The communication process

There is a great need to understand the communication process as it is the key part of promotion. Successful marketing communications depends on a number of factors, including the nature of the message, the audience interpretation of it & the environment in which it is received. Feedback from the receiver helps the sender determine whether proper decoding has occurred or whether noise has interfered with the communication process. A model for communication process is represented below

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_mFD3uuA4E

 For promotion planning, the main thing to be analysed is the target audience. The receiver can be analysed with respect to its composition( individual, group, mass audiences) & the response process it goes through. The following figure lists some of the traditional response models.

Recently some other response models has been suggested which has been a mixture of traditional models and some other inferences. Two of them are alternative response hierarchies & FCB planning model which are depicted below

This model integrates concepts from both high & low involvement response hierarchy perspectives & recognizes the effect of direct experiences with the product.

Similarly the cognitive approach examines the thoughts evoked by a message & how they shape the receiver’s ultimate acceptance or rejection of the communication. The elaboration likelihood model of attitude formation & change recognizes two forms of message processing, the central & peripheral routes to persuasion which are a function of receiver’s motivation & ability to process a message. It is depicted schematically in the following figure

We see that those responsible for IMC program should thus learn as much as possible about their target audience & how it may respond to advertising & other forms of marketing communications.

The Internet and Interactive Media

Internet is the current one-stop shop for all our information needs. Interested people can have a look at its details and history. For others, a succinct summary about 'what is internet?' is captured in below animation.

What is Internet?

Why internet?
 The reasons for using internet for business activities are not hard to see. Though they can be many fold, there are only two dimensions of focus; the source - demand/supply and the sink - opportunities/risks.

In terms of supply-side opportunities, fewer organizations have taken full advantage of this giant of the medium and hence it provides an excellent incentive to be a pioneer in one's respective industry. Also, the entry barrier is quite low when compared to other traditional media. Organizations can generate ideas for designing their new products/services, receive immediate feedback from customers about their performance, take measures to improve their service quality, reduce the transaction costs, inventory, response time etc. The list is endless.

Regarding demand-side opportunities, sellers should be where buyers would be. Internet is growing to be the hottest channel for shopping and e-commerce is where the money lies. Examples of organizations that are milking these opportunities are abound - eBay, amazon, flipkart etc.

However, business is not just about utilizing opportunities - it is also about reducing risks. The supply-side suffers from inertia risk - the risk of being left out and innovation risk - the risk of becoming obsolete. The supply risk also includes performance risks - in terms of cost, time and quality of products/services offered.The demand-side risks or the demand uncertainties are widely known and were carefully studied in many forums before.

 

 What's in it for CMOs?
Internet is not just another medium. In fact,  it is the most powerful medium there is currently. A Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) can lever on this power to design and implement his strategic marketing and marketing strategy plans. 
The way forward is simple. Information is the bloodline of business and internet is going to rule the world as the primary source of information in near future. So, marry marketing and information domains of the organization. A recent HBR article recommends exactly that.
Some advantages of using internet are - speed, efficiency, targeting and positioning capabilities, message customization, customer interaction, access to vital information and importantly, improved sales potential.

How? - An action plan

To synergize the marketing and IT functions, the top management should evolve a plan of integrated communication and drive a top-down approach. The roadmap for the same is given below.

Target Audience --> Objectives --> Strategies  --> Measurement

Target market

·         B2C market

• Consumers are “money rich and time poor”
• Demographic profile is skewed towards higher education and income levels
• Net usage mainly for searching information about products, services and for shopping
• Internet – the future leading cause of consumer spending

·         B2B market

• Market size dwarfs B2C market
• Leading segments: Products - Electronics, Computing, Distribution - Shipping, Warehousing, Utilities

Objectives
For a visionary CMO looking at internet as the gold mine of opportunities, following would be the objectives of his strategic marketing plans.

Primary Objective

• Develop internet as the universal medium - from information dissemination to whole spectrum of marketing mix

 Sub Objectives

• Build interactive capabilities - from read-only web to read-write web (Web 2.0)
• Develop a platform for relationship building - across stakeholders
• Extract maximum out of this hybrid media
• Product
• Understand the pulse of customers with feedback mechanism
• Extract ideas about future products/services requirements
• Design products based on near-real-time consumer needs/wants information, even for mass market
• Price
•  Decide on the optimal pricing
• Promotions
• Create awareness about products, services offered and their UVP
• Generate interest among potential customers - develop the pull factor
• Disseminate information to the target market - effectively, efficiently and economically
• Build a strong brand image
• Place
  
• Stimulate trials, a decisive element in consumers' purchase process
• Convert potential customers to actual customers through buying options (e-commerce)

Strategies

Advertising

Some of the common form of advertising strategies are given below-

• Banner Ads - Advertisements in the form of banners
• Sponsorships - Ownership of an entire site or page
• Pop-ups/Pop-unders - A separate, small window that appears automatically
• Interstitials - Advertisements that appear while the page loads
• Webcasting - A push technology, automated delivery of messages
• Links - Hypertext links to other pages, including external sites 
• Text Ads - No frill advertisements, based on relevancy of user interaction
  

Following video details the various strategies and tactics in online advertising.

Integration
Integration is the big story in every company's backyard. This integration is within the organization (through intranet) and also across the value-chain (including extranet). Some examples of integrated communication using internet are - Sales promotion, Personal selling, Public Relations, Direct marketing (Direct mail, Informercials, e-commerce, Home shopping channels)

Measurement of Effectiveness
Some ways to measure the effectiveness of internet based integrated communications/marketing strategies are tracking - a measure on the performance of the site, recall and retention - a measure critical to marketing communications, typically done through personalized approaches like feedback, ratings etc., non-response - measure of failures, surveys - either online or through offline modes and sales - volume and value of sales generated through sites.
The key terms typically used in these measurements, which also affects the costing/revenue model, are hits - number of requests for a site content, viewers - visits/site, unique visitors - distinct visitors to the site in the observed time frame, click-throughs - number of visitors clicking on banner ads, click-through rate, impressions per page view - number of times viewers view the page.

What's the catch?

• Higher cost
• Unreliable measurements and statistics
• Lower internet penetration in the developing countries and hence limited reach

An illustration
Consider an organization wanting to develop a single-window online system for tourism, specific to North-eastern states of India. 
The target market, here, is geography-based in terms of supply and boundary-less in terms of demand. The primary target segment are travelers/tourists i.e. the B2C segment; however, the secondary B2B segment, in terms of service providers, are also within the purview of portal's service.
The online portal website, thus designed, can be evaluated based on 5C model - Context, Content, Credential, Clarity and Communication.
Alternatively, detailed evaluation criteria for website evaluation can be used. 

Following snapshots show the aspects and features of the portal website.

Design of the new portal website

Evaluation of the Portal Website

In essence, the internet is a Strategic Marketing Tool

• It is not just another medium of communication 
• It provides a platform for integrated marketing solutions
• It is most effective when used in conjunction with other marketing programs
• It is a very powerful tool in the hands of a strategist

THE IMC PLAN for Reliance Restaurant

1. Situational Analysis: All marketing plan begins with a situational analysis, an assessment of the internal and external environmental factors are to be analysed which affects the product, brand or organization. There are different points which come under it on the basis of which we will analysis our situation in the market.

SWOT ANALYSIS

STRENGTH:

• Brand image:-The main strength of that we can rely upon is the brand awareness of "Reliance". No one in the market need to be introduced about the credibility and reliability of this company. It will become easy and boost our new diversified restaurant business.
• Strategy:-At the initial stage, the company plans to establish their restaurants in four metro cities of India and slowly will penetrate in to other regions and even in the foreign countries too.
• Customer Service:- The company is very particular about the services to be offered to their customers as it is indispensable requirement for restaurant business to grow.

WEAKNESS:

• Dynamic nature of customer: One of the important weakness for the restaurant is the prediction of the nature, taste and preferences of the customer is very difficult.
• Demographic changes: The weakness is the demographic factor. The tradition changes and so as the preferences for the food as we move from place to place

OPPORTUNITIES:

• Potential: - There is still huge untapped market in this business and really provide a potential to grow your business.

THREATS

• Competitor: There are lots of excellent players already positioned themselves successfully like Barista, Mc Donald's, KFC. Etc., These will pose a tough competition for Reliance to enter into this business.

2. The Competitive Situation: - The restaurant industry is not an easy business to enter into because there are lots of excellent players already positioned themselves successfully but reliance as an excellent brand can really add up its value in this business. The various competitors in this business are highlighted below:

• Mc Donald's
• Burger King
• KFC
• Pizza Hut
• Café Coffee Day (CCD)
• Barista

3. The Promotion Situation: - As the company already enjoys an excellent brand name, So this will prosper the marketing initiatives taken to promote its restaurant business. The company will be planning to promote heavily through television, newspapers, magazines etc.
4. Marketing Objectives: - The main objectives of Reliance Restaurants are:

• To make the company's presence in the Restaurant industry.
• To look for diversification.
• To provide excellent facility to the customers and promotes company's goodwill.
• Customer satisfaction by providing food as per their region and tradition.
• Excellent service facility.

Marketing Strategy: - The Company will initially be looking to open up their restaurants in the metro cities and then will look to diversify into other cities which are something as per the long term strategy.

The marketing communication plan originates from the marketing plan and an integral part of the latter. The IMC objectives are laid down so as to fulfil marketing goals. In the IMC plan we select the right communication tools, integrate them, plans accompanying media and messages, and also allocates the communication budget to various tools.

Following are the steps involved in the IMC planning process to be undertaken for Reliance Restaurant:

Situational analysis: - Like the marketing plan, in this we will also analyses the promotional situation. Following are the some common areas of analysis:

• Past promotional situation: - There are already various competitors in existence in the restaurant industry (mentioned above). So can analyse the various type of strategies followed by them to position them. This will basically involve analysing the competitor's strategy.
• Product situation: - Barista, Café Coffee Day, KFC, Mc Donald's etc. are well established players in the restaurant industry and are implementing good strategies to phase out cut throat competition. If we take an example of KFC in India that how they changed their strategy in India to include vegetarian food in their menu as they earlier just served non-vegetarian food.
• Audience situation: - Although there are many companies in this sector but still there is huge untapped market as the statistics depicts that most of the income being spent by the people on India is on food only.
• Competitive situation: - As disclosed above about the extent of competition and had mentioned the various potential players in this industry. So had to analyse it fully.

Determine the communication objective:

Target Audience

• Lower middle to high class people
• Working Class People

Marketing Objectives

• Make the company's presence felt in the restaurant sector.
• Attract the business class people

Media Strategy

The main idea behind all of the integrated marketing communications and media strategy will be to deliver the message to the customers. Although the company has tremendous brand value but still it needs some efforts to make people aware about reliance entering into restaurant industry.

Media Objective

• Use sponsorship as well as highly visual print and television advertisement
• To build a great image of the product this has a good brand image.

Timing

• A 12 month campaign
• Continually recycling and adapting to evaluation results over the next 1 years
• To change its strategy between the particular time periods so that customers get new things and new changes, the main purpose is also not to bore the person with same services.

Advertising and communication tools

A print ad in magazines - Print is one of the oldest and the most highly regarded media of advertising and also a very challenging one. Executing a creative idea in the medium calls for various skills- creative writing, visualization, designing etc. The main idea behind the print ad is to attract the customer and provide them best knowledge.

TV Advertisements - While to plan a TV Advertisement, we should clear something's which are very important for it:

• Brand it - The restaurants will be associated by the company's brand name i.e. Reliance Restaurants.
• Big Idea - The big idea can be initiated by associating a famous celebrity like Shahrukh Khan to promote our restaurants.
• Strategy - Providing excellent support network to attract the customers like by initiating the online method of providing services and also providing the best catering services to the customers.
• Tagline - The tagline adopted for the resultants is "Big Meal Time"

Newspaper advertising - The advertisement can be initiated in the newspaper as it results in wide and effective coverage.

Billboards - The billboards is regarded as the modern source of advertisement in which the electric boards are displayed on the road side. So it looks to be an innovative idea to display the billboards in the cities where the restaurants are established.

