Analysis of the Breakfast Clubs - Assignment Example

Analysis of the Breakfast Clubs Part 1 A recent research revealed that children skipped taking breakfast, which is very harmful to their bodies. Those students who skip taking breakfast prefer to take things such as fizzy drinks, chocolates and crisps as they go to school. Following the report, Kellogg’s decided to conduct a campaign that would teach people the importance of children eating breakfast before going to school. Coincidentally, the company had in 2011 launched a campaign called “help give a child breakfast” intended to ensure that all school going children had breakfast. The company is a world leader in the production of cereals selling its products to over 180 countries (Mattern, 2011, 34). The company’s drive to ensure that students get breakfast has made it since 1998 collaborate with different schools to form breakfast clubs which would ensure that students got a healthy meal in the morning. The breakfast clubs not only ensure that students have a healthy meal in for breakfast, but they also give the children a forum to learn, socialize and play with their classmates. The company conducted its research and found out that schools were experiencing difficulties in the funding the breakfast clubs and this had resulted to the closure of a good number of them with them remaining clubs facing a risk of being closed down. The reason, which made the schools find it had to continue funding the breakfast clubs was the recent government move to implement budget cuts. To help avoid the closure of the breakfast clubs and stress the importance of students taking breakfast, the company decided to come up with a communicating plan to help communicate to the involved parties the importance of children having breakfast. Step 1: Message To ensure that its message was effective, the company decided that the external and internal stakeholders were its main target when coming up with the communication plan. The internal stakeholders were its employees while the external stakeholders were the government, school administration, parents and students. The company intended to enlighten the government on the importance of students taking breakfast and the negative implications of the budget cuts policy it had recently adopted (Mattern, 2011, 42). The company would bring to the government’s attentions that the adopted budget cuts made it hard for schools to continue funding breakfast clubs, which ensured students had a healthy breakfast. To the parents, the company intended to tell them about how important it was for students to take breakfast and their role in ensuring that their children took breakfast. Schools needed to be told about the importance of teaching students concerning the need of taking breakfast and ensure that they took breakfast by establishing the breakfast clubs. The company’s employee needed to be told about the importance of embracing the company’s campaign of ensuring students take breakfast in the morning (Smith, 2007, 32). Step 2: Encoding The second step in communication that the company observed was encoding its message so that it could reach to those intended to in the right manner. The company intended to prove to the government the importance of the breakfast clubs, which were important in ensuring that students get a healthy breakfast. The company had to ensure that it encoded the message in a manner that would ensure that it did not appear as a marketing strategy to the intended parties (Nestle, 2013, 65). To achieve this, the company included in its message its role in ensuring that students have a healthy breakfast by mentioning the breakfast clubs it helped put up. There was also the likelihood of people confusing the company’s message as other food companies made messages that supported breakfast clubs and thus the company had to encode it in a way that would remove this confusion. Step 3: Message Transmission The company intended its message to reach to as many people as possible, and this made it use different means to communicate its intended message. The company also had different message receivers and thus used different mediums to help deliver the message effectively. It sent letters to the MPS and schools explaining to them the importance of the breakfast clubs. It sent press releases to radios, newspapers and television that would be read out to people. To communicate to its employees, it used internal briefings and posters (Tybout & Calder, 2010, 56). Television and radio advertisements were widely used as they easily transmitted the message to each of its intended parties. The internet was also a medium used by the company especially its website where people would get important information about the campaign. People would get more information about the campaign as they would interact with the company employees. The company’s employees would receive voicemail messages pleading and encouraging them in their own ways to support the program. The company included in 8 million corn flakes boxes the campaign message meaning that everybody buying these cornflakes read the message (Grimm, 2002, 77). Face to face, communication is an effective method of communication and this made the company use it in the transmission of its message. It invited the country’s MPs to some of its local breakfast clubs to help them understand the program better. Step 4: Decoding The company greatly helped people to encode the intended message and this is evident by the response the campaign got. Step 5: Response Following the intensive and vigorous campaign, the communication plan had Cleary worked based on the response the company got. One response it got was the active participation of its employees as they attended close to 15 breakfast club meetings. The company also raised enough money that is projected to provide over a million breakfast clubs by the year ending 2012. The government also heeded to the campaign as it gave grants to around 500 schools out of the 700 schools that had applied for the funding (Tybout & Calder, 2010, 60). Part 2 Internal and internal stakeholders (government, schools and parents) were the two groups whose the message was intended for and thus the company used two various communication methods to suite the two groups. In communicating to its employee, who were the internal stakeholders, the company used both written and oral communication methods. In the oral method, the company used the face-to-face form whereby its employees were told to support the campaign through talk (Grimm, 2002, 80). Under the written method, posters and internal briefings through memos were used. The other group of people whom the message was intended to was the external stakeholders and thus the company used different communication forms. The mostly used mediums under the means were advertisements through TV and radio and online communication. The company planned carefully to overcome barriers such as message confusion and misunderstanding by the public. For instance, they wrote the campaign message on their corn flakes products so that people would not confuse its message with the one given by other food companies (Tybout & Calder, 2010, 62). Bibliography Grimm, R. T. (2002). Notable American philanthropists: biographies of giving and volunteering. Westport, Conn, Greenwood Press. Mattern, J. (2011). The Kellogg family: breakfast cereal pioneers. Edina, Minn, ABDO Pub. Co. Nestle, M. (2013). Food politics how the food industry influences nutrition and health. Berkeley, Calif, University of California Press. http://site.ebrary.com/id/10704704. Tybout, A. M., & Calder, B. J. (2010). Kellogg on marketing. Hoboken, N.J., Wiley. http://public.eblib.com/EBLPublic/PublicView.do?ptiID=588942. Smith, A. F. (2007). The Oxford companion to American food and drink. New York, Oxford University Press. Read More