Publicity
To a business unit, publicity is extremely crucial. Many companies spend millions of their profits in order to create a massive awareness about their products and brand. For a long time, businesses have always been forced to set sizeable portions of their profits to ensure that they reach out for the market with their brand. A strong brand name for a product or a company in general is extremely beneficial.
A strong brand will help the firm gain and protect its market share. It is also true that a strong brand also allows a company to have easy access to various other services. A company with a strong brand will easily get financial support from financial institutions if they need it because such institutions have faith that the firm will easily recover and that they will be able to regain their position in the market.
The argument that, “any publicity is excellent publicity” is a terribly dangerous reasoning to a business unit in the current business world. Currently, a business firm would struggle to ensure that the market views it fairly. When companies like the Coca Cola Company spend hundreds of US dollars on publicity, their aim is to convince the market that they are the best. They try to convince the market that consuming their products gives the best satisfaction to the customers. They use both the mass and social media to reach out their target market with a message that is meant to convince them to buy their products. They do not go for any publicity. They seek publicity that would make the market buy their products in the end.
Domino’s case may help discuss the argument that any publicity is excellent publicity. Dominos Pizza had experienced a massive growth over the years. It had managed to capture a large market share, and it was the leading pizza supplier in the world. Business was doing well, and it had opened franchised units from various locations in Europe, North, and South America, and some parts of Asia (Staub-Bisang 72).
Then there came the doom day of July 13, 2009 when it suffered a serious blow. Two of their employees were captured preparing pizza at one of the Dominos shop in an unusually unhygienic manner. The video was horrible showing the public how unhealthy the pizzas they eat from Dominos are. This negative publicity almost brought this firm to its knees. This video circulated remarkably fast in the YouTube.
Many of those who watched the video shared it with their friends. Some television stations also aired the video in the news bulletins, cutesy of YouTube. The result was a massive shift of consumers from this product to some other. In less than 40 hours since the posting of the video, all the branches of Dominos Pizza had experienced a more than 70 percent drop in their sales. The sales were sliding at an alarming rate, and the firm faced an eminent closure (Staub-Bisang 72).
It took much effort of the chief executive and the entire marketing team to convince the market otherwise. Although this firm managed to restore its position in the market after using large sums of money, they are yet to recover their outstanding image. The most memorable thing that the market has about this firm is this negative publicity. For this reason, any publicity can be a dangerous publicity.
Communication Strategy
When communicating with their customers, customers always prefer to use either emotional or rational approach. The decision to use either of the two approaches depends on the target audience of communication and the product. Most companies like using emotions when their target audience is women since most women are easily swayed emotionally. When a firm manages to get their emotion, it would make them easily act in a way that the company desires.
The emotion can be captured in two fronts depending on the product. The firm can either decide to create happiness. It can evoke such emotional feeling on the part of the customers. Such products or services like snacks or a holiday destination should raise such emotions. The government can use sad, emotional reminders to convince travelers to use their seat belts. This can be done by running a grisly road accident where people perished because they failed to follow instructions.
When the target market is male, it would be appropriate to use some other appeals such as rational rather than emotions. The point is that men rarely get emotional and trying to win them emotionally may result in a total failure. It would require rationality on the side of the communicator in order to win them over. It will require the person delivering this communication to convince the audience with facts other than emotions to use a given product. When targeting men with a product such as a music system, they should be told the rationale of buying that brand over other brands. This would be the only way to convince them.
Works Cited
Staub-Bisang, Mirjam. Sustainable Investing for Institutional Investors: Risk, Regulations, and Strategies. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, 2012. Internet Source. Web.