Integrated Marketing Communications for Volkswagen

Integrated Marketing Communications for Volkswagen

Assignment: Communicate the Value: Integrated Marketing Communications Brief

Please select a brand that has a brand problem.

For example, recent player legal troubles have been a problem for the NFL brand. Another example is the Bonefish Grill, the country’s second largest seafood chain after Red Lobster. Although their check average is more than $3.00 less than Red Lobster, many consumers see the Bonefish Grill brand as “expensive”. Subway recently underwent bad publicity when Jared, their spokesperson for several years, was sent to prison on child pornography charges. Do not select Bonefish Grill, however.  This is just an example.

Your company plans to outsource its entire promotional effort.  Thus, you will be entertaining bids from external companies (most of which will likely be advertising agencies) who will propose that they can do your company’s integrated marketing communications (IMC) program for you.  Assume that you will host a meeting at which interested companies are invited to attend.  There, you will present what your company has in mind.

For this presentation, your immediate job is to develop an IMC brief. This deliverable paper will be used to instruct an external company that will be hired by your company to develop an integrated marketing communications (IMC) campaign for your company or organization.

Thus, this external company that would be bidding on the opportunity to develop your company’s IMC campaign needs information.  For this reason, they would attend the meeting that you are planning. The meeting would be hosted at your company’s conference center (it seats 100 people) on Monday of the week that follows.

Your deliverable will be presented in four to five page paper and will follow APA formatting guidelines, including a cover page and reference page (Those two pages are included in the page count. Therefore, only two to three pages of actual content are needed).

Correct APA format is required.  Go to http://owl.english.purdue.edu to learn more about APA format.  Be sure to include a correctly formatted APA Running Header.

IMC Brief  

The brief should be a concise document that answers these questions and helps guide the successful bidder’s creative team that will formulate the IMC campaign.

• Why are we developing a new IMC campaign?

o   What is the problem?  (Define the IMC Problem that you are attempting to solve here relative to your MESSAGE?)

o   What is our IMC communications objective (quantified)? (You want to have a measurable goal here.  It could be to “Have 44% of your target audience recognize that ‘Tide Liquid gets stains out best’” and to accomplish this by September 30th, 2016, for the promotional campaign that commences 1 July2016.)

• Who is the target customer?

o   Who are we trying to reach? What are the characteristics of the target market? (Describe your target market using segmentation variables, just as you were asked to do in your IMC Plan outline in Week FOUR – age, income, education, etc., and geography and/or other appropriate segmentation variables.  Demonstrate application of what you learned in Week TWO.)

• What is the message? (What is your IMC Message?  It should be short and sweet and resonate well with the target audience.  A slogan is fine.  Anything over six words is likely too long.  Put your message “in quotes”.)

• How does our target currently perceive us? (Were you to go to the target audience and mention your product/service BRAND name, what words would come to their mind, i.e., what would they say to you, using descriptive adjectives?  This is how your BRAND is currently positioned in their mind.)

• How would we want the target to perceive us? (How do you want the target market to position your BRAND in their mind?  In effect, were we to go up to them at the end of the campaign, what do you want them THEN to be thinking about your BRAND and what words would you want them to say?)

o   What is the most persuasive idea we want to convey? (This can be part of the message.)

o   What creative guidelines do we have to consider (e.g., logo, font, corporate colors)? (You make the decision here.)

• When will the message be delivered?

o   What timeframe are we looking at for development and delivery? (This is the window that you will utilize for development… and then the actual delivery of the IMC promotional effort.  You need to insert dates here.)

• Where will the message be delivered? (In what geography do you envision this message being delivered?)

• Which media will provide the most effective communications mix?    (What media do you see as being most effective at delivering your IMC message to your target audience?  What media will you use?  Traditional media?  Social media?)  Why did you select the media that you did?)

• How much will it cost? (You will need a budget.  What estimated dollar number do you reasonably expect to have available to spend with the company that will eventually be selected to create your IMC campaign?  I realize this is a guess, but you need to make it realistic. If you plan to use television, don’t budget $50K – that dollar amount wouldn’t buy you anything. Top-rated TV shows can easily cost you $200-400K for one thirty-second ad that is broadcast ONCE.   Plan your budgetK for the entire IMC campaign that you envision.  Do graduate-level research that demonstrates your awareness of the actual costs of doing advertising via the media that you have selected.)

Grading Rubric

               Total Evaluation:     /100 Points

Answer Preview

The main target market for the company is the new car buyers in the homes. The company produces cars that are made in an effort to make sales to the people that are entering the job market and want to make purchases of a new car. This incorporates single individuals and in addition families that might be keen on purchasing another auto while arranging off their old…

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