Polaroid Advertising and Campaign Strategy - Essay Example

? POLAROID ADVERTISING AND CAMPAIGN STRATEGY Introduction Polaroid Corporation is an internationally recognized company established in the year 1937. It is an instant photography company established to provide electronic consumer products; it majors in the manufacture and sales of films and cameras. The extent of its sales extended through the world like bushfire. It has branches all over the world with its market base largely in Europe. The co funder of the Corporation is Edward Lands a physics student of Harvard. He based his opportunity on the market that grew out of the rising market of electronic consumers in the America (Bushman 2010). This market arose due to the increased demand for technology products. It is at this time of history that the world war and competition for the world’s meager resources came to the peak. Technological growth also became a subject of importance an inventions became an order of the day. It is in record that at this point in history industrial revolution peaked (Qualters 2003). The company manufactures films and it is on record that the recent sales were about 50 films and over 100 types of cameras worldwide. The company is famous for instant film cameras that were replaced very recently in the year 2008 due to the onset of digital cameras because of digital technology (Porter 20005). For a start, Polaroid went through the growth phases that any newly established company could undergo. As have been noted above, the growth was propelled by apart from existence of adequate market; the competitors like Kodak Express also enabled the growth of the company. In fact, Polaroid, using its strong strategies displaced Kodak from the market and made Kodak flee completely from the instant film technology field (Boone & Kurtz 2011). However much Polaroid posed stiff competition to its other competitors in their field of competition, there also existed other firms like the Nixon and Minolta who differentiated and specialized in pro ducts unique enough to file competition for Polaroid. This made Polaroid experience technical difficulties in their operations that resulted solely from competition from these firms. The state went as far as making Polaroid apply for bankruptcy state in the United States courts in the year 2001. The bankruptcy majorly affected their assets due to overtrading that the corporation was engaged in (Bushman 2010). Almost immediately, the firm undertook a reorganization exercise where it considered acquisition procedures, it approached several firms in a bid to strengthen its operations due to partnerships and mergers. This period could not allow Polaroid to be engaged in acquisitions. The company as a result needed to employ better strategies to increase its production of relevant products, the sales of such products to realize better revenue as well as engaging in cost reduction and minimization measures. One way that it identified could help it realize better returns was through thorough marketing campaign (Bushman 2010). Corporate/ Marketing Campaign Normally, corporate have both general and specific corporate objectives and marketing campaign strategies. The general major corporate objectives of any company are profit maximization objective for the shareholders to realize better returns in form of dividends. This is also geared towards ensuring that the investor confidence is busted and well directed (Cant, Strydom, & Jooste 2009). The other objective of establishing any corporate organization is to maximize the wealth off the shareholders. It is in the interest of any realistic shareholder to anticipate growth in form and nature of their firm. This growth is only achievable if there is profitability and that part of the profits realized is reinvested in prospects like long-term assets that are meant to realize returns to the company. Polaroid during its formation had an objective of being the world leader in film technology. It also had the objective of diversifying its asset base by being one of the participants in the stock exchange market. All these it had achieved. Polaroid even received several awards in the field of film and technology (Davis 2009). Polaroid also has the passion for growth, this it does through seizing opportunities as they present themselves, maximizing on their strengths and minimizing their weaknesses as much as they can. The other way to ensure growth is to deal with their threats by eliminating them and avoiding them where necessary (Singh, Becker, & Ryan 2009). Growth as well can only be felt when comparison is made with the performance of the other firms in the same industry like Kodak and the rest. The firm is also geared towards achieving market leadership. This it tends to try ensuring by doing works that distinguishes it from the operations of the rest in the same industry (Doole & Lowe 2008). Market leadership is pursued through inventions and innovations, creating new products to much the level of technology as well as creating solutions to the current problems. The products, services, and solutions developed should also be reached to the consumers of the products at the relevant time span (Filipe 2009). Polaroid Corporation is exercising to as well to achieve customer loyalty. This goal enhances sales as well as customer turnover, when customers are retained it means that there is no specific time that the company will run out of sales hence revenue. The company ensures that there is customer loyalty by providing the right quality and quantity of the pro ducts and services, the solutions offered should always be certain to the customers (Doole & Lowe 2008). If all these are taken care of, then a customer will always remain loyal and even invite more. This helps build the customer base of Polaroid hence the stability of its operations. Apart from just taking well care of the employees, the