How to Swat Pests: Planning Tactical Marketing Communications within a Strategic Framework
David Gillbanks, Reflective Journal entry for Week 4 (Mar 1-7, 2010) of University of Canberra’s online unit Marketing Communications Strategy PG (7737)
Forewarned
I’m undertaking the University of Canberra units “Marketing Communications Theory” and “Marketing Communications Strategy”. These are electives I’ve chosen as part of my online Master of Internet Communications course. For the Strategy unit I’m expected to write a “Reflective Journal” as I progress. It will be worth 30% of my grade.
Why am I posting this online? You are probably smarter than me and can challenge my assumptions and answers any questions I raise. Maybe you are a real-life marketing communicator and can provide a real-world perspective.
Feel free to comment and contribute at the bottom of this entry.
Swatting Pests Strategically
The development of a business plan should be based on a customer- (or “publics-”) centric strategic situation analysis, which will include SWOT-PEST analyses. A customer- or publics-centric approach to business design, strategy, policy, and indeed marketing communications, ensures that the organization remains focused on its raison d’être. SWOT-PEST refers to internal Strengths & Weaknesses; and external Opportunities & Threats in the Political/regulatory, Economic/competitive, Social/cultural/media, and Technological environments.
The business plan shall lead with (and be led by):-
- Mission/Vision
- Strategic Goals
- Strategic Objectives
Operating within that broader strategic framework, marketing communications professionals as well as all other strategic management functionaries must continuously be on the look-out for changes or trends that may affect the organization. Changes or trends may be short-, medium-, or long-term. They may have positive or negative consequences for the organization. And they can stem from customers themselves or any of the PESTs. Thus they can be viewed as possible opportunities or threats.
An effective response to opportunities or threats perceived as having significant medium- to long-term consequences may be an overhaul of the business plan, entailing a strategic change of course across the whole organization. An accumulation of smaller changes and trends in a short period of time may also necessitate a review of the business plan. In any case, business plans should be considered “living” documents as they are only as sound as the information available to the author(s) at time of writing.
Swatting Pests Tactically
Responses to short- and medium-term opportunities and threats of less existential significance are more “tactical” in nature. While they may not entail strategic adaptations for the whole organization, they nevertheless can be quite disruptive to specific business units and functional departments. And they nearly always affect those in communications roles!
McElreath (1997) discusses how a public relations professional might respond to or pre-empt opportunities and threats (which he call “problems”), and he identifies eight steps a savvy practitioner might take to communicate with external publics. While public relations is but one element of integrated marketing communications, McElreath’s eight steps nevertheless offer the basis for a checklist for marketing communications professionals formulating tactical campaigns within broader strategic frameworks.
Here I’ve borrowed McElreath’s eight steps (numbered 1-8; underlined), split them according to planning (A) and implementation (B) stages, and fleshed out the six planning steps with a little more information (in brackets):-
A) Planning. After identifying an opportunity or threat via situational analysis and ongoing formal and informal, qualitative and quantitative research, the marketing communications professional must undertake a rigorous planning process:-
- Recognize key publics and stakeholders (and identify the perceived and actual/probable impacts on each of the opportunity or threat)
- Explore knowledge; gather information (i.e. conduct formative research on the nature of the opportunity or threat)
- Identify priorities (and develop the broad aims of a potential campaign); place situation in context (based on the overall strategy and strengths and weaknesses of the organization and other external factors)
- Generate possible solutions (through development research); specify outcome goals (which define what needs to be achieved in pursuance of the aims)
- Select a specific solution; specify process goals (which will outline exactly how the chosen solution will be implemented with reference to the outcome goals and include the necessary tasks)
- Acknowledge relationships among campaign activities, strategies, and outcome goals (more specifically, SMART – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-bound – objectives, be they informational or motivational, should be set for the overall campaign in order to a) justify and secure the allocation of sufficient resources to support implementation, b) obtain appropriate inter-functional/departmental cooperation, and c) track the campaign’s effectiveness)
B) Implementation.
