Executive Summary
The purpose of this report is to conduct a marketing communication campaign for Winfield’s Chocolate Bar, located in Houston, Texas. Currently, the organization primarily relies on networking as its primary method of communication with clients, especially when attracting new ones. As of the date of writing this report, Winfield’s Chocolate Bar has two outlets. These cafés have large boards at their entrances that guide foot traffic into the shops.
The company also communicates through its main website, which lists the products offered by the cafés. By leveraging the communication marketing strategies outlined in this report, the chocolate bar agency will enhance brand recognition and increase sales.
Situation Analysis
Company Analysis
The story of Winfield’s Chocolate Bar began when its founder, Winfield M. Campbell, won a packer lottery that included a horse, wagon, and bakery. At the time, Winfield knew nothing about baking, but after trying it out, he discovered he had a natural gift for the craft. During the Great Depression, he sold loaves of bread door-to-door and realized the importance his bakery had become to the community (Winfield’s Chocolate Bar, n.d.).
A century since its foundation, Winfield’s Chocolate Bar is an attractive outlet that offers its clients sweet chocolates that elevate their experiences. The company’s brand has become explicitly associated with the chocolate bar and is listed among the best chocolate outlets in Houston (Burford, n.d.). The brand is associated with high-quality coffee, cakes, and chocolates, as well as a serene atmosphere that encourages clients to unwind.
The café has managed to portray an image of a good restaurant that visitors to Houston could be willing to visit. It has also managed to associate its image with parties, and many people visit the shops to buy birthday gifts for their loved ones. The café’s peak hours are in the evenings, after people leave their workplaces.
There is a shift in demand on Fridays and Saturdays, with people more open to staying in shops late into the night. Farida and Setiawan (2022) state that offering superior products to competitors contributes to the organization’s competitive advantage. This company delivers superior products by following a set of principles when designing its products, ensuring quality and effective distribution.
Winfield’s Chocolate bar products are packaged appealingly. The company leverages its packaging to advertise its brand by placing its logo on all its packaging. The company’s logo is creatively designed, incorporating both artistic elements and a clear label for the brand’s name.
The store also uses packaging to convey key messages that the company wants to reach its target audience. Studies show that for brand marketing to be effective, organizations must have brand colors associated with their brand (Bytyçi, 2020; Henderson, Mazodier, and Sundar, 2019; Kaur & Kaur, 2019). Most of the café’s advertisements feature a combination of three colors: blue, yellow, and white. The use of these colors helps to establish a clear brand identity.
The Winfields’ Chocolate Bar employs various communication strategies to reach its customers. The brand maintains a well-managed Instagram account that showcases its two shop outlets, their locations, and the products available in-store. The Instagram page includes links and contact information to help clients place orders or submit complaints. The page also provides links to the company’s main website page and Facebook account. Nonetheless, the brand has yet to achieve the required engagement on Instagram, as it has only a few followers and even fewer likes and comments on its posts.
The menu for Winfield’s products, which includes cakes, specialty desserts, cookies and brownies, ice cream, coffee, and wines, demonstrates that the company’s offerings are reasonably priced despite their high quality. Offering superior products at an average cost is one way organizations can achieve a competitive advantage (Eldor, 2019). The cakes the brand offers have consistently received positive reviews, such as Aunt Etta and Oreo Cheesecake, which have been recognized as customer favorites (Winfield’s Chocolate Bar, n.d.).
The most expensive cake on the company’s menu is the Aunt Etta, which costs $105; the cheapest is the red velvet, priced at $8.95 (Winfield’s Chocolate Bar, n.d.). The opening hours for the two shops are from 11 am to 10 pm on Monday through Thursday, 11 am to 11 pm on Friday, and 12 pm to 8 pm on Saturday (Winfield’s Chocolate Bar, n.d.). The company relies on traditional marketing strategies, including product differentiation and word-of-mouth advertising.
