Marketing Advertising - Working Pattern of Advertising Campaign - Essay Example

Marketing Advertising Report Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 Background Context 3 Discussion 3 Addressing Current Needs 4 Justification 6 Look/feel of the Campaign & Target Audience 8 Broad Media Recommendations & Timing Issues 8 Conclusion 9 Reference List 10 Background Context As a part of real world marketing project, the researcher here is working as a marketing graduate for Laneway Festival. As a marketing graduate, the researcher is working under supervision of a manager, who is a music industry professional for 20 years with no marketing experience. Due to lack of marketing expertise, the manager has asked the researcher to handle advertising aspect of Laneway Festival, which is on the verge of expansion and has recently expanded its business portfolio by launching shows in Singapore. The manager has a clear objective of building brand awareness for both Southeast Asian Laneway festival and existing local festivals, but she was unsure about the exact marketing activities required to promote the brand. In such a context, the manager has asked the researcher to recommend suitable marketing and advertising strategy to promote the brand, thereby helping her to fulfill the proposed objectives. The manager has asked the researcher to focus on certain issues, while making recommendations such as, 1- propose strategic recommendations that can help Laneway Festival to address their current needs, 2- provide justification regarding functionality of proposed campaign, 3- illustrate look/feel of the proposed advertisement in order to specify how the proposed campaign would achieve success, 4- identification of target audience for the advertisement and 5- make broad media recommendation by addressing budget, time period and brief description of activities. As marketing personnel, the researcher will analyze the brief and try to locate anomalies present in there. In the next section, the study will conduct a brief literature review in order to understand arguments, presented by previous researchers, to identify the working pattern of advertising campaign. Discussion In the book, “Confessions of an Advertising Man”, Ogilvy (1988) had stated the phrase, “If it doesn’t sell, it isn’t creative”, in order to highlight the importance of outcome while employing advertisement to promote brand. According to Ogilvy (1988), success or creativity of advertising campaigns can only be appreciated, if it is able to sell the product/service. Hence, advertising campaigns cannot be created only for the sake of creativity. Kawashima (2006) found that look and feel of advertisements changes with the background story of the brand, nature of target audience and divergence of marketing objectives. Grabher (2001 and 2002) argued that incorporation of creativity in advertisements can be done by experimenting with theme, color scheme and character development. However, Kawashima (2006) suggested that marketers need to connect with needs of target customers in the designed advertisement in order to help target customers understand the relevance of the same. As the Laneway Festival is launching itself as Southeast Asian Laneway festival in Singapore, marketers need to highlight cultural and social trends in Singapore in the advertisement for targeting customers in better manner. Nevertheless, Smith and Yang (2004) argued that the tacit aspect of creativity makes it difficult for marketers to integrate creativity in advertisements in proper manner. On the other hand, marketers need to adjust look and feel of advertisements, on the basis of tacit understanding and prediction of consumer behavior. Addressing Current Needs Objectives of marketing and advertising campaign for The Laneway Festival can be identified as, 1- increasing the brand awareness of the festival in Australia and Singapore by double fold, within next 12 months and 2- increasing attendance to the festival by 10% within next 12 months (Laneway Festival, 2014). Certain marketing needs have been identified in context to the mentioned objectives. Penetration of promotional activities in Australia and Singapore is needed in order to support the marketing objective of doubling brand awareness. In Singapore and Australia, there are music festivals and entertainment carnivals that can compete with Laneway Festival such as, Big Day Out festival and Hostess Club Weekender. Service offerings and ticket price range of these festivals are almost equivalent with that of The Laneway Festival (Event Finda, 2014). Apart from these festivals, there are small level local music festivals in Singapore and Australia which eat up market share and market penetration of The Laneway Festival. There are possibilities that potential customers of Laneway Festival can be attracted by other competitors, owing to low ticket price or variety of service offering. Another point is that, price range of The Laneway Festival is quite high (more than US $50/person), compared to local music festivals in Asia and price sensitive customers might not be ready to pay such high price for attending the festival (Event Finda, 2014). As a result, market penetration and brand awareness of Laneway Festival is pretty low in Asia. Table 1: Campaign Objective 2013 Festival Attendance Targeted Rise of Attendance Projected Attendance More than 18,000 attendance, in Australian, Singapore and Auckland, collectively. Rise of attendance by 10% within 12 months. 