Internal Marketing Communications

International Marketing Communications

Individual Report

Executive Summary

The purpose of this report is to explain the theoretical rationale and practical considerations for companies seeking to run successful integrated marketing communications campaigns within the video game sector.

This report draws attention to the various ways that IMC has been used by companies in the video game industry, from advertising to appearances at major gaming shows, and how the use of market segmenting has been beneficial in giving companies a focused line of entry into the gaming market and helping them decide who they should be targeting with their marketing campaigns.  Marketing communications objectives are also covered, as they can play an important role into the campaign of a product, regardless of whether it is an existing product or a new one.

The report finds that companies seeking to run a successful IMC campaign within the video sector have to seek to have a clear understanding on how IMC works before they begin they’re campaigns. Poor knowledge of IMC can lead to a products failure and in an industry where one failure could be the difference between a studio closing or staying open it is vitally important that they get their message right.

Research for this report was done with material taken from lectures and with the use of academic articles and other secondary sources.

Contents

Section 1: Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………………………..4

Section 2: Integrated Marketing Communications…………………………………………………………...5

Section 3: Objectives………………………………………………………………………………………………………..6

Section 4: Segmentation and Targeting…………………………………………………………………………….8

Section 5: Marketing Communications Mix……………………………………………………………………...9

Section 5: Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………………………………10

References………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………11

Section 1: Introduction

Before 1991 there was not much literature on integrated marketing communications, Kitchen (2004) notes that in the early 80’s integrated marketing communications was, “an unrecognized paradigm, and many professionals and academics within the field of marketing considered each marketing communications function to operate with various degrees of autonomy” (Kitchen, 2004). The idea of combining the various marketing tools into one seamless group was not discussed, others had similar ideas, but they wanted to maintain a form of interdependence between the various marketing tools instead of integrating them into one group equally dependent on each other (Kitchen, 2004).