Customer Analysis
Winfield’s Chocolate Bar has a narrow but loyal customer base in Houston, Texas. Demographics play a crucial role in understanding the brand’s clients, and the company primarily tailors its coffee, chocolates, and cakes to attract millennials and Gen Z. Psychographic factors indicate that Winfield’s Chocolate Bar customers prefer a cool, calm working environment and a culture that fosters community building. Studies have revealed that this demographic tends to be financially well-off and is not averse to paying for comfort (Indriyarti et al., 2022).
Additionally, direct sales have proven to be an effective way to reach this demographic (Studycorgi, 2023). The young, well-off generation is open to adopting new technologies and products, which requires companies to remain innovative (Elgammal & Al-Modaf, 2023). Winfield’s Chocolate Bar is likely to be brand cautious, and once they begin purchasing the café’s products, they are likely to seek other alternatives.
Competitor Analysis
Winfield’s Chocolate Bar’s direct competitors include small bakery outlets in the Houston region, as well as other well-established organizations such as Burger King, McDonald’s, and Wendy’s. Burger King’s communication strategy focuses on leveraging its popular flame-grilled burgers to gain market penetration, which could reduce Winfield’s Chocolate Bar’s market share in the Houston region (Dumlao & Pitichanoknan, 2020).
McDonald’s is a well-established fast-food company with a global reach and could leverage its economies of scale and vast amounts of data to tailor its communications in a way that is more appealing than Winfield’s Chocolate Bar. On the other hand, Wendy’s is an established brand that uses social media and television advertising to reach its primary clientele.
The bakery and coffee outlets also face enormous competition from small coffee shops and regional eateries. Popular bakeries in Houston include the Common Bond Bistro & Bakery, Dessert Gallery Bakery, and El Bolillo Bakery, all offering products that are not as well-received as those of Winfield’s but have had greater social media reach, thus attracting more clients. There are also several indirect competitors to the chocolate outlet, such as Godiva, a global brand that offers high-quality chocolates and has established a sophisticated brand image (Starchukova, Lykova, and Novikova, 2022).
Other popular high-quality brands that offer indirect competition to Winfields’ Chocolate Bar include Lindt & Sprüngli, based in Switzerland; Valrhona, based in France; and Amedei, an Italian high-quality chocolate maker that has successfully established a warm brand image among its clients. Figure 1 shows the biggest global chocolate brands by 2020 revenue, which could compete or establish strategic partnerships with Winfield’s Chocolate Bar.
The bakery needs to consider how these direct and indirect competitors position themselves to their clients. Examining your competitors’ strategies and building upon them provides organizations with a competitive advantage (Azeem et al., 2021). It must also adopt strategies to establish a digital presence both locally and globally. It must establish a skilled team that ensures the production of high-quality and innovative products. When selecting a team of employees to hire, organizations must look for individuals who are teachable and possess both marketing and innovative skills (Lyu & Liu, 2021). The company needs to examine how these companies use brand promoters, both in the media and outside, to effectively reach their target audience with their products and brand.
Objectives
Marketing Objectives
The marketing objectives are the goals that the company will aim to achieve in its marketing efforts, and for Winfield’s Chocolate Bar, they will include:
- Improving the local presence and brand awareness of the company.
- Increasing the company’s overall market share by 15% in the next six months.
- Opening two new shops in the Houston area in the next quarter.
Marketing Communication Objectives
Marketing communication objectives, on the other hand, refer to the specific goals and communication strategies set for a particular promotional purpose within an organization. Commercial organizations must have well-planned and coordinated communication strategies and objectives (IvyPanda, 2019). These objectives for Winfield’s Chocolate Bar will include:
- Expand to other social media marketing platforms such as LinkedIn, TikTok, and Twitter in the next month.
- Increase the foot traffic into the stores by 20% in the next three months by offering exceptionally high-quality products.
