Comcast\'s Advertising Campaign Should Be

Comcast's advertising campaign should be done with several objectives in mind. The first is to attract new users. The company operates in an intensely competitive industry. Customers have the ability to switch providers, but in most markets the competition is oligopolistic in nature. Under such circumstances, the intensity of rivalry will be high. New customers represent market share gains, often at the expense of competitors. Once customers are attracted, other elements of the marketing campaign can focus on issues such as retention. Public advertising represents an opportunity to reach current non-customers; therefore the focus of advertising should be to convert these non-customers to customers.

Comcast has a sizeable advertising budget. External advertising can therefore be divided among multiple media forms. Television advertising has a broad reach, and can be focused on specific markets where Comcast is engaged in intense competition. The second media type is via print, in particular newspapers. This form also reaches a broad audience and can be targeted to key markets. Lastly, radio advertising can also reach broad audiences in a similar manner. Combining the three will give Comcast blanket exposure in key markets. The allocation of advertising budget will be heavily oriented towards television, due to the high cost of producing and broadcasting television advertisements. The allocation should be 50% television, 30% radio and 20% newspaper.

As the objective of this component of the integrated marketing campaign is to driver new business, the message needs to appeal to the needs of the potential customer. Among these needs are a high level of customer service, bandwidth for the Internet service, the channel selection for the cable service and competitive pricing/bundling of services. Each of these can be communicated in different ads in the campaign. In addition, because the target audience is most likely to be a customer of the competition, the message should also focus on comparative aspects of Comcast's service. For example, the message should emphasize the areas in which Comcast outperforms the competition.

The advertising strategy therefore will result in multiple ads being produced. The ads should be simple, and focus on effective communication of the messages. A hook will be required for the television ads -- some visual theme that can also be translated to the newspaper ads. The ads should be relatively inexpensive to produce, as the bulk of the budget should be allocated to ad placement rather than producing splashy visuals. The message is more important than the medium in this case.

The campaign should last over the course of several months. This will allow potential customers to have maximum exposure to the Comcast name and to the messages presented. Saturation is key to the success of this campaign -- we want potential customers to feel as though doing business with any other firm is doing business with the second-tier communications company. The repetition of simple messages will be key to the success of the campaign, since we wish to associate the Comcast name with certain values that are important to potential customers -- service, speed and quality among them. Ultimately, the campaign's success will be measured in points of market share and in terms of new customer numbers.

The direct marketing campaign will be the second component of the integrated marketing strategy. The direct marketing campaign will be focused on the internal market. The objectives of this campaign will be to increase Comcast's revenue per customer. The company has a large installed base of customers from which it earns revenues monthly, on a contract basis. However, each customer type has a different level of penetration. The objective of this campaign therefore is to convert our existing customers to other Comcast products.

The direct marketing budget will be set at a relatively low level, in the $10 million range. Much of the money will be spent on the management of the campaign, the rest on materials. The management of the campaign will be guided by relationship marketing principles. Such principles dictate that existing customers must be subject to regular communication, and not just for sales calls. We wish to build stronger relationships with our customers in order to gain their trust so that they order more services from us. Part of this involves asking the customers their views on our services to gain insight into why they are not meeting all of their communications needs with us; part of this involves educating our customers about the totality of our offerings. The budget will be split along the lines of 20% customer research, 40% education and 40% back office. The high degree of back office spending will allow us to get the most out of our research efforts and effectively target our education efforts.

Given that the objective of the direct marketing campaign is to increase service subscriptions from existing customers, the direct marketing campaign will have two core messages. The first will be primarily informational. Customers will be alerted to the different Comcast services, and the benefits of those services vs. The services of competitors. The message should also contain some of the same imagery and hooks borrowed from the external campaign. The second core message of the campaign will be to make offers to the customers. During the initial stages of the direct marketing campaign where the focus is on relationship-building and information gathering, the sales component will be downplayed, but during the later stages the emphasis will be on the component. At that point the message will be along the lines of "We've made our pitch already, now let's talk about how we can get you on board."

There will be several components to the media strategy. The first component will be email and telephone surveys. These surveys will not have a sales component, but will focus on providing information about Comcast services and on gathering information from the customers about their tastes and preferences. This information will then be synthesized into specific product/service bundle offerings, price points and sales pitches in the second part of the media strategy. This part will utilize different means of communication. The emphasis will not be on high-pressure telephone sales, as that may run counter to relationship-building. At this stage, the focus will be on email, Internet (when customers check their accounts online, for example) and mail marketing. Lastly, the direct marketing program will place emphasis on telephone sales. The purpose will be to push customers who have not been responsive to the pull elements in the earlier part of the program. The message at this point will be blunt -- we will make our best offer and ask for a commitment. The measures for this element of the interactive marketing campaign will be the number of services to which our average customer subscribes.

The third component of the integrated marketing strategy will be interactive/Internet marketing. This component of the strategy will focus on building revenues from existing client-services. An example would be encouraging phone subscribers to send more text messages, or cable subscribers to order more pay-per-views. Our installed customer base is a captive audience. But once we have undertaken the expense of winning the customers, we should then focus on driving the most revenue possible from those subscribers.

The budget for this part of the campaign will be the smallest, since the gains are to be incremental, versus the other two components which will see customers adopt new services. Therefore, the campaign should be held within the $2 million range. The extensive use of the Internet, text messages and email will allow Comcast to keep costs down for this part of the campaign. The budget will be roughly as follows: 70% for email, 30% for text. Text messages are cheaper to create and to send, but they also can be used with greater frequency. Other online elements may emerge as viable options, and if this is the case then some of the email budget will be funneled into emerging marketing technologies.

The objective of the campaign may be to increase usage of our services, but we cannot be direct with that message. The message, therefore, will be to emphasize the benefits of using our services. These messages include increasing one's communication, improving one's social life, having fun, meeting people, being entertained and other positive aspects from using Comcast's service offerings. Emphasizing the positive benefits from using Comcast's services meets two key needs. For this particular part of the IMC, it encourages people to use the service more by equating increased usage with increased pleasure. For the integrated marketing campaign overall, these messages create a stronger relationship between the customer and Comcast. They tell the customer that the relationship is mutually beneficial. Again, this will encourage the customer to strengthen their relationship with Comcast, thereby encouraging the adoption of new services, increased usage of existing services and even referral of friends and family to Comcast. The messages in this part of the campaign therefore play an integral role in the campaign as a whole and support all elements of the campaign. These messages may also be duplicated in the direct marketing and advertising components in order to lend support to those campaigns.

In terms of Internet/interactive strategy, there are two key components. One places emphasis on direct marketing, through email and text. The other places emphasis on interactive marketing. Development of techniques should demonstrate creativity and innovation. Viral campaigns, games and other interactive experiences, contests and other interactive promotions can all be utilized in order to not only demonstrate the pleasure that comes from using Comcast services but to directly encourage the increased use of the services. The measure for this campaign's success will be the sales per customer figure, with submeasures being usage statistics for specific target services like text messages and pay-per-view.