Strategic Communication 2331 Exam 1

The challenge of IMC is maximizing positive impact while maintaining control as well as.....

minimizing negative impacts that are outside of your control (crisis communication!!)

What is the role of packaging in branding?

Impacts brand position in costumer's mind- often the first exposure to a product; it sets expectations

Salient attributes

Important to consumes and are the basis for making a purchase decision. EX: Apple stresses that their devices are easy to use- people like easy things

Positioning by product attributes and benefits

Sets the brand apart from competitors on the basis of specific characteristics of benefits offered

Differentiated marketing

Involves marketing in a number of segments, developing separate marketing strategies for each.

Buying situation segments

1. Behavior/ Involvement 2. Outlet Type 3. Usage 4. Awareness/knowledge 5. Benefits

What are the arguments of those who believe promotion equals power?

-Changes consumers tastes -Lowers sensitivity to price -Builds brand loyalty RESULTS IN>>>> -High profits -Less competition -Higher prices -Fewer choices -Promotes materialism

What are the basic types of contact/touch points?

-Company created -Intrinsic -Unexpected -Consumer initiated

Focus group disadvantages

-Dealing with self appointed group leaders that monopolize conversations -NOT generalizable -Interpretation of results can be subjective and be given too much weight

Once you have identified your target markets...

-Determine your desired brand position -Build and define the brand -Develop brand cues -Determine which channels thru which to promote/ communicate

Public Relations

-Evaluates public opinions -Identifies policies and procedures of an individual or organization with public interest Goal: establish and maintain a positive corporate image

Focus group advantages

-Excellent for exploratory research - gives sense of what connections to begin making -You are able to get data quickly -Cost effective and may obtain in depth feedback

What are the different methods of qualitative strat comm research?

-Field observations -focus groups -case studies -ethnographies -in depth interviews

Reasons why it's becoming so difficult to target audiences:

-Increased consumer purchasing power -Increased competition and clutter -Brand "parity" -Growth of technology -Decline in mass communication = mass advertising -Avoids duplication and takes advantage of synergy

Case Studies

-Particularistic: Focuses on a particular event, program, or phenomenon -Descriptive: final product of the case study is detailed description of the event -Heuristic: new interpretations, new insights, etc Inductive: principles and generalizations emerge from the data seeking to discover new relationships

Criticism of advertising with regard to sterotyping

-Portrayal of women to reflect their changing role in society -Portrayal of women as sex objects -Ethnic stereotyping/representation -Sexual orientation -Gender stereotyping

What are the arguments of those who believe promotion equals information?

-Provides useful information -Increases price sensitivity -Increase competition RESULTS IN>>>> -Pressure for high quality -Pressure for lower prices -Forces inefficient firms out -Creates economic demand

What are the different methods of quantitative research?

-Survey research/ field tests -experiments/ lab methods -secondary/ data mining

Double Transaction

-The media "sells" content to audiences who "pay" with their attention/viewership. -The media then sells access to "audiences" to advertisers.

Developing Brand Cues

1. Brand names: -benefits (Slim-Fast) -association (Subaru: Outback) -distinctiveness (Monster.com) -simplicity (Tide, Olay) 2. Brand Symbols: -logo -trademark -consistency with brand image is KEY

Functions of Promotion

1. Builds awareness of products or brands 2. Creates a brand image - leads to brand equity 3. Provides information concerning the brand 4. Persuades (formation, strengthening, change) 5. Provides incentives to act 6. Provides brand reminders 7. Reinforces past purchases and brand experiences

What is successful branding?

1. Creating a strong psychological dimension, i.e. the brand "personality" 2. Creating a strong linkage between brand personality and physiological traits through strategic communication

Attributes of Brand elements

1. Desire memorability 2. Create a meaningfulness 3. Maintain an aesthetic appeal 4. Its transferability to all aspects of your business/ endeavors 5. Adaptability/ flexibility over time

What are the key attributes of brand cues/elements?

1. Desire memorability 2. Create a meaningfulness 3. Maintain an aesthetic appeal 4. Its transferability to all aspects of your business/ endeavors 5. Adaptability/ flexibility over time

Selecting a target market involves two steps

1. Determining how many segments to enter 2. Determining which segments offer the most potential

Functions of a Brand

1. Differentiates a product from its competitors 2. Makes a promise to consumers 3. Serves as the driving, unifying force directing all functional areas, including IMC

Advantages of digital marketing

1. Engage - interactive brand experience 2. Track - travel between channels, evaluating media investments 3. Target - demos, behavior, attitudes 4. Share - content easier 5. Customize - based on consumer needs 6. Save $$$ - impressions, engagements, leads and sales 7. Collect - Consumer data via online surveys or forms 8. Brand -- progressive

Five Types of Brand Personalities

1. Excitement 2. Competence 3. Sophistication 4. Ruggedness 5. Peacefulness

What are the different steps in the target marketing process?

1. Identify markets with unfulfilled needs 2. Determine market segmentation 3. Select market to target 4. Position through marketing strategies

What are the main types of strat comm research and their focus?

1. Market/brand information 2. Consumer insight research 3. Media research 4. Message development 5. Evaluation

Customer characteristics segments

1. Psychographic 2. Demographic 3. Socioeconomic 4. Geographic

What are the basic elements of an IMC plan?

1. Review of marketing plan 2. Analysis of promotional program situation 3. Analysis of communication process 4. Budget determination 5. Develop IMC program 6. Integrate and implement marketing communications strategies 7. Monitor, evaluate, and control IMC program

Three strategies for selecting a target market

1. Undifferentiated marketing 2. Differentiated marketing 3. Concentrated marketing

80-20 Rule

20 percent of buyers account for 80 percent of sales volume

Positioning by cultural symbols

A meaningful symbol that the brand is easily identifiable and differentiated from its competitors. -Audience begins to associate the product with a specific culture EX: Swiss Chocolate, Tony the Tiger

What is the definition of a brand?

A name, a term, a symbol, or any other unique element of a product that identifies one seller's product distinct from those of other sellers.

Positive Stereotypes

A positive assumption made about someone based on their looks, race, social group, economic stability or gender. EX: "Moms can do everything"

What is the role of advertising when developing a brand?

A promotional strategy that integrates the tangible, intangible, and brand elements for audiences. EX: Honda commercial

What is the definition of IMC?

A strategic business process used to plan, develop, execute and evaluate coordinated, measurable, persuasive brand communication programs with consumers, customers, prospects employees and other relevant external and internal audiences

Experiments/ Laboratory Methods

Controlled and you can isolate factors/variables factors/variables -Disadvantage: a lack of realism and testing bias -Random assignment

Post-Test

Ad effectiveness measures that are taken after the ad has appeared in the marketplace

What are the arguments from advocates and marketers about advertising and children?

Advocates argue that children: 1. Lack the knowledge and skills to evaluate advertising claims 2. They cannot differentiate between programs and commercials Marketers argue children: 1. Must learn through socialization- ads are a part of life 2. Must acquire skills needed to function in the marketplace

Advertising

Any paid form on non-personal communication about an organization, product, service, or idea by an identified person. - Brands build equity and value

Internal Analysis

Assesses relevant areas involving the product/service offering and the firm itself. -Analysis may indicate that the firm is not capable of planning , implementing, and managing certain areas of the IMC plan

Advantages of laboratory tests

Controlled and you can isolate factors and variables

Customer-initiated and intrinsic messages fall in between......

