Integrated Marketing Communication Plan (IMC) - Report Writing Assessment

Report Writing Assessment

Case Scenario/ Task

You are an IMC Manager of a company or starting a company. Write an Integrated Marketing Communication Plan (IMC) of 2000 – 2500 words maximum not including references.

Develop and write an alternative IMC plan that involves the company you currently work for or the company you want to start up. You must address the following in your IMC plan.

• Brief background, of company its products/services and its marketing objectives.
• Information on the target audience segment analysis.
• Develop at least 3-5 communication (advertising) objectives – such as developing brand awareness, promoting product/services and company knowledge, influence interests or consumer attitudes, developing, the product’s image or influencing the purchase intentions.
• Choose one of the alternative styles of creative advertising and justify your communication objectives ethical issues.
• Develop a media plan – select the media vehicle(s) you will use to achieve your objectives and creative strategy. Justify your use of specific media based on how communicates with your target market.
• Provide details of its evaluations/how will you measure IMC plan effectiveness.

Skills

• This is an individual assessment (no groups).
• Be creative
• You are IMC Manager and your report should be professionally presented

1. Introduction

Integration marketing communications (IMC) refer to all the integrated strategies and activities that are incorporated by a company or brand for integrating different media channels and platforms for communicating the key message of the brand to its target customers (Yeshin, 2012). The concept of IMC has been defined by the American Marketing Association (AMA) as “the planning process designed to assure that all brand contacts received by a customer or prospect for a product, service or organization are relevant to that person and consistent over time” (Keller, 2009). Hence, suitable choice of advertising method and media channels are integral and important for developing the IMC plans and strategies for a firm. The report thus presents a comprehensive IMC plan for a new company that I want to start called Energy pump. The report first gives an overview of the company and the products and services it would offer, which would be followed by a discussion of the advertising strategies and media plan that must be adopted for the same for enhanced marketing and marketing communication.

2. Background of Company and its Products

Energy Pump is a proposed company, which would manufacture and sell energy bars in Australia. The company will be formed at a small scale, wherein a small manufacturing operation will be set-up outside Melbourne in Australia. The bars will be then sold in the supermarkets across Melbourne and Sydney and would be sold online to all parts of Australia. The company would sell three types of energy bars, wherein one would be very high on protein and can be used for people who are involved in physical activities like lifting weights, cross-fit etc., one would be made out of chocolate and would be suitable for anybody looking at quick, healthy, tasty and low-cal meal substitute and the last one would be full of proteins, nuts etc. and would be beneficial for people trying to lose weight. Hence, these three products would be introduced and sold in Australia. The key marketing objectives for Energy Pump for marketing and promoting its energy bars would be:

• Brand Awareness: To create a brand awareness in one year regarding the launch and benefits of the brand and the products offered by it
• Increase sales: To be able to increase sales of energy bars by at least 10% every month for the first one year
• Customer Acquisition: To achieve at least 5,000 new customers from Australia every month
• Market Share: Achieve at least 5% of the market share of energy bars in Australia in the first year of launch

3. Target Audience Segment Analysis

The target market for any product or brand can be segmented or divided into different groups based on their characteristics so that the groups that are most profitable and seem to be most attractive for the product can be selected (Hassan and Craft, 2012). Consumers in Australia for Energy Pump can be targeted based on different demographic factors, such as age, gender or geographical area. The working population of people in the age group of 15-64 consists of almost 67% of the country’s population, out of which a large proportion is in the younger age group of 15 to 40 (Jones et al 2015). Thus, the products to be offered by Energy Pump would be mainly targeted at young consumers in the age group of 18-35 years because people in this age group.

In addition, the company can even target customers based on their lifestyle and psychographic factors. The energy bars can be hence targeted at consumers who are very health conscious and are also working and hence usually looking for quick meal substitutes (Thombs et al 2010). Targeting these consumers would hence increase sales and revenues of the product. Thus, the target audience for the new company would be health conscious consumers in the age group of 18 to 35 for maximizing sales of the firm. The communication objectives that must be adopted for the development of the IMC plan for the firm are hence given below.

