Multimedia Marketing Campaign Report (Assessment)

Introduction

The purpose of this report is to design a marketing strategy with very little budget for an upcoming campaign. However, this report will concentrate on the number of issues such as Online Communities, reason to joining online communities, Wang and Fesenmaier (2003) model for member needs, the power of social networking, and target Audience for the campaign.

However, this paper will also focus external and internal environment, strengths, weakness, opportunities, and threats of social media marketing, slogan of the campaign, time frame, budget, technological development on advertising, and effectiveness of the implication of social marketing in the campaign, key objectives and messages of this campaign, and so on.

Situational Analysis

“Drink it down” company will launch a new cherry flavoured cola drink and this report will prepare a marketing strategy to promote this new product to the consumers. The main aim of this situational analysis is to explore the current condition of the selected company “Drink it down”, objectives, functionality, target market and so on.

However, this analysis will find out the latent area where the marketing campaign will make success and importance of Integrated Marketing Communication campaign project of the company in order to create loyal consumer base or build strong brand image in competitive cola market.

However, the behaviour of the customer is difficult to understand, as they always like to taste new flavoured drinks, for instance, according to the report of the Gale Group (2011, p.1), sales of private label bottled fruit juice nectar increased more than 255.0% to $451,354.0 and sales of pineapple juice boosted about 21.40% to $6.70m in the US juice market.

On the other hand, apple juice sales fell 3.40% to $207.0 million and cranberry cocktail juice drink sales fell 9.7% to $133 million in this place, which indicates that the customers choice is unpredictable; therefore, “Drink it down” need to focus on the positive features of new flavoured products in its upcoming campaign projects.

Online Communities

Plant (2004) argues that billions of individuals get together over internet to make conversation, to discover similar-minded individuals, to discuss and share contemporary subjects, to play-games, to provide or seek information, to seek support, or merely hang out with friends; they visits in chat rooms, notice boards, connects to conversation groups or they create their group using instant messaging software.

Bedi (2008) states that these online social meetings are recognized through a range of terms as well as ‘online community’, which is often explained as ‘traditional aggregations that materialize when adequate individuals smack into each other more often over internet; here, members possess a common objective, interest, need, or activity that provides the primary reason for belonging to the community.

In carrying out the massive multimedia campaigns, the Drink it down company wishes to take advantage of this growing trend by targeting the online communities for sell the cherry flavoured cola. The company believes that the due to a number of features of these communities, the campaign would turn out to be quite successful and capable to generate substantial profits. Some of these features are:

• Individuals connect in frequent, dynamic involvement and there are usually passionate communications, strapping emotional bonds and collective actions taking place amongst partakers;
• Individuals encompass right of entry to joint resources and there are guidelines for influential admittance to those resources;
• Trustworthiness of data, assistance, and amenities among individuals is essentially imperative in these communities;
• A mutual circumstance of communal gatherings, verbal communication, and procedures exist in these communities.

Wang and Fesenmaier (2003) model for member needs:

Functional:

• This report would recommend “Drink it down” to use multimedia marketing campaign as it is an efficient and convenient technique to communicate with other participants;
• In addition, social networking system have improved the aptitude of the community to assemble functional needs of the members;

Psychological:

• Besides functional effects, it has psychological factors, for example, it helps the members of the communities to build association, relation, and identification along with provide new sense of belonging;
• The use of social networking tools for instance Facebook and Twitter facilitate members to communicate with the members to invoke feelings of affiliation;

Social:

• According to the report of Swinburne University (2011, p.3), communities are seen to flourish where members interact and respond in an environment of faith where social norms are recognized;
• “Drink it Down” Company should use Social networking technologies due to having the ability to provide easier systems of interaction and relationship building

Hedonic:

• Wang & Fesenmaier (2004) pointed out that to keep using and being involved in a community, members seek several way of enjoyment or amusement;
• However, Multimedia marketing tools facilitate members to play games, share photos and comment

This report recommends the client “Drink it down” Company to use social networking sites considering four factors of the members need framework of Wang & Fesenmaier.

Target Group

This soft drink product of “drink it down” is suitable for all customer but the company should target mainly health conscious people who like to fresh drink those not contain excessive preservatives. In addition, the marketer of this company should target customers who regularly use social networking sites; however, they can be both direct and indirect customers.

However, the campaign project also concentrate on the product features to select target market, for example, new cherry flavoured soft drinks of “Drink it down” Company is healthy drinks for children; therefore, this report recommends the company to target parents who seek fresh and healthy foods for their children.

Objectives and Strategies

Goals of the Campaign “Drink it down” Company

• The prime objectives of this campaign project of “Drink it down” Company is to build brand awareness and create customers base;
• The company is intended to reach break even point within first year of its operation;
• It would promote its slogan “always ‘Drink it down’ Cherry Cola”
• It would like to increase its annual sales revenue from the new cherry cola drinks by 50% within next three years;
• In addition, it has aimed to diversify its products range and carry on new IMC program to build customer awareness about the product of “Drink it down” company by 25% to 35% within next five years;
• It aimed to increase the size of the “Drink it down” Company by 25% within next three fiscal year;
• However, it has aim to increase annual budget for R&D by 300% within the fiscal year 2015 in order to conduct research more attentively to find out proper solutions over the competitors;
• At the same time, it has goal to arrange fund for promotional activities to endorse celebrities to strengthen the brand image of “Drink it down” Company;
• To pull together and enhance consciousness of the people regarding their health;
• Finally, the aim of the campaign is to aware target customers about the cost effectiveness of this new product.

Messages

The campaign ‘Always “Drink it down” Cherry Cola’ has persuade the objectives to convey the following messages to the target audiences-

• Freshness of the new cherry flavoured cola product would be the key message of the campaign, which would influence customers. Thus, advertising in social networking sites would create knowledge of the product;
• Like other large company, it will also sponsor many events in the future,
• Its current message would be
• “Drink it down” would develop a message strategy based on a unique brand image; such as, it convey message about the commitment of the company to the customers

Environmental Analysis

Demographics

The Drink it Down Company is an Australia based business that would initially come up with the cherry flavoured cola in the Australian market; therefore, it is essential for the firm to assess the demography of the country before undertaking the multimedia campaign:

Table 1: Demography of Australia. Source: Self generated from Index mundi (2011).

Social/Cultural

It is important to carry out the multimedia campaign by keeping in mind the social and cultural ethos of the country. Australian culture shows the country’s tremendous unification of diverse customs with intermingles of open-minded and all-inclusive society; both Europeans and natives live here is at harmony; nevertheless, native customs possess outstanding disparity with that of city-life; moreover, with subsequent influx of immigrants all over world, Australian culture has grown to be one of the most diverse cultures of the world.

According to the Maps of World (2011), Australia came to be inhabited by English people soon after England claimed it as their own land; since then, the Australian culture has been largely “Anglo-Celtic”; with changing-times, Australian culture became Americanized in terms of food, dress, lifestyle, and celebrations; in addition, following democratic-principles, Australian-society gives everyone liberty to practice own culture/religion.

Australian society stands on top of some basic doctrines – productive assortment (every one must fortify the cultural, societal and economic standards), and cultural esteem (every one is be able to exercise their own religion and culture); in addition, the country also possesses a cheerful, creative, and traditional outlook in music, drama, and dance.

Economic

The multimedia campaign would only be successful when the advertisements will persuade people to buy the cherry flavoured cola repeatedly, generating substantial revenues.

In order to assess the projected success of the multimedia campaign in terms of revenue it could generate, it is important to evaluate the economic factors of the market, which for example, should include the purchasing power parity of the Australian customers. In analysing the economic factors, some other features will be taken into account.

This includes the real gross domestic product, interest rates (to assess whether is feasible for the company to go for investing in the campaign or the interest rate is so high that by keeping the money in bank the company will be able to come up with more money), and real growth rate. The following figure shows the purchasing power parity of the Australian customers:

The following figure shows the real growth rate of Australia:

The following table shows real GDP per capita of the country:

Table 2: GDP per capita. Source: Index mundi (2011).

The following figure shows interest rates of the country:

Political

The political condition of Australia is quite stable and the government of the country tries to afford the highest business friendly environment to all its industries with a view to raise the GNP; most importantly, the government always encourage and assist the growth of the local and international companies. On the other hand, despite of a few number of problems due to lawful barriers such as environmental and labour legislations, the market of Australia generates enough revenues as well.

