Journalists play a role larger than what has been traditionally defined. First, they keep watch on powers that be. Secondly, they amplify voices which otherwise go unheard. Thirdly, they believe that society works better with information out in the open. Fourthly, the more facts people have, the closer they will get to the truth. Finally, it is necessary to highlight community’s problems to solve them.
Mass Communication
Digital Ads and Mass Media
Digital ads target brand awareness and bottom of the funnel. In mass media, the aim is to create awareness mainly. Digital ads offer a lot more targeting and measurement as compared to mass media. Digital ads may attract better tariffs in future. In India, mass media and digital complement each other. Later there could be some changes. Linear TV that we see today can get converted into connected TV in years to come. The lines of digital and TV will then blur.
Marketing Communication
In yester years, marketing communication basically focused on promoting the brands. These days it aims at creating favourable feelings about the brands and their makers on the social media. If the brand is liked, there is a cascading effect — the word spreads more rapidly and farther than the traditional advertising. And yes, with greater impact.
Marketing communication was treated as advertising in print and electronic media. Digital advertising and social media has expanded the scope. Non-traditional media too have come in the picture.
Effective communication is that communication which creates the desired response in the audience.
Role of Communication in Branding
A burger is a product, but McDonald’s is a brand. A toothpaste is a product but Promise is a brand. A company has to establish its brands successfully, and this function is called brand management. Marketing communication plays a major role by establishing unique identity of the brand. Consumers deal with this identity. The whole process of branding adds intangible aspects to that brand that makes it meaningful and memorable for a consumer.
Brand these days is broadly defined as a perception that is mixed with emotions. How is this perception formed? Through brand experience and information passed on by the company about itself and its product line. In short, a brand is a mix of tangible and intangible elements.
One of the advantages of branding is that a brand distinguishes it from other competing brands.
A brand could be a corporate brand, say Tata’s Eue de cologne or an individual brand, say Lux.
A brand evolves over a period of time. It goes beyond its name and logo. It acquires a perception tinged with emotions, feelings and associations. The whole thing then becomes a brand concept. It is what it stands for in the mind and hearts of its customers. Brands make products meaningful. In fact, they enrich a product.
Brand identity consists of a brand name and its logo. It should be distinctive, associative, benefit indicating, simple and heritage indicating.
Brand comes from the branding of cattle — the name of the ranch to which the cattle belonged.
Brand position indicates how a brand is located or placed in the consumer’s mind, relative to the competing brands.
Brand promise is the promise that a brand makes.
Brand image is a complex brand impression. It is a mental picture of the brand. It considers brand associations.
Brand personality humanizes a brand. Brand equity measures the value of a brand. Brand value has two components — value to the consumers, value to corporation. Brand relationship leads to the loyalty to a brand. Brand equity can be leveraged. Thus we have brand extensions, co-branding , licensing and ingredient branding.
Basic MassCommunication Model : SMCR
As a process, mass communication model called SMCR is traced to the pioneering work of Shanon and Weaver in the 1940s. This model consists of eight major components. Communication commences with a source or a sender who encodes a message. Encoding means putting the message in words or visuals. This message travels through channels of communication. These channels could be mass media channels such as a newspaper, magazine, radio or television. At last the message is decoded by the receiver. Decoding refers to interpretation of the message. Receiver could be the listener, reader or viewer. Ultimately, feedback is derived from the monitoring of the response of the receiver. On the whole process, there are noise variables which work to interrupt the process.
————————————-Noise Variables ————————————-
Source –Coded Message —Channel — Decoded Message — Receiver
————————————–Feedback ————————————————-
Merry X’Mas 2015
Wishing all of you a Merry Christmas, and a happy and prosperous New Year. — Shabbir Chunawalla, 25th Dec, 2015.
Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC)
The communication package consists of advertising, sales promotion, publicity and public relations. Don Schultz, Stan Tonnenbaum and Robert Lauterborn put forward the Integrated Marketing Communication model in a book titled Integrated Marketing Communication : Pulling It Together and Making It Work in 1997. It was a strategic problem-solving approach, and a new way of thinking. Marketing communication must have a unified approach to make it accountable for achieving the business objectives. The idea was soon interpreted as communication consistency, e.g. PR must be in sync with advertising. IMC supports a common idea of communication across all communication media. Grey calls it synchronized marketing. A core brand idea is extended across the media. In an agency, each division has its own business goals. They should emphasise the overall communication package. A single agency may not provide the whole communication package. The problem is that of the lead. Who will be the integrator ? If there is no proper integration, who will be blamed ? Advertisers tend to place the blame at the door of the agencies. However, the ultimate responsibility is that of the advertisers. It is the marketing manager’s responsibility to exericise control over the whole communication package.
Development Communication
It is communication targeted at bringing about social change. It has a very broad ambit and can be applied to the traditional fields and the new fields. The traditional fields are agriculture, health care, nutrition, education etc. The new fields are citizen empowerment, gender rights, governance, urban and rural development, environment etc. It equips you to apply theories of development media and communication to design effective social campaigns. It makes you a good planner, manager or implementer in the development sector. While applying communication theories, the prevailing socio-economic, cultural and political scenarios are kept in mind.
Proposed New University for Communinication
The Government proposes to set up a dedicated university to run the journalism and media related courses of world-class quality.There is one such institute in China called Communication University of China. There are many institutes right now but their courses leave much to be desired. What they lack is the depth and vision.Such a plan also is likely to be objected to especially as regards the autonomy such an institute may have.It is to be seen whether the thrust of the curriculum is on technology alone or on inter-disciplinary approach.The overall structure of the university will be arrived at in the next few days.It will also indulge in consultancy projects.
Against the Journalism
There are people who object to journalists serving news to us, they wish that people should go out and hunt for news. In fact, journalists create content that sells good advertising and builds up circulation. This acts as a filter for some news. Rolf Dobelli, a Swiss writer, is known for his aversion to news. Nassim Taleb, the writer of the Black Swan functions without news. News does not make you a better decision maker. It does not give a competitive advantage to you. Rolf is no worse off without consuming news. According to him, news is to the mind what sugar is to the body. It is not good. However, people are addicted to news. It takes a lot of effort to break off the addiction. News is not knowledge. How can you get knowledge from events ? You have to read detailed articles, which perhaps are built on disaggregated pieces of news. One has to connect the dots. News is the dots.