Understanding the Functions of Marketing and PR

Marketing
Market research
Before designing and marketing your product, there is pre-production research to be
done, in the form of market research. This function incorporates things like;
researching products in the existing markets, finding a gap in the new market and
taking a look at the demographics that but existing products, before thinking about
what sort of demographic you want to consume your products.
Choosing the wrong market or a market where your product wont fit is detrimental for
profits and could lead to a discontinuation of that product for a large company or
financial difficulty for smaller groups.
This sort of research wont be done quickly, due to the severity of consequence should
you market your product wrong. As well as the time scale of the process, large
corporations will have their own Marketing & PR departments, while smaller
companies will outsource their work to marketing groups/individuals, depending on
their budget for the project.
An example of where I have used market research in past projects is in the design for
advertising project. By looking at brands such as Red Bull and Monster, I was able to
get a better understanding of the products already on the market, while also
establishing where my product can fit in. As I soon found out, it was a lot easier to fit in
with an existing market and make less money, rather than try and create a new market
and gamble a lot of money doing so.
An example of market research in the wider world is easy to find. This is due to the fact
that every company who are planning to market a product using this sort of research.
This is to get them a better understanding of the market, existing products, as well as
the fact that the companies can establish a lot about their potential product by doing
this.
Market analysis
Even though its seen as similar to market research, it fulfils a completely other
function. The function of market research is to look at the markets and existing
products, where as market analysis is mostly about finance and how much can be
made from these markets.
Finance and projected profits is a monumental part of corporations and companies
alike and is the only reason they make products for consumption; profits and financial
gain. Researching these things will bring the companies big profits if they carry out this
research correctly, which most do, due top the fact that they get external people in to
do their research or in terms of big corporations, have a purpose assembled team in
charge of marketing and PR. In many ways then, the marketing and PR team can be
seen as one of, if not the most, important elements of companies.

While I cannot locate a companies research for

an existing product, due to it been used for
personal use by them and them only. However,
companies such as Microsoft, Samsung and
Nokia will look at these figures on 0the right
hand side while doing their market analysing.
This tells theses rival companies what they
have to do and achieve to beat Apple in sales.
This particular piece of information will then be
communicated back to the producer so they
can accommodate for cheaper materials, which will make the biggest profit but still
have optimum quality, but most importantly, It must beat Apple and other competitors.
Marketing strategy
As the name suggests, marketing strategy is all about how a company will market a
product, whether it is through traditional means such as posters and television adverts,
or whether it is using things such as the internet or new social media means to market
a product.
As well as market research, this function of researching can shape the whole financial
gain/loss of a product and whether or not its successful. If you fail to research all the
marketing methods and dont optimise the market to your advantage, your company
could miss out on projected targets and goals that they set themselves for the year.
For example, some companies may choose to go down the conventional route of
television or print advertising, which is the normal route at the moment in marketing.
Companies ranging from Homebase to Honda employ these traditional methods to
market their products, due to it been successful for them in the past and they see a
continuation of profits if they carry on with this method.
However, a current example of where a company/group have used unconventional
means to market their products. Due to the argument of how music should be
accessed and bought, Irish group U2 decided to make a deal with Apple and release
their new album on to many Apple users accounts and devices without the permission
of these users. This marketing strategy has not yet been proven to work, due to the
amount of people who listened to it been unknown, but the ploy by U2 attracted lots of
criticism for syncing the unwanted music onto peoples devices.
Why is advertising so important to an organisation?
After the research and the production side of the project, the product that a company
have produced needs advertising. As well as researching, advertising is just as
important in the success of a product and can make or break a certain product. While
advertising can be seen as just the message and the brand name on a billboard, the
advert will have to be planned and if its on more than one medium, continuation of
design and colours maybe an idea for the company.
Advertising helps to communicate a message and a product to the consumer and the
advert is just as important as the actual product. It doesnt matter if your product is the
best in the world if your advert lets down the whole project. Adverts are not only for
consumers to find themselves a new or existing product, its also for companies to
communicate a message to the consumer. For example, the John Lewis Christmas
advert is not only advertising the products they have to offer, they are also trying to

