Implementing an Integrated Marketing Communications Strategy (Hawksmere Special Briefing) 1854181203, 9781854181206

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A

H A W K S M E R E

S P E C I A L

B R I E F I N G

Implementing an Integrated Marketing Communications Strategy Norman Hart

P U B L I S H E D

B Y

T H O R O G O O D

LT D

IFC

A

H A W K S M E R E

S P E C I A L

B R I E F I N G

Implementing an Integrated Marketing Communications Strategy How to benchmark and improve marketing communications planning in your business

By Norman Hart

P U B L I S H E D

B Y

T H O R O G O O D

LT D T H E P U B L I S H I N G BUSINESS OF THE HAWKSMERE GROUP

Published by Thorogood Limited Other Hawksmere Reports and Special Briefings published by Thorogood:

12-18 Grosvenor Gardens London SW1W 0DH. Thorogood Limited is part of the

Public Affairs Techniques for Business

Hawksmere Group of Companies.

Peter Wynne Davis

Understanding the Financial Media Simon Scott

© Norman Hart 1999 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or

Managing Corporate Reputation Simon Scott

transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Evaluating and Monitoring Strategies David Allen

Managing the In-house Legal Function Barry O’Meara

This Briefing is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than in which it is published and without

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a similar condition including this condition being

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No responsibility for loss occasioned to any person

Achieving Business Excellence, Quality and Performance Improvement

acting or refraining from action as a result of any

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material in this publication can be accepted by the author or publisher.

Colin Chapman

Techniques for Ensuring PR Coverage in the Regional Media Michael Imeson

A CIP catalogue record for this Briefing is available from the British Library. ISBN 1 85418 120 3 Printed in Great Britain by Print in Black, Midsomer Norton.

The author Norman Hart MSc FCIM FIPR FCAM was an international consultant, lecturer and author on marketing, advertising and public relations. His books include The CIM Marketing Dictionary,Strategic Public Relations,The Practice of Advertising and Industrial Marketing Communications. He was a Visiting Fellow of both Bradford and Leeds Metropolitan Universities, a Course Leader at Henley Management College and a member of the faculty at the Chartered Institute of Marketing.He was the first Professor of Public Relations in the United Kingdom. His clients included IBM, the European Union, BT, the Department of Employment and COI. Norman Hart was for ten years the Director of the CAM Foundation (Communications, Advertising and Marketing), the national examination and accreditation body for marketing communications studies and qualifications, and consultant editor of Marketing Week, Admap and PR Week.His involvement in education extended to lecturing at Ashridge,Sunridge Park,Durham University and London Business School,where he was Course Director in Public Relations. He was also a Unilever marketing manager and MD of an advertising agency. He was Chairman of IPRF (International Public Relations Foundation) and President of IAMA (Incorporated Advertising Management Association).

Contents 1

Integrated marketing communications planning

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Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………2 Purpose – integrated marketing ………………………………………………………2 Business and marketing objectives ……………………………………………………3 Marketing v public relations ……………………………………………………………8 Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………………12

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The communications audit

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Content of a Marcom Plan – the 10 P’s ………………………………………………14 The image audit ………………………………………………………………………20

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The ten point Marcom Plan

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Marketing communications objectives ………………………………………………26 Issues (internal and external) …………………………………………………………29 Strategy …………………………………………………………………………………30 Audiences (internal and external) ……………………………………………………30 Messages ………………………………………………………………………………31 Tactics – the media plan ………………………………………………………………32 Timetable and action plan ……………………………………………………………43 Budget …………………………………………………………………………………43 Evaluation and research ………………………………………………………………45 Resources ………………………………………………………………………………54 Summary ………………………………………………………………………………63

INTEGRATED MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS PLANNING Introduction Purpose – integrated marketing Business and marketing objectives Marketing v public relations Conclusion

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chapter 1

Chapter 1: Integrated marketing communications planning Introduction The first step in this Briefing is to establish just what is meant by marketing communications, or marcom as it is frequently called. It derives from the classic marketing mix breakdown of the four P’s,namely product,price,place and promotion.Clearly marcom falls into the fourth P category, but it is not as simple as that.The selling function is also part of the fourth P, but it is not part of marcom. Evidence for this somewhat confusing situation is to be found in practice where one never comes across a marketing communications manager who has control of the sales force. The fourth P then breaks down into promotion by the sales force, and promotion by all the other means.To all intents and purposes then, marcom takes in all non face-to-face communications between an organisation and its customers. Not quite as pure definition since exhibitions and seminars for instance involve face-to-face situations, but are clearly in the marketing communications orbit. Specifically marcom embraces advertising, publicity, direct mail, literature, etc. In fact, it might be said to cover both above-the-line and below-the-line communications. To that extent one might even add sales promotion and merchandising. How does this fit in with other corporate functions, and in particular, how does it relate to business and marketing objectives?

Purpose – integrated marketing The purpose of this Briefing is to enable practitioners to implement marketing communications which are in every way integrated and all pulling in the same direction.All the evidence indicates that the vast majority of companies are without a marcom plan, and indeed are considered to be progressive if they have a marketing plan. Business plan, yes, but not much else.The need for a plan,and an integrated one at that stems from the never ending competition which leads on to the need for every possible competitive edge to be deployed.The achievement of integrated marketing communications comes out of the following points: 1. The preparation and implementation of a plan is the most vital step towards integration. Indeed, it is hard to see how marketing communications can be implemented at all without a well constructed plan which will ensure that all the separate strands pull together as opposed to being random, ad hoc, and sometimes even conflicting.

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2. It is pointless producing a plan unless senior management give it support both before and after its production. 3. Communication is the next step in which it is put across to other staff,both horizontally and vertically.This will enable them to understand and support implementation, and for them to be personally transmitting messages in line with those laid down in the plan. 4. All the messages transmitted must be integrated and supportive in all media to all target audiences.Thus the messages received will be the same from the sales force, advertising, publicity, direct mail, literature, exhibitions and so on regardless of the channel of communication. 5. All outside services must be co-ordinated, e.g. the advertising agency and the PR consultancy. 6. There must be a common ID taking in typography, logos, symbols and colour. Use must be made of a corporate manual ensuring a consistent corporate brand. 7. Timing is vital to ensure that there is a maximum synergistic outcome with each channel supporting each other. Use of a Gant chart here is helpful. 8. The integration of common messages needs to span all market segments and geographical regions. Particular regard must be paid to different languages, media and cultures.

Business and marketing objectives The strategic cascade It is important for an effective marcom plan that it fits into the context of the marketing plan which in its turn must fit in with the business plan. From the diagram overleaf it can be seen that there are three levels of planning to be adopted. At the first level must come the business objectives,and here it is argued that for any commercial enterprise, this can be only one thing, namely profit.True, there will be any number of other, you might say secondary objectives, but unless they in turn lead to profit then they are nonstarters.The profit objective may be short or long-term, but ultimately that is what counts. As can be seen in the diagram there are many strategies which can be adopted in order to achieve the business objective.For instance,there could be a financial strategy which involved a comprehensive cost-cutting operation.Or a production strategy of new equipment or processes in order to achieve increased productivity.And so on. Obviously increased profits can come out of a marketing strategy of for instance increasing sales of the most profitable product lines.

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Each of the business strategies as it develops becomes in turn an objective in its own right. Thus the sales increase called for becomes at the next level down the marketing objective. In fact, it can be said that there is only one marketing objective, and that refers to sales, usually to increase them. Market share is not the objective since this only comes about by virtue of sales. Given that the marketing objective is to increase sales and/or market share, clearly there are a number of strategies which can be adopted.Acquisition of a competitor for example,price reduction, product enhancement, and so on. Into this category will fall a more intensive advertising campaign.In other words the marketing objectives will be achieved (maybe only in part) by means of marketing communications. Business objective – profit Possible strategies: • Financial (e.g. cost cutting) • Production (increased productivity) • R&D (new technology) • Marketing (increased sales) • HR (incentive scheme) • Purchasing (competitive quotes) • IT (more efficient systems)

Marketing objective – sales/market share Possible strategies: • Price reduction

• Telemarketing

• Product development

• Aquisition

• Relationship marketing • Niche marketing • More outlets

• Incentives • Stronger marketing communications and/or PR

• Sales training

Marketing communications or – public relations objective – awareness Possible strategies: • Advertising • Editorial publicity • Exhibitions • Direct mail

N.B. Another communications strategy must be to increase the personal selling effort. Strangely, this function is not encompassed by the term ‘marketing communications’ even though it is clearly embodied in Promotion, the fourth P in the marketing mix.

Figure 1:Achieving the business objective

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What will be noted from the above list is that a strategy at one level turns into an objective at the next one down. Hence the term ‘Strategic Cascade’.

Mission statement The starting point must be to develop and lay down exactly where the organisation is going. Where does it want to be in five, ten years time, and in what way should it be positioned in relation to other competitive forces.What is required then is a corporate mission statement which is short, clear and easy to understand without any possibility of ambiguity. It should state ‘what we are,and what we aim to do,i.e.our unique ethical stance and strategic objectives.’ Another way of putting it is ‘to give the stakeholders of a business a clear sense of purpose and direction.’ When developing a mission statement it is vital that it avoids generalities where almost any activities will meet the criteria. Rather, it must facilitate the positioning of an organisation which will differentiate it positively in relation to other competitive organisations.

Corporate personality The line of thought here is that just as people each have a complex personality due in part to instinctive and inherited characteristics, and due in part to acquired traits, so too does an organisation.The difference perhaps is that whereas with people any change in personality is likely to be difficult, with an organisation, change is possible even though it might take a long period of time. Moving on from this line of thought, is the likelihood that an organisation’s ability to attract business is in part a function of its personality. A company perceived as being a ‘safe’ one is going to attract more investors than one which is perceived as being ‘unsafe’.Similarly a ‘market leader’ may receive more customer patronage than an ‘also-ran’. The starting point is to lay down what characteristics are thought to be the optimum ones for business success,and then to measure the extent to which these characteristics are those which are perceived by various target groups of people, or market segments upon whose actions will determine the success of the business.The following diagram is simply an example of how eight different factors can be displayed graphically in a quantified manner which shows the degree of each characteristic compared with optimum, and in such a way as to facilitate comparison with competition.This is not so important in absolute terms,but rather only when compared with the same criterion displayed by the competition. In the example, the organisation is shown as being strong as a market leader.This could be quantified as being at a maximum on a 0 to 5 scale. In that case the creative element would

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score say two.The need to increase the perceptive strength to five would be determined not by the possibility of doing it (at whatever cost this might involve), but by the need to do it having regard to the strength of the same criterion amongst the competition.Looking further at the example, there is strength in safe, authoritative, and international, honest and experienced, but failure in friendly. Market Leader Experience

Creative

Safe

Honest

Authoritative

Friendly

International

Figure 2: The organisation as a market leader What then should be the criteria which go to make up the optimum personality of an organisation? It may be that these are determined simply by the views of top management having regard to their experience.It may be that these are determined by a rather more formal procedure such as focus group discussions, but essentially it is a matter of finding out which characteristics are looked for by the target audiences in question. Also it should not be forgotten that the criteria might well be different as between one segment and another.The following characteristics are typical of those associated with an organisation. Authoritative Creative Friendly Honest/decent/truthful Integrity Market leader Post sales service

Caring Diversified High quality Innovative International National Pre sales service

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Pro-active Reliable Responsive Sales service Specialist Value for money

Profitable Responsible Safe Socially responsible Technical leader Well managed

Corporate culture All organisations have a culture which has been developed over a number of years,and probably stems from the person or people who started the business. In large measure, the corporate culture can be said to determine the corporate personality. Culture in this sense is simply the way in which people behave.A person joining an organisation will soon find out what is accepted behaviour by observing the ways in which current employees behave in a given set of circumstances.Their language and appearance will be all too obvious. The way they treat customers, their telephone manner, what time they pack up to go home, and so on.The question must be asked ‘does this particular way of behaving contribute to the achievement of business objectives, and can it in any way be improved?’ It should be remembered that culture is not static. It will change over time within an organisation in line with national or regional culture changes.It may also be that expectations of customers and other stakeholders change, thus calling for change within the organisation.

