 As-Salaam-Alaikum-Khawad-e-Nuh-Hazrat. Wasim Asim welcomes you to the Virtual University of Pakistan. We're getting into lecture number 32 of Brand Management, MKT 624. I talked about communication, its importance, and the essence of communication in the previous lecture. We all know that the basic objective of communication is to create awareness, maintain that awareness, and then make sure that consumers make the final decision, the meaning go for the final action in favor of your brand. I also talked about the essence of the process of communication, which starts with awareness and passing through so many different steps, it culminates at the action and then referral. I also talked about the one fact that the process of communication, the ones you have understood this, and once it is kicked off, evokes certain responses in part of the customers and consumers. What are those responses? We are going to learn in this lecture. There is something which is known as the customer response hierarchy or customer response effects, which take place in ascending order, one after the other, and I'm going to explain that to you with the help of a graphic illustration. You can see from the illustration that the customer response effects start with the first stage, which is awareness, and this also ends at what you call action. Whereas the essence of the process of communication also starts with awareness and ends at action, by the same token the customer response effects, meaning the responses which are evoked by that process of communication also starts with the stage of awareness and ends at action. In between awareness and action, we have two more stages, which is comprehension and then intention. In ascending order, we can see from this illustration starting with awareness onto comprehension, onto intention, onto action, and these are the four stages which are the basic determinants of the response effects on part of the consumers. In the very first stage, we create awareness and this illustration shows that you have kicked off a campaign which has succeeded in creating awareness on part of 75% of your target market. Because whenever you kick off a campaign, you also should get into some kind of market research, however small and the brief it may be, but it should be able to provide you with some kind of feedback which throws light on the effort that you have undertaken and the results of that effort which either should be reinforced or they should be improved. 75% of the target market is aware of your brand and which means automatically that 25% of the target market is not aware of the brand. The next stage which this illustration shows us is that of comprehension and we can see from here that of the 75% consumers within the target market, 80% of them do comprehend what the brand is, what the communication is all about, meaning they do understand the benefits which the product carries and the value which it offers. Now again, you see this is on your part that you have got to make sure and determine that they do fully understand what the values of the brand are and what benefits the brand really offers. Because if there are any gaps here, you will have to make some adjustments with your campaign. After the comprehension stage, we have the stage of the intention. Meaning this is the stage where you can measure the response effects of your campaign in terms of consumers' intention either to buy or not to buy. According to this illustration, 70% of the people who have very good comprehension of the brand do have an intention to go for the brand, meaning they will buy it. This automatically means that 30% of the population does not really have any intention to go for the brand. Why is that? Well, it is upon you to find out through your custom models, through market research, through your contacts with the marketplace, so on and so forth. The final response effect of course is the action itself which the consumers must take in order to buy your brand. We can see from this illustration that of the 70% of the population which has every intention to buy the brand, 90% have taken the action to buy the brand. It was only the 10% out of the intended ones who somehow at the last moment decided not to go for the brand. This is a stage which is very thought-provoking and also action-provoking. Meaning there has got to be some action on your part to determine why is it that those who really intended to go for the brand did not go for it. Meaning they have gone for the competition and what are the reasons that at the final moment they decided to opt for competition instead of your brand. All I can say is that the communication is extremely important for any brand to gain a decent level of success in the marketplace and the empirical evidence shows that not many brands without advertising or without communication have been successful in the marketplace. There are a few statements we can make about communication and about controlling this strategic intent of the overall marketing strategy and those statements are that there has to be some kind of communication for every brand that appears on the market and the method of communication should be very direct just like advertising. The number two statement that we can make is that there can be ways other than advertising but whatever those ways are, those ways also have to be direct and simple which really reach very convincingly to the your intended target market. The third statement that we can make about communications is that all means of communication and the strategies that you have at your disposal that have got to be very well coordinated and whatever communication message that you are transmitting to the target market through any communication vehicle or communication tool has got to carry the same essence and it's got to mean the same. It just cannot be that you are talking about one thing through advertising and about another through promotions and yet about another if you go for some kind of event marketing the message has got to be very well coordinated and it is because of this reason that when you take a look at the advertising of the good brands and powerful brands you see the same thing in the television commercial and the same kind of message colors and slogans appear on the holdings and exactly the identical of the manifestations that you see in the press. If you really go for things which are kind of diverse and which do not really converge on one single point then the power of the communication campaign is going to be undermined and good chances are that the communication campaign may not succeed. These are the fundamentals which basically form the basis for a brand based communication strategy. What that communication strategy is and how does that fit into the brand strategy let us talk about that and let us talk about that with the help of three guiding principles. I will talk about these principles one by one but before that let us see what these principles are. Number one is that we have to use a combination of all communication tools and communication strategies meaning that we have part advertising, part promotion and part event marketing