BUSI 430 Week 7 IMC Project Example

Fresh From the Farm: An Integrated Marketing Communications Plan for Blue Ridge Roasting Company

Abstract

This integrated marketing communications plan is designed for Blue Ridge Roasting Company, a composite regional specialty coffee roaster with $2.4 million in annual sales. The company's opportunity is to become the region's most trusted source of fresh, ethically sourced coffee as specialty coffee grows in grocery and online channels. The plan targets home brewers aged 28 to 55 and local cafés and grocers, positions the brand around freshness and farm relationships, and sets measurable objectives for awareness, trial, subscriptions and wholesale accounts. A $180,000 budget built with the objective-and-task method funds a coordinated mix of digital, social, traditional, direct, promotional, public relations and personal selling activities, each carrying the message "Roasted this week. Grown by people we know." The plan closes with legal and ethical safeguards, a twelve-month calendar and an evaluation design based on controlled tests.

Introduction

Blue Ridge Roasting Company began twelve years ago as a stall at a farmers market and now roasts coffee for its own café, a dozen independent grocery stores, about forty restaurants and cafés, and a small online store. Its coffee is roasted in small batches, sold within days of roasting, and sourced from six farms whose owners the founders have visited. Customers who try it tend to stay, but most people in the region have never heard of it.

In Clow and Baack's (2018) terms, IMC means every promotional tool working in concert, delivering one consistent message in service of the firm's goals. Blue Ridge has so far promoted itself in pieces: a market booth, an occasional social post, discounts requested by grocers. This plan replaces those pieces with one program. It follows the textbook's sequence, from analysis to objectives, budget, creative strategy, tools, and evaluation, and it draws on research to choose and justify each element.

Situation Analysis

The Market

Specialty coffee has grown as consumers have become more interested in origin, roast freshness and brewing at home. Shoppers increasingly buy whole-bean and ground specialty coffee in grocery stores and online, and the shift toward online purchasing in general continues; online sales made up roughly a sixth of U.S. retail in the second quarter of 2026 and were growing faster than stores, according to the United States Census Bureau (2026). For a regional roaster, these trends create two paths to growth: more grocery shelf space and direct sales through subscriptions.

The region itself favors a local brand. Its three counties include a mid-sized city, two college towns and a ring of growing suburbs, with a strong farmers market culture and several independent grocers that promote local products with shelf tags and in-store events. Grocery buyers in these stores have told Blue Ridge's founders that they want more local brands with a story, provided the products sell. At the same time, coffee prices have risen as green coffee costs have increased, which makes shoppers more attentive to value and gives the brand a reason to explain what its price buys: freshness that national brands cannot match and farm relationships that support the people who grow the coffee.

Competitors

Blue Ridge competes with three groups. National specialty brands sold in grocery stores have strong awareness and large promotion budgets but cannot match Blue Ridge's freshness, since their coffee may sit in distribution for weeks or months. Two other regional roasters compete for the same café and grocery accounts; one competes mainly on price, the other on a design-forward café. Finally, mass-market brands compete for the price-sensitive buyer, whom this plan does not target.

The competitive picture suggests where Blue Ridge should and should not fight. It cannot outspend national brands on broad advertising, and it should not chase the price-focused regional rival with discounts, which would undercut its premium position. Its advantage lies in proof: a roast date on every bag, farmers it can name and photograph, and a team that can visit cafés and grocers in person. The plan therefore concentrates spending on activities where those proofs can be seen, tasted or experienced, rather than on messages that any competitor could also claim.

Customers

Interviews with twenty current customers and a short survey of market visitors suggest that Blue Ridge buyers value taste first, freshness second and knowing where the coffee comes from third. Most buy one or two bags a month, typically spending between fifteen and twenty dollars a bag, and many brew for a household rather than for themselves alone. Their main sources of food and drink information are friends, local food social media accounts and store staff, more than traditional advertising. Most first tried the coffee through a free sample at the market or in a café that serves it. That pattern matters: trial is the brand's most effective conversion tool, and word of mouth from existing customers is its main source of new ones.

