PR (Wo)Man With an IMC Plan

An Integrated Marketing Communications Plan, or IMC for short, details the variety of ways that a business or organization communicates about itself, its products, or its services to the world. It incorporates marketing, advertising, promotion, public relations, and both online and offline communication strategies and tactics.

In our Program Planning course here, at Mohawk, we were assigned the task of creating an IMC Plan to help launch a real or imagined product/service for a real or imagined company.  I chose to base my assignment on Too Faced Cosmetics, a very real company, in order to help launch their new line of Fabulously Frosted Skin Illuminating Powder highlighters, a product of my own ingenuity. The plan included a multitude of information on the company and their new campaign, such as a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis, target audiences, key messages, and the campaign slogan: “Frost Yourself” (which may or may not have been inspired by the Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey romcom: “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days). My communications objectives were to create consumer awareness of the launch of the new product line by securing five million media impressions by the launch date; as well as to increase TooFaced.com site visits by five percent by the launch date. In order to achieve these goals, I planned to implement several tactics and corresponding strategies. This included creating consumer awareness through partnerships with YouTube beauty influencers by way of branded PR packages and VIP YouTuber-only parties. In addition to generating product buzz through social media campaigns and events, such as posting the “#FrostYourself” on Too Faced’s Facebook and Instagram pages, as well as throwing a “Frost Yourself” event for Sephora VIB Rouge members. The plan would also increase brand visibility through media publicity, including a media release and magazine feature with Too Faced co-founders, Jerrod Blandino and Jeremy Johnson.


Furthermore, the assignment also included a presentation portion, which was to range from six to ten minutes in length. The task was simple, stay within the allotted time period and gain full marks, or fall below the minimum time or go over the maximum time and achieve a grade of zero. Presentation aids optional.

IMC is becoming increasingly more important as there are more marketing channels, such as Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, than ever before. Therefore, it is integral for a company to ensure that all messaging and communications strategies are unified across all channels and align to the same core brand positioning.

The assignment incorporated a great deal of what we had learned over the course of the first semester and put it to use in a practical situation.

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