Syllabus

Supported by

Modules

Module 1. Foundation: Marketing and Communications »
Module 2. The Marketing Communications Mix: Disciplines and Applications »
Module 3. The Media Landscape »
Module 4. Understanding Communications and Customers »
Module 5. IMC Strategy »
Module 6. IMC Planning and Execution »

Objectives

This module will provide students with an overview of why a revolution is taking place in our understanding of marketing communications and its role within the marketing mix. Students will learn how research into consumer psychology and discoveries from neuroscience into how communications work is challenging decades of marketing thinking. It will further provide new perspectives and fresh insights into how the very nature of advertising, marketing and brand management is changing as a result of research and technology and social and media trends.

It will introduce key concepts in the role and practice of integrated marketing communications planning and evaluation within the marketing and brand management process as a whole, and be relevant to both B2B and B2C marketers.

Radical transformations of the media landscape and consumer behaviour arising from the internet, customer databases and other digital developments are not only changing budgets but also how we think about marketing communication.

Topic 1 - Introduction to the contemporary marketing process as the context for marketing communication

• How marketing works as a process of mediation between the unique identity, competencies and assets or resources of the organisation and the needs, interests and resources of customer groups/segments and individuals
• How marketing involves the whole organisation and how integrated consistent communication creates and maximises distinctive value for individuals and communities/markets
• Trends and discoveries in society, communication and information technology, and marketing thinking that have led to dramatic changes in the marketing landscape

Topic 2 - Introduction to marketing communication and IMC

• What IMC actually is and how all communication benefits from integration
• The four Cs of integrated communications: collaboration, coherence, consistency and congruence
• The difference between 'communication tools' and 'communication disciplines'
• Key terminology used in marketing communications, including IMC, CRM, channels, touch-points, brand, decision-making unit, push and pull strategies

Topic 3 - The essentials of the marketing organisation and planning process

• The typical organisational structure and agency relationships for a brand to manage communications with consumers
• Why IMC is difficult for brands and the type of consequences on the marketing organisation
• What concepts, models, tools and processes are applied and why
• The five core skills for the communication planning team (branding, communication, the customer, media, social/organisational)

Topic 4 - The IMC planning process

• The background to the open planning process as a method of IMC planning and evaluation
• The overall structure and cycle of the process of planning and evaluating integrated communications, from strategic review to final evaluation

Objectives

This module provides an essential background in the skills and thinking, applications and characteristics, strengths and weaknesses, practices and priorities of the various marketing disciplines. It provides a foundation in the classic marketing communication disciplines but also fully reflects the changes shaping the very different 21st Century market space. Not only is there a shift towards integration but also towards one-to-one customer focus and service.

The impact of information/digital technology has led to a fusion of techniques and major shifts in understanding and practice. This module introduces students to the benefits and applications of customer information management technology, in particular the marketing database, and the importance of investment in a suitable technology infrastructure to manage the customer interface.

Marketers now have to learn to balance and integrate across traditional media, online/digital media and 'real-world' offline contacts. Marketers are also learning to balance the ying and yang of communications, as they move from the classic 'push' oriented advertising model to an increasingly 'pull', or consumer led model. The contemporary challenge is to create persuasion, buzz and fame with permission-based interactivity, rich emotional experiences and loyal relationships. This means the customer must be at the heart of the communications; communications start with the customer, with the planner determining the right combination of mass and personal communications, 'pull' and 'push', affective experience and persuasive selling.

Topic 1 - Direct and database marketing

• Defining modern direct marketing: its philosophy, role, opportunities, applications to different industry sectors
• Why direct marketing is playing an increasingly important strategic role in business and marketing strategy and building brands
• The strategic role of information/customer databases in planning and setting communications objectives
• Using addressable media - direct mail, telephone, email, SMS, internet etc.
• Understanding the basic and advanced measurement techniques from allowable costs to lifetime values
• Setting campaign objectives, implementing and analysing DM campaigns

Topic 2 - Sales promotion

• Defining sales promotion, merchandising and point-of-sale/benefits/applications
• How sales promotion builds brands
• The role of sampling, couponing, premia, price-off, rebate offers continuity programmes and internet promotions
• Understanding the structure of the marketplace - agencies, suppliers, professional bodies
• How to budget and evaluate results from sales promotion

