Integrated Marketing Communication Program For Pillow

Executive summary:

Various PILLOW COMPANIES such as SATYAPAL AND ARCHIES etc. design various integrated marketing program. Although common objective of all IMC program is increase brand awareness, sale and design a unique image in customers mind. In order to address and attract customer all PILLOW companies launch various campaigns. To communicate with public and customers they advertise their campaign on TV, magazine, online and radio. Through their advertisement they want to design their brand image in customer mind. Besides advertisement, they also carried out promotion activity, public relation, direct marketing etc. Direct marketing is although time consuming but most effective tool for communication.

Various PILLOW companies also organize various events in order to communicate properly with customers. Main purpose of this is to increase the sale of PILLOW. Before designing IMC program the company carries out market research in order to judge customers behaviors toward the products. For research they design the strategy.

Before designing integrated marketing communication program it is necessary to judge consumers behavior toward PILLOW, it is necessary to known customers liking and disliking, these data provide various support during designing of IMC program.

Although there are various media available for communicating but Print ads in magazine and news paper is seen most effective medium followed by television. After Research survey done by various PILLOW companies, it has been found that respondents were less brand conscious. There is no particular trend among customers. “Durability” and “comfort” are the major attributes considered by customer while buying PILLOW.

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Marketing plan plan

Situation Analysis:

Every organization faces a lot of problem at present time so it became necessary for every organization that before setting any objective carried out situation analysis in order to recognize strength, weakness, opportunities and threat present in our organization. According to Sally and John, marketing plans are “the written document or blueprint for implementing and controlling an organization’s marketing activities related to a particular marketing strategy”. A successful marketing plan is able to improve organizations’ profits and growth, uses in objective setting and monitors results.

So to gain a successful market plan it is necessary to understand the current situation comprehensively and trends affecting the future of the organization. There are two major reasons to explain why situation analysis plays a vital role in developing marketing plan.

Firstly, dynamic marketing environment will lead to uncertainty, threats and opportunities for marketers. Marketing managers who success to know changes in environment through situation analysis can lead their companies to capitalize on opportunities and cope with threats created by changes.

Then, systematically analyzing situational environments in order to identify our customers and understand their needs. There are certain opportunities in pillow industry, such as increase construction of houses, hotels etc increase market and market share through integrated PR, and advertisement and promotional campaign. Besides opportunities there is a lot of threat that create barrier for entry in to PILLOW industry. These threats are as follow:

• Increasing competition
• High price and decrease loyalty toward brand

Main objective behind situation analysis is to known analyze customer, competitor and there strategy.

Marketing objective:

After situation analysis we became able to known our organization strength, weakness, opportunities and threat present in environment. It provides a lot of support in setting of objective. There may be a lot of marketing objective, some are as follow:

• Increase market share
• Create awareness among target audience. Use excessive advertising especially using media preferred by the target market.
• Create product belonging and position among buyer’s mind

Marketing strategies:

To achieve this objective we implement various strategies.

Target market:

Urban personality:

• High income group
• Hotel owners

Marketing Mix Strategies :

• Main aim of pillow companies is to produce durable and comfortable pillow in various designs. This is mostly done to capture attention. They produce new and innovative pillow to capture more market share. Several pillow brands jump in the Indian market by producing high quality of pillow.
• Pricing range from Rs 500 – Rs 1000
• Pillow does not need too much promotion.
• The distribution channels for Pillow Company are as follows.

MANUFACTURER (COMPANY)

PILLOW SEND TO SHOWROOM

CUSTOMER

Internal Process

It is as follows.

Sample

Cutting

Stitching

Washing

Pressing and labeling

Finishing

Dispatched to store

Packing and containers

Explanation

• The sample is first send by the buyer. It’s called a gold seal sample.
• In cutting dept, one piece is placed on the other and in this way a bundle of 50 PILLOW is made. Then the cutter cuts it.
• In the stitching dept, front end or the upper part is made. Then backend is made and they are assembled together in the assembly end.
• Washing can be done by simple garment wash or through the stone wash and chemicals. It is done according to the buyer’s request.
• In finishing dept, the quality of pillow is checked and mistakes are rectified.
• Then the pillow dispatched to the store.
• Then packing is done. It is done according to the buyer’s request. Then they are sent to the containers.

