IMC Plan of Melo Fruitti Ice Cream Report

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On this page, you will find an IMC report example. It provides a situational analysis of the Melo Fruitti Company, as well as an exploration of its objectives and key problems. Read on to find an example of an IMC plan.

Executive Summary

The purpose of this report is to prepare an Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) plan for Melo Fruitti Company, which offers healthy and organic ice cream. The company always uses natural ingredients, for instance, the chocolate tree, fresh fruits, natural fruit flavors, skim milk and so on.

In addition, low sugar, less than 2% of fats, 0% trans-fats, and flavor without any artificial color or taste are the key characteristics of Melo Fruiti ice cream products. Melo Fruitti Ice Cream will start its business operation from Kuala Lumpur and surrounding urban areas in order to gain competitive advantages of first mover with healthy fruits ice cream products.

However, this company will use IMC plan to create brand awareness, influence the target customers to purchase its products, aware the health conscious people about the positive factors of this brand and the difference between the products of Melo Fruitti and competitors’ products.

However, this plan will focus on the key objectives, such as, Develop of brand image, reach break-even point, aware customers about food ingredients, provide expansion plan, and create of brand awareness to the target audience within a specific period.

In addition, this report will concentrate on the MC functions along with objectives and budgets of these tools such as the marketer of Melo Fruitti Ice Cream will use AU$1.5 million IMC budget for sales promotion, advertising, one-to-one marketing, direct marketing, public relations and building brands etc. At the same time, the IMC plan of Melo Fruitti ice cream will also discuss target audience, “Foote, Cone, Belding” Strategy Planning Model, provide media plan with key messages, break-down of budget plan, slogan for the IMC campaign, evaluation, and so on.

Introduction

IMC plan of Melo Fruitti ice cream will mainly target the people of Kuala Lumpur and surrounding urban areas as they have vast disposable income to spend on consumer products and this campaign will divide the market into three segments like Kids, Adults and Health conscious customers considering consumer behavior, demographics, and psychographic factors.

To aware target audience and increase sales profits, this campaign of Melo Fruitti will include objectives of this project, key benefits of your product, IMC program element mix, examples of other MC functions, budgetary plan, media plan, and so on.

Situational Analysis

Melo Fruitti ice cream is a new product in the market and it needs to reach target market; therefore, IMC campaign could be an effective tool to create brand image and value to the mind of target customers. However, this campaign can easily influence and convey message to the customers using IMC program as Melo Fruitti offers wide range of unique ice cream flavors, and non-fattening- an organic ice-cream.

At the same time, this IMC campaign will be able to attract large health conscious customers who always bother with food ingredients, obesity and other related issues because it uses no artificial colors and contains less that 2% of fats and 0% trans-fats. In addition, this company provides healthy ice cream products along with allergen free ingredients, for instance, peanuts. On the other hand, this company will enjoy first mover advantage and able to be market leader since Melo Fruitti is the first company, which provides all these advantages at the same time.

Here, it is important to mention that Melo Fruitti ice cream needs to select cost effective multimedia marketing strategy, as the budget of the company for promotional activities is not adequate. In this context, the marketer of Melo Fruitti ice cream can concentrate more on the use of social networking sites to attract adult target customers since these sites are popular to the young people.

This IMC campaign will create strong appeal on the target audience and regular internet users and it will assist to developing local culture to the foreign customers because they like to taste new flavored ice cream in different countries.

According to the country profile of Malaysia, the climate of this country is comparatively humid, hot, and uniform temperatures with no seasonal variations throughout the year though the presence of mountain ranges influences climate change in some extent (WPRO 2011, p.2). As a result, Melo Fruitti Company would enjoy geographical benefits as ice cream is used to cool off body temperatures and quench thirst.

This IMC campaign will open a new door while it has the opportunity to promote the ice cream products to the health conscious people by stating that it contains safe, fat free, low calorie and sugar. However, the marketer of IMC campaign will also aware the target customers about the cost effectiveness of this brand; however, this company would be able to offer low price than competitors’ offer price because it is not liable to pay tariff like foreign companies.

At the same time, this campaign has scope to involve some volunteers, sponsors, and donors who will support the activities of the Melo Fruiti ice cream by providing financial or other services to strengthen the position of the company in local and international market.

