Communication is the most important and crucial aspect of any organization to interact with its internal and external stakeholders. These involve employees, customers, competitors, investors, suppliers, distributors, regulators, etc. The ways and methods of communication have to be developed to suit the requirement of the target audience (Kotler & Armstrong, 2010). More so that modern organizations are adopting an integrated approach to interact, communicate, persuade and attract the customer segment towards their organization and its offering in terms of products and services.
This medium-sized organization has to communicate effectively with the young target segment in order to build its brand identity and equity in a manner to again bring in sales and profitability. For this purpose it seeks to identify and define the right segment and their profiling, under the creative positioning which would be most appropriate, build on a comprehensive IMC plan, execute it in the market, allocate budgeting parameters to it, develop measurement metrics and monitor it for effectiveness (Shaw, 2012).
The clothing company has identified the youngsters in the age bracket of 14-22 years as their target audience. This is the category of teenagers to early higher education students but before they join the workforce. Their consumer profile can be as follows:
For the purpose of developing the market again and rebuilding the market share, the company is seeking to change its strategy for the brand. Till recently it was being sold like any other fashion garment. But now the company plans to change the brand positioning to a product or brand which makes the teenager an opinion leader (Keller, 2012). As these days peer pressure is very high on the youngsters they always desire to become the leader in their group. Hence the branding identity to portray that if the customer adopts this brand, he or she would be looked up to and everyone would follow as a leader. This is the subconscious desire which every young consumer has deep inside his heart. But it is never spoken about but it can be understood by their behaviours and actions.
This new value proposition has to be effectively communicated to the target audience in the most rightful way through those channels and medium which have the maximum influence on him.
IMC or Integrated Marketing Communication is a marketing concept where a company uses various kinds of communication methods and tools to have a greater impact on the target audience. These include various methods like advertising, sales promotion, personal selling, direct marketing, public relations and digital marketing (Kotler & Keller, 2006). To again win back the confidence and liking of the consumer segments who are very young in age and are hooked on to the digital media and message.
To again win back the market share of the youngsters the company should develop the following IMC media plan:
The entire 12 months would be executed to achieve certain important tasks and communication objectives and then appropriate evaluation and measurement would be done to understand the effectiveness of the communication strategy.
An amount of $ 1 million has been earmarked for the entire IMC plan to be executed and achieve the desired objectives. The allocation would be done considering the target audience and their media habits (Jensen & Jepsen, 2008):
The company needs to develop metrics to measure the success of the IMC plan. It will also help to know how it is being accepted and communicated to all the stakeholders. After every three months review will be done to understand the awareness the brand has been able to create. This would also mean both quantitative and qualitative measures to judge the standards which the company wants to achieve (Kerr et al, 2009).
The various metrics would be brand awareness, brand recall, preference and liking, acceptability, conversion into sales, digital clicks, website reviews, Facebook reviews, etc (Finne & Grönroos, 2009).
Apart from this, the entire IMC plan has to be explained and accepted by all the other business partners. For example, marketing channel partners, marketing personnel, vendors, etc. This will allow all the concerned people speak the same language of the brand. This would help in the development of a single kind of communication from the company’s end (Ewing, 2009).
IMC’s plan is targeted to achieve a common objective to communicate the same message to the target consumer. This is done through various mediums. Depending upon the profile of the target segment, the IMC would be modified. This would serve the purpose of the organization and help them achieve their communication and marketing objectives. This will also build their fashion brand in the market strongly.
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