MKTG 408

An Introduction to
IMC

Chapter 2: The Role of

IMC in the
Marketing Process
Dr. Dina
Bassiouni
 Recapping Imp concepts:
What is:
Marketing, Value, CRM
Marketing Communications Mix
ATL, BTL, OTL
IMC
Advertising and Culture

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 Learning Objectives
Theories of Advertising
Corporate reasons for Advertising
Social Uses of Advertising
Controversial Advertising
Advertising as an Ideology
Marketing & Promotions Process
Model
Marketing Strategy and Analysis
Target Marketing Process: STP
 Adaptation of Marketing Mix

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 What is the role of
Advertising in brand
marketing?
The role of Advertising and
promotion might include:
pushing a sale
but also involves associating the
brand with particular values,
images and attributes: that is,
‘positioning’ the brand.

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 The Strong vs Weak Theory
a.k.a
Hard vs Soft Sell Theory
 John Philip Jones (1990) has categorized
theories of how advertising ‘works’ into
strong and weak theory.

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 Activity 1!
• List all the communication
sources you can think of that
might potentially influence your
perception of a brand.

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 Activity 2!
• Make a list of arguments in
Favor of advertising.
• Make a list of arguments Against
advertising.

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 Some Corporate
Communication
Objectives of Advertising:
 Awareness ( brand, offers &
promotions....)
 Build Brand Equity
 Communicate benefits/ attributes??
 Set apart from competitors
 Rebranding activities (change of
logo....)
 Launch or re-launch

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 Some Corporate
Communication
Objectives of Advertising:
(cont’d)
 Generate new markets for an
existing brand/ new product uses
 Address a PR crisis
 Motivate employees
 Positioning and re-positioning of a
brand
 Generate rapid sales
 Change behaviour and attitudes

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 Social Uses of Advertising:
 Advertising is not simply a commercial tool-
it is also a form of social communication
which reflects our lives and culture back at
us.

 Examples:
 Embrace Life:
 [Link]
 Smoking campaign
 [Link]
 Children see, children do campaign
 [Link]
 Egyptian anti-drug campaign
 [Link]
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 Social Uses of Advertising:

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 Thought!
• Is any publicity good
publicity????

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 Controversial Advertising:

 Mercedes Ad
[Link]

 Volkswagen ad
[Link]

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 STP through controversy:

• Ad agencies working for fashion

and fragrance brands like FCUK,
Benetton, Tom Ford and YSL and
have sometimes found it useful to
generate some controversy,
creating an artificial sense of
rebellion or edginess for the brand,
and appealing to younger
consumers

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 Advertising as an
‘Ideology’
 An ‘ideology’ refers, among other
things, to values and ideas which
are presented as normal, benign
and self-evident.

 Advertising and promotion can be

seen as a unified ideological
system collectively promoting the
values of consumption as a
lifestyle.
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 Promotional Culture

“Advertising has a unique ability to

juxtapose images of consumption with
other cultural values and practices
(prestige, love, family, social status,
friendship, attractiveness, success,
happiness etc. etc.) and implicitly link the
two sets of values, the commercial and the
non-commercial, creating a hybrid cultural
system: ‘promotional culture’”

(Wernick, 1991)
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 Advertising agencies can be
seen as cultural intermediaries,
how so?
 Advertising acts as a bridge from
commerce to culture.
 They take symbolic meanings from non-
commercial culture and link them with
brands to create commodity-signs.
 Consumption then is richly symbolic as
well as functional.

 Examples???

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 This ad from the 1960s is
investing the car with
implied values of social
status and personal
power, reflecting the
positioning strategy at the
time for the Jaguar brand

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 Marketing & Promotions
Process Model

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 Marketing Strategy and
Analysis:

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 Target Market Process:

• Brand marketing includes these

three elements: positioning,
segmentation and targeting
(STP).

• Advertising and promotion can

support all three

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 S.T.P. (reminder):

 Segmentation: who? how can the market/

audience/readership be most usefully defined and
what are the implications for marketing
management?

 The more a market is segmented, the more

precise is the marketer’s understanding of it.

 However, the more segmented the market

becomes, the fewer consumers there are in it.

 When planning a promotional effort, managers

must consider whether the target segment is
substantial enough to support individualized
strategies or will there be a need to customize
messages to address different segments.
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 S.T.P. (reminder):

• Targeting: how? Through which

channels can the chosen segment be
reached at least cost and highest
impact?

• Positioning: why? do people buy

one brand and not another? What is the
differential?