Technology

Australia is quite advanced in terms of technology most of the population uses social networking sites regularly. This technological advancement means that the multimedia campaign has huge potential for success as it has based on web marketing and Social Medias.

Competitive

Many large competitors like Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and Asahi exist in Australian market, which are able to make huge expenditures in advertisements. The Drink it down company will use the proposed campaign because of limited capital. Although it may not be able to compete aggressively with these giant competitors, but the success of the multimedia campaign may mean great revenue for the business in near future.

SWOT Analysis

Strengths: it should determine the positive factors for promising campaign –

• The budget of the client “Drink it down” Company is not sufficient to conduct campaign using traditional approach. As a result, multimedia marketing strategy will help the company to build brand image and increase integrated profits of the company;
• Social networking sites are popular to the young generation who are the main target market of “Drink it down” Company;
• This strategy has strong appeal on the online consumers and regular internet users;
• This campaign will contribute developing local culture to the international customers;
• This marketing strategy will help to reduce treatment costs by develop public awareness on hygienic and pure drinks.

Weakness: – There have some weak points, such as –

• As the budget is short, it would be difficult to engage lots of volunteer for fieldwork. Therefore, the workforce required for effectively continuing the campaign is also not adequate as a large number of workforce need to employ to serve this purpose
• “Drink it down” Company has not loyal customer groups to try new cherry flavoured cola drinks;
• It should require to conducting more research before designing strategy.

Opportunities: – it has several scopes for instance –

• The campaign will help the company to gather some volunteers, sponsors and donors who will support the activities through financial and other aids that strengthen the campaign;
• Create a future prospect for business by increasing brand awareness;
• The campaign project has the opportunity to convey the massage of protecting
• It can ensure good health of the consumers by increasing awareness about healthy foods and drinks;
• Donation funds will help enhance this program and create new job opportunities.

Threats: – For successful campaign, this firm should measure the risk factors to advice “Drink it down” company –

• Unethical behaviours of the employees or the management can reduce the effectiveness of the campaign project within very short time such as use of excessive preservatives;
• Competitor’s of “Drink it down” is using effective visual advertising in multimedia to attract the customers, for instance, Coca-cola company has used multimedia advertising campaign anthem during the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa (Africa News, 2011);
• Campaign project requires a large sum of money which sometimes critical to manage;

The importance of the campaign project to promote new cherry flavoured cola drinks can easily evaluate from the SWOT analysis.

Positioning Strategy

By using positioning strategy, the marketer of “Drink it down” campaign project will be able to aware the target groups regarding the advantages of the products of this company; thus, they would prepare a brand positioning map. However, this report selects positioning strategy for “Drink it down”, for instance –

• The marketer of this campaign project will focus more on developing a competitive or differential advantage of the “Drink it down” campaign through which it would be able to generate more value than other similar campaigns of the competitors in terms of brand building;
• The second alternative will highlight upon deciding on several differences for promotion by an indication of implication, uniqueness, quality, communicative, and other variables;
• Furthermore, the final choice will target on generating complete mixes of value of the brand, which can call as value proposition. Among the a variety of options of the following grid, “more for less” option will be select since “Drink it down” Company campaign will try to make more value than competitive ones; however, the following figure shows other options –

The Key Problems of This Campaign Project

Drink it down’s campaign would be entirely web-based – this means that this is subjected to the criticisms that web marketers face – the main criticism one of user privacy and autonomy; some critics suggests that advertisers exploit the profiles they build to get customers to purchase their good/amenities, devoid of customers even knowing that they have been tracked or profiled.

The online-promos also confront the “name” of being immoral, dealing with a range of unethical issues; these puts on some rules/ restrictions on online-advertising which could in turn adversely affect the campaign of cherry cola; some rules, for example, state that making untrue-claims, bait-and-switch-offers, etc are unethical; moreover, although interstitial-ads, contextual-links, and overlay-ads, are not unethical, but these contain ethical-dilemmas.

In addition, some people believes online marketing to be too uninteresting and tedious as these appears like a leaflet advertisement; apart from this, staring at a webpage continuously almost immediately build up a abhor for the promotion and the marketer as well.

