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How to write the Marketing or Marketing Communications Campaign
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Writing marketing or marketing communications campaign differs significantly from the way in which you would usually write your reports, essays, courseworks and dissertation. So, to help you I have displayed the very good Marketing Communications Campaign below (it has got 74% on the Master level). Use it as a guide to write your own.

MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS REPORT ON Bluehaven Shopping mall

 

Summary of recommendations

  • This report recommends Bluehaven shopping centre to use print advertising supported by direct mail and other marketing communications tools to achieve its corporate, marketing and marketing communications objectives.
  • Close interaction with journalists through PR will increase the awareness of public, living in the catchment area of the Bluehaven.
  • Internal PR will enable Bluehaven to promote itself via sales force of individual retailers.
  • Internet advertising will enable Bluehaven to establish its interactive nature and reach Internet savvy consumers
  • Sales promotions will allow Bluehaven to increase their short-term sales
  • Constant evaluation and control are highly recommended to reach objectives of the campaign and contingency budget should be assigned to deal with unforeseen events.

 

Introduction

The following report is devised to support marketing communications campaign for the launch of the new shopping mall Bluehaven. The main marketing activities are print advertising and direct mail. The supporting activities includes outdoor and Internet advertising, public relations and sales promotion. In order to attract target audience differentiated marketing will be employed to reach different groups of target consumers.

Campaign will be launched on the 19th of November, twelve days prior to opening of the centre and last for five weeks.

Evaluation of all the marketing activities developed in this plan will take place throughout the campaign. Tracking will establish the extent of brand awareness and effectiveness of the activities in terms of sales figures, awareness levels and attitude towards the centre.

A contingency plan will be implemented in the event that during monitoring and evaluation it becomes apparent that the current marketing plan is unsuccessful. There has been a proportion of the budget set aside to allow for additional marketing tools to be developed for the contingency plan.

 

Marketing communications campaign

 

Launch date

Marketing communications campaign for Bluehaven shopping mall will be commencing on the 19th of November 2002 eleven days prior to opening of the mall, and will last for five weeks ending on the 24th of December 2002. The rationale for that is to attract maximum amount of customers, who would be shopping for Christmas.

 

Budget

The budget of £1million pounds was allocated for this campaign.

 

Objectives

Corporate objectives:

  • Open Bluehaven shopping mall on the 1st of December 2002.
  • Achieve sales target of £661 million within one year

Marketing objectives:

  • Attract 1 million of customers from 1st until the 24th of December. This amount of people is average for Lakeside shopping centre in two weeks. This objective will be measured by CCTV cameras in the centre.
  • Establish a ROI of 5% for the first year
  • Reach £200 millions of revenue until December the 24th

Marketing communications objectives:

  • Gain 10% of awareness of the Bluehaven 1 day before launch amongst population in the catchment area. This will be measured through the use of survey on the 30th of November.
  • Gain 60% awareness of the Bluehaven on the 24th of December in the catchment area.
  • Gain 30% of the Lakesides market share in 1 year.

 

Segmentation: ACORN

Target audience for this campaign will be segmented on the basis of geographical location (circle with 15 miles radius), which will also include South East of London and on the basis of income. Potential target consumers of the Bluehaven are affluent executives, wealthy non-city dwellers and young fashionables.

 

Targeting

Due to the fact that segments, which have been chosen, differ in their age, income and spending patterns differentiated marketing technique will be employed for this campaign. Two programmes will be developed: first one to reach affluent executives and wealthy non-city dwellers and second to attract young fashionables. Different messages will be developed to reach these groups.

 

Positioning

Bluehaven will be positioned by benefit (largest shopping centre in Europe) and by class, for well-off consumers.

 

Message

Due to the fact, that Bluehaven wants to attract well-off consumers to shop at the centre, the message of the campaign should reflect their needs and wants. One of the possible options for the message is: Treat Yourself. This message reflects premium context of the place and stresses the desire of the individual to adorn him or herself. As Bluehaven will be the largest shopping centre in Europe this fact should not be overlooked and should be reflected in the advertisements: Visit the Largest Shopping Centre in Europe!

The message targeted towards affluent executives and wealthy non-city dwellers will be similar to the one targeted towards young fashionables, however the images in the advertisements would be different: first group of customers will be presented the advertisement with the 30-35 years old man in informal clothing together with attractive female happily shopping. Image for young fashionables will present photo of few young attractive males dressed in designer clothing. Choice of the image will be made on the basis on media, promotional method and target audience.