Implementation tactics :

• Launch a blind ad campaign on billboards and magazines in all a class areas of major cities and magazine.
• Heavy advertising on TV, newspapers and magazines
• Set displays of pillow in showrooms and major dealer outlets in all cities.
• Reduce number of billboards, television and magazines advertisements.
• Continue Advertising

Evaluation, Monitoring and Control:

Goal of marketing plan is to achieve market objective that are established before implementation of marketing plan. We evaluate and control our strategic tactic by comparing our result with standard established before setting of plan, by measuring customer satisfaction and brand loyalty. If result is less than our standard than there any is default in implementation and monitoring.

The people who are responsible for the monitoring and control of the marketing plan involves, the Marketing Executives, Sales Managers, Media Managers, Market Research Departments, and the Production Managers.

Some activities must be carried out for precisely and closely evaluating the effectiveness of the strategies and tactics for example the gathering and structuring of data regarding market, product, consumers and the pricing trends, then the generation of daily sales report should be maintained and then in the end continuous reconfirming of the marketing budget and activities by the managers of different divisions.

The Integrated Marketing Communication Plan

Integrated Marketing Communications is a term used to describe a holistic approach to marketing communication. It aims to ensure consistency of message and the complementary use of media. The concept includes online and offline marketing channels. Online marketing channels include any e-marketing campaigns or programs, pay-per-click, affiliate, email, banner to latest web related channels for webinar, blog, micro-blogging, RSS, podcast, and Internet TV. Offline marketing channels are traditional print (newspaper, magazine), mail order, public relations, industry relations, billboard, radio, and television.

A company develops its integrated marketing communication programme using all the elements of the marketing mix (product, price, place, and promotion)

So Integrated marketing communication is integration of all marketing tools, approaches, and resources within a company which maximizes impact on consumer mind and which results into maximum profit at minimum cost. Promotional activities include Advertising, sales promotion, and personal selling activities. It also includes internet marketing, sponsorship marketing, direct marketing, database marketing and public relations. And integration of all these promotional tools along with other components of marketing mix to gain edge over competitor is called Integrated Marketing Communication.

Situational analysis :

First of all we carried out we carried out situation analysis in order to understood problem. In this we identify our competitors and their strategy for example Archie’s carried out competitor analysis and find out various strategy adopted by other pillow companies. After situation analysis Archie’s find out that the California gold rush whose trademark blue pillow have been an American clothing staple for generations, had fallen on hard times by 2004 and needed a change in strategic direction.After seven consecutive years of falling sales, profits turned to losses in 2003. Management responded to the decline by moving its manufacturing plants offshore and by introducing a new line of discount pillow in showroom.

Under situation analysis we also analyze financial position of company.

IMC objective :

There are various IMC objective set by pillow company after situation analysis in order to accomplish their goal. Some of objective is as follow:

• To Increase sale by 50% in six month
• To Increase brand awareness
• To Increase customer loyalty
• To Increase desire of customer
• To Increase repeat purchase
• To measure customer satisfaction
• To create relationship with customer on personal level
• To control and observe public opinion
• To receive feedback from customer on regular basis

Media objectives state the impact that you expect to have on an audience in terms of reach and frequency. Objectives must meet the following criteria:

• Measurability
• Quantifiability
• Realism
• time-specificity

Budget determination:

We need to establish what amount of money will be needed to achieve the IMC objectives.Although there is various methods present to determine what amount of money invest on IMC. These methods are as follow:

• Affordable Method
• Percentage of Sales Method
• Unit of Sales Method
• Zero Budgeting Method

In affordable method we invest money on IMC as soon as we can afford. However in Percentage of Sales Method amount of money invest on IMC tool depend on what amount of sale we expect to achieve during course of year. These percentages are mostly adhoc and sometime based on judgment. In Unit of Sales Method Company allocate a certain proportion of cost of product to promotion. Thus say if ex factory cost of the product is say Rs 100/ – the company will allot Rs.10/- toward promotion cost. Hence if company expects sale 10,000 unit of the product, thus allocated IMC budget will be Rs.100.000/-. In Zero Budgeting Method, company determine what need to achieve in term of sale and then rework backward in term of what money will be needed to be allocate to deliver those customers. Thus if company believe that in order to achieve their sales, 10,000 customers need to purchase their jeans once during the planning period than it will work out what number of prospective customers will needed to be targeted through ATL and BTL activity, in order to achieve that result.

IMC Methodologies

There are various component of integrated marketing communication that is as follow:

Advertisement

Advertisement is any paid form of non-personal presentation and promotion of ideas or products by an identified sponsor. Objective of any ads is to increase brand awareness.