The interviews also revealed barriers. Several customers said they had walked past Blue Ridge bags in the grocery store for months without knowing what made them different, because the packaging did not explain the roast date or the farms. Others assumed local coffee would be much more expensive than it is. A few had tried an online subscription from a national service and canceled because the coffee arrived stale. Each barrier points to a communication task: make the difference visible on the shelf, show that the price is close to national specialty brands, and prove that the subscription delivers coffee roasted days, not weeks, before it arrives.

SWOT Summary

Promotions Opportunity Analysis

Clow and Baack (2018) recommend a promotions opportunity analysis that examines competitors, opportunities, target markets, customers and positioning before setting objectives. The analysis points to a clear opportunity. National brands cannot claim genuine freshness, and the regional rivals do not communicate farm relationships. Blue Ridge owns both qualities but has never told them consistently. Its customers become loyal after trial, so the plan's central challenge is not persuasion but exposure and trial: getting the right people to taste the coffee and learn why it is different.

Target Markets

Primary Target: Home Brewers

The primary target is adults aged 28 to 55 in the region who brew coffee at home, spend more than average on groceries and value local and ethically produced food. They own a grinder or a pour-over setup, follow cooking and food accounts on social media, and shop at independent grocers or farmers markets. Many are parents with limited time who would welcome a subscription that arrives before they run out.

Secondary Target: Cafés and Grocers

The secondary target is business buyers: independent cafés and restaurants that want a local coffee partner, and grocery stores that want distinctive local products. Their decision depends on quality, consistency, margins and the support the roaster provides, such as staff training and in-store promotion.

Two short profiles guide the creative work. The first is a working parent in the suburbs who brews a pot every morning, shops at an independent grocer on weekends and follows local food accounts; this person values convenience and wants to feel good about purchases, and a subscription that arrives before the bag runs out fits that life. The second is the owner of a neighborhood café who has used a national supplier for years, is proud of the café's local character and worries that switching suppliers will disrupt quality; this buyer needs samples, a training visit and evidence that customers will notice the difference. Every message in the plan is written with one of these two people in mind.

Brand Story and Message Platform

Before any channel is planned, the brand needs a story that every employee, partner and channel can tell the same way. Blue Ridge's story is short: two friends started roasting at a farmers market because they could not find coffee that tasted as fresh as the coffee they had tried on a trip to a farm in Central America; they began buying directly from that farm and five others; and they still roast in small batches every week so that customers drink coffee at its best. The message platform breaks the story into three proof points that every communication can draw on: the roast date on every bag, the named farms and their owners, and the local team that delivers and trains. A short brand guide will define the logo, colors, photography style and words to use and avoid, such as using "roasted this week" rather than vague terms like "premium," so that every agency, creator and employee speaks consistently.

Positioning and Brand Strategy

Keller (1993) defined customer-based brand equity as the effect brand knowledge has on how customers respond, built from awareness and from strong, favorable and unique associations. Blue Ridge's equity can rest on two unique associations: freshness and relationship. The positioning statement is: For home brewers and local businesses who care about what is in their cup, Blue Ridge Roasting is the regional roaster that delivers coffee roasted the same week from farms we know by name, because flavor and fairness both start at the source.

Consistency is essential to making that position credible. Erdem and Swait (1998) explained that a brand works as a signal of quality only when its message is clear and consistent over time; a brand that claims premium freshness while running deep discounts sends a confused signal. Every element of this plan, including pricing promotions, is designed to reinforce, not dilute, the freshness and relationship promise.

Communication Objectives

Objectives must be specific and measurable so that the plan can be judged (Clow & Baack, 2018). For the next twelve months, Blue Ridge will pursue six objectives.

The objectives were chosen to follow the customer's path rather than to measure activity. Awareness comes first because most people in the region have never heard of the brand. Trial follows because the interviews showed that tasting is what converts people. Subscriptions and grocery sales measure whether trial becomes habit, wholesale accounts measure the business side of the plan, and advocacy measures whether customers are spreading the word on their own. The targets are ambitious but grounded in current results: the company's best grocery store already sells about 30 percent more since it began weekend demonstrations, and the referral rate among existing subscribers suggests that 600 referrals is achievable if the program is promoted consistently.

