Integrated Marketing Communications and Campaign Planning
This domain tests campaign architecture: one strategic idea, the right message for each funnel stage, and a media plan you can defend numerically. Expect reach/frequency arithmetic and brief-quality judgement.
Message and structure
- IMC means consistency of positioning across paid, owned and earned channels, with channel-specific execution.
- Hierarchy-of-effects models (AIDA; think–feel–do) map message type to stage: awareness needs salience, consideration needs proof, conversion needs an offer.
- A brief contains: insight, proposition, support/reasons to believe, tone, mandatories, target audience and success metrics.
Media planning
- Reach = unduplicated people exposed; frequency = average exposures among those reached.
- GRP = reach × frequency, expressed as a percentage of the target audience times exposures.
- Share of voice above share of market tends to correlate with share growth; SOV below SOM usually means gradual share loss.
- Budget methods: percentage of sales, competitive parity, affordability, objective-and-task. Objective-and-task is the most defensible logically.
Worked example
A plan delivers 60% reach at average frequency 4, so 240 GRP. The team wants 75% reach at the same frequency: 75 × 4 = 300 GRP, so 60 extra GRP. At £900 per GRP that is £54,000 incremental. Reasoning: buying more spots on the same channels raises frequency faster than reach, and returns fade past roughly 3–4 exposures, so the extra 60 GRP should come from a channel with low audience overlap.
Traps
- Confusing GRP with reach, or frequency with unique people.
- Quoting awareness lift without a pre/post baseline or control group.
- Writing a brief with tactics but no single-minded proposition.