Integrated Marketing:
A
Case Study
When does 1 + 1 + 1 equal more than three? In a well-designed, carefully targeted integrated marketing campaign.
“One-to-one integrated marketing is probably the most effective way of marketing any product, service or event,” says Pam Sullivan, President of Sullivan Creative.
What’s Integrated Marketing?
“Integrated marketing” is the preferred term today for what used to be called “multi-channel marketing.” (See Sullivan Solutions, Vol. 2, Nos. 5 & 6.) An integrated marketing campaign uses a number of different channels (sidebar) to send essentially the same message, over and over.
This results in two important benefits. Inevitably, you’ll reach some people through one channel that you won’t reach through another. And if you do it right, there’s a good chance that you’ll “touch” a number of people more than once. With each touch, you’ll increase your presence in the minds of your audience, making them more likely to raise your hands and say they’re interested.
How Does It Work?
Just placing a number of ads, sending out a lot of press releases and mailing out promotional pieces does not constitute an integrated marketing campaign. An effective integrated campaign needs to have at least three things.
It has to be targeted. “It’s demographics, demographics, demographics,” says Sullivan. Who are your prospects? Where are they? What channels will reach them? Some of this comes from knowledge of your product or service: you want to market automotive accessories to car and truck drivers. Other targeting comes from research: what are the characteristics of the people who are buying from you? A good way to find out about this is to survey your customer base.
It has to be integrated. “It’s all about making sure that all the pieces look as though they come from the same family, when they’re laid out on a table,” says Chuck Provancher, Senior Art Director at Sullivan Creative. This means not only graphical consistency but consistency of typography, copywriting and brand identity. Provancher points out that this doesn’t require all the pieces to look exactly alike. “Maybe you start with an image and a certain color palette, but then each subsequent piece takes one color from that palette, or one detail from the image.”
It has to be strategic. An agency experienced in integrated marketing campaigns will plan exactly how each piece is placed in time and space. Ads will be run in some key publications in selected geographic areas and market segments. Some elements will be rolled out early, others at the very end of the campaign. And the interplay of the different channels will be carefully calculated for maximum effect.
The Annual Craftsmen’s Fair: a Case Study
The League of New Hampshire Craftsmen was founded in 1931. Today it is made up of about 700 state-juried craftspeople working in jewelry, wood, clay, metal, fabric and other media. Their work is top quality. “These are beautiful, fine craft items,” says Sullivan. “They’re heirloom pieces, to be passed on for generations.”
Sullivan Creative assists the League in its marketing efforts. The biggest League event of the year is the Annual Craftsmen’s Fair, held every August at Mt. Sunapee, in Newbury, New Hampshire. In recent years, more than 35,000 people have attended during the nine days of the fair.
“It’s a major event,” says Terri Wiltse, Operations Manager of the League. “It involves more than half of our craftspeople. It’s also really important to the Dartmouth-Sunapee region in terms of bringing in people, who then need lodging and meals.”
The team’s goal was to increase attendance for the 2005 and operating income for the League.
The integrated marketing campaign began in March, when promotional postcards were sent to the 200 booth-holders to give to their customers. The full-scale public campaign was launched in June, when postcards were mailed to the 15,000 names on the League’s in-house list – a prequalified list.
The postcards were in the shape of a brochure, and were also placed in brochure racks at rest areas and other tourist locations around the state.
Sullivan Creative also purchased a mailing list from the New Hampshire Division of Travel and Tourism, made up of people who had asked for information about New Hampshire – another prequalified list. “We sorted that by zip code, in the affluent areas of New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts where we were running ads,” says Julianne Kujala, Operations Manager of Sullivan Creative.
“There’s a lot of time that goes into these hand-made items, and you can’t put a $29.99 ticket on them,” says Sullivan. “So you have to make sure you go after the right market.” Print ads and postcards reinforced each other, leading to two touches of many prospects.
Then there was print advertising in the Boston area and New Hampshire. “A lot of people have come to New Hampshire for years,” says Sullivan, “and they’re at their vacation homes and they really do follow the papers, and the summer journals, and the travel guides and all of the in-state publications.”
