Designing and Managing Integrated Marketing Communications
I.  Chapter Overview/Objectives/Outline
A. Overview
Marketing communications is one of the four major elements of the company’s marketing mix.  Marketers must know how to use advertising, sales promotion, direct marketing, public relations, and personal selling to communicate the product’s existence and value to the target customers.
The communication process itself consists of nine elements: sender, receiver, encoding, decoding, message, media, response, feedback, and noise. Marketers must know how to get through to the target audience in the face of the audience’s tendencies toward selective attention, distortion, and recall.
Developing the promotion program involves eight steps. The communicator must first identify the target audience and its characteristics, including the image it carries of the product. Next, the communicator has to define the communication objective, whether it is to create awareness, knowledge, liking, preference, conviction, or purchase. A message must be designed containing an effective content, structure, format, and source. Then communication channels, both personal and non-personal, are selected. Next, the total promotion budget can be established. Four common methods are the affordable method, the percentage-of-sales method, the competitive-parity method, and the objective-and-task method.
The promotion budget should e divided among the main promotional tools, as affected by such factors as push vs. pull strategy, buyer readiness stage, product life-cycle stage, and company market rank. The marketer should then monitor to see how much of the market becomes aware of the product, tries it, and is satisfied in the process. Finally, all of the communications effort must be managed and coordinated for consistency, good timing, and cost effectiveness.
Advertising—the use of paid media by a seller to communicate persuasive information about its products, services, or organization—is a potent promotional tool. Advertising takes on many forms (national, regional, local, consumer, industrial, retail, product, brand, institutional, etc.) designed to achieve a variety of objectives (awareness, interest, preference, brand recognition, brand insistence).
Advertising decision-making consists of objectives setting, budget decision, message decision, media decision, and ad effectiveness evaluation. Advertisers should establish clear goals as to whether the advertising is supposed to inform, persuade, or remind buyers. The factors to consider when setting the advertising budget are:  stage in the product life cycle, market share, competition and clutter, needed frequency, and product substitutability. The advertising budget can be established based on what is affordable, as a percentage budget of sales; based on competitors’ expenditures, or based on objectives and tasks; and based on more advanced decision models that are available.
The message decision calls for generating messages, evaluating and selecting between them, and executing them effectively and responsibly. The media decision calls for: defining the reach, frequency, and impact goals; choosing among major media types; selecting specific media vehicles; deciding on media timing; and geographical allocation of media. Finally, campaign evaluation calls for evaluating the communication and sales effects of advertising, before, during, and after the advertising.
Sales promotion and public relations are two tools of growing impor¬tance in marketing planning.  Sales promotion covers a wide variety of short-term incentive tools designed to stimulate consumer markets, the trade, and the organization’s own sales force. Sales promotion expenditures now exceed advertising expenditures and are growing at a faster rate. Consumer promotion tools include samples, coupons, cash refund offers, price packs, premiums, prizes, patronage rewards, free trials, product warranties, tie-in promotions, and point-of-purchase displays and demonstrations. Trade promotion tools include price-off, advertising and display allowances, free goods, push money, and specialty-advertising items. Business promotion tools include conventions, trade shows, contests, sweepstakes, and games. Sales promotion planning calls for establishing the sales promotion objectives; selecting the tools; developing, pretesting, and implementing the sales promotion program; and evaluating the results.
Marketing public relations (MPR) is another important communication/promotion tool. Traditionally, it has been the least utilized tool but is now recognized for its ability in building awareness and preference in the marketplace, repositioning products, and defending them. Broadly, MPR is those activities that support the ultimate sale of a product or service.  Some of the major marketing public relations tools are news, speeches, events, public service activities, written material, audio-visual material, corporate identity, and telephone information services. MPR planning involves establishing the MPR objectives, choosing the appropriate messages and vehicles, and evaluating the MPR results.
B. Learning Objectives
• Learn the roles of Marketing Communications.
• Identify the major steps of developing effective communications.
• Define the communication mix.
• Determine how to set the communication mix.
• Learn the concepts of an integrated marketing communications program.
C. Chapter Outline
I. Introduction - This chapter describes how communications work, what marketing communications can do for a company and how holistic marketers combine and integrate marketing communications. An opening vignette describes how Ocean Spray reintroduced its Ocean Spray Cranberry to the market as a “versatile fruit that supplies modern-day benefits.
II. The Role of Marketing Communication - inform, persuade, and remind consumers, directly or indirectly, about the products and brands that they sell.   Marketing Communications can also contribute to brand equity by establishing the brand in memory and creating a brand image while it strengthens customer loyalty, driving sales and affecting shareholder value.
A. The Changing Marketing Communications environment
1. Technology advances create extreme dynamics for the optimal communication processes as envisioned by both the organization and the customer and have eroded the effectiveness of mass media methods
2. Commercial clutter is rampant causing consumers to block out communications.
3. Must be creative while avoiding the intrusion of customer’s lives.
4. Refer to “Marketing Insight: Don’t Touch That Remote” for a description of developments in television advertising

