Marketing Tactics That the Owner Symington Utilises for Its Product The Nation's Normous Noodle - Case Study Example

Marketing Communications strategy and tactics that the owner Symington utilises for its product "The Nation's Normous Nooldle" Table of Contents Introduction 2 Analysis and recommendations provided 2 Promotion mix and Golden Wonder, “The Nation’s Noodle” 6 Advertising 6 Advertising and “The Nation’s Noodle” 7 Sales Promotion 8 Personal Selling 8 Public Relations 9 PR and “The Nation’s Normous Noodle” 10 Direct Marketing 11 Recommendations and Conclusion 11 References 13 Introduction Sales starts with increasing appreciation of the product in the target market and it is the point from where marketing communications strategies begin within the selling process. In order to reach potential customers with present various ways, the tools of marketing communications have become vital in the business process of the organisation. However, no single organisation can be sure about the future success of selling their product without creating own marketing communication strategy that is supported by their general strategic marketing direction. In addition, it is very important for the company to make their marketing communication strategy appealing with their target audience. The report outlines the marketing communication strategy and tactics, which “Golden Wonder: The Nation’s Normous Noodle” uses. Analysis and recommendations provided In 2009, Symington has launched a new product – “The Nation’s Noodle”, an instant flavoured hot noodle snack, which at first place was available only in four tastes: Chicken and Mushroom, Beef and tomato, Chip Chop Curry and Sweet and Sour. Later on, the company decided to extend their core brand and in August 2010 launched “The Nation’s Normous Noodle”, which is 25% larger than the standard size. They also presented a new flavour - Inferno Chilli. (www.RPC-group.com, 2010) For the reason that “The Nation’s Normous Noodle” was launched recently and differed from the original product only by the size, the analysis would be taken for “The Nation’s Noodle”, as a former product. Communication is known as a “transactional process between two or more parties whereby meaning is exchanged through the intentional use of symbols”. (Blythe 2005, p. 213) Communications involve the active contribution from both sender and receiver, thus, in order to be effective, communications not only have to include the information which organisation aims to share, but also have to be interesting to the target audience to consider it. If the information is delivered properly, this should lead to the desire on the part of consumer, who consequently will take an action. The above process is known as AIDA approach. (Blythe 2005) Marketing communications can be defined as “communications with target audiences on all matters that affect marketing performance.”(Pickton 2005, p.4) Marketing communications have a mix, which is also called “promotion mix”, which consists of several elements such as advertising, sales promotion, personal selling, public relations (PR), direct marketing. The purpose of all these components is to deliver a single message about the product to the target audience, as different information confuses the customers and ruins the reputation of the brand. Though, the message from the organisation about itself or its products or brands is sent by different elements of the promotional mix to the consumers, stakeholders, employees and other audience, all these five elements lead into each other, thus deliver the single message. The following table illustrates five elements of the promotion mix, context of application for each of them and the relative timeframe for the favourable results in the form of enhancing brand perceived image and product’s value, presented and grouped into short term and mid/long term impact in terms of benefits for the company’s image and future successful sales of its product. Promotion Element Context application Example of tools and channels Interaction Integration Short Term Impact Mid/long Term Impact Advertising Sponsoring Presentation of the company and their product by one or more advertising media that can best reach the targeted audience Broadcast media, print media, Internet ads, outdoors, and social media. Sales Promotion Personal Selling Build up product’s awareness and induce product switching. Increase sales. Emphasis legitimacy. Emphasis Image. Build brand preference. Sustain Customers’ loyalty. Sales Promotion Normally is associated with Marketing campaigns in form of the price discount or extra gift set with product purchase. Discounts, coupons, displays. Advertising Direct Marketing Brand differentiation Create customer relations Product switching Maintenance of customer relations Public Relations Creating positive publicity and manage negative incidents, involving the company’s or product’s image among the customer groups and other stakeholders. Press releases, public speeches by CEOs, sponsoring special events, loyalty clubs, above-the-line publications, Website, audiovisual and corporate identity materials. Direct Marketing Personal Selling Manage Company relations with stakeholders. Emphasis and protect company’s image. Enhances the image of the company Build Brand and product loyalty Personal Selling Company’s sales department, supported by the executives, making personal presentation promoting