Insights into Marketing Communication Issues, Trends and Practices.

published 2003

Marketers are being challenged more than ever before as the environment changes and the means of reaching consumers continues to become more diverse.

Some of the points to emerge from a roundtable discussion led by the US-based executive editor of Advertising Age and a former news editor of the UK’s Marketing and PRWeek and involving executives from the multinational PR agency, Ketchum were:

• Demographic changes are forcing smart marketers to change their approach.
  
• Many marketers are using a wider variety of tools in more equal proportions rather than relying on one method (eg advertising) to dominate.
  
• However getting the balance right and knowing which tools are best in specific circumstances is proving to be a challenge for many marketers.
  
• A significant development is in marketers realising the importance of influencers and opinion formers and the value word-of-mouth in the marketing mix.
  
• While marketing via the text message has become hot in the UK marketers are still experimenting with what is acceptable to consumers on this front.
  
• Increasingly marketers are determining that such factors as credibility, brand values, image and reputation come more from PR than advertisers.
  
• Most brand managers and marketing communications staffers are well versed in advertising but PR isn’t part of their educational foundation so until they use PR they don’t appreciate its role or value.
  
• The challenge for PR people is to demonstrate that PR isn’t the last option in a marketing plan; that it at least carries the same weight as the rest of the tools.

To read the full Roundtable Discussion click here.