Marketing assignment essay help on: NSPCC marketing staff

Critical Review of Charitable Organisation and the Role played by Marketing Staff in the present and future development of the Organisation.

Introduction of Organisation

National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) is one of the leading charitable organisation in U.K. which works towards the cause of child protection and prevents the cruelty to the children too (Charities & Volunteering, n.d.). The NSPCC was founded in the year 1884 and is the leading children’s charitable organisation in U.K (Jenkinson and Sain, 2005). The main objective of the organisation is to put an end to cruelty to the children. Achieving this objective is only possible when society along with the people recognise that any type of child abuse including any form of psychological or physical abuse or punishment is not acceptable in the society.

This is a very big mission which NSPCC has to accomplish in future and that too without any financial support from government. Thus the vital thing which NSPCC needs to keep in mind is that it needs to utilise its resources in wise manner (Jenkinson and Sain, 2005).

NSPCC’s Full Stop mission follows the main aim or gaol to stop cruelty done to the children within a generation and the whole organisation is being aligned to this specific goal of NSPCC. This depicts integrated marketing at its best.

Therefore NSPCC has to interact with very diverse range of audiences through most appropriate messages for the audience. All its marketing activities, public policy lobbying, communications (internal as well as external communications), everything should be directed towards one goal and that is ending cruelty done to children.

Activities undertaken by NSPCC to end cruelty to children

Services which are done directly for families and children
Public awareness, influencing and motivation to take action
Professional training regarding child protection and safeguarding
Child protection websites and helplines
Developing partnerships with other child protection organisations
Research regarding the causes or and finding responses to, child abuse.

Importance of NSPCC to reach out to its present and potential customers

NSPCC launched its FULL STOP campaign in the year 1998 to promote the idea that cruelty to children must stop. The message is very huge and reflects the NSPCC ideal. The whole NSPCC organisation is aligned towards it and everyone in the organisation knows very well what they are working towards. The organisation has been permeated by Full Stop as it has gained wide approval as well as buy-in, both internally as well as externally.NSPCC through its better services and policies will help in providing it’s the most immediate and powerful driver for action to its present as well as potential customers. The main objectives of the various marketing programs launched by NSPCC have been varying.

For example the NSPCC wants to reach out to the children and help them in dealing with bullying and to make them realise the importance of friends through its Program called ChildLine. The objectives of Childline are:

Aim of Childline and Objectives

The main aim of Childline is to enhance and raise the awareness regarding the child menace called bullying and to help the students to finding and realising that the friends can be very good form of support (Dealing with bullying and the importance of friends, n.d.).

Importance of Milestones

In the year 2001, John Grounds had been appointed by NSPCC as Director of Communications and the responsibility assigned was to ensure proper harmony of communications across all the activities which are happening around in NSPCC. With the help of his holistic approach and expert planning created an efficient communication project called ‘Milestones’ which helped in taking active steps towards ending cruelty occurring towards children in U.K.

Importance of Checkpoints

Checkpoints have been created for the young people at school and have been created based upon the suggestions given by youngsters only. These guides known as Checkpoints can be used in schools to create a happier and safer school life for kids.

These checkpoints help in drawing attention of everyone towards the problems of aggression, violence and bullying which youngsters face. These Checkpoints are effective tools which help in suggesting that what can be done in order to prevent unacceptable behaviour and they can be used at home as well as schools (Varnava, n.d.)

Involvement of Marketers in the Developments at NSPCC

Integrated Marketing is the main discipline which helps in extending the traditional marketing concepts through the creation and integration of the principles or organisations like:

Leadership
Lean management
Organisational Alignment
360-Degree Brand Experience

Integrated Marketing is a completely holistic discipline which helps organisations like NSPCC to become a creative and coherent organisation. It also helps in creating a customer and cultural experience which is totally aligned with the fundamental truths of the concerned brand so that desired value can be easily delivered to the customers, organisation as well as the employees. Existing marketing practices helps in building and creating Integrated Marketing which covers:

Media Neutral Planning
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Relationship Marketing
Internal marketing

Integrated marketing practices helps in merging all the above mentioned marketing practices and develops a strong connection of these marketing practices with the organisational fields for example finance, production and Human Resource departments.

Objectives of Integrated Marketing

There are three main inter-related objectives which have been proposed by integrated marketing for NSPCC and they are:

Develop a unique customer experience which not just feels relevant but also provides satisfaction to the customer and is coherent and congruent at all the media,/touch points and helps in building customer equity along with brand awareness.
The whole NSPCC works as a creative and well aligned team towards its goals. The integrated processes developed help in delivering smoothly all the maximum value to the customers, employees as well as the company or shareholders.
The agencies and the marketers or the marketing team together work in complete harmony to implement the best ideas all across the optimum platforms and thus helps in leading the brand development along with brand alignment at the same time.