communicate they are a family brand, through various connotations in the adverts they
put out every Christmas.
With an increasing amount of places to advertise, companies dont have a shortage
when it comes to advertising but the question stands, how much advertising is too
much? New mediums, such as internet and social media have joined existing mediums
such as magazines, televisions, billboards and public transport to advertise companies
products.
Advertising is important to all companies and can, in some circumstances, make and
break a company. However, due to the ranges in sizes of companies, the amount of
advertising used on products varies. Big corporate companies such as Apple and
McDonalds can afford to advertise and have advertised using every traditional mean
possible, where as smaller companies may not have the means to advertise in this
quantity.
An example of one such product that has been heavily advertised in a series of
mediums and ways is the Apple iPhone. As one of the most popular phone brands in
Britain, Apple are determined to try and tell consumers about their new products and
try and generate some huge margins and profits even on the launch day of the
product, as well as the following months after the release. After all, apple are trying to
beat their rivals on sales and profit margins, they want to try and advertise it as much
as they can and with a budget to do so, they can advertise in a variation of ways.
The places where Apple iPhones are advertised are;
Billboards
Internet (social media especially)
Advertising hoardings
Broadcast platforms
Print platforms
Public transport (both posters on them and on the outside of buses etc)
In contrast, little companies with nowhere near the budget of Apple will have to
optimise their advertising and advertise to the right market and through the correct
means, unlike Apple, who can advertise in all mediums. This means that more
research must be done for these companies, failure to do so may result in a failed
promotional campaign and for very small companies, financial difficulty.
What is brand promotion and what methods could you use to promote a brand?
Brand promotion is the practice of getting your brand seen by various means and it
can be done in many different ways. Promoting your brand is important and must be
done if the company are a big corporation and own various companies or medium
sized companies have a desire to be a corporation. As well as occasional collaboration
between products, companies must rely on links with other companies to promote
themselves. Another method of doing this is only done if the company itself is part of a
conglomerate. This technicality means that the owners of the conglomerate can parttake in self-promotion for their own brands and products. As well as the previous two
methods, there is another option for brand promotion and that is the previous
mentioned star power and endorsement, with the addition of multi-platform
endorsement. This method means that a product from another medium advertises
another product.
Santander
A good example of where brand promotion is used through endorsement and star

power is the popular high street bank Santander. Through a range of mediums, the
bank use golfer Rory Mcllroy, athlete Jess Ennis and Formula One driver Jenson
Button to advertise their brand and Santanders products. In advertising, endorsement
is one of the most used methods and on this occasion, its worked also, with
Santander remaining one of the most used high street banks. Along with the
sponsorship of Formula one teams Ferrari and McLaren, Santander have chosen to
use younger stars to entice their younger audience and have actually thought about
the demographic which they are targeting, which has optimised their profits as a
company.
Gillette
Before Gillette turned to amateur actors to advertise their products, they used to
employ similar techniques to Santander, using star power. Through Tiger Woods,
Roger Federer and Thierry Henry, the shaving giants advertised a wide range of their
products. At their peak, Gillette were, and still are, a giant brand. However, when the
allegations of infidelity about Tiger Woods broke, the dip in form by roger Federer and
the disappearance of Henry to play in America prompted the company to pull the plug
on the idea and to move on. While they are still a big brand, they arent as popular as
they once were, advertising isnt always about star power, but on this occasion, it
certainly was.
James Bond
As well as using star power in adverts, another medium could be used that isnt really
considered when looking at advertising. The use of product placement in films and
television is a big brand promotion feature and can subconsciously sway someone to
buy a product if their favourite actor/actress are using that particular product. A good
example of where this has happened is in the recent James Bond films. Through the
use of product placement, the bond franchise have had a contract with Sony for the
past 3 films, with a range of Sony products been evident in Skyfall, Casino Royale and
Quantum of Solace. With pure sales, Sony have found it difficult to compete in a range
of markets with rivals Apple, however, with the employment of this technique, they
have been able to increase profits and sales and have, in recent times, been able to
compete. Sony is not the only, and certainly not the most iconic brand that bond has
been involved with however; the use of the Aston Martin in the majority of 007s films
has sparked a relationship that has spanned 50 years and when you think of James
bond, you also think of Aston martin also. Despite coming with a hefty price tag, the
production and sale of Aston martins increased after bond started using them back in
1964. The James Bond and Aston Martin link is one of the most popular brand
promotions in film and advertising/promotion as a whole.
Newspaper/magazines
As well as adverting in newspaper and magazines, the publications promote various
brands, either because they have a strong link with the company or because they are
in the same conglomerate (which will be mentioned in the following section). Even
though you would think that print promotion wouldnt be effective, due to the
introduction of the internet, it is still seen as one of the best ways to advertise and
promote. However, the demographic that still read the physical product is an older one,
so research must be done and specialised products for that market must be put on the
magazine if the promotional campaign is going to be a success.
Company links News Corp
The last way that a company can promote their brand is technically self-promotion. If a
media mogul, such as Rupert Murdoch, earns the conglomerate (News Corporation)
he can promote different shows and media products through different mediums without
paying a company or returning the favour to a company, due to the conglomerate

