I have had a wonderful experience with the subject IMC. At the beginning I had some doubts of whether the subject would go as interesting as I thought it had to be because Ma’am was teaching the subject for the first time and I had high expectation from the course. I was really glad to know that the teaching approach used by Ma’am was very creative and practical, which helped us to get detailed knowledge in the concepts.

The best part about the course was the project. I really enjoyed doing the project and never felt the burden of assignment because the project felt so real. Even when we were working on an assignment, I really had passion for the brand ‘Falcon Shoes’ and always gave my best to come up with creative ideas for our project. The major learning while doing the project has been that customer research is crucial. Sometimes it is needed to have certain assumptions about the customers but those assumptions need to be verified if we wish to have a successful business.

I have also learnt that only verifying the assumptions is not sufficient, it is essential to improvise on the planning as per the customer wants. Since, customers are the ones to use the product, it is really important to look at the things from their perspective. Coming up with excellent product which is not wanted by the customers is total failure thus study of consumer behaviour is important to serve the needs and wants of the customers.

Another major learning from doing the project has been that, we generally put a lot of effort on deciding on the brand names and logos and try to be as much as creative as possible. But what I learnt was that customers generally prefer simpler names and logos that are simple and easily recognizable. And it is very important to relate you names and logos to present consistent image of the brand among the customers.

The presentations done by my classmates were also very helpful for me get clear on several topics. I knew in brief about alternative media marketing, I knew about buzz marketing but was not clear on guerrilla marketing and branded entertainment. From the presentation done my our friends, I was able to get clear on the topics. The learning from the presentation was that some of the alternative media choices were cheaper to other media and when used wisely they would be very beneficial for reaching out to the target customers.

The course IMC has been very interesting and helps me to widen my horizon of knowledge. All the class activities carried out were fun and the project helped me to think of things from different angles. Thus, summing up the whole experience of this course went pretty good and I am very satisfied with the course.

Consumer Buying Process

The classes of IMC were going very smooth and I was finding the course content very interesting. The reason might be that, I have always been someone who is very interest in advertising, brands and anything related with marketing. The best thing that had happened in our class was that, we were assigned with a group project where we had to come up with a product of our own and had to design whole IMC plan for our product. I really liked the idea of giving these sorts of projects because it would help to reflect the creativity that we had within ourselves. Adding onto that, I really enjoyed working with my IMC group.

We has already completed our STP analysis and now it was time for us to know about consumer buying process of our customer. Ma’am had told us to interview few of our customers in order to know about them better. Before interviewing the customers, I had had thought that I knew our customers. I had thought that there was no much need of interviewing the customer. But since, we were asked to do so, we interviewed few of our customers. I was astonished  to know that the few of the findings from the interview were different from what I had expected it to be.

According to the one of our customers, he recognized the need for a new shoes when this sports shoe would get very old or would tear off. Next, he would have the want for new shoes, when he would see some friends wearing good shoes and he would want them too or he would see some new trends going on in the market and wanted to know more about the trend and buy the shoes if he liked them. After that comes the stage, where the customers searches for information. Our customers revealed that, normally he would ask his friends about the shoes and also search for information about shoes at the internet. After having received the information, the customer would evaluate the shoes on the basis of different criteria’s.

The most important criteria for our customer to choose among the shoes was comfort. He told that who would always prefer comfort over any other attribute of the shoes. After comfort, brand and price were found to be important for the customer. After that the customer went for the shoe that had trendy design and were available in variety of colour so that he could choose from the wide ranges. After all these evaluation, the customer would buy the shoes that would provide highest value in terms of all the criteria’s. The last purchase made by the customer was shoe from the brand sketchers because most of his criteria’s were there in the pair of shoes he bought from sketchers. The customer told that the he was really satisfied with his purchase and would go with the brand again.

IMC Planning Process                                                             

The interview taken was really helpful for us as it helped us to know our customer in detail and find out the process which they would use to decide on which brand of shoes to buy. After knowing the customer well, now we had to plan the IMC communication process. Before going on with the project, Ma’am provided us with the brief concept of the chapter. The session provided us with the brief idea about where we had to start out activities from. I came to know that, at first it was essential to carry out communication research and then follow by defining the target market, then product positioning was to be done and after that communication objective was to be set out and on the basis of the objective budget and IMC components were to be decided.

