What is integrated marketing communications?

Business Description

joy Chemicals Limited. The Group’s principal activity is to manufacture and sell inorganic chemicals and fertiliser. The Group operates in three segments: Inorganic Chemicals, Fertilisers and Others. The Inorganic Chemicals segment products include soda ash, salt, marine chemicals, caustic soda, cement and bulk chemicals. The Fertilisers segment consists of urea, phosphatic fertilisers and other agricultural inputs. The Others segment consists speciality fertilizers, like Calcium Nitrate and Zinc Sulphate. Bengal. In Mar-2008, the Group acquired General Chemicals Industrial Products Inc.

INTEGRATED MARKETING COMMUNICATION FOR JOY SALT

What is Integrated Marketing Communications or ‘ IMC’?

IMC is a product of the late twentieth century. Its birth can be traced to practitioner (advertising, direct marketing, and public relations) activities in the late 1980s – as witnessed by articles in the trade literature. Its growth can be traced directly to emergent academic interest, commencing in the early 1990s – spearheaded by the work at the Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University, led by Professor Don Schultz. Since that time, its growth has been meteoric. But, like so many marketing developments, it has been driven by:

• Market dynamics.
• Continued academic inputs in the trade and academic literature (see for example the series of articles and papers in Marketing News, the main practitioner magazine for the AMA (American Marketing Association)).
• The fact that from its earliest beginnings, the development was embraced and supported by ‘ gurus’ in the generic marketing discipline (for example, the top-selling textbook in marketing is by Professor Philip Kotler, also from Northwestern University).
• The widespread adoption of IMC by advertising agencies around the world, who were themselves driven by organizational exigency. Thus, ad-agencies are now integrated agencies.
• The apparent adoption of IMC by major companies around the world. Integrated approaches make sense to businesses, and to agencies who service their needs.
• The need to have ‘ promotion’ appear to be consumer-orientated and consumer-driven, previously promotion’ had been internally driven and by a philosophy of separatism where each promotion mix element had its own foci and dynamics.
• The need to overcome the ‘ silo mentality’ associated with promotion mix singularity.

These dynamic forces are amply illustrated in the following chapters. But still we ask: just what is IMC? There are a multiplicity of definitions, and hence a multiplicity of understandings, and therefore potential and actual variability in terms of applications. Here we cite just a few. Don Schultz (1993) stated: IMC is the process of developing and implementing various forms of persuasive communication programs with customers and prospects over time. The goal of IMC is to influence or directly affect the behaviour of the selected audience. IMC considers all sources of brand or company contacts which a customer or prospect has with the product or service as potential deliverychannels for future messages. Further, IMC makes use of all forms of communication which are relevant to the customer or prospect, and to which they might be receptive. In sum, the IMC process starts with the customer or prospect and then works back to determine and define the forms and methods through which persuasive communications methods should be developed.

The title of Don’s paper included ‘ maybe the definition is in the point of view?’. He was right, the definition – and by implication – the application is in the point of view of the user or perceiver. The aims of IMC are:

• To persuade by means of communication (marketing and other forms, in fact all forms).
• To affect behaviour, not just attitudes.
• To start with customers or prospects and then to work backwards to develop effective communication. Another prolific author Tom Duncan (2002) stated simply that IMC is:

• a process for managing the customer relationships that drive brand value. More specifically, it is a crossfunctional process for creating and nourishing profitable relationships with customers and other stakeholders by strategically controlling or influencing all messages sent to these groups and encouraging data-driven, purposeful

  dialogue with them. Note that this definition is also focused on building dialogues and relationships between brands and customers, stakeholders, or prospects (see also Kitchen and Schultz, 2001). That dialogue or relationship is built, apparently, on some form of data-base – collected, collated, massaged, manipulated, and updated regularly. Messages depend for their validity and meaning on the extent to which the organization has correctly understood the buyer or prospects position, and created the forms of persuasive communication necessary to inculcate behaviour. Schultz and Kitchen (2000) developed their own definition, repeated here for convenience. It resembles that of Duncan, and indicates the move toward integrated communication at the corporate level, as well as at the individual brand level: IMC is a strategic business process used to plan, develop, execute, and evaluate coordinated, measurable, persuasive brand communication programs over time with consumers, customers, prospects, and other targeted individuals.