Corporate identity There is frequent confusion as to the difference between corporate identity (ID),and for instance, corporate image.This should not be so since the difference between the two is fundamental. Corporate image is in effect what has already been described as corporate personality.Alternative terms would be corporate reputation,goodwill or even perception.It is whatever is conjured up in the mind upon hearing or seeing the organisation’s name. Corporate ID takes in all ‘message sources’, and will include logos, symbols, graphics, house colours, letter headings, company flag,badges,uniforms,signage,and so on.All these lead to and contribute ultimately to the corporate image.The one leads to the other.

Corporate brand A new piece of marketing jargon which has emerged over the past few years is ‘The Corporate Brand’.Its value comes about from the need in an ever increasingly competitive environment for a competitive edge over and above the classical four P’s.It is a somewhat confusing term, and more properly should be referred to as ‘Corporate Image’ concerned with the organisation, as opposed to ‘Brand Image’ in connection with the product.

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Marketing v public relations Marketing and public relations operate in parallel sending messages about the product (marketing) together with messages about the organisation (public relations). A company can choose whether to develop and promote a brand image, a corporate image, or both.Many companies have done well enough by having only a brand image,e.g.Unilever and Proctor and Gamble. But then they have other problems that centre around having competing brands whose credibility would be undermined if there was a common corporate image in the product promotion. Other companies have the very opposite,namely just a corporate image and no brand images, e.g. most Japanese consumer durables. Some products, on the other hand, have always had both e.g. cars.A buyer of a Fiesta car in the UK must also feel comfortable with Ford as the organisation behind it. Nowadays, however, more and more companies are waking up to the extra competitive edge to be obtained from having corporate image back-up to support brand image. Major changes, for example, have been with Cadbury, whose products like Wispa, Crunchie, Dairy Milk and Milk Tray all now have a common corporate identity. A similar development has occurred with Rowntree Mackintosh, now Neˆstlé Rowntree, in relation to Polo mints and Black Magic chocolates.

Five dependent marketing variables Whether or not a product is purchased then is dependent on five factors and not four (the 4 P’s) – namely, the product, its price, its availability (place) the brand image (promotion) and the corporate image, if any.Each one of these variables can act in a positive or negative way but the net effect must obviously be positive for a purchase to take place.

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Negative attributes

Positive attributes

Product

Price

Place

Brand Image

Corporate Image

Figure 3: The attractiveness of the total product Thus a product might be very good (positive) but the price rather high (negative) and not too readily available (negative). The brand name might be unknown (neutral) but the manufacturer highly regarded (positive).The product benefits and corporate image in this case must clearly be strong enough to overcome the ‘price’,‘place’and ‘brand image’barriers. The attractiveness of the total product offering, as illustrated above, demonstrates both the polarity of each factor (positive or negative) and the intensity of each. A series of such diagrams facilitates the comparison of all competitive products in a market segment, and highlights their strengths and weaknesses. Such an analysis enables a strategy to be selected for increasing market share of one’s own product simply by considering which one (or more) of the five factors is likely to be the most cost-effective in beating the competition. Alternatively, one can look at a constant market share but a trade-off of one factor against another one, e.g. price could be increased but corporate image strengthened without loss of sales.In so far as public relations is the function which builds reputation or corporate image, it can be seen then to have a direct correlation to sales and hence to profit.It is a real investment which can be, and is, expressed in financial terms, e.g. as ‘goodwill’.

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The marketing function It is important to understand how the marketing and public relations function interrelate. The following diagram illustrates the principal marketing functions, all aimed primarily at customers and prospects.The non face-to-face elements are shown as breaking down into the various channels of communications,such as advertising,publicity (editorials),direct mail, exhibitions, and so on. There is a comprehensive, and hopefully synergistic, marketing communications plan which,together with a similar sales plan,go to make up the Promotion element of the 4P’s.Note that public relations does not come into this since it is,by definition, concerned with the reputation or image of the organisation behind the product.

Marketing

Market Research

Product Development

Distribution

Sales Marketing & Service Communications

Advertising

Editorial

Direct Mail

Exhibitions

Literature

Customers & Prospects

Figure 4: The principle marketing functions

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The public relations function The diagram below can be seen to bear a remarkable resemblance to the previous one,except that the number of target audiences has been increased to cover, in effect, all the ‘stakeholders’ of a business. Thus, the appropriate messages are sent out to employees, shareholders, pressure groups and so on as well as customers, but using precisely the same channels of communication as in the case of marketing. Certainly, editorial publicity figures high on the list, and so it should, being the most cost-effective channel of all. But, equally, consideration must be given to advertising where publicity alone cannot achieve the public relations objectives.

PR

Advertising

Editorial

Direct Mail

Exhibitions

Literature

Customers & Prospects

Employees

Shareholders

Government

Local Community

Figure 5: The public relations function

Relationship between marketing and public relations A block schematic diagram,as shown overleaf,indicates the relationship between marketing and public relations.Here it can be seen that public relations starts with a state of unawareness amongst its various publics including,of course,customers and prospects.It takes them through being aware of a company and on to a perception which, of course, needs to be positive. Similarly, marketing is concerned with moving a prospect from unawareness of the product to awareness, and on to a favourable perception. The two streams come together with the establishment of ‘behavioural intent’.But here,and in subsequent stages, three other factors come into play which might render all the communications in the world useless in terms of subsequent sales.These are the remaining 3 P’s,product,price and place.If the price is too high,for example,then the product will not

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be purchased (behaviour), or even considered (behavioural intent), let alone continue to be purchased.

Unawareness

Awareness

Perception Product

Public Relations

Price

(Corporate Image)

Place

Continued Behavioural

behaviour

Behaviour

Intent

1st Purchase

(Repeat Purchase)

Unawareness

Awareness

Perception

Figure 6: The relationship between marketing and public relations

Conclusion The corporate brand then is strictly speaking the outcome of public relations and this throughout the world is beginning to be recognised as a new and independent management function, quite separate to marketing. It is essentially strategic, and contributes to the overall business objective by providing effective communications channels to assist all the other management functions.With ‘human resources’ or ‘personnel’ it encourages would-be employees to apply for jobs, and it also contributes to the morale and motivation of existing employees, leading to people staying longer with an organisation.In the financial sector,the role of public relations is to support share values,for instance,and to encourage more people to invest in the company. And so on with other functions. In marketing it might be stated simply as increasing the propensity to buy.As a corporate brand becomes better known (familiarity) it becomes better regarded (favourability),people are more inclined to buy products from companies they know and respect as against ones about which they know little or nothing.

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THE COMMUNICATIONS AUDIT Content of a Marcom Plan – the 10 P’s The image audit

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chapter 2

Chapter 2: The communications audit Before setting about the production of a marcom plan it is necessary to examine the current situation and the current communications activities.This will be considered under two headings – content of the marcom plan and the internal image audit.

Content of a Marcom Plan – the 10 P’s Within the marketing mix, provision for marketing communications may seem to have been made in that it is embodied in the fourth stage of the 4 P’s: Product Price Place Promotion. This,however,is now regarded as inadequate since by compartmentalising ‘promotion’a number of other important opportunities can be missed. One authority makes this point: ‘The promotional mix has long been viewed as the company’s sole communications link with the consumer. However, this kind of provincialism can often lead to sub-optimisation of the firm’s total communication’s effort,because if viewed in isolation,promotion can actually work against other elements in the marketing communications mix.Other communications elements with which promotion must be co-ordinated are price, product, retail outlets, and all other company actions which are perceived as communicating something about the company’s total product offering.’ The starting point before examining the role of promotion as such is to look at the message cues which might be transmitted by the other 3 P’s – product, price and place.

1. Product cues The fundamental marketing concept postulates that a customer does not buy a product but rather a product performance,or more to the point a benefit or a satisfaction.In the consumer field it has been said that a customer does not buy ‘soap’,but rather ‘hope’:similarly in industrial marketing the customer buys ‘holes’rather than ‘drills’.Furthermore,the customer makes his or her purchasing decision based upon the perceived benefit that he or she will receive as against the actual physical product attributes.

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The total product offering is not what the supplier offers, but what the customer sees to be on offer.It may well be that the packaging and the presentation is the key factor in a purchasing decision, particularly with the increasing number of undifferentiated products. Indeed with some of these,for instance cigarettes,cosmetics and drinks it could be argued that the package is the product.It is increasingly a fact that what comes inside the pack is identical as between one brand and another,and then the package is the single most important purchasing influence. With products which sell in supermarkets this is particularly important. An interesting example of packaging and presentation was in a range of divan beds where the mattresses were finished in a variety of fabrics from the traditional to the very modern. A further variable was that the finish on offer was of a soft plain surface, a quilted finish or the rather old fashioned button type fixing.The customers unhesitatingly chose a quilted finish in the traditional fabric notwithstanding that all the mattresses were physically identical. Research evidence shows that the buyer is influenced to a critical degree by the size of a product,its shape,the colour,weight,feel,typography,and even smell.The successful package is the one which appeals to both the conscious and unconscious levels of the consumer’s mind. The conscious mind recognises just the product whereas the unconscious mind is motivated by the package. It must not be supposed that ‘presentation’ of product applies only to the consumer field. The study of ‘organisational buyer behaviour’ shows clearly the many subjective factors that enter into a purchasing decision. Gone are the days when a handful of components were bundled into a black box,and as long as the performance matched the specification that was all that mattered.The appearance of an industrial product is sending out signals.The design, shape, colour and so on all combine to create an impression, on the one hand of a dynamic, innovative,go-ahead company;on the other of a traditional or maybe a backward one.Important to realise also is that it usually costs no more to put a conscious effort into good product presentation whereas to create the same effect by means of conventional promotional media is often very expensive. Consideration must also be given to brand name as part of the total product offering.Any product is going to be called something by its customers and users, so it might as well be a name of the company’s own choice,and one which brings with it certain positive attributes. Does it have or imply a favourable connotation,is it short and memorable,can people actually pronounce it,does it support the claims being made of product performance? And then there is the graphic symbolism of the logotype.A good brand name can evoke a feeling of trust, confidence, security, strength, durability, speed, status, and the like.

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2. Price cues For many if not most products, the signal given by price, and thus the effect on purchasing, follows the normal economist’s law of supply and demand.As price falls,so demand increases. With everyday products where price levels are common knowledge the message conveyed by price is indicative of good or bad value for money. Hence the success of supermarkets in being able to offer heavily branded products at a lower price than the local grocer, and going one stage further, the success of own label products which undercut the established branded ones. For some products,however,the normal rules do not apply as for instance shown in the following graph:

Price

Quantity Figure 7: Price factors In this case, price is taken as signalling quality or prestige, and within limits creates a desire to acquire which increases as the price increases. Without delving into the ethical consideration the fact is that in some circumstances a reduction in price will signal a reduction in quality and vice versa.This is particularly so where the customer is unable to make a judgement on any other basis.A watch for instance or a hi-fi set, or cosmetics in general; there are other factors of course such as appearance and availability,but in the main the assessment of quality will be based heavily upon price.

