Integrated Marketing Communication and Customer Satisfaction Strategy

Integrated Marketing Communication and Customer Satisfaction Strategy

Discuss the company's advertising strategy and how it aligns with its marketing goals.

Coca-Cola's company advertising strategy is designed at communicating how exceptional the experiences are of consuming their products, and how those experiences generate and sustain strong positive emotions. Coca-Cola is one of the strongest brands in the world because they understand the dynamics of how to make this association of strong emotion and their brand correlate quickly and easily in consumers' minds. The very popular Open Happiness Campaign, with many of the videos getting well over 1 million views on YouTube, is a case in point. Coca-Cola used the Open Happiness campaign to show that they are more than just a food and beverage manufacturer by personalizing the experience of interacting with their brand (Golan, Karp, Perloff, 2000). A second example of how pervasive Coca-Cola uses their events to further underscore and strengthen the relationship between their brands and the emotions they want it to represent. Coca-Cola's integrated marketing communications programs are specifically designed to infuse events with energy and positive emotion, leading consumers to be even more loyal (Crimmins, Horn, 1996). A third example is how effective Coca-Cola is being in using its social media channels to keep its loyal customers informed of promotional programs and innovate advertising worldwide (Bernoff, Li, 2008). As of this writing Coca-Cola has over 33 million followers on Facebook alone and millions following their YouTube account, RSS feeds, and Twitter accounts. Coca-Cola's advertising strategy tightly aligns to marketing goals, creating one of the world's most respected, well-known brands.

Discuss how the effectiveness of the advertising will be measured.

Coca-Cola is one of the most accomplished companies at measuring the performance of their marketing initiatives and programs. The Coca-Cola approach to integrated marketing communications (IMC) strategies served as a the foundation for many of the concepts Disney relies on to cross-promote and integrate marketing programs for their movies, parks, rides and massive catalog of products (Cook, 1997). Examples of this include the highly effective seasonal promotions featuring the polar bear mother and cub, and the many back-to-school and fall promotions that are staged globally, each aligned to the specific cultures they are active in (Rosenfield, 1995). Coca-Cola measures these through aided and unaided awareness programs that are based on statistical sampling techniques to capture a cross section of consumers (Song, Xu, Techatassanasoontorn, Zhang, 2011). A second example is how Coca-Cola measures the online advertising initiatives, measuring the performance of banner advertising in addition to its own extensive online properties including the main website (Lavrakas, Mane, Laszlo, 2010). Coca-Cola relies on Google Analytics to get a baseline measure of performance for its websites and uses advanced analytics tools including Radian6 social media monitoring tools to evaluate how their brands are judged globally online (Lavrakas, Mane, Laszlo, 2010). A third example is how extensive the consumer sampling and online panels are the company relies on to test new marketing, promotion and advertising programs (Sung, Campbell, 2009). Coca-Cola has online panels in nearly every nation it has operations in, which gives them a ready base to test new ideas from.

Discuss the promotional strategies that may be used in addition to advertising.

Coca-Cola is one of the most advanced consumer products companies globally in the use of social media, combining social networks. They are today combining Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, and MySpace for the optimal mix of channels for the given content the company wants to influence and strengthen their brand and marketing messages with (Bernoff, Li, 2008). Today Coca-Cola is using their social networks as the primary foundation for promotional strategies. The second aspect of their promotional strategies centers on events to further strengthen and differentiate their brands over time (Crimmins, Horn, 1996). This is especially evident in their current promotional program base of Open Happiness that is now active across several different geographies concurrently. The third promotional strategy that the company is relying on centers on making the legacy of their brand stay alive and vibrant with consumers, many of whom have been loyal for decades (Fosfuri, Giarratana, 2009). This focus on brand longevity is seen in how effective the company is at creating and maintaining integrated marketing campaigns including the flash mob sequence events now going on in Asia, and the continual Delivering Happiness across the many cultures globally the company operates in. Coca-Cola takes an exciting, successful marketing campaign and expands on it across non-English speaking nations, turning the promotional campaign into a foundation for future product introductions and growth of sales on a seasonal basis (Bashford, 2010). Coca-Cola orchestrates programs to optimize sales by country and season.

Develop an approach to measuring customer satisfaction with your company's product/service.

The primary approach Coca-Cola relies on for measuring customer satisfaction are the online panels used for evaluating new products, product line extensions, variations in existing products by geographic location and enhancements to service. Coca-Cola today relies on social media to track customer satisfaction through analysis of unstructured content or comments on their webpage, Facebook account and on their YouTube account as well (Bernoff, Li, 2008). A second approach that Coca-Cola uses for measuring customer satisfaction is the use of their online panels for ensuring they stay on messaging and relevant to their customers over time (Fosfuri, Giarratana, 2009). Coca-Cola uses these panels to stay competitive relative to Pepsi and their stronger regional competitors by market as well. A third approach that Coca-Cola relies on for measuring customer satisfaction is the use of online feedback forms and the opportunity for customers to opt in and provide feedback on any issue via their website (Sung, Campbell, 2009). Coca-Cola's senior management team are also strong believers in multichannel support and customer satisfaction, still offering telephone call center support, the Web, and walk-in refunds with its retailers. The focus on customer satisfaction is a high priority for the company with systems all aligned to the specific needs and anticipated requirements of customers (Crimmins, Horn, 1996). The massive amount of customer satisfaction research that Coca-Cola does is reflected in how strong their branding and messaging programs are in each chosen market segment.