Budget

The budget uses the objective-and-task method the textbook recommends: each objective was broken into tasks, and each task was costed (Clow & Baack, 2018). The total, $180,000, is 7.5 percent of current sales, higher than Blue Ridge's past spending but justified by the growth objectives.

Research supports caution about any single channel. The average short-run advertising elasticity in the meta-analysis by Sethuraman et al. (2011) was only about 0.12, so the budget favors trial-generating activities, sampling and offers, which match the finding that Blue Ridge customers convert after tasting.

Each task area has a clear reason for its share. Sales promotions receive the largest share because sampling and demonstrations produce trial, the step that most reliably creates customers for this brand. Traditional media and social media receive similar amounts, one to reach people who do not follow the brand online and the other to carry the stories that give people something to share. Digital and search spending is modest because it targets people already looking for coffee, a smaller but more ready group. Database marketing is inexpensive per contact but central to keeping customers, so its share is small relative to its importance. The evaluation and contingency line protects the plan's ability to learn and adjust.

Creative Strategy

The campaign theme is "Roasted this week. Grown by people we know." It joins the brand's two unique associations in a single line that can appear on bags, posters, posts and radio. The primary appeal is rational and emotional together: the rational benefit is fresher flavor, which the date stamp on every bag proves, and the emotional benefit is the satisfaction of supporting farmers and local roasters by name.

The executional framework is the slice of life and the testimonial: short stories from real farmers and real customers. A recurring visual shows the roast date on the bag next to a photo of the farmer whose beans are inside. Humor is used lightly, if at all. Humor buys attention and liking at some cost to credibility (Eisend, 2009), and credibility is exactly what a freshness and fairness claim needs. The tone is warm, specific and plain-spoken.

The message is adapted for each audience without changing its core. For home brewers, the emphasis falls on taste and on knowing where the coffee comes from: a radio spot might open with the sound of a grinder and a roaster saying, "This Ethiopian coffee came out of our roaster on Tuesday. By Saturday it can be in your kitchen," followed by the name of the farm and the grocery stores that carry it. For cafés and grocers, the same idea becomes a business benefit: fresher coffee keeps customers coming back, and a local supplier can deliver weekly and train staff in person. For subscribers, the message is reliability: coffee roasted within days of shipping, timed so it never runs out.

The packaging carries the theme as well. A redesigned label will show the roast date in large type, the farm's name and a small photo of the farmer, with a short line on the back explaining why freshness matters for flavor. Because shoppers decide at the shelf, the package is the most frequent point of contact with the brand, and making it explain the difference addresses the barrier customers described in interviews.

Digital Marketing

Batra and Keller (2016) argue that integrated programs should match each communication option to a stage of the customer's path to purchase and judge options by how well they complement one another. In this plan, radio and posters build awareness, social media and influencers build interest, sampling and offers drive trial, and the website, email and subscriptions turn trial into loyalty. The website is the hub of the program. Improvements include a "meet the farms" section, an easy subscription sign-up, and a roast calendar showing which coffees were roasted this week. Search engine optimization targets local searches such as "fresh coffee beans near me" and "local coffee roaster."

Paid search ads will run on local queries and on searches for coffee subscriptions in the region. Following research on paid search, the plan avoids paying for searches on Blue Ridge's own brand name. eBay's own field test, reported by Blake et al. (2015), showed that paying for its brand name in search added almost nothing, since searchers typing the name were headed to the site anyway. Budget is instead directed to non-brand searches that reach people who do not yet know Blue Ridge.

Local listings on map and review platforms will be claimed and kept accurate, with photos and hours for the café and a store locator for grocery partners. Goldfarb (2014) notes that online advertising's advantages lie in cheaper targeting and measurement, so every digital activity will carry tracking codes that link it to sales.

