Melbourne University and Integrated Marketing Communication - Literature review Example

Integrated Marketing Communication According to (Clow & Baack, 2012) Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) is a collective term applied in market campaign which uses both traditional and non-traditional elements of communication to ensure that communications and messaging strategies remain uniform across all channels and that the customer is the focus. IMC is preferred due to its synergistic nature; the strong medium supports the weak medium. IMC uses different marketing disciplines applied in market mix such as direct marketing, social media, owned assets, sales promotion, public relations and paid advertising see figure 1. Manning & Barry, (1998) says an organization, institution, individual or businesses lists down marketing strategies to use depending on the business objectives and targets. Combining different marketing strategies ensures that there is maximum communication impact; consistency and clarity at a given time. The information is executed to achieve a specific brand target. For effective results in using IMC, the marketer need to understand the strength of each channel of communication and the right message to pass through regarding the products. Some of common messages include: opportunities (bonuses and or discounts), production, creativity of the product and cost (Fill, 2002). This research looks into IMC in Melbourne University. Figure 1: Marketing Communication Elements Melbourne University Overview Melbourne University is the second oldest public university in Australia established in 1853 after Sydney University. It commenced education and research platform with sixteen students, four facilities and four professors. It focuses majorly on rendezvous, teaching, learning and research in a number of disciplines. It has maintained consisted in performance and practice. This fact has seen the university ranked among the best campuses internationally number 28 as per (Times Higher Education World University Rankings, 2012-2013). It has held first position in Australia for decades in reference to cultural, economic and social contributions, research and teaching achievement. The University has extensive international connection which has seen the university rank first in international cluster within higher education in the region of Asia-Pacific and outside. The academia has grown up to seven campuses across Melbourne, the Parkville and the rural victoria. Today, the campus has over 47,000 students and over 6500 staff. In addition, the institution offers 270 graduate courses and 11 undergraduate degrees. The university has excellent governance and leadership structure. The structure runs from the bottom Emeriti, University council, academic Board, Senior Executives and Vice Chancellor http://www.marketing.unimelb.edu.au/. Melbourne University and IMC Clow & Baack, (2012) adds that, since IMC came into place in late 1980s it has received many changes and backing by different principle. This fact has made the world of business competitive and convenient. IMC has seen all-round turn over of businesses in the 21st century. As a matter of fact what a person can get from next door can as well get it 1000 miles away efficiently, effectively and timely and a reasonable cost. It is this fact that Melbourne institution is always on its toes to ensure what they pass to the consumer is not only targeting the stakeholders within the nation but also outside. The university aims at promoting its brand to always outstand in the world of education and research in higher education as the leader. To do this, departmental collaboration is vital. The promoting team ensures they deliver engagement and strategic marketing programs. In order to support the engagement program of the university, the team offers advice and services and manages the brand. Following this fact, the university websites http://www.marketing.unimelb.edu.au/ is filled with rich materials that the university staff can access to get assistance in regards to procedures, guidelines, services and tool they need for their communications and marketing activities. Some include: Promotion According to (Belch George & Michael, 1998) Promotion is one of the four P’s that comprises a marketing mix. The promotional team in Melbourne University incorporates marketing together to ensure excellent flow of information and that the tools do not put friction as they market the product. This ensures there is no confusion regarding the information conveyed at any given time. Marketing mix and IMC are well correlated. The 4p’s of the MM (promotion, price, place (distribution) and product should be integrated. To build the MM coordination and consistency factors of IMC are vital. On the other hand, promotion actually looks into particular tools used by an organization to pass message. The promotional messages should demonstrate clear message through effective and efficient tools of preferment on how price point, channels of distribution and the product will work together to offer value. In relation to MM there are two types of integration in IMC: vertical and horizontal integration. Vertical integration This looks into the correlation between communications and marketing