Previously, I used to think that IMC campaign was decided after setting the communication objective. I did not know that these long steps were to be followed just for designing IMC plan. The learning was helpful for me and I am sure that the learning will definitely help me in the future when I will be deciding on developing IMC campaign for my business.

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I was eagerly waiting for Ma’am to talk about advertisement management chapter in the class because this topic had always been my favourite from my bachelors days. While dealing with the chapter, we got to see many ads in the class and I really enjoyed the session. We were asked to see ads from the perspective of the advertisers and it was a fun thing to do. After the session, I started to think of the rationale used while developing the ads and  I would get happy every time I would be able to guess it. The best part about the chapter was I got to learn about new things. Previously, I had heard about creative brief but I was not sure as to whether I would be able to develop a creative brief on my own or not.

While doing our report, we had to develop creative brief for our particular brands. We were provided with sample by Ma’am and were asked to develop briefs my considering the samples provided. I along with my group members, developed creative brief for our brand and now I was confident enough that I would be able to develop a good brief on my own. In the brief we has to include different topics like advertising objective, target market, message appeal, message strategy, execution framework etc. If we had only learnt the topics at our class then, I am sure that I would not have understood the topics so well. But since, we did a lot of brainstorming to come up with our creative brief, I will never forget about  the topics.

Another important learning for me from the chapter was about the advertising agencies and parties involved while developing an ad. I used to think that few of the creative were behind developing great ads. I was not aware that so many people were involved in an advertising agency and I also came to know that it required a lot of creativity, hard work and team effort was required to come up with great ads. I have also come to know that companies don’t always go with advertising agencies to develop the IMC campaigns. Times when the companies have limited budget, when the products are not complex and even when the creative people are available in-house companies don’t take the help of advertising agencies to develop ads.

Thus, the learning from all of the three chapters have been important for me and I am sure that the knowledge derived will help me to develop IMC campaign for my business in the near future.

I have always been very interested in Advertising and Promotion. I had taken the course Ad and Promotion in my bachelors, and had found the class to be very effective. I wanted to learn more on the topic, thus decided to take IMC as elective course in my masters as well. After joining the classes I had some doubts as to whether my expectations would be fulfilled or not. I had got answer to my questions after attending three classes of IMC. I was finding the course to be very interesting and found the teaching pattern of our instructor very effective.

Our instructor taught us about few of the concepts about IMC. After that we were assigned in our groups and were asked to come up with our own products. We had to come up with new product and had to carry out STP analysis as well. We came up with our product named ‘Falcon Shoes’. After a lot of brainstorming and discussions, we were able to come up with our brand name, tagline and also decided on our STP. After that we had assumed that our task of primary analysis was done.

The new thing that I learnt from our IMC class was about carrying out research to check whether our assumptions held true or not. Generally, I used to think that the analysis part is carried out on the basis of judgement of marketers. However, I learnt that finding out whether our assumptions about our product and customers are true or not is very essential.

For our product as well, we had set our various assumptions. We were not sure whether our idea would work or not. Customer research carried out with the help of questionnaires was really helpful for us. The research helped us to gain a rough idea about our customers and find out whether our assumption were true or not. From the research we came to know that, the target customers really liked our product name, we were able to finalize the logo as well. The thing that we changed after our research was the price of the product and we decided to focus on shoes that were highly comfortable.

The major learning from the exercise was that market research is really important before proceeding with our IMC plan with our own set of assumptions. I am sure that I will be using this learning in my real life as well.

Another topic which I found very interesting during the session was about ‘Brand’. I was very familiar with the term, however from our IMC classes, I came to know about new things about brand management. The first thing that caught my interest was that the colours used in brand names actually had some meanings. I used to think that colours were randomly selected by the companies, but it was not so. E.g. Red colour was used to depict factors like aggressiveness, passion, strength. The example that came in my mind was red bull.

As seen in the picture, the logo of Red Bull has red colour and here I could relate my learning with actual brand using colour to depict a certain meaning. Red Bull is a energy drink and thus uses Red colour to depict strength that people get by having the drink.

Packaging and Labelling are two factors that has lot to do with Brand Image. In the present time, it has been essential to pay attention to every single detail to retain the customers. In the class Ma’am had shown us different example of brands that were doing excellent in terms of packaging and labelling. From those examples I was able to get a brief sketch on how packaging and labelling could be done creatively to depict a certain brand image.