Company-created and unexpected messages in terms of impact as well as the ability of the marketer to control

Brand positioning: Competition Focus

Compares benefit product offers to the competition

Ethnographic research

Complete immersion with a great deal of people watching -Researchers begin to live the lives of the people who are being studied -

Main types of pre-tests

Concept testing, theater tests, rough tests, on air tests, readability tests

Explicit racism

Conscious and openly shared attitude -Clearly plays off racist stereotypes -Not common in contemporary advertising

Focus groups

Controlled group discussion. Optimal size is 6-12 people. -The key is asking questions- knowing what to ask- moderator has rough script but best used only as rough guide.

What are the many different ways that customers can be segmented?

Customers be segmented by characteristics and by buying situation

Socioeconomic segmentation

Dividing the market on the basis of income, education, and occupation

Positioning by competitor

Differentiating a product from a competitor's product EX: When Chevy mentions Honda and Toyota to show how much better they are than them

By which channels do we promote brands?

Direct and indirect

Examples of direct marketing

Direct mail, catalogs, telemarketing, email

Behavioristic segmentation

Dividing consumers into groups according to their usage, loyalties, and buying responses to a product -80/20 Rule -Often combined with psychographic and demographic segmentation to create consumer profiles

Psychographic segmentation

Dividing the market on the basis of personality, values, and lifestyles. -Create categories or profiles of customers so can align brand marketing strategies *Psychographic prism

Demographic segmentation

Dividing the market on variables like age, sex, family, size, race, education, income, and social class. EX: Dove (sex) and BMW (income)

Positioning by Price/Quality

Done where cost comes secondary to quality EX: Premium brands like BMW use this. But brands like Kohl's also use to show that they have good values for the right price

What is the definition of contact/ touch points between brands and consumers?

Each and every opportunity a consumer has to see or hear about a company and/or its brand or have an encounter or experience with it.

Agenda Setting Theory

Editors set the agenda by deciding which stories are newsworthy and which ones are not. -Influences which stories the audience sees.

Direct response advertising

Encourages the consumer to purchase directly from the manufacturer

What is product/brand positioning?

Fitting the brand to one or more segments of the broad market in such a way as to set it apart form competition in the mind of stakeholders

Concentrated marketing

Focus on one segment and capture most of it. EX: Rolls-Royce focuses exclusively on the high-income segment

Evaluation

Focus on persuasion outcomes

Promotional Program situational analysis (page 34)

Focus on the factors that influence or that are relevant to the development of a promotional strategy. Includes both internal and external analysis.

Field observation advantages

Helps to define a basic research problem -get a sense of how people react to message or product

Advantages of Publicity

High credibility and low cost

Market segments

Identifiable groups of customers sharing similar needs, wants, or other characteristics that make them likely to respond in similar fashion to a marketing program

IMC

Integrated Marketing Communication

Customer-initiated touch points

Interactions that occur whenever a customer or prospect contacts a company. -The manner in which companies handle these interactions has a major impact on their ability to attract and retain customers

Intrinsic touch points

Interactions that occur with a company or brand during the process of buying or using the product or service such as discussions with retail sales personnel or customer service representatives.

What trends are driving companies to adopt IMC?

It is becoming increasing difficult to target audiences and communicate effectively.

Disadvantage of field tests

Lack of control, take more time and money, atypical events can occur and affect results

Disadvantages of laboratory tests

Lack of realism- testing bias. Lacks a natural viewing environment

Brand positioning: Consumer Focus

Linking the product with the benefits the consumer will derive

Sales promotion

Marketing activities that provide extra value or incentives to the sales force, the distributors, or the ultimate consumer and can simulate immediate sales EX: coupons

Geographic segmentation

Markets are divided into different geographic units because consumers have different buying habits depending on where they live. EX: Midwest, east coast, south, west coast

Framing, Agenda Setting, and Priming theories are all examples that.....

Media has power.

Priming Theory

Media images stimulate related thoughts in the minds of audience members. Can desensitize audience to negative things like stereotypes, violence. -Influences how the audience reacts to stories.

