That's a Wrap!

I can't believe it's the end of the semester, and more importantly, the end of my college career! It's been an amazing four years and I'm going to miss Western New England a lot. Although it's upsetting to see this chapter end, I am really excited to see what the future has in store. This is my final blogpost, as my semester in Marketing Seminar is coming to a close. I've learned a lot of valuable information about marketing in relation to my major this semester, and it was a nice wrap-up of all of my marketing courses here at WNE. Through our course articles and readings, the brand analytics assignment, marketing simulation, and these weekly blogposts, I feel that I've acquired a more well-rounded vision of marketing as a whole. Writing these weekly blogposts has helped me expand my thinking about different course concepts while connecting them to current day issues in today's marketing field. I think that the skills and concepts I've learned in this course have helped to prepare me as I enter the workforce after graduation. Now that I've finished all of my classes, I am one paper, one presentation, and one exam away from being done with my undergraduate career. That's a wrap!

Subway's Deja Vu Deal: Will it Work?

I read an article on Ad Age that discusses Subway's latest strategic move. They will be offering a buy-one-get-one deal all throughout May, and released their campaign on Sunday, May 1st. Through hearing this commercial on the radio and reading this article, I thought their strategy would be an interesting blog to write about.

According to the article, a lot of fast food chains are starting to shift their focus toward breakfast options. If you're on the go, or looking for a quick and inexpensive morning meal, stopping at your local fast food chain is a pretty good option. These chains have taken advantage of this growing opportunity by promoting their breakfast menus and giving deals. Subway's sales dropped about 3.4% to $11.5 billion last year, which is the second year they've seen a noticeable decline. They knew that a change in their marketing needed to occur in order to help boost these declining sales.To combat this issue, Subway decided to shift their marketing promotions to breakfast, to try and get people in their stores in the morning. Having a large focus on sandwiches, they tend to be busiest during lunchtime.

This new campaign features what they call a "Deja Vu" commercial. They are promoting their new deal; if you buy a 6-inch or footlong sub before 9am, you will get a free 6-inch breakfast sandwich. This is a clever promotion, because it tries to get people in the store earlier to grab their lunch food, while also encouraging them to try a free breakfast sandwich. Once people try the breakfast sandwich and realize they like it, they will start visiting Subway not just for lunch sandwiches, but hopefully for breakfast too! It uses repetition in order to catch consumers' attention and continuously remind them that they will be offering this deal all throughout May. This is a "Deja Vu" commercial because they offered a very similar promotion back in 2012.

I think that this move is really strategic and clever for Subway to try and increase sales and keep up with the fast food trends. Because they position themselves as a healthier fast food option, they might have difficulty competing with McDonald's or other "traditional" fast food chains. We'll see if this campaign helps Subway make a comeback!

JC Penney & Pinterest: Effective Partnership?

I found an interesting article on AdAge that discusses the use of Pinterest in a recent marketing campaign done by JC Penney. This article caught my attention because I feel like I rarely hear of companies using Pinterest. I know that it is a popular social media platform used by many companies (and I'm an avid user myself), but this is one of the first real examples I've found. This campaign is going to feature JC Penney putting up digital Pinterest boards in 10 different malls around the country. The target audience is "Pinterest-pinning moms", which is based around Mother's Day approaching on May 8.

I was surprised to see that JC Penney has had a partnership with Pinterest for quite some time now. Apparently, this is the first time they have worked to create a "mall activation". The purpose of this is to promote the JC Penney brand and let consumers interact and explore the new spring styles they have to offer. It was also interesting to read that Pinterest and JC Penney noticed a lot of similarities between their target audiences. Brad Spychalski, who works in the creative and brand strategy departments at Pinterest, discussed how their target audiences have interests such as parenting and saving money. Their logic behind this joint idea was that they "'were able to create an integrated marketing campaign that helps JC Penney customers save time, energy and money, while also fueling Pinners with inspiring and helpful ideas"'. JC Penney will also utilize geo-targeted emails and post frequently on social media.

The article mentioned how traffic in malls has decreased nationally, and I think JC Penney is a store that has suffered a lot. The Eastfield Mall nearby used to have a JC Penney, but it did not do well and had to shut down. I think that JC Penney might struggle because of their lack of focus. I know that they are a department store with many offerings, but I think that makes it difficult to reach a particular market of consumers. Focusing on mothers will be a good idea for JC Penney, and I think that partnering up with Pinterest will work well. Mothers look on Pinterest for ideas that they enjoy and trust. By showing off JC Penney fashions on Pinterest, mothers may view them differently than they would solely if they saw them hanging on a clothes rack in store.

