Vice President of Marketing

Graves Enterprises

Defining a Communication Plan

Promotion, just like marketing has its own mix of communication tools. All of these work better if they work together in harmony rather than in isolation. Joshua is right when he mentions Integrated Marketing Communication since it ensures that all forms of communication are carefully linked together. In fact, a comprehensive IMC plan can produce stronger message consistency. It can also help to build brand equity as well as create greater sales impact.

However, I wonder if Joshua even evaluated the return on investment while in his plans .From what the Financial Analyst said, if the firm follows Joshua’s suggestions, the Consumer Product Division Campaign will not break even until year two if the entire campaign is conducted, which will not meet the profitability goals of the company. Since it is a matter of cost effectiveness, the company should make sure that the cost of promotion is less than the revenue expected. So, I would suggest the firm to establish a total marketing communication budget for both divisions (consumer products and commercial products).By so doing, agency fees are reduced by using a single agency for all communications and even if there are several agencies, time is saved when meetings bring all the agencies together for briefings, creative sessions, tactical or strategic planning for instance. This will reduce workload and subsequent stress levels.

As far as the approaches are concerned I would support the last one which is developing a public relations campaign. To begin with, advertizing is a paid media, where charges are incurred for providing space and promotion media whereas in public relations it is a free publicity that is gained by publicizing in news conferences to press releases just to name a few, for promotion of products and/or services.

Moreover, in public relations , there is no control on proliferation of