PBL 10/ How corporate image affects stakeholders’ relationships?

What is relationship management?

Relationship Management in Business (BRM) is defined by Wikipedia as: understanding, defining and supporting inter-business activities related to business networking.” (Wikipedia 2015). It consists of knowledge, skills and behaviour that creates a productive relationship between the business and its stakeholders. This can be identified both internally and externally inside a company. Internally it consists of for example the HR, IT and finance department as in externally it also considers the external provider and partners. BRM should not be mixed with the term customer relationship management (CRM). (Wikipedia 2015.) 

(Source: https://www.boundless.com/marketing/textbooks/boundless-marketing-textbook/introduction-to-marketing-1/introduction-to-marketing-18/relationship-building-with-various-stakeholders-111-3496/)

 

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIeqIN90dK0)

Why is stakeholder relationship management so important for the company? Harrison from Cutting Edge PR writes that "Effective management of relationships with stakeholders is crucial to resolving issues facing organizations." (Cutting Edge PR  2005-2013). He clarifies that stakeholders are the ones that hold the key to the environment where your company operates and play an important role when it comes to the financial and operational factors of the business. According to him the aim of the stakeholder relationship management is to be able to influence attitudes, decisions as well as actions for mutual benefit. Both need to be able to gain from the cooperation in their own ways for it to be successful and continuous. (Cutting Edge PR  2005-2013.)

How to create and maintain trust and loyalty with stakeholders through communication?

Stakeholder engagement? (how to maintain the relationship, trust and loyalty)

Source:(Cotter 2013)

Stakeholder Conflict Resolution Styles

(Source: http://www.slideshare.net/CharlesCotter/stakeholder-relations-management-and-conflict-resolution)

References:

Wikipedia 2015. Business Relationship Management. URL:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_relationship_management. Accessed: 21.04.2015.  

Cotter, C. 2013. Stakeholder Relations Management and Conflict Resolution. URL: http://www.slideshare.net/CharlesCotter/stakeholder-relations-management-and-conflict-resolution. Accessed:21.04.2015. 

Cutting Edge PR  2005-2013. Stakeholder relations management is a key skill. URL: http://www.cuttingedgepr.com/articles/stakeholder-relations-management-is-key-skill.asp. Accessed: 21.04.2015.

PBL 9/ How creative ideas become messages?

Message strategy is very important element of advertising since it aims to convince the customer. The key is to make the consumers understand why they should buy the product, to learn in what way this product is special, how it is beneficial or how it can help them and what value its characteristics have. To be able to decide what to communicate the advertiser needs to understand the target group well. Especially what the product can do for the target group, what the product can mean to them and how the product can help them should be clearly understood. The advertising cannot be focused on the seller’s objectives, but needs to begin from the target group’s motives. (Pelsmacker, Geuens & Van Den Bergh 2013, 206.) So in other words the customer comes always first. To be able to advertise this message the advertising needs to go from various creative ideas to the key message that opens up the eyes of the customers as hoped and wanted. So in this PBL the aim to is to understand how the creative ideas are developped into messages(for example ads and commercials) reaching the marketing objectives.

 

What is the process of creating a message? How do advertising agencies turn their ideas into a clear message?

Referring to Pelsmacker, Geuens and Van Den Berg (2013, 209), the process starts with a phenomena called the creative brief, which they define as the starting point for advertising agengies. This naturally includes the customer insight information that I already mentioned to be the key element of producing advertising. But in addition there are other things included also like finding out the advertising objectives, understanding the message strategy and important information concerning the company, product, market and competitors. All the information listed to the creative brief can be seen from the figure below.

Figure 1. Elements of the creative brief (Pelsmacker & al. (2013, 209),

This briefing enables the advertising agencies to see a big picture of the "information concerning the past, present and future" (Pelsmacker & al. (2013, 209), when starting the process of creating a message (creative strategy). This process can be seen in the figure below.