Topic 3 - Advertising

• Understand the origins of advertising, its growth and development and size
• How advertising fits into the communications and marketing mix
• Provides an overview of advertising management, its functions and processes
• How to set advertising objectives, strategies and budgeting
• How advertising's affects consumer behaviour and perception
• How to brief and evaluate advertising campaigns

Topic 4 - Digital marketing

• How digital channels have transformed the way major brands approach marketing communications
• Integrating online marketing communications with traditional marketing campaigns
• Understanding the digital, online customer
• How to apply permission-based marketing
• How to brief and evaluate creative work and web design
• How to attract website visitors - the tools; search engine, banners, affiliates, online PR, sponsorship (covered in depth under media landscape module)
• Buying and managing digital suppliers, agencies and service providers

Topic 5 - Public relations

• What is public relations, its role, scope and application to different industry sectors
• What are the different public's PR addresses as target audiences
• Writing for the media, handling PR enquiries and negotiating coverage
• Setting PR objectives and writing the business case
• Brief and evaluating a PR campaign/ legal and regulatory constraints

Topic 6 - Design, packaging and logos

• Understanding modern design and packaging, its role, size, scope and applications within key industry sectors
• How design, logos and industry sectors help define and build brands
• Designing the brand world: online and offline spaces and their role in advertising, brand building and marketing communication

Topic 7 - Marketing research and customer insights

• What is marketing research, its role, size, scope and applications within key industry sectors
• What type of information can MR promote; market size, product evaluation, customer satisfaction, customer behaviour, customer identification and segmentation
• The role of marketing research and customer information in decision making
• Marketing research's techniques; qualitative, quantitative, interactive and behavioural, on and offline
• How to design a research survey, sampling, weighting and questionnaire design
• Challenges of business-to-business research

Topic 8 - Personal selling and service management

• What modern personal selling is, its role, opportunities, applications to different industry sectors
• Experiences, service encounters, critical incidents and moments of truth in value generation and brand building
• Salesforce and service management and organisation

Topic 9 - Exhibitions and events

Students will gain a practical understanding of exhibitions and events; value, role, planning, organisation, logistics and evaluation. Applications, benefits and evolution methods are discussed.

Topic 10 - Sponsorship

This unit explains the growth and importance of sponsorship, its applications to different sectors, highlighting the different applications and types of sponsorship opportunities.

Topic 11 - Field marketing

The critical field marketing plays in brand distribution, trialling, testing and product launch. How field marketing is planned, budgeted, organised and managed. Case studies demonstrate the different ways field marketing can be applied and its return-on-investment quantified.

Topic 12 - Internal marketing

Using internal marketing to employees can be a valuable element in the communications strategy. Case examples of the traditional employee communication and applying thought leadership as a business and communications strategy.

Objectives

The media landscape is increasingly fragmented. Developing efficient and effective contact strategies is a new and significant challenge, while potentially providing smart marketers with richer scope. Search marketing, for example, is a way of responding in real-time to a consumer's immediate interest.

The module provides students with a clear overview of the entire 360° media landscape, covering the full scope of opportunities for the brand to interact with and communicate with private and business consumers. These include classic paid for advertising media, as well as new on and offline media opportunities in the UK, including the internet and email, word of mouth, personal selling/service and reality media such as packaging and store design. Students will learn how to start with the consumer and their changing individual media consumption patterns, in order to devise the most efficient and effective combination of traditional, digital and offline media for the intended combination of 'pull' and 'push' communications.

The module will include a review of the essential characteristics, relative costs and applications of each of the media. This includes the selection, planning, negotiating and buying of media and their measurement. Students will gain a foundation in the dynamics and mechanics of the different media and contact channels.

Learning outcomes:

• Understand the roles and value of different media, interplays and dynamics, different media/relative syllabus/websites
• Recognise the importance of media-neutral planning
• How to plan and apply audience research
• Setting advertising objectives and developing marketing strategies
• How to plan and evaluate on and offline media campaigns - the key metrics
• Preparing media briefs and how to construct a media budget
• Planning, scheduling, negotiating and buying on and offline media: the process and timescales
• Different processes and time frames between different media
• The importance of testing individual media and the 'multiplier effect'
• The different pre- and post test research methods
• Understand the range of full service agencies, specialist agencies and media buying shops
• Understand the legal and regulatory constraints for each medium

Objectives

Markets consist of individual people responding to their own desires and habits. In order to communicate with them, marketers need to understand how communication works and how people experience and process marketing and other forms of communication. They need to understand who their different customers are and why, when and how they do or do not buy from the brand.