Target Audience

This ice cream product of Melo Fruitti is suitable for all but the company should primarily target health conscious customers who like to taste ice cream those not contain excessive chemicals, fats, creams, and artificial colors. Moreover, the marketers of Melo Fruitti Ice Cream Company should target customers who frequently use internet and visit social networking sites and they should target these groups considering the opportunity of multimedia strategy.

Most importantly, this IMC plan also focus on the product features to select target market, such as, new fruits flavored ice cream of Melo Fruitti Company is healthy for kids; consequently, this report suggests the marketers to target parents who seek fresh and healthy ice cream for their kids.

Objectives of the IMC Campaign

1. Melo Fruitti ice cream would develop strong brand image to the target audience using integrated marketing communication program by 2012;
2. To create awareness among 90% of the target market within seven months of the product launch;
3. This company would like to reach break-even point and captured 5% of Malaysian ice cream market share within 12 months of its operation;
4. One of the main objectives of the company to promote its slogan “A world of cool taste”;
5. More than 50% target customers would be loyal customer within 12 months of its operation;
6. the sales revenue of Melo Fruitti ice cream would increase by 50% by third years of its operation;
7. However, Melo Fruitti would diversify its product line and offer new flavor organic ice cream within next year;
8. Moreover, the goal of this IMC campaign is to aware target customers about the cost effectiveness of this new product.
9. To pull together and develop consciousness of the target audience concerning their health;
10. It would organize new IMC campaign to build customer awareness about the product of Melo Fruitti by 30% within next three years;
11. In addition, it would increase annual budget for promotion and research by 75% within the fiscal year 2014 to analyze market.

Messages

This IMC campaign “A world of cool taste” of Melo Fruitti Ice cream will provide messages to the target customers and these messages include description about products’ ingredients due to give information to the health conscious people and parents of kids to help the customers to select right brands.

One of the most important tasks is to convey messages to the target audience about the commitment of the company to give the opportunity to taste ice cream without bothering the tension of obesity; thus, freshness of the new fruits flavored ice cream of Melo Fruitti would be the actual message of the campaign.

Key problems of IMC Campaign

The Marketer of Melo Fruitti Company will find out the market threats to avoid loss in the future and suggest the company to carry on successful campaign projects. However, major foreign competitors like Baskin Robbins, Cornetto, and Haagen-Dazs are the great challenge for Melo Fruitti as they offer testy products and campaign for their testy products to influence the customers whereas this new company would campaign for healthy, but not testy ice cream products.

As the customers can switch off to other company, the marketers of this campaign have to concentrate on the immoral behavior of the employees or the management, supply chain management system and technological factors like cold chain facilities for transportation and storage.

In addition, Melo Fruitti has to face two major problems in order to gain market-leading position in the national market and these barriers are – the products of this company melt quickly because of not use of excessive chemicals and products are not as tasty as other ice creams on the market due to low sugar and skimmed milk. On the other hand, lack of budgets, efficient employees, and volunteers may create problem to carry on campaign project.

Foote, Cone, Belding Strategy Planning Model

Vaughn (1986) presented the Foote, Cone & Belding Planning (FCB) Model based on traditional theories of customers’ response with the aim to identify and measure the effectiveness of advertising in diverse Medias, the model has established to analyze the communication situation that the advertisers encounter with present situation.

The FCB¹ grid model involved with four fundamental advertising strategies such as informative presentation, emotional statement, habitual addressing, and satisfaction of targets group and this model facilitates the users to recognize the appropriate way of advertising planning process that would positively contribute to generate appropriate promotional strategies for the involved organization, for Melo-Fruitti, FCB² model would be an effective tool.

FCB grid model stated that advertising planning of Melo-Fruitti evidenced to emphasis on the communication response that would undoubtedly be diverse in support of high versus pointing to the lower association with products that requisite for the most of the part of thinking (left alignment of brain) otherwise feeling (right alignment of brain) at the information processing system of customers.

