The Marketing Bureau

By Brian H Meredith
From the NZBusiness Magazine"Marketing Maestro" Archive.
First published April 200

Do you know what Brand of batteries the Pink Drummer Bunny represents?   Chances are, according to Sandra Moriarty (“An Introduction to Marketing Communications. An Integrated Approach” Prentice-Hall Publishers 1998) that you might think you do but that 50% of you would wrongly associate the bouncing beauty with Duracell.

The correct answer is, in fact, Energizer.

Sandra reports on Consumer research undertaken in the U.S. some years ago that found that half of all respondents incorrectly associated with Pink Bunny with a competitive product.

And, she goes on to contend, the reason for this disastrous state of affairs (certainly disastrous if you were responsible for the Energizer Brand) is the lack of a truly Integrated Marketing Communications Programme. Apparently the Bunny existed, at that time at least, on the small screen, in Energizer TVCs only – he did not see the light of day in print, magazines, point of sale material, sales promotions or anything else.

And, as a result, the effective cut through of the Brand message was adversely affected (and to a very significant degree).

Not a lotta people know that! But now you do.

And you need to know it because the concept of Integrated Marketing Communications is not a new one but it is an important marketing communications approach that is proven to have significant and highly beneficial effects.

And it allows marketers, in organisations both large and small, to achieve very substantial leverage of their promotional message (not to mention the same effect on their budget) through ensuring that, once we are sure of what we are selling, who we are selling it to and why the heck they should want to buy it anyway, the message is delivered in a compelling and consistent manner through all marketing communications channels that we choose to deploy.

And in that way, our cut through goes up, the opportunities to see/hear go up, the memorability of our message goes up, recall goes up, product trial goes up, sales go up and, ultimately, profit goes up.

Easy. Eh?

So why didn’t Energizer know this? Why didn’t Energizer do this? Blowed if I know and I wouldn’t be presumptuous enough to speculate. But pay the price they certainly did.

In order to ensure that you are able to achieve truly integrated marketing communications, it is important to realise that marketing communications works by sending out two, distinctly different types of message to audiences – planned messages and unplanned messages.

Planned messages are relatively easy to understand and manage and they comprise all the traditional, as well as new technology delivery vehicles, (advertising, sales promotion, direct mail, public relations, internet marketing etc.)

However, just when you think you’ve got this little lot sorted out in your business, along comes the other type of marketing communications messages – unplanned messages.

Unplanned messages are powerful. Unplanned messages may or may not have anything to do with the marketing team. Unplanned messages can, however, account for as much as 80/90% of your Brand’s total communications effect (my estimate)  – and without you even knowing it!

Unplanned messages include dirty windows, unfriendly telephone systems, wrongly addressed mail, grubby and poorly maintained vehicles, bad drivers, long customer response times, poor crisis management, employee gossip and behaviour (especially when away from the workplace) etc. etc. etc.

Powerful stuff. Scary stuff. So much communicating going on and so little awareness that it is going on.

And how many Marketing Managers have headed down to the factory floor and attempted to tell the Factory Manager that the state of his factory floor is a marketing concern and could he please address the problem urgently. Wonder what the response would have been?

Or told the delivery driver that the Marketing Team were concerned about the speeds at which he drove because of the unplanned messages that it is sending to other road users who are also customers and prospects. The response? Who knows what it might have been. But we could take a guess!

We only need to pause and consider the power and effect of unplanned messages for a short while to begin to understand how critical it is to turn them into planned messages – messages for which desired outcomes are known and understood and for which systems are in place to ensure those messages are communicating the right stuff and that regular monitoring ensures that this is continuing.

Treat the windows, the phone systems, the delivery drivers and the rest just like the advertising, sales promotion, direct mail etc.– consider what you want to say and to whom you want to say it and then put in place the systems necessary to ensure that you say just that.

Jan Carlzon of Scandinavian Airline Systems called the occasions on which unplanned messages were sent and received, Moments of Truth. And to combat the fact that the outcomes of those Moments of Truth were being left to chance, he and his team identified every single Moment of Truth in their businesses operation, made specific decisions on what they wished the outcomes of those Moments of Truth to be and then put in place managed systems to ensure those outcomes were achieved. Consistently.

If the Pink Bunny and the values that he represents is your way of making a single minded proposition come alive in a compelling way, then make sure that Bunny and/or all that he stands for, is reflected, single mindedly, in every message that you send – planned and unplanned. (But then you will only have Planned Messages from now on, won’t you?)

And then, and only then, will you begin to enjoy the benefits that IMC can offer your communications effort.