Objectives:

There are mostly three objective of advertisement campaign, that is as follow:

– Inform

– Persuade

– Remind

1. Inform:

Informative advertising, seeks to tell the market about the pillow, explain the new quality added in pillow, provide information on pricing, and build awareness of both the pillow quality and the company. Such objectives are normally pursued at the launch of a new quality pillow, or re-launch / up-date of an existing pillow.

2. Persuade:

Here objectives are to encourage the target audience to switch brands, make the purchase, and create a preference in the market for the pillow as opposed to its competition. Advertising of this nature is required in highly competitive markets, where a range of pillow design competes directly with each other. In such circumstances businesses often seek to differentiate their pillow through Comparison Advertising – either directly or indirectly comparing its pillow to that of its competitors.

3. Remind:

Reminder Advertising, is used to maintain interest and awareness of a well established pillow brand in the market, often in the latter stages of its product life cycle. It is often used at the Point-of-Purchase to remind consumers of the Brand.

Advertisement budget:

Having identified advertising objectives, the advertising budget must be set. Determining exactly how much a business should spend on advertising to achieve the desired level of sales. Commonly, the decision is based on past experience of expenditure on advertising, and the sales subsequently achieved. There are however a number of factors that can be considered in setting the advertising budget

Factors influencing the setting of advertising Budgets:

Product life cycle stage:

New products in the ‘Launch’ stage of their Product Life Cycle, will normally require greater expenditure on advertising to create product awareness, and encourage consumers to trial the product. Whilst products that have reached ‘Maturity’ in their product life cycle, will often require smaller advertising budgets to achieve the level of sales required.

Competition:

The number of competitors in the market, and their expenditure on advertising competing products, will influence a business to spend to a similar or higher degree.

Product Differentiation:

A product very similar to other products on the market may require greater expenditure on advertising to differentiate it from its competitors.

Advertising Strategy:

Developing an Advertising Strategy to achieve the objectives of a campaign, requires that consideration be given to both the ‘Message’ which will be communicated and the ‘Media’ through which it will be sent

Advertising Message

An advertising campaign, no matter how much money is spent, no matter what media is used, will only be successful if the Message appeals to the target audience. Given the level of advertising which bombards the average consumer, a successful advertising message must stand out amongst the advertising clutter. Thus marketing professionals are required to be creative, imaginative and innovative in developing the advertising message, both in terms of what is said, and How it is said?

What is said…

This is often referred to as the ‘Big Idea’, and will normally address the key benefits sought by the target audience, motivating the audience to pay attention. Given the constant search for new ways to appeal to target audiences, it is difficult to categories the content of advertising messages which a business may send; below we include a couple of examples of actual message strategy.

For example:

Satyapal brand, pillow and clothing:

Satyapal. Keep it Simple.

Satyapal, It’s True.

Fashion is nothing without people.

In this example massage that draw attention of youth is quality must should be greater because without quality, fashion is zero.

How they say it…

During delivery of advertisement massage in customer mind take the personality symbol, lifestyle and musical as consideration.

In addition the tone of the advertisement will need to be established, which can be either positive or negative. The advert may therefore promote positive feelings of fun, contentment, and happiness or take on a more negative, somber, or even threatening tone.

Selecting Advertising Media: In addition to deciding upon the content, style and tone of the advertising message, the media through which the message will be communicated to the target audience must also be selected. Mostly for pillow advertisement we select media such as magazine, newspaper and outdoor. TV rarely used for advertisement of pillow.

In order to select the most appropriate media, consideration must should be given to various advantage and disadvantage of various media. Strengths and weakness of various media are as given below:

Television :

Strengths

• Dynamic attention getting media, combining visual, sound and animated stimulus.
• Strong potential Impact & High market coverage
• Good at demonstrating products

Weaknesses:

• Highly expensive
• Poor at communicating lengthy technical information

Newspapers:

Strengths:

• Targeting is possible through profiling readership
• Good level of market coverage

Weaknesses:

• Static media, not suitable for product demonstration
• Potential for poor reproduction, sometimes limited to black and white print
• Short-life span, i.e. today’s newspapers become tomorrow’s rubbish

Magazines:

Strengths:

• High quality reproduction, of color images
• Targeting is possible through specialist publications
• Good pass on readership

Weaknesses:

• Static media, not suitable for product demonstration
• Lengthy lead-time between advert being placed and magazine being published

Outdoor:

Strengths:

• High repeat exposure to advert
• Relatively low cost
• Low levels of competition, in terms of advertising clutter

Weaknesses:

• Limited audience selectivity / targeting possible
• Static media, not suitable for product demonstrations
• Difficult to monitor effectiveness

“Make them your own” is the name of the campaign launched by Archies to boost the sale of pillow. This is one of the most aggressive marketing and advertising strategy followed by pillow to move up the sales. The theme of this marketing campaign is narcissistic youth. It will feature youth who will check themselves out in pillow. The advertising will target the age group of house hold wives. Mostly Archie’s also select TV, Magazine, and Newspaper as a media for delivering there massage about their product in customer mind.