 

Marketing strategy

To achieve the best possible results it was decided to use mixture of pull, push and profile marketing strategies for Bluehaven. Pull strategy will be used to achieve the awareness levels stated above. Profile strategy will work towards interest building. Push strategy will allow to reach maximum number of visitors.

85% of all budget will be spend on pull strategy, 5% on profile strategy and 1% on push strategy. Rest of the budget will be allocated for contingency plan.

 

 

Print advertising

Advertising in print media will be the keystone of the campaign and will have local coverage. The objective of this medium will be to inform people of the launch and build interest. Different newspapers will be used, for example Kent and Sussex Courier. In general campaign will be using A3/A4 groups of publications. Print advertising will start on the 19th of November and last until 20th of December. Total spending for print advertising will be £345,000. Forty six percent of this amount will be spend on daily and evening press. A3 publications will be issued 24 days (excluding week-ends) and will cost £158,700 altogether. A4 publications will be issued 4 times and will cost £186,300.

 

Outdoor advertising

Outdoor advertising will be presented by 6 sheet size adverts on bus stops, which will be run for the period of two weeks (first and third week of the campaign) with medium weight with 4000 sites. This activity will cost Bluehaven £350,000. the goal of Outdoor advertising will be to raise the awareness levels.

 

Internet advertising

Internet activities of Bluehaven will include development of the web-site (£1000) which will inform visitors about Bluehaven and give access information, and banner advertisements. The objective of Internet advertising will be reach target consumers, who spend significant amount of time online. Banners will be based on CPM (cost per thousand impressions) and will cost Bluehaven £30,000. Banner advertising will be the key medium to reach Young Fashionables as, according to national statistics, the proportion of households in the UK who could access the Internet from home increased to 45% in June 2002 (www.statistics.gov.uk) and also 89 per cent of young men aged 16 to 24 have used the Internet (www.statistics.gov.uk). Banners will be positioned on web-sites with fashion background, in the on-line editions of fashion magazines and local entertainment pages. Promotion via search engines will also take place with Yahoo, Google, MSN and other popular engines. This activity is projected to cost Bluehaven £30000. In total Internet advertising will cost £61000. Internet advertising will take place throughout the campaign.

 

Direct marketing

Direct marketing will be used to reach prospects, thus to increase the amount of potential customers coming to the centre. Direct marketing for this campaign will take form of direct mail, which will be distributed to the local (living within catchment area) affluent executives, wealthy non-city dwellers and young fashionables through CACI system and its application InSite, which is suitable for Out-Of-Town retailing (www.insite.info). This activity will also require the purchase of CACI Postcode coding file, which costs £369,75. Fifty thousand direct mail postages will be personally addressed, which will require list rental of £50,000; production costs of £750 and mailing costs of £22500. Sales promotions leaflets will also be distributed. Total direct mail costs will be £73619,75. 40% of direct mail will be distributed 1 week prior to opening of the shopping mall and the rest during the third and forth weeks (most sales for Christmas presents).

 

PR

PR will be the part of Bluehavens profile strategy. The goal of this activity will be to build awareness and interest around the brand. Since editorial coverage is virtually free advertising, we will rely on PR to supplement paid advertising as a low-cost way to interface our target markets and receive awareness. PR activities will include press releases, newsletters, and on-going dialogs with key editors, writers and news personalities. Bluehaven will schedule key people to give talks and seminars. PR will take place throughout the campaign. Projected spending on PR will be £50000.

Internal PR strategy will present the push strategy for Bluehaven. Bluehaven will motivate and persuade individual retailers to take part in it. Individual retailers will teach and motivate sales force of their high street and other local shops to suggest their customers to visit their outlets in Bluehaven. Different motivations will be given to consumers, for example: larger assortment, special discounts and other aside entertainment activities. Bluehaven will spend £10000 for this activity.

 

Sales promotions

The objective of sales promotions will be to reach maximum short-term sales. Promotional coupons will be distributed via direct mail to the potential consumers at the commencement of the campaign. 20000 coupons with par value of £2 will be distributed to young fashionables. This amount was found to be optimal, as it is large enough to motivate consumers to come, but on the other hand small enough for Bluehaven to afford it. These coupons will offer £2 discount for single purchase for more then £30. On the back, coupons will have advertisements from several retailers, which operate in the mall. This will allow Bluehaven to reduce costs of sales promotion though cross-promotion. Estimated cost of sampling will be £2400 and overheads will be £5000. This will make the total of £7400 for this activity, which will take place during the first two weeks Bluehaven is opened.

