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MANAGING PROJECTS

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Projects represent nonroutine business activities that often have long-term strategic ramifications for a firm. In this chapter, we examined how projects differ from routine business activities and discussed the major phases of projects. We noted how environmental changes have resulted in increased attention being paid to projects and project management over the past decade. In the second half of the chapter, we introduced some basic tools that businesses can use when planning for and controlling projects. Both Gantt charts and network diagrams give managers a visual picture of how a project is going. Network diagrams have the added advantage of showing the precedence between activities, as well as the critical path(s). We wrapped up the chapter by showing how these concepts are embedded in inexpensive yet powerful software packages such as Microsoft Project. If you want to learn more about project management, we encourage you to take a look at the Web site for the Proj...
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Designing and Managing Integrated Marketing Communications

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Modern marketing calls for more than developing a good product, pricing it attractively, and making it accessible to target customers. Companies must also communicate with present and potential stakeholders and with the general public.
The marketing communications mix consists of eight major modes of communication: advertising, sales promotion, public relations and publicity, events and experiences, direct marketing, interactive marketing, word-of-mouth marketing, and personal selling.
The communications process consists of nine elements: sender, receiver, message, media, encoding, decoding, response, feedback, and noise. To get their messages through, marketers must encode their messages in a way that takes into account how the target audience usually decodes messages. They must also transmit the message through efficient media that reach the target audience and develop feedback channels to monitor response to the message.
Developing effective communications requires eight steps: (1) Identify the target audience, (2) determine the communications objectives, (3) design the communications, (4) select the communications channels, (5) establish the total communications budget, (6) decide on the communications mix, (7) measure the communications results, and (8) manage the integrated marketing communications process.
In identifying the target audience, the marketer needs to close any gap that exists between current public perception and the image sought. Communications objectives can be to create category need, brand awareness, brand attitude, or brand purchase intention.
Designing the communication requires solving three problems: what to say (message strategy), how to say it (creative strategy), and who should say it (message source). Communications channels can be personal (advocate, expert, and social channels) or nonpersonal (media, atmospheres, and events).
Although other methods exist, the objective-and-task method of setting the communications budget, which calls upon marketers to develop their budgets by defining specific objectives, is typically most desirable.
In choosing the marketing communications mix, marketers must examine the distinct advantages and costs of each communication tool and the company’s market rank. They must also consider the type of product market in which they are selling, how ready consumers are to make a purchase, and the product’s stage in the company, brand, and product.
Measuring the effectiveness of the marketing communications mix requires asking members of the target audience whether they recognize or recall the communication, how many times they saw it, what points they recall, how they felt about the communication, and what are their previous and current attitudes toward the company, brand, and product.
Managing and coordinating the entire communications process calls for integrated marketing communications (IMC): marketing communications planning that recognizes the added value of a comprehensive plan to evaluate the strategic roles of a variety of communications disciplines, and that combines these disciplines to provide clarity, consistency, and maximum impact through the seamless integration of discrete messages.

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