INTEGRATED MARKETING COMMUNICATION (IMC) PLAN
Integrated Marketing Communication first germinated in 1980 when many companies came to realize the need for a strategic integration of their promotional tools, instead of keeping them in separate silos. Integrated Marketing Communication is a common-sense approach of looking at communication tool- not as isolated elements that communicate different things to a consumer but as inter-related parts that are jointly go to solving communications problems. IMC includes the various tools like, advertising, personal selling, sales promotion, direct marketing, events, internet etc.
IMPOTANCE OF INTEGRATED MARKETING COMMUNICATION (IMC):

It helps the firm or company to cope up with the changes occurs in the market.
It helps to improves internal and external communication.
It helps to know the customer demands that what type of product is needs to be devoted in what area?
It helps company to achieve its objective, vision and mission.
It increases the productivity of the organization because management is more focused through it on its competitors.
It helps to build teamwork, commitment, esprit de corps and share-of-mind.
Encourages consideration of new marketing tactics and media.

Abstract on Restaurant Industry
The financial rewards and the personal satisfaction associated with having one’s own business can be considerable. When the business is one with a high level of social interaction, such as a restaurant, there are personal rewards that move beyond the financial satisfaction that may result. The paper explains that a successful restaurant becomes a part of the community that it serves and can become a focal point of that community. This makes the restaurant business very different from other types of businesses and adds to the personal satisfaction that the owner receives. The paper shows, however, that restaurants also have traditionally low operating margins and are one of the riskier businesses that can be developed.
Now for my term paper on the topic “Restaurant”, I had taken a hypothetical example of company named “Reliance”. It is assumed that Reliance, One of the biggest conglomerate is entering into the restaurant business in a big way (initially into India). So here is the marketing plan that how the company plans to establish itself into the restaurant industry.
For initiating the idea into practical shape, The company had broadly had formulated its stretegy on the basis of time horizon i.e short and long tem. A brief of that is highlighted below:
Short Term
In the initial phase the company plans to enter in to this business with with opening of the restaurants in 4 metros cities of India i.e Delhi, Ahmadabad, Mumbai and Chennai.
Long Term
In its long term objective the company plans to come up with a public issue to facilitate finance to establish its restaurants into various important cities and region of India and along with can expand into the foreign countries.
Company profile: Reliance
The Reliance Group, founded by Dhirubhai H. Ambani (1932-2002), is India’s largest private sector enterprise, with businesses in the energy and materials value chain. Group’s annual revenues are in excess of US$ 28 billion. The flagship company, Reliance Industries Limited, is a Fortune Global 500 company and is the largest private sector company in India.
Backward vertical integration has been the cornerstone of the evolution and growth of Reliance. Starting with textiles in the late seventies, Reliance pursued a strategy of backward vertical integration – in polyester, fibre intermediates, plastics, petrochemicals, petroleum refining and oil and gas exploration and production – to be fully integrated along the materials and energy value chain.
The Group’s activities span exploration and production of oil and gas, petroleum refining and marketing, petrochemicals (polyester, fibre intermediates, plastics and chemicals), textiles, retail and special economic zones.
Reliance enjoys global leadership in its businesses, being the largest polyester yarn and fibre producer in the world and among the top five to ten producers in the world in major petrochemical products.
Every product before its launching has to make an IMC plan. The IMC planning process begin with a review of the marketing plan. A marketing plan is a written document that details the marketing objectives, strategies and tactics for an organization, product or brand, and guides the marketing efforts.
THE IMC PLAN for Reliance Restaurant

Situational Analysis: All marketing plan begins with a situational analysis, an assessment of the internal and external environmental factors are to be analyzed which affects the product, brand or organization. There are different points which come under it on the basis of which we will analysis our situation in the market.

SWOT ANALYSIS
STRENGTH:

Brand image:-The main strength of that we can rely upon is the brand awareness of “Reliance”. No one in the market need to be introduced about the credibility and reliability of this company. It will become easy and boost our new diversified restaurant business.
Strategy:-At the initial stage, the company plans to establish their restaurants in four metro cities of India and slowly will penetrate in to other regions and even in the foreign countries too.
Customer Service:– The company is very particular about the services to be offered to their customers as it is indispensible requirement for restaurant business to grow.

WEAKNESS:

Dynamic nature of customer: One of the important weakness for the resturant is the prediction of the nature,taste and prefrences of the customer is very difficult.
Demographic changes: The another weakness is the demographic factor. The tradition changes and so as the prfrences for the food as we move from place to place

OPPORTUNITIES:

Potential: – There is still huge untapped market in this business and really provide a potential to grow your business.

THREATS

Competitor: There are lots of excellent players already positioned themselves successfully like Barista, Mc Donald’s, KFC. Etc., These will pose a tough competition for Reliance to enter into this business.