By this stage, IMC has become a strategic business process. It is not just about promotion itself, but about communication. Strategic refers to the overall driving force of the organization. IMC has become part of that driving force according to this definition, or – put another way – it has the potential to become a driving force if a company takes the steps that lead to its implementation. Yet, this book is not about strategy, it is not about a driving force, nor is it entirely focused on customers or prospects. Why is that?

• IMC is in the eyes of the beholder.
• IMC can be practised at various levels.
• IMC in terms of practice is still anchored to the dock of its very early stages of development. Staying with the analogy – some few vessels may have started out into the choppy waters of IMC, but many have not.
• New and multiple definitions of IMC may keep the theoretical waters hot, but only succeed in raising the temperature of a few marketing executives. Most prefer the less-involving, less-rigorously testing safety of the tried and tested. IMC can be, in fact, what any organization determines it to be. It’s most acceptable form is shown in stage

Modern marketing calls for more than developing a good product, pricing it attractively, and making it accessible. Companies must also communicate with present and potential stakeholders as well as the general public. For most companies, the question is not whether to communicate but rather what to say, to whom, and how often. The marketing communications mix consists of advertising, sales promotion, public relations and publicity, personal selling, and direct marketing, although savvy marketers know that communication goes beyond these five methods. The product’s styling and price, the package’s shape and color, the salesperson’s manner and dress, the place’s decor-all communicate something to buyers. In fact, every brand contact delivers an impression that can affect a customer’s view of the company. Therefore, the entire marketing mix must be integrated to deliver a consistent message and strategic positioning. We first explore effective marketing communications and the communications mix, and then look more closely at advertising, sales promotion, and public relations.

EFFECTIVE MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS USE BY JOY SALT

Today JOY SALT a new view of communications as an interactive dialogue between the company and its customers that takes place during the pre-selling, selling, consuming, and post consuming stages. Successful companies are asking not only “ How can we reach our Customers?” but, in a break from the past, are also asking “ How can our customers reach Us?” Now sellers use a variety of communication platforms to stay in touch with customers, as . Increasingly, it is the newer technologies, such as the Internet, that have encouraged more firms to move from mass communication to more targeted communication and one-to-one dialogue with customers and other stakeholders.

There are eight steps to follow in developing an effective marketing communications

Program for JOY SALT :

1. Identify the target audience,
2. Determine the communication objectives,
3. Design the message,
4. Select the communication channels,
5. Establish the total communications budget,
6. Decide on the communications mix,
7. Measure the communications’ results, and
8. Manage the integrated marketing Communication process.

Step 1: Identifying the Target Audience

The first step is to identify a clear target audience: potential buyers of the company’s products, current users, deciders, or influencers; individuals, groups, particular publics, or the general public. The target audience is a critical influence on the communicator’s decisions about what to say, how to say it, when to say it, where to say it, and to whom to say it. Target audience for JOY salt is whole India who use branded salt in kitchen Further analysis helps the company assess the audience’s current image of the company, its products, and its competitors. Image is the set of beliefs, ideas, and impressions that a person holds regarding an object. People’s attitudes and actions toward an object such as a product or service are highly conditioned by that object’s image. In assessing image, marketers research the audience’s familiarity with the product, then they ask respondents who know the product how they feel about it. If most respondents have unfavorable feelings toward the product, the organization needs to overcome a negative image problem, which requires great patienc because images persist long after the organization has changed. Once people have a certain image, they perceive what is consistent with that image. It will take highly disconfirming information to raise doubts and open their minds-but it can be done. Wolverine World Wide of Rockford, Michigan, discovered this when its Hush Puppies brand of casual shoes lost its fashionable image. Then a fashion designer used Hush Puppies dyed in bright colors, changing the product’s image from stodgy to avant garde. Once the “ new” Hush Puppies were in demand, sales skyrocketed from less than 30, 000 to millions of pairs sold in just 2 years. 1