PRINT AD OF PILLOW

Sale promotion:

Sale promotion is collection of various consumers and trade promotional tool such as rebate, discount, gift, contest, coupons, price deal, contest game, sampling etc. to increase sale of products. There are certain objectives of sale promotion. However main objective is to increase immediate sale because Sales Managers are under great pressure to produce results quickly.

Objective:

There are certain objectives of sale promotion that are as follow:

To increase immediate customer sale

To increase support among the marketer’s sales force.

To gain the support of the trade in marketing the product

Reasons for Growth of Sales Promotion:

There are number of reason for growth of company in sale promotion some are as follow:

1. Increasing Competition

Due to increase in competition, companies are finding it increasingly difficult to compete on quality. They are therefore resorting to more innovative methods of sales promotion. In order to have a competitive advantage over its competitors like ARCHIES, SATYAPAL.JNO, once a year has a grand sale of up to 50%.

2. Customers Have Become More Price Sensitive:

The increase price sensitivity is direct result of rampant inflation. Economic support this trend further, as a result customers and dealer became more sensitive toward price. If the customers get branded PILLOW at half the actual price, then they are definitely going to make huge purchases of SATYAPAL PILLOW because they want value for their money, as they are price sensitive.

3. Sales Promotions Generally Create an Immediate Positive Impact on Sales:

Advertising, personal selling and other methods of promotion produce slower impact on sales in compared to sales promotion. Sales promotions are mostly for short duration, for a specified period, leading to a sense of urgency in consumers to buy now. This creates an immediate positive impact on sales.

4. Products have become more standardized:

In many product categories there is proliferation of brand or line extension and me too many brands. Most of brand perceived by consumer varies little in price. Due to this it became very difficult for advertiser to reposition their product in customers mind. Due to which they focus on more and more on sale promotion to get immediate result.

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6. Advertising Has Become More Expensive and Less Effective:

All the advertising media have become quite expensive. Audio-visual medium, which is considered as the most effective for short-duration ads, may cost in excess of Rs. 1 lakh for a 10 second exposure during prime time. In many cases, consumers have reached a point of boredom due to excessive advertising on TV. Firms with small budgets cannot compete with big companies, which spend huge sums of money on advertising. For these small budget firms, sales promotion is a more cost-effective promotion method to produce sales results.

7. Trade Has Become More Powerful:

At present time Retailers and wholesalers have became more powerful and demand extra facility from company to promote their product. Company has no other alternative.

Besides these there is also various kind reason such as Excess Stocks, Impulse Buying Is Increasing, Sales Promotions Maximize Profits etc.

Promotion Strategies:

Promotional strategy is mostly run to change consumers’ behavior, to increase brand image, to increase profit, to increase sale of various good. There are mostly two kind of sale promotion, one is directed toward consumer and other one is directed toward trade such as dealer, supplier, retailer etc.

Consumer sale promotion tool:

there are a lot of promotional tool used to increase sale. Consumer sale promotion is directed toward consumer. It stimulate consumer to purchase their product rapidly. There are a lot of tool that are as follow:

Price deal:

Price deal is temporary reduction in price of product. There are two type of deal: cents-off deals and price-pack deals. Price deal is given at various times to stimulate purchase of pillow.

Coupon:

A coupon is typically a printed certificate giving the bearer a stated price reduction or special value on a specific product, generally for a specific period. Various company issue various kind of coupon that contain various discount price, customer get the advantage of this discount and purchase pillow at low price.

Offer:

There are various kind of gift is offer by various pillow industries. For example the branding magazine said that the archives will be conducting a marketing campaign centered on the idea that your favorite songs and your favorite pillow, make the perfect fit. Customers who try on a pair of the retailer’s new pillow will receive a free iTMS download.

The campaign will be marketed with print and TV ads, and will feature TV commercials with musicians singing covers of their favorite song while wearing satyapal jeans. The company will be offering those collected covers in a CD at retail ARCHIES locations for customers who make a US$60 or more ARCHIES purchase.