Special contests will also take place from the date Bluehaven is launched until the end of the campaign. Twenty four £100 shopping vouchers will be given away to randomly selected purchaser at 8pm each day. This will motivate customers to stay longer, thus purchase more. Cost of this activity will be £2400 for vouchers and these contests will be advertised by print, outdoor and Internet. Overall sales promotion cost will be £9800.

 

Collateral materials

We will produce the following collateral materials to support advertising and sales:

  • Brochures and Catalogues will be published and distributed amongst people who would request them through web-site. Cost of this activity is projected to be £3000.
  • T-Shirts for children, who win certain contests and games, while their parent shop. 2000 T-Shirts will be produced (costing £0.5 each) and given away. His activity will motivate more children to stay longer and to come frequently to the shopping centre, thus children themselves will encourage parents to come. Other small giveaways will also be created (small cars, dolls and etc). Despite the fact, that children were not primary target market for this campaign it is very important to attract them, as affluent executives and wealthy non-city dwellers often do shopping together with their families. This activity will cost £2000.
  • 100,000 in store leaflets at the price of 2p each will be published. Their cost will be £2000.

 

Contingency planning

Very important aspect of launch will be contingency planning. Oppose to usual 5% this campaign will allow 9% (£90000) of the budget for contingency planning. This money will be spend to replace the activities which fail to work or on additional promotion. Detailed Media Plan and allocation of promotional budget are presented in Appendixes 1 and 2 accordingly.

 

Evaluation and control

Monitoring and evaluation will take place throughout the campaign. Amount of £3581 have been set aside from the budget to control the performance of the campaign.

To assess pre-launch awareness random survey will be conducted on the 30th on November 2002. Two hundred people will be questioned. Same procedure will take place on the 24th of December 2002, the day campaign terminates. For this occasion 1000 people living in the catchment area will be surveyed. Results of these researches will be compared to the target and all necessary measures will be employed to reach the goals of the campaign.

Sales and revenue figures will be tracked on the daily basis. This will help Bluehaven to determine the effectiveness of the campaign. In case when actual figures will differ significantly from the plan emergent measures will be employed and sponsored from the contingency budget.

 

Conclusion

 

This report has developed the marketing communications campaign for the launch of a new shopping centre Bluehaven. The main marketing tool chosen for this campaign was print advertising heavily supported by direct mail. The other devices used to support this campaign were outdoor and Internet advertising, public relations activities and sales promotions.

It is believed that the objectives outlined at the beginning of this report will be met with the marketing activities chosen.

Every step was taken to ensure that there was continuity throughout the whole campaign and each marketing tool complemented each other. This is so that the brand values will be reinforced through each type of marketing tool and there will be less chance for the message to be misinterpreted or neglected by the consumers. Continuous evaluation will be performed throughout the campaign and is accounted for in the budget.

 

 

Bibliography

 

Broadbent, S. (1994) 20 Advertising Case Histories, Holt Rinehart Winston.

 

Broadbent, S. (1989) The Advertising Budget, McGraw Hill.

 

Brown, C. (1995) The Sales Promotion Handbook, Kogan Page.

 

Brown, H. and Buskirk, B. (1992) Readings and Cases in Direct Marketing, 2nd Edition, NTC Publishing Group.

 

Fill C (1999) Marketing Communications, 2nd Edition, Prentice Hall Europe

 

Jefkins, F. (1984) Advertising Today, 3rd Edition, International TextBook Company.

 

Ogilivy, D. (1983), Ogilivy on Advertising, Pan Books.

 

Papatla, P. and Krishnamurthi, L (1996) Measuring the dynamic effects on promotions on brand choice, Journal of Marketing Research, Vol 36, 211-222

 

Robison, W. (1995) Promotional Marketing, Ideas and Techniques for Successes in Sales Promotion, NTC Publishing.

 

Roderick, W. (1993) Advertising, what it is and how to do it, 3rd Edition, McGraw Hill.

 

Wright, L. and Crimp, M. (2000) The Marketing Research Process, 5th Edition, Prentice Hall.

Lecture Notes

Mintel reports

European Retail Property Scene (2002). United Kingdom

Department and Variety Store Retailing in the UK (2002)

 

www.caci.co.uk

www.insite.info

www.statistics.gov.uk

www.icsc.org

http://www.mall-uk.com/landingpages/lakeside/lakeside.html

http://www.bluewater.co.uk/

 

All Rights Reserved ©2005 Verena Vaneeva