if at all we are going to go for that and part this and part that. So it has got to be a mixed bag of different strategic tools. Advertising could be the heaviest among those or maybe promotion is going to be the heaviest among those. It all depends on your strategic situation and your strategic goals and your resources in particular. Number two of the principle which is a very important principle is that all communication strategies are going to be driven basically by the brand promise meaning the brand picture and the brand positioning. And number three guiding principle is that all the communication strategies have got to be very well net and well integrated so that they all talk about the same thing so that they can appear to you as stemming from one common platform which is the platform for the brand picture which you developed and the brand positioning which you created and that is the brand position which you intend to occupy into the minds of the consumers and that is what you are working for. So these are the three guiding principles that have been derived out of all the elements that I have talked about so far and the brand strategy or the communication strategy as part of the brand strategy basically stems from these principles. In other words these principles must guide our communication strategy. Now before I start talking about these principles in a little detail let us see how these principles are related to the hierarchy of customer response effects. The reason I call, I mean the marketing experts call it hierarchy of response effects because it does happen in a hierarchical fashion. It ascends and it goes from down position to an up position and that up position is the position where consumers take the final action of buying. So it is a hierarchy. Let us see how these principles relate different phases or different responses on that hierarchy. Because the total framework of your strategic intent in relation to communication strategies is going to depend on that hierarchy. Why? Because if you are a new brand you are out to create a lot of awareness and your campaign is going to center around that awareness objective. If your brand is an established one you are going to just remind the consumers of your brand. So in other words you are reinforcing the message and you are reminding them. If you think there is a gap between the comprehension and the final action so maybe there is something wrong with the brand persona and there is something which you have got to do to make your consumers understand what the product really is about. What are the associations which you are trying to develop and what is the brand personality and the character and the traits which your customers and consumers must conjure up when they think about your brand. So these are the kind of responses which you have to look at and then relate these with the position of your brand and you must know where your brand stands. So wherever your brand stands at that hierarchy you have to create a campaign accordingly. I hope it is clear. If it is awareness then you seek out the bottom of the hierarchy. If it is comprehension it is a step further. If it is intention it is a step even further. If it is action it is the final step and you keep on reminding the customers over and over again that we do exist and this is what we are all about and why don't you go by and they will if your brand is powerful and if your strategies are well knit and well integrated. So in other words all the tools that you are going to have at your disposal are going to be decided upon after you have looked into the strategic situation in relation to those responses or response effects I hope it is clear by now. After being very mindful of the stage or the response effect of the hierarchy we must then determine the objectives of the communication strategy accordingly. This is something we are clear about and that is something which is going to generate the final action. So in other words if a marketing communication fails to reach its target customers and create awareness the successive steps of the hierarchy will not emerge. That is the conclusion of this discussion so far. And if a marketing communication strategy fails to develop the successive responses you have to do something about the next response effect. If you have succeeded in generating that effect in a positive way then you worry about the next one and the next one. So you have to develop these relationships and study the market at every successive phase and stage of the response hierarchy. Each stage in other words lays the foundation for the next one and that is how you become very clear as to where we stand and what should be the strategic intent of the campaign that you are wanting to kick off. Let me try to explain the whole concept of response effects or hierarchy of response effects with the help of a few examples. I am going to talk about examples which I have taken from the textbook which you must have gone through or at least the handouts which do talk about these examples and since these are very well recorded into the marketing history I do not feel kind of hesitated to talk about the brand names First of all, let us talk about the world famous glasses which we are all fond of and these glasses basically are have been meant for the male market all over the world and these glasses always carry the promise of being very high quality and the promise of being very modern and the promise of being very masculine because these are basically limited to the masculine market. A time came when sales started slipping and despite the fact that the brand was very well known all over the world the manufacturers or the brand managers became worried as to the why I said that all of a sudden sales are slipping because we are maintaining the brand picture and we know what the brand persona is and the brand is very well positioned the awareness is there comprehension is there intention is there so why I said that the final action is not taking place when they carried out their market research they found out that it basically was a gap between the brand persona and the final action where the gap was well the gap was all about positioning meaning the market was looking upon that brand or perceiving that brand as limited to just males and not only males but males of a certain age the youngsters thought the glasses were not really meant for them females thought the glasses were not really meant for them so it gave for the management a lot of food for thought they immediately changed the brand persona and repositioned the brand with an appeal for not only their existing customers but also for their potential customers who were from those segments who refused to buy those glasses meaning youngsters and also females the new persona that was created was that of modern and very up to date intelligent and appealing to all the kind of glasses and glasses which were full of confidence that they really had an appeal for all those segments and the result was that the strategy worked very well and the new brand persona which the company created with the intention of challenging perception of