the product and providing assurance of its value. Sales presentations, trade shows, and incentive programs. Advertising, Public Relations Increase short-term sales. Emphasis company’s relationships with customers. Enhance Image and message perception Building long-term brand preference. Managing Relations with current and future potential customers Direct Marketing Create and Manage Direct communications with selected customers and the mass of the company’s targeted customers. Social Media, Catalogues, Telemarketing, kiosks, customer databases, Internet marketing and Web offerings and sales transaction. Sales Promotion Public Relations Establish and strengthen Relations with customers and other stakeholders Company and Product loyalty (Armstrong et al 2009) Promotion mix and Golden Wonder, “The Nation’s Noodle” Advertising Advertising is known as a non-personal communication as it carries the message for a significant amount of consumers and has to be clear for all target audience. As it was mentioned before, advertising has got plenty of tools, however, it is still hard to get the consumer’s attention and to obscure all of AIDA only by one ad, as usually advertising primarily is about catching consumer’s attention and raising the awareness of the product or company itself, thus getting the Interest. In order to cover all the AIDA aspects, it is important to use different components of promotional mix, as they are correlated. Advertising is regarded as a type of communication or correspondence relationship that develops between the producer, product and consumer by means of the advertisement (Young 2005). Advertising convinces people to continue their usage of a product or service or to purchase it to get good results. Usually advertisements are made to make sure that the product or brand that is advertised will solve a respective problem of the consumer or will facilitate the consumer to do a certain task associated with the product or brand. One cannot depict that advertisements always make use of factual information related to the product or brand. The truth related to the efficacy of the product or brand comes in the forefront when it is used but the advertising is there to make people take a service, product or brand and to continue making use of it (Hackley 2005). Advertising and “The Nation’s Noodle” Mainly "The Nation’s Noodle" uses a social media to advertise their product. The website is still under maintenance; however, it is expected to function during November 2010. The design was presented as a student block, and has got some attractive tools and features. In addition, the company has got an account on the Facebook. Thus, it is obvious, that “The Nation’s Noodle” aims to attract the target audience that spends significant amount of time online, going through social networking websites. Despite the fact that there is information about the company in Internet, it is not necessarily advertising, as advertising is known as “paid message inserted in media” (Blythe 2005, p. 220). Accordingly, a mass media is able to deliver the information about the company’s product or itself, however it is not the advertising unless it is paid. Sales Promotion In order to temporarily increase the sales, often company uses another element of promotion mix, which is known as sales promotion and involves short-term activities, such as money-off offers, free gifts etc. “Sales Promotions are marketing communications activities used to encourage the trade and/or end customers to purchase or take other relevant action by affecting the perceived value of the product being promoted or to otherwise motivate action to be taken.”(Pickton 2005, p. 639) However, there are several concerns regarding Sales promotions, only few of them are worth to mention regarding “The Nation’s Noodle”. ASDA, as a retailer, offers “The Nation’s Normous Noodles” Pot for 50p instead of 98p or five pots for £2. Tesco has an offer “buy 1 get 2 free” for “The Nation’s Noodle” Pot (normal size, which costs 98p. These offers are more likely a retailer promotions rather than the company’s, but it might have a negative influence on the opinion of the customers about the product. Firstly, as a short-term activity, Sales promotions cannot be repeated often, as it might turn into consumer’s expectations. Secondly, since the price is normally indicator of quality, reducing the price can have a negative impact on brand value, as the product becomes as cut-price. Personal Selling Selling is known is the most effective marketing tool that a company has. However, personal selling is often being ignored by the companies that concentrate mostly on other promotional tools. Since it is a very separate function, sometimes it does not fit the typical management structure within an organisation. In contrast to other elements of the promotional mix, personal selling is a two-way communication between a salesperson and customer, which can be face-to-face, telephone etc. Consequently, salespeople are able to look into customer’s preferences directly and then to apply the marketing offer and presentation by responding to customer’s needs. Although the personal selling varies within different companies, sales force plays a vital role in approaching and communicating with customers. It is worth to mention that saleforce is not only a vital part of the external marketing communications, but also a target group for internal