B. Marketing Communications, Brand equity, and Sales
1. Eight major modes of communication in marketing communication mix
a) Advertising
b) Sales promotion
c) Events and experiences
d) Public relations and publicity
e) Direct Marketing
f) Interactive marketing
g) Word-of-mouth marketing
h) Personal selling
i) Every brand contact delivers an impression that can strengthen or weaken a customer’s view of the company. Table 15.1 lists common communication platforms used to contribute to brand equity.

C. Communications Process Models
1. Macromodel of the communication process - nine elements (see figure 15.1)
a) Major parties in communication - sender and receiver
b) Major communication tools - message and media
c) Major communication functions - encoding, decoding, response, feedback
d) Noise (random and competing messages that may interfere with intended communication)
2. Micromodel of consumer responses - concentrate on consumer’s specific responses to communications (three different sequences). Figure 15.2 summarizes four classic response hierarchy models.
a) “learn-feel-do” - appropriate when there is high consumer involvement and perceived high product or service differentiation
b) “do-feel-learn” - relevant with high consumer involvement and little or no differentiation
c) “learn-do-feel” - appropriate with low consumer involvement and little or no differentiation 
III. Developing Effective Communications (eight steps, first 5 steps are covered under this section III, steps 6 and 7 fall under IV and step eight is outlined in V)
A. Identify the Target Audience 
1. Image analysis is a major part of audience analysis that entails assessing the audience’s current image of the company, the products, and the competitors.  (Image defined - set of beliefs, ideas, and impressions that a person holds regarding an object)
a) First step is to measure target audience’s knowledge of the subject using a familiarity scale
b) Second step is to determine feelings toward the product using a favorability scale 
2. The specific content of a product’s image is best determined with use of semantic differential (relevant dimensions, reducing set of relevant dimensions, administering to a sample, averaging the results, and checking on the image variance)
B. Determine the Communications Objectives (Rossiter and Percy’s four possible objectives)
1. Category need - remove or satisfy perceived discrepancy between current motivational state and a desired emotional state
2. Brand awareness - recall important when removed from brand stimulus whereas recognition important when facing stimulus. Builds brand equity
3. Brand attitude - evaluation of brand’s perceived ability to meet a currently relevant need
4. Brand purchase intention - self-instructions to purchase or take purchase-related action
C. Design the Communications
1. Message strategy - develop appeals, themes, or ideas that tie into positioning and establish points-of-difference or points-of-parity
2. Creative strategy - message translated into specific communication, two methods of classification
a) Informational appeals - elaboration on attributes or benefits
b) Transformational appeals - elaborate on a non-product-related benefit or image (e.g. demonstration of the type of person that uses the brand)
3.          Message source – expertise, trustworthiness, and likeability
             a) Expertise – specialized knowledge the communicator possesses to
                  back the claim.
             b) Trustworthiness – how objective and honest the source is perceived
                   to be.
              c) Likeability – Source’s attractiveness
              d) Principle of congruity implies that communicators can use their good
                  image to reduce some negative feelings toward a brand but in the
                  process might lose some esteem with the audience.
D. Select the Communication Channels – channels may be personal and non-personal (refer to “Marketing Skills: Permission Marketing”)
1. Personal Communication Channels - direct (advocate, expert, and social)
a) Advocate channels – consist of company salespeople contacting buyers in the target market
b) Expert channels – consist of independent experts making statements to target buyers
c) Social channels – consist of neighbors, friends, family members, and associates talking to target buyers. 
2. Non-personal (Mass) communication channels - directed to more than one person (media, sales promotions, events and experiences, public relations)
3. Integration of communications channels
a) Personal communication more effective than mass communication
b) Mass communication may stimulate personal communication (two-step flow implications)
(1) Mass media mediated by opinion leaders
(2) People’s interactions within their own social groups acquire ideas from opinion leaders
E.        Establish the total marketing communication budget
1. Affordable method – setting the communication budget at what managers think the company can afford.
2. Percentage-of-sales method – setting the communication budget at a specified percentage of current or anticipated sales or the sales price
3. Competitive-parity method - achieve share-of-voice parity with competitors
4. Objective-and-task-method – define objectives, determine tasks needed to be performed to achieve objectives and estimate costs of performing tasks.

