STATE ANY ASSUMPTIONS YOU MAKE WHEN ANSWERING The world\'s leading sportswear br
ID: 421696 • Letter: S
Question
STATE ANY ASSUMPTIONS YOU MAKE WHEN ANSWERING The world's leading sportswear brand, Nike, undertook research as part of a situation analysis for its range of female running shoes. While Nike was a leading consideration for female runners, Asics was seen as the running specialist and the brand most likely to be recommended to others. Nike set about changing this perception. Nike had always designed shoes specifically for women's feet, but had never communicated this exclusively to females. This was a great opportunity. The challenge was to find a way to connect with female runners and get them talking about Nike. Nike discovered that apart from young females who took their running seriously, running was a pursuit dominated by men and male targeted communication. When women ran, they ran alone, often left to overcome their fears and achieve their goals by themselves. To Nike, this seemed at odds with women's natural inclination to discuss, share and overcome barriers together. Running for young women lacked something fundamental to their psyche, a forum to discuss, share, achieve goals and overcome barriers together Nike's brand manager, Meghan Alexandra, briefed a panel of five respected full service agencies with the intent of selecting the agency that pitches the most appropriate integrated campaign idea for the launch of Nike Free, a new running shoe specifically designed for females. As part of the pitching process, Meghan and her team directed several questions to the five agencies for their input and recommendations. It was important to Meghan that the successful agency fully understands integrated marketing communication and the myriad of tools (communication touchpoints) available to Nike for consideration as part of this campaign.Explanation / Answer
Differences between direct & indirect communication:
Direct communications are those in which speaker’s true intentions are communicated verbally. It expresses the speaker’s & sender’s needs explicitly.
Direct communicators take the speaker’s words at its original meaning. They don’t analyze the inner meaning in the message. The messages may be short & direct and they are frank & honest.
Indirect communication happens where the speaker’s intentions are hidden. They don’t make a statement directly because it can result in unfavorable situation. They may use the words may be or “possibly” when the original answer is “no”. it believes that being polite is more important in order to avoid hurting another person
Situations where direct communication is used:
Direct communication is used when there is no option for further discussion or compromise and it never allows the listener to respond with an opinion or view point. For example, a manager tells his subordinate that he needs to be office on time and must not be late again. This is pretty direct and there are no chances of misunderstanding here.
Situations where indirect communication is used:
This is used for communicating a bad news or unfavorable information in the organization or for making any suggestions. For example if a subordinate wants to know how to use particular equipment, he won’t ask “how do you use this machine”? But rather he would as” can you please tell me how to use this machine?
In the above case, direct communication is taking place when the brand manager raised several questions to the agencies for their inputs and recommendations. This was adopted my Meghan in order to ensure that the agencies fully understand the integrated marketing communication. Hence this is a direct communication as the meeting takes place face to face between the managers and the agencies to discuss about their ideas and suggestions.
Indirect communication in the above case happens when Nike was not able to connect with the female runners and the company finds it a challenge. They didn’t know how to communicate to overcome fears. They were finding forums to discuss, share, achieve goals and also overcome barriers.
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