4. Communication Objectives

Energy Pump is a new company that is going to be established in Australia and hence its communication objectives would be more focused on increasing the knowledge and awareness regarding the brand so that the consumers are able to know that the product exists. Hence, the key communication objectives that must be focused upon by the firm are:

• Brand Purchase Intention: to make Energy Pump the preferred choice of consumers in Australia in energy bars
• Brand Knowledge: Increase and promote knowledge of the brand and its products among target customer groups so that they are more motivated to purchase the same
• Customer Attitude: Change customer attitude towards energy bars and make them believe that Energy Pump is a good alternative and option in the market for losing weight and eating healthy
• Brand Loyalty: To influence customers to make them loyal towards the brand, which would help in achieving higher market share and sales

Thus, the IMC plan that is being developed and proposed for the firm would be focused upon achieving these communication objectives. The choice of advertising style and the ethical issues regarding the communication objectives are being discussed further.

5. Choice of Creative Advertising Style

There are several new creative advertising styles that have evolved in the market over time. As explained by De Mooij (2013), these creative advertising styles help in defining the way a message is to be communicated to the target audience to have maximum impact. Commonly used advertising styles are generic, preemptive, brand image, unique selling proposition, emotional and resonance (De Mooij, 2013). The key creative advertising styles that can be adopted by Energy Pump are given below.

• Generic Style: Generic creative style is the one in which the companies generally tend to put forward their message and information regarding the products that they are offering. Shimp and Andrews (2012) explain that the advertiser does not try to differentiate its products from that of its competitors in this advertising style and make generic claims. This advertising style is effective in communicating the offerings of the firm and its products.
• Preemptive Style: Another creative advertising style that can be used by Energy Pump, wherein the advertisers tend to establish a claim and communication information regarding the product. However, at the same time the companies tend to make use of this practice as a category-dominance approach wherein they incorporate and use the style of assertion to establish the product to be superior as compared to its competitors (Veres et al 2014).
• Emotional: Energy Pump can even make use of the emotional creative style, wherein the messages are communicated at the emotional level. The brands tend to emotionally appeal to target customers by targeting emotions such as love, romance, fear etc. This style is usually adopted for product categories such as food or clothes and hence is suitable for the company as well (Shimp and Andrews, 2012).

Energy Pump would make use of the preemptive style of advertising. Veres et al (2014) have explained that any new brand or company in the market must focus upon first generating brand awareness and knowledge, which must be then followed by increasing the motivation of consumers to purchase. Hence, the use of preemptive style is adequate for the first year because it would help the company in communicating the features, characteristics and offerings of the products to consumers and at the same time would assist it in differentiating its products from that of other brands.

According to Kapferer (2012), differentiation strategy is the most effective strategy to be used when there is high competition in the market. The competition in energy bar market is very high, wherein there are several energy bars like Winner Bars, Powerbar, Endura, Detox Energy etc are already available in the market. Hence, Energy Pump needs to establish its differentiating factor while communicating the product offerings. The key differentiating factor that can be used for communication is that the products of the firm offer tasty, yet all natural ingredients based bars. Since the consumption of organic, natural products is increasing in the country Falguera et al (2012), this differentiating factor would help in increasing sales.

This would help in meeting the communication objectives and would also help in ensuring that no ethical issues in business communication as discussed below:

• One of the biggest issues that arise in increasing brand knowledge among consumers is that the consumers need to be given complete and true information (Daymon and Holloway, 2010). Since the preemptive style of advertising focuses on communicating the product offerings, this ethical issue can be overcome.
• Kotler et al (2015) argue that companies focusing on changing customer attitude can face the ethical issue of not offending the buyers in the process of changing their attitude. Hence, since the company is looking at changing attitude of customers must make sure that the communication message and advertising are not offending to the buyers in any way.
• Energy Pump must consider the ethical issue of defaming its competitors as well. It needs to make sure that in the preemptive style of establishing itself as superior, it must not defame its competitors or say anything negative regarding them.

