Question

Question 2- A new company launching a new brand of locally manufactured and locally marketed motorcycles in Oklahoma is to arrive at its Advertising and Integrated Marketing Communication budget. In this context discuss:

1. The ideal method for developing a budget. Which of the percentage of sales method or the objective and task method do you consider more appropriate, explain why.
2. Discuss which of the promotional or integrated marketing communication components such as advertising, publicity and public relations, sales promotion, personal selling etc. do you regard as more important in this context and why.

Answer 1

(a): The objective and task method is more appropriate for developing a budget. This is because the purpose of advertising and integrated marketing communication budget is to develop an advertising and marketing expense plan in such a manner that the marketing goals and objectives of a company are met. Keeping this in mind it is the objective and task method that is more appropriate as it is based on set objectives. Each and every organization has a desired result of advertising that they want to achieve and there are certain strategies that are essential to achieve these desired results. The objective and task method considers them. The percentage of sales method is purely a quantitative method and fails to consider these qualitative factors and so the objective and task method is more appropriate for developing a budget for advertising and marketing.

(b): Adverting will be the most important form of promotional communication in this case. This is because the company is new and hence advertising will help it to reach out to its target buyers and communicate the attributes of the product in a tangible and systematic manner. Since the motorcycles are being sold and marketed locally only in Oklahoma the company can consider doing advertisements in local newspapers, local magazines, local radio channels and out of home (OOH) advertising medium like billboards. These can be augmented by certain promotional events that will help them to showcase their motorcycles.