IMC Plan for Royal Food

This assignment focuses on analyzing the Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) plan for a food company named Royal Food. The plan outlines strategies across various communication channels such as public relations, paid advertising, social media marketing, and more. The analysis involves evaluating the plan's objectives, proposed strategies, and methods for measuring its effectiveness. The assignment also emphasizes the importance of aligning IMC with brand image and mission, as well as considering customer preferences through focus groups, surveys, and social media metrics.

Running head: INTEGRATED MARKETING COMMUNICATION
Integrated Marketing Communication
Student’s name:
Name of the university:
Author’s note:

1INTEGRATED MARKETING COMMUNICATION
Table of Comments
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
1. Brief background of Royal Food and its product and its marketing objectives..........................3
2. Information on the target audience segment analysis of Royal Food..........................................3
3. Developing communication objectives of Royal Food...............................................................4
4. Choosing one of the alternative styles of creative advertising and justify communication
objectives ethical issues...................................................................................................................6
5. Developing a media plan.............................................................................................................7
6. Providing details of its evaluations............................................................................................12
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................13
Reference List................................................................................................................................14

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Introduction
This report highlights Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) that ensures that all
forms of organisational messages and communications are linked together. Andrews & Shimp
(2017), supported the idea by saying IMC integrates all promotional tools so that organisation
can work in harmony. IMC comprises direct marketing, advertising, public relations, sales
promotions and personal selling. This study aims to make an IMC plan for a startup organisation
named Royal Food through the integration of multiple means of communication with target
markets in order to create a consistent and comprehensive message. I am the IMC manager of the
organisation and in the first part of the report, target audience and communication objectives of
the organisation will be stated. In the later part, IMC marketing plan will be given to the
organisation. In the last section, evaluation of marketing plan will be analysed.
1. Brief background of Royal Food and its product and its marketing objectives
Royal Food is a startup organisation that has opened its first store in Melbourne and
Brisbane. Royal Food first started its business in Melbourne at the end of 2016. Royal Food is
burger chain mainly; however, they are trying to make it a restaurant chain in Australia and also
in New Zealand. The founder of the organisation is Nathan Colby and he has a dream to make
Royal Food is Australia's best burger chain. Royal Food believes in taking the raw materials
from Aussie farmers to make fresh and premium burgers for the consumers. Royal Food offers
various types of burgers, sandwiches and beverages like milkshakes and soft drinks. Famous
classics dishes of Royal Food are chicken express, the big rich, el diablo and magic mushroom.
Moreover, the organisation has made its own website with the domain name. Soon, it starts to
deliver the food items from online booking.

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The marketing objectives of the organisation are:
 To increase sales at least by 5% in next two years
 To open 5 new outlets in Australia in order to grow the market share
 To build brand awareness by opening social media network pages
 To enhance customer relationships and increase profitability by 5% by the end of 2018
2. Information on the target audience segment analysis of Royal Food
There are four types of market segments that can be targeted by an organisation. In the
geographic segment, the organisation can target the customers in location and wise. In
demographic segmentation, the organisation can target the customers by age, gender, occupation,
socio-economic group wise (Percy, 2014). In addition, the behavioural segmentation, the
organisation can target customers by loyalty status, readiness to purchase, the rate of usage and
benefits sought. Lastly, an organisation can target the customers by psychographic choices,
personality, lifestyles, attitudes and classes. In case of Royal Food, as it is a startup organisation,
it targets mainly demographic and behavioural segments. Through the integrated marketing
communication, Royal Food wants to target these both segments in order to increase the sale.
Demographic segment:
Royal Food chooses kids, aged between 5 to 10 years who lie to eat burgers and fast
foods. Royal food provides happy meal and it is a healthier choice for the kids.
Royal Food also targets families of upper-middle-class sections for weekend outings for
meals.

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Royal Food is going to target students of colleges and universities as they spend their
time in cafe and restaurants.
Behavioural segment:
Royal Food is going to target the working adults who can come to outlets for meeting and
work purposes. This type of target customers is ready to purchase the food if discounts are given
and they are loyal to the organisation.
Cafe-goers are the target for the Royal Food, as it relaxes place for business work and it
has advantages of air-conditioned, free wifi system and cosy ambience in the outlets that would
attract the customers.
3. Developing communication objectives of Royal Food
The aim of the communication is to set the overall communication of an organisation.
Specific To persuade people about Royal Food and to create brand
awareness of Royal Food as it is a startup
Measurable It would be measured through CRM analytics (like Facebook
likes, Twitter followers)
Attainable It would be achieved through creating a PR team and they will
make social network pages and creative content
Realistic This objective is realistic as stakeholders engagement would be
higher and it can impact on increase of sales
Time-bound This can be achieved within 12 months
Table: SMART Objective

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Specific To inform about products and discounts
Measurable It would be measured through analysing website traffic and
number of order of deliveries
Achievable This can be achieved through integrated advertising using the
various medium. In the first stage, a website has to be made.
Realistic This is realistic as market share and profitability would be
increased
Time-bound This can be achieved within 12 months
Table: SMART Objective
Specific To reinforce buyer behaviour and to develop preference about
advertised products
Measurable This can be measured through activity metrics of the consumers’
visit of outlets and website
Achievable This can be achieved only through advertisements using various
mediums and contents should be engaging (emails, social media,
hoardings, direct selling)
Realistic This is realistic as it can increase marketing qualified leads and
quantity of selling numbers
Time-bound It can be achieved within 12 months
Table: SMART Objective

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4. Choosing one of the alternative styles of creative advertising and justify communication
objectives ethical issues
Alternative styles of creative advertising are generic, pre-emptive, unique selling
proposition, brand image, resonance and emotional (Belch et al. 2014). Royal Food is going to
take Unique Selling Proposition (USP) style of advertising. Unique selling proposition of Royal
Food is it has lo of burger varieties at affordable prices. Moreover, the organisation aims at free
delivery of food items within 30 minutes at the door step.
Unique selling proposition has three key factors within this. First one is uniqueness,
Royal Food is giving the customers a chance to have their food within 30 minutes and food items
will be fresh. The second factor is specific as Royal Food gives the customers’ varieties of
burgers at affordable prices. The third factor is USP message needs to be short as Royal Food
keeps the message ‘Royal Food gives you burger varieties at affordable prices and within 30
minutes after your call’.
Royal Food is going to be socially responsible as the organisation is concerned about
society, people and environment. The food items are fresh and packet they re using are made of
jute and they are biodegradable. The organisation has licensed from food department of
Australia. As stated by Patty et al. (2017), socially responsible marketing is about taking moral
actions through which employees, stakeholders, shareholders and consumers can take
responsibility of marketers. Royal Food will do the marketing in a philanthropic way as USP
tells to deliver the items fresh. Royal Food shares the standard of truth in the communication
process that means the organisation will not do any ambush marketing. USP tells about truth or
fact that the organisation is going to provide and it is not about sensationalism. Moreover,
communication ethics should make clear about the endorsement and the whole process of

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advertisement must be transparent (Armstrong et al. 2015). Australians government regulation
and standards must be adhered by Royal Food.
5. Developing a media plan
IMC is about coordinating promotional efforts to use communication strategies and best
IMC blends various marketing elements.
Figure: Media strategy of Royal Food
(Source: Created by author)
TV advertisements:
Royal Food in Australia is going to show the funny story about youngsters to engage the
target customers, which is related to the relationship. This is going to open up the emotion and
fun sides of fast food outlets. This TV advertisement is going to be short as Royal Food is startup

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organisation and it cannot afford big budget. Royal Food wants to affect attitudes towards the
brand through TV advertisements. As stated by Luxton, Reid & Mavondo (2015), TV
advertisement helps to reach mass audiences as television is mainly leisure time activity of
common people. Royal Food is going to make 12s TV commercial to reach the large section of
Australians people.
OOH (Out-of-home):
Royal Food showcases the billboards and hoardings in roadside and people will see the
advertisements and get to know about the organisation. The billboards advertisements will have a
touch of creativity as Royal Food is giving the order to make ads to an external agency. Target
audiences of the billboards ads are young generations who need quick meal and celebration. As
opined by O’guinn et al. (2014), outdoor advertisement helps to reach large customers and it is
an integral part of a high-quality advertisement. The outdoor advertisement is costly, however, it
helps to throw brand message properly and effective way.
Print media
Print media advertising will be helpful for Royal Food as newspaper and magazines can
help an organisation to reach wider audiences. Local newspapers will be helpful to reach local
people, mainly Melbourne and Brisbane; the organisation can take the strategy of newspaper
advertising strategy. Advertising space should be small as it takes a large amount of money to
provide advertisement on newspaper, however, the content should be engrossing. As stated by
Thorson & Moore (2013), print media give the benefit to advertising in scheduled and potential
exposure and it has repeated views advantages.
Broadsheet:

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¼ page ad and floating ad
Magazine:
Food item feature, Editorial, ½ page advertisement with colour
Social networks and digital media
Royal Food organisation is going to open two social media network accounts through PR
team. Social media advertisements provide the assistance to reach a maximum number of
customers in a cost-effective way. Social media is the best way to reach the customers as it
provides benefits to use content marketing, images and video sharing options.
Facebook Twitter YouTube Instagram Whatsapp
16,000,000 2,800,000 14,800,000 5,000,000 3,100,000
Table: Social Media Statistics Australia
(Source: Socialmedianews.com.au, 2017)
In Australia, almost 24.4 million Australians use Facebook at least one time in a day
(Kitchen & Burgmann, 2015). Social media advertisements will give the benefits to reach those
customers. On social media pages, Royal Food can give the link of website and people can visit
the websites to watch the food items and price charts. The discounts and membership card
systems offers can be displayed through social media. Facebook and Twitter social networks are
the first aims of Royal Food that would increase their market share and website traffic. Targeting
the young generation can be fulfilled by the strategy of social media advertisement. Moreover,
demographic segments are depended on their decision as what they see on social media pages.
Social media can give the benefits of increasing the visibility.