IV. Deciding on the Marketing Communications Mix
A. Characteristics of the Marketing Communications Mix (eight major modes of communication)
1. Advertising – reach, pervasive, allows for focus on specific aspects of brand and product
2. Sales promotion – draws attention to product, provides incentive to customer, invites customer to engage in the transaction now
3. Public relations and publicity effective when combined with communication mix. Three distinct qualities
a) High credibility
b) Ability to reach hard-to-find buyers
c) Ability to tell the brand or product story
4. Events and experiences – highly relevant actively engaging for customers and indirect soft-sell approach
5. Direct and interactive marketing
a) Customized for addressed individual
b) Able to prepare quickly
c) Can be changed depending on response
6. Word-of-mouth marketing – online of offline and can be influential, timely and personal
7. Personal selling – most effective in later stages in he buying process. Three notable qualities
a) Personal interaction
b) Ability to cultivate relationships
c) Personal choices for response
B. Factors in Setting the Marketing Communications Mix
1. Define the market types, as each requires different allocations. Addresses stages of consumer purchase readiness as promotional tools vary in cost effectiveness at different buyer readiness stages
2. Communication tools vary in cost effectiveness at different stages of the product life cycle. Refer to Figure 15.4 for an example of Cost effectiveness of Three Different Communication Tools at Different Buyer-readiness stages.
3. Communication tools vary in cost effectiveness at different product life-cycle stages
a) Introduction stage – most cost effective are advertising, events and experiences, and publicity followed by personal selling to gain distribution coverage and sales promotion and direct marketing to induce trial
b) Growth stage – demand has its own momentum through word-of-mouth and interactive marketing. Advertising, events and experiences and personal become more important in maturity.
c) Decline stage – sales promotion continues strong, other communication tools are reduced, sales reps give less attention to product
C. Measuring Communication Results
1. Measure impact by measuring target audience recall, impressions or feelings about the message, and previous attitudes versus current attitudes
2. Collect behavioral measures of audience response including transactional data and word-of-mouth