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The same price/demand relationship is to be found in products which are purchased as gifts. Here a higher price may be paid largely as a compliment to the receiver of the gift, or for that matter to enhance the prestige or satisfy the ego of the giver. Once again it is a matter of perception on the part of the buyer. It matters little what message the seller intends to convey,the purchase will be determined by the way in which the buyer interprets the message. An example in the field of services was in a programme of seminars where in order to attract larger numbers to a particular subject area the price per day was dropped progressively over a period of years.The numbers reduced.The sponsor in desperation offered the seminar free of charge. No-one attended.At the other end of the scale an advanced course of instruction was offered at a much higher price than hitherto,and higher than the competition.The number of registrations went up. Over and above simple price levels there are many price offerings which can give positive signals without involving price cutting leading to a price war.Credit facilities,quantity discounts, prompt payment discounts, special offers, trade-ins, free delivery, sale or return, and so on can all provide a competitive edge without necessarily incurring a high cost.

3. Place cues Physically of course there is a well defined correlation between market share and the number of outlets. Look for instance to car hire firms or for that matter petrol service stations. But there is also a psychological factor and that is that every retail outlet has a perceived reputation or image,and if this is positive then it is likely to bear an influence on the sales of the individual product it carries.The products will stand to benefit from what is known as the ‘halo effect’ of the store. It is important to realise that the store image or personality will vary from one group of people to another.And so an expensive high fashion store might evoke a feeling of confidence,reliability and comfort to people in the higher income bracket.To people with lower incomes it may communicate extravagance, waste and snobbishness. Location of a store is perhaps the starting point. Is it in an up-market or a down market part of a town, and then what does it look like? The exterior of the building will signal ancient or modern,small or large,elegant or drab:even the name and typeface will convey an impression. Inside, the store is even more important, Size of gangways, displays, colour, sound, smell, temperature, decor, and lighting will all play a part.Added to this then is store personnel, all of whom will be transmitting messages depending upon their age,sex,colour,speech,product knowledge, friendliness and helpfulness. In the personnel field it is most easy to swing from very positive perception to very negative just for lack of staff selection,training and motivation.

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In putting together a marketing communications mix the question here is to what extent ‘place’ might be important in enhancing a product’s perception in such a way as to increase sales.To take an example of two extremes.In one case a new Russian wrist watch being offered by a soap-box salesman in Woolwich market. He claims that its accuracy is greater than any other watch due to the application of new technology.The price is at a bargain knock-down level of £49.00 including gold bracelet. Now take the same watch and the same claims and price and put in the window of Harrods in Knightsbridge.Which ‘place’ is like to be most successful? An interesting reflection of the reputation of Harrods is that referring to the previous section, if the price on the watch was put up to £149.00 the sales may well increase. Having set down the first three P’s it is time to bring in what for many would be regarded as the principal or even the only components of a marcom plan,namely advertising,promotion, personal selling and service and publicity.

4. ‘Paid-for’ advertising This, quite simply, is all the above-the-line media such as press, TV, radio, cinema, and outdoor/posters.The one characteristic that they have in common is that they all pay media commission to whatever agency places business with them: hence the term above-the-line.

5. Promotion This represents all non-commissionable media such as direct mail, exhibitions, sales promotion, literature, seminars, merchandising, and so on. In other words, below-the-line.

6. Personal selling and service Strictly speaking sales and service are not part of marketing communications even though they are clearly part of the fourth P of the marketing mix. Even so, it is important to include reference to selling activities in order that they be integrated with all the non face-to-face operations which go to make up marketing communications. Service is included here since it is increasingly becoming a vital element as a differentiating competitive advantage.This should break down into pre-sales service, sales service and then post-sales.

7. Publicity There are still many people who quite incorrectly refer to this as PR. Furthermore it could well be argued that by definition it should fall into the below-the-line category. Be that as it may,it can be broken down into three essential elements,namely,news,features and comment.

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8. ‘Third party’ messages Strange that this element has mostly been missed or ignored in setting the programme for a marketing communications campaign.Strange,that is,because in many marketing operations it is the single most important factor in influencing a prospect to place an order,buy a product or service. It refers to what other people say about a product i.e. third-party endorsement. Some may argue that there is not much one can do to persuade other people to transmit favourable messages on our behalf.But that is just not so,since a carefully planned programme of supplying impressive information to all the many third parties who can be of influence can clearly help to ensure that favourable messages are sent.

9. People This refers to all the employees of an organisation.They can for convenience be broken down into customer-facing and the rest,but all,however humble,are capable of transmitting messages which are favourable, neutral, or unfavourable.Verbal messages are a starting point – what people say, how they say it, accents, vocabulary, authority, knowledge and enthusiasm.Then there are the whole range of non-verbal communications – body language,appearance,dress and even smell.

10. Passive messages Essentially this refers to signals which are sent out and were never intended to influence prospects,but nevertheless do.There are many such message sources such as a firm’s smoking policy, job titles, factory building, parking facilities, etc. The importance of any one of the ten P’s will vary from company to company,but if all message sources are not managed then something will be missing from the overall communications activity, its efficiency and effectiveness.

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The image audit The essential question here is ‘how, and in what ways are we perceived?’The ten P’s above is the starting point,but now we must get down to specifics.The fact is that people’s perceptions of a company and its products are based upon all of the message sources,deliberate or otherwise. These include every communication, every person, and all manner of other stimuli. Even if a company sets out to send no messages at all,that in itself becomes a message.Message sources can be broken down into four categories: Active message sources Outside People Passive.

Active message sources The starting point is obviously to appraise all the deliberate and active sources of publicity such as advertising, direct mail, and so on.An advertisement for instance will have a specific purpose,maybe to generate enquiries for a particular product or service.Whether it is successful or not might be said to depend on the number of enquiries produced compared with the objective.This, however, is to overlook another important role which is performed by any advertisement, and that is the impression that it creates of the organisation behind it.A small advertisement tucked away at the back of a publication might pull the enquiries but give the impression of being but a minor business compared with its competitors.Equally a large and lavish advertisement might give the impression of a business which is not too careful with its money, of having more money than sense. So, every ‘active message source’ should be evaluated in terms of what impression will it create? Typical examples include: Press advertising

Sales calls

TV

Merchandising

Radio

Point of sale

Outdoor

Sales promotion

Public exhibitions

Envelope franking, letter stuffers and stickers etc

Private exhibitions

Sales aids

Films, video and A.V.

Direct mail

Demonstrations and visits

Seminars and conferences

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Sponsorship

Press releases

Telemarketing

Press receptions

Sales leaflets and brochures

Press visits

Business gifts

Parliamentary and other lobbies

Directories and year books

Charity support

Educational packs

Feature articles.

Outside message sources In the field of marketing there are many other message sources, some of which are far more important.The single most influential factor on whether someone buys a product is what can be termed third party endorsement i.e.recommendation by a buyer or user of the product. This introduces a whole group of influencers which can be pulled together under the heading ‘outside message sources’. Examples would include: Agents and distributors Customers – specifiers, authorisers, purchasers Users Trade associations Consultants Local community Competitors Suppliers.

People message sources But it’s not just people outside the organisation which affect what people think of it. It’s the people inside it,the employees.What impression is given for instance when the chief executive makes a speech? Good or bad? And what about the telephonist, or a secretary, or the sales force? Specific groups of people should be identified and evaluated so as to see where there could be changes in order to improve the impressions being created.

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Examples include: Company VIPs Service engineers Receptionist Spouses and friends Applications for jobs Membership of trade associations Attendance at conferences Public speaking Social activities

Sales force Telephonist Employees in general Shareholders Handling complaints Membership of learned institutes Chairing committees Local community activities

Passive message sources A final round up brings in what are referred to as ‘passive message sources’.These are many, and comprise any single factor which in any way contributes to public perception. The appearance of the offices and reception for instance,coupled with the way in which visitors are greeted.The tidiness of the office desks, job titles, letter headings, vehicles etc., the list is endless. Here are a few examples: Annual Report Company name Sales office back-up Packaging Telephone contact Specification sheets Instruction manuals Delivery notes and invoices Price list/credit facilities Christmas cards Fax messages Trade mark Diaries Photographs Appearance of factory Ties and emblems Logotypes Queen’s Award to Industry Notice boards Delivery, promises – reliability Nationality Guarantee cards/trading terms Job titles

Sales letters House magazine/newsletters House style Labels Business cards Test certificates Service manuals Cars, delivery vehicles Pre-sales service Heating and ventilation Telephone directory entries Calendars Wall charts Showrooms Location Brand names Royal Warrant Reception area The product – quality, appearance etc. Group name Range of products/application Samples Visitors/entertaining.

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One of the great attractions of conducting such a comprehensive review of message sources is that in many instances changes can take place quickly and without any great expense. The starting point is to produce a checklist of message sources which will be used for the audit.Then a small project team of three senior people needs to be assembled with a view to reaching a consensus on whether any given message source is creating an impression which is favourable,neutral,or unfavourable.The objective is to end up with a list of all those message sources which are obviously in the unfavourable category, with a view to setting in motion an action programme to correct them. Stage two is to examine the neutral message sources, and finally those which are already favourable to be made even more favourable? What has been described so far of course is an internal image audit. It might be argued that what is actually wanted is an external image audit.The internal audit is justified in that many of the message sources are easy enough to categorise from within. It is true, however, that outside perceptions may be different,and for this reason having conducted quickly and cheaply an internal audit, it is worth considering going through precisely the same process but now with a customer panel who will have their own thoughts on which are important message sources and which are not.Also, the extent to which any of them are in need of change. Overleaf is an example of an internal image audit actually conducted in recent times.

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Favourable

Neutral

Unfavourable

Active Message Sources Advertising Exhibition Demonstrations & Visits Sponsorship Telemarketing Sales literature Educational Packs Sale Calls Merchandising Point of sale Sales Promotion Envelope Franking Etc. Sales Aids Press Releases Press Visits Charity Support Feature Articles

Passive Message Sources Desks Canteens Toilets Car Parks Language Accents Smoking Outbound Faxes Reception Telephone Contact Communications Hospitality Signage Annual Repor t Sales Letters Company Name Sales Office Back-Up House Style Packaging Labels Business Cards Delivery Notes/Invoices Cars Price List Pre-Sales Service Showroom Appearance of Factor y Location Brand Name Ro yal Warrant Notice Boards The Product Qual/Appearance Delivery Promises Reliability Group Name Nationality Range of Products Trading Terms/Guarantees Samples Job Titles

Outside Message Sources Agents & Distributors Customers Users Non Customers Trade Associations Consultants Local Community Competitors Suppliers Key influences Press Banks Police

People Message Source Company VIPs Sales Force/Complaint Handling Receptionist/Telephonist Employees in General Spouses & Friends Shareholders Applications for Jobs Local Community Activities

Figure 8:An image audit

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THE TEN POINT MARCOM PLAN Marketing communication objectives Issues (internal and external) Strategy Audiences (internal and external) Messages Tactics – the media plan Timetable and action plan Budget Evaluation and research Resources Summary

3

chapter 3

Chapter 3: The ten point Marcom Plan It is convenient to consider the media plan in ten sequential steps.