Content will support search visibility over time. The website will publish a short weekly roast note and a monthly brewing guide written in plain language, such as how to adjust a drip machine for fresher beans, so that people searching for brewing help find Blue Ridge. Email will be the main tool for turning first purchases into subscriptions: a three-message welcome series will introduce the farms, explain freshness and offer the subscription with its free brewing guide and mug. The online store will add a simple quiz that recommends a coffee based on how the customer brews and what flavors they like, which both helps the customer and gives the database useful information.

Social Media, Influencers and Word of Mouth

Social media will carry the farm and freshness stories in short videos: a roaster explaining the week's coffee, a farmer at harvest, a customer brewing at home. Paid social ads will target the primary audience's interests in cooking, local food and coffee within the three-county area.

Word of mouth is the brand's main source of new customers, and research explains why it matters so much. Trusov et al. (2009) showed that member invitations on a social network outperformed the site's conventional marketing in both the size and the staying power of their effect on sign-ups. Berger (2014) found that people share what makes them look knowledgeable and what helps others, so the plan gives customers something worth sharing: the farm stories, brewing tips and a referral program that rewards both the customer and the friend with a free bag.

Online reviews will be encouraged by a follow-up email after each first purchase. Chevalier and Mayzlin (2006) found that improvements in reviews increase sales and that negative reviews weigh more heavily than positive ones, so the plan includes a commitment to respond to every critical review within two days with a fix or a replacement.

Influencer partnerships will be small and closely matched: three to five regional food writers, home baristas and chefs whose audiences fit the primary target. Leung et al. (2022) found that influencer effectiveness depends on the fit among influencer, content and audience rather than on follower count. Every partnership will be clearly disclosed.

The social calendar will follow a weekly rhythm so the audience knows what to expect: a roast-day video on Tuesdays, a brewing tip on Thursdays and a farm or customer story on weekends. User-generated content will be invited with a simple prompt, sharing a photo of a morning cup with the bag's roast date visible, and the best posts each month will earn a free bag and a repost. Short videos will be cut into versions for each platform, and the same stories will appear in email and on the website, so that someone who meets the brand in one place recognizes it in another.

Traditional Media

Radio during morning drive time will carry thirty-second spots in which a roaster names the coffee roasted that week, reinforcing the freshness promise in a medium heard when people are thinking about coffee. Posters at grocery entrances and on transit shelters near partner stores will show the roast-date and farmer visual. Traditional media are justified here because they build awareness among people who do not follow the brand online, and because Naik and Raman (2003) found that combining media can produce synergy, with each medium increasing the effect of the other. The radio spots and posters will run in the same weeks as paid social and search, so that the same message reaches the same people through several channels.

Media will run in flights rather than continuously, concentrating spending in the spring launch and the fall campaign, when coffee purchases and gift buying rise, with lighter social and search support between flights. Flighting lets a small budget achieve enough frequency in each burst to be noticed, and it creates natural comparison periods for evaluation. Radio stations will be chosen for the primary target's commuting habits, and posters will be placed within a mile of partner grocers so that the message is fresh in shoppers' minds when they reach the coffee aisle.

Database and Direct Marketing

Clow and Baack (2018) describe database marketing as the use of customer information to communicate with customers individually and build long-term relationships. Blue Ridge will build a permission-based customer database from online orders, market sign-ups and café cards. Subscribers will receive a short email with each shipment introducing the farm and the roast; lapsed customers will receive a personalized reminder with their last coffee and a new suggestion. For the wholesale target, a direct mail kit with samples, a margin sheet and a farm story card will go to 150 prospective cafés and grocers, followed by a phone call from the sales team.

Sales Promotions

Sales promotions will focus on trial rather than price cuts. Blattberg et al. (1995) summarized research on how promotions work and found that temporary price reductions produce large short-term sales increases but that frequent deals lower the price customers consider normal, a risk for a brand positioned on quality. The plan therefore uses sampling and value-added offers instead of deep discounts.

Consumer promotions include weekly in-store tasting demonstrations at partner grocers, sampling at farmers markets and community events, a first-subscription offer of a free brewing guide and mug, and the referral reward. Trade promotions for grocers include a quarterly display allowance and demonstration support, and for cafés, free barista training and branded cups during the first three months of a new account. Ailawadi et al. (2009) note in their review of retail promotion that retailer and manufacturer goals often diverge, so trade support will be tied to in-store demonstrations and displays that build the brand, not to price reductions alone.