Persuasion and Stereotyping

Needs to be conscious of what stereotypes you are offering and what less than ideal attitude are being reinforced. -Understanding that audiences use stereotypes because they provide us with cognitive short cuts

Negative Stereotypes

Negative expectations of people based on some demographic EX: race, gender, age

Advertising is the primary source of revenue for.....

Newspapers, magazines, television, and radio

The IMC approach gets beyond trying to design a message and a campaign that speaks to everyone and the focus is instead....

On identifying one or more lifestyle groups and building brand equity with them.

Direct marketing

Paid, personal communication directly with a consumer to generate a response and/ or a transaction - One of the fastest growing sectors of the U.S. economy -

Open-ended questions

Participant can offer a wide range of responses. EX: what comes to mind?

Laboratory tests

People are brought to a particular location where they are shown ads or commercials.

What are the two dimensions of a brand?

Physical and Phychological

Company created touch points

Planned marketing communication messages created by the company. -Advantage: under the control of the marketer - EX: ads, websites, social medias, news/press releases, packaging, brochures, collateral material, sale promotions, displays.

Positioning by who uses the product

Positioning a product by associating it with a particular group of users. EX: Skaters, snowboarders, etc

What are the different types of product/brand positioning strategies?

Positioning by... -Product attributes and benefits -Price/ Quality -Use or application -Product class/category -Who uses the product -Competitor -Cultural sysmbols

Positioning by product class or category

Promoting two or more products that lie in the same product class -Some brands need to compete against products of similar class. EX: Amtrak has positioned itself as a alternative to airplanes, citing cost savings, enjoyment, and other advantages. V8 juice promotes drinking both your fruits and vegetables.

What is the role of pricing in branding?

Price communicates brand. -Price must be consistent with perceptions of the brand -Higher prices communicates higher quality -Lower prices reflect bargain -A product positioned as high quality but with a low price will confuse customers -Must be unified with advertising and distribution

4 P's of Marketing

Price, Product, Place, Promotion

Marketers don't promote _________ they promote _________!

Products + Brands!

Indirect

Sell network of wholesalers and/ or retailers

Co-Branding

Promotional strategy that mutually strengthens brand image/positioning and expands access to target markets -Essentially just trying to reach the most amount of people possible EX: KFC and Taco Bell in the same building

In-Depth Interviews advantages

Provide a leavel of detail not offered through other methods. -Useful for reseaching sensitive issues

In-Depth Interviews

Provide detailed background about reasons why respondents give certain answers -Lengthy observations of non-verbal cues -Most sessions last serval hours and are long -Unique questions are designed for each participant

What are the promotional pull strategies?

Pull people into the stores. -Consumer to retailer to wholesaler to producer. -Goal: Create demand among consumers and encourage consumers to request the product from the retailer

Physiological/ involuntary measures

Pupil dilation, galvanic skin response, eye tracking, brain waves

What are promotional push strategies?

Push to the consumer. -Producer to wholesaler to retailer to consumer. -Goal: Push the product through the channels of distribution by selling and promoting it

Implicit racism

Racism that operates unconsciously and unintentionally -"Subtle" racism -EX: dove and intel ads

Field observation disadvantages

Reactivity is problem where researcher is identified. Heavily reliant on researcher's perceptions (possible bias)

Main types of post-tests

Recall tests, recognition tests, inquiry tests, tracking studies

Closed-ended questions

Researcher has provided a range of possible valid responses EX: How do you feel on a scale of 0 to 100?

In-Depth Interviews Disadvantages

Same as qualitative but interviewer bias can be especially strong here.

Secondary data/ Data mining

Searching for data on gov't websites, internet, etc. to find hidden patterns in quantitative data

Direct

Sell directly to consumers thru online, catalog, sales force, telemarketing, stores, etc.

Pre-tests

Tests conducted before an ad campaign is implemented

Field tests

Tests of an ad or commercial under natural viewing situations, complete with the realism of noise, distractions, and the comforts of home.

What is the "double transaction" when talking about media, advertising, and advertisements?

