Samenvatting
Marketing Communication
2025-2026
, INTRODUCTION AND GENERAL
FRAMEWORK
1. introduction marketing communication
Marketing communication about?
o 1. products vs services
➝ With products, you buy a physical object
➝ Today, many products also include a service layer (‘service economy’)
FE: such as software updates for smartphones: You buy the phone, but you also expect the
services that come with it.
FE: In restaurants, people do not only buy food, but also the experience and service
(If that service is poor, customers are less likely to buy the product again)
o 2. business-to-consumer (B2C) vs business-to-business (B2B)
➝ In B2C, companies try to persuade individual consumers to buy their products or
services
➝ In B2B, companies try to convince other businesses to become their clients
o Brands: it’s about promoting what the brand stands for, it’s different than just trying to
sell stuff (it’s also about status etc)
o Non-profit organisations
o NGO’s, …
Marketing… Communication
Marketing Communication = all the communication that goes into marketing
Philip Kotler’s Marketing Mix “4” Ps
Products + services
1. product
Pricing strategies
2. price
The place where you try to sell and communicate
, 3. place
Communication
4. promotion
People producing, consuming and selling the stuff
(5) People
Note: promotion is a specific form of marketing communication (so is advertising)
(paid, owned and earned media ➝)
MarCom media and tools
Notes:
o POP marketing = point of purchase marketing: marketing in a store or webshop
o In between paid and owned media (‘grey zone’):
➝ Packaged: you own your own packaging but you’re not aloud to do whatever you want
with it (there is regulation, retailer requirements, FE they are not happy when you suddenly
change the packaging because they need to reorganize store shelves)
➝ Emails: you own the emailadresses yourself on a own database, but you need to hire
external IT-services to distribute these emails and track how consumers respond to them
(external cost)
➝ Sales: epending on whether salespeople work internally full-time for the company or are
hired externally (external cost)
➝ Trade fairs: at a trade fair you have to rent a boot from the organiser (external cost)
o influencers* (earned media): there are a lot of people who behave like an influencer FE:
posting food from a restaurant on your Instagram
o Marketing communication is all about different media, each with their own properties and
dynamics. Besides the distinction between paid, owned, and earned media, there is also an
interconnected stakeholder system behind it that strongly shape current, past, and even
future trends in marketing communication
Media exposure a company pays for/ you pay an external partie to host
1. paid media your message (ranging from mass media advertising to highly targeted
and specific promotional content)
You own the medium in which you post
2. owned media
, Media that you can’t control that much
3. earned media
1. above-the-line 2. below-the-line
= mass communication. There are three main All the other types of marketing communication
stakeholders: 1. the brand 2. the did not have this fixed agreement system. For
advertising agency 3. the media every extra element you wanted to include in a
company. A brand hires an advertising agency campaign (FE sponsorship relations that
to develop a campaign, while media channels aligned with your TV campaign) you had to
are needed to distribute the advertisement to negotiate separately. This created a lot of
consumers. Traditionally, advertising agencies negotiation, extra work, and complexity.
receive around 15% of the media budget as
compensation for creating and managing the
campaign. (FE if a company spends 1 million
dollars on media space, the agency may receive
150,000 dollars). This clear and structured
system made agencies more willing to focus on
large-scale mass media campaigns rather than
on below-the-line communication strategies
➝ For a long time, major advertising agencies therefore mainly focused on above-the-line
communication. This created a system that reinforced itself: advertising agencies had very
practical reasons to prefer above-the-line campaigns, while mass media companies also wanted to
keep the advertising revenues for themselves. Together, they convinced brands that mass
advertising was the only real way forward. As a result, below-the-line communication (although
often more interesting, innovative, and effective) became much more difficult and received less
attention (= a system skewed towards mass media) (you still see it today because advertising
agencies mainly focus on the ‘big money’)
MarCom stakeholder groups
If we single out business-to-consumer (B2C) marketing communication, this is the simplest
version of the stakeholder system you can imagine:
Consumers want entertainment and information and therefore use
media. Media companies need consumers because they generate profit,
1. consumer and either through subscriptions or through advertising revenue. Most
media media companies do not mainly make money from consumers
themselves, but because they attract consumers that advertisers want to
reach.