Market Segmentation for Melo Fruitti Ice Cream

The marketer of the Melo Fruitti ice cream has perceived the idea that the success of the integrated marketing campaign would engender huge responsiveness among the people of Malaysia and persuade the nationals to buy healthy ice cream. Standing on this revelation, the marketer attempts to deal with on not only the natives aging from five to fifteen, but rather, the entire nation; hence, it is vital for the business to appraise the demography of the country before carrying out the marketing:

Table 1: Assessing Malaysian Demography

Source: Self generated from Index mundi (2011)

Brand Positioning Strategy

The marketers of Melo Fruitti ice cream will give the message of freshness of the products and reach their objectives within the deadline. As a result, the top-management of the company directs the marketers of Melo Fruitti to research on current market, and to assess the price of the products of the competitors to strengthen its position its brand positioning map. However, the aim of the campaign project is aware the target audience regarding the advantages of the products of this ice cream Company; thus, this plan selects positioning strategy for Melo Fruitti, such as the competition in the ice cream market is comparatively high due to have presence of numerous foreign competitors. Therefore, the sales management team should give attention on developing competitive advantages of through the IMC Campaign and aware people about the price of the products as the company offers low price for its unique items. However, the subsequent figure demonstrates selected option of the company –

Figure 1: Possible value proposition of the campaign

Source: Self generated from Keller (2009)

Media Mix for Melo Fruitti Ice Cream

In order to conduct this integrated marketing campaign project, the marketer of the Melo Fruitti ice cream hopes to concentrate on a number of mass media vehicles together with some out-of-home campaigning methods. Because of the fact that the fund for the marketer to advertise the Melo Fruitti ice cream is quite low (that is AUD 1.5 million), it is practicable for the company choose online advertising mediums to build the image of the product through the integrated campaign and develop public awareness.

This form of advertising may include in web marketing, including search engine optimization (SEO), company’s own website development, blogs, e-mails, and more fundamentally, advertisement through social networking sites. Social-networking websites are tremendous for constructing consumer relationships; moreover, it is quite simple to connect with consumers at social websites; it comprises creating accounts at popular social-sites, assembling community/customers, providing helpful information about product, and updating information frequently; conversely, consumers will enjoy joining the community as a place to share their experiences and find information about what to buy.

Moreover, as the product will be introduced in the Malaysian market, the marketer of the Melo Fruitti ice cream could also campaign through print media available in Malaysia, such as Berita Petang Sarawak, Harian Ekspres, Melaka Hari Ini, and Utusan Malaysia. Newspaper is one of the most crucial demonstration media for any product to come into notice of mass people (Zaichkowsky, 1985 and Traylor, 1981); so Melo Fruitti will begin and maintain remunerated circular promotions in conjunction with similes of ice creams and eye-catching snapshots; moreover, the marketer could also come up with press kits, brochures, and posters.

The promotion will also run through radio broadcasts, as this type of commercials will better deal with those active citizens who, for instance, listen to radio while driving cars or while cooking food; furthermore, even those people who are enjoying a free time snoop to the radio. Additionally, radio-advertising would enlarge potential-outcomes for IMC with sense of suppleness and can also have a superior capture over audiences with help of good mottos; so the central focus of the marketer will stay on campaigning through the most popular radios-stations of Malaysia, such as Asyik FM and Salam FM, Klasik Nasional FM, Pahang FM, Suria FM, and One FM. In addition, outdoor IMC is a very important tool to address mass people.

Outdoor campaigns could be an immense type of advertising to put vast contributions to conquer the aim of the IMC; this may include setting billboards at busy streets beside colleges, universities, offices, shopping malls, bus terminals, or airport roads to attract an increasing number of people to buy the ice cream. Loker & Kamali (2002), Recklies (2006), and Percy and Rossiter (1992) argued that public relations can create huge customer involvement; so, the marketer will also focus on creating public relations and undertaking other forms of campaigns, such as promoting through magazines, or concentrating on special promotions.

However, it is important to note that it is not possible for the marketer to focus on IMC through television advertisements. Although television campaigns are the best medium to attract people of all ages, including middle-aged men and women spending their leisure, working people watching TV at a Saturday night, young generation aging from 20 to 35, and the teenagers, high adverting costs associated with it will make it impossible for Melo Fruitti ice cream to go through TV campaigns.

Therefore, during the first year of the integrated campaign, television adverts would not be feasible for the marketer of the Melo Fruitti ice cream, and the business would look forward to undertaking it in the upcoming years.