Thus, the preemptive style of creative advertising can be effective in communicating the company’s key characteristics to buyers and would help it in achieving its advertising and communication objectives. The media plan that must be utilized for achieving the objectives is being presented below.

6. Media Plan

Media plan of any company includes the establishment of suitable objectives, identification of message to be communicated, selection of media choices and the budgeting of the same (Berthon et al 2012). The media plan for Energy Pump for accomplishing the above defined objectives is given below.

6.1 Key Communication Message

The key message that must be communicated via the media plan and media strategies to be adopted by the firm is that the energy bars offered by the company are very healthy because they are made of complete organic substances and products and also offer health benefits along with taste.

6.2 Selected Media Vehicles

Social Media: Social media has become one of the preferred and most commonly used and adopted media vehicles and channels used for advertising purposes. Social media network users are expected to grow to almost 2.5 billion by the end of 2018, thus demonstrating its ability to reach out to large number of consumers (Statista, 2015). Since social media penetration rate is very high in the Australian market and the target young consumers are the key users of social media, social media based media channel would be beneficial for Energy Pump in increasing its sales. Also, social media is a cheaper option for advertising and would be beneficial for a new entrant like Energy Pump (Evans, 2012).

Digital Media (Web and Mobile): Couldry (2012) argues that digital advertising is the most effective form of advertising currently being adopted by companies because digital channels or media vehicles help companies in being able to target the desired and target group of customers, which helps them in minimizing their costs and also helps them in not wasting their marketing initiatives on customers who are not the target audience. Thus, Energy Pump must make use of internet and mobile based advertising. Since the target customer group of young consumers are the biggest users of the internet and smartphones, digital media based marketing would be beneficial for the firm. The company must hence not only use web ads on some of the key health websites and blogs of Australia like Shesaid.com, Mile Posts and Yahoo (Nicholas, 2010). In addition, it must develop its own website and mobile app to communicate and engage with the buyers.

Location and Place based Marketing (Gyms and Health Places): Place based marketing is an extremely effective marketing plan because it helps in making sure that the communications are directly targeted at the target audience, thus minimizing costs and resulting into higher returns on the investments made. Thus, gyms and different health places like yoga houses etc. can be used as the media vehicle for promoting the product. Dhar and Varshney (2011) have established that place based advertising is extremely effective in increasing brand visibility, which would increase brand awareness, knowledge and sales of the products.

Hence, the above presented media vehicles seem to be extremely effective for the target audience and would help in achieving the above established marketing and communication objectives. Budgeting for the media plan is given in the table below.

6.3 Budget

Total budget for advertising for the company would be around 30,000 AUD, the distribution of which is given below

7. Evaluation of IMC Plan Effectiveness

Various methods and practices that can be used for measuring the effectiveness of the IMC plan and strategies based on the objectives are discussed below.

• Number of New Customer: Since increase in market share and change of customer attitude are the key objectives that have been established, the company must evaluate the effectiveness of its IMC plan by measuring the number of new customers that are acquired by the firm every month. An increase in the acquisition of new customers on a monthly basis would suggest effectiveness of the IMC plan (Percy, 2014).
• Number of Repeat Purchase: Since increase in customer loyalty is a key objective of the IMC plan as established above, an important way via which the effectiveness of the IMC plan can be evaluated is the measure of repeat purchases made by consumers. The company must hence measure the number of repeat purchases on a monthly basis because higher repeat purchase signifies and represents higher brand loyalty (Yang et al 2013).
• Sales Response: Sales response is an important measure of evaluating if the IMC plan is effective or not and hence the company, Energy Pump must measure the sales response of its products from every source individually. This will not only help in identifying if the sales have been improving or not and will not also help in assessing the effectiveness of different sales channels and sources (Yang et al 2013).

8. Conclusion

The above discussed IMC plan for the promotions and communications of the products of the new proposed company; would be beneficial in increasing sales and revenues of the firm. The plan has been devised by keeping the target customer group in mind and would be suitable for achieving the defined marketing and communications aims and objectives.