company is also geared towards handling its employees well, this is possible by taking care of the employee welfare in terms of work environment, the benefits directed towards the employees as well as the advantages derived. It is always logical and prudent to any aspiring employee to consider benefits and costs of any employment opportunity, if the benefits outweigh the costs then they will tend to remain better employees of the company and even perform better than expected (Filipe 2009). Other objectives include global leadership and Leadership capability. Global leadership ensures that the company fulfills its objects and responsibility to the society like being corporate socially responsible. It has always sponsored several societal activities and events like sports, health checks and many more others. A corporate has the responsibility to its country of establishment to become an economic, intellectual, and social asset most s to the surrounding community that it operates. Polaroid has always provided scholarship schemes to needy students all over the world (Kanagal 2004). Apart from the corporate objectives, a company must at times establish its marketing objectives. Marketing objectives ensures no derailment in the sales and financial management objectives of the firm. Marketing objectives of Polaroid include the maximization of the sales units, this it does by producing and selling products, which are technologically relevant. Products that are in demand will be sold in large numbers to ensure sales volume is maximized (Kanagal 2004). Another marketing objective of paranoid is to make its products a market leader in that the products are able to stand the test of time and hence go into the future and have prospects of growth. Innovations have highly supported Polaroid in its objective of product market leadership (Fornell & Fornell 1987). Environmental trends Trends in the operation environment most so the technology and film industry, which is very volatile and frequently marred with, changes, calls for very keen and careful operation management strategy (Singh, Becker, & Ryan 2009). The environment is also characterized with fierce competitors with even better and differentiated strategies. The environmental trend has of recent been characterized with change of technology and a transition from the instant film technology to the digital technology error. This slightly stabilized thee operations of Polaroid, which majorly relied on instant film technology. This was the major cause of the restructuring that it faced in the period it faced insolvency (Lancaster & Massingham 2010). Environmental trends are tricky to deal with since they are unpredictable in nature. In addition, they require a great deal of resources to take care of hence proper time and resource planning is of essence. Proper management further supports this. Without proper management, a company like Polaroid cannot be growth oriented and achieve their objectives. The company having realized this embraced a system of employee recruitment that attracts a wide pull of employee worldwide (Porter 20005). Advertising and marketing communications objectives Advertising has the major aim of creating awareness of the product in the market. The first strategy of realizing major sales is to make the product familiar with the targeted market. This also helps create loyalty of the customers. Advertisements also come with their packages, which entails after sales services and many other incentives that are geared towards attracting customers (O'Guinn, Allen, & Semenik 2011). Apart from just attracting sales revenue and units of sales made that is sales volume, advertisements may also have objectives such as those for making the withstand competition in a highly competitive market. Creating competitiveness also ensure that weak competitors are automatically driven out of the market resulting into a widened market for the remaining firms. The other objective is also that of identification of the potential market shareholding of the firm. Strategic decisions therefore have to be made by the relevant department such as the communications and coordination department in the formation of relevant policies (O'Guinn, Allen, & Semenik 2011). Communication is a vital component of an organization since it is the helm of all the necessary coordination to be made during operations in the firm. Polaroid had to invest so much on modern communication devices and subscribe to relevant international networks to facilitate on the same. Communications will also en sure productivity, therefore any organization, which has the objective of improving on their employees performance and productivity has the responsibility of developing good communication networks and programs that intertwines the operations of all their employees (Pride & Ferrell 2011). Another objective of communication is to bust the morale and hence motivate the employees. A motivated employee is one who can work and motivation is not derive from remuneration and financial incentives alone. Other ways such as facilitated effective communication can also enable employees work tirelessly hard in the achievement of the company’s objectives (Filipe 2009). Marketing strategy Since Polaroid is an international company, its marketing strategy will entail that off segmenting the market depending on the segmentation element that is selected. In this case, the geographical segmentation was appropriate since the countries that it operates in care of international boundaries and separated by varied geographical makeup. Geographically, the markets can be managed separately considering the rules and regulations that govern the different geographical set ups. The economic and financial set ups of these geographical set ups are also very different calling for the separation in management (Assael 2003). Their target market is also