Thus the ‘vertical creative alignment’ lies at the core of integrated marketing through the organisation while the ‘horizontal creative alignment’ is being done through media, touchpoints and channels.

NSPCC is a very good example of integrated marketing where in ‘Full stop’ shows the best example of ‘vertical creative alignment in the organisation which is implemented through the organisation and its partnering agencies. Milestones are the true example of ‘horizontal creative alignment which is done through channels, touchpoints and media.

Analysis of current marketing activities of NSPCC

Fig1: Strapline from Milestone ‘Someone to talk to’ (Jenkinson and Sain, 2005)

The Full Stop campaign launched by NSPCC is the most current campaign which has been carried out with the prime objective of putting an end to child abuse in Britain and that too within current generation ( i.e. within a span of 20 years).

The evocative and very terse expression is very well depicted through its tagline “Stop cruelty to children. FULL STOP”. It has now become the governing idea of NSPCC, which not just govern the marketing communication activities rather every marketing activity which is being undertaken by NSPCC.

Even John Grounds the Director of Communications ahs said, “This is a bold objective and some people think its utopia.” (Jenkinson and Sain, 2005)pp.6). Along with this idea the mina objective which NSPCC wants to attain is to reduce the cruelty done to children by almost 90%. So does that mean that 10% cruelty to children is acceptable?

Thus NSPCC has developed a marketing plan which is completely based upon the steps listed below:

What should be the picture of Britain once the objectives are achieved?
What needs to be done for this to be achieved (i.e. The Vision)?
What is required from NSPCC to be done or influence and what depends upon the outside parties on which there is no or very little influence NSPCC has?

This approach of NSPCC has allowed it to stay focussed on the major and relevant issues, identification of major challenges and conceiving a set of interdependent and flexible action plans for marketing communications.

The huge budget of £ 7 million supported, when Full Stop was launched and it has emerged as the largest and the most successful campaign which NSPCC has ever had in its life time. It helped NSPCC to gain front-page coverage insignificant newspapers and has been endorsed by many well-known celebrities as well as leading politicians too.

Full Stop is not just a simple communications campaign rather it has become the central governing idea for NSPCC. It operates at the extended level of organisation and is the main driving force for NSPCC along with its partners too. Full Stop has become the major context for NSPCC’s and its partners every action and job which includes the Milestones communications projects.

Impact of Full Stop Interacted Marketing

It has been found that the Integrated Marketing ideas have been helpful in meeting the challenges through Full Stop. The figure depicted below shows the integrated marketing model for action designed for Full Stop which shows three core areas of management:

Figure 2: The three key areas of Integrated Marketing for Full Stop (Jenkinson and Sain, 2005)

Identity Management

Every organisation should have a very clear knowledge about its identity which is very deeply rooted in the organisational character and it should understand that it is not simply external projection or facade. Every organisation has something very unique and instinct which characterises it and the value delivered by it should reflect its uniqueness.

Full Stop clearly gives us clear reflection of the main purpose for which NSPCC was being created almost 120 years back. Protection of children from cruelty is in Full Stop’s DNA and it is the most distinct expression too of Full Stop. It wants to create value for its customers who include parents, donors, public policy makers, employees, children, volunteers etc. Every audience is being addressed in a distinct way with a very relevant and distinct proposition (Jenkinson, Sain and Bishop, 2005). The communication function handles the external communication, while the fundraising functions objective is to source the funds for financial support of organisation. The public policy function works towards bringing about changes in the public policy framework in favour of the children to protect them from child abuse. These functions properly cover all the audiences through their different and distinct activities with different objectives but share a common mission.

Mobilising Everyone

Full Stop has emerged as a dramatic change in NSPCC. The reason being it is the effective tool which helps in alignment of whole organisation. It gives a clear expression of worthwhile cause along with that it gives proper direction and purpose to the organisation. The primary task of John Grounds is to make sure that everyone in NSPCC shares the same idea and works towards achieving the mission of NSPCC. Therefore he developed a fruitful collaboration with the HR function.

Each and every member of the 1800 staff and every volunteer of NSPCC (17,000) should be actively involved and be on board in the Full Stop Mission

Therefore collaboration is being developed between the Grounds Communication function, external agencies and the HR function which results in proper cohesiveness, clearer visions and collective buy-in. This way the employees as well as volunteers clearly know what path NSPCC is following and what is their role in the mission accomplishment. This way they are able to identify their ideal and experience the overlapping of their own values with the organisational values. This leads to stronger bonding amongst each other and with the organisation too.

This finally leads to improved job satisfaction, raised morale and enhanced productivity for organisation. The partner’s community has been significantly impacted by Full Stop (Home PAge: NSPCC, 2011). That is why the communication and marketing agencies consider NSPCC to be a very special client and they feel really very proud to be working for a noble cause. They feel that they are contributing towards something really worthwhile.