their consumers really worked in the marketplace and the glasses were back on track all over again strategy worked so this is one example of the gap between the brand persona and the final action which the consumers were not taking let me give you another convincing example which you will find in many of the marketing books relating brand management and that is about one of the world renowned cars which you see on the streets of almost every country in the world it was back in 1997 that this car manufacturer realized that there was a drop in sales in the luxury car segment which was very well focused on the performance and this car manufacturer just like the manufacturer of the glasses part 2 itself housed that the car sales have registered a drop whereas the awareness, the reputation and the brand personality and the brand positioning everything seems to be in place and still the sales are dropping, why is that? well the results of the marketing research were brought to the surface, the one fact and that fact was all about customers not being reminded of the position which the brand occupied and not being reminded of the manufacturers the vigor and manufacturers the willingness to communicate with the customers all the time and that only was the reason so what happened was that the company did not do anything with positioning the company did not do anything with the set of promises the company did not do anything with the brand personality or for that matter brand persona the company only did one thing and that one thing was that it kicked off a campaign reminding the customers of one thing about which the car was known and that was performance so the company kicked off that campaign with a beautiful slogan which is very well known world renowned and I mean performance focused performance centered it only was a matter of reminding the customers and reinforcing the message that the sales came back on track and the company witnessed a growth and from there on the company like they say never looked back and I think the company the dust kicked off that kind of a campaign from time to time so these are the two examples which very convincingly explain the relationship of your marketing strategy or the basis of your communication strategy to be very precise with the response effects whether it is a problem at the awareness level or is it a problem at the comprehension level or is it a problem at the intention level or is it a problem at the action level so once you really have pinpointed and identified the problem in relation to the response effect you are all set to create and craft a beautiful strategy which really is going to guarantee success in the marketplace in relation to glasses and in relation to the car whether you have seen and how the companies fulfilled the requisite needs in terms of kicking off the right kind of campaign and those really worked for those two companies and those campaigns challenged the perceptions of the customers which were changing a little bit and those perceptions which the two companies wanted retained in their customers' minds were reinstated and reinforced so in the case of glasses to summarize it was a case of gap between the brand persona and the final action whereas in case of the car it was only a question of reminding the target market so with so much explanation with the help of examples I think the strategic relationship with the response effects has got to be very clear in our minds let us now talk about the guiding principles one by one because our understanding of the guiding principles is going to be very clear with the help of the examples which I already have talked about talking about terminologies and just the strategic intent without the help of the examples which I have given may become a little difficult so I do hope that we will pick up the strategies and the strategic requirements in relation to these principles very quickly with the ones we have cleared about these examples the first principle that we have to use all communication strategies to achieve our overall corporate strategy this relates to the combination of different communication strategies and like I already have explained we have got to be very clear about the strategic intent and the clarity about strategic intent comes to us by way of being very clear about the response effects the stage of the hierarchy where we stand because from there we start crafting our strategies and it is from there that we become very clear how much of advertising how much of promotion and like I said earlier how much of this and how much of that the mixed bag of communication strategies that you come up with in other words has got to be very compatible with the strategic vision the brand vision and the brand picture and the overall goals any deviation here of your strategy with meaning a combination of strategies which of course have got to be well integrated and well coordinated with the basic strategic elements which I just talked about meaning the brand vision the strategic vision and the goals is going to cause some problems and it is here that you reaffirm the support of the top management and it is here that you have to have all the resources in place the weather timetable for execution of the strategies the time frame which you have to yourself has got to be very realistic the results which you are going to see as a consequence of the communication strategies will not come to you overnight so the time frame which you set to yourselves has got to be very realistic and based on certain solid logic the amount of time in other words is of essence the important point which we must not forget here is that the overall objective remains the same that is awareness, comprehension, retention, action and every guiding principle has got to relate to one of the phases or stages of that arching principle number two is like I said earlier brand picture and brand positioning are the ones which drive our strategies I think it is very obvious that it is the basic set of promises which are based on the benefits you are going to deliver and what you are going to deliver forms the contract in which you have not signed with your customers and consumers but which is there for the consumers to perceive and the moment you deviate they know that you have breached the contract and they never talk in those terms that the contract is breached, no they know something is wrong with the brand and this brand always delivered this kind of a promise meaning the service was so good that it was available anywhere and I could just go and pick it from the nearest store and it is no longer available so that is a breach of contract so brand promise and brand contract and brand picture all the concepts about which we are so very clear about are the ones which must drive this communication strategy and if the communication strategy deviates from the essence of these strategic elements these strategies are not going to work now all this has to work in integration with the brand positioning because brand promise or brand contract or brand picture for that matter is for the present you already have it and you are very clear about