Week 10

Before purchasing anything online or off the shelf, a smart way to figure out how good a product is, or rather how reliable the brand in which the product is from, Is a simple Google search of both the keywords of the product followed by the brand it is from, and almost guaranteed if the product is at least real, there will be reviews and links to the official website or Facebook page. That my friends are the freedom we have as consumers today, and marketers cannot puppet us like before. Making their products seem what they are not.

It is this reason Vollero says in his paper on Integrated Marketing Campaign (IMC), that the traditional IMC that has worked in the 90s are now almost irrelevant and moves to a negotiated brand, meaning it is now on the company to plan ahead to mediate consumers and the brand, even in the absence of a marketer. As shown by the figure below.

But how it is accomplished is why companies need to know or even master an omni-channel marketing, ensuring no matter where the consumers view or interact with your product, you have already designed the webpage, social media site or any other form of channel to be presentable and consistent throughout. Consistency is important as Lonoff says in her article, 7 ways to create a successful integrated marketing campaign, is through also consistent messages as it may take up many impressions on an individual for the message to sink in.

One interesting way is of the emergent strategy from Vollero, where the consumers are relied on to drive a brand message, either through collaboration or engagement. Which reciprocity comes in to decide the balance of input from the managerial and consumers. As shown below engagement is now of importance because this way it gets consumers involved and talking about it, so co-creation with consumers would be sort after.

Hybrid communication mix would then be the pinnacle of modern marketing melding all elements of traditional and modern IMC, the video from Dunkin Donuts, creatively shows how it was achieved by using traditional methods such as billboard advertisements at certain bus stops, along with carefully planned bus rides, where commuters would experience the smell of coffee when the Dunkin Donut jingle is played. This is ingenuity to me and for marketers alike, the future holds some anxiety inducing processes but nevertheless exciting opportunities.