I think that this article relates to many of the concepts we discuss in class, especially now that we are working on our simulation project. Our group recently faced the issue of determining which target to focus in on. It's easy to say that your product (in our case, cold medicine) is targeted at everyone, because it is something that people of all ages need/want. However, it is really difficult to try and create a marketing campaign without a central focus on what target audience you wish to reach. Think about it: marketing messages need to be enjoyed and understood by the target audience. How can you reach consumers on both ends of the age spectrum effectively? I think JC Penney has had this problem, and I think that partnering with Pinterest and targeting mothers will be extremely effective and enjoyable for consumers!

Marketing Simulation: A Learning Experience

During the past few weeks, our course transitioned into the Simulation phase. We are working with Interpretive Simulations, which is an online simulation website geared to help students use active learning about business problems. This is the first time I have extensively used a simulation for a course, so it definitely has its challenges. We are put into teams of half Marketing majors, and half Marketing Communications/Advertising majors to bring different perspectives and thought processes together. My team members and I have created one marketing plan so far, and have advanced our simulation through two periods. Although we have been actively working hard to grasp the way this simulation works, we are still facing challenges.

The biggest challenge of this simulation, in my opinion, is all of the financials. As a Marketing Communications/Advertising major, I prefer and understand the more creative end of a marketing campaign. This simulation challenges me because I have to base the campaign off of the company's financial standpoint. Although it is difficult to grasp, it is definitely a useful skill to have as I am close to entering the marketing field upon graduation. It is important to understand where the financial resources are that support marketing efforts. A particular concept from the simulation is the Contribution after Marketing, which is something that I had not heard of prior to this experience. This contribution can give you an idea of how sales are affected after marketing strategies are implemented. The goal is that marketing will help increase sales and drive volume.

The simulation and marketing plan require us to also determine our strategy and tactics. As a Marketing Comm. major, I immediately think of generating brand awareness, strengthening brand image, etc. However, for this simulation we need to think more concretely, about measurable goals. For instance, instead of saying "increase profits as a result of marketing campaign", you would have to say, "increase sales revenue by x percent..." etc. Using the SMART objectives, Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Timely (there are also some other variations of this acronym), you can ensure that your proposed goals are able to be achieved and properly implemented/examined.

An additional challenge our group has faced while working with the simulation is entering our own decisions. Each period, we advance the simulation by making various decisions that are based off of our objectives. These decisions are aimed at helping the Allround brand (our simulation company name) succeed in the marketplace. Each time we advance the simulation, our decisions will impact company performance. Again, this can be challenging because we are dealing with all numbers here. Instead of thinking of how to improve brand equity, we are trying to improve brand performance based off of financial decisions.

Overall, working with the simulation has been tough so far. I think the biggest challenge for me personally, is the unfamiliarity of it. Hopefully, in time I will get the hang of it through working with my group each period advancing the simulation. It is interesting to see how big of an impact financials play on marketing strategy. It's not all about the creative aspect, that's for sure.

Kraft Mac & Cheese Targets New Consumers

I came across an interesting marketing story on AdAge about how Kraft Heinz is creating a new brand extension: Cracker Barrel brand Mac and Cheese! This article was interesting to me not only because I am interested in branding, but because I absolutely love mac and cheese. Prior to reading this article, I did not realize that Cracker Barrel was sold by the Kraft brand. Their new strategy to create a new mac and cheese product using Cracker Barrel cheese is extremely strategic and sounds delicious!

Through work created by their outsourced advertising agency, Kraft recently launched a new campaign to promote the new Cracker Barrel mac and cheese. Their commercial shows a man presenting an award at a spelling bee, making note of the fact that Cracker Barrel has won so many awards for their delicious cheeses in the past. Not only is this campaign funny and creative, the reason behind the brand extension is genius.

In many of the brand analytics assignment presentations, students discussed the consumer base that primarily purchases their brand. But, what if brands went so far as to target their less popular consumer base? This is exactly what Kraft did. Kraft found that they were lacking in sales from consumers that are in families with older children that prefer to buy prepared mac an cheese as opposed to shelf-stable packaged mac and cheese. To win over these consumers, Kraft decided to take their core competency of making mac and cheese, combine it with their Cracker Barrel cheese brand, and create a "premium" macaroni and cheese.

Mac and cheese is a staple in many people's childhoods, as it is an easy and fun meal to eat. Once people grow older, they often grow out of shelf-stable products like this, and turn to more "mature" foods, or pre-made dishes. By trying to influence consumer perception in creating a more high-end kind of mac and cheese made with quality cheese ingredients, Kraft can target those consumers who might have previously grown out of their mac and cheese phase. As stated in the article, Kraft is trying to reach out to consumers who are "looking for 'quality foods with more sophisticated flavors'". As for as in-store positioning, the product will be a premium to traditional boxed mac and cheese products, but will be below refrigerated or pre-made mac and cheeses. Although there are no artificial dyes or flavors, there are preservatives in this product.