Marketing communications objectives The starting point for any plan has to be the setting of objectives.Where we want to get to has to precede how we are going to get there.The exception to this rule is that if not enough information is available to enable firm objectives to be laid down, then it may be that some form of market research is necessary in order to establish benchmarks. If there is not time or finance to undertake research,then assumptions must be made,and this fact clearly stated from the outset. The second precursor to setting marcom objectives is to give the context within which they are required to operate,i.e.the business objectives (profit) and the marketing objectives (sales and market share).Clearly ‘to double turnover within the twelve months’will call for a much more vigorous campaign than to look for an increase of ten per cent.It must be emphasised, however, that profit, sales or market share cannot be marcom objectives since these will be influenced by other factors such as product performance and availability, price, and indeed the activities of the sales force and any other intermediaries in the chain such as retail outlets. The objectives then should comprise a clear statement of the aims of the plan,having regard to both the marketing and the business objectives.They should be simple to understand, unambiguous and, most importantly, quantified. So many plans in the past have set out to achieve for instance, simply ‘an increase in awareness’ of a given product or organisation. What must be asked is by how much,by whom and by when.There is clearly no way in which a campaign can be evaluated unless there is a tangible, and thus measurable, objective. Furthermore, how can a budget possibly be set without knowing precisely what the benefit is going to be.

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Primary objectives There are nine primary objectives which can be set for a marcom plan.These are as follows: Awareness

Here, one scrutinises the target audiences or market segments in order to establish the extent of peoples awareness of the product in question.The judgement now has to be made as to whether this level of awareness is adequate to give the support necessary to achieve the marketing objective.The statement here might be ‘to increase the level of awareness in a particular market segment from the current 30 per cent to 40 per cent within one year.’ Perception

It may be that there is already a very high level of awareness of the product. So, an objective here might be to change the perception of people who are aware of the product from a positive view of 50 per cent to 70 per cent within a year. Information

Perhaps this is rather a passive objective,but in order to have people acquire a positive perception it will require them to receive information to advance their knowledge, and one must be aware here that the prospects will be in receipt of hundreds of competitive messages which will clutter our own message, hence the need for creativity and impact. Persuasion

The information which is supplied needs to carry with it messages which are likely to persuade the recipients that the benefits on offer are desirable. In other words, to create desires i.e. to move a prospect on from having a positive perception to what might be called behavioural intent – to buy the product. Enquiries

With the emergence of direct marketing as a major activity in any marketing operation, the need for databases has become almost a standard requirement in both for businessto-business and consumer campaigns.Thus with above-the-line campaigns the majority of ads now carry a response mechanism designed to generate enquiries. These importantly add to existing databases,or facilitate the creation of new ones.All manner of incentives are being chosen to encourage response, and indeed with the right offering the number of enquiries can be increased very substantially.The offering

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of course has to be coupled with an easy way of making the enquiry e.g. freepost or 0800 telephone number.What is wanted is a maximum number of names and addresses of people who might then be able to be converted into customers. Sales leads

An essential follow up to enquiries is some procedure to qualify them as to their sales potential.Do they represent immediate potential sales,or sales at some future date,or perhaps never.The idea is to identify all those people who should be followed up, and eliminate those who shouldn’t. In this way cold calls should be eliminated, and the whole selling operation made more cost effective. Reassurance

This is often a neglected area of operation but is changing under the influence of relationship marketing where emphasis is put upon retaining existing customers as a priority compared with gaining new ones at much greater expense.The line of thought here is that a customer after making a purchase may well have second thoughts about the wisdom of making the purchase.This is known as being in a state of cognitive dissonance, or post-purchase dissonance.To overcome this state of affairs it is necessary to aim messages at customers which reassure them that their purchasing decision was a wise one.This leads on to the concept of ‘the lifetime customer’in which the value of a purchase is considered over the projected lifetime period of a customer’s patronage. Correct misconceptions

The life of a product and a company, and the benefits to be derived from them will always be in a state of change. Old perceptions can become outdated as a business changes in order to provide even greater satisfactions to its customers. Indeed an important marketing measure these days in order to outdo the competition is to establish a customer satisfaction index which can be seen to be putting the offering in an ever increasingly favourable light.Thus, for instance, a reputation for being a product which is hard to obtain needs the problem itself to be overcome,but equally important for this fact to be communicated to potential customers. Remind

This is a basic objective and stems from the fact that one’s product is probably not all that important to customers who have many other calls upon their money, and may well be attracted by the blandishments of other brands.The customer base might be said to be a company’s greatest asset, but it is one that cries out for continuous and ongoing attention.

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Secondary objectives Over and above the various primary objectives in a marcom plan there are many activities which will be engaged in covering all the media to be employed.With these it is just as important to set down what should be the outcomes against which the expenditures can be compared before even the money is spent.For instance,if an exhibition is to be used,the tactical objectives for that exhibition must be established in terms perhaps of the total number of new prospects to be seen, together with existing customers.Then there may be an objective to distribute a given number of leaflets. Only by quantifying the exhibition objectives can the outcome be judged in terms of success or otherwise. Other secondary objectives might include: Delegates to seminars and conferences Number and frequency of press releases Number of editorial mentions (press cuttings) Column inches and advertising equivalent value Enquiries from ads Response to direct mail shots Audiences for VCRs and audio tapes. Secondary objectives are vital to achieving successful and cost-effective campaigns.They cannot, however, be arrived at until the media plan has been completed. For this reason it may be better to position them within the media plan,or indeed in the measurement section of the plan.

Issues (internal and external) The question here is, are there any issues, internal or external, which would undermine or add to the achievement of the objectives? The state of the economy might be an important factor, as might be unhelpful staff attitudes. If the communications’ objective is to establish a firm as the technological leader in the field, this will be to no avail if one of the product range has a poor performance. Indeed, it may be necessary to change the objectives in view of the existence of certain issues. It is useful for internal issues to refer to a SWOT analysis (Strengths,Weaknesses,Opportunities,Threats),and for external issues to use a PEEST analysis (Political, Economics, Environmental, Social,Technological).

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Strategy There should be no confusion here of the difference between objectives, strategy and plan. Quite simply,the objective is what we aim to achieve,the strategy is how we intend to achieve it and the plan is the detail of the programme of activities which are to take place.The strategy then sets down in brief the policy for reaching the objective, i.e.‘by means of’.This should be no more than a sentence or two.

Audiences (internal and external) In order to achieve the greatest cost effectiveness of a marketing communications campaign there are two essentials.First,there is a need to fine tune each market segment or niche market into those narrow groups which have the same homogenous characteristics and in industrial or business markets this means identifying the people belonging to the decision making unit and not just the organisations.The second and equally important ingredient is to quantify the people concerned. For any campaign there are eight target audience categories, to which there might be a multiplication factor of up to ten or more to allow for the individual members, for instance, of a DMU (Decision Making Unit).

External Existing customers (specifiers, internal influencers, authorisers, purchasers, gatekeepers, users) Potential customers (specifiers, internal influencers, authorisers, purchasers, gatekeepers, users) Past customers (specifiers, internal influencers, authorisers, purchasers, gatekeepers, users) Intermediaries (retailers, wholesalers, agents, business partners) External influencers (press, professional bodies, trade associations, consultants, academics) Future players (education) (universities, colleges, schools – students, lecturers, teachers)

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Internal Customer-facing employees (internal and external sales force, service personnel, telephonists, reception, secretaries) Other employees (all others, regardless of status or position) Over and above the primary marketing audiences there will be with every firm a number of special audiences relating to the particular business, trade or industry. An additional audience, and one could argue the most important one, is shareholders, and the City. After all the shareholders actually own the company,and therefore must have a priority treatment.Associated with this group will be all those who in any way can affect the standing of the company, and the value of its shares.This will include financial analysts, stockbrokers, accountants, bank managers, etc. Increasingly firms are finding that their operations are being affected by government actions, and that is at local level,national,regional and international.It is equally important to include elected members as the officials,and of course,in the UK the House of Lords can be another target audience.Added to this will be the local community,and finally,all manner of pressure groups and opinion formers.

Messages It is important to understand that these should not be a statement of the ‘attributes’ of the product or its function or performance.Rather,it is a matter of identifying customer benefits. One can even argue that customers only buy ‘perceived benefits’ and so if a customer thinks he or she is getting satisfaction then to all intents and purposes he or she is.Thus, messages must be transmitted to satisfy the ‘needs’ or ‘wants’ of a prospect which more usefully might be termed ‘requirements’. Messages need to be prioritised and tailored to fit each person in the DMU. A final point to be considered is that the ‘unique selling proposition’(USP) is becoming redundant since, as more and more products are undifferentiated, it follows that there is an absence of uniqueness. USP should be replaced by SSP i.e.‘single selling proposition’.Whilst the idea might not be ‘unique’,it will be the most important benefit at the particular stage of a campaign. It also becomes the basis for the copy platform.

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In practice it is useful to make messages the subject of a brainstorming session which will probably produce a dozen or more likely benefits. Each DMU category is then taken in turn and the messages which are relevant set against it.The final step is to prioritise each message against that category. Clearly the messages are likely to be different to children and parents in consumer marketing, and between the CEO and a user in business to business. Since getting the message right is a vital part of any campaign it is valuable to check out the final messages with the people to whom they are going to be addressed i.e. the potential customers. Focus group discussions are a very good vehicle for this kind of investigation.

Tactics – the media plan These are the channels of communication through which the messages are to be sent to the target audiences.Here then is the guts of the plan showing how each of the component parts relates to the others in both time, messages, and what might be termed brand identity.They will be matched to each of the target audiences for minimum wastage.

Media check list The following is a check list of 45 external and 24 internal media, together with a listing of the use of people as media. Forty five external media

Aerial Books Case studies Cinema Complaints Customer training Dealer panels Directories and yearbooks Editorial publicity (press releases, features, visits) House magazines (internal, external, audio) Literature (leaflets, brochures catalogues, price lists, technical papers)

Audio/visual material Business gifts CD Rom Competitions Corporate hospitality Customer user panels Direct mail Disks E-mail Help lines Internet Letters Magazine advertising, consumer, trade and technical Mailing: ads and press releases

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Newsletters Outdoor/poster Packaging and presentation Presentations Public exhibitions and trade shows Road shows Sales service actions/samples Social events Telephone Video conferencing

Newspaper advertising, national, regional, local Point of purchase Private exhibitions and receptions Radio Sales aids Seminars and conferences Sponsorship Television Works visits

People as media

Employees Business partners Trade associations and institutions Consultants and academics Other outside influencers

Agents Journalists Customers Retailers

Internal media *

Annual Reports Award ceremonies Campaign presentations Congratulations boards Literature Manager/employee team talks Notice boards Posters Special competitions Specialist consultants Static displays Training sessions

Attitude surveys Big boss visits Company magazines Information on personal computers Local newspaper articles Mass meetings Pay packet inserts Senior management presentations Special launch brochure Sports and social activities Trades union representatives Video/audio cassettes

* N.B. Many of the external media channels can also be used as internal media, e.g. press releases can be sent to employees

Inter media comparisons The following is an appraisal of the relative strengths and weaknesses of each of the major channels of communication.

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Medium

Strengths

Weaknesses

Television

Wide audience coverage; movement, colour and sound; high impact; good research data; regional opportunities.

Expensive in time and production; intrusive; transitory; high wastage; complex planning

National press

Good national coverage; newsy environment; quick; special interest targeting; variable sizes; good for response mechanism; good readership data.

Short life; low impact;restricted reach.

Regional/local newspapers

Regional/local flexibility.

Poor readership data; complex planning.

Consumer magazines

High targeting; good quality reproduction; long life; high pass on readership; good readership data.

Long lead time; slow getting message across.

Radio

Relatively quick and cheap; localised; sense of news/immediacy

Transitory; low impact; difficult response; quick wear out; complex.

Posters

Creative opportunity; low cost; high coverage; local; high impact; POP location; on show all day (and sometimes night).

Limited detail; long booking times; high production costs; lack of research data.

Cinema

High impact; colour, movement, sound; local coverage; good coverage of 15 – 25 year olds.

Limited reach; high production costs; intrusive.

Editorial publicity

High degree of credibility. Medium gives implied endorsement. Can provide widespread coverage of a market. Up to five times the number of readers of advertising. Free. Greater reach than advertising. Suitable for inexpensive reprints.

