IMC Plan Strategy For Edgell Rendang Beans: Part B

Situation analysis, positioning, and development of the IMC plan discussed in Part A

Question:

Discuss about the Empirical Economic and Regulatory Conditions.

This report is the second part; the first part is based on a development of a new IMC plan for Edgell Brown Lentills. This IMC plan helps the company in improving the sales and maintaining the sustainability in the market. The report of Part A talks about the Situation analysis, positioning and the development of the IMC plan. This part B includes the IMC plan strategy that the company needs to follow to enhance the sales of the company (Belch, Belch, Kerr, and Powell, 2014). The new product is the Rendang Beans that is marketed by Edgell. The target market comprises of urban areas as well as rural areas, age group of 12-45 years. The target country for this new product is Turkey and Sri Lanka because here the customers like to eat dietary products.

The SMART objective of the company discussed in part A says that the company needs be specific to the product they are going to launch; the time of launching the new product needs be measurable for the company. The marketing needs to be properly done by assigning it to the team; in marketing, the team will perform the task with the use of integrated marketing communication. The company will launch the new brown lentil canned product in the market considering the proper timeframe.

The company Edgell Brown Lentills may use different IMC tools to accomplish the objective of the company. Advertising is the best effective tool that is used by the marketers to complete the strategic goals of the company (Blakeman, 2014). The objective of the company is to launch the product in the market for that company needs to form a good relationship with the targeted customers. Rendang Beans product is marketed by the company so they believe it is must create the brand recognition in the market and once the brand is built then the company needs to maintain the brand.

Building the brand- It is must for the business to build a brand in the market. The new product brand building needs the appeal to the elite customers. The Edgell Brown Lentills use the advertisement to promote the brand along with the new product. The advertisement reaches to a large number of the customers (Schultz, Patti, and Kitchen, 2013).

Maintaining the brand- The communication is the only way to maintain the brand. The brand will keep the logo on the product through which the customers will be able to recognize the brand easily.

IMC plan strategy for launching Edgell Rendang Beans in the target market

The function of the integrated marketing communication is the coordination of the message for maximum impact. The impact is created through synergy, synergy is the linkages creates a link in the receiver’s mind as a result of a message that connects to create impact beyond the power of any one message on its own (Melewar, et.al., 2017). The integration will be equal to the synergy; once the brand messages are integrated they support each other and thus generate a synergy effect. Synergy creates an impact on the entire Structure of the message; the linkage and the repetition of the advertisement create an impact in each and every situation, even if the receiver pays a less attention towards the advertisement. This is the only way to enhance the awareness about the product Rendang Beans.

IMC comprises of the different functions such as advertising, direct marketing, sales promotion, publicity, personal selling, packaging, events and sponsorship, internet. The IMC function that is selected for the marketing of the Rendang Beans new product is an advertisement. The reason behind the selection of the advertisement is this mode allows the company to communicate whatever the company is willing to communicate to the target audience. The product is available for the people who are in the age group of 18-45 years. The Advertising media consists of the magazine, newspaper, TV stations, and website. Through this mode, the company will show creativity and the innovation in the message they want to communicate to their audience.

The each function of the IMC plays a vital role for the company who is looking to communicate or promote the products or services to the target audience.

Advertising: – The Edgell Company will follow the trade advertising that needs to be done considering the target audience. The advertisement for the customer will be national, retail or local and it will be selective demand advertising (Kelley, and Jugenheimer, 2015). The company will make use of the advertisement for creating the awareness about the brand to the large audience in the small timeframe. 

Sales promotion: – The Company will do the promotion by offering some benefits to the customers if they will buy the product such as discount coupons, loyalty clubs, lucrative schemes, incentives and the attractive packages for the loyal customers (Sen, Parmar, and Chaudhari, 2017). This helps the Edgell Brown Lentills to create the awareness for the new product.

Public relations: – This activity will be used by the marketers of Edgell to promote the brand through press releases, events, news, public appearances. By doing the public relations company will show the positive or the best side of the company to the customers (Reddi, 2014). Hence, this will enhance the trust of the customers for the company.

Selection of advertising as the key IMC tool

Personal selling: – It is one of the best and effective tools of integrated marketing communication which is used by a company to sell the products and services through forming a relationship with the targeted audience (Sharma, 2015). Through this way, the employees of the company play an important role in establishing a good image of the company and its products in the mind of the customers. This helps in enhancing the customer loyalty.

Direct marketing: – The direct marketing tool allows the organization to communicate directly to the customers. This will be done by the company through emails, text message, broachers, promotional letters, and many others (Jones, 2016). By doing so the Edgell Brown Lentills attract the customers towards their new product so that they will be able to enhance the sales of the canned coffee beans

Online/ digital: – There are different platforms that company uses to promote the product of their brand. This tool helps the company to educate or to inform the customers about their new product (Andreani, Rokka, Moulins, and Conchon, 2014). This enhances the awareness of the products in the market and potential customer will convert into the customers.

