Analyze an organizations media communication activities Essay Example for Free

Analyze an organizations media communication activities Essay The objective of this project is to analyze an organizations media communication activities. The work must use concepts, models, and theories to support and critical the companys website. It should be critically assess + evaluate and use strategy to analyze. The author should review it as a marketing professional specialist and knows how, when, and where the organization use digital media to communicate with its audience, customer, stakeholder, and public. Executive Summary: PO Cruises uses a maturity website to distribute and communicate (Fill, 2002). It is a fabulous website that uses a lot of tools from personal communications (PCs) to support their offline marketing (Hartley, 1999). Once customers surf its website, they could get information they need easily. The website becomes a distributed channel for the business. It is in the highest level of scenario 4 (Doren, 2000). Information on website is variety and useful that helps offline media and lures more customers to join the PO Cruises with rational exchange (Fill, 2002). PO Cruises Background PO Cruises is one of the cruises belonging to Carnival Corporation PLC. There are 13 distinct brands of cruises all over the world are operating by Carnival Corporation PLC; PO is one of them. PO is not as same as its name belongs to the PO group (Peninsula and Oriental steam Navigation Company); for it was demerged into Carnival public limited company on 23 October 2000, and has changed its name to Carnival Public limited company on 17 April 2003. PO Cruises now is the largest premium cruise brand in the United Kingdom. See the list as below. Carnival Corporation Princess Cruises Carnival plc PO Cruises were belong to Ocean Village PO Princess. Swan Hellenic Cruises plc AIDA PO Cruises Australia Carnival Cruise Lines Holland America Line Windstar Cruises Seabourn Cruise Line Costa Cruises Cunard Line AROSA Main Report: Marketing mix Product PO Cruises currently owns four types of ships Aurora, Oriana, Oceana and Adonia. Each of them gives different atmosphere and personality to customers. They are service, facility and quality oriented. Mostly, customers who are attracted to join PO Cruises are through travel agencies to get tickets no matter a set of schedule or connections with flights or another cruise. If customers who are interested in PO Cruises, PO Cruises also use different brochures to introduce its products to them. PO Cruises builds a marvelous introduction of its products on the website. There is a column of their ships in directories of its website introducing each of ships details by clicking any icon of them (Chaffey, 2000). There are also other links connecting to these four ships that makes customers easily check to PO Cruises ships (main products) whenever they want. The website builds a good cognitive environment to customers who are like ship, boat, cruise, and adventure. Most fantastically, customers could find what each deck looks like by 360i panoramic tour. After customers learn about these ships, they enable to feel more about these ships by fun stuff sector, which involved games, videos, and pictures (screensaver and wallpapers) to addict customers affective (Fill, 2002). Promotion PO Cruises is not a company which uses all of the marketing communication tools to communicate with its target audience, but it uses its promotion tools well to achieve its customer needs and to explore its market opportunities (Chaffey, 2000). 5 main elements of the promotional or communications mix of PO Cruises are analyzed as below (Fill, 2002): 1. Advertising (Off-line) PO Cruises has TV advertising displaying during summer time or the beginning of the year. Customers who havent seen the advertisement on TV could also enjoy the advertisement on PO Cruises website; to the Fun Stuff-Videos to view the version of its Sh-boom advertisement. Its an advertisement with affective (Fill, 2002). Besides TV advertising, PO Cruises posts its advertising on newspaper as well. (On-line). There are many agencies selling PO Cruises tickets on line; they help PO Cruises build a perfect advertisement system. If someone who is interested in cruises, they will easily find out the name of PO Cruises on many websites building by travel agencies. Customers are able to easily book a cruise through any ABTA travel agent; there are about 16 agents linking to PO Cruises and helping customers to book tickets in different areas. Although many websites all connecting to the name of PO Cruises, it is difficult for people who want to buy the ticket right through PO Cruises website. 2. Sales promotion (Off-line) (On-line) PO Cruises is targeted. It divides into consumers and the sales forces of both PO Cruises and its agents (Fill, 2002). The sales promotion PO Cruises uses is by the timing when customer book for their tickets. The earlier they book for cruises, the more discount they will have. It uses the method of price reductions to motive its sales in the early stage (Fill, 2002). PO Cruises also sets up the Portunus Club for customers who re-join to the PO Cruises. There are Ruby, Sapphire, and Gold tiers for different types of customers. Customers could get points for their discounts when they had joined the cruises and also discounts to any other consumption on the ship. The method builds customer royalty; it is referred to as a points accrual programme that helps the company keep customers loyalty for preventing them from moving to PO Cruises competitor (Fill, 2002). The Portunus Club has not only increased the amount of customers, but also maintained those current customers well (Raaij, 1998). 