Marketing Communications Management Concepts & Theories, Cases and Practices

The way marketing communications are used by organizations to reach target audiences has changed significantly in recent years. Once, the emphasis was on promoting 'to' audiences through an acquisition and persuasion orientation, now it is about communicating 'with' audiences, where the focus is on interaction and relationships. The traditional promotional mix was based on the five main communications tools but it is argued that this is no longer representative of contemporary communications practice and an increasingly complex media environment. It appears that the promotional mix approach does not reflect current industry practice neither does it complement contemporary marketing theory. It is accepted that there has been debate about the efficacy of the mix as a concept (Copley, 2012) but the emphasis of this paper is on the exploration of the validity of the promotional mix as a model for explaining how modern marketing communications are operationalized. It considers some of the practical and theoretical issues associated with this convention, and it reviews the way in which the tools and media are used as a focus for understanding the ways in which organizations communicate. Finally, a new framework is presented which, it is hoped, will stimulate discussion and further research in order to better represent both marketing theory and marketing communications practice. The promotional mix element of the 4Ps marketing mix has become established as the conventional method to express the way organizations promote their products and services. Commonly agreed to consist of advertising, sales promotion, public relations, personal selling and more recently, direct marketing, each tool possesses different properties and capabilities. As a result, the promotional mix can be assembled in a variety of ways to achieve different outcomes, both cognitive and behavioural. However, ideas that organizations should promote and hence persuade customers to think and behave in particular ways have changed.