Jed Hatton Unit 9 Exploring Creative Product Promotion P1

20128821

Describe the promotional mix used by two selected organisations for a selected product or service. Promotional Mix The entire purpose of promoting products is to create awareness, persuade and inform customers about your product or service while identifying key features compared with competitive products. There are many benefits of performing successful promotion such as increasing sales and acquiring a greater market share, showing your products features and exposing competitive products flaws, teaching the market benefits of your product, explaining different usage of your product, conveying your brand image of your organisation and promoting new and improved features of your products. The common tools needed to achieve successful promotion include advertising, publicity and public relations, sponsorship, personal selling, direct market and corporate image development. Managers must use these tools together for maximum promotion to their consumers with minimal costs. Advertising Advertising is a type of communication that is meant to persuade its viewers, readers or listeners to take some action. It normally includes the name of a product or service and how it could benefit the consumer; it is also used to persuade potential customers to consume that particular brand and not other competing brands. Modern advertising developed with the rise of mass production in the late 19th and early 20th century. Publicity and Public Reason Publicity is the deliberate attempt to manage the public's perception of a subject. In order for businesses to do this effectively they must be put in the public eye in a positive manner as to create a good brand image. New technologies such as weblogs, web cameras, web affiliates, and mobile upload are changing the cost-structure. The disadvantages are lack of control over how releases will be used and perceived. Sponsorship Sponsorship is when a business supports an event, activity, person or organization financially or through supplying the products or services. A sponsor is the individual or group (normally a business) that provides support, similar to a benefactor. Sponsorship is a cash in-kind fee paid to a property normally in sports, arts and entertainment in return for access to the commercial publicity associated with that product. For example a company may provide equipment for a famous athlete and ask in

Unit 9 Exploring Creative Product Promotion P1

Jed Hatton

20128821

exchange for its logo to appear on its clothing and other assets in order for the company to receive brand recognition. Personal Selling Personal selling is where a sales man actually comes to target market doors and tries to promote and make a sale from his product. This method of selling is perceived to be quite intimidating and often salesmen can be quite bullish in their approach of the customer. A business that is looking to maintain its corporate image will want to employ good salesmen that will not give off a bad aura when they are at work. Direct Market and Corporate Image Development Corporate Image Development is the build up of an image and understanding of a brand in peoples minds. It is generally an accepted image of what a company stands for. Marketing experts use public relations to further the image of the brand, this can be done by the news, the media, journalists and online blogs. This publicity enables to spark an interest among consumers, create share of mind, generate brand equity and therefore create product sales. Universal Records Promotional Mix Universal Records signed Jamie Cullum and the rest of his band who play jazz music. As part of their promotional campaign they sent a copy of his new album to the head girl at every single girls school in Britain. A total mail out of 430 state and independent schools were sent the CD by post. They put up promotional posters in schools and urged pupils to back the bands in polls and send in requests on radio stations for the Jamie Cullum to be aired. Universal are using free gifts such as their album, posters and personal phone calls from the band providing they help them out by voting for them on radio stations. They use multiple tools to promote the Jamie Cullum brand which include; advertising around schools with posters; publicizing their band by contacting all head girls, this may have been done to attract attention from the press; personal selling is used when they went into all the girl schools to promote the band; a corporate image was being developed when they offered a phone call from the band themselves. This is seems like bribery as they are exchanging one thing for the promotion of Jamie Cullum. Despite the increasingly pro active and pushy tactics used by Universal they say they are unapologetic about targeting school children and argue Jame Cullum struggles to get airplay on teenage focused radio stations and music channels. Universal used Database marketing to target all the high school girls Advertising efforts when they set up banners in schools of the band

Unit 9 Exploring Creative Product Promotion P1

Jed Hatton

20128821

Direct Marketing to ring up certain lucky pupils for a phone call from the brand to increase brand recognition and corporate image. Skoda Promotional Mix The car company Skoda launched a new car Octavia into one of the most heated and competitive markets in the UK. They believed it would have a massive change on the corporate image and branding of the organisation. With the new launch they saw the opportunity to create positive perceptions towards the brand and the company which was the main objective of the Skoda marketing team. The Octavia was a completely new and up to date car reaching out from the usual target market of Skoda to the younger people, family men and working women who were more highly qualified. The Skoda owners would receive much more for their money compared with competitive models and the quality standards were also increased to that of any Volkswagen Group product. The Skoda marketing team incorporated a variety of promotional activities when proceeding with the launch. They went into shopping centers and other busy venues to exhibit the product, ran test drive campaigns; set up the Skoda challenge where a test drive is given at dealerships and gives consumers the chance to compare with other competitive models; local and national press advertisements were given out as a publicity stunt and also to gain recognition; they did public relation activities with newspapers, magazines and television programmes, they found local sponsorships to advertise their brand in busy events and they allowed the local dealers from small towns to use the national campaign materials in order to spread a consistent message to the consumers as an act of direct marketing. Reference http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advertising http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_Image http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salesman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sponsorship BTEC National Business Book

Unit 9 Exploring Creative Product Promotion P1