Marketing Communication
2025-2026
, INTRODUCTION AND GENERAL
FRAMEWORK
1. introduction marketing communication
Marketing communication about?
o 1. products vs services
➝ With products, you buy a physical object
➝ Today, many products also include a service layer (‘service economy’)
FE: such as software updates for smartphones: You buy the phone, but you also expect the
services that come with it.
FE: In restaurants, people do not only buy food, but also the experience and service
(If that service is poor, customers are less likely to buy the product again)
o 2. business-to-consumer (B2C) vs business-to-business (B2B)
➝ In B2C, companies try to persuade individual consumers to buy their products or
services
➝ In B2B, companies try to convince other businesses to become their clients
o Brands: it’s about promoting what the brand stands for, it’s different than just trying to
sell stuff (it’s also about status etc)
o Non-profit organisations
o NGO’s, …
Marketing… Communication
Marketing Communication = all the communication that goes into marketing
Philip Kotler’s Marketing Mix “4” Ps
Products + services
1. product
Pricing strategies
2. price
The place where you try to sell and communicate
, 3. place
Communication
4. promotion
People producing, consuming and selling the stuff
(5) People
Note: promotion is a specific form of marketing communication (so is advertising)
(paid, owned and earned media ➝)
MarCom media and tools
Notes:
o POP marketing = point of purchase marketing: marketing in a store or webshop
o In between paid and owned media (‘grey zone’):
➝ Packaged: you own your own packaging but you’re not aloud to do whatever you want
with it (there is regulation, retailer requirements, FE they are not happy when you suddenly
change the packaging because they need to reorganize store shelves)
➝ Emails: you own the emailadresses yourself on a own database, but you need to hire
external IT-services to distribute these emails and track how consumers respond to them
(external cost)
➝ Sales: epending on whether salespeople work internally full-time for the company or are
hired externally (external cost)
➝ Trade fairs: at a trade fair you have to rent a boot from the organiser (external cost)
o influencers* (earned media): there are a lot of people who behave like an influencer FE:
posting food from a restaurant on your Instagram
o Marketing communication is all about different media, each with their own properties and
dynamics. Besides the distinction between paid, owned, and earned media, there is also an
interconnected stakeholder system behind it that strongly shape current, past, and even
future trends in marketing communication
Media exposure a company pays for/ you pay an external partie to host
1. paid media your message (ranging from mass media advertising to highly targeted
and specific promotional content)
You own the medium in which you post
2. owned media
, Media that you can’t control that much
3. earned media
1. above-the-line 2. below-the-line
= mass communication. There are three main All the other types of marketing communication
stakeholders: 1. the brand 2. the did not have this fixed agreement system. For
advertising agency 3. the media every extra element you wanted to include in a
company. A brand hires an advertising agency campaign (FE sponsorship relations that
to develop a campaign, while media channels aligned with your TV campaign) you had to
are needed to distribute the advertisement to negotiate separately. This created a lot of
consumers. Traditionally, advertising agencies negotiation, extra work, and complexity.
receive around 15% of the media budget as
compensation for creating and managing the
campaign. (FE if a company spends 1 million
dollars on media space, the agency may receive
150,000 dollars). This clear and structured
system made agencies more willing to focus on
large-scale mass media campaigns rather than
on below-the-line communication strategies
➝ For a long time, major advertising agencies therefore mainly focused on above-the-line
communication. This created a system that reinforced itself: advertising agencies had very
practical reasons to prefer above-the-line campaigns, while mass media companies also wanted to
keep the advertising revenues for themselves. Together, they convinced brands that mass
advertising was the only real way forward. As a result, below-the-line communication (although
often more interesting, innovative, and effective) became much more difficult and received less
attention (= a system skewed towards mass media) (you still see it today because advertising
agencies mainly focus on the ‘big money’)
MarCom stakeholder groups
If we single out business-to-consumer (B2C) marketing communication, this is the simplest
version of the stakeholder system you can imagine:
Consumers want entertainment and information and therefore use
media. Media companies need consumers because they generate profit,
1. consumer and either through subscriptions or through advertising revenue. Most
media media companies do not mainly make money from consumers
themselves, but because they attract consumers that advertisers want to
reach.
