Integrated marketing communications plan. Case: Emmaus St. Petersburg.

The purpose of this study was to develop an Integrated Marketing Communications Plan for an international charity organisation ‘Emmaus’ assuming that it considers opening a new charity branch in St.Petersburg, Russia. The aim of the secondary research was to evaluate the available literature related to IMC topic and primary research intended to investigate the attitudes of the local residents in Russian towards charitable organisations and determine the most influential communication channels for the audience. The outcomes of the research were used to propose the IMC plan. Quantitative method was applied to gather the opinions of the respondents upon the research topic. It was carried out in the form of the questionnaire survey which focused on the awareness of Russian charities amongst various age groups of respondents and their attitudes towards charitable activities. Along with that the survey has examined the audience choice of marketing communication channels. The survey was sent out via online form and in print and managed to receive 40 responses. The results revealed that although the awareness of present charities in St.Petersburg is rather low, the average attitude of local residents towards charities is positive. Digital media (Internet, social networks, emails and TV) was indicated as the most popular marketing communications channels for the researched audience. The research results has led to the conclusion that Emmaus charity can successfully run its marketing communication strategy, if it focuses on digital channels of communication and integrates them with each other, so that its coherent marketing message is spread evenly among them