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In a previous article, Marketing 101, I discussed the four 'Ps' of a marketing mix: Price, Product, Place and Promotion, and promised to follow that with an overview of the marketing process and how design fits into it, so here it is...

The marketing process is the chain of decisions and actions that start with your client's intention to make money and end ups with them actually making the money. The flowchart below describes the main process and the key inputs required to make it all tick along. And marketing managers are responsible for all or part of this process!

Awareness is where it all begins - getting the message out there. Advertising is a driver to create awareness, and Competitive Actions can act as drivers to reduce awareness by drowning out your client's attempts to get heard.

Purchase intention, or predisposition, is driven by the Characteristics & Price, not only of your client's product but also by the competitors' offerings.

Design can act as a multiplier for your client's efforts to create awareness by adding emotional impact and memorability to the basic commercial proposition. No matter how many times you throw a message at a market, if it ain't noteworthy or memorable, they won't 'get it.'

It can powerfully affect the progression from Awareness to Predisposition by aligning your client's product with the target market, the segment, by speaking subliminally to them in their own visual idiom. The Star Grill restaurant in Sydney, or the Commonwealth Bank, speak to very different audiences. Each design assures its audience that it 'understands' their basic needs. Arnotts Biscuits recreated their original red delivery trucks, leveraging the 'nostalgia' imagery as on-the-road billboards.

Design can even affect the Price, or at least the perception of value at that price, by positioning the product visually against higher priced competing products. Farmland leverages design for its 'house' brand products by moving away from the original 'black and white' imagery of house brands. It 'looks' just as real as the more expensive name brands, but it isn't as expensive - this equals value in the consumer's mind.

Design helps to negate the competitors' actions by creating strong visual distinctions between your client's product and the rest. Hahn Ice and Carlton Cold created a storm by going with clear glass bottles and 'light' visuals. The irony of those examples is that they were originally targeted at younger, female drinkers and were rapidly picked up by the entire 18-35 yrs segment of the mass market.

Predisposition and product availability work together to drive Segment Market Share. No matter how excited consumers get about a product, if they can't buy it...

Here too, design can strongly support the marketing strategy by giving the Sales Force powerful promotional tools to persuade Distributors to stock the product. Supermarkets measure product performance in terms of dollars per metre of shelving, so a designer who can modify the container to increase shelf density gives the manufacturer a boost with the distributors.

And once the product is in the store, design gets to work again by ensuring that the client's products stand out as a block against the thousands of other products crowding the shelves. One of the most dynamic product categories in supermarkets is shampoo - the Colgate Palmolive Organics range grabs the eye by presenting it with a big chunk of glossy green that also is also a visual cue for the 'health' positioning.

Segment market share multiplies with the Segment Volume, the number of customers in that group, to give you total Sales. This is the province of the marketing manager and market researchers, who spend hours working out just how many potential customers are out there with that particular profile and need. Design doesn't have much to say here.

The bottom line, Profit, however can be affected by design, via Costs. The materials used all add up to unit costs, and here too the designer can make a big difference by choosing wisely to gain maximum impact from the stock or substrate, the number of colours and the capabilities of the printing process.

So next time a client asks you what design can do for them...

"Good read Andrew. You have hit the nail on the head! If all designers take note and understand their clients marketing communication mix for their business."

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andrew@lam-po-tangcom