This module provides students with a broad understanding of the essential theory behind these important topics, and reflects both classic ideas and the significant new knowledge that has emerged in recent years. During the last decade, the traditional persuasion models of how advertising (in all its forms) works have been increasingly challenged and changed. New techniques for understanding and profiling consumers and markets have been developed, re-evaluated and adapted.

This module is designed to give students essential insights into human psychology, it reveals how communication is processed, and how marketing communications actually influence the consumer (whether prospects or customers, business or private consumers, high or low value buyers). Students will not only understand human psychology as it applies to consumers, but also how behavioural research can be converted into insights to drive more effective and creative communications.

Topic 1 - Consumer psychology and attitudes

• The nature of identity and how consumers experience themselves as individuals
• Attitude formation: cognitive, affective and conative mental processes, and why they matter
• The relationship between buyer behaviour and attitudes
• The nature of loyalty from behavioural and attitudinal perspectives
• The concept of hierarchy of effects and important theories of the relationship between cognition, affection and conation

Topic 2 - How communication works

• How customers process information
• Why everything communicates/ left brain and right brain
• How communication creates meaning and why it is different for different people, communities and cultures; an introduction to semiotics, gestalt and hermeneutics and their implications for marketing communications
• How communication creates attitudes: the classic hierarchy of effects model of advertising and the cognitive model of persuasion and new understanding
• The nature of brands and what they mean for consumers
• The concept of synergy, and the media multiplier

Topic 3 - Value

• What 'value' is and its relationship to customer needs
• Human needs and three models of need states (Maslow, Max-Neef, Richard Barrett)
• The implications of value for brand and communication management
• Essentials of how to research and measure value
• The nature and importance of insights and their relationship to data and knowledge
• The practical importance of ethics in marketing communications

Topic 4 - Segmentation and buyer behaviour

• How and why buyer behaviour varies
• Forms of segmentation: geodemographic, behavioural, attitudinal, lifestyle, needs based, decision-making role
• Types of buyers, based on product, situation and personal characteristics
• Life stages and occasions as planning tools
• Implications for customer management: capturing and using customer information

Topic 5 - The customer experience and brand relationship

• What is meant by customer experience and experience marketing
• Communication and experience: the service-image cycle and its implications
• The relationship cycle and its implications for communication/relationship planning
• Customer relationships and relationship management
• Image and brand management and the importance of trust

Objectives

This module will enable students to develop strategies based on the profile of the category customers, applying Pareto and other analysis to understand the financial segmentation of the market and of the brand's customers. They will similarly learn how to do and apply research and database analysis to generate insights about consumer needs and behaviour and develop strategies for value creation, including the brand's value proposition and campaign/programme level communications objectives and priorities.

Students will also learn how to take a robust financial and continuous learning approach to this challenge, establishing and allocating budgets and then evaluating and learning how to improve both effectiveness and efficiency, drawing on quality management techniques and continuous learning.

Finally, it will also touch on the major organisational implications of IMC planning and execution. It will discuss the challenge of implementing and sustaining a unique brand identity throughout the organisation using strategic identity management, internal marketing and other techniques to create a strong culture, shared vision and processes and personal objectives that are aligned to the brand.

