Marketing Communications

Powered by Harvard Business Publishing, this module covers fundamental concepts, theories, and frameworks in marketing. This module begins with an overview of marketing communications strategy and then presents a framework for designing strategies to optimize consumer engagement. This framework offers marketers three broad phases for developing a marketing communications plan: strategic intent, strategic execution, and strategic impact. Crafting such a plan ensures that coordinated and complementary messages are delivered in an integrated marketing communications plan across all consumer touch points. This module contains two Interactive Illustrations, “Budgeting for Marketing Communications,” which illustrates the objective-and-task budgeting method with a hierarchy of effects perspective, and “Viral Effect of Marketing,” which explores the likelihood that a shared YouTube video will “go viral.” The Reading also contains links to two video clips, the Taco Bell “Routine Republic” advertisement, a classic example of a conflict-based story, and “Cracking the Code of Super Bowl Ad Effectiveness,” which describes research linking viewers’ brain activity to the emotional connection of effective ads. Please note: This module does not cover the complexity of digital marketing. Its influence on marketing communications is covered in greater depth in Core Reading: Digital Marketing, a recommended pairing (assignment) with this Reading.