INTEGRATED MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS Lecture week 2: Marketing Communications Theory – the basic process

Aims of this lecture The lecture seeks to explore and explain the theoretical underpinnings of communication and to underscore the usefulness and limitations of theory to practice. At the end of this input the participant will be able to: Discuss communications in terms of the needs of practitioners Discuss communications in terms of the needs of practitioners Explain the basic model of communication within an historical context Explain the basic model of communication within an historical context

THEORY AND PRACTICE “Theory without practice may be barren and vacuous, but practice without theory risks being gratuitous and promiscuous” Buttle (1995)

BASIC MODEL OF THE COMMUNICATIONS PROCESS source (communicator) encodes (creative) signal (message) decodes (perceive) destination (receiver)

Model of mass communications Later developments of the basic model saw additional stages/processes added in, namely: Later developments of the basic model saw additional stages/processes added in, namely: –Feedback –Noise –Fields of Experience/perceptual fields/realms of understanding

PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS Sender/source A person, group of people, company or some other organization may wish to transmit/relay an idea, set of ideas, a proposition in order to share something with another party Source credibility is a major issue that can influence the communications/persuasion process

PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS Encoding If the problem is perceived incorrectly by the source then the wrong concept might be developed and encoded making the communication faulty The encoding process usually involves the development of creative strategy The marketer and agencies are usually involved

PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS The message The message is the symbolic representation of the sender/source's thoughts/ideas. If the source does not say what he means, even if the problem is understood, then the message strategy will be faulty Equally, if the message does not relate to existing consumer knowledge there may be problems later on in the decoding process.

PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS The medium As the conduit/channel for the message, the medium (or particular vehicle) and its nature and characteristics are of crucial importance to marketing communicators whether this be a newspaper, a trade show or a sales person Media characteristics and credibility also greatly influence the communications process.

PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS Decoding This involves the deriving of meaning from the received message that is a composite of the actual message sent and any influences the medium may have had upon it This is where Information Processing comes in New information is comprehended in relation to existing knowledge and attitudes

PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS Recipient/receiver The receiver is normally the person or people, organization (hence the reason why some writers prefer to use the catchall DMU, decision making unit) that the sender wishes to share thoughts, ideas and so on So, it could be an individual, a family unit, or a DMU Equally it could be a ‘tribe’, or sub-cultural group

PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS Feedback This loop of the process provides the sender/source with a channel of evaluation of the message encoded and sent. This can be viewed in several ways. – – Firstly in terms of how accurately the message has hit the target. – – Secondly in terms of the degree of correctness of interpretation on the part of the recipient/receiver from that which was intended – – Were the original objectives of the communication achieved?

PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS Noise The notion of noise can be misconstrued. It is not a question of making enough noise in order to be heard, like a shelf screamer in a supermarket that is designed to attract attention. The term noise was used originally to denote interference or impedance, for example of a radio signal. These are terms often used interchangeably to describe the blocking or distortion of the message at any stage in the marketing communications process

CRITIQUE OF THE ORIGINAL PROCESS 1. Focus on the individual F amily/household - ‘what we do during the commercial break’ or some other social context of advertising reception Institutional effects involve the message production and delivery systems involving companies, agencies and so on Cultural effects are both cognitive and critical. Cognitive involves for example cultural values, mores and so on whereas critical involves Marxist and feminist views, dealing with institutional structures and the way society is organised

CRITIQUE OF THE ORIGINAL PROCESS 2. Focus on individual messages  This is clearly a problem if estimates such as the one that suggests that 3000 marketing- controlled messages bombard individuals each day. Cumulative impact should be taken into account. Added to the effect of marketing communication stimuli, other stimuli exist outside of the marketing communications area have impact

CRITIQUE OF THE ORIGINAL PROCESS 3. Focus on source intent  W here cumulative impact, shared meaning, derived symbolic meaning and not least meaning derived from non-promotional marketing and other variables are bound to have some sort of effect

CRITIQUE OF THE ORIGINAL PROCESS 4. Focus on co-orientation  W hereby to avoid problems with fidelity the communicator can opt for a closed text to avoid misreading, misunderstanding and so on. This, of course, ignores the social and other contexts people necessarily operate in and that might produce multiple meanings because messages get ‘contextualized’

FIELD OF EXPERIENCE/REALM OF UNDERSTANDING rou/foe sender/source (encoding) noise signal/message rou/foe (decoding) feedback destination/ receiver

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