Market Communication Strategy and Action Plan
Advertising Strategy and Tactics
Objective
- Increase the organization’s brand awareness by 10% and increase the foot traffic into the shops by 15% in the next six months.
Tactics
- The marketing team of Winfield’s Chocolate Bar should focus on print advertising, placing advertisements in newspapers, magazines, and all food-related publications, and distributing them around Houston to reach the local audience.
- The chocolate company should focus on placing advertisements on the local billboards around Houston to increase the brand’s visibility and drive traffic into the organization’s stores.
Personal Selling Strategy and Tactics
Objective
- Improve the level of customer experience and have them leave positive reviews, promote their knowledge about the café, and increase sales by 10% by improving direct relationships with customers in the next three months.
Tactics
- Ensure that all staff within the organization are well-trained on how to communicate with the customers, how to upsell Winfield’s Chocolate Bar products, and how to create a positive and engaging environment with the client.
- Have the customers engage with the bakery’s high-quality cakes and chocolates by having them test free samples.
Selling Promotion Strategy and Tactics
Objective
- Drive immediate sales, ensure customer retention reaches 80%, and ensure the name Winfield’s Chocolate Bar becomes a buzzword in Houston in the next six months.
Tactics
- Introduce offers with a time limit to leverage the research that customers buy more on occasions with a sense of urgency (Belch & Belch, 2021).
- Offer products for special occasions such as birthdays alongside other promotional offers such as gift cards or vouchers.
PR Strategy and Tactics
Objective
- Give the brand a positive image through the media, introduce new products through powerful press releases, and increase the organization’s media visibility by 40% next year.
Tactics
- Develop a habit of regularly releasing press statements to showcase Winfield’s Chocolate Bar products and services.
- Form collaborations with bloggers, influencers, and other media personalities to promote the brand and its offerings.
- Get involved in corporate social responsibility initiatives to give the brand a positive image in the eyes of various stakeholders.
Direct Marketing Strategy and Tactics
Objective
- Have the customers engaged directly to feel part of the team and promote brand loyalty.
Tactics
- Have the customer’s email and phone data in the organizational database so that critical communications about the café are done directly.
- Have the customers fill out online or in-store surveys so that their concerns can be addressed directly.
As the figure 1 shows, these marketing strategies will follow a scheduled action plan.
Table 2 – Action Marketing Communication Plan
Campaign Evaluation and Ethics
The effectiveness of the communication strategies recommended in the previous sessions will be assessed by the degree of increase in footfall and sales. Online metrics such as web traffic, online sales, and social media engagement are also key indicators of marketing campaign performance (Dolenga et al., 2021; Li, Kim, and Choi, 2021). These online metrics will be measured alongside surveys to evaluate the effectiveness of the organization’s marketing campaigns. When implementing marketing campaigns, corporate organizations must consider ethical considerations (Szabo & Webster, 2021). Winfield’s Chocolate Bar must ensure its marketing campaigns align with advertising and marketing standards and regulations.
The chocolate brand must be aware of both federal government legislation and regulations, as well as those of the State of Texas. In particular, the company must be aware of the Federal Trade Commission Regulations (FTC), which are very strict regarding the types of advertisements organizations use (Ward, 2022). The business also needs to ensure that the target audience for its marketing campaigns remains ethical. For instance, the brand needs to ensure that the marketing displayed does not negatively impact young children and is not manipulative.
The organization’s communication and marketing strategies must also be culturally sensitive to the Houston community and not contradict its religious beliefs or other values. The aim of the message in the marketing campaigns must also remain ethical, and the marketing team should avoid certain stereotypes, such as the objectification of women. Finally, the outcomes of the proposed marketing campaigns must also be ethical, and the company should not use its marketing to promise unrealistic expectations that could promote unhealthy eating habits.
Budget
Table 3: Projected Expenses
Reference List
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Winfields’s Chocolate Bar (n.d.). Visit a Winfields’s chocolate bar location in Houston, Texas.