I think Raymour & Flanigan has a sale every day. I could be wrong, but that’s my perception. It seems like every spot is about a promotion. Although promotions tend to peak my interest, when I hear of one at Raymour & Flanigan, I’m not even fazed—for two reasons.
First, the promotions are so common, they don’t spur me to action even if the store is offering something I could use. I just assume I’ll keep what I have for a while longer, and when I’m ready to buy, Raymour & Flanigan is bound to have another sale.
Second, because Raymour & Flanigan advertises their promotions so often, I am suspicious of their furniture’s quality. I know there's always a deal, but is there always good craftsmanship? There may be, but I'd be more likely to walk into the store if that was communicated more often.
It’s interesting that a tactic intended to increase immediate sales has the ability to postpone sales and detract from brand equity--at least for one segment of the population.
On reflecting on class last week something that sticks in my mind is the personal selling element of integrated marketing communications. Unfortunately I do not have documents I can share to give examples of this phenomenon. His name was Jim, he was a salesman that we began to call Salesman Clause. His way of selling to the client was to say yes. Yes to price reductions, waive requirements, offer any and every additional service we offered all at the price of a basic plan. He was our salesman in the mid-west territories and we would all gather in the administration department when he called in, giving the fantastic news that he had signed another client. A round of applause would ensue, and then the questions would begin. Finance would want to know the specifics of what he had offered, operations would want to know how accurate the information they were going to be getting was going to be, implementation would want to know what kind of ridiculous dates had been put on everything, that the company could never meet. Jim would always respond with an inarticulate answer, the CFO would give him an atta-boy and the conference call would end, on a high note for Jim and the CFO, everyone else scraping the bottom of the barrel. Then the paperwork would start to flow in, contracts that had horrible figures, insane due dates that we could never meet, and files that were so messy it would take a month to wade through the data just to get a simple enrollment file. Decisions had to be made as to what battles we wanted to fight, the CFO was no help because in his eyes Jim could do no wrong. Eventually, Jim decided to move on to a different company, making huge sales, with unachievable promises. Personal selling is a huge aspect of integrated marketing communications, but it has to be done right, within the regulations and rules to be affective.
As I reflected on last class, I began to think about how an IMC plan is very similar to a person’s character. When companies develop IMC plans, the purpose is to make sure all of their stakeholders are receiving consistent messages. It would not make any sense for a company to say they wanted to be known as the “health center” one day and the next day begin developing a line of ice cream. These two activities are completely contradictory.
Now, let’s take a look at consistency on a more personal level - a person’s character. A person’s morals and values, just like a company’s IMC plan, should remain consistent regardless of what situation they are put in. Overall, consistent communication and actions are really the keys to being successful in many aspects of life, both for people in their personal and professional lives, and for companies.
Taking the time to write down all of a company’s stakeholders was really eye opening. When all of them are on the same page, it shows how many individuals, organizations and companies are truly impacted by one entity—and there were many more than I had expected. It is almost overwhelming to think of all the people who, in some way, depend on the sustainability of St. Ann’s Community. Although the significant number and variety of stakeholders makes an IMC plan more complicated from a marketing standpoint, I am grateful that I’m not in the finance department, struggling to balance all these stakeholders’ needs in the wake of New York State budget cuts!
Listing all the stakeholders seems like a simple and easy exercise, but as I quickly learned, when you attempt to make an exhaustive list in a short amount of time, it is very easy to overlook a stakeholder or two. This further underscores how important it is for a marketer to understand the intricate workings of a company or organization, and to take the time to create a thorough marketing plan. Since Tuesday’s class, a few more stakeholders have come to my mind, and it will be interesting to see how long the list will grow as I learn more about the different departmental operations within the 1,100-employee organization.
I found it amusing this week, after we had talked about what stakeholders think about the organization I came face to face with two examples of what feedback can say about an organization. One particular incident I was on a call with a current client, the data they had sent to me was not the information that was needed to be input and I was trying to find out what had gone wrong and to get the correct data. The client on the other end of the line laughed and said "I'm so glad we use you to take care of this…you do the work I would hate to do, and you do it so well" While this may not have meant more money for the company, it was positive feedback to know that the client is happy with what we do. Another bit of feedback came from a different end of the spectrum, we supply information to a debit card printing company who then creates the cards and sends them directly to our participants. Much like our organization they rely on the accuracy of the information sent from us to do their jobs. Every month the printing company runs a report that tells them how many cards have been sent back due to bad information per client. Since we have started using this printing firm 3 years ago we have had the least amount of returns. Once again, these aren't huge victories or money making pieces of information, but it is positive feedback from two different stakeholder groups, clients because they utilize our programs and want to maintain their contracts, and the printing firm because part of their success is based on ours.
I hope you will share with me the things you love . . . or don't really love . . . as you apply your blogging savvy in the coming weeks.
Contact me any time with questions or comments at 594.6904 or at sullivan_susan@roberts.edu.
Susan