No control over appearance, positioning, timing or accuracy or whether it will ever appear. Cannot be repeated.

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Medium

Strengths

Weaknesses

Trade & technical press. Advertising/ Advertorials

Can provide widespread coverage of a market. Can control timing, colour, positioning, accuracy, message and media where it appears. Can be repeated.

Comparably expensive. Fewer readers. Size, obviously biased.

Exhibitions

Very good for meeting people on a face to face basis. Buyer approaches the exhibitor. Can allow demonstration. Many times more cost effective than visiting prospects.

Difficulty in getting prospects to attend. In competitive environment. A lot of distractions. Availability and timing of suitable exhibitions is not always suitable.

Direct mail

Can be accurately targeted and allows considerable creative scope. Can provide a high level of response. Sample testing is possible. Can be progressively rolled out. Competition cannot monitor.

Inaccuracy of many databases. Difficulty of defining the decision making unit. Direct mail can give a poor image.

Telemarketing

It permits direct contact with a prospect which can have a high level of impact and attention. It is also very fast. It can be designed to respond differently depending upon circumstances encountered. It can gather information as well as fix appointments for sales calls, etc.

It can be expensive. It needs trained operators to run effectively.

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Medium

Strengths

Weaknesses

Audio/visual material

Very good for demonstration of complex products or concepts, especially where a personal demo is not possible.

Can be expensive

Business gifts

Can help prompt awareness and can keep a supplier name in front of a prospect.

Can be expensive if used indiscriminately. Can be seen as a bribe.

Case studies

Good for showing doubtful prospects how other businesses in a similar situation have benefited from a product and their experiences which helps build confidence and trust.

Selected businesses need to be genuine case studies and should have quantifiable benefits.Cannot be done for new products which are yet to be proved.

Customer training

Ideal for ensuring customers can use products properly and are consequently satisfied and loyal users.

Only for practical products which have fairly limited sales and which are technical and need demonstration and training.

Customer user panels

A good means of obtaining feed back from customers on strengths and weaknesses of products and for stimulating new product development.

Can be used by customers as a product bashing forum.

Directories & yearbooks

Useful when a prospect is looking for a supplier.

Many are never used. Reactive and will only be consulted once a prospect has made up his mind. Usually a highly competitive environment with rival entries all together.

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CHAPTER 3: THE TEN POINT MARCOM PLAN

Medium

Strengths

Weaknesses

Help lines

A good means of maintaining contact with customers and prospects and helping to ensure that they do not have problems with a product.

People only use it when they have a problem. Cannot always resolve the problem over the telephone.

Newsletters & external house magazines

Useful for building understanding and trust in a company and confidence in its products. Can be very cost effective.

Need a proven database of prospects and a continuous stream of news.

Literature (leaflets, brochures, catalogues, price lists, technical papers, etc.)

Good for conveying technical information and for more complex products and for where there is a lengthy gestation period for the purchase.

Can be too technical for the audience.

Presentations/Private Exhibitions/ Receptions/ Seminars/ Conferences

Good for communicating with small groups of people like journalists etc.

Only practical for small groups and cannot therefore cover a large market. Can be expensive and requires administrative efforts to organise.

Road shows

Ideal for demonstrating products to a small group of people.

Many people agree to attend but do not turn up. Can be difficult to organise. Can be costly.

Sponsorship

Especially good for strengthening loyalty to a known product or for enhancing a brand image by associating it with a sponsored event or activity.

Does not convey information about a product.

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Medium

Strengths

Weaknesses

CD-Rom/e–mail/ Disks/Internet

Good for computer related products where facilities are available. It has novelty appeal, especially to technophiles.

Not everyone has CD-Rom, e–mail or computer facilities yet.

Corporate hospitality

Very good for building relationships with selected contacts. Personal and can be tailored to individual requirements.

Is only practical with a limited number of contacts. Can be expensive. Can create ill feeling by people who are not invited.

Internal house magazines

Good for communicating within an organisation, especially where people are on remote sites and not in regular face to face contact.

Often seen as propaganda or as being too trivial.

The media mix It is one thing to be able to identify the respective strengths and weaknesses of each media channel: it is something else to arrive at the optimum media mix. All markets are amenable to segmentation, and in each market segment will be a multitude of quite different decision making units,each comprising a number of individuals having his or her own particular egocentric motivations. Not only will the advertising message need to vary from one to another, but even more important so will the media necessary to reach any target group. And a target group may vary between a few tens of people to hundreds of thousands.It would seem unlikely that for effective communication it is possible to rely upon just one or two media;rather more likely is the need to select by methodical analysis an optimum combination of media categories. All the indicators are that to make a thorough and positive communication with all the purchasing influences in particular market segment what is required is a ‘media-mix’. To arrive at an effective media mix presupposes the availability of data upon which to make comparative judgements.In consumer advertising there is relatively a wide range of research material available to assist the media planner,and even here the task is extraordinarily difficult.

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In the industrial sector one is hard pressed to obtain even the most elementary information, as a result of which if guesswork is to be avoided, at least some form of logical grid must be devised against which each possible medium in turn must be related and given a certain comparative rating. As a guide to this the following criteria are offered as a basis for a meaningful planning.

Market size The total size of a market segment and all of the people that go to comprise it must be the starting point of media choice. With a market size of ten units; there is clearly not much room for more than personal contact backed by whatever support might be required.Move to 100 units and the situation hardly changes.At 1,000 the personal contact must become selective, and here one can add direct mail, specialised press, editorial publicity, literature, maybe sponsored films and AV,local demonstrations and perhaps telephone selling.At 10,000, personal selling falls away and press advertising and most other non-personal media take over. Exhibitions have a particular merit here combining unit economy with the benefits of face to face contact. Direct mail sometimes starts to become difficult to handle. Editorial back up is of course well worth full exploitation.At 100,000 one starts to move into mass media with television, radio, national newspapers and posters replacing or heavily supplementing the other media already listed.

Impact The extent to which an advertising message is transmitted, received, stored and able to be recalled with accuracy is vital. Each medium has its own intrinsic impact potential. Clearly a medium which facilitates two way communication is top of the list,and so personal selling, exhibitions,demonstrations,telephone selling are all worthy of a high rating.Direct mail,properly conceived can expect to perform well here, as can editorial publicity, sponsored films and literature.All the research evidence we have on page traffic and Starch measurements would indicate that press advertising performs least well in achieving impact.

Message What is the nature of the selling message? Is it simple, or reminder? Is it complex, technical or innovative? In the former case, press advertising, point of sale, posters and radio will do well. For a complicated message however, the need is for demonstrations, seminars, feature articles, literature, sponsored films and the sales force.

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Coverage and penetration This is the breadth and depth of a medium’s capability. In breadth, the question is what proportion of the target audience (i.e. people within a market segment) are covered by readership as opposed to circulation. In other words who will have an ‘opportunity to see’ (OTS). In direct mail the answer could be 100 per cent, with a national newspaper perhaps 60 per cent but with a great deal of wastage.Commonly one is looking for an in-depth coverage of around 80 per cent.Turning to penetration, certain media are known by long standing practice to penetrate decision making units even where the actual names of the people involved cannot be identified.A major trade fair for instance or a weekly trade magazine that has to be seen by anyone who is anyone in order to keep up-to-date.

Negative characteristics Some people resent some advertising and it is as well to check out in advance of using a particular media group whether your intention could be counter productive. Most people in the UK dislike advertising messages on the telephone or front door or on the street corner.They also dislike loose inserts,direct mail that it too intensive or repetitive,and for many,radio and television commercials are intrusive. It depends on many factors – just check it out.

Positive characteristics We are looking for an added plus which comes over and above the basic medium itself.Examples are with an ad in a very prestigious publication where to be seen in good company lends an extra credibility to an advertising proposition.With an exhibition stand a comfortable lounge can be a welcome oasis after the formal business has been completed.An in-house exhibition or seminar might draw together people with common interests who have not met for some time and welcome the chance of informal discussion almost as much as the event itself.

Cost There are two costs to be considered, and also the price.The first cost is the total capital investment involved and whether this is compatible with the cash flow position, and also the other major capital expenditures in marketing activities.Then the cost per contact must be evaluated ranging as it does from the latest estimated call cost for an industrial salesman of over £100 to just a few pence for a mass medium. Media planning decisions are often made on the outcome of aggressive media buying, and this is where price comes in.All rate cards have their price, and 10 per cent off quoted rates can be a lot of money.

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Speed Television, radio, newspapers, direct mail, all under pressure can be transmitting messages within 24 hours or less,and to very large audiences simultaneously.The sales force can respond even quicker, but a rate of just a few people a day.At the other extreme it might be two years before an appropriate trade fair takes place.Thus,if the time for activating consumer/customer behaviour is a critical factor then choice of media must be influenced by this.

Complexity and conveniences Nothing could be simpler than to take half a million pounds appropriation and allocate it half to a single commercial network on television, and the balance to full pages in national newspapers. Such a media strategy may even be right.As against this can be compared the complexity of a multi-market, multi-shot direct mail campaign, coupled with regional presentations tied in with local publicity,back-up sales visits,regional press,supporting literature and posters with a culminating business gift. Media choice just might be influenced by ease of use (idleness) coupled with such other non-professional factors as good or bad agency commission.Is there any possible justification for some media nominally paying commission and others not? Media choice within an agency must therefore have some regard to the amount of effort required to service each medium (a cost) in relation to the income and aggravation it is likely to receive.

Feedback Press advertising and television are essentially single channel communications systems.Since impact is greater where a dialogue can be established there must be an intrinsic advantage in all the face to face media, and even with direct mail and editorial publicity where there are some instances of feedback. It is worth noting that many of the popular sales promotion techniques involve heavily the customer’s participation.

Creative scope Should a medium be chosen for its creative scope? Increasingly this is regarded as a major factor but within the rather strict limits of availability of colour or movement.What is meant here is the opportunity for some quite novel or extraordinary approach to be made entirely as a result of the medium being used. In press relations the creative opportunities to set up extremely newsworthy events are limitless, and needless to say this would be done in such a way as to involve the product or company inextricably.With direct mail there is complete freedom on material, size, shape, colour, smell, timing, audience and frequency. Exhibitions also have an almost infinite variety of creative opportunities. Where particularly the product itself is mundane, the choice of media where creativity can be exploited fully is especially relevant.

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Data availability There is a somewhat old fashioned idea in business to business advertising that since the amounts of money to be spent are relatively small therefore the need for information about what one is buying is not very great.This is a quite extraordinary and quite illogical situation since the advertising task may well be of the greatest importance to the company.The fact though that the cost of achieving it may not be astronomical does not mean that the media buying operation should be incompetent. With any media that overlaps into consumer marketing a good deal of information is likely to be available,but otherwise hard to find.The technical press is rarely able to provide believable readership data,and exhibitions are way behind what is done in other countries.Some advertisers set up their own sources of audience information and it may be that in respect of ‘data’media choice should be biased towards these channels from which the most reliable facts can be obtained.

Subjective factors So far,the factors being discussed on media choice have been largely objective or quantitative. In practice of course there are many other sources of influence,apparently trivial,but perhaps of far greater significance in the media buying decision than many people either realise or are prepared to admit to. So why else do advertisers opt for a particular medium. Here are a few reasons: a) Good service from the publisher or media house b) Good salesmanship – hard selling – pleasant personality c) The buyer’s ego trip – he likes his products to be seen in a particular medium d) Good lunches, Christmas presents, and all forms of what might kindly be termed ‘grace and favour’ e) Because the Managing Director says so f) Competitors use it g) The title of a publication, also its format: with exhibitions, location is a factor h) Inertia – we’ve always done it this way i) Personal prejudice and ignorance j) The good reputation of a medium, with publications, the quality of their editorial k) Hunch l) The agency gets a better service or higher commission.