20,000 attendance in Australian, Singapore and Auckland, collectively. (Source: Al Newstead, 2013) It is recommended for Laneway Festival to address their current need by deploying three way operational plans, 1- identifying exact needs of target customers and adjusting STP (segmenting, targeting and positioning) process as per target market requirement, 2- deploying integrated marketing communication (IMC) model to promote the brand, in end-to-end manner, for generating brand awareness as part of IMC and a new campaign should also be launched to involve customers with offerings of Laneway Festival and 3- developing campaign management plan in order to control variance in projected outcome. As a justification of the proposed campaign, Means End Chain analysis will be done. For the next 12 months, following activities will be part of the proposed campaign. Table 2: Campaign Strategy Time Period Campaign Activities February 2013 to May 2013 Print media advertising, establishing social media community and conducting social media campaign via Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. As part of unique selling proposition (USP), the advertisement series would showcase variety of music offerings for customers in the festival. Launching YouTube videos of previous festivals can also be used as a potential mean to reach customers. June 2013 to September 2013 Print media advertisements, web advertisements, e-mail campaigning and social media advertisements will be done. These will communicate the story behind Laneway Festival and try to develop a loyal customer base. October 2013 to January 2014 Social media campaigns, e-mail campaigning, offering 20% discount to customers for referring the festival to peer groups, road shows, bill boards and posters of the festival at back of vehicles, YouTube video uploading and also, online games centering the festival, can be used to generate brand awareness. In the next section, the study will use justification of the working pattern of the proposed campaign. Justification Consideration of research works of An and Kim (2007) and Zimmerman and Dahlberg (2008) reveals the fact that advertisements or campaigns can be regarded as pointless or monotonous, if they fail to convey message or USP of the brand or offering to customers. On the other hand, Smith and Yang (2004) pointed out that effectiveness of advertisements can be measured by linking the content of advertisement with consumer behavior. In such context, means end chain analysis can be done in order to justify working pattern of the proposed campaign. Table 3: Means End Chain Analysis Print Advertisement & billboard promotion Social media advertisement, e-mail campaign & YouTube promotion Discount on referring peer group Road shows Attribute Printed advertisements highlighting offered services and billboards with pictures of young people in the festival. Online video streaming of Laneway Festival, forming community in social media sites and blogging about the festival. Offering 20% discount on referral to customers. Brief music concert on roads and moving vehicles, a month prior to the festival. Functional Level Wide ranges of customers become aware of the offerings and existence of the festival. Young people, social media users and general online users can access festival information or even watch previous festivals. Target audience gets regular update about the festival through e-mail campaign. By referring the festival to friends, customers get a chance to enjoy the festival by paying lower price. Watching live clips and trailers of actual festival will generate interest among target audience. Psychological Level Customers get aware of the festival’s USP and the story behind it. Target customers get the chance to interactively communicate regarding the brand. Customers will perceive that they are receiving desired valued based service offerings, without paying additional prices. Customers get to know the USP and background of the brand. (Source: Laneway Festival, 2014; Al Newstead, 2013) It is evident from the above table that the proposed campaign would integrate functional and psychological values in one place for target customers and such integration would aid the campaign to successfully attract customers to the festival. Look/feel of the Campaign & Target Audience In the brief, it has been mentioned that the target audience would be young people within age group of 18 to 24 years. In case of Singapore, target audience can include students, couples, young professionals and bachelors. As working professionals have greater monetary access in contrast to students, therefore, young professionals and working couples would be the prime target. The campaign will comprise series of advertisements, via both offline and online media, in order to promote the brand comprehensively. Pratt (2006) suggested that look/feel of the advertisement should be adjusted as per target audience preference and communication objective of marketers. For simplicity of discussion, the study will consider the proposed campaign of Laneway Festival, which would be broadcasted through social media platform, in order to foreground look and feel of the campaign. DAGMAR model has been used to analyze look/feel for the proposed campaign (Leitner, 2007). 