Communication Plan

Source: campussuite.com

This week's trigger dealt with the company IVANA Helsinki and their approach to communication planning. We got to know that they don't make use of a specific communication concept and their marketing communication mix mainly consists of fashion fairs, publicity, product presentations and of course representation and selling in their shop.

The group developed the following (draft) learning objectives:

• How to select the proper communication plan?
• How to implement communication plans successfully?
• Measuring and monitoring the outcome of a communication plan

1. How to select the proper communication plan?


Ferguson (1999, 14) describes the following types of communication plans: 

• Strategic plan (annual or multi-year at corporate or business level)
• Operational plan (annual or multi-year at corporate or business level)
• The work plan (annual, at the corporate or business level) 
• Support plans (at programm level)
• Crisis communication plans (at corporate level) - This was covered in the previous blog

Communication plans support corporate and business objectives and do not exist in isolation.
According to Dow & Tailor (2008, 34), there is also the necessity to develop communication plans for projects. The communication plan for a project can consist for example of the following components: project communication plan, project organization chart, project communication requirements matrix, people report matrix, timeframes and lessons learnt.


Koekemoer and Bird (2004, 41) describe the regular communication flow in contrast to a communication plan flow: Communication deals with 5 Ws: Who? (Source or advertiser) Says what? (Message or adverstisement) In which way? (Channel or media) To whom? (Receiver or target audience) With what effect? (Feedback of results). In this model, the communication starts with the source. The impact of this message is measured in terms of feedback of the target audience to the communicated message.
However, in the development of a marketing communication plan, the planning flow is reverse, meaning that the receiver is the starting point, since the success of a marketing communication plan is determined by the nature of the consumers who receive it. The message, medium and source are selected by the characteristics of the constituencies. The constituencies are regarded as an uncontrollable variable, since the marketer can not really control the actions of these persons. The controllable variables are the source, message, media and channel that are used.

Own illustration according to Institute for Media 2005, 11.

Who are the constituencies of communication plans and how can they be classified?
According to CommunityToolBox, the knowledge about the audience enables a logically planning of communication. The constituencies can be grouped according to the following characteristics:

• Demographics. Demographics are simply basic statistical information about people, such as gender, age, ethnic and racial background, income, etc.
• Geography. You might want to focus on a whole town or region, on one or more neighborhoods, or on people who live near a particular geographic or man-made feature.
• Employment. You may be interested in people in a particular line of work, or in people who are unemployed.
• Health. Your concern might be with people at risk for or experiencing a particular condition – high blood pressure, perhaps, or diabetes – or you might be leveling a health promotion effort – “Eat healthy, exercise regularly” – at the whole community.
• Behavior. You may be targeting your message to smokers, for example, or to youth engaged in violence.
• Attitudes. Are you trying to change people’s minds, or bring them to the next level of understanding?

  

  Source: friendfiler.com

Sources:

• CommunityToolBox 2015. Online: http://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/participation/promoting-interest/communication-plan/main Accessed: 14.10.2015. 
• Dow & Tailor 2008. Project Management Communications Bible. Wiley Publishing. Indiana. https://books.google.fi/books?id=NbWYXV5zkt4C&pg=PA32&dq=communication+plan&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CDYQ6AEwAjgKahUKEwiJt7Ga-L7IAhUKDSwKHSIqAYg#v=onepage&q=communication%20plan&f=false
• Ferguson 1999. Communication Planning: An integrated approach. GoogleBooks. https://books.google.fi/books?id=_Mn0CAAAQBAJ&pg=PA14&dq=types+of+communication+plans&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAGoVChMIrpmdhva-yAIVxIgsCh15_giJ#v=onepage&q=types%20of%20communication%20plans&f=false 
• Koekemoer and Bird 2004. Marketing Communications. Juta Academic. South Africa. https://books.google.fi/books?id=T3UUfNBE1DcC&pg=PA41&dq=communication+plan+target+audience&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCMQ6AEwAWoVChMIm_SIgvu-yAIVC4gsCh23Jgd2#v=onepage&q=communication%20plan%20target%20audience&f=false 
• http://www.orgwise.ca/sites/osi.ocasi.org.stage/files/resources/Strategic%20Communications%20Planning%20-%20COCo.pdf

2. How to implement communication plans successfully?

While communication plans are written documents they also need to be thought of as living documents. The reality is, the communication landscape is always changing, and new opportunities will continually arise for delivering your organization’s messages to internal and external audiences.
For these reasons, written communication plans should be revised regularly, at least quarterly, based on ongoingevaluation. (Institue for Media 2005, 4)
The following illustration highlights the steps in Integrated Marketing Communication Planning:

Integrated Marketing Communications Plan. Saurage Research Inc. 2013.

The following questions need to be answered prior to the implementation of the communication plan:

• Whom do we want to reach?
• What do we want to do them differently from the current situation?
• What is the benefit of doing so?
• What are the obstacles to doing so and how to deal with them?
• What is the primary key message to be communicated?
• What types of media will we use to communicate? 
• When will we communicate?