owner having many newspapers, television stations, radio stations and a percentage
of an American football team. While it might not be evident why ownership of a sports
team would be beneficial to brand promotion, its the fact that advertising hoardings
can display whatever you request, therefore, Murdoch could promote all his FOX
programmes, as well as UK products, such as The Sun (communicating UK brands
with US consumers may not be beneficial however, they wont be enticed into buying it
if it just conveys UK news).

PR
What are some of the key principles involved in managing the message?
When managing the message is concerned, there are several stages. Before you can
communicate the message to the consumer, you must ensure you construct the
perfect message to put on your product. As a company, the message needs to be
something n memorable and preferably catchy and must fit in with your brand
ideologies. If a political party has the ideologies focusing on family, their brand
message is not likely to involve the words individual or on your own. They are much
more likely to use words together and united.
So, in theory, the main principle of managing the message is finding out what you want
to say and then finding the best way of putting this message out, is it going to be on a
billboard? In a magazine? On a bus? If the combination is wrong, the whole campaign
will be unsuccessful and will lose the company money. However, this is the first
category that can be thought of in a political way. Before now, most theories linked to
companies only but this one can be also seen as a political tool as well. Before
elections, political parties will think of messages, some to do with their agendas and
some questioning other political parties. These people and groups must also manage
the message well because its equally, if not more important to get the message
correct because it could make or break an election campaign.
Im lovin it! Just do it every little helps are just a few of the slogans that we hear
and see in every day life and help to sway our decision into buying products. These
brands have managed their message and thought of their most important ideology and
company rule and converted it into a memorable and short little line that will
subconsciously sway a consumers mind about a product or brand.
Some of these slogans and tag-lines are so memorable that they have become stuck
to the brand and with brands like McDonalds, they have started to leave the tag-line
text out of the advert and just have the tune instead, due to the fact that the consumer
will already be familiar with this tag-line.
What is positive publicity?
Positive publicity as a general term means a person who actively does something
positive and is in turn publicised for it. For this reason, positive publicity is usually
about a celebrity or a person of interest, due to the consumer not wanting to read
about an everyday person, even if they have made a positive contribution. However,
due to this section linking to public relations and marketing, a piece of positive publicity
in this case would be an endorsement by a celebrity for a product. As for the positive
tag attached to the phrase, the celebrities that are involved arent getting slated for
doing so, while the company are getting lots of attention for the endorsement, which is

also a positive thing.

