By Omair and Rohit (group 65)
SHE RUNS & Despicable ME – Two Examples of IMC
Once considered as a novel concept, fully integrated marketing communication campaigns have now become an important part of marketing strategy. In the present day to address the wide variety of consumer segments, messages are echoed across various channels, that it’s hard to imagine a time when most of the advertisements were platform specific.
We would discuss two examples which inspired us the most as best use of integrated marketing.
“Despicable Me” by Universal Pictures
To capture the emotions of target audience “Despicable Me” used conventional channels as well as new approaches such as billboards, TV, radio, Film premier, game application and social media platforms. This integration of classic advertisement and social media networking played consistently an effective role in mass awareness of not only the desired audience but also the rest.
Universal pictures has commenced the first ever mobile controlled, customized, geo-particular Digital marketing campaign in public areas in different European regions. For its promotion the interactive campaign invited audience to control and personalise the on-screen creative through their phones.
In this the consumers can commands the minions through text messages or online instructions. The minions then respond by addressing the name of consumer. In this way the marketers made emotional attachment of consumers with these characters. Moreover, Minion Rush a game available at apple store and google play store, which was launched to engage viewers with the game characters.
SHE RUNS AT NIGHT – Nike campaign
Nike has gained high level of brand exposure through its various digital marketing campaigns via social interaction of consumers.
One of the best examples of NIKE campaigns include SHE RUNS campaign.
As we all now Nike is a leading brand in sports shoe market however Nike has realized this fact that ASICS has edge over it. Although they make women shoes but never promoted it exclusively to women. In order to address this pitfall, Nike launched SHE RUN campaign.
To further associate their campaign Nike researched by communicating with women on social media and found that women run alone at night and had various odd experiences. To make a strong association of their brand with women they used this as a basis to design this campaign.
In this campaign, they engaged passionate female runners and promoted a concept of running community. The different channel employed by Nike were
- Physical running communities – created for authenticity,
- digital communities – necessary to match young female social behaviours,
- mobile interactivity – essential given high usage by runners, and
- Advertising – placed in female worlds, not running worlds, shattering the male-dominated norms
To further promote this campaign Nike challenged the female community by launching a 13 Km night race. Furthermore, to add authenticity, they appointed a young runner Carly whose Facebook posts lead massive engagement among female runners on social media. Together the offline and online connection of the brand messages is one of the main ingredient of successful IMC.
After 16,000 likes and 14,000 people talking about the run within one month, it was clear the community was on to something powerful
Other activities which were done by Nike maximum participation of consumers was publishing of editorial on night Run, running workshop and hired ambassadors who promoted the campaign at various places like universities, health clubs etc.
This has been one of the successful marketing campaigns of 2012.
From the above two campaign we can say that IMC does not mean conveying one message in all campaigns but it is a two way communication and tying the brands core image to consumer. experience.
What do you think how universal pictures and Nike has engaged the consumer in their marketing campaigns? Do you remember any brand story which has best utilised Integrated Marketing tool for promotion?
References:
http://www.cengagebrain.com.au/content/9780170223997.pdf
http://sammannyimcdespicableme.blogspot.com.au/
http://despicableme2mkt103.blogspot.com.au/
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-despicable-me-2-trailer-grus-back/
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