Strategic communication planning 7/9. A series of presentations tutorial to learn how to plan for communication. How to write a brief This section focuses on consumers' responses. How to plan for consumers response. What do we want consumers to do once they have been exposed to our communication? Download all the decks at https://www.yawp.agency/private-access https://www.linkedin.com/company/26586622/admin/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/massimilianolafranca/

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Developing COMMUNICATION
Section 7

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The structure of this document
Developing communication is arguably one of the most complex and, at the same time, most important activities that
marketers will have to do over the course of their career, whether working on existing products or new ones.
For this reason this document is quite complex and made of several building blocks. In order to simplify we have
divided it in a series of sections that you will be able to download and read separately.
• SECTION 1: Background and big picture.
• SECTION 2: Introduction to the communication approach
and the standard brief.
• SECTION 3: Setting objectives – brand task, marketing
objectives and communication objectives.
• SECTION 4: Target and consumer insight
• SECTION 5: Key message and communication concept
• SECTION 6: Ideas and executions
• SECTION 7: The response model
• SECTION 8: Communication channels
• SECTION 9: Offline – Online – Onground

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• Information that can be useful for the team to know. Example: background context, brand recent developments, social context information that are relevant for the project.1. Background
• What are we trying to do? A brief explanation of what we are trying to achieve with digital communication. What it the problem that we are trying to solve? What is the opportunity we want to grab? What’s the
challenge the brand is facing right now? Why do we need digital activities and communication?
• This section contains Brand task >> Marketing objectives >> Communication objectives
2. The problem or the
opportunity
• A description of the communication target that the brand wants to influence. Beyond demographic, describe the target in terms of their behaviours. What are the reasons for their behaviours (Insight) What
channels should we use? Offline, online, onground: what is each one’s role? What tone of voice? What is the style of the communication?
3. The target
• What should we say to them to make them feel/think or do the way we want? A key message that will be spread throughout different channels. If needed, provide reasons to believe (RTB) – supporting evidences
that make people believe our key message.
4. The message
• What would we like them to feel, think or do in response to our activities? A brief statement explaining what is the desired response once people have been exposed to communication. In fact, all our activities aim
to make people feel, think or do something. Ex. we want them to change their attitude towards our brand (feel), or we want them to share our video online (do) or we want them to understand how our product works
(think). Being clear on the outcome it is crucial for agencies to plan the right stimulus.
5. The response
• Describe any practical requirement that might be useful for creative teams to develop their ideas6. Practical requirements

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The response model
Brands spend million in communication hoping to get a response from consumers.
This response is ultimately the output of the whole process and as consequence, the most important thing in the whole
communication process.
However this response is often delayed in time and not easy to directly relate to the brand’s communication activities.
This section analyses the whole process and proposes some ideas to help marketers defining different roles and
desired responses.

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Sender’s field
of experience
Receiver’s field
of experience
Back to basics: The communication model
Communication happens when a source (a person or an organization) encodes information that was abstract
in his/her head, in the form of a message (visual, symbols, words, sounds) and send this message through a
channel (TV, print, billboard, word of mouth, radio, internet…) to a receiver. The receiver decodes this
message it and sends a feedback (response).

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Let’s look at it from
Advertising pov
Source
Message
Channel (print )

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The communication model
This seems a linear process but there are numerous issues related to it, the most important for our brands are:
1.Encoding and decoding the message largely depends on
the field of experience of the parts involved. If the parts don’t
pay attention to this problem they won’t understand each
other.
IMPLICATION: it is crucial for a brand to understand its target
audience (see target section).
2. In real life the receiver of a message gives an instant feedback. In
advertising the response (ex. a change in attitude for a brand, a purchase
act) it is not obvious and not instant.
IMPLICATION: Brands need to plan for the role of the communication and
the expected responses in advance and do research to understand
whether their communication activities is producing the response they
aimed for.
LET’S FOCUS ON N. 2

