Improving the marketing communication strategies of the DTI\u27s Go Lokal brand to better support the local MSMEs

In this collaborative insider action research, our team agreed to focus on Go Lokal’s lack of substantial marketing initiatives. As the brand continuously grows, it has to adopt relevant marketing strategies to increase its visibility and strengthen its branding so it can thrive in the competitive retail industry and at the same time, empower the Go Lokal MSMEs. Through action research and methods of inquiries, our team identified the absence of planning for marketing as a key factor that led to the team’s failure to adopt substantial marketing initiatives. Therefore, our team resolved to create a marketing communications plan and using that as a blueprint, implement selected marketing initiatives during the second quarter. In the first cycle, our team applied Shimp’s model of the marketing communications decision-making process as the framework, together with the concept of integrated marketing communications and the AIDA Model. The creation of the marketing communications plan helped establish a clear direction for promoting the brand in 2020. Also, the implementation of the social media campaign and the e-commerce partnerships during the second quarter enabled the Go Lokal brand to strengthen its online visibility and remain relevant in the digitally-driven industry. Moreover, these initiatives for the first cycle ensured that our team would continuously support the Go Lokal MSMEs, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Because of the delay we encountered during the e-commerce campaign, we focused on communicating with the Go Lokal technical consultant about his specific requirements in relation to the marketing communications strategies that we identified. The team considered that given his role as the overall in charge of the Go Lokal brand’s creative direction, we had to convey to him our expectations to ensure successful implementation of the marketing communications plan. His acknowledgment of the summary of requirements that we prepared for him served as a validation that he is now aware of all the marketing initiatives we outlined for the year and our expectations from him