There was also a very large press kit for public relations purposes which went out in early June to about 300 publications. It featured a CD with images of craft works available at the fair, and press releases about the fair. It was also customized for each of the seven defined tourism regions in the state, so that publications could follow up with articles about crafters in the Seacoast region, for example, and access the CD for examples of their work.
There were radio ads using the New Hampshire Radio Network, an organization that, in return for advertising, would broadcast live all week from the fair, giving exposure on 29 New Hampshire stations. And for the first time, the League purchased TV commercials – on WMUR, Channel 9, a Manchester, NH station with a reach around New England, including Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts.
As the fair was about to open, Sullivan Creative sent out an e-mail blast to the direct mail prospects for whom they had e-mail addresses. “We did that just a couple of days before the fair, just as a quick reminder: ‘Don’t forget, there’s the Fair,’” says Kujala.
During the fair, Sullivan Creative sent out regular press releases. and calls were made to different media outlets, giving them reports of what was happening, and succeeded in getting additional coverage. A highlight of this was when a world-famous 90-year-old League-juried potter put on a demonstration, and the Concord Monitor featured it on the front page the next day.
Theintegrated marketing campaign paid off. On the last day, says Sullivan, “I stood up on the roof of the building and I counted the cars coming in. And I knew, when Parking Lot 3 filled up, that we were in good shape.”
It is important to note that the success of the Fair is dependent on weather. This year’s Fair coincided with a severe heat wave, with temperatures in the 90s, and a spike in gas prices. These factors crippled most other shows and tourist attractions, but says Wiltse, “We still accomplished our goal. When the numbers were added up, the fair attendance was equal to last year, yet the overall income from the Fair exceeded our projected plan.”
The future of the next integrated marketing campaign for the Annual Craftsmen’s Fair builds on the success of the previous campaign. Sullivan Creative and the League will employ all the previous strategies, but add new strategies and twists.
Says Wiltse, “We’ve been doing artist bios and plan on sending them out with the regional mailings. So somebody in the Monadnock region can say, ‘Oh, wow! We have these great glassblowers here, I never knew that, they went to the Corning Glass School’ – and then follow through and do an article.”
Sullivan wants to put in place more measuring mechanisms, such as ads or mailings that give you a discount if you present them at the door. She is also looking into partnerships with the local Sunapee Chamber of Commerce, “creating packages with local inns, and maybe doing cooperative advertising with them for big publications such as the New York Times.”
The Channels
We talked with Pam Sullivan about the different channels that could be employed in an integrated marketing campaign.
Television
“You’re going to reach a lot more people, but it’s not really focused, so it may have the shortest amount of return. Who are your viewers? It’s not really targeted. But the local stations can be good for general regional awareness.”
Radio
“Now you have demographics of the different stations – country, rock, easy listening, talk, public radio – so it’s more focused and better targeted. If you go to an oldie’s station, you know it’s a specific demographic.”
Print Ads
“You have to pick your publication. If you’re advertising a canoe, you’ll place ads in outdoor recreation magazines. If you’re selling a specialty piece of jewelry, you might place a small ad in The New Yorker.”
Direct Mail
“When you have the right list – for example, using your own internal list and also purchasing highly targeted lists – you can’t do better than that. Because these people have raised their hand, they’re interested. Maybe they’ve already bought something. They’ve already put one foot in the door. With a really qualified list, there’s no better marketing vehicle. Especially when you put it in the context of a complete integrated campaign.”
e-Mail Marketing
“Here it’s very important that the people on your list have opted in to receive e-mail from you. Without this, you run the risk of annoying people instead of intriguing them.”
Public Relations
“It’s no secret: this can make or break any campaign. You need to have a really well thought-out, well-developed press kit. You want to give the editors all the information they need, so they can just pick it up. Include a CD of photos if it’s appropriate. If you can customize the kit to the publication, so much the better. And consult the editorial calendars; your release may be perfect for one particular edition.”
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