Contact Management

Being a charitable organisation NSPCC is held much more accountable for the spending done on marketing as compared to the commercial organisations. They have to report to the donors, trustees and sponsors. Therefore their marketing communications function should work in proper conjunction with Public Policy function and Fundraising functions. That is why marketing communication plays a very vital role in supporting the Full Stop’s mission. The three broad objectives which are met through marketing are (Jenkinson, Sain and Bishop, 2005):

Helping in educating children, in brief ranging from general information and particularly information regarding their rights and also about political lobbying of political leaders.
Helping in Fundraising ranging from major sponsors to small donors.
Drawing on and creating supporting environment for these causes, through creation of broad climate of awareness and supporting the issue which is being supported for NSPCC.

Activities for generating Funds in NSPCC

These are major marketing activities which are being undertaken by NSPCC for fundraising. These activities are not directly related with the objectives of NSPCC (Kelly and Flanagan, 2010). Few examples of these activities are:

Dinners and Balls
Challenge events
Auctions’
Sale of Christmas cards
Allowing the commercial organisations to use NSPCC’s name in their marketing activities.

This helped NSPCC generate a find of £9.760, 000 for the year 2009/10.

Developments planned in Future for NSPCC

A completely new strategy has been planned by NSPCC in order to deliver more to the children. NSPCC needs to act as a catalyst for change and it needs to work with and work through others to create and achieve maximum level of impact. Therefore a new strategy for NSPCC for 2016 has been developed (Kelly and Flanagan, 2010). It has four core principles on which it focuses which are:

Focussing on what achieves maximum impact
Prioritise the children who are at maximum risk
Maximum Learning from whatever we do
Creating leverage for a very wide range of social change.

The preferred approach for NSPCC would be in future to provide services along with influencing, campaigning and advising as the preferable approach. The most vulnerable and acute issues and the children groups which are highly vulnerable have been identified which are:

Children in care
Neglecting
Children from minority or certain black ethnic communities
Sexual Abuse
Children below age of one
Children with disabilities
Physical abuse in high risk families (Kelly and Flanagan, 2010)

Environmental and Market forces which are likely to influence the future direction of organization

The environmental and market forces which are supposed to influence the future direction of organisation are:

Political Factors: many political leaders create high pressure on charitable organisations to work to build their image or to get grants political pressures have to be succumbed by NSPCC in future.
Economic Factors: the changing economy with recession and downturns might make the people to reduce the amount of grants and donations to the organisation. Thus it will fall short of resources to achieve its mission.
Social factors: These factors are supposed to be highly supportive for NSPCC because the society getting aware about the cruelty done to children will definitely support the cause in whichever way they can.
Technological Factors: AS per a study conducted it has been found that children do not feel comfortable using SMS and they would prefer to use internet for counselling. So instead of automated texting service NSPCC will have to be more active on internet and develop an interactive interface where children can be counselled through internet online. Moreover with the advent of Smartphone children have more accessibility to use web and utilise instant messaging instead of going in or alternative ways to talk (Kelly and Flanagan, 2010). These automated texting service of NSPCC will help in redirecting the children to online services or phone.
Competitors: In future more charitable organisation will emerge who will also like to work for the same cause and then NSPCC will have to face a competition for the fund and resources (CAF/NCVO, 2003). It will have to prove its reliability and effectiveness to gain a competitive edge (Andreasen and Kotler, 2004).
Creating Awareness: Since the awareness level of NSPCC especially the Helpline is not very high so it needs to raise its profile through the use of online media as well as outdoor media. It should become socially active through online social media websites like Facebook, Twitter etc. It can also promote itself through the promotion of services by professionals who work with children so that they can get access independently to Help line 24 hours. This way these professionals can offer advice and information about safeguarding concerns.

Significance of Marketing Planning in Organisations

Marketing Planning in charitable organisations helps in many ways like NSPCC has been able to develop and maintain relationship and partnerships for a long-term change. Like at very local level it has been influencing the children thinking through Safe Network which is jointly managed by NSPCC and Children England. It was jointly created in June 2009 in order to give full support to voluntary organisations and support community which help in providing activities for children.

Effective marketing Plan will help the charitable organisation to develop strategic position for it. The strategic positioning is the managerial process in the organisation which helps in creating an organisational level position strategy which aims at effectively distinguishing the organisation from remaining service providers (Chew, 2003). For organisations Positioning strategy acts as the major part of strategic marketing planning process (Kotler and Andreasen, 1996) (Hooley et al., 2001).

The effective market position strategy will help the organisation in creating a framework based upon which it can easily coordinate and build varied elements of marketing mix in order to implement the position strategy (Lovelock and Weinberg, 1989). It also helps in communicating the desired positioning to its target audiences.

The market planning through positing strategy in charitable organisations will help in formation of three interrelated components:

Choice of target audience or segments which they desire to serve
Choice of generic positioning strategy
Positioning dimension for differentiating the organisation from other service providers (Chew, 2004).

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