Thai marketers must be nimble in tough times

Rising costs of fuel, high inflation and expensive but necessary agricultural products are clearly unavoidable for both consumers and producers.

While producers have been investing millions in new marketing campaigns during the first half of 2008 to stimulate the demands of consumers, consumers are also struggling with the higher cost of living and adjusting their spending priorities to fit their purchasing power.

With the rising cost of living in Thailand today, marketers have to face another challenging time, initiating effective campaigns to win the hearts and minds of consumers. In the past, when the old-school marketing practitioners mentioned advertising, it was assumed that they were talking about television commercials. The greatest proportion of marketing budgets has traditionally gone to this medium compared to other media touch points.

But traditional television advertising has now lost much of its power to put a new product into the hearts and minds of consumers because it has less credibility, with consumers today increasingly sceptical of its claims and likely to reject its messages.

Many years ago, Sergio Zyman, the former head of marketing for Coca-Cola, mentioned in his book "The End of Marketing as We Know It", that traditional marketing was "not dying but already dead, and the information revolution is exposing consumers to all types of communications, and marketers need to better understand this clearly".

Even though the rising cost of necessities and fuel are still un-controllable for all marketers, they need to change the way they allocate their promotional baht. In

the consumer-products area recently, it can be seen that spending on in-store media and sales-promotion activities for both consumers and the trade have continued to rise.

Publicity or public relations and consumer activation are also hot marketing tools today. These help drive credibility, trial and purchase intention among consumers enticed by key influences, hands-on experience or real-user testimonials.

Today, you can also launch your new products with publicity or public relations and event marketing since these help you effectively tell your story to third-party outlets and real users in a credible way. Many new marketing programmes today start with publicity and get rolling by advertising once the public-relations objectives have been achieved.

The winning companies today are those that can seamlessly integrate all key communicating messages to consumers through the best relevant touch points with one voice.

Besides, with the rapid growth of communications through interactive media and the Internet, forward-thinking marketers need to be able to catch up with the new media trend since in the near future young consumers will no longer respond to traditional forms of advertising, and costly television spots will not pay financially as they did in the past.

To win in today's competition, one must recognise how a company can utilise and integrate all relevant tools of communication to reach target consumers effectively and efficiently, especially during difficult times such as these.