Premium:

sometime various companies like Jno, SATYAPAL etc. offer some gift or at bargain price to encourage customer buying.

Sampling:

Some company like American eagle’s to known customer feedback provide free simple of various PILLOW according to their preference.

Advertising Specialities:

Advertising specialities also call a promotional product. It mostly given to our loyal customers. It includes various card like birthday card, New Year card. It is mostly done to retain old customer.

Trade sale promotion tool:

Objectives of Trade Sales Promotion:

• Gain/maintain distribution
• Influence resellers to promote product
• Influence resellers to offer price discount
• Increase reseller inventory
• Defend against competitors
• Avoid reduction of normal prices

There are various sale promotion tools that stimulate trade to promote company product. There are a lot of trade sale promotion tools some are as discussed below:

Trade Allowances:

Trade allowances are short-term special allowances, discounts, or deals granted to resellers to stimulate reseller to rapid purchase of their product.

Point-of-Purchase Display:

Point-of-purchase displays are generally used at the retail level to call customer attention to a featured product. In this company employees observe every retail shop and that retail shop that display more company product will be winner of special gift or prize

Trade Shows:

A trade show is periodic, semi periodic public event at which supplier displays their Pillow and provides information about pillow quality and price to potential buyer.

After implementing these different techniques of sale promotion we monitor result and evaluate these by comparing with objective set before implementation of plan.

Public relation

Public relation is nothing but creating a favorable relation for organization and product which is done through used of various communication channel and tool. So public relation is mostly done to improve the image of company and build good image in customers mind.

So public relation may be define as “Public Relations is a set of management, supervisory, and technical functions that foster an organization’s ability to strategically listen to, appreciate, and respond to those persons whose mutually beneficial relationships with the organization are necessary if it is to achieve its missions and values.”

Objective:

like other aspect of marketing, public relation is also used to address several broad aspect of marketing like:

Building Product Awareness –

When introducing a new product or relaunching an existing product, marketers can use a PR element that generates consumer attention and awareness through media placements and special events.

Creating Interest:

Public Relation create public interest to use the product at least for once time.

Providing Information:

Through the Public relation we can provide a lot of information about company activity and their product feature and service provided by company. This information is delivered to public through newspaper, article website, collateral material; PR helps in delivering information that helps to public in understanding the product feature.

Stimulating Demand:

A positive article in a newspaper, on TV, news show or mentioned on the Internet, often results in a discernable increase in product sales.

Reinforcing the Brand:

In many companies like JNO, SATYAPAL PILL Company the public relations function is also involved with brand reinforcement by maintaining positive relationships with key audiences, and thereby aiding in building a strong image.

Direct Marketing

Direct marketing is business of selling company product directly to customers through mail order, telephone, fax, e-mails, or web selling, rather than through retailers.

Objective:

There are mostly to objective for which direct marketing is carried out these are as follow:

• Convert not user to user. It is mostly done to obtain new client. The identification of new potential clients is very crucial when it comes to recruit new prospects and transformed them into your clients.
• The perpetual loyalty of customers. A loyal consumer cost less than new customers.

Strategy:

Various pillow industry like archives’, satyapal involved in direct marketing to get more market share. These companies sent a mail-order catalog to approximately prospective customers.

100-page catalog, developed in-house, targets both men and women and also contains 10 pages devoted to home products.

There are various tools for direct marketing these are as : Direct mail, Telemarketing, Email Marketing ,faxing, Voicemail, Couponing, Direct response television marketing.

Besides these pillow producing company also used various methods to promote their product. One method that archies’s has recently taken is Path Breaking Strategy.

Path breaking strategy byARCIES:

This strategy is mostly for that pillow whose cost above Rs.600. We know a lot of thing about EMIs for house, car and other kind of white goods. But these EMIs is first time adopted by archives’ for jeans. This idea has been conceptualized by archives’. Downturn market, cost cutting everywhere and empty pockets is the present situation; and here to curb all these hindrances, Archie’s is now, for the first time ever offering EMI facilities on its pillow in India. Simply shop for more than Rs. 600 and you can avail this offer. This amount will be set off through your credit card in three equal installments. They have also tied up with ICICI Bank for the credit card settlement.

There are certain objectives behind this strategy that are as follow:

To increase the sales of premium pillow wear category that is worth more than Rs. 800 per pillow.

To ensure sales throughout the year irrespective of seasonality: How will this objective be achieved: Indian market for apparels is highly driven by seasonalit