Campaigning Frequency and Media Schedule

Due to a total budget of AUD 1.5 million for the IMC, the marketer of the Melo Fruitti ice cream will go for relatively cheaper form of advertising methods. As show in the chart below, in the first four days of the first weeks of each month, the advertisements will go through national dailies like Berita Petang Sarawak, New Sunday Times, The Star, and Utusan Malaysia; however, the ads will not appear simultaneously in all the newspapers as shown.

For example, in the first Sunday of January, the ad of the ice cream will come in two newspapers. In a similar way, to promote Melo Fruitti, the radio advertising, social networking, other web marketing, press kits, brochures, posters, billboards, and other outdoor ads will be used in the sequence given below.

It is important to note from the chart that the marketer of the Melo Fruitti ice cream has designed the media schedule in a way so that the costly forms of advertisements, such as newspapers, are used for few numbers of times. Conversely, the marketer has made more use of cheap form of advertisements such as online promotions, press kits, brochures, posters, etc., so that the campaigns repeat constantly in those media:

Table 2: Frequency of Campaigns and Media Schedule Chart

Source: Self generated

Cost of Each Media Vehicle Selected

The marketer of the Melo Fruitti ice cream has designed a total integrated marketing campaign budget of AUD 1.5 million; the distribution of the budget in each of the region is given in the following table. The rates of the newspaper campaigns have been estimated from the raw rates given in RAA (2009). As the secondary sources suggest, in Malaysia, the cost of out door advertising and online marketing are far lower than that of the newspaper campaigns – this is evident from the budget of the IMC plan of the ice cream below:

Table 3: Cost of Each Media Vehicle Selected for Melo Fruitti

Source: Self generated

MC Functions

Sales promotion program of Melo Fruitti

Datamonitor (2009) pointed out that the Ice cream in Malaysia has grown in a steady rate of 4.5 % per year where there are large multinational companies like Nestle and Unilever are major player in the market with hundreds of small and medium local manufacturers. Due to increasing popularity of ice cream in Malaysia, Melo Fruitti has huge sales promotion scope here.

The marketing team for Melo Fruitti organic Ice cream campaign would essentially apply two poles apart sales promotion strategies to enhance sales for this product by inspiring public awareness regarding use of artificial color and flavor while Melo Fruitti uses all natural ingredients.

At this connection, it is essential to mention that the use of organic ingredients instead of artificial flavors and colors are very expensive, but the company has deeply concerned to reduce risk of public health; consequently, one of the objectives of MC tools is to increase deliberate involvement of the public of all age. Moreover, this campaign of Melo Fruitti ice cream would offer some extra advantages to the customers, for instance, the marketers has decided to offer special rewards, gifts and other options, like home delivery to the online communities.

Budget

Identifying the sales promotional opportunities in all the States of Malaysia, it would require huge budget, due to constrain of resource, the total allocation for the IMC campaign is US$ 1.5, it is suggested to allocate 20% for sales promotion.

One to one marketing

CIA (2011) mentioned that Malaysia has 287 million populations in 2011, 29.6% children under 14 years, 65.4% adults from 15 to 64 years and rest 5 % are over 65 analyzing this demography it is argued that the marketer might study about the demand of target groups by using one to one marketing. However, the marketer of the Melo Fruitti organic Ice cream campaign aimed to use such strategy to communicate with its target audience, any time when a customer will resister or visit the company’s website, it will preserve the relevant data and use it for further direct communication process –

At the initial stage, the marketer of Melo Fruitti ice cream will develop an outstanding website for the campaign projects of the company to give the opportunity to the customers about products, which will increase sales revenue; however, the following figure gives more information about the steps of web designing –

Building brands

Johnson, Scholes & Whittington (2008) pointed that primarily four main stages influence to build strong brand, assist to achieve objectives of the company by giving message to target customers; however, these stages are brand classification, sense, responses, and association. As a result, the marketers of the Melo Fruitti organic Ice cream campaign will take some forwarding initiatives for target customers (parent’s kid and health conscious people) to develop brand and these are –

Advertising

The peak season for ice cream in Malaysia is March to October of every year and Melo Fruitti Ice Cream’s IMC campaign would make most use of rush scheduling of advertising for this period and spend highest budget though there are provisions for advertising round the year.