Figure 2. Creative strategy (Pelsmacker & al. (2013, 202)


After the briefing comes the action of developing the creative ideas. What is meant by a creative idea exactly? Creative idea can be defined in many ways, but the one that I found appealing and interesting was the definition of Charlie Mingus (a jazz musician) who claims that creative ideas are more than just being different. He states that: " Everybody can play weir, that's easy. What's hard is to be as simple as Bach. Making the simple complicated is commonplace, making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity." (Pelsmacker & al. (2013, 209).  So if I understand correctly generating creative ideas lead to one goal: making the message as simple as possible.
A more theoretical definition for creative idea is stated by Pelsmacker & al. (2013, 209) as following: "An original and imaginative thought designed to produce goal-directed and problem-solving advertisements and commercials." (Pelsmacker & al. (2013, 209). 

In addition to creating an idea the idea needs to be executed well. What factors need to be considered when creating a message?
- customer insight (qualitative research)
- knowing the problems, preferences and aspirations of the target group might be helpful when deciding the right message
- advertising must meet the marketing objectives: translating the creative ideas
--> multiple appeals (Pelsmacker & al. (2013, 206-208)

Figure 3. Creative advertising appeals (Pelsmacker & al. (2013, 213),

How to make the message appealing? How do advertisements reach people emotionally and rationally?

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9vFWA1rnWc)
What makes this add appealing in my eyes? 
-problem solving, warmth, gratitude, the need to relate & to become a part of it, happiness

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKvKXGMDc5E)
What makes these add so appealing? 
- fear, sadness, sympathy, love, slice of life and dramatization 

 (Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opPt7DYc9F0)

 (Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VatyxYCggJk)

PBL 8/ How to benefit from Social Media?

What is social media and why we should y?

Tom Funk defines social media as the umbrella term of web-based and mobile services that offer the possibility to establish a personal profile, connect with others and create, publish and respond to content. This can be either shared with the network of friends or with the whole Internet. (Funk 2011, 8.) Here I found a list of other definitions put together by Heidi Cohen: http://heidicohen.com/social-media-definition/ . In addition to the definition of social media itself Funk makes a clear statement of the definitions of: 

• Social-networking sites:
  “Services that allow individuals to create a personal or business network.” (Funk 2011, 8). For example: MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn and Match.com(dating sites).
 

• Social-media sites:
  “Services designed around a form of media –videos, photos, articles, and Web pages – that allow individuals to publish, rate, and comment upon the media (Funk 2011, 8). For example Youtube, Flickr and Instagram nowadays. 
  
  
  
• Blogosphere:
  Articles posted in blog and mini blogs in Twitter. (Funk 2011, 8).

To answer the question of whether we should use social media in our business I recommend you to watch the following video: 

Source: Michael Stelzher 2014, 18.

Social media channels

Below you can see the Social Media Channels Diagram by Brian Solis which explains the different social media channels. These channels are divided clearly into groups and include also more than the commonly known channels. 

Source: http://www.mikekujawski.ca/2008/08/19/social-media-channels-diagram-newly-updated/

Source: Michael Stelzher 2014, 24.

Like can be seen from the picture above there are plenty of social media tools and platforms for us to use. We as a company do not need to use them all, but we need to distinguish the best possible channels for us. Therefore when we are selecting these tools it highly important that we take into consideration the social media strategy, analyse what is the most effective channel for our business in particular and which sites the competitors are using. Many times people face the following phenomenon when starting to use social media in their business.

Source: http://www.intersectionconsulting.com/2009/social-media-tip-tools-vs-strategy/

In addition to this we must also think of the outcome we want to attract and are aiming for. This in my opinion differentiates the B2B companies from the B2C companies. Channels like LinkedIn and Youtube are maybe more professional and suitable for the purpose of networking and providing product knowledge to the customers as Facebook, Instagram etc are more based on personal usage. However this also depend on the field of business and the target audience and their preferences. 

 Source: Michael Stelzher 2014, 27.

Social media strategy & measuring the results 

Source: http://guersonmeyer.me/tag/siemens/ 

Source: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/4-step-framework-creating-your-lasse

References:

Funk, T. 2011. Social Media Playbook for Business: Reaching Your Online Community with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and More. Praeger. Santa Barbara, California. 

Michael Stelzher 2014. 2014 Social media Marketing Industry Report. URL: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/SocialMediaMarketingIndustryReport2014.pdf. Accessed: 7.4.2015.