1º Perception- social media advertisements would present young people enjoying the festival and colorful and interactive visuals of variety of music offerings of the festival. YouTube video links of previous seasons will also be updated on a Facebook page. A vibrant and synergistic promotional theme would help young people to engage with the brand, thereby building their curiosity about the festival. 2º Learning- interactive online sessions with sponsors, web blogging and online community knowledge sharing on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, would help young people to know more about the USP and previous success stories of the festival and positive word of mouth will be created. 3º Persuasion- interactive, friendly and vivid feel/look of the campaign would create both functional and psychological drive among young people to visit the festival. Broad Media Recommendations & Timing Issues As operational activities, regarding media campaigning for 12 months period, has already been discussed previously in this report, in this section, the report will make some broad media recommendations, in order to control outcome of the campaign. Some key recommendations can be stated as; Recommendation 1- as the budget is AUD$50,000 and target market is fixed, hence, there is scope of using costly TV commercials to promote the festival. 50% of the budget should be allocated for digital marketing, 20% budget allocation should be done for public relation activities, 15% of campaign budget should cover print media advertisement and remaining 15% should direct towards discount scheme. Recommendation 2- 50% of the campaign cost would be used for brand awareness generation process, while the rest should be used for mitigating operational cost. Recommendation 3- frequency of campaign promotions should reach and be at its peak, from December 2013 to January 2014. For the first six months, focus of the campaign would be at communicating the USP and story of the brand to target customers in order to engage them. Campaign objective, for the last 6 months, would be to influence target customers into buying festival tickets and also, recommending other friends to attend the festival. Conclusion Few anomalies have been identified in the brief and they can be stated as, 1- functioning of the campaign has not been discussed, as according to means end chain theory, consumer value perception analysis is needed to describe the same, 2- the brief has not discussed operational activities required to make the campaign successful and 3- look/feel of advertisement has been ambiguously stated in the brief. Despite such anomalies, the brief has significantly helped to prepare the proposed campaign plan in this report. Therefore, it is expected that by deploying the proposed campaign, Laneway Festival would be able to achieve its marketing objective in future. Reference List Al Newstead., 2013. Laneway Festival 2013 Sells Out In Sydney, Melbourne, & Perth. [Online] Available at: [Accessed 21 January 2014]. An, D. and Kim, S., 2007. Relating Hofstede’s masculinity dimension to gender role portrayals in advertising: A cross-cultural comparison of web advertisements. International Marketing Review, 24(2), pp. 181-207. Event Finda, 2014. Upcoming Music Festivals Events. [Online] Available at: [Accessed 21 January 2014]. Grabher, G., 2001. Ecologies of creativity: The Village, the Group, and the heterarchic organisation of the British advertising industry. Environment and Planning, 33, pp. 351-374. Grabher, G., 2002. The project ecology of advertising: Tasks, talents and teams. Regional Studies, 36, pp. 245-262. Kawashima, N., 2006. Consumer Market, Media and Advertising Agencies: The Changing Quality of TV Advertising in Japan. Media Culture & Society, 28. Laneway Festival., 2014. History: Philosophy. [Online] Available at: [Accessed 21 January 2014]. Leitner, A., 2007. Marketing communication. Munich: GRIN Verlag. Ogilvy, D., 1988. Confessions of an advertising man. 2nd ed. New York City: Scribner. Pratt, A. C., 2006. Advertising and creativity, a governance approach: A case study of creative agencies in London. Environment and planning A, 38 (10). pp. 1883-1899. Smith, R. E. and Yang, X., 2004. Toward a general theory of creativity in advertising: Examining the role of divergence. Bloomington: Kelley School of Business. Zimmerman, A. and Dahlberg, J., 2008. The sexual objectification of women in advertising: A contemporary cultural perspective. Journal of Advertising Research, 48, pp. 71-9. Read More