missions, corporate goals and objectives. These factors are always put in place first by any given organization that wishes to succeed in IMC. An organization which clearly understands the IMC ensures there is consistency and coordination between Marketing objectives and top-level goals (Clow & Baack, 2012). For example, Melbourne University has an outstanding mission of providing best quality solution to education, learning and research. Its advertising therefore, has remained sensible over the years. This is because it has always communicated to only ensure high-cost solution. In reference to this, the marketing messages have always been passed with the aim of supporting corporate goals using the high status of education, research and learning environment http://www.marketing.unimelb.edu.au/. Horizontal integration In Horizontal integration, an organization is mandated with viewing the core function of the business as vital to the marketing mix (Clow & Baack, 2012 & Fill, 2002). In Melbourne University, marketing, distribution, finance, production and product development sections do collaborate to ensure the university marketing message promise is kept. The collaboration is quite vital if IMC has to succeed. For example, Melbourne University does cultivate a high quality solution that concurs with the promotional messages given to the target consumer (customer). In this case, the customers actually sees how coordinated and consistency the university programs and plans are. Therefore, this particular fact tells people why the university capacity of those graduating from undergraduate and postgraduate has continued to increase over the year as well as the staff quota. Subsequently, the message which is conveyed and received is actually what the actual solution is. This can be supported by the fact that the academia has held exceptional position in both research and academic performance as earlier stated both within and internationally http://www.marketing.unimelb.edu.au/. Advertising The University Success would not have been realized without effective and efficient marketing. Therefore, for the institution to maintain its brand in the field full of competition, advertising is a key player. Advertising is relied upon for the university’s consistency development and maintenance. The university uses IMC approach to ensure its presence in the market is felt and it outwits its competitor institutions and products (Brassington & Pettitt 2000). To achieve this, the Higher Learning Institution has Brand Advertising Unit (BAU); a particular section within the Marketing Office that deals purely with marketing and promotions of the brand. BAU offers best procedures, guidelines, policy and advice on booking and planning advertising placements or campaigns using different promotional-mix-tools http://www.marketing.unimelb.edu.au/. Publishing As from http://www.marketing.unimelb.edu.au/, the objectives of the advertising team would not have matured if publishing department was asleep in IMC. Melbourne University has a publishing service team. The team is bestowed with design and printing activities related to marketing and communications. The university has its own expert designers of their brand and visual identity. This team performs a project from concept part to the end product efficiently and effectively. The team does design and print the following services: i. Publication materials like reports, strategic plans, course guides and prospectus documents. ii. Promotional materials: posters, flyers, postcards and brochures. iii. Event materials: event collateral, invitations, nametags and specialsed place cards. Branding The formulated brand guidelines are always up-dated to ensure the institution is feasible and accessible to millions of persons across the globe. In addition, the staff communicates with one voice. Such engagement of the staff in turn engages the network of the stakeholders to the university positively. The interested parties include the current and future students, the community, affiliates, business, industry, media and the government http://www.marketing.unimelb.edu.au/. Having a dedication and consistency brand principle ensures the brand loyalty is build and maintained (Keller 1998). Consequently, the stakeholders experience to Melbourne university brand remains distinctive from their competitors, inspiring and meaningful. Filming/photographing in the campus The university houses good scenes and grounds suitable for filming both out and indoors. The grounds and building within the campus have featured greatly in items of general news, student films, televisions programs, movies and advertisement (Manning & Barry 1998). The university is an asset of its own, value and interest of the community. Therefore, Melbourne is mandated to preserving the building and the ground to make them available for filming opportunities where appropriate http://www.marketing.unimelb.edu.au/. Merchandise Graduate schools and faculties are provided with sufficient display, signage and university-branded merchandise materials by the marketing services team to support events and sponsorship. Melbourne University merchandise strategy contributes positively in a unique manner to events program. This helps in creating an impression that last