The tool is advertised as being comprehensive, and that it will help you out with all of your IMC needs. However, my first impression was that this tool is merely an expensive word processor. For example, they claim to make nice and easy to use charts tables and graphs, merge the text, format the style of your document, and create a linked table of content. For Almost $300 I would say no thanks, and I could take the time to do similar things in word, excel and pdf.

When I clicked on the segmentation section, I was impressed with the feature that claimed that it could help me understand my target audience. However, I am skeptical as to the uniqueness of this program. I think that the program only guides you on how to think about the target audience. There is nothing wrong with that, but I feel like is a person were to read the website superficially they would think that the program would segment your population for you.

My overall impression is that this is a TOOL to help you think in a proper way to get your IMC plan into writing. I think that a communication professional with experience might not find this product helpful since they already have experience and expertise in the field and they will already know how to segment the population. I believe this product is more hype than it is worth - the product does not offer anything new or exciting, it just integrates all the steps into one product.

Q2. Please note that the tool does NOT do any of the work for your advertiser. That is where I feel the website miscommunicate their message. If you were to read the site, you would think that the program segments your population, creates your budget... but no that is not the case. The tool will guide you in make your decisions, it will help you think in a critical way, it will structure your thinking. You still have to do the thinking; the program will just put it all together for you.

Q.3 Honestly, I do not see a small company using this tool. Small companies usually have only a few products geared towards a few targets. Small companies will have a small budget, which they could easily manage on their own. Their IMC plan would be smaller and simpler than a large company would. Small companies would not need such an expensive product to keep track of their daily marketing activities. I could maybe understand a company, who had 1000 products for 850 target markets, and they would need the tool to track 1000 budgets and 1000 competitors; however, on a small scale it would not provide any more skills or knowledge to an IMC professional.