When looking for various people to endorse their products through the star power
technique, a company will look at a positive role model and someone who doesnt
have much negative press, while been well known, due to the fact that consumers will
have to be familiar with the celebrity and therefore the product they are advertising.
Due to the media slating a lot of people, it is often tough to find a celebrity that hasnt
been portrayed in a negative light, however, the company have to make the executive
decision whether this endorsement will be a positive or a negative thing for the
product, which is key for the success of the advertising campaign.
There are lots of examples of positive publicity out there but one in particular that
currently uses an endorsement and public publicity is the Virgin Media advert that
features the fastest man in the world, Usain Bolt. This is both a great endorsement for
the media provider, while it portrays the athlete in a positive way and furthers the
positive image he has portrayed himself as in the past.
However, the example above was more important to the media provider than it was to
the endorser. An example of where an endorsement is equally important to both
service provider and endorser is the EE adverts. Since the company first started to
make it as a commercial phone provider, they have had actor Kevin Bacon starring in
their television and other medium adverts. While this is a good thing for EE, due to the
fact they have got a celebrity to endorse their product, Kevin Bacons career started to
dissipate during the 2000s, with his most notable movies been in the 80s and 90s.
While Kevin Bacon starred in the advert, he also received a role in hit TV show The
Following in 2013, as well as appearing in various other shows and films. In short, it
revived the actors career and was certainly positive publicity, as his new roles prove,
as well as the fact that EE have now taken over Orange, T-Mobile and are in talks to
take over BT and O2.
In public relations terms, what is spin
For corporations and companies alike, its important for them to have positive publicity
and even more important for them to be seen as positive and trustworthy by the
consumer. Sometimes though, its not possible to do this and these companies,
corporations and even individuals have to spin their message to make it look positive,
when in actuality, its nearly always masking something negative.
As well as the companies doing it, individuals, such as celebrities and politicians do it
also. Despite this not been illegal to do, politicians, especially near election campaigns,
can make their political party look good, while making rival parties look bad with
twisted statistics and percentages.
Spinning information extends to percentages but cannot be officially added to
companies financial reports or ales figures because they must be analysed truthfully. If
this is breached the ASA and other regulatory bodies may put sanctions in place as a
result.
An example of this would be the recent and alleged spin of George Osborne, after the
chancellor of the Exchequer claimed that the current government had halved the
1.75bn EU budget surcharge. The claim was followed by a range of labour
government politicians accusing George Osborne of smoke and mirrors while
Labours Ed Balls added that it had not saved the taxpayer a single penny. It is
claimed that Osborne has measured the deficit in another unit that isnt the official one

and has therefore managed to spin the figure in the current governments favour and
therefore made it look like they were doing a good job and having a positive impact on
the UK.
Why might a person or a company engage in damage limitation?
Damage limitation, as the name suggests, is all about trying to salvage some positives
from a negative or damaging piece of press on a group or individual. This, like many of
these sections, may link to a politician or a public figure because its more of a
sensational headline if a celebrity/high profile person does something negative,
compared to a member of the public.
These people in a negative scenario seek to carry out damage limitation because they
not only want to salvage what respect they have, they may want to still hold the power
they did before these allegations arose. However, a reason why both individual and
companies may part-take in damage limitation is that they owe it to the public; they
owe them a service to try and carry on like they did before. This is especially relevant
for a company because they could well be providing the consumer with a product and
if a negative scenario arises for them, it is their job to still provide or try and provide
this service to the best of their ability. This might be difficult for individuals dependant
on the severity; the public arent going to want someone in a position of power going to
someone with a negative reputation and in this scenario, the public may call for a
resignation form this person, or if not, some form of sanction.
Despite individuals engaging in damage limitation, my example comes from where a
company has shown a form of damage limitation. This high profile case is the one of
Tesco and the use of horsemeat in a number of the products that they sold to the
consumer. The scandal saw Tesco and other supermarkets disgraced for selling these
products, with most products of these retailers been tested and taken off the shelves if
they were found to have horsemeat in.
This scenario would seem like you couldnt engage in damage limitation but for the
retailer, they had to try and restore faith in themselves and get retailers back into their
stores, instead of shopping elsewhere. The damage limitation came when they
announced that they had removed all of the affected products off their shelves and
made a promise that their products would be more extensively tested in future. This
might not be seen as damage limitation but if you have this situation, there is not much
you can offer to the consumer apart from an apology and a promise of consistently
good service in the future.
What benefit could there be to an organisation to create an event?
First and foremost, there is one underlying benefit of an organisation creating an event
and that is to make their brand more established or if they are already a huge
corporation, to keep them relevant and keep them ahead of their competitors. An
example of this would be the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals that are staged in
London. This tennis tournament is prestigious and features the 10 best-ranked tennis
players in the world and pits them together in a final competition of the season. By
staging/sponsoring this and events such as the Barclaycard British Summertime
Festival and others, the bank firm have been able to compete and has been able to
rise to one of the top mainstream UK banks through familiarity and of course, revenue.
Another benefit of holding an event is that consumers will then be familiar with your
brand and your products that you showcase in this event, as well as promoting other
events and products of yours during the event been held. This is key if a small or a
medium company are holding this event; advertising these things can help them make