- Implement campaign and evaluate process goals
- Implement campaign and evaluate outcome goals
The focus of Week 4 in Strategy is on the setting of aims, goals, and objectives (AGOs), which you will note I have weaved into McElreath’s six planning steps above. A case study by Lyle et al (2009) is a good example of an effective tactical response to sudden change. However, it does not very well illustrate the usefulness of setting AGOs, because the paper doesn’t specify the AGOs used. Nevertheless it was a successful campaign and was bound to have had implicit, if not explicit, AGOs.
LyleBailie International, an agency in Northern Ireland, initiated a road safety campaign in December 2008 in response to a “dramatic upsurge” in road deaths in November. The month-long campaign was themed “Go safe – it’s the last gift you can give this Christmas”. Informing campaign development was secondary research that showed how sustained bad behavior on the roads can have the effect of “normalizing” dangerous driving and “conditioning road users into a resigned fatalism about road deaths”. Based on this, LyleBailie developed a strategy to “personalize the consequences” of dangerous driving and promote a sense of individual responsibility by “confronting the public with piercing anti-festive truths and hard-hitting images”. The campaign messaging, which appeared on radio, press, outdoor, transit, and online media, was shown to save lives and, based on the so-called economic value of the lives saved, generated a payback of GBP10.86 for every GBP1 spent.
While the case study paper does not go into great detail about the planning process, and while LyleBailie International’s campaign was for the public good rather than one set in a normal organizational context, we can still retrospectively and with some imagination apply McElreath’s six planning steps to this case:-
A) Planning. Statistical analysis uncovered a sharp increase in road fatalities, which was perceived as a threat to society that required some kind of communications response.
- Recognize key publics and stakeholders – for example, road users, their families, appropriate government departments, including the Department of Environment (DOE), which handles road safety issues, the police, et cetera.
- Explore knowledge; gather information – secondary research about the conditioning of road users; further statistical analysis of December road deaths identified top causes of accidents (carelessness, speed, and drugs & alcohol) and their most frequent victims as (young male drivers aged 17–24, their girlfriends, plus children).
- Identify priorities; place situation in context – to reduce incidence of dangerous driving and thus save lives; Christmas approaching, therefore it should be a joyous time to spend with loved ones.
- Generate possible solutions; specify outcome goals – time was of the essence. LyleBailie had a week from identifying the threat to rolling out a month-long campaign on December 1. One can only imagine the after-hours brainstorming sessions to generate appropriate themes, creative strategy, and media. No information given about the outcome goals.
- Select a specific solution; specify process goals – again time was of the essence. Process goals will have been met almost as soon they were set! Once the DOE approved the campaign proposal on the 27th, the radio and online elements of the campaign were produced on the 28th and broadcast from December 1.
- Acknowledge relationships among campaign activities, strategies, and outcome goals – LyleBailie must have made a compelling case for this 11th-hour tactical campaign. The proposal was submitted to DOE on November 26 and approved the next day. And one can assume that the objectives set for the campaign were met or exceeded, for it appears to have been nominated for an Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) Effectiveness Award.
Help Me Understand: What Do You Think?
Outcome and process goals are focused on the organisation. Objectives are SMART – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-bound – but related to the campaign’s target audience. Can outcome and process goals be SMART too?
References
McElreath, M.P. (1997). How to Define Problems/Opportunities and Develop Measurable Goals and Objectives (Ch. 4). In Managing systematic and ethical public relations campaigns (pp. 136-170). McGraw Hill.
‘Road Safety – How a Short Sharp Burst Can Reduce Road Deaths’, Lyle, D., Bailie, J.A., Rooney, F., Martin, D., Lyle, R., Ludlow, V., Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, IPA Effectiveness Awards 2009 (as accessed in the WARC case study database on March 4, 2010 – www.warc.com)
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