406 The Marketing Book
Forget Price. Understand the consumer’sCost
to satisfy that want or need.Forget Place. Think Convenience to buy.Forget Promotions. The word in the 90s is
Communications.If marketing communications are to be effec-
tive, it is vitally important that we move from a
situation of specialization – in which marketers
are experts in one area of marketing commu-
nications – to people who are trained in all
marketing communications disciplines.
At the same time, as we have already seen,
the process of change requires us to look at
focused marketing approaches rather than
adopt the litany of the 1960s – that of mass
marketing. With the recognition that all con-
sumers are different and hence have different
needs and wants – even of the same product or
service – there is the need to ensure that we are
able to communicate with them as individuals
rather than as a homogeneous unit. The
increasing concern is the desire to communicate
with ever small segments of the global market
and, in an ideal world, reach a position where
we can communicate with them individually.
This desire manifests itself in the increasing
drive towards direct marketing techniques, the
most rapidly growing sector of the marketing
communications industry.
There needs to be a clear statement of the
desired outcomes of marketing activity as a
whole. This requires a totally new approach,
since most people working within marketing
have been brought up in a disintegrated
environment.
Objectives need to be longer term and
expressed more strategically than would be the
case for the short-term objectives of more
individual marketing tactics.
Schultz (1999) argues that as the tools of
marketing communications are progressively
diffused into a variety of specialisms, there has
been a natural inclination for those individual
specialists to focus entirely within their own
area – often to the detriment of the brand or
communication programme. The consequence
has been a natural drift towards less integrated,
less co-ordinated, less concentrated marketing
communications activities.
The task of IMC is to strategically co-
ordinate the various elements of the promo-
tional mix in order to achieve synergies and to
ensure that the message reaches and registers
with the target audience.
Novak and Phelps (1994) have suggested
that there are several important dimensions to
the process of integration: The creation of a single theme and image.
The integration of both product image and
relevant aspects of consumer behaviour in
promotional management, as opposed to a
focus on one or the other of these two.
The co-ordinated management of promotion
mix disciplines.Relationship marketing
A development of the marketing communica-
tions process, as it moves through the early
2000s, is the area known as relationship market-
ing. With the ability to reach consumers on a
highly segmented or even one-to-one basis, so
too has come the recognition that the process
itself can become two-way. Hitherto, marketing
communications primarily concerned itself with
the process of communicating tothe end con-
sumer. By encouraging the process of feedback,
we can now communicate withthe consumer.
Increasingly, companies such as Nestl ́e and
Heinz have announced moves into club for-
mats which enable the establishment of a direct
relationship between the manufacturer and the
consumer. Many loyalty programmes, such as
the Frequent Flyer and Frequent Stayer pro-
grammes now run by most international air-
lines and hotel groups, have a similar objective
of establishing a relationship with the con-
sumer, to their mutual benefit. The increasing
use of customer loyalty programmes within the