delivering it and that confidence makes you feel that you are going to be a winner no question about that but then the positioning upon which the communication strategy is also depending on relates to the future because position is something that you still have to create in his or her mind so therefore the brand picture along with brand positioning are the two factors which really drive your communication strategies we shall become even more clear about brand picture and positioning when we start talking about different tools advertising in particular how ads are developed and what are the considerations when you develop those and how you reach your target market so on and so forth but for the time being I think the understanding should be good enough when I talk about the importance of the brand picture and the brand positioning as the basis of your communication strategy if the brand has not been able to evoke the right associations and customers cannot really develop the kind of picture in their minds and therefore are at a loss to develop a persona which is intended then there is a gap and this is the kind of gap which was so comprehensively explained to you with the help of two examples and that is why I talked about the examples before I started talking about the guiding principles so that's the perspective which we must understand and we must take the biography craft our communication strategies only that will help you achieve the intended position in the marketplace and if you have succeeded in registering in the minds of consumers the position to which is intended to which you think that it must occupy the consumer mind I think that's a great success and that what is the whole exercise is all about and then it only is a question of reminding them and reinforcing the message to whatever is going to be the combination best suited to your strategic situation I still would like to give you another example of a company which is known the world over to its printers whether which we all use in our offices also at homes attached with our computers this company a few years ago started facing a problem and the problem always is declining sales don't forget one thing that the communication strategies of that matter any marketing strategies are basically meant to achieve our goals and goals are very strategic in terms of some solid results and the first result any company likes to see is the sales if it has good sales if it has good chances are it will have good profitability so the first indication about a communication strategy of that matter any other marketing strategy being good or being not good is a decline in sales this company started witnessing sales a few years back and it really wanted to to find out what really had gone wrong because the company knew it is known all over the world and the position this company has in the minds of its customers the world over is very compatible with the technical power which the company has and the strategies which it had been and it has been kicking off always with the work so what all of a sudden has gone wrong with the product the results of the marketing research showed that the company was too decentralized and too fragmented in terms of making their strategies and in terms of executing their strategies so probably there was no one department or there was no one mechanism which really could ensure the centralization in terms of the message which should have been and could have been delivered in a very well integrated way and I will take you back to one of the basic elements and the guiding principles that any communication campaign has to deliver the same message whatever is the combination of the campaign all the tools and all the elements that they have got to carry the same the message so probably because of the fragmentation and decentralization which company must have carried out in relation to some other very creative and convincing management strategy the communication strategy did not seem to be working the company reassured itself that the brand persona in the minds of the customers was still that of innovative reliable and very scientific so when customers thought that this company makes products which are very scientific and which are based on innovation they come up with beautiful reliable products every now and then because that's what the company does so why is it that the sales have gone down well the results showed that it was because of a lack of integration and a lack of coordination between and among different units of the company which were working quite independently in terms of these communication strategies the moment they put everything together and integrated the whole thing to bring all the strategies together the company started witnessing a rebound and the sales again started showing a positive growing trend so this is an example of the significance of having a campaign which is very well integrated and which carries the same the message and in relation to this example I'm going to talk about the guiding principle number three that we have to have integrated marketing communication strategy and I think with the help of this example the strategy should be very clear because this is what experience has shown us that advertising and promotions when for the use together by carrying a message which is just about the same everywhere and anywhere the impact they create is compounded and the reasons are common sense based a mix of all communications with the carrying the same message that has got to have a bigger punch and impact than the fragmented strategies and fragmented tools there and there so it is to be taken in a very synergistic light as you might have learned in one of the management courses you have to create synergies whereby you can really optimize your marketing results and also not end up wasting your money all the tools and all the strategies have got to be mutually inclusive and mutually consistent so that they can complement each other complementing each other leads to the cumulative impact in the minds of the customers and in a very coherent way so that's the level of coherence which you have to create in the minds of the consumers and that level of coherence is created when the message is very impactful and the impact fullness through integration of your communication strategies and not through fragmentation and fragmentation when it occurs at the kind of unrelated unconnected and disparate times and timeframes they do not really create the kind of impact the campaigns which are well integrated in terms of all kinds of efforts and also in terms of time have this integration has to come through certain solid methods and the methods which are proven are number one that you must look for all the opportunities, the possible opportunities to blend the various communication tools that is method number one and let me remind you that I still am talking about the overall guiding principle number three which calls for the integration of all the marketing communication campaigns so method number one in relation to this communication strategy is that we have to look for all the possible communication tools that