V. Managing the Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) Process – IMC is a concept of marketing communications planning that recognizes the added value of a comprehensive plan.
A. Coordinating media
1. Combine personal and non-personal communication channels for maximum impact
2. Multiple-vehicle, multiple-stage campaign approach – achieve maximum impact and increase message reach and impact
3. Coordinate online and offline communication efforts
4. Use Facebook and other web sites to drive customers into stores
B. Implementing IMC
1. Unify various brand images and messages
2. Look at whole marketing process
3. Coordinate advertising, direct marketing, public relations, and employee communications
VI. Executive Summary
“Marketing Communications as the Key Tool in an Uncontrollable Marketing Environment”
This discussion provides focus on the increasing importance of marketing communications, as well as the concept of integrated marketing communications (IMC).  Here we will look at the question of “How does interactive marketing fit with existing marketing campaigns?”  Interactive marketing involves extending the reach, frequency, and power of the existing communications. With current communications programs, firms likely integrate public relations, print, direct marketing, and perhaps radio, TV, and Internet in some combination.  Whether firms add networked media (commercial online services, the Internet, and other stand-alone interactive media to this mix) successful interactive projects work the same way as traditional vehicles: in harmony with the wider communications plan.    
Teaching Objectives
To understand how today’s uncontrollable environment has led largely to the increased use of marketing communications.
To consider why integrated marketing communications is a powerful and cost-effective promotional strategy.
To present the advantages of a tool often used in an integrated marketing communications program:  a company newsletter.
Discussion  
INTEGRATED MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS
Not all product concepts are right for all individuals, thus bringing about the notion of market segmentation and targeting. The same holds true for marketing communications. One message does not fit all. Integrated marketing communications (IMC) focuses on discreet customer segments. With IMC, the firm learns to understand that while mass-market promotion appears cost-effective on the front end, brand/product messages are also offered to millions of people who are not interested.   
Mass media no longer serves the mass audiences sought by marketers. Individual audiences for each media have decreased, thus indicating a need to ensure that whenever and wherever the prospect is exposed to the message, he or she receives a consistent one. Customers typically do not differentiate between message sources; they only remember the message they received. Considering how many messages consumers are exposed to on a regular basis, mixed messages from the same source are bound to cause confusion and, worse yet, they will be more quickly forgotten. 
While understanding the importance of marketing communications is somewhat simple, finding the best means through which to implement a marketing communications program has become increasingly difficult. The buying public has been virtually buried alive in ads. Consumers are bombarded with hundreds of ads and thousands of billboards, packages, and other logo sightings every day.
Old advertising venues are packed to the point of impenetrability as more and more sales messages are jammed in. Supermarkets carry 30,000 different packages (product packages), each of which acts as a mini-billboard, up from 17,500 a decade ago.  Networks air 6,000 commercials a week, up 50 percent since 1983.   Prime-time TV carries up to 15 minutes of paid advertising every hour, roughly 2 to 4 minutes more than at the start of the 1990s. Add in the promos, and over 15 minutes of every prime-time hour are given over to ads. No wonder viewers zap so many commercials.
The IMC planning process is based on a longitudinal consumer purchase database. Ideally, this database would contain, by household, demographics, psychographics, purchase data, and perhaps some information about how the household feels about or is involved with the product category. In many cases, direct-marketing organizations already have this type of information at their disposal. An IMC program is implemented according to the needs and lifestyles of the selected target markets, thus allowing for customized, yet consistent, message strategies to sell increasingly individualized products. 
SUSTAINABLE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE
It has been said integrated marketing communications will be the only sustainable competitive advantage for marketers in the near future. The other elements of the marketing mix, product development, pricing, and distribution, can be achieved at a very similar level, and in a similar way, among companies competing in a particular industry. In addition, we know the customer has taken on a completely new, powerful, role in the marketing process. Because it is largely through promotion that a company speaks most directly to its customers, it seems appropriate that a marketer’s promotional strategy must change to reflect the dynamics of today’s marketplace.
Some of these changes include:
Changing technology, which has made it possible for media organizations to identify, segment, select, and attract smaller audiences for their respective vehicles.
The trend toward de-regulation that has allowed for increased competition within many industries, such as air travel, banking, and utilities.
Globalization of the marketplace, which causes promotional efforts, including advertising, sales promotion, public relations, and personal selling, to be implemented throughout a worldwide market. Customization for different cultures is key to competing successfully in this arena.
Changes in the demographic and Psychographic profiles of today’s consumers, that have paved the way for new product category opportunities (such as health care for the aging “baby boomers” and health food/clubs for nutrition conscious consumers).
Money-rich, time-poor consumers are seeking control of their purchases.  Consumers have become adept at avoiding marketing communication, through the use of VCRs, remote controls, radio push buttons, etc. When they are listening, the message should be simply stated and easy to understand. Today’s generation is also more visual than verbal, thus they rely on images, symbols, and graphics more than any previous generation. 
It is important also to note that a marketer can communicate with customers through means other than formal marketing communications. Every element of a product’s marketing mix helps to position that product in the minds of consumers. The result is that the elements of the promotional mix should all present a consistent theme. The same is true of the other “Ps” of marketing, namely product, price, and place that should support the theme: 
Products communicate through size, shape, name, packaging, and various features/benefits. 
Price communicates to the consumer that the product is high quality, low quality, prestigious, common, etc. 
Retail locations (place) where customers purchase the product will reflect upon the product’s image as well.  Stores are considered “high-class”, specialty, discount, etc.
USING NEWSLETTERS FOR CUSTOMIZED COMMUNICATION
One of the newest and most effective ways to stimulate and maintain positive communication with customers is through newsletters (print and online).  Newsletters are useful for many reasons, but one of the best reasons is that they cross the boundary between news and advertising, providing a bit of both. Further, they bring back some much-needed credibility that has been lost with many market segments. The newsletter can be delivered physically, but more likely, it will be made available via the Internet or e-mail. Newsletters not only describe, in detail, a company’s philosophy, goals, and objectives but also enhance its current marketing program.  In addition, newsletters can be utilized as communication tools for many other purposes.