Demonstrations will be planned carefully because they are the plan's largest trial investment. Each demo will run on a Saturday morning, when the target shoppers are in the store, with a trained staff member brewing two coffees, explaining the roast date and offering a coupon for a small discount on a first bag, valid only that week. The staff member will record the number of samples, coupons distributed and bags sold, and the store's sales report for the following four weeks will show whether trial turned into repeat purchases. Stores where demonstrations produce lasting sales increases will receive more demos; stores where they do not will receive a different form of support, such as shelf signs.

Public Relations, Sponsorship and Cause Marketing

Public relations will tell the farm story. Twice a year, a founder's visit to a partner farm will become a series of posts, a short video and a story offered to local food reporters. The company will sponsor two community events, a local food festival and a charity run, with sampling at each. Sponsorship is chosen for fit: a food festival draws exactly the home cooks and local-food enthusiasts in the primary target, and a charity run reaches health-conscious adults who start their mornings early. At each event, the booth will brew coffee from the farm being featured that month and collect email sign-ups for the database.

Blue Ridge will also launch a cause program: ten cents from every bag sold in the spring will support a clean-water project in a partner farm's community. Robinson et al. (2012) found that letting consumers choose among causes increased their support for cause-related marketing by giving them a sense of personal role, so subscribers will vote among three projects proposed by the partner farms.

Public relations also includes preparing for problems. If a batch of coffee were ever found defective, or if a partner farm faced a crisis such as a crop failure, the company would communicate quickly and honestly with customers and partners, explaining what happened and what it is doing about it. A short response plan names who speaks for the company, how customers will be notified through email and social media, and how affected products will be replaced. A brand built on trust has more to lose from a slow or evasive response than from the problem itself.

Personal Selling

Personal selling will drive the wholesale objective. Two sales representatives will call on cafés, restaurants and grocers, bringing fresh samples and a brewing demonstration. The sales approach will be consultative: understanding each café's menu and customers, recommending coffees, and offering training and equipment support. Clow and Baack (2018) note that personal selling is most effective for complex, relationship-based sales, which describes wholesale coffee accounts well. A café's choice of coffee supplier affects every cup it sells, involves equipment and training, and is reviewed over months rather than made on impulse, so it calls for conversation, tasting and trust that advertising alone cannot provide. Each new account will receive a quarterly visit to taste the current coffees and review sales.

The sales process has five steps. Representatives first qualify prospects from the direct mail list, focusing on cafés and grocers whose customers match the primary target. The first visit is a tasting, in which the representative brews the café's current coffee alongside two Blue Ridge coffees for the owner and staff. The proposal follows, with pricing, delivery schedule, training and equipment support, and references from current accounts. After the account opens, a training visit teaches baristas or grocery staff how to talk about freshness and the farms. Finally, quarterly visits maintain the relationship and look for opportunities to add products, such as a seasonal coffee or retail bags for the café's shelf. Because many café owners know one another, each satisfied account is also a source of referrals to others.

Legal and Ethical Considerations

Every claim must be truthful and supportable. Freshness claims will be backed by the roast date on every bag. Claims about farm relationships and prices paid will be stated specifically and only when documented, and the company will not use certification labels it does not hold. Influencer partnerships will be disclosed clearly in every post, as Federal Trade Commission guidance requires for paid endorsements. Email will be sent only to people who have opted in, with easy unsubscribe options. The cause program will state exactly how much goes to the project and will publish an annual report of funds given. These safeguards protect the brand's credibility, which, as the creative strategy explains, is the foundation of its position.

Risks and Contingencies

The plan carries several risks. Green coffee costs could rise further, squeezing margins and tempting the company to cut promotion; the contingency reserve and the emphasis on measurable activities allow spending to be trimmed where it is least productive rather than across the board. A national brand could launch its own freshness message; Blue Ridge's response would be to emphasize the farm relationships and local delivery that a national brand cannot copy. Wholesale growth could outpace roasting capacity; the sales team will pace new accounts to the roastery's schedule, and the company will plan an equipment upgrade if the objectives are met. Finally, a sampling program depends on staff who represent the brand well, so demonstrators will be trained and observed before working alone. Each risk has an owner on the leadership team who will review it quarterly.

