Chapter 7

What is Strategic Planning?

For marketing communication, strategic planning is the
process of:
o identifying a problem that can be solved with
marketing communications
o determining objectives
o deciding on strategies
o implementing tactics
What is strategic planning?
What do each of these terms mean?
o Objective: what you want to accomplish. (position a
brand, increase brand awareness, boost brand
loyalty, change product opinion)
o Strategy: how to accomplish the objectives.
(means, design, or plan for accomplishing
objectives.)
o Tactics: actions that make the plan come to life.
(actions that execute the plan, such as how an ad is
designed or written)
The Business Plan
The business plan and marketing plan provide direction
for advertising planning and other areas of marketing
communication.
The business plan may cover an SBU (strategic business
unit), which is a line of products or all offerings of a brand.
The Business Plan
Objectives focus on profit or return on investment
(ROI).
ROI is revenue earned above the amount invested.
Business planning starts with a business mission
statement; an expression of broad goals and policies.
The Marketing Plan

Developed for a brand or product line, usually annually.

Parallels the business strategic plan and contains many of
the same components.
A market situation analysis assesses the environment
affecting marketing.
The Marketing Plan
Here, the SWOTs are also defined:
o Strengths
o Weaknesses
o Opportunities
o Threats
The Marketing Plan
For marketing communication (marcom) managers, the
marketing mix strategy is key.
It includes decisions about:
o Target market
o Brand position
o Product design and performance
o Pricing
o Distribution
o Marketing communication
The advertising or IMC plan
o As with business and marketing plans, advertising
and marketing communication plans also includes
objectives, strategies, and tactics.
o The focus is on the communication program
supporting a brand

Audience insight
Message
Medium
are at the heart of an advertising plan
What in a campaign plan?
A campaign plan is more tightly focused in solving a
particular problem in a specified time.
It includes a variety of marcom messages carried in
different media and sometimes targeting to different
audiences.
Typical campaign plan outline
Situation analysis
o Key strategic campaign decisions
o Media strategy (or points of contact in a IMC plan)
o Message strategy
o Other Marcom tools used in support
o Campaign Management
Situation Analysis
Backgrounding
o Research and review the state of the business that is
relevant to the brand and gather all pertinent
information.
o In the situation analysis, the goal is to identify a
problem that can be solved with communication.
SWOT Analysis
o Finding ways to leverage the strengths and
opportunities, address the weakness and threats
Strengths: positive traits, conditions and good
situations

 Weaknesses: traits, conditions, and good

situations
Opportunities: areas in which the company
could develop an advantage over its
competition
Threats: a trend or development in the
environment that will erode business unless the
company takes action.
Key Problems:
o Analyze the market situation for communication
problems that hinder successful marketing.
o Find opportunities advertising can crate or exploit.
o Advertising cant solve price, availability or quality
problems, but it can address the perception of these
marketing mix factors.
Objectives
o Formal goal statements outlining what the message
is supposed to achieve and how it will be measured
o Main effects and objectives: Recall the six
categories in the facets model of advertising effects:
Perception
Emotion
Cognition
Persuasion
Association
Behavior
o Those can be used to identify common consumerfocused objectives.
o Some objectives are tightly focused on a single
effect; other require a complex set of effects
o For example, a campaign to create brand loyalty
must
generate cognitive(rational) effects
generate affective (emotional) effects

move people to repeat buying (behavioral)

Measureable objectives
o Every campaign is guided by specific clear and
measure objectives
o Objectives must be measureable so advertisers know
whether the campaign or advertising is effective
o Benchmarking: a similar product or prior brand
campaign is used to predict a logical goal.
Five Requirements:
1. A specific effect that can be measured
2. A time frame
3. A baseline (where we are or where we begin)
4. The goal (a realistic estimate of change to be created
5. Percentage change (subtract the baseline from the
goal; divide the difference by the baseline)
Targeting
Marketing communication strategy is based on accurately
targeting an audience that will respond to a particular
message
Targeting is identifying and profiling an audience.
Targeting is also getting inside the leads and hearts of the
audience to find put what kinds of messages will motivate
them.
Positioning
A brand position is how consumers define the product or
brand in comparison to its competitors
A position must be on a particular feature or attribute that
is important to the customer.
Product features and attributes
o Product differentiation is a strategy that focuses
attention to product differences that distinguish the
companys product from others in the eyes of
consumers
o Competitive advantage is found:

where the product has a strong feature

in an area that is important to the target
where the competition is weaker
Repositioning
Repositioning can only work if the new position is related
to the brands core concept.
The Old Spice
Although advertising shapes the position, the position is
anchored in the target audiences minds by their personal
experiences.
The role of the brand communication strategy is to relate
the products new position to the target markets life
experience and associations.
Brand communication strategy
Brand Identity
o Must be distinctive and familiar in terms of name,
logo, colors, type face, design, and slogan.
Brand personality and liking
o It should have human characteristics like loving,
trustworthy, sophisticated.
Brand position and understanding
o The soul or essence of the brand; it stands for
something that matters to consumers
Brand image
o The mental impression customers construct for a
product based on symbols and associations that
customer link to a brand
Brand promise and brand preference
o Believing the promise that a brand will meet your
expectations leads to brand preference.
Brand loyalty
o A connection built over time that leads to repeat
purchases.

Campaigns strategies and management

Determining how to achieve objectives requires a general
strategy statement
Strategies may focus on:
o focusing
o positioning
o countering the completion
o creating category dominance
Budgeting
o Five common methods:
Historical Method: Last years budget plus
inflation; not based on goals
Objective Task Method: What do we want to
do and will it cost? Based on goals.
Percentage of Sales Method: Compares total
sales with total advertising to get ratio
Competitive Budgets: Use competitors
budgets as benchmarks and relates to the
products share of market.
All you can afford: Whatever is left over, not a
strategic approach.
Evaluation determining effectiveness
o Evaluation is the process of determining the
effectiveness of a campaign.
o Its impossible without established, measurable
objectives
o In effect, evaluation is a research proposal.
Account Planning: What is it?
Account Planning
The research and analysis process gain knowledge of the
consumer uncover key insights about how people relate to
a brand or product

An account planner is an agency person who uses a

disciplined system to research a brand and its consumer
relationships to devise message strategies to effectively
address consumer needs and wants.
The account manager is seen as the voice of the client
while the account planner is seen as the voice of the
consumer.
An account planner:
o Who: agency person
o Role: uses a disciplined system to research a brand
and its consumer relationships
o Purpose: devise message strategies to effectively
address consumer needs and wants
The account planners mission is to discover:
o Who? Who are you trying to reach and what insight
do you have about how they think, feel, and act?
How should they respond to your advertising
message?
o What? What do you say to them? What directions
from consumer research are useful to the creative
team?
o Where? How and where will you reach them? What
directions from research are useful to the media
team?
The account manager is seen as the voice of the client
The account planner is seen as the voice of the
consumer
The research foundation
Understanding begins with consumer research, which is at
the core of account planning
Account planners:
o Information integrators who bring it altogether
o synthesizes who express what it all means in one
simple statement.
Consumer insight the fuel of big ideas
Insight mining

o Finding the a-ha in a stack of research reports,

data, and transcripts is the greatest challenge for an
account planner.
o Account planners are looking for clues about the
brand meaning, usually phrased in terms of:
Brand essence
Brand personality
Brand image
The communication brief
The outcome of research is the communication brief or
creative brief is a document that explains the consumer
insight and summarizes the basic strategy decisions
The first step in the creative process it is designed to
spark creativity and serve as a springboard for ideas.
Toms Shoes Creative Brief
Problem: Whats the problem that communication can
solve? (establish position, increase loyalty, increase liking,
etc.)
Target Audience: To whom do we want to speak? brand
loyal, heavy users, infrequent users, competitions users,
etc.)
Consumer insights: What motives the target? What are
the major truths about the targets relationship to the
product?
Brand imperatives: What are the important features and
competitive advantage? Whats the brand position,
essence, personality and/or image?
IMC campaign planning
Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC)
planning is similar to advertising planning but is broader
in scope and involves more marketing communication
areas.
The objective is to most effectively use all marketing
communications tools and functions and to control the
impact of other communication elements.
Effective IMC leads to profitable long-term brand
relationships.
Objectives

o IMC objectives are tied to the effects created by the

various forms of marketing communication.
The main areas of IMC:
o Public Relations
o Consumer sales promotion
o Trade sales promotion
o Point of purchase
o Direct marketing
o Sponsorship and events
o Packaging
o Specialties
Stakeholders
o Any group who has a stake in the success of a
company or brand (employees, shareholders).
Contact points
o IMC maximizes all contacts stakeholders have with
the brand; where a message is delivered.
A defining principle of IMC:
o All contact points deliver brand messages.
IMC planning involves many messages delivered through
multiple media at different contact points.
Synergy: the brand impact of all messages together is
greater than what any one message could deliver.
o Another principle of IMC:Consistency drives
synergy.
Synergy requires cross-functional planning.
o Everyone involved in creating and delivering
messages should be involved in planning to ensure
consistency.