Some of the advantages of newsletters include:
Delivering continuous background or educational material to clients in an efficient manner.
Providing highly-targeted distribution through database utilization.
Acting as a form of personal calling, on paper, to prospects and clients.
Proving more economical than other forms of promotion.
Not obvious advertising, if done correctly.
Attention-getting.
Providing the ability to create demand.
Keeping mailing lists (or e-mail lists) accurate.

Possible newsletter content may also include such as items as:
Announcements of new products and services.
Stories of products/services in application (from either the company or its customers).
Answers to commonly asked questions/concerns.
Information on industry trends.
Updates on new or pending legislation.
Personnel changes (but otherwise very little employee communiqué).
Guest articles by prominent figures in the industry.
“Think” pieces—philosophy, ideas, suggestions, techniques, and tactics.
Specialized news.

A newsletter also provides opportunities for customer feedback:
Brings the prospect to the marketer in the form of an inquiry.
May solicit response through use of a formal survey.
Enables experimentation with numerous formats/contents/ promotions through small sample test mailings.
In addition, orienting articles to topics that are on the customer’s minds will guarantee holding their interest.
Bad news should not be ignored. Any problems that are occurring, as well as actions being taken to solve these problems, need to be addressed.  After all, relationships will have both ups and downs.
Most important, the primary goal of any newsletter should be to inform and educate readers; it must not become the voice of management and/or marketing alone. To that end, it must be filled with news and not exist solely to sell products/services.
Note to the Instructor: As a final note, you might ask the class to consider whether the newsletter approach has found additional life on the Internet. Many Web sites include elements of the newsletter approach in their operations. Ask the class to investigate some leading Web sites to prove and/or disprove this point.
 Background Articles 
Issue:  Integrating Marketing Communications
Source:  Don E. Schultz, “Multichannel: New Term, Old Challenges,” Marketing News, April 29, 2002, p. 10.