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Summing up then, the bad news is that much of media decision making is by guess work, is inefficient and thus wastes money. On the other hand this must offer scope for anyone with the least bit of drive and energy to gain an edge over the competitors, by progressively introducing facts and data into the choice and mixture of media.

Timetable and action plan This usually spans one year which can be on a rolling basis. A shorter timescale might be employed and it is certainly useful to give some indication of a longer period ahead.In practice one can see how a direct mail campaign will support an exhibition and how a press release is timed so as to avoid being scooped by an advertisement carrying the same story. It is recommended to use a GANT chart and make provision for periodic reviews. A useful addition is an action schedule showing the various actions to be taken on a month by month basis in order to have the material and media ready in time for implementation. Within the context of a timetable must be provision for tracking all of the various activities. This is perhaps best done with a quarterly review meeting at which all of both primary and secondary objectives are monitored to see if the targets which have been set are being achieved. It should be expected that not all will be, and that changes have to be made to bring the results in line with the objectives.The campaign may have to be intensified in certain areas, and cut back in others in order that the end of year achievements conform to the plan.

Budget By far the most common way of arriving at a budget for marketing communications is for an allocation to be made at board level without much regard for what actually is needed to secure a result which in itself has not been defined with any degree of precision.This must be the largest single area of corporate financial waste of very many organisations. Where some attempt is made to arrive at a figure based upon some criterion,the most popular is as a percentage of sales turnover.This is inadequate for two reasons. If it is based upon reliable figures, then it must be last year’s sales which are already well out of date.The really problematic factor,however,is that no-one has ever been able to determine exactly what should be an optimum percentage in a given trade or industry: indeed much research in the USA has shown that the percentage figures in practice, and in relation to successful businesses, varies as between one firm and another by a factor cost of ten cubed.

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A more conservative approach to budgeting is merely to spend just the same as last year, on the basis that we seemed to survive on that figure, so why change it.A slight variation might be to even spend a little less because times are hard; or a little more to allow for inflation. One school of thought is to measure carefully what is being spent by one’s main competitor and copy that.This is presumably on the basis that they know how to arrive at the optimum expenditure level, whereas we don’t so lets copy them.This is faulted in two ways in that much of the competition cannot be monitored e.g. direct mail, and then who is to say that that expenditure is at the right level anyway? This is not to say that competitors’expenditures should not be investigated; it should, if only to give us information on their share of voice. Following the media plan is the earliest stage in which it is possible to produce a budget. There is no sensible reason for starting out with a sum of money and figuring out how best to spend it.It may be far too much or far too little.But by working progressively and logically through each of the steps,having regard to the ‘task to be achieved’,the production of a budget is simply a matter of costing all the various items which have been built into the plan. This is a ‘bottom up’basis of budgeting as opposed to ‘top down’.When more than one product is involved, the costs should be allocated to each product so as to arrive at a cost per sale and cost per enquiry.Also, consideration should be given to providing for a contingency. Whilst it should be clear that the only responsible way of operating is within a budget arrived at by the ‘task method’,it is necessary to face up to the fact that in many situations it is unrealistic; the money is just not there.Even so,that is no reason for not calculating a budget requirement on the basis of what has to be achieved. So that must be the starting point.After all, it may turn out that less money is required than had been thought. But even if not, the care which has gone into arriving at a task oriented budget means that it is possible to cut proposed expenditure on those items which are likely to have least effect on the outcome,particularly in the short-term. Finally, it may turn out that the objectives set simply cannot be achieved with the finance which is currently available. In that case it is as well to be aware of that likelihood at the beginning of the financial year rather than the end, when it is too late to do anything about it. It may be that the objectives must be changed which will have repercussions throughout the company, and again these are better faced sooner rather than later.

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Evaluation and research Evaluation Much of the value of producing a marcom plan will be wasted unless a very thorough system of measurement is installed.A good deal of the necessary evaluation can be done in-house and at little cost.Even if outside services have to be employed it is a fair allocation of resources to allow some ten per cent of the budget to measuring the outcome of marcom activities. And this should include tracking so that any deviation from objectives are signalled in time for adjustments to be made.In this more enlightened way of operating it must not be assumed that all task budget allocations will be higher than one can afford: similarly when measuring results, they are by no means always less than planned. Sometimes they are higher than anticipated,when it is still important to know this in advance since they may well be greater than your resources can cope with in the way of response,leading to customer dissatisfaction. The starting point has to be to examine primary objectives in comparison with the results achieved.This will be followed by secondary objectives.

Primary objectives Awareness

Nothing could be much simpler. Here under objectives will be defined a particular homogenous group of people who are to be influenced,for example a market segment. Messages about the organisation will be directed at such people for a planned period, after which there will be a measurement of what increase in awareness had occurred from the original benchmark over the planned period of time.Take for instance an hotel setting out to become better known in the minds of a certain group of people. For both the benchmark and any tracking,and the final evaluation there will be two types of question asked, one unprompted, and the other one prompted. So if the target group were to be local inhabitants,people would be stopped,maybe at random and asked to name all the hotels they could think of in the area. So, was the target hotel mentioned and by what percentage of respondents? Did this meet the objective? The second question would be prompted, namely to ask of a list provided of all the local hotels, which ones had the respondent previously heard of. Such awareness measurement can be applied equally well to a product or an organisation.

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Perception

Now it may be that an organisation is very well known, but is it perceived in an unfavourable light i.e.negative perception? In the case of the local hotel the question now to ask people responding could be such as to make for a league table.The question could be which local hotel was the best in terms of whatever criterion was being evaluated.This might be luxury, value for money, or any other factor.To probe the matter in depth, and indeed to find out which were the main criteria to be tested, would be the task of one or more focus group discussions.In other words qualitative research followed by quantitative research. Behavioural intent

This is a matter of how people intend to behave when next an issue arises.This is easy enough to measure but is likely to be flawed because people don’t know or because they respond with an answer which is untrue. But for whatever reason, such researches are often substantially wrong. Parliamentary election forecasts are a good example here. Nevertheless the formula of qualitative/quantitative examinations can be useful. After all it is only a matter of the degree of error, and the benchmark may well have suffered in the same way so that comparisons turn out to be valid. When applying such procedures within the marketing area the behavioural intent factor is now influenced by other considerations such as financial limitations. So a person may have heard of Rolls Royce (awareness) and consider the company to be first class (perception) but have no intention of taking any action (behavioural intent) because they cannot afford to. Behaviour

With behaviour one is back to reality. Did the target audience take whatever action the campaign was designed to achieve? So in the case of a charity,did people actually make a contribution? This is again a yes or no question just as with awareness, but here the figures are accurate and require nothing in the way of interpretation. The fact that marketing communications should be measured in terms of outcomes doesn’t mean that transmissions should be ignored.These fall into the category of secondary objectives.So targets must be set for all the channels of communication.

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Secondary objectives Editorial publicity

The first measure is the number of publications covered by a press release where news is concerned.A critical initial factor, ignored by many, is the conversion rate. That is the number or percentage of publications running the story.This is a factor in evaluating the accuracy of the media database used, and then the content and presentation of the release itself.Maybe 50 per cent should be aimed for,and certainly it shouldn’t fall below 40 per cent.Next,of course,comes the most popular measure, namely press cuttings.So how many mentions were achieved against the set target? This is followed by the number of column centimetres or inches, and at this stage the results must be categorised into positive/negative and accurate/inaccurate.Some attempts are now being made by in increasing number of consultancies to analyse publicity into whether or not a key message is getting through, though this is still transmission and not reception.Also such results are being produced on a computer printout perhaps to give them some extra implied authority.In fact there is absolutely no difference between this and what has been done by any competent manager over the past many decades. Another measure which is often presented to demonstrate the press coverage achieved is the Opportunity To See (OTS).The value of this in organisational marketing is limited in that for most publications,readership figures are not available. In their absence the circulation figures are used quite incorrectly, and anyway most circulation figures are not audited and thus have to be regarded as dubious. In the most favourable circumstances where genuine readership figures are available the procedure is to say that if an editorial mention was achieved in a journal having a readership of say 40,000, then there was an OTS of 40,000.Taking then all publications in which mentions have been secured,it might then be said that a particular editorial campaign achieved an overall OTS of 250,000. This is of course important information but what is rather wanted is some measure of what size audience actually saw,let alone read,a particular piece of news.In other words the only completely valid criterion is page traffic. From OTS, the next stage is to determine the Advertising Equivalent Value.This,again is measuring transmission, but at least it gives proper weighting to each individual cutting.In this way,a mention in the Financial Times can be reasonably added to one in PR Week,though even here one must exercise judgement since it may well be with a particular story that PR Week is actually more important that the FT.A particular criticism of this practice is that one would never have allocated such sums of money to advertising anyway. This may be true, but in view of the many times greater value of editorial publicity it usually does not represent an exaggeration.The final system of measurement has

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to be enquiries, and this will take in reader response cards, letters, telephone calls, and increasingly faxes and e-mail. Advertising

With many budgets, advertising is the largest single item of expenditure.There are a range of what might be said to be tactical outcomes starting off with pre-testing, and going on to post-testing say recall and increasingly response. Focus group discussions play a major part, especially in formulating relevant messages, and also consultation with customer panels.A system for measuring an advertisement is given later in this report. Direct mail

What was the reach achieved, were there any adverse comments, or positive ones, what were the number of mailing returns ‘gone away’,and most important how many responses compared with the objective. Exhibitions

How many visitors walked past the stand, how many walked onto the stand, how long did they stay,how many enquiries were received,how many leaflets were taken, how many drinks dispensed? All of these and more are going to add to what might be termed the qualitative evaluation by company staff, and indeed customers. Seminars

Seminars and conferences, and also private exhibitions are being used increasingly to differentiate both companies and products.Again it is quantitative measurements coupled with qualitative which in this case can be based upon delegate assessment forms ‘how useful did you find this seminar on a scale of 0 to 5?’ Videos

Way before a video is ever commissioned there should be a comprehensive distribution and viewing plan giving what is regarded as the optimum number of showings coupled with the optimum size of the target audiences.This provides the basis for the decision to go ahead and measurement is thus facilitated e.g. how many people falling into the prescribed target audience category have viewed it, and what did they think of it?

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Events

Whatever the event might be, there will be an objective, a purpose for holding it. This is what will be measured. Maybe it is to get a given number of a certain type of person to attend.Thus the measure will be how many people actually attended. A further built-in objective is sometimes to achieve a certain amount of press coverage, in which case there might be a number of journalists attending to be measured, and then the number of press cuttings etc for pre-show,and post show. All set against the target for the event.The quantifying of any such activities might be felt to be just too difficult. Just upon what basis should a number be chosen? When targeting for the first time it is little more than a well thought out guess, which will probably turn out to be wrong. But with each and every following activity, the quantifying of objectives will become increasingly accurate as experience is developed. In this way budgets become more and more precise, and thus less money is wasted. Road shows

Just the same as events. Competitions

How many entrants is it aimed to achieve,and what about any supplementary press coverage.Were the objectives achieved or by how much did they fail,and what should be done next time.And results don’t always fall short of targets, they sometimes go way over the top and that can be a serious embarrassment. What it amounts to is that just about every marcom activity is capable of some degree of measurement,and the more that is undertaken,the more accurate the objectives will become thus reducing budgetary wastage,and making the whole operation more efficient.It will never be totally precise,and it certainly will not eliminate the need for brilliant creativity and mature judgement, but that is no reason for abrogating the responsibility of having the most costeffective procedures.

