Marketing communication: principles and practice

EFFECTIVE STRATEGY 
To be effective, marketing communication strategy must have certain
characteristics:
Hughes (1980) explains why many plans are never properly carried out.
Many marketing plans fail because the planner does not realise that the
organisation is not capable of implementing the plan. Short-range plans will
require adaptation to the existing organisation, whereas long-range plans may
require redesigning the organisation.
P L A N N I N G T H E S Y S T E M
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CONSISTENCY
No inconsistent objectives
CONSONANCE
A genuinely adaptive response to the trading and wider social environment
ADVANTAGE
Providing for the maintenance of competitive advantage
FEASIBILITY
Must not create unsolvable problems or overtax available resources
Figure 16.5
Indispensable characteristics of effective marketing strategy

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Marketing managers also need to consider the role of the people with whom
they are communicating. Windahl 
et al
. (1992) identify four possible ‘types’
of role (Table 16.1).
Of course, we would recognize that all of these roles are stakeholder 
roles in which either party may initiate the interaction. In the sense that
communication is an exchange in interaction, all people are communicators
when they interact with the marketing system. This is a subtle, but significant
bias in our thinking. Marketing management can gain by taking this wider
perspective that recognizes consumers and buyers as real people in all of these
social system roles.
EVALUATION OF COMMUNICATIVE ACTION
The myth of efficiency lies in the assumption that the most
efficient manager is 
ipso facto
the most effective; actually
the most efficient manager working on the wrong task will
not be effective.
(R. Alec Mackenzie, management consultant 
and author of 
The Time Trap
)
A common problem in planned communication is that the choice of medium
is made too early in the process. This is beginning the communication
planning process at the wrong end (Windhal 
et al
., 1992). It is essential in
ensuring that effective and efficient communication is also responsive and