Events and sponsorship: – These events mainly used by the high brands, the sponsorship of the products will be used by the Edgell marketers to promote the new product in the market (Winkelmann, Dickenson, Souchon, Lee, and Michaelidou, 2016). The trust of the customers increases when they found that the product or services are sponsored by the well-known brand.

One of the most vital components of the IMC is marketing communication message. Creativity is used in developing the marketing communication strategies (Drewniany, and Jewler, 2013). The creativity strategy is used by the Edgell Brown Lentills Company make the advertising more attractive that attracts the customers. The aim of the creative strategy is to determine what message company need to communicate to the audience. This message needs to be catchy that helps the company in grabbing the attraction of the customers as well as the potential customers (Herrman, 2015).

An effective sales pitch that is used to grab the attention of the customer and the build the trust and excitement of the product are selling argument. Each and every company uses different selling arguments (Blakeman, 2014). Over here the major selling arguments the company Edgell Brown Lentills will use the slogan “Best canned beans, Better coffee”. This slogan shows that the company is willing to form the connection with all the coffee lovers available in Turkey and Sri Lanka. The slogan creates the excitement regarding the product.

Other functions of IMC such as sales promotion, public relations, personal selling, direct marketing, online/digital, events, and sponsorship.

One of the essential parts of the creative strategy development is evaluating the central theme that becomes the big idea for the advertising campaign (Duggan, 2013). There are various approaches that Edgell Brown Lentills will use to bring the major selling idea such as:-

• There is unique selling proposition in the advertisement that company will maintain. The advertisement will be different from the competitors and will be able to pull the new potential customers.
• The creative strategy includes the creation of the unique benefit or attribute so that the advertisement develop a memorable and a strong brand image in the eyes of the customers.
• The position of the product is the main concept behind the creative strategy, making the place of the product in the market is must for the company. The advertisement campaign will indicate the customer benefits.

The creative team might face many challenges in creating the big idea or a major selling idea. This big idea is must to guide the development of the effective and beneficial creative strategy.

Creative execution is a process which shows the manner in which a marketing communication appeal is carried out by the company (Ashley, and Tuten, 2015). This is the important approach or tactic which is used by the company to deliver the message theme. There are three main message strategies that will be used by the Edgell Brown Lentills.

Cognitive: – This strategy is to design an advertisement which will create an effect the knowledge and trust of the customers.

• Generic- Generic strategy is carried out for the promotion of the brand, not for the category such as Eat meal, Feel Good. Similarly, the company is using the generic message which is “Best canned beans, Better coffee”.
• USP- The message will be unique for others based on the functional attributes of the coffee beans. Definitely, the company is going to give the canned beans to the customer which is USP of the company and this is clear from the slogan of the company (Lubart, Zenasni, and Barbot, 2013).
• Hyperbole- In the message when a company uses untestable claim based on some benefits or attributed. The hyperbole does not require substantiation such as NBC states that it has America’s favorite comedies.
• Preemptive- In preemptive, the company will claim that there no other competitors have the same appeals such as Radio station Nova promotes not more than two ads in a row.
• Comparative- In this message strategy, there is an indirect or direct comparison of the product with the other products such as Avis and Hertz (Ashley, and Tuten, 2015). The company is performing the direct competition as many of the competitors provide the beans in packages but Edgell Brown Lentills is giving the beans in cans.

Affective: – Affective strategy plays an essential role in invoking emotions or feeling and relates those emotions with the product or services in which company is dealing.

• Resonance- The advertisement strikes a chord or resonated with the viewer.
• Emotional- Attempts to elicit a powerful emotion that helps the company in recalling the product and the choice. The emotions include the emotions of trust, reliability, happiness, friendship, security and the romance. The slogan “Live for Now” of Pepsi applied which enhance the emotions of excited and being active. Similarly the slogans “Best canned beans, Better coffee” enhance the emotions of the customers who enjoy the flavored coffee and are diet conscious.

Conative: – Conative message strategy is created to lead directly to several kinds of consumer’s response. The main aim of the conative message is to stimulate behavior of consumers (Wang, and Praet, 2016).

• Action-inducing- The goal is to create the transactions with the cognitive knowledge and effective feelings as the product are used.
• Promotional support- The promotional support consist the tied in with other promotional efforts that include the coupons, sweepstakes.

The Edgell Brown Lentills Company use Cognitive and Affective message strategies for their new product which helps the company in successfully achieving the strategic goals of this campaign.

Commercial and print advertisement use some form of appeal to enhance the reach towards the potential customers. These appeals help the company by influencing the customers towards the product (Tih, Chan, Ansary, and Ahmed, 2016). Edgell Brown Lentills Company also uses some advertisement appeals that help the company in enhancing the sales of the product in the target countries.