long on its community, stakeholders and students (Clow & Baack 2012). The materials are both physically accessible in the university branches and on their merchandise online store. This fact ensures that any corporate or interested party to Melbourne can have the materials as needed. Events Melbourne University houses different events and festivals at any given seasons. Such include celebration of excellence performance of the university in terms of engagement, teaching and learning and research. To ensure there is coordination of staff and good planning the marketing office is mandated with information and services provision to all staff in all campuses. These team is bestowed with the responsibility of coming up and publishing annual events manual. In addition, it is the duty of the marketing office to manage and host major university events. Such events include Melbourne university open day, conferring, public lectures and conferences. Prior planning ensures there is no coercion of events and related stakeholders (Fill 2002). The information is also posted online for wide scope. Social media To take care of the core branded channels of the university the central office is in place. In addition to this role, it strategically guides the university in reference to social media, trains the new executive staff to social media, administrators and other stakeholders who need to be acquainted with social media networks like twitter or Facebook among others and a 24-7 chat system to ensure information efficient and timely delivery (Brassington & Pettitt 2000). In Melbourne this departments is bestowed with the responsibility of updating its students and other stakeholders through an automated alert system. Shortcoming Despite the affluence IMC displays in Melbourne University it is not without limitations. IMC is an investment. It therefore, calls for well knowledgeable persons to work and update the guidelines, procedures and tools. This therefore, calls for more personnel employment and trainings which may deem costly. In addition to its application, there is some information though vital to the public which can not be displayed to the public. Some of this information would otherwise increase promotion of the brand to a greater depth. This can occur for example where some managers would like to protect the base of power and or their budget (Clow & Baack 2012). On the other hand, some departments may fail to report to the marketing section. This may result to failure of updating the systems and inefficient delivery of information henceforth lack of coordination within and outside the institution. Creativity is part of marketing. However, since the promotional team works on a particular brand the creativity level is tied down to a greater level. Adopting change; this is common to those who are still conservative to the traditional methods of communication. For example, it is possible to often to find unread emails by the concerned stakeholders. In addition, despite the alert system in social media some stakeholders are not conversant with the system or they rarely visit their sites. This fact leads to communication barriers from the sender to the receiver a fact which may encumber coordination (Manning & Barry 1998). Conclusion IMC is a communication web that holds elements of promotion mix to make sure they work together without coercion and to support one another. Such elements include, direct marketing, social media, owned assets, sales promotion, public relations and paid advertising (Clow & Baack 2012). For effective and efficient application of IMC any organization has to highlights it objective. This helps analyse the best elements of communication and how they relate to one another (Belch & Michael 1998). Adopting IMC in Melbourne University has led to improvement in engagement, learning, research and education within and outside. Consisted marketing has seen the university rank at the top in the Asia-Pacific region. The university uses different marketing strategies such as advertising, publishing, merchandising, social media, promotion among others http://www.marketing.unimelb.edu.au/ . However, it is not without challenges that IMC has seen great success for the campus. Such include, delayed information reporting to the marketing team, creativity needs, some stakeholders not willing to adopt change in communication system and cost of investment (Clow & Baack 2012). References About Melbourne university updated 2013. http://www.marketing.unimelb.edu.au/ retrieved on 24/08/2013. Belch, G. E. & Michael, A., 1998. Advertising and Promotion: An Integrated Marketing Communication Perspective 4th ed, Boston Irwin, McGraw-Hill. Brassington, F. & Pettitt, S., 2000. Principles of Marketing second edition Prentice-Hall, Harlow. Clow, K., E. & Baack, D., 2012. Integrated Advertising, Promotion and Marketing Communications 5th edition/global edition Essex: Pearson Education. Fill, C., 2002. Marketing Communications, Contexts, Strategies and Applications, Prentice Hall. Keller, K. 1998. Strategic Brand Management, Building, Measuring and Managing Brand Equity, Kogan page, London. Manning, G., L. & Barry, L., 1998. Selling Today: Building Quality Partnership 7th edition, Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Read More