at three basic forms of advertising campaigns viz:
The Pioneering form: Where we showcase the product features and inform the customer.
Usually the campaign run by Apple Inc just after its annual event called Mac Expo or Mac World. It’s an amazing concept for a campaign. They create a lot of rumors about what’s going to be their new product. These are usually bizarre news and some leaked images on net etc of different gadgets etc. At the Mac World they launch the product and simply showcase (read show off) their products and new features. This is followed by an email campaign to all of its existing customers informing about the new product or service.
What is brilliant in this campaign is, by the time the Mac World starts there is so much publicity and curiosity that at the MacWorld every newspaper, every news company is there covering the event and wanting to be the first to cover the launch.
Apple receives a lot of free publicity a very wide coverage from this launch almost free of cost!
The Competitive form: Where we compete with others and position re position ourselves and or our competitors
In a competitive market like India this is a predominant form of advertising. We have seen the Cola wars! The war between Underwear’s! You name a product and there is an example for it!
More Recently, the war between the “xBox 360”, and the Sony “Playstation 3”.
They are competing for selling a product that 1) Indians can’t afford, 2) Don’t need
I mean with for most of the people the Machine is just a video game, without the hi-fi TVs, the web bandwidth! The device is just a portable DVD player (competing against cheap Chinese ones and others costing less than 4000) and a video game (that sells for 30k… ha ha ha no thanks)
However xBox 360 seems to be doing it all correct now, showing off the device at crucial touch points, and selling it as a Media Centre PC (solution to problem 2). Also if you recollect in my last journal I had spoken about xBox co branding with ICICI for an xBox credit card. This card offers discounts and cheap EMI options for xBox and its accessories (solution to problem 1)
I am too tempted for buying one, but rest assured if my dad knows what it costs, then I will get a kick at my rear ;) SO I guess I would be happy with my trusty portable PlayStation portable (nice gadget by the way)
The Retentive form: Where we just remind the consumer about us being there!
Aaaagh! World cup is coming up soon, and a lot of established companies are using this for their retentive campaigns.
As soon as I read these, it reminded me of the PLC curve. In a normal market with a normal product, when we launch the product, we do a lot of Pioneering campaigning, with the product moving into Growth stage, and competitors jumping in, we move to the Competitive form, and once the demand stabilizes, and the products hits maturity just a retentive campaign is required.
The Six M’s of IMC execution:
Mission:
The Mission is basically what the company wants from the campaign. This is however not found form the IMC, but from the 3Cs framework of Oh My!
In the BMW ad that we saw in the lecture, the company had portrayed a larger than life image of the car, and how it was positioned as both a sports car and a car for general purpose!
Talking about cars, that reminds me, what about your Merc?
I have also set a target of a SBK probably Honda CBR600RR once I am through this MBA with A
The Market:
The Market…. Hmnn from the first trimester we know “Market is a Medium, whereby potential buyers & sellers interact and get exposed to product, services & ideas with intent to buy”
In this context it’s an identified target, after doing all the segmentation.
The Message:
Note: Any relevance to Reliance as a company in the above illustration is purely coincidental.
Seriously I just put it up for the message part of it, and then realized that we had a seminar for this as well.
The M-Message here talks about how to deliver the message, what to deliver, and whom to…
What: The messages can be Rational, Emotional, Enticing as required by the product, or as applicable in the market
Whom to: Whether to target the promotion to the end consumer or the influencer of the demand.
And the golden rule applies here as well, speak less, don’t say everything in one go!
The Money:
The Vitamin G of any campaign, (Vitamin Green )
As usual the campaign must be Cost Effective the potential spend should be relevant with the kind of response we want from that campaign.
(Hey I have gone through the other teams campaign, they talk of putting up a full page ad on times etc, with an Ad budget of just 5crores, being cost effective is one thing and superfluous is another. A front page ad costs some 15+ crores for a day! We did our budgeting based on proper media costs!)
The Media:
The media is the choice of medium that we will use. It also covers the frequency or the number of touch that a customer would get.
It can be a ‘Flighting’ i.e. an ad-hoc Jingle or an ad-hoc advertisement.
It can be ‘Continual’ i.e. repetitive in nature, but not too much of repetition, typically the hoardings etc from this form of campaign. Even the Calvin and Hobbes series being used here, although come as a small comic form in newspaper, but it always carry some bits of what we had read a day before to the next one!
It can be ‘Pulsing’…. Sorry but couldn’t resist, pulsing and getting on to nerves are kinda related!
This is what Pulsing campaigns does, I mean continuous bombardment to the customer!
The Measurement:
We spoke about how to measure the success of the campaign.