As I have traveled the world the last six months or so, one of the hottest topics in Europe, and increasingly in Asia, is that of multichannel marketing. While it does not yet command the highest level of interest in the United States, it probably will in the next year or so.
Multichannel marketing is, it seems, 21st century terminology for how a marketing organization makes its products and services available to customers and prospects: How the marketer determines the best choice of distribution systems and the type of communication programs to use, for example, and how the company will organize those programs and alternatives into a cohesive whole. In the 20th century—at least in the 1990s—we called those efforts integrated marketing or integrated marketing communications. In reviewing what has been written about multichannel marketing and listening to the discussions in seminars and conferences, the questions and answers have an oh-so-familiar ring. For example, the questions about distribution seem to revolve around, How much emphasis or focus should be put on which channels? How much should be invested in traditional retailing? And how much focus and reliance is on the field sales force? Much of the discussion is about the level of effort to make in electronic marketing and how that fits with traditional approaches. Some even wonder if the dotcoms will rise again.
The ample supply of questions and paucity of answers spawn the conferences, seminars and scholarly papers. In the multichannel area of communications, the questions are much the same: How much to invest in advertising? How much above-the-line and how much below it? Where does PR fit? How about events? Sponsorships? Some experts advocate focusing efforts and expenditures on a few areas, while others suggest investment diversity.
To me, about the only thing that has really changed from what we were struggling with 10 years ago is that a much greater variety of alternatives are available now and, as a result, more challenges.
What all this multichannel conversation seems to ignore, however, and what I thought we learned almost a decade ago is that much of the discussion and almost all the planning starts at the wrong end of the question. The process seems to start with what the marketer wants to do, how the seller wants to organize and develop his business.
For any multichannel approach to succeed, the questions have to start with the customers or prospects. What type of distribution system do they want to select from? What type of communications systems do they want to access? What type of business relationship do they want with the seller?
What multichannel marketing and communications advocates seem to ignore is the fact that marketers no longer control the marketplace. They can’t decide what is best for customers and foist it off on the channels and customers, no matter how sophisticated the software or how elegant the marketing models. The customer decides what is best and pursues that course, and woe to the marketer who can’t fit that pattern.
It all comes back to marketplace power. In the traditional 4Ps of marketing, the marketer decided how he wanted to go to market, and channels and customers were simply pawns in the great game of marketing. The organization with the best plans or people—or combination of the two—was sure to win in the long run. That’s what built firms such as P&G, Unilever, Colgate and Nestle.
But over the last decade or so, marketplace power has shifted. Customers are now in control because they have access to incredible amounts of market knowledge, and the traditional restrictions of time and geography have disappeared. With access to a vast array of distribution channels, they can shop and compare products, prices and formats and yes, even marketers, from around the world.
In my view, customers, with their increased access to information, have created an almost-perfect marketplace, at least for them. Customers now know most of the marketing secrets because they have lived through them. It’s increasingly difficult to fool customers any more (Enron and the financial analysts excepted) for any length of time. The marketer who ignores that fact does so at his peril.
Today, it is not a question of how the marketer wants to sell, it is a question of how the customer wants to buy. So, what I hear missing in all these multichannel marketing dialogues is a mention of the customer. That lesson seems to have been lost somewhere over the years.
By relying on software, analysis and market modeling, multichannel advocates believe they can find the optimal approach to the marketplace. But customers decide how they would like to buy, not how the marketer wants to organize and initiate.
Understanding that marketing and marketplace multichannel allocation models must start with customers and prospects is a hard lesson for organizations to learn. But, it’s critical, even in the enlightened 21st century.
Note: Don E. Schultz is a professor of integrated marketing communications at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, and president of Agora Inc. in Evanston, Ill.

Issue:  Careers in IMC
Source: “Integrated Marketing,” Advertising Age, February 25, 2002, p. 22.

