Ok today Miia Fohlin(Marketing Manager of Fonecta) who talked about planning and assessing marketing communication campaigns with us. This was so interesting. We actually had to do stuff ourselves like creating a brief. I have never done that before and therefor this was very exciting. A brief is a detailed written assignment that enables the advertising/media agencies to actually plan a marketing campaign with which the marketing objectives can be reached. It was also very interesting to hear that 70% nof the budget you spend on planning communication goes actually to media only. I always thought it would be way less. But now when I think about it, it seems very reasonable because the media is everything that is seen(by other parties) so a lot of money actually should flow on there.
Phase 2 of communication campaigns is all about the production plan(which is clear to me) and also Pre-testing. Ok, to be honest I kinda expected something like that. Of course u have to test it if you ‘re using a new concept and things like that but I did not know that it can take up to 2 weeks. This is a long time and for that reason it is not very surprising that a lot of advertising agencies don’t like the idea of pre-testing.(or actually it was surprising or I expected something like that but still very informative to find out!)
It was very intersting to listen to Miia explaining phase 2. Never thought how many details you have to keep in mind when you are actually producing the TV spot or something like that. A lot of spots are shot in South Africa for example and when you are shooting a Finnish commercial you actually have to make sure that everything…from the pavement on the streets to the clothes and hairstyles the people/models are wearing are looking Finnish enough so the viewer will believe the message of the spot.
The last thing that was intersing is phase 4…the follow up. Never even thought of the fact that you actually have to somehow measure how succesful your campaign actually was. This is actually very clever because when asking the consumers directly you will get the best feedback on how and what to improve for next time so yor campaigns are successful!
Phase 3 is all about campaigning. Here it was very intersting to hear how important internal commnication is in a company. It is very important to launch the campaign internally first before you launch it and it appears in the media so the people inside the company know what is going on. This also keeps the people very motivated!
