Thoughts on Marketing Communications

What do firms want to communicate?? Why?? Let’s take advertisement; we would think that the main reason for a firm to advertise its products it’s to increase the sales. But there is more to it than that…

I was going through the Marketing notes and at the end of the Marketing Communications topic was a section with some interesting questions: Do you remember any adverts from the last 2 days on TV, newspapers, radio, Internet, street or any other? Do you remember the brands from the adverts? And finally, did the advert make you consider buying the product?

I would like to share my answers and thoughts; I remember seeing advertisements for Luis Vuitton and for an expensive watch stolen from Bernie Ecclestone  (F1 boss) on the Financial Times (funny I don’t remember the brand of the watch); I hear about a bicycle shop on the radio every morning, I don’t own a bike so maybe that is why I don’t remember the name of the shop or where is located; I see ads of Virgin Media, a perfume and a video game when I’m watching South Park on the Internet; walking home I walked in front of a Subway shop and there was a guy dressed up as a sandwich, I was given a free drink voucher which I still have in my pocket and then I saw a big sign from BT Internet  in Princess street.

So, did any of these messages encourage me to consider purchasing? Well, not really. Maybe some of them created awareness, which could be considered as the first step in the purchasing decision. On the other hand why brands like Starbucks don’t advertise massively? Well they rely on word of mouth to create awareness and make people take action.

This discussion reminded me of what Seth Godin talks about: mass marketing needs to reach the masses, needs average to be good to most people. I think is an interesting point when you are making marketing communication decisions that have to reflect the strategy of the firm and the objective of what you want to communicate.