can be brought together to create the kind of punch that we are looking for number two is that we have to ensure that the message is transmitted very consistently the message is not only the same but it is transmitted very consistently and in a way that it carries an impact a message which is spread over a very long period of time may lose its impact in comparison with the message that is delivered within a short period of time but repeated very frequently so this is something that you have to look into before you make your decision but the lesson is consistency and frequency number three is that you have to track all the expenditure I would pay a lot of emphasis on this because this is an area again within communications in which you are going to be responsible in which you enter the practical field you are going to be attached with the brand managers and the marketing managers as their assistants and be required to work on budget making dealing with the agencies and dealing with all the suppliers who are going to supply you different the promotional materials and so on and so forth so what you are supposed to be doing is you must relate expenditure with every tool that you are going to use for your communication strategy and you must then measure the results of those tools in relation to the expenditure in which you invest and then see how your performance has been and on the basis of that you make further decisions whether you should be bringing about any improvement or any adjustments within the tactical execution that is taking place as part of this strategy in other words these the four methods that I have just talked about really lead you to consider all the possible tools at your disposal to communicate your positioning directly with your customers you make sure nothing is left uncovered and that basically is the objective of communication getting back to the question of expenditures let me say a few things about the budgeting because I do believe you are going to be a part of the budget making immediately upon your landing into the department of marketing and brand management it involves a very sensitive question here how these budgets are made and what are the allocations and how those allocations are made you must know how the whole process works but before you develop an understanding of the budgets and budget making be clear about the one thing that the point of departure for all that is the situation analysis it is the same situation analysis which I talked about in one of my lectures earlier that you've got to know where you are where the company stands and in light of the strategy which you already have in place where you really want to reach and why you want to reach there because answers to all these questions are going to provide you with the right most of the dissection of the situation for you to make the right most decisions about the right combination of your communication strategies the next thing which you must consider is the objective of course and the overall objectives are the things which you never lose sight of wherever you are within the process of strategic management not only brand management but strategic management in its totality because the whole company is working for the same objectives once you are clear about these two things the next question is how these appropriations are made the method which is generally followed by most of the companies in the world is that you always allocate part of your sales revenue to your marketing budgets now there are many marketing experts who object to this method because they look upon this method as something which is driven by sales whereas they think that it has to be vice versa meaning communication strategies should be the one that drive sales and not sales that should drive communication strategies but the fact of the matter is that this is the way it happens to be and most of the companies are following this practice what you are to be mindful of is the fact that you must work very closely with the sales people meaning the sales managers and the sales officers in order to master the sales forecasting done by those people and based on that sales forecasting and the revenues which are being projected and envisaged that you start working on those appropriations meaning what percent of sales is going to be allocated to a combination of different communication strategies what is going to go to advertising what is going to promotions and you break all those expenditures into different levels and then sub levels and relate those with the different departments and sections within the not only department of marketing but also others if the relationships with the transcend the marketing boundaries the objective here is to make sure that you are very clear about what you are going to spend and you are very clear about the time frame the time limit which you have defined to yourselves so that you can achieve those objectives very realistically anything which is overly ambitious and is reflected in the budget making is going to backfire so you have got to be very practical about that take your colleagues into confidence listen to their viewpoint and then go for something which is very well integrated not only in terms of communication strategies but in terms of overall management strategies like I was talking about the need for integrating your communication strategies the fact is that the total strategic framework of the company marketing management production management financial management operations any management they have got to be very well integrated and you have got to start training yourself in a way that you end up as a beautiful team player who really subscribes to the idea of integration whatever is the field having talked about advertising importance and elements and the response effects in particular and how those response effects are related to your strategic intent at any given point in time is the main learning of the day and I will repeat that whenever you craft a communication strategy for a new brand, for an established brand whatever may be the case you have got to be very clear about the hierarchy of response effects and then start crafting your strategies the chances are you will not go wrong like they say it doesn't really take a genius to craft a strategy even if you are an average person and you understand the brand picture well and you have created the brand positioning right the chances are you will not go wrong with this I could bring this lecture to an end and in the next lecture I am going to start talking about the tools of advertising which I talked about earlier in my lecture of today meaning advertising, promotions, event marketing and all those things and the reason I am going to talk about those tools like you experienced earlier again that I really want you to have a very good understanding of the strategic intent and the strategic frameworks that you develop in order to use those tools so unless you know how these strategies come into being understanding about the tools is not going to be as productive so Allah Hafiz until the next lecture I look forward to talking with you then