3. personal selling (Off-line) PO Cruises tickets are sold through personal selling or other travel agencies. Customers buying tickets can either from agencies or directly make a phone call to the PO Cruises as the telemarketing. It is a good method for the company itself uses lots of personal selling on promotes their ticket, for it is a method always interactive to customer and company. And Consumers may talk to and obtain answers from real persons or from machine interaction that helps PO Cruises directly being aware of what customers wants and what they need (Raaij, 1998). (On-line) On the website, customers who are interested in any trip and willing to join the tour could book on line by leaving the messages to the reservation team. Besides, its very easy for customers to find the ticket selling on website from different agencies in different areas, and then buy the ticket based on customer needs. 4. public relations (Off-line) The means of PR of PO Cruises is announcing news on newspapers. It mostly tells people about its schedules, timetables and its new ship or company information on travel pages or events column. PO Cruises owns a press center to run for its news. (On-line) Customers could also find out their news through news websites, travel agents or the websites connect to sailings, such as, what you need to about or scoop agents (two website names). Moreover, there are numbers of news PO Cruises showed to the public and listed on its own website. It is press centre in the company section. For people who are interested in to PO Cruises and want to know more about its reputation, besides company introduction, they could attain more information on this section. 5. direct marketing (Off-line) (On-line) PO Cruises uses direct marketing through ABTA agents and many other travel agencies where they sell cruises tickets. It connects to personal selling to use different types of tools to achieve the needs of customers. It uses e-mail (member confirm) and through post-mail (brochure sending) to directly send the information to customers. Â  Place PO Cruises, the Britains leading cruise operator, customer aboard its shipping at Southampton, UK or fly on a scheduled or PO Cruises charter flight to any of its 25 destinations all over the world. All ships cruise Europe in the summer, and in winter Aurora and Adonia embark on round the world cruises while Oceana and Oriana tour the Caribbean. Places are stabile in different places by annual schedules; depended on where customers plan to go abroad. The headquarters is in Southampton, but usually people usually book tickets at agencies instead of heading for PO Cruises office. If people who would like to book tickets online, they could go to www. pocruises. com or through links on any ABTA agents to buy tickets. Agents are viewed as the PO Cruises retailers. This method helps PO Cruises reach its sale targets by selling tickets to many other segments in different areas and places. The channel of its distribution is producer retailers consumers (Blythe, 1998). Price PO Cruises sets its price at the moment when customers buy tickets. The company uses different brochures to attract customer to join its cruises business. Customers could save as much as money if they book earlier according to the timetable set up by PO Cruises. Customers could save up to 5%~45% discounts for early booking, depending on availability, and its reward for those who book early. PO Cruises named it as pricebreakers. Besides, price differs from different cabin type and grade that customers choose. It is very easy for customers to find the price on the website or by the brochure which customers could also easily get by request online. * DRIP PO Cruises (model by Fill, 2002). PO Cruises communications have need to: Differentiates itself by it is one of the oldest cruises company which form of British to attract customers who enjoy in English style. Remind and reassure its customers by telling them that the leisure cruising business was started by PO in 1844. The step helps the company acquire trust from customers Oldest = standard = traditional (British) ? Inform the consumers by educating them that PO Cruises is the company with offering high quality but middle-low price to customers Persuade to the consumers that althouthg PO Cruises is the oldest company, it has most modern fleet of ships in the UK. Scenarios In order to know how a company created a website on line to present its own products through the internet, the company needs to define the level of commitment it wants to reach (Doren, 2000). There are 4 possible scenarios for promoting on the internet. PO Cruises is belonging to the highest level 4, because it offers on-line ordering of products and services. The product PO Cruises supplies to customer is not the tangible things that customers could touch but services and facilities on cruises. So the company tries to present its product through the website. PO Cruises uses web cam, lots of 360i panoramic tour and many of pictures on its website to interact with users. Moreover, there are images, screensavers and wallpapers of its 4 ships for customers to download. The usages of multimedia presentations also reach facilitation as a web promotion; it enables a more personal, one-on-one approach with the internet user (Doren, 2000). According to the four possible scenarios lists, PO Cruises does make a high extensive interaction with its customers through its website. The web site of PO Cruises may be high costs, but it could attract more customers order on line.