Media Selection

Because of the fact that the fund for the Drink it down company to advertise its cherry flavoured cola is quite low, it is viable for the company choose online advertising mediums to build the image of the product through the campaign and develop public awareness.

This form of advertising may include in web marketing, including Search Engine Optimization (SEO), company’s own website development, blogs, e-mails, and more essentially, advertisement through social networking sites.

Social-networking websites are awesome for constructing consumer relationships; moreover, it is quite simple to connect with consumers at social websites; it comprises creating accounts at popular social-sites, assembling community/customers, providing helpful information about product, and updating information frequently; conversely, consumers will enjoy joining the community as a place to share their experience and find information about what to buy.

Once the community has set, Drink it down can adjoin supplementary features, for example, poll, question and answer, symposium, and re-evaluation; the more the cola is affianced with individuals, the profounder they will feel a personal connection to this product; social-networking sites are intensely potential to serve for building customer-relationship; in long term, the business will build better customer loyalty.

In order to do advertisements through social networking sites, it is feasible for the Drink it down company to go for selecting the most renowned networking areas; the following table shows the list of the social networking sites of choice, the potential advantages, and the reasons for choosing them. However, the marketer of “Drink it down” should require to select the following media to create the image of the campaign, it reputation and develop public awareness as well as increase sales revenue, however the selected medias are:

• Google +
• Foursquare
• Twitter
• Facebook
• Myspace
• Hi5

Table 3: Potential advantages, and reasons for choosing. Source: Self generated.

YouTube

Most popular, successful, and well-known video sharing website – YouTube was launched in the year of 2005, which allows users to download, upload, and view as well as share videos (Cheng, Dale & Liu, 2007, p.3).

However, the marketer of “Drink it down” Company should use this site for advertising new cherry flavoured cola drink because it is the prime adverting media for the any new business drive to come in the attention of mass people as YouTube launched free streaming service from March 2010 and broadcasted 60 live Indian Premier League cricket matches.

According to the statistics of Chapman (2010), YouTube was providing over two billion videos per day from May 2010, which is almost twice as many as the prime-time audience of all three main US television networks together; therefore, the researcher assumed that it could replace the traditional television and become the substitute of television particularly in case of video advertising.

As a result, this report suggests the marketer of the “Drink it down” Company to select this media for upcoming campaign as it considered YouTube would be the ultimate destiny of entertainment in this era and it would be able to influence consumers to purchase this new product.

Sales Promotion and Objectives

As it has not enough funds, the marketer of “Drink it down” Company should mainly use two different sales promotion strategies to create value and influence the members of online communities. However, they will offer some facilities for the volunteer, for instance, it will announce awards and other services for the volunteers, and provide buy one get one options for the buyers. The main objectives to offer special price is –

• Aim to increase sales revenue from the target groups;
• Engage with online community more easily;
• To encourage friends and family members to taste the products.

Website

Firstly, the marketer of “Drink it down” should develop an excellent website for the company in order to broaden all business function.

Objectives

• It will give an option to the web visitors to submit the valuable opinion for future development and it will publish on the visitor comment page;
• It will stimulate a higher frequency of visits and join with several social network to get more visitors;
• Add campaign slogan along with blogs to aware customers;
• It will keep space for advertisement and link these with other sites, offer the customers create own account, and provide job opportunity;
• Implication of such strategy will help “Drink it down” company to increase its operational efficiency by reducing associated costs;
• The website will provide an opportunity to generate an effectual network connecting service providers.

Public relations

The campaign projects of “Drink it down” not only concentrates on maximizing profits by using multimedia marketing strategy, but also focus on development of public relation by addressing social problems, for instance, develop verbal communication with employees to know their position, communicating with media, engagement of social media, rebuilding the confidence of people who affected by disasters, develop industrial relations.

At the same time, this new cherry flavoured cola drinks campaign would improve employee relation associated with maintaining public image for the elite class, provide regular information about safety rules in work place, and develop investor’s relation by publishing quarterly progress report for the stakeholders, corporate social responsibility and so on.

