Communications Theory, Etc. How Communication

Communications theory, etc.

How communication can contribute to marketing theory: What theories or ideas from communication can best inform marketing theory?

The problem with theories -- marketing or communications -- is that no one knows if they work or how they work until they attempt to employ them in real-life situations. In fact, when Coca-Cola offered "New" Coke two decades ago, it was a total failure. Was it the taste? Was it the way it was communicated? Was it the way it was marketed? In fact, in hindsight, it appears to be a classic case of replacing a viable product with one that the consumer did not want. In such cases, no amount of theory -- communications or marketing -- would move the product.

According to an article on the employment Web site, The Vault, Coke introduced New Coke because market research had discovered that consumers preferred the taste of Pepsi. A majority of taste tests showed consumers preferred the new Coke flavor to the old, but what was left out of the mix was this: "these tests could not gauge the emotional appeal of the "old" Coke. In other words, consumers want their cake and eat it too. A large public outcry ensued during the 79 days when old Coke was no longer on the shelves. Coca-Cola quickly reintroduced the 'old' Coke when they realized market share was falling and christened it Classic Coke" (Vault Web site, 2005).

The Vault also reported that Classic Coke's sales volume has increased 24% since 1984, and "Consumers became even more loyal to the brand after it was temporarily taken away from them."

However, that was twenty years ago. It must be assumed that a great number of Coke drinkers were not even alive when that event occurred. What accounts for the continuing brand loyalty?

Miller and Rose (1994) might suggest that it was ICAP (integrated communications: advertising and public relations) or IMC (integrated marketing communications) that causes Coke to continue to be the soft drink of choice nationwide, despite a plethora of other cola flavors from Pepsi to RC to Jolt and probably other regional products.

In fact, communications theory has long encompassed more than the words used to deliver a message. Public relations professionals engage in strategic planning, consumer behavior studies, creative strategies and marketing management as well as simply cranking out press releases to inform the public (Miller and Rose, 1994). They are well aware that, without being offered in an appealing context, information will end up in the trash, physical or digital, depending only on the whether the delivery method is hard copy or cyberspace and not on the quality or quantity of the message itself.

In fact, within the communications industry, the necessity of putting all communications into an identifiable and cohesive format has been so important since the early 1990s that a preliminary Task Force Report at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communications (AEJMC) Conference suggested curricular integration of public relations with advertising and/or marketing (Miller and Rose, 1994).

Professionals in the communications field, particularly public relations professions, were increasingly interesting in learning the skills for some areas traditionally regarded as advertising: media planning and message evaluation, for example. Whether communications theorists want to keep areas of interest separated, it was clear to Miller and Rose that those who worked in the field wanted to combine them, and perhaps needed to combine them in a marketing context in which more people had more access to more forms of information delivered in more formats than ever before. In other words, media and particular the Internet and its increasing sophistication, with streaming video and its inherent interactivity, made it essential for anyone with a message to understand fully how messages could be delivered and how they might be received. The line between advertising and public relations became blurred, or possibly more accurately, subsumed into the major discipline of communications.

Public relations, according to Miller and Rose (1994) is called upon to "devise programs that support marketing and advertising strategies precisely and cost effectively. Public relations can play a strategic role in achieving marketing objectives."(Miller and Rose, 1994, p. 13+). Advertising is also called upon to do this, with the added objective of creating sales.

It is clear that communications influences modern marketing theory in an essential way; it might even be said that modern marketing is communications. However, a new player in the game is media economics research, a field that "complements the larger body of mass communication research and theory" (Albarran, 1998, p. 125). Although this research comes close to suggesting that all behavior is economic behavior, nonetheless media economics research helps in understanding the activities and functions of media companies, which in turn links directly to advertising/public relations/communications. Albarran wrote: