IMC Campaign Situation Analysis: Sea Life Melbourne Report

This report provides an Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) analysis for Sea Life Melbourne, an aquarium in Melbourne, Australia. The report begins with a company background, followed by a SWOT analysis to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. It then examines stakeholder attitudes and behaviors, pinpointing key communication problems such as lack of information for foreign tourists and inadequate marketing staff. The report details current IMC actions and proposes solutions, including the implementation of a digital marketing team and online surveys to improve communication and engagement. The analysis aims to enhance Sea Life Melbourne's marketing strategies, particularly in attracting and retaining both domestic and international visitors.

Running Head: INTEGRATED MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS
Integrated Marketing Communications
Student’s Name
University Name
Author’s Note

2
INTEGRATED MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS
Table of Contents
1. Company background..................................................................................................................3
2. SWOT: strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats.................................................................3
3. Stakeholder attitudes and behaviors............................................................................................5
4. Key communication problem(s) to be solved (What is the problem for their IMC)...................5
5. IMC Actions taken to date (What sets should be taken).............................................................6
6. Reference list...............................................................................................................................7

3
INTEGRATED MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS
1. Company background
Sea Life Melbourne is a southern ocean as well as Antarctic aquarium situated in central
Melbourne, Australia. The facility is situated on banks of the Yarra River. The major
entertainment here is the Sea Life Centre, which is under the ownership of the Merlin
Entertainments. The current facility has been developed by the Peddle Thorp architects and the
structure of the facility resembles a ship that has been moved to the river. In the year 2008, the
facility at the Melbourne Aquarium has opened after significant expansion and currently the
entire facility extends from Yarra River to the Flinders Street. This is an organization with basic
set up and only about $3 million revenue, annually (Hocking et al. 2017). The number of
estimated employees is about 49. This is a private, independent organization under another
parent body. The aquarium comes with an internal dining facility, and other tailored services for
the visitors. There are various location choice for the visitors and based on their choices, they can
select private dining parties. There are four basic categories of packages that can be availed by
the visitors. The silver package comes at $250pp, gold package at about $275pp, the platinum
package at about $300pp and the cocktail Upgrade Package at $99 pp (Battle et al. 2019).
2. SWOT: strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats
Strengths
One of the major strengths that the organization has been enjoying is the vast media
coverage and the acquired popularity among the domestic as well as the international visitors.
There are no other sea life organizations which offer such advantages to the visitors. The VIP
packages that are offered to the people are unique and most cost effective. another major strength
is the organize management of the facility because of which the visitors have the ease of

4
INTEGRATED MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS
travelling and that is why more than 38% of the visitors keep coming back for various forms of
fun and enjoyment. Although the time for dinner and private parties is very restricted, it is
noteworthy that the packages are affordable (Klook.com 2019). Besides, there is availability of
the online booking facility. People in Australia can book the tickets to the museum from any part
of the country directly from the official website of the Sea life Melbourne. Again, the visitors
from any other part of the world can book the tickets using any of the online payment portals.
Weaknesses
As revealed in many of the reviews provided by the visitors from Australia and other parts of the
world, the management is quite reluctant about the hygiene and cleanliness of the podiums where
the animals are kept and displayed. Hence, there are some flaws in the internal management
which needs to be revised in order to keep up a sustained reputation.
Opportunities
There is ample scope of advertising and promotion of the facilities and the various
interests that are associated with the Sea Life Melbourne. Firstly, there needs to be adequate
publicity of the sites on social media. There should be a specialized social media publicity
campaign that would be making use of the web content development team and their role in
promotion and marketing. With proper social media publicity, there can be significant level of
enhancement in visiting rate of the foreigners (Pietsch 2016). This would be incurring adequate
response from the foreign tourists and that accounts for a large part of the foreign capital input in
the country.
Threats

5
INTEGRATED MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS
Fragile management of the Sea Life Melbourne resulted in the break out of the
legionnaire’s disease that has resulted in 2 deaths and even 60 people have been affected as an
account of that (Farmery et al. 2015). There is a high possibility of the recurrence of such a
scenario and in that case, the marine life in the aquarium, (now expanded in large numbers) can
be severely affected. In case if something like this happens it would be considered as an offense
under international crime.
3. Stakeholder attitudes and behaviors
There needs to be a major change brought in the attitude of the key stakeholders which
involves the facility managers and that of the marketing departmental heads and the marketing
executives. The maintenance of the facilities takes a backseat at the time of the peak tourism
seasons, because of the rush of the visitors and keeping the facilities closed for a day would
mean loss of large volume of business.
The marketing department needs to be aware of the fact that there have been depreciation
in the proportion of the foreign visitors in the sea life facility. The lack of communication and
marketing effort is one of the main reasons behind the reduction in the proportion of the foreign
visitors. In this context, it can be conveyed that there is a lack of adequate marketing executives
which is why the members in the marketing teams are not able to successfully implement the
marketing plans.
4. Key communication problem(s) to be solved (What is the problem for their IMC)
The key communication problems are as follows:

6
INTEGRATED MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS
 Lack of information with the foreign tourists regarding the package rate, contact details
and so on.
 Inadequate marketing staff for proper conveyance of the marketing messages to the
executives.
 Lack of youthful and creative minded staff for management of the internal and external
prospects.
5. IMC Actions taken to date (What sets should be taken)
The major IMC actions include departmental meetings. However, in most of those
meetings the senior staff have met and decided the future activities. However, the junior
employees could not be incorporated at once because of the lack of the adequate staff to handle
the operations. The festive packages that are offered by the organization are manually conveyed
to the people through pamphlets and small hoardings. Owing to the lack of marketing budget,
there is no such social media team working with the company. A proper digital marketing team
should be appointed in the organization so that there is adequate publicity of the innovative
decisions for the visitors taken by the management, for evidence, the happy hours and so on
(Clark, Consalvey & Rowden, 2016). Besides, there should be an online survey on various social
media fronts, so that the people can respond regarding what they like or not about the Sea Life
Melbourne.

7
INTEGRATED MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS
6. Reference list
Battle, A. R., Norton, R. S., Böcking, T., Noji, H., Kim, K. K., & Nagayama, K. (2019). Special
issue of Biophysical Reviews dedicated to the joint 10th Asian Biophysics Association
Symposium and 42nd Australian Society for Biophysics Meeting, Melbourne, Australia,
December 2–6, 2018.
Clark, M. R., Consalvey, M., & Rowden, A. A. (Eds.). (2016). Biological sampling in the deep
sea. John Wiley & Sons.
Farmery, A., Gardner, C., Green, B. S., Jennings, S., & Watson, R. (2015). Life cycle assessment
of wild capture prawns: expanding sustainability considerations in the Australian Northern
Prawn Fishery. Journal of cleaner production, 87, 96-104.
Hocking, D. P., Ladds, M. A., Slip, D. J., Fitzgerald, E. M., & Evans, A. R. (2017). Chew, shake,
and tear: prey processing in Australian sea lions (Neophoca cinerea). Marine Mammal Science,
33(2), 541-557.
klook.com, (2019). Melbourne Sea Life Aquarium & Legoland Discovery Centre Attraction Pass
(Bar Code Direct Entry). Retrieved on 31st July 2019. Retrieved from
https://www.klook.com/activity/11271-melbourne-attraction-pass-sea-life-legoland-discovery-
centre-melbourne/
Pietsch, T. (2016). Bodies at sea: travelling to Australia in the age of sail. Journal of Global
History, 11(2), 209-228.