The following prerequisites need to be fulfilled when dealing with implementation of project communication plans. According to Medscape 2011, a craftily designed communication plan can quickly become useless if it is not carefully executed. Team members must complete their assigned tasks according to the timeline. The project manager must coordinate the team's efforts and adjust the timeline to counteract unexpected obstacles and delays in the schedule. Team meetings should continue throughout the implementation phase as they provide an opportunity to capture pertinent information and to make changes to the plan as it unfolds.
Meeting minutes are another valuable tool in assisting the team in project implementation. The project manager should designate a team member or, if possible, use an administrative support employee not on the team to keep minutes of the meeting. The minutes will provide a background for follow-up meetings and a historical perspective for future projects. Meeting minutes typically contain the following items: agenda, list of attendees, discussion, findings, recommendations, and an update of the task-tracking table.

Sources: 

• Medscape 2011. Communicating Change to Laboratory Customers. Online: http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/744865_6 Accessed: 14.10.2015.
• Institute for Media 2005. Strategic Communication Planning Handbook. Online: http://www.orgwise.ca/sites/osi.ocasi.org.stage/files/resources/Strategic%20Communications%20Planning%20-%20COCo.pdf Accessed:14.10.2015. 
• Saurage Research Inc. 2013. Measurement Tools for Communications and Marketing Success. Online: http://de.slideshare.net/ssaurage/measurement-tools-for-communications-and-marketing-strategy Accessed: 14.10.2015.
• https://www.washington.edu/research/rapid/resources/toolsTemplates/Implement_CMU_Plans.pdf

3. Measurement and monitoring of communication plans

One way of approaching the measurement and monitoring of communication plans is to test the success of marketing communications by intense contact with both retailers and customers, as IVANA Helsinki does. This is a rather qualitative approach, but there are also possibilities to measure the outcome of a communication strategy, which will be described in more detail in the following: According to Fill (2013, 286), the evaluation of a marketing communications plan provides a potentially rich source of material for the next campaign and the ongoing communications. Fill devides the evaluation in pre and post-testing. Pre-testing is the practice of showing unfinished commercials to selected groups of the target audience with the view of refining the commercial to imrpove effectiveness. Post-testing is the practice of testing ads that have already been released. Physiological test to measure responses to stimuli have also grown in importance. However they are linked to high costs. Online communications (superficially) are the easiest to measure, since servers can indicate which and how many pages have been requested, the time spent on each site etc. However this type is largely superficial and does not give insight to the user, including their motivation to visit the site or behavioural outcomes as a result of the interaction. Hence it is necessary to develop visitor profiles, follow what the fans and followers do and how they behave subsequent to the social media activity.
According to Saurage Research Inc. (2013), continous monitoring of performance against predetermined targets is essential in achieving effective and efficient integrated marketing communications. Available tools for measuring performance are

• quantitative (measurable, structured in numeric form) - statistics
• qualitative (exploratory, open-ended) - metaphors, symbols, stories
• competitive intelligence (gathering and managing external info that affects plans and decisions) - interviews, empirical data

Saurage also lists some inexpensive tools of data analysis. To analyse customer feedback, online surveys, roundtables, lunchs, direct asking and onsite surveys can be used. To analyze external markets, quantitative or qualitative surveys can be used. With internal markets, round tables, lunch&learns, direct asking and employee communities are ways to receive feedback to the communication. The following overview highlights the metrics to be measured:

Source: Saurage Research Inc.

Case Studies:

In the following, I would like to introduce a case study of Kellogg's related to communication planning. This case study examines how Kellogg’s devised a plan to communicate the importance of breakfast to selected target audiences through a multi-platform campaign.
The whole case study can be found here and the different steps of communication planning are explained in detail: http://businesscasestudies.co.uk/kelloggs/devising-a-communications-plan/fitting-the-message-to-the-audience.html#axzz3oYeENz1R 

Research and Planning: In a first step, Kellogg's researched the current market situation which showed that as many as 1 in 7 children in the UK do not eat breakfast and that up to 25% eat crisps, chocolate or fast food on the way to school. In addition, 1 in every 8 (around 3,000) breakfast clubs in the UK have closed due to government budget cuts and up to 45% of remaining clubs were at risk of closure.
The purpose of the Kellogg’s campaign was to show its commitment to breakfast clubs in schools in the UK. The important messages that the campaign was aiming to get across and the audience that were targeted are the following:

Source: Businesscasestudies

 

 

Source: Businesscasestudies

Implementation: The table above should outline the importance of the selection of the communication channel.

Measuring and Monitoring: The feedback to any communication is important to evaluate whether your messages are reaching the target audience effectively. Kellogg’s therefore carried out an evaluation of its campaign. Highlights include:

• The first six weeks of the campaign generated 73 press articles across a variety of media – including news coverage on ITV’s Daybreak and news articles in The Observer and The Independent. All carried positive reaction to the messages and reached a potential audience of nine million people.
• Over 700 schools applied for the funding and around 500 of these received a grant of up to £450 for their breakfast club.
• Kellogg’s employees have attended 15 of those breakfast clubs with the local MP to see what difference the funding has made to the children.
• The money raised from the campaign will provide a million breakfasts by the end of 2012.

These results clearly indicate that Kellogg’s has communicated its messages effectively. The time taken in planning the communications through a multi-platform approach worked in relation to each of the targeted audiences.