The measurement here will help in identifying if its efforts of the campaign have been fruitful or otherwise!
It is not necessary that the increase in sale is the only or rather the right way of measuring the impact.
The recall value of the campaign is a better form of measurement, and of course backed with results
The recall can be of two types Aided and Un Aided recall
Aided Recall:
Where we suggest or aid the target audience to recollect the campaign
Un Aided recall:
Where we do not suggest or aid the target audience to recollect the campaign. We ask the target audience who have been exposed to the campaign about various related and unrelated products and services
We also discussed other ways to measure the IMC impact. Listing this down now as these would help in revision during the exam time :)
Click Through rate: This is more applicable for Online advertisements whereby the click hit ratio of every user click on the ad banner is measured. BTW this is not a fool proof method to check the hit ratio, as most of the Online-Pay-Programs pay for doing this. Thereby defeating the very purpose of the study by bloating the results!
Brand Preference Matrix: Under this method a matrix of various competing product is given to the customer, and the one that he recollects and the reason for the same is collated
B rand Loyalty: This we can measure by how many repeat customers we have had
Customer Lifetime value: lolz this sound as a Life time achievement award.
In a weird sense this IS a lifetime achievement award! Here you cumulate the value of all the products sold (and estimated to be sold) to the customer life to day. This is vital for deciding on the communication strategy to the customer
The day-after-Recall test to check the retention of the message!
We also saw the classification of the Premium brands
We spoke about how Dove is at the Hitch Hiker level as a High Premium Soap of a market which as a category has a very low %
The “High road” category is of products which are the ones usually to Innovate in the market and therefore enjoy big margins. Eg. Apple Mac Book Pro in the aggregate Laptops market is a High Premium and is enjoy a High share, thanks to the cult of Mac!
The “Hitch Hikers” category usually just moves along the market, they don’t want to play on price or the product strategy.
The “Low road” categories are on the ones who constantly work upon playing on the price strategy. They are usually the lower end premium products soon to be in a transition from a star category to a cash cow category
The “Dead End” category, is hoping for its survival, they have low margins of profit and have a very low share in market and are low premium products.
We also spoke about Guerilla marketing and Viral marketing as strategies. Viral marketing as a strategy especially for women oriented products should work wonders anywhere in the world!
We also discussed he various tools for communication, and what they can be used for in the AIDA principle.
|
| Attention | Interest | Desire | Action |
| Television | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Radio | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| Internet | Not in India | Not in India | Yes | Yes |
| | Yes | Yes | No | Yes: Coupons etc |
| Cinema | No | Yes | No | No |
| Outdoor | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Mailers | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Personal Selling | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Scheme | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| EventsSponsors | Yes | No | No | No |
| Celebrity Endorsements | Yes | No | Yes | No |
| Touch Points Kiosk | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
| Give-Aways | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Sampling | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Telemarketing | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Viral Marketing | No | No | Yes | No |
| Co Branding | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Cross Selling | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Contests | No | No | No | Yes |
| e-Stores | No | No | No | Yes |
| Personal Comm. Devices | Yes | No | No | No |
| In Movie promotion | Yes | No | Yes | No |
| Referrals and Testimony | No | No | Yes | Yes |
I guess with so many options and so many uses, and so many shortfalls, IMC would again become I am Confused!!!
That’s about it now it finally boils down to the exams!
Hey what about your PHD? Was it 29th April or 29th May? I guess thats when we get to see your Merc and maybe a party as well!
BTW I got a rating of one again! Back to Back 1 ratings consecutively and also got promoted!!!!
Hey and I am sorry about what happened during the project, we were simply unaware of what had happened. I was like an idiot sitting in Pulin’s office editing the creative’s till 1 AM the earlier day, and was at my office the next day morning early at 8, so that I could leave by 3 to complete the video editing!
How did you find the ads, my first take at Video editing as well! It was chaotic in the beginning, but was really fun! We had a tough time cutting using and adding effects on different clips to make a ad which didn’t appear as patch work! Adding sound to it was also a lot of fun, we thought of a lot of songs and then when we discussed the track from U2- Vertigo…. We all said YES!!! ;)
The lyrics and all blends well with the idea! BTW the last part of graphic of start living you footprints is nothing but a series of pictures created in MS Paint! We didn’t know animation either hence created a lot of images to be played fast frame by frame to appear as an animation! And the whole video was edited in the Windows Movie maker!!!!!! Talk about lack of resources!
Hey I even uploaded the first trimester journal online at journeyorjournal.blogspot.com do comment on that as well! Would upload this one (without the copyright images soon )
So finally I don’t know if it boils down to just marks or what so one last time (atleast for this trimester)
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