Step 2: Determining the Communication Objectives

Knowing the target audience and its perceptions, the marketing communicator can now decide on the desired audience response, seeking a cognitive, affective, or behavioral response. That is, the marketer might want to put something into the consumer’s mind, change an attitude, or get the consumer to act. The four best-known models of consumer-response stages are presented All of these models assume that the buyer passes through a cognitive, affective, and behavioral stage, in that order. This “ learn-feel-do” sequence is appropriate when the audience has high involvement with a product category that is perceived to have high differentiation, as in purchasing an automobile. An alternative sequence, “ do-feellearn,” is relevant when the audience has high involvement but perceives little or no differentiation within the product category, as in purchasing aluminum siding. A third sequence, “ learn-do-feel,” is relevant when the audience has low involvement and perceives little differentiation within the product category, as in purchasing salt. By choosing the right sequence, the marketer can do a better job of planning communications. THE MAIN OBJECTIVE OF JOY SALT TO CREAT BRAND IMAGE IN THE MIND OF CONSUMER SO THAT THEY NEVER SWITH OUR PRODUCT IN FUTURE

Step 3: Designing the Message

Having defined the desired response, the communicator moves to developing an effective message. Ideally, the message should gain attention, hold interest, arouse desire, and elicit action (AIDA model-see the first column of Figure 5-5). In practice, few messages take the target audience all the way from awareness through purchase, but the AIDA framework suggests the desirable qualities of any communication. Formulating the message will require solving four problems: what to say (message content), how to say it logically (message structure), how to say it symbolically (message format), and who should say it (message source).

• THE MESSAGE IN OUR ADD WE PROVIDE BEST QUALITY FOR INDIAN IN INDIA BY INDIAN.
• THE MESSAGE IN OUR ADD WE PRVIDE HEALTHY PRODUCT

Message Content

In determining message content, management searches for an appeal, theme, idea, or unique selling proposition. There are three types of appeals:

• Rational appeals:- engage self-interest by claiming the product will produce certain benefits such as value or performance. It is widely believed that industrial buyers are most responsive to rational appeals because they are knowledgeable about the product, trained to recognize value, and accountable to others for their choices. Consumers, when they buy certain big-ticket items, also tend to gather information and estimate benefits.
• Emotional appeals:- attempt to stir up negative or positive emotions that will motivate purchase. Marketers search for the right emotional selling proposition. Even when the product is similar to the competitions’ product, it may have unique associations that can be promoted (examples are Harley-Davidson and Rolex). Communicators also work with negative appeals such as fear, guilt, and shame to get people to do things (brush their teeth) or stop doing things (smoking). In addition, positive emotional appeals such as humor, love, pride, and joy are often part of the message content.
• Moral appeals :-are directed to the audience’s sense of what is right and proper. These are often used to exhort people to support social causes. An example is the appeal “ Silence _ Death,” which is the slogan of Act-Up, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power. Multinational companies wrestle with a number of challenges in developing message content for global campaigns. First, they must decide whether the product is appropriate for a country. Second, they must make sure the targeted market segment is both legal and customary. Third, they must decide if the style of the ad is acceptable or customary in all of the countries. And fourth, they must decide whether ads should

  be created at headquarters or locally. FedEx, the package express carrier, has chosen to create ads at its U. S. headquarters. Long known for its humorous ads, the company recently created a campaign that ran in 20 countries with only minor changes, instead of being customized or created in each local area. This campaign helped FedEx deliver the message that “ we’ve become a global company.”

IN OUR ADD WE ARE USE RATIONAL & EMOTION APPEAL BECAUSE INDIAN CONSUMERS ATTRACT MORE BY USING THIS TOOL

Message Structure

Message effectiveness depends on structure as well as content. For example, a communicator may think that one-sided presentations that praise a product would be more effective than two-sided arguments that also mention shortcomings. Yet two-sided messages may be more appropriate, especially when some negative association must be overcome. In this spirit, Heinz ran the message “ Heinz Ketchup is slow good” and Listerine ran the message “ Listerine tastes bad twice a day.” Two-sided messages are more effective with more educated audiences and those who are initially opposed. The order in which arguments are presented is also an important part of message structure. In the case of a one-sided message, presenting the strongest argument first has the advantage of establishing attention and interest. This is important in newspapers and other media where the audience often does not attend to the whole message. With a captive audience, however, a climactic presentation might be more effective. In the case of a two-sided message, if the audience is initially opposed, the communicator might start with the other side’s argument and conclude with the strongest argument.