Overall, I think that this is a really good move by Kraft. Because they're already so successful in their existing brands, it only makes sense that they will continue to grow their business through new products. I am curious to see if Kraft will be successful in trying to gain more consumers in the "older children/more mature families". I'm eager to get out and try this new mac and cheese!

Listerine: The Newest Lifestyle Brand?

In all of our class discussions, we seem to go back to one vital marketing concept: how does a brand achieve a deep connection with its consumers? Is it through emotional or humor appeals? How about cute babies and adorable puppies? Every brand seems to find its own unique way to evoke emotion out of consumers and build a strong bond. Listerine, the well-known mouthwash brand made by Johnson & Johnson, has recently been re-branding as a "lifestyle" brand to better appeal to consumers. Listerine has been stuck at a household penetration level of 16%, and is itching to try and increase the use of its products. An article I found on AdAge further explains what this brand has been up to.

Listerine's new "Bring Out the Bold" campaign was launched on April 4th in over 80 different countries. This campaign takes consumer and brand personality and brings it to the next level. In my opinion, this recent launch relates closely to our Brand Analytics Assignment, which we just completed a few weeks ago. The purpose of this assignment was to better understand a brand on a deep, emotional level through analyzing everything from their product attributes, all the way up to their brand essence. Through this project, we were able to gain a full understanding of what kind of people purchase our brand, from their demographic profile to their self-concepts and beliefs. That same kind of extensive analysis (obviously much more in-depth), was performed by Listerine when they went back and re-investigated their brand's consumers.

To investigate, Listerine spoke with 6,000 customers in a total of six countries, half being people who use the brand, and the other half were people who do not. I think it is really interesting that Listerine did a few focus-group like activities, as opposed to just surveying consumers. I wonder how our Brand Analytics Assignment would have been different if we were able to conduct this kind of research! They took the two groups of consumers (Listerine users and non-users), and offered them both spicy/odd foods. The Listerine users were more likely to select those foods, and they were also more likely to try new sports, or do adventurous activities.

Based off of the research findings, Listerine is able to conclude a great deal of information about their consumers, that will help them engage and connect with them on a deeper, more emotional level. This "Bring out the Bold" campaign is also predicted to better reach millennials, who are said to react favorably to the "bold" and adventurous brand personality. This new campaign also shows Listerine trying to personify their brand, and bring together the inner and outer layers of their brand and their consumer. I think that this campaign is giving personality and adding hedonic value to an extremely utilitarian, non-emotional product. I think these efforts by Listerine are extremely bold themselves, but they will produce bold results and strengthen brand value!

How will the Instagram Update Affect Marketing?

This week, I've heard a lot of my friends talking about the new Instagram update, and how it will supposedly "ruin" the social media photo sharing platform that we've all grown to love. Because I heard this update dramatically changes Instagram, I decided to turn off my automatic update settings on my iPhone to give myself time to decide if I want to get the update or not. The new update will no longer show photos on a person's news feed in chronological order. Now, the photos that will come up are going to be based off of who the user interacts with the most. This will be extremely similar to the way the Facebook news feed is set up.

After learning about this new update, I instantly thought of how this change will affect marketers. Instagram is one of the widely used social media platforms by brands, and I was curious to learn if it would help them or hurt them. I found an article online from Internet Marketing Inc. that discusses all of the details. Because the update will involve such a drastic change in the way photos appear on users' feeds, it is important that brands adjust their strategies accordingly. I'm going to discuss a few points and tips from the online article I read.

Because engagement is huge in all aspects of a brand's marketing strategy, post engagement will definitely be affected by the new update. Without the photos being shown in chronological order, marketers will no longer have a guarantee that their followers, or other consumers for that matter, will see their photos at a particular time. I remember at my internship, I would have to schedule various social media posts for clients. I wonder how this will affect post scheduling, since it seems like the order photos will be shown in is determined by each individual's use of the platform. The online article suggests that it is necessary for brands to continue engaging with their consumers, with the hope that they will engage with brand content. By engaging with consumers, hopefully it will increase the reach of the posts.

Another key issue the article discussed was regarding post frequency. Brands are now unable to tell stories to their consumers based off of a chronological time frame. This means that the time element of the Instagram posts is not as critical, but the content itself might be more important. I think to successfully avoid running into issues regarding this topic, brands should create posts that can be seen at a variety of times to accommodate different consumers using Instagram. Brands need to ensure that regardless of when consumers see their photos, that they have valuable content and are worth noticing.

Overall, it is interesting to look at different social media platforms and how their updates and changes will affect brands. This ties into the ongoing theme that marketing is always changing- especially because of its strong ties to social media. The best piece of advice I can give to brands regarding this topic is to constantly stay on top of the latest trends and updates. If your brand is using a social media platform to engage with consumers, be sure to check out updates frequently to see how they'll affect your marketing strategy