Events: The advertisement can be done through events. It is regarded as most innovative and a creative kind of advertisement which generally produces results and promotes mass awareness.

Direct marketing tools

It is strongly recommended that nature fresh must an effective web presence in this interactive world .To promote the entire site, an online marketing program must be launched. A comprehensive, highly targeted group of destination web sites must be chosen for the program. The web site should be registered with yahoo search portal. And a number of tactical elements will help drive online awareness and inquiries into the program including:

• Online webinars
• Online newsletters
• Search engine registration
• Web site links
• Content marketing and licensing
• Opt-in email
• Specialized promotions and partnerships

Evaluation of the Planned IMC

Evaluation of an IMC plan is not easy because often communications effects are difficult to measure. At times they may not even have a direct impact on sales or profitability; effects may be delayed, etc. Therefore it is important to set the objective or "standards for measuring performance" in specific, measurable terms to make the evaluation possible.

After doing all these now it’s time to evaluate the performance, the performance is satisfactory as we had imagined because its quit difficult to enter into the restaurant market and establish yourself as there are already huge potential marketers in existence like Mc Donald's, KFC, and Barista etc., but still we had developed a very good strategy of firstly establish ourselves into the metro cities and accordingly will penetrate into other cities and then globally.

Manager has to measure the actual performance either through consumer surveys or sales figure.

• Monitoring of the revenues generated on weekly basis.
• A general market research can be undertaken to generate the public views.
• Manager got to know these outcomes by comparing actual performance with set standards of new product.

These steps also helped out to take further decision or plans.

WHAT IS INTEGRATED MARKETING COMMUNICATION ??

There is a plethora of change affecting the lives of people every day and needless to say every industry has undergone a transformation of the way it works and thrives to survive. Needless to say, the way the corporate world has approached its marketing communication efforts has seen a distinctive turnover.

Marketing communications these days include direct selling, social networking ad spaces, sales promotion concentrating on BTL as opposed to the aggressive ATL practices from just about a decade ago.

It becomes extremely important for the various channels adopted by the companies are integrated and there is clarity of thought of the messages being sent to the end customer. This is where the very concept of Integrated Marketing Communication has evolved.

IMC TOOLS

Advertising was the only form of conventional marketing communication. However, organizations have innovated various other ways of this communication to make their message reach the customers. The following figure describes the various forms of IMC tools that are in practice.

The following figure describes clearly how a firm decides to use the various IMC tools to its maximum advantage.

As a concluding remark, firms believe that IMC is the future way of promotion. A few thoughts from Mr. Troland, Media Business and Brand Strategy Advisor on the marketing in a new world:

Thus, it is fitting to say that firms that integrate their marketing efforts avoid duplication, bring out clarity of message to the customers, bring about a synergy in the communication aligned strategically with the firm's objectives and maximize its return on advertising and promotion. 

My journey at IIM Shillong

Organizing advertising and promotion

Any Integrated marketing communication effort involves various organizations, who with shared roles and responsibilities make the IMC process possible. These participants of the IMC process can be divided in five major categories as shown in the image. Depending on the requirement of the advertiser, all or few of these organizations can be involved in the IMC process.

Every organization needs marketing communication for one or the other purpose. Thus an internal department exists for taking a direct responsibility. The organizations have three options of organizational structure for its needs

1.       Centralized system – Advertising activities are kept alongside other marketing activities like sales, research and planning presided over by the head of marketing.

2.       Decentralized system – Big companies in particular with various brands follow this system. Each brand is separated under a brand manager and the planning, budgeting and evaluation of marketing activities are done separately

3.       In House Agency – Under this system, the advertiser creates a advertising agency owned by the advertiser himself

Many companies turn to advertising agencies for development and execution of their promotion programmes. These AD agencies provide variety of services like full-service, link between the client and advertiser (account service), marketing service or creative service. These agencies are charged based on fee, cost-plus or incentive based agreements. Accountability is built in system by means of evaluation, which can lead to an agency gaining or losing a client. 

Reading: Advertising and Promotion, Belch & Belch.