Integrated marketing communications of "Premier Cement"

Abstract

Integrated marketing communication (IMC) has emerged as a new concept in marketing in the twenty-first century. Its customer focus, intended to grow and retain customers, is more than just advertising and promotion, and it takes into consideration more than just customers or clients. This report examines how IMC is more than simply the integration of advertising and promotional activities in perspective of one of the leading cement brand of the country Premier Cement. This report firstly provides an overview of integrated marketing communications, its concept, current trends and how it is important to build a strong brand. Next, the report contains about the analysis of major tenets of Premier Cement brand communications, its functions, current strategy, how it related to the company’s brand equity and lastly a brief evaluations of the marketing communication programs of the company. Also provides a critical observations and recommendations according to my point of view on the basis of findings on integrated marketing communications of the company. Though Premier Cement started their journey in 2004 commercially but it initiated heavy investment in their marketing program from 2007. And from then the company able to peak up its growth as well as created strong market in the cement industry. Currently the company is running with an annual production capacity of 12 lacs metric tons producing 80,000 tons of cement per month which is a significant achievement in such a short time. Moreover, the company has a plan to increase its production capacity to expand market share. In a very competitive and saturated cement market the company is able to increase its sales growth and can think of to increase their market share because of its marketing and brand communication programs. Though the market communications of the company is quite traditional but they are successful in integrating the market communication programs effectively. Premier cement offered two promotional campaign last year; CASH++ Offer and Eid 2 Eid offer. This proved to be a successful campaign for Premier Cement as they achieve 98% of their sales target from this program. This year the company also re-launched the CASH++ offer and till August 2011, the offer is quite successful to achieve the sales target. And the company is planning to launch a new promotional campaign from this September 2011. The company always tries to integrate its communication mix, brand tools, IMC and brand equity strategy in a way so that it goes hand in hand with their marketing programs. Thus, all the promotional campaign of Premier Cement achieving its expectation because of proper integration and management of marketing communication programs. However, Premier Cement required lots of improvement and strategic development in their communication programs. As I mentioned, the IMC programs of the company are quite conventional and not sustainable in a long run. So the company needs to update and have to think out of the conventional way of market communications in order to sustain in a long run. At the same time the company should have to increase their investment on marketing programs since it called the life blood of any business to generate the ultimate sales, customer satisfaction and sustainable brand image.