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Planning for response
As we want to plan for consumers’ response in advance, we need to understand how are they responding to
current communication. In other words: what is happening in our heads when we receive adv? What do we
know about a certain brand / product?
A number of different models have been developed to formalise this process; the most widely accepted is the
“Hierarchy of effects” explained in next slide.
The model is the base for most consumers’ researches, both qualitative and quantitative and, although being
challenged in numerous ways, is still a useful framework to understand the situation of a brand image in a
certain time and to define effective actions.
LEARN
FEEL
DO

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Hierarchy of effects
Hierarchy of effects works in a pretty linear way. It states that when exposed to advertising we pass through 3
main stages:
1. Cognitive (Learn): get to learn, to know, to understand. This is the stage where awareness of something
is firstly built and after deepened down into more detailed knowledge of the details.
2. Affective (Feel): once learned something we form attitudes, like-dislike, preferences, conviction. Do we
like what we have learned? Do we think this works for us? Does it work better than competitors?
3. Behavioral (Do): Once convinced, we move to a specific behavior example. Purchase.
LEARN
FEEL
DO
Awareness
Knowledge
Liking
Conviction
Performance
Purchase

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Hierarchy of effects (follows)
In other words, when advertising is executed, a number of people will be exposed to it. Some will simply see
and forget. Some of them will remember details and get to know the brand advertised, better. Amongst them,
some will start forming an opinion towards the brand.
Some of them will like it and think that performs better than other brands in the same category. Amongst them
some will end up buying the brand.
In a way this model works like a funnel, a lot of people start at the beginning but only few reach the last stage.
The more the communication brings people from the start to the end of the process, the more effective it is.
Moreover, by analysing in details what happens between one phase and the other, for example the biggest
drops happen, we can understand more about the brands’ issues and plan for the right responses.
LEARN
FEEL
DO
Awareness
Knowledge
Liking
Conviction
Performance
Purchase

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Millward Brown Brand Equity for Unilever
THE PRACTICAL USAGE OF
THE HIERARCHY OF
EFFECTS MODEL

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Definition of BHC Pyramid
Performance
Presence
Relevance
Advantage
Conviction
Do people know your brand?
Is it relevant for them?
Does your brand satisfy their
needs?
Is the brand better than
competition?
Do they buy your brand? Are they
loyal?
The response process is used in real life by companies like Millward Brown to define the Equity of brands. This is
done through quantitative research by analysing the number of people the agree with certain statements (as per
below) and tracking how this number of people declines from bottom to top.
For best best brands, the graph looks like a big block instead of a pyramid because they are able to convert the
bottom (people who are aware of the brand) into the top (people who think the brand is superior and actually buy
the brand).

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Brand pyramid is the “upside-down”
version of the Hierarchy of effects
LEARN
FEEL
DO
Awareness
Knowledge
Liking
Conviction
Performance
Purchase
Performance
Presence
Relevance
Advantage
Conviction
Do people know your brand?
Is it relevant for them?
Does your brand satisfytheir needs?
Is the brand better than competition?
Do they buy your brand? Are they loyal?

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Response models: implications
Why is this important for us? What are the implications?
There are 2 major points to remember:
1. Analysis helps marketers understanding where is the crucial problem and what stage that they want to influence
with their activities (role of the communication)
Example: is there a problem with this new product because people don’t understand how it works (knowledge) or because they don’t know that the
product exist (awareness). Implication: 2 different message/activities to solve the 2 above problems
2. Forces marketer to think ahead what response they want from their activities. This clarifies the brief for agencies
and everyone involved in the communication development.

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A brand or a product can suffer a specific problem at any specific stage
in the described model (ex. low awareness or low conviction).
How we use this in real life (1)?
How many people know this brand?
How many people like this
brand?
How many people think this
brand is better?
How many people of them
do actually buy?
In this example, here’s the biggest gap, a lot of people like the brand but when it comes to
think it performs better than competitors, there’s a big drop. Why? What is happening?
Identifying this issue will be critical to plan for the right actions and responses.

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YAWP - MASSIMILIANO LA
FRANCA DISCLAIMER: the material in the slides has been collected from different
sources and curated by the author for training purposes. I don’t own
copyrights and there’s no intention to infringe any third party right.