Rationale: – The Edgell Brown Lentills follows rational appeals for their product, in this appeals, the main focus in on the customer needs for practicality and functionality in the product. This appeal shows the product feature, for the new product the company will discuss the benefits of the diet conscious people. The company will use the printed advertisement for sharing the benefits of the new product to the customers.

Bandwagon: – This is another appeal that will be used by the company for promoting their new product in the target market. In this appeal, the customers consider they are missing out by addressing the customers need to belong. The company will show the healthy people make the choice of the Rendang Beans. This appeal is formed by the marketers considering the target market of the new product.

Development of creative strategy, selling argument, and message theme

Emotional: – This appeal is designed to make the customer emotional after seeing the advertisement. The coffee beans with the flavors attract the customers towards the product as they feel an emotion of trust and the reliability (Underwood, Smythe, Pontari, and Hastings, 2015). The emotions vary from customer to customer, so different people who attract towards the new product might have different emotions because of which they get attracted towards the product.

The execution framework of the advertising consists of the different advertising contexts such as animation, slice-of-life, dramatization, testimonial, authoritative, Demonstration, Fantasy and informative (Sebastio, Amoretti, and Lluch Lafuente, 2014). Over here the company will use the dramatization framework in their advertisement.

Dramatization- In an advertisement, some of the companies use the drama to promote the new product in front of the targeted audience. For this advertisement the company will show the boy of Sri Lanka, 21years old consume this coffee while doing evening walk in the park. The flavor of the beans makes the person refresh. Boy desire to consume more and more coffee using the same coffee beans and he was telling to his friend about the benefits of the coffee beans is consuming. The beans are healthy for the youth and they consume it for the flavors. The flavor of the coffee enhances the demand for the product.

Informative: – In this advertisement, one boy tells about the benefits of the coffee beans to his friend which makes this advertisement informative for the target audience who are consuming this product. This attracts the customers towards the product and enhances the sales of the products.

The media that the company is using includes the broadcast, print and the digital. The broadcast and media print will enable the company to form the connection with the target audience. This is the best way to communicate the message to the targeted audience. In the online/digital source company uses different portals to display the advertisement. The sites will be Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. The decision to use online for the media strategy is done by the company considering the increasing use of the social media by the people. Nowadays most of the people daily visit the social media this makes the companies believe in that social media is an effective tool for performing the ads.

The media planning is done by the company to evaluate the best combination of the media that is used to achieve the marketing campaign objectives (Tankersley, 2017). Below is the media plan that the company will use to promote their new product through different media sources.

Milestone	Starting time	Duration	Ending time	Description
Newspaper and magazine
Selection and creation  of the article or news	January 2016	2 months	February 2016	The company will select the advertisement and the article.
Final check of the article	March 2016	1 month	March 2016	The company will check the article they are going to print.
Time-in-printing	April 2016	2 months	May 2016	The company will try to reduce the timing of the printing.
Distribution of magazine	June 2016	2 months	July 2016	After the printing the article on the magazine it’s time for the distribution of the magazine.
Online/Digital
Selection of advertisement and video	August 2016	1 month	August 2016	For the online marketing communication, the company needs to select the advertisement and the video.
Launch of Advertisement on Facebook	September 2016	2 months	October 2016	The launch of the advertisement will take place on Facebook.
Launch of Advertisement on Twitter.com	November 2016	2 months	December 2016	The launch of the advertisement will take place on Twitter
Launch of Videos and advertisement on YouTube	January 2017	2 months	March 2017	The launch of the video will take place on YouTube

Application of cognitive and affective message strategies

The Integration Marketing communication plan discussed above will definitely help the company in achieving the objective of the Edgell Brown Lentills. The company will be able to create the awareness about the product in the market with the help of the creative message. The appeal of the advertisement will attract and target the customers towards the product. The integrated marketing communication plan helps Edgell in making the market realities. The plan is completed within the time framework. The media plan includes the time framework that the company uses to accomplish the advertising on different online platforms.

Conclusion

The paper shows that the integrated marketing communication that the company will follow. The report is Part-B based on Part –A, the Part-A talks about the company Edgell Brown Lentills. The report shows the marketing communication of the new product Rendang Beans. It includes the IMC strategy that the company will follow to achieve the strategic goals. The company will select the advertising for their creating the awareness about the new product and establishing a brand value in front of the targeted audience. The report shows the creative strategy that the company will follow and how the company put in efforts to execute the creative in the message that they are going to communicate to the customers.

The report also includes the execution framework; it is suggested to the Edgell Brown Lentills to make use of the dramatization as it helps in attracting the maximum number of an audience (Percy, 2014). Later, there is media schedule or plan that guide the time duration that the company will take to carry the whole process. The evaluation in the report shows the achievement of the objectives formed by the company.

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