Message Format

The communicator must develop a strong message format. In a print ad the communicator has to decide on headline, copy, illustration, and color. For radio, the communicator has to choose words, voice qualities, and vocalizations. If the message is to be carried on television or in person, all of these elements plus body language (nonverbal clues) have to be planned. If the message is carried by the product or its packaging, the communicator has to pay attention to color, texture, scent, size, and shape. Web-based messages have the flexibility to combine aspects of print, radio, and television messages with a variety of special effects and interactive features to attract, retain, and reinforce audience interest.

Message Source

Messages delivered by attractive or popular sources achieve higher attention and recall, which is why advertisers often use celebrities as spokespeople. In particular, messages delivered by highly credible sources are more persuasive, so pharmaceutical companies have doctors testify about product benefits because doctors have high credibility. Three factors that underly source credibility are expertise, trustworthiness, and likability. Expertise is the specialized knowledge the communicator possesses to back the claim. Trustworthiness is related to how objective and honest the source is perceived to be. Friends are trusted more than strangers or salespeople, and people who are not paid to endorse a product are seen as more trustworthy than people who are paid. Likability describes the source’s attractiveness; qualities like candor, humor, and naturalness make a source more likable. The most credible source would score high on all three factors.

Step 4: Selecting Communication Channels

Now that the message has been designed, the communicator must select efficient communication channels to carry it. For example, pharmaceutical salespeople can rarely wrest more than 10 minutes’ time from a busy physician. Because personal selling is expensive, the industry has added multiple channels: ads in medical journals, direct mail (including audio and videotapes), sampling, telemarketing, Web sites, conferences and teleconferences, and more. All of these channels are used in the hope of building physician preference for particular branded drug products. In general, firms can use two types of communication channels: personal and nonpersonal.

Personal Communication Channels

Personal communication channels involve two or more persons communicating directly with each other face to face, person to audience, over the telephone, or through e-mail. These channels derive their effectiveness through the opportunities for individualizing the presentation and feedback. Amazon. com, for example, invites on-line customers to sign up for e-mailed reviews and recommendations from experts in their choice of book, music, toy, and home improvement subjects.

Companies can take several steps to stimulate personal influence channels to work on their behalf:

• Identify influential individuals and companies and devote extra effort to them:-10 In industrial selling, the entire industry might follow the market leader in adopting innovations.
• Create opinion leaders by supplying certain people with the product on attractive terms:- A new tennis racket might be offered initially to members of high school tennis teams at a special low price.
• Work through community influential such as local disk jockeys and heads of civic organizations:- When Ford introduced the Thunderbird, it sent invitations to executives offering a free car to drive for the day; 10 percent of the respondents indicated that they would become buyers, and 84 percent said they would recommend the car to a friend.
• Use influential or believable people in testimonial advertising:- This is why sports equipment and apparel companies hire top athletes such as Tiger Woods as spokespeople.
• Develop advertising that has high “ conversation value”:-Ads with high conversation value often have a slogan that becomes part of the national vernacular, such as Nike’s “ Just do it.”
• Develop word-of-mouth referral channels to build business:- Professionals such as accountants will often encourage clients to recommend their services.
• Establish an electronic forum:- Toyota owners who use Internet services such as America Online can hold on-line discussions to share experiences.

