Marketing_Management_14th_Edition-min

Managing Personal
Communications: Direct
and Interactive Marketing,
Word of Mouth,
and Personal Selling
In the face of the Internet revolution, marketing communications today
increasingly occur as a kind of personal dialogue between the company and its customers.
Companies must ask not only “How should we reach our customers?” but also “How should our
customers reach us?” and “How can our customers reach each other?” New technologies have
encouraged companies to move from mass communication to more targeted, two-way communications.
Consumers now play a much more participatory role in the marketing process. Consider
how Pepsi has engaged the consumer in its marketing communications. 1
For the first time in 23 years, PepsiCo chose not to advertise any of its soft drink brands
during the biggest U.S. media event, the Super Bowl. Instead, it launched its ambitious
Pepsi Refresh Project. With a tagline “Every Pepsi Refreshes the World,” Pepsi earmarked
$20 million for the program to fund ideas from anyone, anywhere, anytime to
make a difference in six areas: health, arts and culture, food and shelter, the planet,
neighborhoods, and education. Ideas are submitted at refresheverything.com
and voted online by the general public. A significant presence
on Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks is a key aspect to
the program. The first grant recipients received funding for a variety of
different projects, including building a community playground, providing
care packages and comfort items for troops in the field or recovering
from wounds at home, and conducting financial literacy sessions
for teens. Pepsi also allocated an additional $1.3 million in the summer
of 2010 to support communities in the Gulf of Mexico region affected
by the catastrophic oil spill.
Marketers are trying to figure out the right way to be part of
the consumer conversation. Personalizing communications and
creating dialogues by saying and doing the right thing to the
right person at the right time is critical for marketing
effectiveness. In this chapter, we consider how companies
personalize their marketing communications to have more
impact. We begin by evaluating direct and interactive marketing,
then move to word-of-mouth marketing, and finish by
considering personal selling and the sales force.
Direct Marketing
Today, many marketers build long-term relationships with customers. 2 They send birthday cards,
information materials, or small premiums. Airlines, hotels, and other businesses adopt frequency
reward programs and club programs. 3 Direct marketing is the use of consumer-direct (CD)
channels to reach and deliver goods and services to customers without using marketing middlemen.
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