The Competitive Situation: – The restaurant industry is not an easy business to enter into because there are lots of excellent players already positioned themselves successfully but reliance as an excellent brand can really add up its value in this business. The various competitors in this business are highlighted below:

Mc Donald’s
Burger King
KFC
Pizza Hut
Coffee Café Day (CCD)
Barista

The Promotion Situation: – As the company already enjoys an excellent brand name, So this will prosper the marketing initiatives taken to promote its restaurant business. The company will be planning to promote heavily through through television, newspapers, magazines etc.
Marketing Objectives: – The main objectives of Reliance Restaurants are:

To make the company’s presence in the Restaurant industry.
To look for diversification.
To provide excellent facility to the customers and promotes company’s goodwill.
Customer satisfaction by providing food as per their region and tradition.
Excellent service facility.

Marketing Strategy:
– The company will initially be looking to open up their restaurants in the metro cities and then will look to diversify into other cities which is something as per the long term strategy.
The marketing communication plan originates from the marketing plan and an integral part of the latter. The IMC objectives are laid down so as to fulfill marketing goals. In the IMC plan we select the right communication tools, integrate them, plans accompanying media and messages, and also allocates the communication budget to various tools.
Following are the steps involved in the IMC planning process to be undertaken for Reliance Restaurant:
Situational analysis: – Like the marketing plan, in this we will also analyses the promotional situation. Following are the some common areas of analysis:

Past promotional situation: – There are already various competitors in existence in the restaurant industry ( mentioned above). So can analyze the various type of strategies followed by them to position themselves. This will basically involve analyzing the competitor’s strategy.
Product situation: – Barista, Coffee café Day, KFC, Mc Donald’s etc. are well established players in the restaurant industry and are implementing good strategies to phase out cut throat competition. If we take an example of KFC in India that how they changed their strategy in India to include vegetarian food in their menu as they earlier just served non-vegetarian food.
Audience situation: – Although there are many companies in this sector but still there is huge untapped market as the statistics depicts that most of the income being spent by the people on India is on food only.
Competitive situation: – As disclosed above about the extent of competition and had mentioned the various potential players in this industry. So had to analyze it fully.

Determine the communication objective:
Target Audience

General high class people
Business Class People

Marketing Objectives

Make the company’s presence felt in the restaurant sector.
Attract the business class people

Media Strategy
The main idea behind all of the integrated marketing communications and media strategy will be to deliver the message to the customers. Although the company has tremendous brand value but still it needs some efforts to make people aware about reliance entering into restaurant industry.
Media Objective

Use sponsorships as well as highly visual print and television advertisement
To build a great image of the product this has a good brand image.

Timing

12 month campaign commencing December 10th, 2010
Continually recycling and adapting to evaluation results over the next 1 years
To change its strategy between the particular time periods so that customers get new things and new changes, the main purpose is also not to bore the person with same services.

Advertising and communication tools
Print ads in magazines – Print is one of the oldest and the most highly regarded media of advertising and also a very challenging one. Executing a creative idea in the medium calls for various skills- creative writing, visualization, designing etc. The main idea behind the print ad is to attract the customer and provide them best knowledge.
TV Advertisements – While to plan a TV Advertisement, we should clear something’s which are very important for it:

Brand itself – The restaurants will be associated by the company’s brand name i.e Reliance Restaurants.
Big Idea – The big idea can be initiated by associating a famous celebrity like Shahrukh Khan to promote our restaurants.
Strategy – Providing excellent support network to attract the customers like by initiating the online method of providing services and also providing thebest catering services to the customers.
Tagline – The tagline adopted for the resultants is “Big Meal Time”

Newspaper advertising – The advertisement can be initiated in the newspaper as it results in wide and effective coverage.
Billboards – The billboards is regarded as the modern source of advertisement in which the electric boards are displayed on the road side. So it looks to be an innovative idea to display the billboards in the cities where the resurants are established.
Events: The advertisement can be done through events. It is regarded as most innovative and a creative kind of advertisement which generally produces results and promotes mass awareness.
Direct marketing tools
It is strongly recommended that nature fresh must an effective web presence in this interactive world .To promote the entire site, an online marketing program must be launched. A comprehensive, highly targeted group of destination web sites must be chosen for the program. The web site should be registered with yahoo search portal. And a number of tactical elements will help drive online awareness and inquiries into the program including:

Online webinars
Online newsletters
Search engine registration
Web site links
Content marketing and licensing
Opt-in email
Specialized promotions and partnerships

Evaluation of the Planned IMC
Evaluation of an IMC plan is not easy because often communications effects are difficult to measure. At times they may not even have a direct impact on sales or profitability; effects may be delayed, etc. Therefore it is important to set the objective or “standards for measuring performance” in specific, measurable terms to make the evaluation possible.
After doing all these now its time to evaluate the performance, the performance is satisfactory as we had imagined because its quit difficult to enter into the resturant market and establish yourself as there are already huge potential marketers in existence like Mc Donald’s, KFC, and Barista etc., but still we had developed a very good strategy of firstly establish ourselves into the metro cities and accordingly will penetrate into other cities and then globally.
Manager has to measure the actual performance either through consumer surveys or sales figure.

Monitoring of the revenues generated on weekly basis.
A general market research can be undertaken to generate the public views.
Manager got to know these outcomes by comparing actual performance with set standards of new product.

These steps also helped out to take further decision or plans.
References

www.relianceadagroup.com
Book: Shah Kruti and D’Souza Alan,”Advertising & Promotions an IMC Perspective,” published by “Tata Mcgraw Hil.”