Building brands

Keller (2009) pointed out that there are generally four key steps in building strong brand, assist to accomplish objectives of the company to target audience and these steps are brand identification, meaning, responses, and relationship; therefore, “Drink it down” should take following steps in order to building strong brand image. However, these are –

• The marketer “Drink it down” campaign will build its brand image by using existing media strategy, knowledge, and image to target markets by emphasizing on brand name, logo, symbols, designing, packaging, along with functional performances of the company;
• In addition, they need to consider various IMC campaigns those conducted by renowned beverage companies, for instance, mass- media advertising, sales promotions, sponsorship, websites developing, and direct mail, B2B, or one to one marketing;
• In addition, “Drink it down” Company should concentrate on its competitive advantages in order to expand market and maintain brand identity;
• Finally, this company should develop its brand as a social marketer.

Ads and Other Multimedia Campaign Sample

As the multimedia campaigns would be mainly a part of web marketing in social networking sites, its advertising should be enough eye-catchy and attractive to get the attention of the targeted groups. The ads must appeal to customers aesthetically, providing a relaxing and enjoyable insight of the chilled cherry cola that would settle in their minds as soon as they see the graphical presentation.

However, the ads must not be annoying to the eyes of people, and nor should the slogans and designations be too gimmicky putting forward a sense that the ad is a mere puff that is not true under any circumstances; some headings and graphics of the ads are given below-

Advertisement – 1

• Heading: – You Deserve the Cherry Chill Out!
• Graphic: – Cherry cola splashing over the misty ice cubes

Advertisement – 2

• Heading: – Cherry Cola: Every Drop Recharges You…
• Graphic: – An animated boy with superpower showered with cola

Advertisement – 3

• Heading: – Enjoy a Bottle of Liquefied Freshness!!!
• Graphic: – The cherry cola logo drowning under a cola fountain

Advertisement – 4

• Heading: – Feel the Chill in Every Move, Get Up and Join the Groove
• Graphic: – An animated hip hop dancer dancing and enjoying a bottle of cola

Projected Marketing Budget of the Drink it Down Company for the Cola

The Drink it down company has projected and allocated small amount of budget in each of the sectors because of the fact that is has very limited money to complete the entire project, so, it is not possible for the business to advertise the cola through different mediums; as social networks are quite cheap, the budgetary requirements are as follows:

Table 4: Marketing Budget of the Drink it Down Company. Source: Self generated.

Evaluation and Control

The marketer and the management of “Drink it down” would evaluate the outcomes of the campaign in the national and international market and compare the difference in profits level monthly basis to keep away from financial risks and to take prompt actions to get better outcomes.

Consequently, managers must arrange monthly meeting with the ad firm and consultants to assess the effectiveness of the campaign projects and appreciate their contribution if the marketers observe outstanding results in terms of sales position, current financial situation, which would help to remove operational barriers to bring success in the future.

At the same time, the management team of “Drink it down” Company should identify the uncertainty in terms of return on investment capital, it should categorize net profit, and they review the multimedia marketing strategies considering the demand of the market.

Reference List

Africa News (2011) The K’naan & Coca-Cola® Story. Web.

Bedi, T. S. (2008) Social Media Marketing, A Consumers Insight: Hotels and Web 2.0. Web.

Cheng, X., Dale, C. & Liu, J. (2007) Understanding the Characteristics of Internet Short Video Sharing: YouTube as a Case Study. Web.

Global Finance Company (2011) Current Interest Rates. Web.

Index mundi (2011) Australia Demographics Profile 2011. Web.

Index mundi (2011) Australia GDP – real growth rate. Web.

Keller, K. L. (2009) Strategic Brand Management- Building, Measuring and Managing Brand Equity. 3^rd ed. New Delhi: Prentice Hall of India.

Maps of World (2011) Australia Culture. Web.

Plant, R. (2004) Online Communities. Technology in Society, 26: 51-65.

Sing, W. C. (2011) The advantage of advertising on Social Networking Sites. Web.

Swinburne University (2011) Facebook – The Final Frontier For Tv Fandom: A Lurker‟S Persepctive. Web.

The Gale Group (2011) Drink it down: new and exotic juices are exploding onto an American market that once knew nothing but orange juice. Juice isn’t just for breakfast anymore. Web.

Wang, Y., & Fesenmaier, D. R. (2004) Modeling Participation in an Online Travel Community. Journal of Travel Research , 261.