Research For many years communications research has been used extensively in consumer marketing. Not so with business-to-business marketing,due entirely to the fact that marcom budgets are lower,and therefore money for research cannot be found.This is entirely illogical,like saying since I don’t have to spend so much money on advertising, therefore I won’t bother to find out if it is working.’ Whilst it is true that for a number of research activities it is as well to outsource the work to a market research agency, for many projects, the job can be tackled quite well within the company. Some examples are given later in this section.

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Customer panels

Every organisation should have one, or preferably more, customer panels to give outside guidance to a whole host of issues which might not be seen in their true light if viewed only from within.These will cost very little. The procedure is to make up a list of say ten customers,each representing a particular characteristic – like small and large,old and new,north and south,male and female, one market segment against another,and so on.Contact is made inviting the people to become members of a customer panel which will meet say no more than once a quarter for a working lunch of two hours. Maybe eight will accept, of which six will eventually turn up.No fee is necessary;they will be flattered to have been asked, and anyway they will find a networking benefit from attending. Many matters can be settled. How does one selling proposition compare with another? How about this new product idea? Would anyone ever bother to play a CD Rom if one were to be mailed out? Such a system is obviously highly subjective and potentially inaccurate.But if the panel unanimously rejects an idea,it certainly makes it worthwhile having second thoughts,and maybe undertake some quantitative primary research to confirm it. Focus group discussions

The limitation of a customer panel is that the answers to questions are likely to be biased since respondents know the identity of the questioner.The essence of a focus group is that the company is anonymous.Thus one can probe all manner of sensitive issues and obtain relatively unbiased responses.The number of people involved is usually six to eight, and therefore the results have no statistical validity.The other problem is that it is difficult,though not impossible,to set up the panel oneself and remain anonymous. And so there is likely to be a cost, currently around in excess of a thousand pounds a session for employing an outside agency. Focus groups are particularly valuable in testing advertisements for instance,or indeed probing customer and prospects into what criteria are likely to be effective as selling messages. One to one

There are occasions when it is better to ask questions on a one-to-one basis. No problem with customer research.One goes to a location where prospects are likely to be in attendance, and stop people at random and ask the various questions. Experience has shown that,providing no further analysis is required,interviews with a hundred respondents will prove to be statistically accurate.This number of interviews can usually be conducted in a day and a half, obviously depending on the length of the questionnaire.

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For a business-to-business research the wide dispersal of respondents makes oneto-one more difficult and expensive.An ideal way of overcoming this problem is to make use of an appropriate exhibition or other such gatherings of the target audience. In some instances one can even make use of one’s sales force during their routine calls providing that no interpretation of the answers is required, and providing due allowance is made for the fact that there will be a number of people within the decision making unit (DMU) who will not be seen by a sales representative. Increasingly these days the telephone is being used for market research purposes, and all the evidence indicates that this is an acceptable procedure. Again, a sample size of a hundred must be aimed for, but the disadvantage is that one cannot see the physical responses which sometimes can be as enlightening as the verbal ones. Finally there is the post, and here the biggest problem is one of a relatively small response. And maybe the replies come only from people having a particular point of view,thus biasing the results.The key to success is in having a questionnaire which is simple to complete,and obviously so,coupled with some kind of response incentive together with an easy means of response. Readership research

It could well be argued that the single most important action in marketing communications is to know with some accuracy what publications are read by the target audience.True, you have to know with some precision exactly who are the target audience, but the fact of the matter is that the very best of ads in the wrong publication will get nowhere whereas even a second rate ad in the right publication will achieve some result. In consumer media a large amount of very useful data is available on readership. In business-to-business marketing, the media almost never have readership data available.What they do have is circulation data,but that is very different to readership. It may well be that a subscription journal will have anything up to eight readers per copy whereas a controlled circulation magazine will have only one or two.There are of course many hybrid publications, having part paid-for circulation and part free,with a readership factor of say four.But even when circulation figures are supplied it is as well to be aware of the fact that under half of these are audited. So let the buyer beware. In the majority of marcom budgets, the biggest single item is press advertising, and this is where by far the largest amount of money is wasted. For this reason it is worthwhile any firm conducting a readership survey, almost regardless of the information supplied by the publisher. By far the easiest way of doing this is at a

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location where one can reasonably expect to find a good sample of people who are likely to be either customers or prospects. In practice, exhibitions and/or trade shows have proved to be very efficient.The procedure centres around a visual aid comprising a flip chart in which on a separate sheet of cardboard is pasted the front cover of a particular journal.Anything up to 12 can be accommodated.The reason for the visual aid is that people tend to confuse one title with another, and so the front cover serves as a good reminder. People are stopped at random as they walk around the exhibition,and asked if they would kindly answer a few easy questions.The majority will say yes.The questions are ‘do you read this publication regularly,occasionally,or never’.They have no problem with this though it is as well to have a definition to what comprises ‘read’e.g.spend 15 minutes or more. Having run through all the publications there is value in asking whether there are any other publications read in connection with the particular business being investigated. Then a few questions regarding job function, involvement in purchasing etc. The optimum number of interviews is one hundred providing that no further analysis is to be made. For instance, if it is required to know how the reading habits differ from male to female, then the sample size would have to be doubled. A readership survey as described therefore can be conducted by oneself in under two days and at virtually no expense. If there is no convenient exhibition, then the sales force can be used, or alternatively the telephone, and as a last resort the mail. Overseas exhibitions work just as well as UK ones. A fact to note is that it is not even necessary to be an exhibitor,though it is a courtesy to notify the exhibition organiser.The usual response here is that the organiser asks for a copy of the research when it is completed so that he knows which are the best journals to advertise in. A word of warning.Having determined the journal with the best readership figures in terms of cost per thousand, doesn’t necessarily mean that is the one to advertise in. There are qualitative factors to be considered as well as quantitative. Another question or two might be added along the lines of ‘which of all these journals would you regard as the most authoritative?’or ‘which do you spend the most time reading?’

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Page traffic

It has been argued above that circulation is not good enough for cost-effective advertising,and that an important step is to acquire readership data on the particular market segment under consideration. From this, one can arrive at the OTS (Opportunity To See) which is as far as many advertisers,agencies and consultancies ever bother to go. But this really isn’t good enough. Surely what one wants to find out is not whether an audience had the opportunity to see an advertisement of editorial mention: what one wants to know is did they actually see it! In America it is common practice to have the page traffic figures of the publications in which one has one’s advertisements. By page traffic is meant ‘what percentage of the total readership noticed, and/or read most each advertisement and editorial item in a particular issue of a journal.Typically a given ad might have a noted score of 10 per cent and a read-most score of 5 per cent.And then a new product editorial mention would perhaps clock up as much as 70 per cent and more for noted and again half that figure for read-most (i.e. more than half the copy). This measuring process has been conducted by a number of British publishers over the years, but somehow it has not caught on. One reason for this may be that the results were too damning.Research by the author has shown an arithmetic average for noted of 7 per cent with advertisements,and 35 per cent for editorial mentions. That is to say that in the particular publications tested (trade,technical and business) an editorial item could expect to be seen by some five times more readers than the equivalent ad. Obviously such work can be put out to a research company, though in fact it is not beyond a client company doing the job itself, and for very little cost. The procedure is to make contact with the publisher or editor of the journal in question, and reach agreement that a week after publication date (for a monthly journal) a second copy will be sent to say two hundred subscribers together with a letter from the editor asking that the recipients strike through with the enclosed ball pen each item, ads and editorials, which were noticed.The question can be varied to ‘found of interest’ or ‘read most’.They are asked then to return the copy in the accompanying pre-paid envelope.The letter needs to spell out the motivation e.g. that the outcome of the research will contribute to the editor’s knowledge of what particular topics are of interest to the readers.Which is quite true; it will. The deal can be that the client will receive the returns and analyse the results, thus finding out just how his own items fared, and also those of the competition, and every one else for that matter.The editor or publisher will expect to have sight of

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the results which will be of great interest to them and they are usually willing to bear the cost of postage and letter reproduction themselves. Statistically this form of research is not sound.Moreover it doesn’t spell out the reasons for low scores and high scores.The surprising fact is that there begins to build up consistency in the outcomes of consecutive researches,and there emerges some most informative data on ad performance as between for example left and right hand pages, full page versus half page, colour versus black and white etc.As a way of improving an intrinsically wasteful process it can’t be bettered.

Resources This relates to human resources, both in terms of the number of people to be involved in implementing the campaign and in their professional capability and motivation to carry out the work involved with maximum efficiency.They must obviously have the time needed to do the job and the necessary talent and motivation.There may be a case for providing some kind of incentive: financial perhaps, or a job title, or simply to broaden experience.This part of the plan should also take in the use of outside services such as the advertising agency and PR consultancy. Here also is where any training needs and expense should be covered.

Measuring an advertisement or direct mail piece No one will disagree that millions of pounds are wasted on ineffective advertising.Lord Leverhulme may well have been wrong in estimating the figure to be 50 per cent: it is probably more. It could be argued that all other business functions waste money,so why pick on advertising. For example,wrong choices are made in personnel selection,sales forecasts are often wrong, new products are developed and fail.And so on.But mostly such failures are eventually discovered and such knowledge leads to more effective operations. Not so with advertising.Many campaigns are launched without quantified objectives,and the attempts which are sometimes made to measure results are inadequate. Looking across the whole range of media,some are more difficult than others to assess.Poster advertising and sponsorship are examples,and even television and radio.The most likely medium for accurate and reliable measurement is the press, and this applies equally to direct mail. Variations of the technique can also be used to evaluate sales literature and exhibitions. Whilst it is true that any pre-testing is going to be approximate,the fact is that there are certain criteria which can, with confidence, be applied in order to achieve the best possible result. After all, it doesn’t require a sophisticated and expensive piece of research to find out, for

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instance,with the proof of a proposed ad,that the body copy is difficult to read simply because it is set solid in a typeface which is too small to read easily. Or that the action element has been left out. The following criteria have been used over a number of years to evaluate industrial or business to business ads, but they seem to apply also with force to consumer ads.The system has met with wide acceptance by the managers using it. It can also be used exactly as it stands to measure direct mail shots. Its rationale is that over and above that spark of creative genius that can never be satisfactorily measured, there are a number of quite obvious factors which can stop an ad being really effective.Ten such factors are listed below,with the possible score shown in brackets. Attention value (9)

Extensive research, both in the UK and the USA, has shown that the majority of industrial or business ads are seen by only a few percent of the readers of a publication, and read by even fewer.Thus the first requirement of an ad is to have stopping power. Some ads will be passed by simply because the subject matter is not of interest,but even if it is potentially of interest, the ad may not be noticed, for instance, because it is too flat and grey or, at the other extreme, too cluttered.The headline, the body copy, and the picture must all be laid out in such a way as to attract the eye. Instant message (5)

For a fraction of a second,providing an ad has attention value,there is the opportunity to hold a reader’s interest for long enough to get across the subject matter of the ad which alone will be the incentive to read on.The test here is to hold up the ad for a second and judge whether in that time it communicates a message. Is the headline clear, short, and to the point? Does the illustration show the ‘benefit’ as opposed to, or at least as well as, the ‘product’? Beware the excessively creative headline and illustration which can obscure the essential single selling idea.The vital purpose is first to communicate the chosen message, and second to pull the reader into the ad. Impact (2)

It is no use projecting an instant message if it is then instantly forgotten.So,will the ad achieve an impact on the mind of the reader such that he or she will retain the message for subsequent action? Is it memorable and is it distinctive? This will be determined partly by its ‘attention value’and ‘instant message’,and also by the overall impression that the ad achieves before the reader moves on to the next page.

