Reference no: EM133545258
Assignment
Question A. Explain why it is important to evaluate brand communication effectiveness. Marketing communication evaluation is used to test, monitor, measure, and diagnose the effectiveness of IMC messages. Without campaign evaluation, marketers cannot know whether IMC efforts had any impact; they also do not know how to improve on their current campaign.
Question B. Discuss the role campaign objectives play in the measurement of campaign success. Campaign objectives set the stage for measurement. Based on objectives, companies can determine exactly what to measure and which tools to use to evaluate campaign success.
Question C. Describe the key ways in which campaign evaluation is conducted. Campaign evaluation is conducted using tracking studies, scanner analyses, and single-source research, among other methods. Campaign research also is conducted for various IMC tools (e.g., digital) specifically and to understand the wisdom of media choices.
Question D. Explain how the performance of media vehicles is evaluated. One of the biggest challenges in media planning is media efficiency-getting the most for the money invested. For major campaigns, agencies do postbuy analyses, which involve checking the media plan against the performance of each media vehicle. A critical question is whether campaign reach and frequency objectives were obtained. Just because audience members have been exposed to marketing communication does not mean they have paid attention to it, and media professionals must always keep that in the top of their mind. Each media vehicle has its own metrics and means of assessing performance. Newspapers and other traditional media have fairly straightforward metrics: readership, circulation, coverage, ratings, and gross rating points. However, media performance is more difficult to estimate for out-of-home media, digital media, and alternative media. However, media planners have developed innovative new technological means of assessing even these.
Question E. List some of the key challenges faced in evaluating IMC effectiveness. Key challenges relate to difficulties in assessing monetary return on campaign investment. Also, building communication programs that span many types of traditional and digital media, not to mention different cultures, requires special team-building skills and analytical talents.
Question F. Detail ways to determine if a campaign met its objectives. Competent brand communication managers return to the campaign objectives-all the various desired effects that were stated up front-and then objectively measure the campaign's performance against those objectives. A good campaign assessment should compare pre-campaign and post-campaign measures of perception, image, consumer preferences, and behaviors. Measurements of success are only possible if past baseline and benchmark measures are present. If these measures or data are not available, it is very difficult for a brand manager or agency to point to significant changes to these key metrics due to an IMC campaign.