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Public relationship:
The main responsibility of IMC is to include all forms of communication with the target
market and also to the external publics, such as shareholders, community, governments and
sponsors. Royal Food is going to release any newsworthy element on newspaper, digital media
and print media that can enhance the brand awareness. Royal Food tries to do wellbeing for the
children and family. PR strategy of the organisation is to increase brand image and reach more
target audiences. The behavioural segment can be influenced by this strategy as public relations
is important to increase sales.
Schedule of IMC
TV advertisement
Duration Daily Timesheet Total spots
30 weeks Mon-Fri (Evening allot) 750
25 weeks Saturday (night allot) 650
8 weeks During sports hours 200
12 weeks Sunday (morning allot) 300
Table: time schedule of TV advertisement
Out-of-home advertisement
Medium Duration
Billboard Jan-Mar 2018
Hoarding at roadside Jan-Mar 2016
Buses ads Apr-June 2018

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Street ads Apr-June 2018
Table: Time schedule of out-of-home advertisement
Social media advertisement
Medium Duration
Facebook Advertisements July to Sept (3 months)
Facebook posts with discounts During festive occasions
Twitter posts and
advertisements
July to Sept (3 months)
Google ad world Oct-Dec (3months)
Table: Time schedule of social media advertisement
Print media advertisement
Types Days Newspaper and magazine
names
Floating Ads Sundays The Australian, The Daily
Telegraph
¼ ads Saturdays and Sundays The Australian, The Daily
Telegraph
½ ads Sundays The Monthly, Vogue
Editorial Saturdays and Sundays New Idea, That’s Life
Table: Time schedule of print media advertisement
Budget of IMC plan

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Medium Budget
TV advertisements AUD 12,000
Social media advertisements AUD 4,000
Print media AUD 20,000
Out-of-home advertisements AUD 30,000
Total AUD 66,000
Table: Budget of IMC plan
6. Providing details of its evaluation
The objectives of Royal Food are to increase brand awareness, informing others about
food items and convince the buyers to purchase from Royal Food. The two main elements of
IMC are increased interest and increase sales of the organisation. Online presence of Royal Food
can help them to increase the sales. This plan is for next one year and the performance of
communication plan will be evaluated through online foothold, profitability and increase of
sales. Royal Food can gather customers into a focus group to display them the rough idea,
commercial advertisements, leaflets and social media posts as a pre-test. This focus group would
tell them whether these attract them or not. Sales promotion strategy is kept out of IMC plan and
asks the focus group to speak out what kind of discounts and offers they want to have. Focus
group can tell about whether this IMC plan motivates them or not. After that, intercept surveys
will be conducted by using close-ended questions. The questions will be prepared based on the
frequency of visits to outlets, food preferences, mode of payment, types of communication of
advertisements, taste experience and recommending to others. In the last stage, the organisation
can use social media metrics in order to measure the customers' preferences. The collected data

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about communication techniques in Royal Food would be judged based on social media
performance and ROI (Return on Investment).
Conclusion
A true marketing communication plan helps an organisation to meet the objectives as
creative campaign and marketing strategies can assist them to reach. Public relations paid
advertising and social media marketing are helpful to reach a large number of target customers.
The IMC plan of Royal Food is for next year, within this timeframe, the organisation hopefully
reaches the objectives. The brand image of the company will get higher as visibility will increase
and the creative strategy of USP is matched with values and mission of the Royal Food.

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Reference List
Andrews, J. C., & Shimp, T. A. (2017). Advertising, promotion, and other aspects of integrated
marketing communications. Nelson Education.
Armstrong, G., Kotler, P., Harker, M., & Brennan, R. (2015). Marketing: an introduction.
Sydney: Pearson Education.
Belch, G. E., Belch, M. A., Kerr, G. F., & Powell, I. (2014). Advertising: An integrated
marketing communication perspective. New Jersey: McGraw-Hill Education.
Cowling, D. (2017). Social Media Statistics Australia – January 2017. Socialmedianews.com.au.
Retrieved 24 September 2017, from https://www.socialmedianews.com.au/social-media-
statistics-australia-january-2017/
Kitchen, P. J., & Burgmann, I. (2015). Integrated marketing communication: Making it work at a
strategic level. Journal of Business Strategy, 36(4), 34-39.
Luxton, S., Reid, M., & Mavondo, F. (2015). Integrated marketing communication capability
and brand performance. Journal of Advertising, 44(1), 37-46.
O'guinn, T., Allen, C., Semenik, R., & Scheinbaum, A. C. (2014). Advertising and integrated
brand promotion. London: Nelson Education.
Patti, C. H., Hartley, S. W., van Dessel, M. M., & Baack, D. W. (2017). Improving integrated
marketing communications practices: a comparison of objectives and results. Journal of
Marketing communications, 23(4), 351-370.
Percy, L. (2014). Strategic integrated marketing communications. Abingdon: Routledge.