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 Positioning could be based
on:
 Attributes/Benefits – a common approach is
setting the brand apart from competitors on
the basis of specific characteristics or benefits.
Marketers attempt to identify salient benefits,
which are those that are important to
customers when making purchase decisions.
 Examples
 Price/Quality – using price as characteristic of
the brand. If a product is positioned as high
quality, price may be a secondary
consideration. Another option is to focus on
product quality or value offered at a
competitive price.
 Examples
 Use/Application – associate the brand with a
specific use. This approach can be an effective
way to expand usage of a product.
 Examples
26  [Link]
 The Marketing Planning
Process:

Product Distribution
Decisions Channels

Promotional Price
Strategy Decisions

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 Relating Price to Ads and
Positioning:
Price must be consistent with
perceptions of the product
Higher prices communicate
higher product quality
Lower prices reflect bargain
or “value” perceptions
Price, advertising, and distribution must
be unified in identifying product position

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 Distribution and Promotion:

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 Promotional Strategy:
 Push strategy involves pushing the
product to the consumers by inducing
channel members to carry the product
and promote it to final consumers.

 Pull strategy is when the producer directs

its marketing activities toward final
consumers to induce them to buy the
30 product and create demand from
 The Concept of a “BRAND”:

 Brands can be described in terms

of four dimensions
1. A badge of origin
2. A promise of quality and performance
3. A reassurance for consumers
4. Can transform experience

 Commodities (cars, shoes, soda)

have no identity: brands confer
identity and allow consumers to
exercise choice and preference.
31 “Brand Identity”
 Question!
• Why do we brand products?

Develop & Build &

Build & enhance foster
maintain attitudes relationships
brand toward the between the
awareness company, consumer
and interest product, or and the
service brand
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 Question!
What’s the difference between:
Brand Identity and Brand Equity?

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 Question!
• Branding & Packaging must work together
to help create a position and/or image
(T/F) Explain.

• Answer: Packaging is crucial in creating brand

identity and image. Packaging can be used to
communicate, hold the consumer’s attention, and
differentiate a brand from competitors.
– Other uses of packing include:
• Making a favorable first impression
• Distinguishing one product from all the others competing for
attention
• Communicating information
• Satisfying legal requirements regarding composition and content.
• Carrying sales promotion messages (premiums, contests,
34 sweepstakes)
 Brand ‘values’ and
‘personality’:
 Brands consist of tangible things
(logos, materials, colours,
performance) and also symbolic
“values”
 Brand communications planners
think of the brand ‘personality’ as a
metaphor for the values that
consumers attribute to the brand.

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 The Case of Marlboro
Man
 Philip Morris & Co. had originally introduced the Marlboro
brand as a woman's cigarette in 1924.
 Starting in the early 1950s, the cigarette industry began to
focus on promoting filtered cigarettes, as a response to the
emerging scientific data about harmful effects of smoking.
 Most filtered cigarette advertising sought to make claims
about the technology behind the filter.
1. Filtered Cigs are feminine
2. Marlboro is known to be a brand for woman’s cigs
 Leo Burnett decided to tackle the matter differently
creating ads completely void of health concerns or health
claims of the filtered cigarette.
 Marlboro Man was first conceived by Leo Burnett in 1954.
The advertisements were originally a way to popularize
filtered cigarettes, and by refusing to respond to health
claims matched the emergent, masculine image of the
New Marlboro which at the time were considered feminine.
 In 1955 when the Marlboro Man campaign was started,
sales were at $5 billion. By 1957, sales were at $20 billion,
representing a 300% increase within two years.

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 More on “Brand Positioning”
 Positioning is used to illustrate the
relative place a product, service or
brand occupies in the market in terms
of its perceived attributes.
 Positioning is sometimes defined as the
‘complex of psychological associations
linked with a product (or service or
brand)’.
 The aim is to create a differential
advantage for the brand.

 For illustration, think of three rival brands in a

similar market segment: what values do you
associate with each brand? How do they differ?
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 Key Positioning

Brandname
Master BrandKey

Brand communications planning

Being It takes a kettle

for Unilever Pot Noodle

upfront, taking the and 4 minutes to
have a hot meal with no
piss, behaving badly.
washing up.
Bold, unexpected, Packed with noodles.
subversive, Available in a range
absolutely of intense
confident. flavours.
Always under a
8. Essence quid.

Temptingly bad food

It's perfect Pot Noodle

for young is quick,
people - hot and
quick, easy, trashy.
cheap, hot,
satisfying and
tastes
gorgeous

3. Insight
There are certain times when all you
want to eat is crap - the worse it is the
better it feels

1. Competitive 2. Target
Environment 16-24 year old single men who've
Everyday foody snacks that satisfy got better things to do than think
hunger, when proper cooking is out about food, like drinking, having
of the question, e.g. sandwich, sex and sleeping.
toast, Supernoodles. We need to When they need to fill a gap they
stand out as a cuttting edge youth want something hot and tasty that
brand.
requires no effort.

Define here further details like draft/final, country/region, date etc.

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 Brand Positioning Key:
1. Competitive environment
2. Target
3. Insight
4. Benefits
5. Values & personality
6. Reasons to believe
7. Discriminator
8. Essence

 Example: Don’t lose your neighbors campaign for Linkdsl

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Role of..
• So, advertising and promotion
can fulfil a wide range of
supporting roles in brand
marketing
• Probably the most important
overall element is the power of
communication to create and
maintain brand positioning.
Thank you