not localized hence in the provision of the services; the cultures must all be taken care of. Specifically language is of essence and uniformity or differentiation of this has to be taken note of. Market positioning is only to ensure that the position of Polaroid is not threatened and that it is able to even secure even more share of the market using its pillar core strategies and core objectives (Assael 2003). Campaign strategies For a marketing campaign to remain effective and relevant, strategies of how the campaign should be performed must therefore be developed. The strategies that have been employed by Polaroid over the years include; looking for completely new and virgin markets for their products, this it does by taking their products through market testing to such new markets, if they are received well then they acquire that new market as their own (Kurtz 2010). Another strategy is that of strengthening the products that they already have in the market. This it does by aggressively looking for new markets for their products and it involves engaging into competition with the competitors in the industry. Another campaign strategy is that of developing new products through invention and innovation. This is the major strength of Polaroid since its service and product delivery is based on scientific and technological innovations and inventions (Kanagal, 2004). Another campaign strategy that can be employed by Polaroid is the interactive marketing strategy. This will entail communication with every individual that the company targets reach. Online marketing or e-commerce has enabled the reach of so many customers within a very short. Several tools can be used for this purpose including networking sites and website (Polaroid 2006). Implementation and review of strategy This is done to ensure that it serve the purpose it was meant to. The strategies discussed above can be implemented by; first visiting the target market, which is the sure way to be certain that they exist. Several analytical tools of reaching the clients to sell the ideas and the products can as well be used such as the networking site, which spreads information like bushfire. Electronic media can be engaged and even the papers. Polaroid can specifically develop its magazine, which contains specifically the products that it offers and spread them throughout and specifically their areas of target (Polaroid 2006). To make sure that the strategies are effectively employed and that they are working well. Several other activities can be undertaken, which in general is called review of everything that has been done. Majorly, review can be done by comparing what has actually taken place with the objectives of the company. If they are in line of the objectives then the strategy is satisfactory. If not, then the strategy should be replaced. FIG: STRATEGY BOARD OF POLAROID CAMPAIGN STARTEGY Recommendations and Conclusion Polaroid Corporation has never faced much challenge if not only the insolvency of the year 2007 which lead to its reconstruction and reorganization. This it went through by a short change of ownership and then resumption of operations by coming back to its original name. Therefore, for further success the company must ensure the following should be done; continue the development of new products, which are up to date with the current market requirement. Management should also be enhanced further through recruiting and employing the most appropriate staff. Strategic objectives, which are future oriented, must also be developed and implemented for the sake of future prospective growth. In conclusion, Polaroid still has a chance of shining in the highly competitive film industry with well-developed and implemented strategies placed under constant review. List of References Assael, H 2003, Marketing:principles & strategy, Dryden Press. Boone, LE & Kurtz, DL 2011, Contemporary Marketing,Cengage Learning, South-Western. Bushman, D 2010, The Golden Age of Polaroid Advertising, New York. Cant, MC, Strydom, JW & Jooste, CJ 2009, Marketing Managemen, Juta and Company Ltd ,Cape Town. Davis, JA 2009, Competitive Success, How Branding Adds Value, John Wiley and Sons. Doole, I & Lowe, R 2008, International marketing strategy: analysis, development and implementation, Cengage Learning, South-Western. Filipe, J 2009, E-Business and Telecommunications: International Conference, ICETE 2008, Porto, Portugal, July 26-29, 2008, Revised Selected Papers, Springer, New York. Fornell, C & Fornell, C 1987, Defensive Marketing Strategy by Customer Complaint Management: A Theoretical analysis, Journal of Marketing Research , 337-346. Kanagal, N 2004, Role of Relationship Marketing in Competitive Marketing Strategy, Journal of Management and Marketing Research , 321-322. Kurtz, DL 2010, Contemporary Marketing 2011,Cengage Learning, South-western. Lancaster, G & Massingham, L 2010, Essentials of Marketing Management, Taylor & Francis New York. Levere, JL 2002, March 18, The media business: advertising; Polaroid's new campaign moves away from the family and toward the young and the hip, New York Times . Mollie, N 2008, Polaroid's New Focus, AllBusiness. O'Guinn, TC, Allen, CT & Semenik, RJ 2011, Advertising and Integrated Brand Promotion.: Cengage Learning, South-Western. Polaroid, 2006, successful strategy to increase awareness:Advalue:Polaroid European campaign. Marketingweek. Porter, ME 20005, From Competitive Advantage to Corporate Strategy, Harvard Business Review . Pride, WM & Ferrell, OC 2011, Marketing,: Cengage Learning, South-Western. Qualters, S 2003, Polaroid takes aim at new consumer market: Business, Boston Business Journal , 16-17. Singh, S, Becker, M & Ryan, W 2009, Social Media Marketing for Dummies, For Dummies. Weitz, BA & Sandy, J 2005, Relationship marketing and distribution channels, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science , 305-320. Read More