INTEGRATED GLOBAL MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS

Sunarto Prayitno
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DEVELOPING IGMC PROGRAMS

The nine keys areas to develop effective IGMC programs: Create Global Processes and Standardization Start with Customers, Not Products or Geographies Identify and Value Customers and Prospects Identification of Customer and Prospect Contact Points Align the Organizations Interactive Response Capabilities Manage Multiple Systems
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DEVELOPING IGMC PROGRAMS

The nine keys areas to develop effective IGMC programs (cont.): Value the Brand Focus on Financial Measures Create Horizontal Organizational Structures

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1. Create Global Processes and Standardization

The ability to create systems and processes that can cross borders, cultures, and businesses becomes absolutely critical. Until the organization has standardized methods of operating, producing, transporting, and communicating, it will be nothing more than a group of geographically based elements struggling to find common ground with its other parts.

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2. Start with Customers, No Products or Geographies

IGMC is founded on communicating with all internal and external customer groups. Who they are, what they do, what interests they have. Works backward to design products and communication.

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2. Start with Customers, No Products or Geographies

Start with: How does the customer or prospect behave to our product category now? Do they use it? Have they use it? Might they use it? What information do they have about our product, services, or brand now? What would they need or like to know? How can we make that information or knowledge or material available to them?

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2. Start with Customers, No Products or Geographies

In this approach is the need to consider all the organizations stakeholders in the marketing communication process. Whom have an interest in the firm and can impact future success. Non-customer stakeholders can range from government authorities to lobbyists and pressure groups.

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2. Start with Customers, No Products or Geographies

However, most internal and external stakeholders have limited influence on income, affecting only the level of income flow generated from end users. The end users are the only people who generate income for the firm. If the organization has no customers, it has no future no matter how supportive or influential the other stake holders may be.
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3. Identify and Value Customers and Prospects

Commonly we value customers based on the income flows they have produced in the past and their potential for the future. Further, we can value prospects based on what income flows they might create for the firm in the future. We look at customers and prospects as assets.

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3. Identify and Value Customers and Prospects

How to manage those assets so they produce the greatest return to the company. The finite resources of the organization must be directed toward the best customers or prospects either to continue current income flows or to generate new or increased it. In the IGMC approach we make great used of information technology to capture and analyze vast amount of information about customers and prospects. Intellectual Property of IMCS

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4. Identification of Customer and Prospects Contact Points

In todays crowded and confused marketplace it is not so much how an organization wants to communicate with customers and prospects, but understanding how and where and in what ways the customer and prospect already come into contact with the firm.

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4. Identification of Customer and Prospects Contact Points

The same is true with consumers and prospects. They observe product users in the marketplace. They see product evaluation in the media. They listen to or ignore advocates. Undoubtedly the paid, planned, and measured communication program, the organization develops are only a part of what exist in the marketplace and to which customers and prospects alike, along with employees and stakeholders, are exposed.

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4. Identification of Customer and Prospects Contact Points

The task of the IGMC manager is not just to prepare and deliver integrated marketing communications program. It is also to understand how and where and in what ways customers and prospects come into contact with the brand and the organization.

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4. Identification of Customer and Prospects Contact Points

The task is process: to understand the system, not just the specific elements involved, And then to begin to manage global communication programs in an integrated fashion.

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Marketing Communication as a Process

Media Relations Sponsorships Internal Training Investor Relations Government Relations Human Resources External Training

Mobil
Events Community Affairs Human Resources Graphic Identity Collateral Advertising

Sales Promotion
Source: Don E. Schultz & Philip J Kitchen, Communicating Globally: An Integrated Marketing Approach, NTC Business Book, 2000

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5. Align the Organizations Interactive Response Capabilities

For the most part of companies have had limited listening posts through which to access customer needs and wants, relying primarily on sales force reports and formalized market research and increasing on customer service activities and data.

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5. Align the Organizations Interactive Response Capabilities

The primary focus of the organization in the 21thcentury marketplace must be its ability to respond to customers, not just communicate with them on an outbound basis. The outbound model must be replaced so that the organization can create and manage interactive communication with customers, often in real time.

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5. Align the Organizations Interactive Response Capabilities

Further, the organization must be focused totally on the customer and prospect so that all areas combine to provide an integrated global communication message to every customer and prospect.

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6. Manage Multiple Systems

Marketing practitioners have always tried to simplify and synthesize marketplace systems and communication approaches (e.g. the 4Ps marketing), as if, by controlling those elements, we could control customers and competitors. The same is true with marketing communication (e.g. the AIDA model).

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6. Manage Multiple Systems

Obviously a global marketplace is far more complex and certainly not simple to summarize and synthesize. The manager of the 21st century must recognize that there are multiple markets, multiple marketplaces, multiple customers, multiple channels, multiple media, and so on.

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Evolution and Revolution

Historical Marketplace
Marketer Information Channel Channel Channel

Current Marketplace

Twenty-First-Century Marketplace

Mktr

Mktr

Mktr

Mktr

Mktr

Mktr

Channel
Information Media Media Media

Media Media Information Customer Customer

Source: Don E. Schultz & Beth E. Barnes, Strategic Brand Communication Campaigns, NTC Business Book, 1999.