Thus, Melo Fruitti Ice Cream’s IMC campaign would book the “Borneo Post”, Malay Mail Business Times, Berita Harian, Utusan Malaysia, China Press, and The Malaysian Insider for their regular advertise with cost effective long-term contract with the aim to gain the ultimate objectives of the campaign with small space, but colorful impression. For the print media this campaign of Melo Fruitti Ice Cream would ultimately generate accelerated profit and brand value by creating strong base of satisfied customers (Belch & Belch, 2009).

Public relations

The IMC campaign Melo-fruitti organic Ice cream would concentrate on the development public relation because its functions to arrange communication between the employees of the organisation and top-management, where the PR works as a unique introduction to the audiences concerned with public interest such as news matters that endow with a mediator endorsement.

Conclusion

The marketer of the Melo Fruitti ice cream will evaluate the results of the campaign in the Malaysian market and contrast the differences in involvement of citizens before and after the IMC. Below is a summary of the IMC budget, comprising the costs of the evaluation stage:

The top managerial executives of the company should organize regular board meetings to evaluate if the demand has increased after the IMC campaign. In addition, the marketer should further test the IMC after the first month. For testing the success of the IMC, the market should focus on techniques, such as gaining feedback from online communities of the social networks.

Recommendations

Melo Fruitti ice cream should conduct IMC campaign as it is one of the most effective the procedure of maximizing customer’s values by means of concurrent marketing activities, integrating proper management of customer’s knowledge and information to maintaining long-term relation with them and increase demands of the products in Malaysian market.

However, this is an effective IMC campaign plan as the media plan of this report suggests Melo Fruitti ice cream company to using popular social marketing sites like Facebook, Youtube, twitter and other sites to create brand image of the company and increase profit. This campaign will be able to meet the objectives of the company because the marketers of Melo Fruitti ice cream have properly organized the budget for IMC campaign and used fund for all kinds of selected promotional activities.

In addition, this IMC plan has designed considering business environment, geographical advantages, economic condition of the target audience, strength, and weakness of the company and this project. On the other hand, this plan will meet the objectives of the company because the marketers of the company have research on the competitors’ campaign strategies, ingredients of the products of rivals, and the budget to implement their IMC plans.

At the same time, they have identified possible risks of the market and formulated the plan to overcome such barriers, for example, this campaign will focus more on health related issues as the marketers have recognized new product of Melo Fruitti Ice cream is not tasty due to avoid of excessive chemicals and use of natural ingredients.

Reference List

Belch, G. E. & Belch, M.A. (2009). Advertising and Promotion. (8^th ed.). New Delhi: Tata McGraw Hill.

CIA (2011). Malaysia Demographics Profile 2011. Web.

Datamonitor (2009). Ice cream in Malaysia to 2012. Web.

Duncan, T. (2005). IMC Planning and International Marketing Communication. Principles of advertising and IMC. (2^nd ed.). Chicago: McGraw-Hill/Irwin.

Index mundi (2011). Malaysia Demographics Profile 2011. Web.

Johnson, G., Scholes, K. & Whittington, R. (2008). Exploring Corporate Strategy: Text & Cases. (5^th ed.). London: Prentice Hall.

Keller, K. L. (2009). Strategic Brand Management- Building, Measuring and Managing Brand Equity. (3^rd ed.). New Delhi: Prentice Hall of India.

Laudon, K. C., & Traver, C. G. (2002). E- commerce- Business, Technology, Society. (4^th ed.). Dorling Kindersley Pvt. Ltd.

Loker. S. & Kamali. N. (2002). Mass Customization: On-line Consumer Involvement in Product Design. Web.

Percy, L., & Rossiter, J. R. (1992). A model of brand awareness and brand attitude advertising strategies. Journal of Psychology & Marketing, 9(1).

RAA (2009). Press rates. Web.

Recklies. D. (2006). Understanding and Managing Customer Perception. Web.

Traylor, M. B. (1981). Product Involvement and Brand Commitment. Journal of Advertising Research, 21(1).

Vaughn, R. (1986). How Advertising Works: A Planning Model Revisited. Web.

WPRO (2011). Climate Change Country Profile: Malaysia. Web.

Zaichkowsky, J. L. (1985). Measuring the Involvement Construct. Journal of Consumer Research, 12(4).

Footnotes

¹ Foote, Cone & Belding Planning

² Foote, Cone & Belding Planning

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