Marketing communication: principles and practice

COMMUNICATION BEHAVIOUR AND BRAND
OFFERS
An essential part of the marketing communication manager’s job is to make
offers of products to consumers and buyers that are taken by them as
distinctive and attractive brand offers. But, crucially, the task of under-
standing how to deploy marketing communication resources for appropriate
communication purposes and related objectives must precede this.
Promotional communication effort must be supported by knowledge 
of what will grab attention, create attraction, catalyse action, and foster
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BOX 8.2
COMMUNICATING LOW RISK
Promise is an Internet-based mortgage lender that aims to overcome the problem of
high-cost loans by operating without expensive overheads such as a branch network
and application form administration. So how do they overcome the dual problem of
the risk of a high involvement house purchase loan (perhaps with repayments over
twenty-five years) and the further risk of trading with an ‘invisible’ company. Perhaps
the choice of brand name is the key?
(See www.promise.co.uk)

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allegiance to the product–provider. The strategic task is not merely to sell a
unit of your product but to introduce it as a long-standing component of
the consumer/buyer purchase habit (Figure 8.3).
We can think of a brand as an array of informational clues about value for
money, suitability, reliability, and so on, associated with the purchase of the
particular product from the particular provider. The communication
behaviour of a consumer or buyer will be situationally determined (Grunig,
1992). Figure 8.4 shows that the purchasing behaviour of a consumer 
or buyer will depend on how they understand their situation in terms 
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