Customer

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6. Manage Multiple Systems

The first task of the manager will be to identify the marketplace in which the organization is operating. That will depend on the customers and prospects to be served. In many case the manager will quickly discover that there are customers in all three marketplaces. And there may will be some in totally new and different marketplaces specific to the organization.

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6. Manage Multiple Systems

The key challenge is to recognize the marketplaces and the various customers, and then define IGMC programs to serve them. Often the this analysis reveals the need for multiple marketing and communications programs.

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6. Manage Multiple Systems

While there is commonly a need for an umbrella approach for the brand, generally specific communication programs a needed for individual markets and customers and prospects. The most part of the global marketing communication manager is involved in multiple markets for multiple customer groups.

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6. Manage Multiple Systems

Do not confused this multiplicity of programs with differences in geographies, languages, and cultures. The differentiation will come from different customers with different needs seeking different types of information, and responses from the marketing organization.

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6. Manage Multiple Systems

One of the best examples of how globalization has changed many on the traditional planning approaches in marketing communication has been development of global media systems and brands.

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6. Manage Multiple Systems

For example, CNN and BBC circle the globe. They can receive in most countries where television is available. Yet these organization generally broadcast in only a single language, English. MTV is a bit different. MTV, while featuring the same artists and concepts, changes the language and some of the music to fit the local country, though the basic approach is the same.

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6. Manage Multiple Systems

In print, Playboy magazine is published in multiple countries, in local languages, with local stories and personalities. But the Playboy concept is the same. Thus what we see today is the development of circular groups of customers and prospects around the globe.

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6. Manage Multiple Systems

They have the same interests, purchase the same products, and are attuned to culture and approach they have adopted no matter where they live or what language they speak. This globalization of markets is a key element in the development of marketing communication programs today and will be more so in the future.

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7. Value the Brand

The brand developed and became important to customers and prospects not because of any plan effort on the part of the marketing organization, but simply because the product and the product name delivered good value to those who purchased the product or service.

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7. Value the Brand

It wasnt that marketing organizations didnt understand or value the brand, it was simply that they paid little attention to the management and growth of the brand in and of itself. It has only been in the last twenty or so years that brand creation, growth, maintenance, and above all value have begun to be recognized as an organizational priority.

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7. Value the Brand

Therefore, true management of brands, branding, and brand communication is a fairly recent phenomenon. The brand was not terrible important in the productor marketer-driven marketplace.

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7. Value the Brand

Better products, newer features, incremental innovations, and brand extensions were what marketer-driven organizations were and still are all about. The same is true for distribution-driven marketers.

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7. Value the Brand

The brand is a name to differentiate products and services from others in the distribution system. It was generally not a major factor in the success of the firm. It is only when all the traditional marketing activities becomes commodified or easily replicated that the value of the brand comes to the fore.

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7. Value the Brand

In a customer-driven marketplace the brand, and the brands relationship with customers and prospects and other shareholders, will be the primary competitive advantage organization will have. As a result, to compete in any of the marketplaces, it is important to understand and manage the brand properly.

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8. Focus on Financial Measures

To be honest, many marketing and communication activities in the past have been weak in measurement, particularly when an attempt was made to relate marketing communication spending to financial returns.

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8. Focus on Financial Measures

New technology and improved financial management mandate that marketing communication manager be able to relate their financial expenditures on marketing and communication to the financial returns received as results of those investment.

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8. Focus on Financial Measures

Whether this is considered accountability, stewardship, or simply ROI (return on investment), marketing communication managers must be able to relate what was spent or invested to what was received in return.

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8. Focus on Financial Measures

In the IGMC approach, we use financial investments and returns from customers and prospects as the basis for evaluation. Part of the difficulty in measuring the return on marketing communication investments has been a lack of precision in setting objectives.

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8. Focus on Financial Measures

If you cant measure, you cant set realistic objectives. If you dont set objectives, you cant measure. Given that the firm has finite resources, the ability to invest those recourses in activities that will generate the greatest returns is critical.

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8. Focus on Financial Measures

Thus in the IGMC process we focus on financial objectives and use attitudinal measures to understand customer behavior and to better understand our success in the marketplace.

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9. Create Horizontal Organizational Structures

Managers have always organized thinks on a vertical basis. Organizations have been built on vertical structures such as divisions, sectors, units, and the like. Yet the global marketplace demands horizontal, not vertical, structures, the ability to work across business units, the ability to cross borders and cultures.

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9. Create Horizontal Organizational Structures

The demand today is for singular units that can access and use all the talent the organization to focus on customer needs and wants. This demand for horizontal, not vertical, approaches is perhaps the most difficult challenge for any organization attempting to operate globally.

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9. Create Horizontal Organizational Structures

Global communication must cross borders, geographies, and cultures effortlessly and quickly. That requires horizontal structures, not vertical ones. That means communication must move across and through and around and among groups and firms. That is horizontal organization in action.

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9. Create Horizontal Organizational Structures

The organization must align and integrate itself to focus on customers and prospects. The organization must align and integrate all the various elements in the communication process. That means internal integration and organization so that marketing, sales, operations, production, and the like are all working together and focused on the customer.

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9. Create Horizontal Organizational Structures

Similarly, external suppliers must be aligned and integrated. Internal operations, which generally include employees, channels, and support units, must be align as well. Likewise, external communication in the form of advertising, public relations, sales promotion, direct marketing, events, and the like must be integrated and aligned with a customer focus.

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