¶ … Integrated Brand Promotion (IBP) concept is uniformity. What you want to achieve in the end is a uniform idea, a uniform campaign. One of the problems often met in teams and team working is the fact that each individual is generally believed to have his own perspective on things and his own ideas. As such, you want, as a team leader, to smooth out the differences and bring the team individuals together into working for the same vision, achieving thus a uniform perspective. In my opinion, the growing emphasis on IBP makes effective teamwork more difficult because time is spent on smoothing out different individual perspectives and this can prove a difficult process in most cases.

Uniformity does not necessarily mean a singular way of seeing things, but a singular way of getting things done. A team is important and essential in a company because each individual brings his own contribution and his own solutions of getting things done. The power of a team relies in the individual power of each member to think out solutions of achieving the final objective.

Mark Serrianne's statement refers to the fact that if two members of the team think the same way and, thus, at the same solutions, there is no point in keeping both on the team. It is much better to have different ways of thinking things out, for the higher efficiency of the team.

3. In this case, the client and the agency each brought its own resources and areas of expertise in order to be able to get the best out of the campaign. We can, in this sense, discuss a synergy effect that meant that the final pool of resources had a higher value than the sum of the two set of resources.

The client, Cincinnati Bell, brought to the table technical expertise on the product, financial resources, as well as insights on competitive strategy. On the other hand, the agency brought in the pool commitment to communicating with the customer and understanding his exact needs, commitment to understanding the consumer and the entire set of expertise and experience related to design and preparation of the campaign, as well as a significant set of communication tools.

If we look at each part's contribution, it is hard to decide who has the most important role. It is obvious that we are in a situation where the work cannot get done unless each participant plays his part. The client, however, may play the greater role in creating a successful partnership and he can do so through clear specification and constant communication with the agency.

4. Teamwork can indeed foster creativity by the encouragement of each member to lay out his design ideas and his creative solutions on the project. In this sense, at one point, the creativity director will have several creative ideas, preferably one from each member of the team, and thus, a much larger base from which to choose the final idea for the project. In this sense, the synergy concept, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, comes to life because instead of a set of separate ideas, the creativity director will have a joint pool of ideas to discuss. The key idea refers to channeling the individual positive, creative energies into the achievement of the mission, the overall concept that has been decided upon.

Case 2

1. There were two main market segments for the new wireless phone service that Cincinnati Bell Wireless identified. The first was the midlevel executives segment. For these, the wireless services was equivalent with an increase in productivity, because of features such as e-mail, voice mail or text messaging, all elements that were emphasized and communicated by CBW. Additionally, this market segment required a high level of availability and reliability and the good quality of sound and availability of the service in different zones was communicated as well.

The second market segment referred to the families with a child in college. The key value propositions for this market segment referred to safety and security. Parents, primary users in this case, wanted to secure and control costs. In need of a safe, easy and cheap way of communicating with their children, parents were more or less needless of the high technology required by the other market segment.

2. 1) How often do you plan to use a wireless service?

2) How much weekly time do you spend in the office?

3) How often do you travel on business?

4) How much time do you spend, on average, on the phone?

5) How 'in touch' are you with the new technologies?

6) How often do you use the Internet?

7) What type of cellular phone are you currently using?

8)...

Functional benefits
Full time availability for communication

Ability to make and receive calls in virtually any place

Staying in touch with friends and relatives

Emotional benefits

Being connected to the outside world and to the loved ones

Security in being able to connect to the rest of the world in critical situations

Having an impact on the people around me

4. AT& T. can, in my opinion, be associated with full time availability in any place in the country. Indeed, its nationwide network ensured this and Cincinnati Bell Wireless could instantly capitalize on its partnership with AT& T, benefiting from the prestige and credibility that the latter enjoyed. Besides the role AT& T. plays in the telecommunication market in the U.S., the sheer size and importance of the company made it an excellent choice.

Nokia, on the other hand, has always been associated with top portable phone brands. Reliability and technological achievements always spring to mind when referring to Nokia. In this sense, CBW's partnership with Nokia meant not only that it benefited from AT& T's prestige, but also that it had the technological support from the most important company in the world in terms of phone brands.

Case 3

1. The CBW campaign can be characterized by an excellent and efficient cooperation between the beneficiary of the campaign (CBW) and the advertising company (Northlich). This efficient collaboration ensured the fact that the agency knew from the very beginning what the beneficiary needed, how that could be achieved, the market segments it was targeting, etc. As such, the final product was adapted and applied to this set of needs.

On the other hand, skillful communication ensured the fact that the agency could adapt along the way to changes required either by CBW or AT& T, without influencing the final success of the campaign.

2. The direct marketers are practically the privileged member of the team that get to interact with the customers themselves, eye-to-eye. One of the problems that marketers and advertisers face is the fact that they sometimes do not understand the actual reality that is going on outside their offices and they make a campaign that is not connected to the realities. This is not the case for direct marketers, who have an immediate feedback from the people they contact and can tell the very instant what is wrong with the way they are promoting the object or with their direct marketing campaign in general.

In this sense, learning is implicitly a process of adaptation to the responses of the customers and implies that you, as a direct marketer, adjust the campaign following the trial and error process and facing the actual obstacles in the field. In the CBW campaign, the direct marketers at Northlich learnt for future campaigns that direct mail, followed by telemarketing were the most efficient combination.

3. 1) Working with diversity. Teamwork is all about diversity and about the necessity to positively channel this diversity into a uniform perspective. Each individual in the team needed to be heard out and encouraged to present his ideas.

2) Matches. This communication technique was necessary not only in the CBW-Northlich partnership, but also in the team that got the project finished. This tool ensured that each team member was able to bring his ideas to the table and present his point-of-view to the other members of the team.

3) Discussions. This was perhaps the key of the entire cooperation. Discussions referred not only to what each part was supposed to do, but also to the changes that needed to be made along the way and how these could be implemented. Additionally, discussions needed to clearly define what the customer (CBW) wanted to get done.

4) Defining rules. Rules definition was perhaps the first phase of the working relationship between the two parties, without which things could have never moved on. Defining rules refers, in this case, to knowing from the very beginning what each party needs to 'bring to the table' and what obligations it thus assumes for itself.

5) Positive feedback. The partnership between Northlich and CBW certainly relied greatly on a positive feedback, otherwise it is more than probable that either the partnership would have not worked out or that the final result would have been a fiasco. Positive feedback referred,…