Overview 🔎

Learning about contemporary PR, advertising and marketing communication concepts that underpin businesses and organisations operating in private, public and third sector environments today. This project equips me with the knowledge and skills required for developing your skills as a PR and communications professional in digital environments, including web, social and mobile. The project helps me to develop an understanding of the way different communication disciplines interact to deliver the notion of ‘brand’ via what is often referred to as ‘integrated marketing communication’. As well as the opportunities afforded by digital communication, the unit also considers the dangers of instant communication to organisational reputation and how this is being managed in professional practice.

Problem & Solution 🤝

• A (brief) analysis of the business environment – key external and internal factors that have affected the brand’s overall performance;

• A review of the organisation’s current Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) objectives (strategy) and activity (tactics);

Goals/Requirements: • A set of viable recommendations for the period 1 July – 31 December 2021 in relation to a maximum of three IMC objectives; and

• A schedule for implementation of the IMC plan which includes some detail of actions and timings.

Process 🛣

Contemporary Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) consist of strategically integrating communications and interactive experiences on targeted audiences and individuals. It is used to communicate what the brand stands for effectively. This ensures that the company is seen and heard by the people. It is important to use IMC to ensure that not only people remember the brand but become loyal customers due to their trust in the brand. By having that trust enables companies to generate revenues. This essay will reflect on the importance of branding and how having a character for a brand is the foundation to having a strong IMC and a successful brand. This essay will make use of Nike, the biggest sports retail brand in the world, to reflect on how they were able to create a successful brand.

Throughout the branding and digital marketing module, I have learnt about the importance of branding, how companies use IMC to build a community and thus generate revenue to the company. More specifically, by using the anthropomorphism theory of seeing the brand as a person, it has helped me further understand and generate effective IMC.

Branding, in other words is a form of humanising a company to allow people to be able to connect emotionally in a form of a relationship. This is similar to how people connect with one another. By understanding the psychological and determining benefits of having human relationships allows a company to better understand how each IMC framework affects the consumers in different ways. To be able to see the brand as a person, the brand need to first have a strong identity. Its identity does not just consist of its name, logo, colours, products or services but also a personality that people can relate to. Thus, a brand persona can be expressed well in a character or icon representation based on the customer’s lifestyle. This enables people to create associations with the brand in the consumers’ minds. It is through these associations that will enable brands to be relatable.

The exercise that I did for part one was to present a marketing communication plan for Nike. Nike is known to be the biggest sports retail brand in the world even though it is not the first in the market. However, their dominance in the market is due to their marketing-oriented business model. Nike ensured that they have clear brand identity, a brand that breaks barriers. Their communication plan does not only consist of having good sneakers but also desirable as they repeatedly communicate the importance of making a difference. This enables people to associate Nike as a brand that will generate confidence in people. Therefore, it is important to have clear missions and vision in a company as well.

After ensuring that the brand is communicating the values well, they will need to ensure that the people do associate the brand in the same way. This can be done through the use of questionnaire, interviews and research. By ensuring that the brand association matches with the brand values, it enables me to create an effective IMC.

Being able to understand the identity of a company helps to ensure that all of the marketing communication plans are effective and purposeful. It is also easier to understand and generate marketing plans that will create an impact and generate sales. IMC looks into the way people communicate and build relationship with one another and apply them into strategic communication plans and interactive experiences. By building this relationship, it enables the company to create a sense of community with their consumer. Being able to relate with them and thus causing them to want to resonate and relate with you. This is similar to how people connect with one another and slowly build trust to one another. The fundamental of communicating to people is being used to create tactics for brands to communicate with their consumers. Some of these ideas in relation to digital marketing.

Results 🎁

Some of the marketing plans that I did for Nike consist of ensuring that they give clear messages regarding their values of as a brand in every digital platform. As each platform caters to different demographic, Nike should use each platforms based on their target audience to create a sense of community-based on their age and lifestyle. I also created marketing plans to gain the attraction of new consumers to be a part of the Nike community. However, I wanted to make the community stronger by enabling people to be able to relate more. That is why I created marketing plans that are more directed to the people based on their demographic, which was in the UK. This enables people who are in the UK to be able to relate to Nike much more. Thus Nike will be able to have a higher revenue and increase in loyal customers in the UK. This will increase their sales to not just come from the US which takes up 40% of their sales.The difference between strong and weak brands lies in their ability to have a strong brand persona and how much people can relate to the brand. A strong brand not only attracts new customers but can also have strong customer loyalty. This can only be done through having strong communication plans. This is why companies need to develop IMC plans and strategies that helps to communicate the brand’s identity.

Lynsey Fox Marketing Researcher

Takeaways 📣

creating a collaborative environment is crucial in developing more holistic and ideas for campaigns. Generating different ideas with one another and brainstorming helps to give different perspectives and generate new and better ideas.

Questionnaire