Topic 1 - The task of the brand manager

• Brand equity and the task of the brand manager
• The key components of strategy: goals/objectives; resource allocation, action plans and tactics
• The dimensions of brand identity and corporate image and their influence and value within marketing strategy and integrated communications

Topic 2 - The strategy process

• How the integrated communication plan is intrinsic to the business and marketing strategy
• Market intelligence (including buyer behaviour): how research, analysis and market audit assist
• The Ten-Steps strategic workflow and its two components: the Brand Review and the Communication Review sub-sets
• How to conduct a business audit to ensure an integrated approach to managing people assets, processes and technology

Topic 3 - Brand Review I: Equity and brand strategy

• Brand equity and customer equity and their significance for strategy and communication
• The Pareto principle and the economics of customer relationships
• The implications of the value pyramid and lifetime value for marketing and communication strategy
• Setting high level KPIs/objectives

Topic 4 - Brand Review II: Identifying and profiling markets

• How to use an audit checklist for profiling the market
• Using a database to identify and profile target audiences, using the database
• How to develop and use customer segmentation by understanding attitudinal, behavioural and financial dimensions of customers
• Determining and developing the value proposition/ setting communication objectives
• Setting high level KPIs/objectives, budgets, making investments and allocating revenues

Topic 5 - Brand Review III: Assessing and developing business readiness

• The integrated organisation: the challenge of managing people and processes
• Strategic identity management; applying the Stellar identity and value model
• Developing the information technology infrastructure, including CRM or marketing database resources

Topic 6 - The Communications Review: Creating the communications strategy

• 360 degree planning: reviewing and making decisions on customer touchpoints, occasions and media/channels
• Reviewing and making decisions on creative objectives; the CODAR tool
• Developing and using analytics and brand tracking capabilities
• Setting high level KPIs/objectives and budget setting

Topic 7 - Research and analytics methods

• The role and use of the market audit, market research and database analytics for understanding customers in relationship to market and communication strategy
• Determining knowledge gaps and the value of knowledge
• How to identify and auditing contact points (or touch-points)

Objectives

Successful IMC planning is a combination of science and art, rigorous discipline and creative freedom, inspiration and practical project management. The successful process is based on strong insights, clear objectives and a carefully developed set of interrelated and harmonious communications, which may be developed and executed by a number of internal departments and external agencies. The combination of communications needs to efficiently interact with the right set of consumers with the most effective set of creative communications in order to achieve synergy and the highest possible return on investment. The process therefore needs to ensure that all members/creatives in the communication team are set clear and insightful objectives. It needs a strong discipline and workflow management process and an intelligent system to handle the complexities of evaluation. Best practice also means developing a continuous learning culture and collaborative team process.

Topic 1 - Open Planning: media and disciplines in an integrated world

• Barriers to integrated marketing communications
• How changes in technology have influenced the media planning and the rise of data-driven relational communication strategies
• The Open Planning theory of how media and disciplines interact
• A conceptual channel matrix: personalised/general messages; personal and mass media
• Principles of media neutral planning: what media and disciplines share in common

Topic 2 -The process of planning and evaluating an integrated set of communications

• The overall IMC/integrated communications process using the Open Planning method
• Planning campaigns and relationship or loyalty programmes, differences/intersections
• The structure, components and workflow of an integrated communication process
• How to create an integrated team and organise the players in the process
• The agency team: what to expect from each professional group and service provider

Topic 3 - How to develop and use the Master Creative Brief

• How to transform marketing objectives (from Module 4) into a communications plan
• Budget setting: how to allocate the right overall budget
• The use of a single master level creative brief in integrated planning
• Integrated marketing planning tools; models of universal planning; the CODAR model

Topic 4 - How to develop the optimum channel strategy

• Developing the hierarchy of communication objectives using an integrated/universal approach
• Matching the communication objectives to the media/brand experience
• Channel mix and media optimisation tasks and tools
• Creative pre-testing and establishing objectives/KPIs

Topic 5 - Workflow Management: how to make the process efficient and effective

• Optimising communication objectives/quality of the communication brief
• Logistics of executing an integrated communications plan
• Managing channel conflicts and implications for managing and paying agencies

Topic 6 - Evaluating and learning from integrated communications

• The challenges of evaluating multi-channel communications
• A recap of basic testing methodology: isolating differences and creating controls; variation, reliability and basic statistical principles
• How to use CODAR for evaluation / testing techniques in IMC
• Types of metrics and their application to channels
• Integration of metrics - satisfaction, brand tracking, ad/communication recall, response, sales etc

Book online -
choose your study option below

Intensive

27 Apr 09 (3 weeks)

 

In-company
If you would like to find out more about the in-company option, email our in-company qualifications team.

Request a prospectus
If you're not yet ready to book, we'd be pleased to send you a full prospectus.