Digital Communication Network (referred to as DigiComNet or DCN) is a non-profit communication association founded in 2016. It is run by the board, selected out of the existing members of the network.
History
Digital Communication Network, founded in 2016 after the same name program by the US Department of State, is a 6.000 member strong collaborative network that connects professionals of the digital age from a variety of backgrounds, in order to generate ideas, tools, and products for media outlets, civil society organizations, businesses and public authorities. Its main activities include professional trainings and workshops for media and related professionals as well as enhancing digital skills. Among DCN’s biggest projects is an exchange program, funded by the US Department of State, and run by World Learning. The program invites nearly twenty media professionals from Eastern Europe and Central Asia for a three-weeks long internship in different media in the United States.
Today
The organization aims to facilitate the collaboration between media, civic entrepreneurs, businesses, policymakers, creative, tech, and other professionals around the ideas of digital innovation, entrepreneurship, and open Internet. The organization unites over 6,000 members mostly from Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
The association develops projects in the following areas:
- Exchange programs for communication professionals;
- Camps, trainings, networking events, hackathons (ranging from international conferences to local meetups)
- Research on trends and best practices;
- Product development of the digital tools, content, and educational materials.
DCN’s mission is to create lasting impact through empowering a new generation of voices and ideas in the digital communication space. To achieve this mission, DCN serves as an open space for communication, creativity and connectivity with the purpose of promoting truth and good values by being a catalyst for credible information and democratic changes in society.
Activities
Among the organization’s biggest projects is an exchange program, funded by the US Department of State and run by World Learning called Digital Communication Network exchange. The program invites nearly twenty media professionals from Eastern Europe and Central Asia for a three-weeks long internship in different media in the United States.
Digital Communication Network is associated with different projects such as the Rockit Conferences (co-organised with Granat), which bring together activists from civil society, journalists, tech developers, and businesses. Other projects include workshops and trainings for media and other professionals such as Training for Trainers camps
Marketing strategy
Marketing strategy allows organizations to focus limited resources on best opportunities to increase sales and achieve a competitive advantage in the market.
Strategic marketing emerged in the 1970s/80s as a distinct field of study, further building on strategic management. Marketing strategy highlights the role of marketing as a link between the organization and its customers, leveraging the combination of resources and capabilities within an organization to achieve a competitive advantage (Cacciolatti & Lee, 2016).
Marketing management versus marketing strategy
The distinction between “strategic” and “managerial” marketing is used to distinguish “two phases having different goals and based on different conceptual tools. Strategic marketing concerns the choice of policies aiming at improving the competitive position of the firm, taking account of challenges and opportunities proposed by the competitive environment. On the other hand, managerial marketing is focused on the implementation of specific targets.” Marketing strategy is about “lofty visions translated into less lofty and practical goals [while marketing management] is where we start to get our hands dirty and make plans for things to happen.” Marketing strategy is sometimes called higher order planning because it sets out the broad direction and provides guidance and structure for the marketing program.
Overview
The strategic gap
Marketing strategy involves mapping out the company’s direction for the forthcoming planning period, whether that be three, five or ten years. It involves undertaking a 360° review of the firm and its operating environment with a view to identifying new business opportunities that the firm could potentially leverage for competitive advantage. Strategic planning can also reveal market threats that the firm may need to consider for long-term sustainability. Strategic planning makes no assumptions about the firm continuing to offer the same products to the same customers in the future. Instead, it is concerned with identifying the business opportunities that are likely to be successful and evaluating the firm’s capacity to leverage such opportunities. It seeks to identify the strategic gap, which is the difference between where a firm is currently situated (the strategic reality or inadvertent strategy) and where it should be situated for sustainable, long-term growth (the strategic intent or deliberate strategy).
