Marketing communication: principles and practice

P R E FA C E
xxv

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The sign brings customers
(The Fortune-Tellers, Fable 15)
INTRODUCTION
As far back as 1954, Peter Drucker said that any business has two basic
requirements: marketing and innovation. Marketing assumes the task of
guaranteeing the conditions of communication and information that allow
demand for need fulfilment to be met through production of goods and
services. Managers have long realized that it is as important to organize the
demand as it is to organize the supply. Thus, straight away we can see the
significance of managed communication – exchange relationships are needed
chapter 
one
AN INTRODUCTION
TO MARKETING
COMMUNICATION
LEARNING POINTS
Careful study of this chapter will help you to:
• adopt a particular conception of the role of communication in marketing
• understand marketing communication as the mode of managing exchange
• critically engage with the questions of what and why, before limiting your
thinking by asking how

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and ideas must be generated and deployed. Ultimately, it is customers (buyers
and users) who determine the nature of the businesses that can operate.
Integrated marketing actions, when applied to meeting the needs of
consumers and buyers, can generate profits and other corporate results through
customer satisfaction. This matching of corporate and customer interests
requires the parties to communicate. This communication can be spon-
taneous and ad hoc, but experience shows that careful management of
marketing communication can add value for all involved.
Since the rise of consumer marketing in the USA in the 1950s, there has
been a shift from personal relationships with customers to mediated actions
directed towards consumers. Recent developments in information and
communication technologies, and market conditions, have spurred a further
shift, back to dealing with relationships again. With the emergence of new
forms of mass communication and information, it is time to bring the
marketing communication knowledge-base up to date.
We must beware of a contradiction in traditional discussions. Do we view
consumers as sovereign, or as easily manipulated, seduced, and outwitted?
This is an important question, for it locates our stance on communication
as either a transportation tool or a participatory human experience.
The advent of electronic media produces situations that cannot be
adequately explained by conventional marketing theory. Some of the answer
lies in adopting up-to-date communication theory, something that has not
happened yet in even the most recent textbooks on marketing communications.
We can benefit from systematic study of marketing communication, as this
helps guide judgement and decision-making. The logic begins with the needs
of providers and consumers, to guide marketing interventions. In turn,
communication needs can then be established, and these will indicate suitable
communication objectives (Figure 1.1).