it onto a higher level of company status/financial bracket.

As well as the financial gains of organisations creating an event, there are also
benefits aside from this. Spreading awareness is a good benefit for creating an event
and with lots of charities in the UK; there are no shortage of created events to raise
awareness for illness, poverty and other world tragedy. Even though these events do
get publicity and their brand more established, they are doing this in the name of
charity and getting people to donate to the charity to help these problems therefore,
awareness is been created. One event that spreads awareness more than any other
and is a big charity event every year is Cancer Researchs Race for life. This event is
exclusively for female and while youre missing out on the charity of males by doing
this, it draws a great crowd each year and the females running raise a lot of money for
charity, while fulfilling a secondary purpose, raising awareness.
What is lobbying and who is most likely to be influenced by it?
Lobbying is an action that the public or public figures take upon themselves when
campaigning for a certain thing or change. Lobbying involves trying to sway someone
in some way to try and get them on your side and therefore, that particular group then
has an advantage on getting the change they want. Despite been linked to a lot of
groups, a group in particular that are most likely to be influenced by it is politicians, due
to the fact that they are the people with the power who can change things such as
legislation and laws.
As well as been the ones to be most influenced by them, the politicians are the people
are most likely to be targeted by the groups trying to bring about change, whether this
is a celebrity trying to get a politician onside or whether its a public group trying to do
so, politicians are the biggest target of lobbying.
Lobbying and acquiring a politician to be on your side of the argument is a
monumental thing for any group trying to bring about change, while getting a politician
or key person to transfer onto your side been even bigger still.
Lobbying is a technique used by people who are aiming to bring about change to a
system or a piece of legislation. This particular practice involves group or an individual
that wants the change talking to a politician or a person who is highly involved in the
potential solution process and try and get them onside, which would give the campaign
for change a significant boost. While it doesnt directly link to corruption, the dictionary
definition of lobbying is the act of attempting to influence decisions made by officials in
the government, most often legislators or members of regulatory agencies which is
very close to the act of corruption in government.
This process may involve the group or individual trying to sway the politician/person of
power with incentives. These benefits and gifts arent always legally done and with
such important decisions been made by these people, the outcome is always
questioned after been decided.
Even though lobbying can influence anyone, only people of importance and power are
normally influenced by the motion, due to them been the ones that can actually make
an active change to legislation, law or system. While there hasnt been that many
examples of lobbying in politics in this country, in others, corruption and lobbying is
evident and has a common place there. On the other hand, lobbying is a wide bracket
and paying or having allegiance with someone in exchange for money is seen as
lobbying, which, in 2010, saw former Prime Minister Tony Blair embroiled in a lobbying

scandal. It emerged that Blair, who had resigned in 2007, had acted as a paid
consultant for an oil company with firm interests in Iraq. In 2008, he had allegedly told
the committee that this must be kept a secret for the reason of market sensitivity.
However, come 2009, the story was picked up by The Guardian and it was revealed
that this, along with other payments, had been made to Blair during his time post-prime
minister.