Strategic planning seeks to address three deceptively simple questions, specifically:
- Where are we now? (Situation analysis)
- What business should we be in? (Vision and mission)
- How should we get there? (Strategies, plans, goals, and objectives)
A fourth question may be added to the list, namely ‘How do we know when we got there?’ Due to the increasing need for accountability, many marketing organizations use a variety of metrics to track strategic performance, allowing for corrective action to be taken as required. On the surface, strategic planning seeks to address three simple questions, however, the research and analysis involved in strategic planning is very sophisticated and requires a great deal of skill and judgement.
Tools and techniques
Strategic analysis is designed to address the first strategic question, “Where are we now?” Traditional market research is less useful for strategic marketing because the analyst is not seeking insights about customer attitudes and preferences. Instead, strategic analysts are seeking insights about the firm’s operating environment with a view to identifying possible future scenarios, opportunities, and threats.
Strategic planning focuses on the 3C’s, namely: Customer, Corporation, and Competitors. A detailed analysis of each factor is key to the success of strategy formulation. The ‘competitors’ element refers to an analysis of the strengths of the business relative to close rivals, and consideration of competitive threats that might impinge on the business’s ability to move in certain directions. The ‘customer’ element refers to an analysis of any possible changes in customer preferences that potentially give rise to new business opportunities. The ‘corporation’ element refers to a detailed analysis of the company’s internal capabilities and its readiness to leverage market-based opportunities or its vulnerability to external threats.
The BCG Matrix is just one of the many analytical techniques used by strategic analysts as a means of evaluating the performance of the firm’s current stable of brands
Perceptual mapping assists analysts to evaluate the competitive performance of brands
A product evolutionary cycle helps to envision future directions for product development
Porter’s five forces
Mintzberg suggests that the top planners spend most of their time engaged in analysis and are concerned with industry or competitive analyses as well as internal studies, including the use of computer models to analyze trends in the organization. Strategic planners use a variety of research tools and analytical techniques, depending on the environment complexity and the firm’s goals. Fleitcher and Bensoussan, for instance, have identified some 200 qualitative and quantitative analytical techniques regularly used by strategic analysts while a recent publication suggests that 72 techniques are essential. No optimal technique can be identified as useful across all situations or problems. Determining which technique to use in any given situation rests with the skill of the analyst. The choice of tool depends on a variety of factors including: data availability; the nature of the marketing problem; the objective or purpose, the analyst’s skill level as well as other constraints such as time or motivation.
The most commonly used tools and techniques include:
Research methods
- Environmental scanning
- Marketing intelligence (also known as competitive intelligence)
- Futures research
Analytical techniques
- Brand Development Index (BDI)/ Category development index (CDI)
- Brand/ Category penetration
- Benchmarking
- Blindspots analysis
- Functional capability and resource analysis
- Impact analysis
- Counterfactual analysis
- Demand analysis
- Emerging Issues Analysis
- Experience curve analysis
- Gap analysis
- Herfindahl index
- Industry Analysis (also known as Porter’s five forces analysis)
- Management profiling
- Market segmentation analysis
- Market share analysis
- Perceptual mapping
- PEST analysis and its variants including PESTLE, STEEPLED and STEER (PEST is occasionally known as Six Segment Analysis)
- Portfolio analysis, such as BCG growth-share matrix or GE business screen matrix
- Precursor Analysis or Evolutionary analysis
- Product life cycle analysis and S-curve analysis (also known as technology life cycle or hype cycle analysis)
- Product evolutionary cycle analysis
- Scenario analysis
- Segment Share Analysis
- Situation analysis
- Strategic Group Analysis
- SWOT analysis
- Trend Analysis
- Value chain analysis.
Relationship between the marketing strategy and the marketing mix.
Marketing strategy and marketing mix are related elements of a comprehensive marketing plan. While marketing strategy is aligned with setting the direction of a company or product/service line, the marketing mix is majorly tactical in nature and is employed to carry out the overall marketing strategy. The 4P’s of the marketing mix (Price, Product, Place and Promotion) represent the tools that marketers can leverage while defining their marketing strategy to create a marketing plan.