The ideal candidate, the marketplace demands a mixed skill-set. Ten Years ago, the graduate-level marketing program at Northwestern University changed its name to Integrated Marketing Communications to serve a marketplace moving toward multidisciplinary marketing tied to corporate strategy and business results rather than merely mass-media creative executions. A decade later, Northwestern’s IMC grads have no trouble finding jobs-at a median starting salary of $70,000 or more. Its members tend to become marketing consultants or client-side marketing strategists as opposed to agency employees (see charts below). There’s no question that agencies, marketers and clients alike are driving toward integration. The challenge is finding the right people to navigate the course.
KEEPING CURRENT
“People who were relevant five or ten years ago are not relevant today if they haven’t kept themselves current with all of the technology,” said Daniel Morel, chairman-CEO of WPP Group-owned Young & Rubicam’s Wunderman Worldwide. ‘We’re looking for truly well-rounded, business-minded individuals.”
Digitas, which many industry insiders consider to be one of the few agencies successfully delivering integrated marketing to clients, recruits and develops four categories of employees: marketing technology experts, channel operations specialists, creatives, and relationship managers.
The latter are the most critical and the hardest to find, said David Kenny, chairman-CEO of Digitas. They are “senior people who run each (client) relationship.  They have to be general managers and understand the economics of a client’s business-that you have to save money and gain market share simultaneously.”
The link between business strategy and marketing is clear and agencies are fighting to become full partners with their clients. “For agencies to take a step up the food chain, they’re going to have to be able to do a whole set of things that are traditionally consulting-like exercises,” said Chris Lederer, partner at Helios Consulting, adding that simply building consulting departments within agencies is not the answer. “I don’t think agencies should go hire the MBA stereotype-the bean-counter accountant. They need to hire somebody who marries the marketing skill-set with some of the strategic and analytic skill-sets.”
Consultant-turned-agency head Mark Hodes, managing director of WPP’s OgilvyOne, Chicago, agrees that a good job candidate is someone “who understands the key economic metrics that the boardroom looks at, and is able to translate that data into successful marketing programs.”
IMC grads, for one, understand these economics, recognizing that integrated marketing is the “commitment to measurable results,” said John Greening, VP-director of client services at Omnicom Group’s DDB Worldwide, Chicago, and an associate professor at IMC.
 Case  
Cunard Line, Ltd:  Managing Integrated Marketing Communications
                     HBS Case: 594-046         TN:  595-028

Teaching Perspectives
Cunard, the world’s oldest luxury line company, is confronted with several key issues involving its marketing and marketing communications strategy. One concerns the balance between image/positioning advertising and short-term promotional advertising/communications on behalf of each Cunard ship (i.e., pull vs. push communications). Related to this is the overall mix of marketing communications tools used by Cunard—media advertising, direct marketing, etc. 
Many corporations face a similar problem in how to integrate their various marketing communications efforts. In most cases, this takes the form of standardizing messages and creative approaches across different individual advertisements and diverse media. However, in some, such as the Cunard case, the situation is more multi-faceted and difficult. Cunard is  trying to integrate marketing communications on several levels:
Between strategic and tactical advertising.
Between a corporate name and subsidiary names.
Across different media.
Across different target markets.
Among different advertisements.

The task is a challenge in terms of not only advertising issues but also the organizational alignment of the firm.
The vice president for corporate and marketing communications at Cunard also faces organizational changes that could undo the careful work accomplished in integrating the firm’s marketing communications. A new layer of management with broad overall marketing responsibilities for particular ship “groups” will be created. The firm appears to be moving toward an organization based on specific market segments rather than one based on the ships themselves. One possible implication of this change is that each of the new groups will want a distinctive marketing communications program. This would tend to seriously dilute the efforts that have been made to integrate the firm’s marketing communications.
The case exhibits visually illustrate the effects of these efforts. The exhibits demonstrate how integrated communication “works” by inspection of the details of the advertisements. While there are obvious differences in the advertisements, they appear to convey the same image. Thus, the case can be used to show the effects of an integrated communications plan that appears to have been well executed.  The instructor/class can address how to maintain that integration in light of organizational “realities.”
One of the primary issues is how can one have the same marketing communications for a well-known brand, yet have a very distinctive image and for a brand known to few within the target market. The class discussion that ensues probably will encompass “umbrella brands” versus subsidiary brands as well as the differences between corporate images and individual brand names. It is important to probe deeply on the meanings (to the potential customers) of the names Cunard, QE2, Sagafjord, etc., and how they are or are not related in the public’s mind. In addition, there is a question as to why the company is concerned about having integrated communications among the various ships under the Cunard umbrella.
Questions
1. In light of the difficult economic and competitive conditions, should Cunard use a more “sale-oriented” format with more emphasis on price for its tactical advertising?
2. In better economic times, would your judgment differ regarding question 1?
3. What is your recommendation to Cunard regarding the balance in the focus of marketing communications between the overall Cunard identity and image, and the identity and image of the individual ships?
4. Which marketing communications elements do you believe should receive greater/lesser emphasis? Why? Specifically, what about the role of direct marketing?
5. What effects would you expect the impending organizational change to have on marketing communications at Cunard?

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