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Writing style (2)

The style of writing is important, e.g. always use short and simple words and short sentences, missing out any advertising clichés and unnecessary jargon. The terminology must be in a form which is familiar to the reader. Whilst it must be persuasive, the slick hard sell and hype associated with some fmcg (fast moving consumer goods) products is likely to be counter-productive. Familiar copy also extends to familiar illustration:the picture should be in a setting to which the reader can relate. Single Selling Proposition (SSP) (4)

A product or service is likely to have a number of ‘attributes’which can be expressed in terms of customer ‘benefits’. Does the ad clearly get across one specific promise or benefit, or is it a jumble of messages which leaves the reader confused as to just what it is getting at.A good rule is to pin-point the single selling idea,but ensure that it is presented in such a way as to remain in the mind of the reader after reading it. Credibility – is it believable? (3)

All the advertising claims are of little avail if they are not believed.So to what extent does an ad ring true? Is there any hard evidence to support the claims, such as a picture of the product in operation, or a case history or, even better, a third party endorsement? Facts are more believable than generalities and exaggerations. Logical progression of the argument (2)

Look at the positioning of the components of an ad,and the sequence of the headline, subhead and body copy. Do these add up to a logical series of statements which together support the basic selling proposition? In short,is the ad easy to understand? Legibility (8)

It is an extraordinary fact that so many otherwise excellent ads are ruined simply by incompetent typography. Starting with the most dominant features, how readable are the headline and subhead? Quite apart from the words themselves and whether they communicate a convincing message, what about the typography: is it simple and clear? Come the body copy,is the combination of typeface,point size, leading,measure and general layout and presentation such that the copy is easy and inviting to read? Basic facts of legibility which will have been taught in the first year of college are continually ignored,maybe in an attempt to be modish or avant garde. For instance,people over the age of 40 have difficulty in reading eight point or smaller.

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On top of this,leading helps legibility,whereas reverse type reduces it.Capitals make body copy more difficult to read, and serif faces are more legible than sans serif. Leading between the lines helps as does the ‘measure’ (length of line) and justification.These simple rules must not be ignored. Action-response mechanism (7)

All ads have a purpose and apart, maybe, from corporate ads, this usually involves the reader taking some action. It surely makes sense then to indicate to the reader what action is intended.The actual offering itself is important since research shows that to offer something tangible will generate a larger response than a vague invitation to ‘write for further information’.It needs to be spelt out in such a way that the reader is really motivated to act.And then, visually, the action element must stand out. One of the best devices is the reply coupon – not just that readers will want to use it, but because of the visual signal that it sends. Corporate benefit (8)

It may be that an ad fulfils its primary purpose very well, i.e. to sell a product or service, or to contribute to brand image, or to generate enquiries.The fact remains, however, that all ads have an opportunity also to influence corporate image or to portray a company’s personality – the things that make a company liked, respected and admired. A messy ad tends to indicate a messy company, a small ad, a small one, and a dull ad suggests a company which hasn’t much to get excited about. So all ads,both corporate and product,contribute to both corporate image and brand image, whether they are designed to do so or not.

Evaluation To evaluate an advertisement from the ten criteria given above, award a rating against each up to a maximum of the score shown in brackets, e.g. (8) – award any figure between 0 and 8 depending upon your judgement of how effective the advertisement is against that particular point. Then add all the scores together and double the result.This is now the percentage rating of the advertisement.The following groupings give suggested evaluations based upon experience of using this system. 82 – 100%

Outstanding

72 – 80%

Very good

62 – 70%

Acceptable

0 – 60%

Send it back

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Team evaluation Having developed a set of rules for advertisement evaluation, these must be applied in such a way as to obtain maximum effectiveness. Some managers have a reluctance to make judgements,and would tend to defer to their advertising agency who after all are specialists. True, they have their part to play, but the people in the best position to make a judgement on how a potential customer will react to such a selling proposition are those who as part of their daily lives are in contact with customers and prospects. So the client must make the decision,and this simply means that every person in the company who needs to have a point of view should be included in the approval team. In the final analysis of course it is the customer who will decide, so best ask a few of them just to be safe.This requires each advertisement to go through a parallel evaluation with one or more customer panels,or even focus group discussions.Such measures are not statistically sound,but they can be extremely illustrative,and contribute substantially to the overall assessment.

Evaluating a brochure Following the ‘ten criteria for a successful advertisement’,a system which has been in place for some years, the same basis can be used for other media, but maybe with a number of modifications. In the case of a sales leaflet or flyer, this can be treated as a direct mail piece, and as such no modification is necessary. With a brochure, however, if the assumption is made that the reader actually requested it, then there must be some changes.The relevant criteria are: Retention value (4)

There is no need for ‘attention value’ if the brochure has been requested: rather the need is that it will be so attractive and useful that the reader will want to keep it for future reference, i.e.‘retention value’. It does, however, require some ‘attention’ element since it may have to be judged in relation to competitor’s literature. Presentation (5)

Whilst a brochure is not required to present an ‘instant message’, an additional requirement appears to replace it, namely its general appearance, and in particular the stock upon which it is printed, the number of colours, the quality of the photographs, diagrams, tables, and the number of pages.With regard to the latter, there comes a point where too large a number of pages reduces the likelihood of it ever being read.

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Impact (2)

A brochure has to have impact just as much as an advertisement. One wants the reader to remember it. Writing style (5)

At its most simple, a brochure has more words than an advertisement, and thus the style of writing becomes of greater importance than with an ad. Promise specific benefits (4)

Whilst with an advertisement the best practice is to decide which ‘single selling proposition’ is to be the basis of the copy platform; with a brochure it is necessary to put across all of the benefits. Credibility (5)

It can be argued, perhaps, that it is even more important that a brochure should come across as believable than an advertisement.Hence this criterion has been given a slightly higher weighting. Logical progression of the argument (4)

Again, with more words, there is greater importance to ensure that they flow in a logical way.The weighting compared with an advertisement has been increased. Legibility (8)

There is no change over an advertisement,but this criterion continues to be heavily weighted since if the copy cannot be read easily,then it won’t be.There is absolutely no excuse for typesetting which is too small, or indeed anything other than very easy and inviting to read. Action (7)

The action element is of a more strategic nature than with an advertisement where a tactical response of a sales lead might be the requirement.But if a brochure is not intended to generate some further activity, what else can be its purpose? Perhaps the action here is to place an order, or ask for a quotation. But whatever, the question should be asked ‘what action do we want the reader to take?’

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Corporate benefit (8)

The increasing recognition of corporate image (or corporate brand) as an important factor in the buying process makes the overall impression of a brochure all the more important.

Evaluation Just the same as for an advertisement. Once again there is no reason to accept second-rate brochures, and to fall below 62 per cent is second-rate.

Evaluating a successful exhibition stand Just in the same way in which an advertisement can be measured, so also can an exhibition stand.The criteria are different, as indeed they are in measuring a brochure, but the method is the same. Attention value (4)

Whilst many visitors will decide in advance which stands they intend to visit,others will not, but rather will wander around and pay calls on the stands which happen to catch their eye.And even if a plan of action has been decided upon, there will always be odd random calls stimulated initially by an attractive stand design,maybe coupled with some attention-getting activity. Instant message (4)

A new approach to an exhibition stand is required here in which it is regarded as a three-dimensional advertisement.So,having succeeded in attracting attention,the next step is to get across the key message or messages – at a glance, and in such a way as to make the visitor want to learn more.What is wanted then is the equivalent of an advertisement headline and sub-heads, all of which can be seen, read and understood at a distance. Impact (2)

This is simply ‘Is the stand memorable?’With maybe hundreds of stands to look at, the task here is to ensure that after the show,one’s own stand is one of those which come top of mind for any further action which might be contemplated.

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Projects the benefits on offer (6)

With an advertisement the task is to get across the ‘single selling proposition’whereas with an exhibition the opportunity exists to communicate all the benefits of a particular product or service, since there is more time. Effective display panels (6)

This is the equivalent to the body copy of an advertisement, and in just the same way must be assessed both in what it says, and in how it says it. Frequently one finds that the selling copy is written by an in-company person who would lay no claim to being a creative or persuasive writer.This might be,for instance, a sales manager who would never dream of being let loose on a piece of advertising copy. As to legibility, the same rules apply as for an advertisement, namely that it must be legible and eminently readable.Black lettering on white is more legible than reversed type, serif face is easier to read then sans serif, leading between the lines is helpful as are short measures. Action (5)

Some would say that an exhibition provides the greatest opportunity of all media to obtain enquiries and sales leads.But this operation must not be passive,just waiting for prospects to demand attention.A procedure must be in operation, and the sales force adequately briefed essentially to obtain names and addresses both for shortterm action and for entry onto a database.Obviously enquiry forms must be present and used for every encounter of any value.Visiting cards must be collected: some stands make profitable use of a ‘visiting card competition’.A good way of gaining leads is to have a policy of not having sales literature on the stand,but only a special but well produced, exhibition leaflet that gives a summary description of all the products on the stand. Each visitor is then offered to have the detailed leaflet sent that day from head office.This automatically provides names and addresses and also means that the product leaflet does not have to compete in the same way as all the other literature collected from competitors at the show. Here, the Stand Manager has an important disciplinary role to play in ensuring that a maximum effort is put into acquiring such leads.Thought must be given,and procedures laid down for instant follow-up since customer interest is at its highest when the enquiry is made and can tail off easily when back at the office.

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Location (8)

Choosing the best location in the exhibition hall can be a critical factor in the overall productivity of the stand.What one is looking for here is a site where there is a high corridor traffic.To some extent this may be obvious simply from looking at the floor plan, but research is required to measure traffic all around the stand, and at various times during the day.This doesn’t require a market research company: it is simply a matter of counting heads at the previous show, or for that matter at any previous show in the same hall.Coupled with location,there should be some weighting given to the shape of the stand i.e. on how many sides it is open. Welcome (3)

Always assuming that the purpose of a stand is to attract people onto it, the design must contribute to that effect.Display units therefore should not totally enclose the stand, making it off-putting to step onto the plinth, and sales staff must stand well back to allow for the timid visitor who doesn’t want to face up to the ‘hard sell’. With this in mind, consider placing literature dispensers on the outside of a stand so that people can pick up a leaflet without actually going onto the stand.This might, of course, defeat the objective of collecting names and addresses.Welcoming is of course much more than stand design,and here again one comes back to exhibition training coupled with an active Stand Manager. The personal welcome is a fine balancing act between indifference and the hard sell. In particular there must be a courteous procedure for dealing rapidly with ‘tyrekickers’ and other time wasters. Entertaining (4)

If,amongst the exhibition objectives,some kind of entertaining facilities are required, and somewhere to talk with visitors in comfort, maybe in private, then this must be allowed for.Whether refreshments should be ‘soft’or ‘alcoholic’is largely a matter of what is the usual practice at this particular show and perhaps the culture of the industry. What will a visitor expect, what is the competition doing, and how can you get the edge on them? Corporate benefit (8)

Amongst the strengths of exhibitions as a medium is that they can be used to put across a powerful message about the company in addition to the selling function. To what extent does a stand contribute to the corporate image?

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Factors like history, production processes, awards, achievements, and so on give background information.A prospect will use this information in deciding with whom he will be doing business.

Summary 1. A most useful ingredient to the marcom plan is the executive summary.The discipline here is to condense everything to one page, and if priority should be given to the contents,they should essentially comprise the objectives,the strategy and the budget. 2. Particular use should be made of appendices so as to keep the plan itself as concise as possible. 3. The circulation of the plan should be stated,and consideration given to the inclusion of an introduction if this is likely to be of some value to recipients.

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