How the Pieces Work Together

Integration is easiest to see from a customer's point of view. Imagine a suburban parent who hears the morning radio spot about a coffee roasted on Tuesday from a named farm. That weekend, a poster at the grocery entrance shows the same farmer and roast date, and in the coffee aisle a demonstrator is brewing the same coffee. The parent tastes it, takes home a bag with a coupon and, a week later, receives a social media ad showing the farmer at harvest. A code on the bag leads to the website, where the parent takes the brewing quiz and signs up for a subscription with a free mug. The welcome emails introduce the other farms, and after a month the parent receives a referral offer and shares it with a neighbor.

At every step, the message is the same, freshness and relationship, and each tool does the job it does best: radio and posters create awareness, the demonstration produces trial, the package and website explain the difference, email builds the habit and the referral program turns a customer into an advocate. This is what Clow and Baack (2018) mean by integration, and it is why the plan treats the tools as parts of one program rather than as separate campaigns. Naik and Raman (2003) showed that media can amplify one another; this plan tries to create that amplification across every point of contact, not just between two advertising media.

Implementation Calendar

Evaluation

Rust et al. (2004) trace marketing's payoff through linked stages, from what the firm does, to what customers think and do, to sales and market position, and finally to financial results. The evaluation plan follows that chain. Awareness will be measured by surveys of the three-county area before launch, at mid-year and at year-end. Trial, subscriptions, referrals and reviews will be tracked through codes and the customer database. Grocery and wholesale results will be tracked through partner sales reports and account records. Each will be compared with the objectives in the table above.

Because many sales might have happened without the campaign, paid media will be evaluated with controlled tests. Hundreds of split-cable tests analyzed by Lodish et al. (1995) showed that heavier schedules alone seldom lifted an established brand's sales, and Shapiro et al. (2021) measured television returns well below what earlier work had suggested. Blue Ridge will therefore run its radio and paid social campaigns in two of its three counties during the first flight, compare sales with the third county, and adjust the media mix before the fall campaign. Every dollar in the plan should be able to show what it did, or move to an activity that can.

Results will be gathered in a simple monthly report for the owners. It will show progress on each of the six objectives, spending against budget by task area, and the results of any tests completed that month. Each quarter, the team will review the report and decide whether to shift money between task areas. Wholesale results will be judged over a longer period, since a new café account may take three to six months to reach its normal volume; the report will therefore track each new account's monthly orders against the average path of earlier accounts, so that a slow start can be addressed with extra training or point-of-sale support before the account is lost. Customer feedback will be gathered as well, through a two-question survey sent with the third subscription shipment asking what customers like most and what they would change, and the answers will feed directly into the next round of creative work and product decisions. For example, if sampling at grocers produces more subscribers per dollar than paid social, the next quarter's budget will move toward sampling. The awareness surveys at mid-year and year-end will show whether the brand is becoming known beyond its current customers, which is the long-term purpose of the plan.

Conclusion

Blue Ridge Roasting Company has a product its customers love and a story few people know. This plan gives the company one message, "Roasted this week. Grown by people we know," and carries it consistently through every tool, from radio and search to sampling, subscriptions, public relations and personal selling. The plan emphasizes trial because customers convert once they taste the coffee, and it builds in measurement so the company learns which activities create value. If it meets its objectives, Blue Ridge will be on its way to becoming the region's best-known specialty roaster, with a brand built on promises it can prove. The first year's results will also set the baseline for the next plan. Knowing which tools produced customers at the lowest cost, and which messages people repeated to their friends, will let the company spend its second-year budget with far more confidence than its first. Above all, the plan asks Blue Ridge to keep doing what earned its first loyal customers, roasting carefully and telling the truth about where its coffee comes from, and to tell that story to many more people, consistently, in every place they might meet the brand.

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