Designing and Managing Integrated Marketing Communications

Developing Effective Communications

Identify the target audience: 
The target audience for Cadbury Silk is the youth and the growing population.

Determine Communication Objectives:
Category need
Brand Awareness
Brand Attitude
Brand Purchase Intention

Design Communication Objectives:
Message Strategy
Creative Strategy

Select the Communication Channels:
Personal Communication Channels
Non Personal (Mass) Communication Channels
Integration of Communication Channels

Establish the Total Communications Budget:
Affordable Method
Percentage of Sales Method
Competitive-Parity Method
Objective-Parity
Objective-And-Task Method
Communication Budget Trade-Offs

Designing on the Marketing Communications Mix:

The marketing communications mix consists of:

Advertising

Cadbury launched Cadbury Dairy Milk Silk with a big bang.

Their first promotional ads were:

After the product was well over the introduction stage, they started with these ads

Sales Promotion

There was a promotional offer recently where Bournville was given free with a Cadbury Silk

Interactive Marketing

There was a campaign by Cadbury called ,"Say it with Silk"

Cadbury Dairy Milk Silk had launched a new campaign that urges you to ‘Say it with Silk’. Calling all Silk buffs – also affectionately referred to as ‘Silkaholics’ – the chocolate brand had thrown up a mystery around a new machine, which it says will soon come to a store near you and help you say it with Silk. Yes, you can actually select a message and have it etched on a bar of Silk for that special someone!

Though the customized Silks was only available at Magnet hypermarket in Mumbai for now, the brand said that more stores would have it soon. For ‘Say it with Silk’, the brand had chosen social media platforms to create the excitement and buzz, prior to revealing the new feature. Fans had been invited to guess what this new machine will do to help unveil the mystery. In fact, it was the trend #SilkMystery on Twitter that caught my attention last week.

Unraveling the #SilkMystery

Just days after sharing a social experiment to see the ‘Silk Effect’ produced by a Silkaholic in an elevator, the Facebook wall began its Silk mystery journey. A cover page that claimed, “It’s not a bird. It’s not a plane. It is something we have never seen before’ was soon accompanied by a picture update of a strange machine found by a bunch of Silkaholics.

Soon visual updates followed comparing the strange machine with Alexander Graham Bell’s lost invention, the telegraph and was even suspected to be from outer space. Another similar machine was found again, while the fans’ guesswork continued. An innovative fan’s guess also included ‘Bamboocopter from Doraemon’!

Finally on the 1st of September, a drawing of the machine was revealed, after being unveiled bit by bit every day. The visual was accompanied by a message that the machine is coming soon to a store near you, so you can say it with Silk.

A few days later, the wall shared a picture of a Silk bar etched with ‘Have an Awesome Birthday!” As you can see, the post has received more than 25K likes and has been shared more than 1000 times.

The campaign was also extended onto Twitter. Users were asked to tweet with #SilkMystery and share their ideas on the machine. After the simultaneous updates on Twitter with the eventual reveal, the handle began a contest with gift hampers to be won. Twitter users were invited to tweet funny and witty messages to their best friends using the hashtag #SayItWithSilk.

‘Say it with Silk’ sees an innovative launch

The buildup to the launch of the ‘Say it with Silk’ feature on social media is a cool one. Building up a mystery around a strange machine, asking fans to guess about its purpose and coupling it with cool teaser updates to eventually unravel the possibility of a customized Silk, has not only spread excitement but it has also got the community engaged and involved in the new offering by the brand. In one word, I’d say the campaign is ‘awesome!’

‘Say it with Silk’ has made good use of social media platforms to introduce the new feature, especially when it has 2.8 million fans on Facebook and more than 6K followers on Twitter. The use of Facebook for the visual storytelling bit and Twitter for getting people to gossip, is creative and clever.

You can say it with Silk only today and tomorrow and that too only at Matunga in Mumbai, however, until the Silk machine is available at a store near you, you could buy the regular Silk and say it with a greeting card!