The American media system works under a financial structure of promotion subsidizing free or at least cheap media

What is the relationship between brands and identity?

The brand experiences need to become connected to your self identity AND social identities. -Self/social expression through brands

Promotion

The coordination of all seller-initiated efforts to set up channels of information and persuasion in order to sell goods and services or promote an idea

Benefit segmentation

The grouping of consumers on the basis of the benefits they derive from products or services. EX: Watches are commonly bought for accuracy or stylish reasons but they are also commonly bought as gifts. The benefits the purchaser derives are different from those the user will obtain.

Brand equity

The intangible asset of added value or goodwill that results from the favorable image, impressions of differentiation. and/or the strength of consumer attachment of a company name, brand, or trademark. - Does NOT come from the products themseleves

Framing Theory

The media sets frame of reference for the news and information, -Influences how the audience interprets stories.

Market Segmentation

The process of dividing a market into distinct groups that (1) have common needs and (2) will respond similarly to marketing action.

What is the promotional mix?

The tools used to accomplish an organization's communications objective. Includes advertising, directing marketing, digital marketing, sales promotion, public relations, and personal selling.

What are the goals of IMC?

To generate short term financial returns and build long term brand value.

Unexpected touch points

Unanticipated references or information about a company or brand that a customer or prospect receives that is beyond the control of the organization -Word of mouth, blogs, news reports, Yelp, Tripadvisor

Positioning by use or application

Used to enter a market on the basis of a particular use or application and is an effective way to expand the usage of a product. EX: baking soda

Trade advertising

Used to motivate wholesalers and retailers to purchase products for resale

Digital marketing

Uses all digital media, including the Internet and mobile and interactive channels, to develop communication and exchanges with customers

Brand "Parity"

View of consumers that few tangible distinctions exist between competing brands in mature markets

Synergy among promotional tools:

Weaknesses of one tool offset by strengths of others

Psychological dimension of a brand

What the object means to you and how it connects to your lifestyle or self-expression

Physical dimension of a brand

What the object physical is and what it does

Disadvantages of Publicity

Won't build long term loyalty and can damage brand image

Advertisers may exert control over the media by......

biasing editorial content, limiting coverage of certain issues, or influencing program content.

IMC builds....

brand equity

What is key in today's competitive market?

brand equity

IMC develops....

brand identity and consistency

Media's dependence on advertising for revenue makes them vulnerable to.....

control by advertisers

Qualitative methods are more concerned with...

description and explanation compared to the focus on measurement and quantification that drives quantitative. - NOT GENERALIZABLE - Participants counts are small and not randomly selected - often used to supplement and in conjunction with quantitative research

Company planned touch points are the ___________ to control but are the __________ in terms of impact

easiest, lowest

Consumer Insight Research

focus on audience/consumer behavior, psychology, preferences

Market/Brand Information

focus on competitive marketplace; focus on competition, strategic situation

Media Research

focus on the promotional channel- audience, content, distribution

External Analysis

focuses on factors such as characteristics of the firm's customers, market segments, positioning strategies, and competitors EX: consumers have become more focused on health and nutrition, which has had a major impact on the soft-drink industry

Survey Research

gathering primary data by asking people questions about their knowledge, attitudes, preferences, and buying behavior. -Phone, face to face, internet

Unexpected messages are often the most ____________ but are the most ___________ to control

impactful, difficult

Undifferentiated marketing

involves ignoring segment differences and offering just one product or service to the entire market. -Saves money but does not allow opportunity to offer different versions to different markets EX: Coca-Cola only had one flavor for the longest time

Advertisers need the media.....

more than the media needs any one advertiser.

Publicity

non-personal communications regarding an organization, product, service, or idea not directly paid for or run under identified sponsorship

Message Development

testing message design and effectiveness, audience reactions, use of sources

Synergy

the power that results from the combination of two or more forces EX: combines the power of promotional tools into one.