An Evaluation of the Strategic Application of Integrated Marketing Communications for Dove
Introduction
The pace of change in the marketing communications industry has accelerated with the advent of the Internet and new media technologies. New technologies create new ways for marketers to reach consumers and are having an impact on the more traditional media, in terms of greater fragmentation of these media (Belch & Belch). For the purpose of this report, the official website of Dove will be critically evaluated. With effective use of the response hierarchy models, an analysis will be conducted on how Dove is exploiting the Web for influencing consumers.
The Role of Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC)
“Marketing communications is a management process through which an organisation engages with its various audiences. Through understanding an audience’s communications environment, organisations seek to develop and present messages for their identified stakeholder groups, before evaluating and acting upon the responses. By conveying messages that are of significant value, audiences are encouraged to offer attitudinal and behavioural responses” (Fill 2005, pp. 7). It was during the 1980s that firms started moving towards IMC, which essentially acknowledges the added value of a comprehensive plan that strategically evaluates the roles of a variety of communications tools and effectively combines these tools to provide maximum impact of communications (Belch & Belch, 2004). Traditionally there are five principal marketing communications tools which include advertising, sales promotion, personal selling, public relation and direct marketing.
Purpose of the website
The website of a company can be considered as a promotional event on its own. ...