Non-personal Communication Channels

Non-personal channels include media, atmospheres, and events. Media consist of printmedia (newspapers, magazines, direct mail), broadcast media (radio, television), electronic media (audiotape, videotape, CD-ROM, DVD, Web page), and display media (billboards, signs, posters). Most nonpersonal messages come through paid media. Atmospheres are “ packaged environments” that create or reinforce the buyer’s leanings toward product purchase. Law offices are decorated with fine rugs and furniture to communicate “ stability” and “ success. site is colorful and animated to reinforce the brand’s upbeat image. Events are occurrences designed to communicate particular messages to target audiences. Tokyo’s Mitsukoshi Department Store, for example, arranges special cultural events and arts exhibits in the flagship store to maintain a sophisticated, cultured image in the minds of upscale shoppers. Although personal communication is often more effective, nonpersonal channels affect personal attitudes and behavior through a two-step flow-of-communication process. Ideas often flow from radio, television, print, and Internet sources to opinion leaders and from these to the less media-involved population groups. This two-step flow has several implications. First, the influence of nonpersonal channels on public opin Developing Effective Marketing Communicationsion is mediated by opinion leaders, people whose opinions are sought or who carry their opinions to others. Second, the two-step flow shows that people interact primarily within their own social group and acquire ideas from opinion leaders in their group. Third, two-step communication suggests that marketers using nonpersonal channels should direct messages specifically to opinion leaders and let them carry the message to others. This is why many software makers give opinion leaders a preview of new programs before they are sold to the general public.

Step 5: Establishing the Marketing Communications Budget

Industries and companies vary considerably in how much they spend on promotion; expenditures might amount to 30-50 percent of sales in the cosmetics industry but only 5-10 percent in the industrial-equipment industry, with variations from company to company. How do companies decide on the promotion budget? Here are four common methods:

• Affordable method. Many companies set the promotion budget at what management thinks the firm can afford. However, this method ignores the role of promotion as an investment and the immediate impact of promotion on sales volume; it also leads to an uncertain annual budget, making long-range planning difficult.
• Percentage-of-sales method. Many firms set promotion expenditures at a specified percentage of sales (either current or anticipated) or of the sales price. Supporters say this method links promotion expenditures to the movement of corporate sales over the business cycle; encourages management to consider the interrelationship of promotion cost, selling price, and unit profit; and encourages stability when competing firms spend approximately the same percentage. On the other hand, this method views sales as the determiner of promotion rather than as the result, and it provides no logical basis for choosing the specific percentage.
• Competitive-parity method. Some companies set their promotion budget to achieve share-of-voice parity with competitors. Although proponents say that competitors’ expenditures represent the collective wisdom of the industry and that maintaining competitive parity prevents promotion wars, neither argument is valid. There are no grounds for believing that competitors know better what should be spent on promotion. Company reputations, resources, opportunities, and objectives differ so much that promotion budgets are hardly a guide. Furthermore, there is no evidence that competitive parity discourages promotional wars.
• Objective-and-task method. Here, marketers develop promotion budgets by defining specific objectives, determining the tasks that must be performed to achieve these objectives, and estimating the costs of performing these tasks. The sum of these costs is the proposed promotion budget. This method has the advantage of requiring management to spell out assumptions about the relationship among dollars spent, exposure levels, trial rates, and regular usage.

• Budget for media

  Budget assign to me is rs. 5cro. The distribution will be following

  Electronic media

  Cost of tv ad. 1 CRO

  Prime time :- 9PM-11PM because mainly women are watching TV show

  Channels: star plus , Zee tv, sony tv.

  Cost prime time Rs70000/min.

  Cost in off peak time: rs 25000-30000/min

  Hoardings

  30*40 quantity cost 4, 00, 000

  Postures

  Cost rs. 2, 00, 000

  Print media

  News papers 4, 00, 000, Magazines 3, 00, 000

  Print media on our product packing

  Cost -free just printing cost which already occur

  Step 6: Developing and Managing the Marketing Communications Mix

  Having established a communications budget, companies must decide how to allocate it over the five promotional tools. Companies differ considerably in their allocations, even within the same industry. Avon concentrates its promotional funds on personal selling, whereas Cover Girl spends heavily on advertising. Still, because companies are always searching for more efficiency by substituting one promotional tool for another, they must be careful to coordinate all of their marketing functions.

  Promotional Tools

  Each promotional tool has its own unique characteristics and costs.

