Hellohello again!

This time I'll be studying about message and communication plans/campaigns. Last time I was unfortunately not able to attend class due to illness but tomorrow I'll participate as the discussion leader.

As usual I'll go through the learning objectives one by one, let's start with the first learning objective:

What are communication planning processes?

First off: Communication is a way of transmitting your ideas and information and it can be transmitted in numerous ways such as news stories (print and broadcast), PR, posters, brochures, events etc.

Creating a communication plan for your business starts by you defining and understanding your objectives of it, what is the current state and where do you want to get with this plan? If you don't focus on this part, it may well turn your business communication into a disaster.

Define your target audience. As always, you have someone you want to  target your message and product(s)/service(s) to, who are they?

The communication plan you are implementing should be consistent throughout the process, both externally and internally. So, you want your employees to understand it as well, wouldn't it be weird if they knew nothing about it, or if everyone had a different idea of what and why you are communicating?

Where and when will you communicate your plan to the target audience? If it's a new gadget targeted to youth's, will it then be on print media or would you rather focus on social media channels? Should the gadget be released somewhere where these youth's gather in the near future, and event maybe? And who will communicate it, the CEO, product developer or someone else?

http://www.marketingforchange.com.au/how-to-write-a-simple-communication-plan/

A communication matrix (on the right side) might help you clear out to who you will communicate your message and through what channels. This way you'll have a clear visual on how to implement your plan. Keep the stakeholders on one axis and the channels on the other one.







Sources: http://smallbusiness.chron.com/objectives-effective-business-communication-plan-13554.html
http://www.marketingforchange.com.au/how-to-write-a-simple-communication-plan/
http://www.wikihow.com/Create-a-Communication-Plan
http://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/participation/promoting-interest/communication-plan/main

I think that covers all for communication plans, let's move on to the second learning objective:

How to construct a unified global campaign / bring an idea to life?

As in the Snickers case stated, they needed to create a campaign that could be distributed around the world but the initial message should be the same. This was achieved by localization of the ads done, for western countries having known actors from the US, in some other countries an Egyptian actress and in Europe communicating the "you're not yourself when you're hungry" phrase.

It was all about understanding the differences the countries have and adapting the message in accordance to those differences. Timing was also important, the message was communicated during "big, populist TV moments", that meant the Superbowl in the US, and other events in other countries.

The key here is that there is not a global campaign that is same throughout the world, it's something that's localized and personalized and understands the cultural differences of people. For some countries using celebrities work, for some humor etc.

Source: http://www.business2community.com/marketing/create-strong-global-marketing-campaign-01299961#sOlz6DZVAMvuBLjf.97
The case

That's all that I have to say on this learning objective, so let's move on to the last one:

How to translate a message to a global audience?

As I already went through in the second learning objective, key is to understand cultural differences, language differences etc. This is why I suggest to take a same kind of approach as Snickers did, to use what works in which country: actors, humor, reality and appropriate.

By appropriate I mean that different countries have different norms for politics, cultures and social habits. That means that they also have different images, words and scenarios they feel to be appropriate. Some cultures for example have different meanings for different colors (luck, death, etc..). Genders and roles of them are important in some countries, so keep that in mind.

Not all celebrities from Hollywood are known around the world, so be sure to change celebrities to local stars if the situation calls for that.

Humor: All cultures, languages and countries have different ways of perceiving humor. For example, Finns tend to be very sarcastic and self-ironic people, that would well work in here. In other countries, probably not. Use local people to tell you what is funny and what is not.

Reality: Use something that could be real for the target audience, that may start from geographical issues like weather, terrain etc.

It all goes down for a proper research before the actual campaign.

Source: http://www.business2community.com/marketing/create-strong-global-marketing-campaign-01299961#sOlz6DZVAMvuBLjf.97

That's all for today, thank you!


-J