marketing communications within the company, as the employees have to be instructed in order to carry out their task regarding to selling. Unfortunately, “The Nation’s Noodle” did not take into consideration this element of the promotional mix, besides probably encouraging their employees to communicate with the public during the Launch Event in Portsmouth. Public Relations Public Relations or PR can be defined as “the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organisation and its publics: customers, employees, shareholders, trade bodies, suppliers, Government officials, and society in general.” (Blythe 2005, p. 237) PR people and marketers purposes are different, as marketers are mostly concerned about the customers’ opinion and aim of PR or Public Relations people is to make an encouraging impression on the audience and to generate attractive image of the company or its product in consumers’ minds. PR activities often include creating news stories or any event regarding to organisation or its product in order to attract people’s attention. PR is also different from advertising, as it is not directly paid for. PR and “The Nation’s Normous Noodle” In 2009, combined marketing, PR and digital campaign that involved a nationwide sampling tour supported the launch of “The Nation’s Noodle”. The aim of that tour was to raise the product awareness and increase sales among the chosen target market, which consisted of males aged between 12 and 30. The tour included approximately six main UK cities, such as London, Leeds, and Newcastle etc. What’s more, on Sunday 27th of September, regarding the launch of “The Nation’s Noodle”, The Cow’s PR agency organised event, which was held at South Sea Common in Portsmouth. The idea was to drop hundreds of noodle pots tied with parachutes from a vertigo-inducing 150ft onto the crowd bellow. Only 300 people out of 1000 won places at the event, and were willing to catch one of the parachuting pot, that held £1000. The Golden wonder Spokesperson commented on the event and mentioned that, the main purpose of the event was to “... do something attention grabbing to mark company’s return to the big time...” (www.cowtimes.com 2009) This year “Golden Wonder: The Nation’ Noodle” celebrated first anniversary, where the brand owner Symington has announced a number of new products. In August 2010, “The Nation’s Normous Noodle” Pots were launched nationwide. Symington has claimed that like all other products in range, the new product also has no artificial colours or flavours. Moreover, it was marketed as a “more substantial full meal option.” (www.talkingretail.com 2010) Direct Marketing Many organisations and companies implement direct marketing as a main marketing approach or as an addition to the other approaches. Direct Marketing is defined as “... direct connections with carefully targeted individual consumers both to obtain the immediate response and to cultivate lasting customer relationships.” (Armstrong et al 2009, p. 398) The main forms of Direct Marketing are telephone marketing, direct-mail marketing, direct-response marketing, television marketing, catalogue marketing, kiosk marketing, personal selling and online marketing. Direct Marketing is also a two-way communication. (Armstrong et al 2009) “The Nation’s Noodle” plans to use online form of the direct marketing via Facebook, as they aim to create a “You’ve been Noodled Game” – a Facebook connect based application, which members of FB can connect via their Facebook profiles. The idea of the game is that the users can access friends’ pictures and then modify them with “noodle” hair or beards. (www.talkingretail.com 2010) In addition, as it was mentioned before, ASDA and TESCO do sell “The Nation’s Noodle” product online, which can be defined as personal selling. Recommendations and Conclusion In today’s rapidly growing competition, it is vital for the organisation to develop and implement the effective and flexible communication strategy, which build a positive and persuasive image and deliver a clear message about the company itself and about its product to the potential target audience through carefully planned and integrated promotion mix. David Cherrie, Marketing manager at Symington has mentioned that the brand Golden Wonder means a lot to British Consumers. However, majority UK consumers remain doubtful about eating pot noodles, as it is associated with snacking products, which already have a poor quality image. The major communication tool used by Golden Wonder "The Nation’s Normous Noodle" is social media. Taking under consideration that the company mostly concentrates on younger consumers, it would be recommended to do sales promotions and probably, PR events in schools, universities etc. Also, not to mention, that using personal selling in the retailer supermarkets, as a promotional element will attract more consumers and will help to broaden the target audience, as the supermarkets are always full of customers. It is vital to actually “mix” all the elements of the marketing mix, as they are interconnected and sometimes PR will be the leading tool followed by direct marketing and personal selling, other times advertising would be a prior followed by sales promotions etc. References Hackley. C 2005, Advertising and Promotion: communicating brands, SAGE, London, pp. 29-54. Young, Charles E 2005, The Advertising Research Handbook, Ideas in Flight, pp. 56-72. Read More