The course IMC has helped me to see things from different angles. Previously, I used to think from the perspective of consumers only. But, now my viewing ads or any other tool of marketing, I have started to think from the perspective of Brand as well. I have been able to know to rationale behind every activity done by a company to promote a brand. Thus, the sessions and the class activities have been very helpful for me.

‘It’s not creative unless it sells.’ a famous quote by David Ogilvy has always inspired me. No matter how good the product is, without marketing it is impossible to be reach out to potential customers and gain adequate sales to earn a good amount of profits.

The role of Integrated Marketing Communication(IMC) comes here. At first, we need to learn what IMC is all about. At first, IMC seemed like a fancy term with some difficult meaning to me. But after learning our marketing course, I realized that it was a very simple concept. IMC was all about using different tools of marketing to communicate unified and consistent information or message to the target customers. Previously, advertising in radio, television or just using print ads were considered to be sufficient to grab customer’s attention and motivate them to buy products. But, I have come to know that the case is not the same in present era.

I feel that, these days customers have become highly sophisticated due to which it has been essential to reach out to target customers through every possible media. Thus, different marketing tools like advertisement, direct marketing, sales promotion, personal selling, public relations, events and experiences, interactive marketing need to be used to communicate consistent message.

The above picture shows the tools that are used heavily in the present time besides the traditional way of reaching out to the customers. With the heavy use of digital media, tools like social media, website, blogs have emerged as one of the tools of IMC.

Apple can be taken as a example of a company which has been making great use of IMC. Apple uses different tools like advertising, sales promotion, public relations, and personal selling. Ads of apple products such as iPhones are on the television, emails, newspapers, train, billboards, internet or email. Through these media Apple always communicates the consistent message only to their consumers and potential consumers. Ads designed by Apple are very eye catchy. The main focus of Apple is on innovation and the IMC program of the company is about to portray the message in a perfect way.

I perceive Apple as a premium phone with superior features. I have never owned a Apple phone and the way the position the brand is all derived from the IMC program that the brand uses, its pricing and the audience it targets through its marketing tools.

Before deciding on the message or tools to be used it is very important to carry out Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning (STP) analysis. Previosly, I used to have hard time carrying out STP analysis. But after the IMC class and all the exerices that we did in the class, I have known that, segmentation is all about dividing the market into different groups with similar needs. Targeting is about selecting the most attractive segment and choosing a strategy like mass marketing, niche marketing or differentiated marketing . And s positioning is all about designing message in such a way which helps in creating a desired image in the customer’s mind.

However, it is not that easy to carry out STP analysis. Not being able to segment, target and position can have severe impact on the sales and profitability of the company, thus it is essential to carry out some level of research before going on with the segmentation. In my experience as well, I have felt that STP analysis requires some level of effort. I have studied the concept since a long and it took me quite a long time to be clear eith the concepts from the very base.

One of the major learning for me from our IMC class has been the roles of designing promotional activities. I have come to know that, the main roles of designing promotional activities is to inform, persuade or remind the product. For a new brand IMC is designed to inform the customers about the brand and persuade them to try the brand. But for a well recognized brand like Coca-Cola the aim of IMC program is to remind the customers about the product. Thus, the product life cycle impacts the ways in which IMC will be designed.

The prime reason successful brands have been able to do well is all because of its IMC plans. It’s true that without product being good it is hard to retain customers but without proper communication as well rand cannot sustain in long run. Famous brand like L’Oreal, Coca-Cola, Sunsilk, Dove, Toyota make heavy use of IMC.

In my personal experience as well I feel that IMC works really well. I first came to know about brand named Dove when I was in my school. At that time, I used to use Pantene shampoo. Then I began to hear a lot about Dove. I use to see the ads on the TV, hear about it in the radio, see the hoarding boards and every super markets I use to visit and receive good feedbacks from the users as well.

After so much of hype, finally I started to use Dove and have never thought of switching the brand as I am very satisfied with the shampoo. At that time I was not able to related the concept as I was not familiar with the concept of IMC. But now, with my own experience I can sense how the whole idea of IMC works.

I feel that, IMC is all about knowing your customers very well and designing communication plan in such a way which attracts and retains the customers. With globalization and huge development in technology, it has been difficult to attract and retain customers as there are thousands of other brand trying to cater the needs of same customers. Thus, IMC can be used as a tool to differentiate our brand with that of competitors.

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton