Advertising: Sales Promotion Exercise - Coursework Example

Advertising: Sales Promotion The successful marketing campaigns The McDonald’s Olympic burgers The promotion as deigned to promote sales for McDonald’s. The company promoted that foe every medal won it will give free burgers to customers. Customers were given some printed T-shirts and if they were at the McDonald’s during an Olympics games and a medal was won by an America athlete, they would get free burgers. Unfortunately, there were some factors that McDonald’s had not boycotted. McDonald’s did not expect the American athletes to win as many medals as they did. They based their numbers on the previous Olympics competition that the US had been involved in, which was back in 1976. The US did not participate in the 1980 Olympics games because they were held in Russia and there were diplomatic issues between Russia and US. So in the 1984 Olympics when the US hosted the games, the Russians and their friends (Germans and other allies) also boycotted the games. Because Russia and Germany were the strongest opponents for US, it meant that their exclusion from the games would lead to America winning more medals than ever. This marketing promotion did not work so well for McDonald’s because they ended up giving way more free burgers and free food than they had anticipated. This is why as Joel (J013) says, it is necessary for a firm to know that the promotion they are about to run cannot cost them more that it will earn them. Walkers Potato Chips Marketing promotion can be very expensive if not well thought out (Gibson, 2012). The other marketing campaign that was one of the worst is the Walkers Potato Chips marketing camping in UK. The idea was to make the customers to buy as many Walkers Potato Chips bags as possible every day. Each time a customer would buy a bag of Walkers Potato Chips, he or she was given a code that he could enter into a website, then the customer could be given a chance to predict anything, such as where and when it is going to rain and if they prediction was right, they would get 10 pounds. It being during spring, rain was easy to predict. It later turned out that for every three bags of Walkers Potato Chips that the company was selling worth 6 pounds, the firm was giving out 10 pounds. While this promotion was great in meeting most of the elements of a good promotion, it failed in one major way. Because it was not sustainable in the long run, it did not manage to lock the customers to remain faithful to the firm. If anything, it might have cost the fir not only in terms of money but in terms of bad faith by the customers. This is because the firm started young to use all mean to try and stop the customers from claiming any more money from their correct predications. In fact, they pulled the website down, and has was bad image for the firm. As James (2013) says, promotions have the potential to affect the firms image and even led to legal issues. This marketing strategy was effective in driving sales, but was very poor in meeting the bottom line of the business. The firm was losing more money in implanting the campaign than it was making. The failure was in designing the campaign in such way that it was impossible for the firm to lose money. However designed the sales promotion had no foresight at all. He did not foresee any chances that the promotion could end up in a disaster. In fact, towards the end of spring when rain is in abundant in London, the firm was calculating a loss of over 1 million pounds. Tesco promotion The other marketing failure that caught the eye of the media was the Tesco promotion. Tesco, which is a UK supermarket, promised their customers that if they could find any product hat was cheaper in Asda, a rival supermarket, Tesco would double the difference and compensate it to the customers. This promotion was geared towards not only driving sales but also proving to customers that Tesco was t he only supermarket where they could save money. The designers of this promotion oversaw one particular issue that came back to haunt them later. First, they assumed that customers could not take the pain fog going the two supermarkets comparing prices of groceries. Second, they assumed that even if the customers did, they could only do this for the thongs that they actually needed. This is where this promotion went wrong. First, they were wrong in whether the customers could actually go and compare prices. In fact, most customers worked together to beat the difficult of comparing prices. They were able to immediately locate the products that were sold cheaper at Asda. Secondly, the assumption that the customers would only buy the things they needed was also wrong. In fact, the customers went out and bought as many products from Asda that were cheaper at Asda than at Tesco, even the odd items that they did not need. The issue was an issue of simple math. If a customer could buy an odd products that he or she did not need whose price difference was big enough for them to get more money from Tesco to cover the cost they had incurred at Asda, they would make enough profit and use it to shop for the things that they did need at Asda. Tesco ended up losing the over 40 million pounds and had to alter change the structure of the promotion by placing a 20 pound cap on the double-your-money marketing promotion. The successful marketing campaigns Healthy Choice Growing Coupon This marketing camping combines social media strategy and discount coupons. The idea was for the customer to increase the discount for the coupon by liking the Healthy Choice facebook page. The more the likes the page got, the more the discount coupon increased. This was very successful in very many ways. First, it increased the customer engagement and Healthy Choice was able to engage the customers and know what they wanted. Secondly, it increased the number of facebook likes for Healthy Choice from only about 7000 likes to over 60,000 likes. This campaign was successful in looking at all the five elements of promotion. With regard to making the potential customer to stop and ponder about the promotion or the message of the promotion, it managed to do this became it used a unique way of delivering the coupons to the customers. By using social media and only asking the customers to like the page, they managed to get the attention of the some many people. Healthy Choice had realized that a big percentage of its customers and even potential customers were social media savvy. As a result, they knew that it would be prudent to combine the social media with their coupon promotion. The method was also persuasive in that it appealed it the potential customers. Everyone needs a discount and this was a good way for the customers to know that they could get a discount. Furthermore, the customers knew that they could get more discounts if only they managed to get as many of their friends to like the Healthy Choice Facebook page. It was also had a locking power in that as long as the customers liked the Facebook page, they were now connected to the page and they could now be able to receive updates from the Facebook page as often as Healthy Choice updated their page. What this means was that even after the promotion, Healthy Choice still retained these customers. This is important because most promotions only engage the customers for the time the promotion will last but then lose the customer as soon as the promotion is complete. British Telecommunications Company Another successful marketing camping was from British Telecommunications Company Orange. The firm offered to give a block buster voice over for tweets from followers. The followers were asked to tweet their tweets with a hash tug and then the tweets would be given a movie-class voice over. The firms managed to increase their followers while at the same time drive traffic to their site. The promotion also helped to achieve customer engagement for the firm. This promotion was useful because it had the four elements of promotion. To begin with, it had the power to make the person stop and ponder about what was being offered. Even of the targeted people were not gaining any financial or economic benefit from the promotion, it was a lot of fan for them to have their tweets given a vive over. Because it was a fun thing to do, a lot of people went ahead followed British Telecommunications company Orange’s twitter page. At the same time, those who had already done so were now tweeting about the firm and this gave the firm more visibility. The marketing campaign was also effective in persuading the potential customers. This was because they were using a platform that is relevant to the customer. It was also easy for the customers to be able to understand what the promotion was all about. Furthermore, the promotion made it easy for the firm to engage the customer not only in the time of the promotion but also in the long term, which is good thing for a promotion campaign. References Gibson, P. (2012). Modern Marketing and Promotion design: Looking at the Elements of Promotion. New York, NY: Pearson Books. James, A. (2013). Keeping Promotions in Line With Corporate Strategy. New York, NY: Pearson Books. Joel, P. (2013). Markting and Promotion: The Modern Way. New York, NY: Pearson Books. Read More