  • Advertising:- Advertising can be used to build up a long-term image for a product trigger quick sales (a Sears ad for a weekend sale). Advertising can reach geographically dispersed buyers efficiently. Certain forms of advertising (TV advertising) typically require a large budget, whereas other forms (newspaper advertising) can be done on a small budget. We discuss advertising in more detail later in this chapter.
  • Sales promotion. Although sales-promotion tools-coupons, contests, premiums, and the like are highly diverse, they offer three distinctive benefits:

  • (1) communication (they gain attention and usually provide information that may lead the consumer to the product)

    (2) incentive (they incorporate some concession or inducement that gives value to the consumer)

    (3) invitation (they include a distinct invitation to engage in the transaction now). Sales promotion can be used for short-run effects such as dramatizing product offers and boosting sales. Later in this chapter we discuss sales promotion in more detail.

  • Public relations and publicit:- The appeal of public relations and publicity is based on three distinctive qualities:

  • (1) high credibility (news stories and features are more authentic and credible than ads)

    (2) ability to catch buyers off guard (reach prospects who prefer to avoid salespeople and advertisements)

    (3) dramatization (the potential for dramatizing a company or product). This underused technique is examined later in this chapter.

  • Personal selling. Personal selling has three distinctive qualities:

  • (1) personal confrontation (it involves an immediate and interactive relationship between two or more persons)

    (2) cultivation (it permits all kinds of relationships to spring up, ranging from a matter-of-fact selling relationship to a deep personal friendship)

    (3) response (it makes the buyer feel under some obligation for having listened to the sales talk).

  • Direct marketing. All forms of direct marketing-direct mail, telemarketing, Internet marketing-share four distinctive characteristics: They are

  • (1) nonpublic (the message is normally addressed to a specific person);

    (2) customized (the message can be prepared to appeal to the addressed individual);

    (3) up-to-date (a message can be prepared very quickly); and (4) interactive (the message can be changed depending on the person’s response).

  Factors in Setting the Marketing Communications Mix

  Companies must consider several factors in developi

  ng their promotion mix:

  • Type of product market. promotional allocations vary between consumer and business markets. Although advertising is used less than sales calls in business markets, it still plays a significant role in building awareness and comprehension, serving as an efficient reminder of the product, generating leads, legitimizing the company and products, and reassuring customers about their purchases. Personal selling can also make a strong contribution in consumer-goods marketing by helping to persuade dealers to take more stock and display more of the product, build dealer enthusiasm, sign up more dealers, and grow sales at existing accounts.
  • Push-versus-pull strategy. A push strategy involves the manufacturer using sales force and trade promotion to induce intermediaries to carry, promote, and sell the product to end users. This is especially appropriate where there is low

  PRODUCT RANGE AND MESSAGE APPEALS

  Joy Salt – Desh Ka Apna Namak

  TARGET MARKET IS HUSEHOLD USER

  Market

  JOY Salt today has a 43 per cent market share in the national branded salt segment. It sells an average of 40, 000 metric tons per month and is available for its consumers at over 12 lakh retail outlets .

  Product

  Consumed by nearly 40 million households each month, JOY Salt is a vacuum evaporated iodised salt produced by JOY Chemicals at LUDHIANA, on the western coast of Gujarat in one of the most integrated inorganic chemicals complex in India. It is manufactured through a technologically advanced production process by evaporating sea brine in steam-heated vacuum evaporators and is almost completely free from extraneous matter to reach consumers in the purest possible form. JOY Salt has a fine crystalline structure and dissolves very quickly. It contains requisite amount of Iodine that ensures proper mental development of children and also prevents iodine deficiency disorders in adults. It undergoes stringent quality standards prior to its distribution to different parts of India.

  Applications

  Due to its purity and reliable quality, JOY Salt is widely used by hotels and restaurants, housewives, and by manufacturers of packaged snacks, colas and namkeens. As a salt JOY Salt enhances and accentuates the flavour of vegetables and meat to add the required taste in food. Additionally, as a carrier of the essential nutrient iodine, JOY Salt suppor