Advertising: Promotion of the Laneway Proposal in Australia and Singapore - Assignment Example

Advertising: Promotion of the Laneway Proposal in Australia and Singapore Introduction Laneway Festival started as live band music concerts and has been operating within Australia. Its growth has been tremendous and this resulted to expansion into Singapore. However, its salience has been low and it also faces competition from other music festivals, more especially the Big Day Out festival. It is therefore important that this festival is promoted so as to ensure that it is known more widely. This report will discuss ways through which the festival can be advertised and promoted. It will include various recommendations and their justifications on how to build awareness in a fun way. To better reach out to people in Singapore and in Australia, Laneway Festival should develop a promotion and advertising strategy. According to Marketing Made Simple (2012), promotion is considered as a key element in the marketing mix and it involves any communication way; be it one-way or two-way, which occurs with the customer. Laneway Festival should therefore develop a promotional strategy that will focus in advertising it to the target market and make people aware of its existence and the services that are offered. The marketing manager needs to develop a strategy for marketing communication. The manager is required to make key decisions on who the customers of the festival are, how the customers can be contacted and the message that shall be conveyed to them (Marketing Made Simple, 2012). Baines et al (2005) stated that the answers faced by the manager can be answered by a three-stage process known as the STP process (segmentation, targeting and positioning). This process is used when the market is mature, the needs of the customers are diverse and there is need to reach niche or specialized segments. For this reason, the Laneway Festival manager should first segment their market so as to identify the people to be reached. These are particularly the people aged 18-24. The segment will also show that these people are the correct target group since they are the people who are most likely to attend festivals. This will also help the organization to identify new opportunities for products in terms of the needs of the people. Besides this, the manager should identify suitable positioning of the festival and the communication strategies that will involve the kind of message to be communicated to the target market. Baines et al (2005) further stated that organizations that operate in environments that are highly dynamic will conduct segmentation frequently so as to keep up with the changing market. Such a case applies to Laneway Festival since the target market are always changing with time and they will need changes in the services that they are being offered. Some of the benefits that are obtained from the STP process include the enhancement of the competitive position of the company. This is achieved through provision of direction and focus for strategies of marketing like targeted advertising and brand differentiation. Already, Laneway is facing very stiff competition from Big Day Out festival and this segmentation technique could help it face off this competition. In addition, the company will be able to examine the market keenly and identify any opportunities for growth through acquisition of new customers and introduction of new services that will attract the customers better. Besides, the resources of the company will be matched more effectively and efficiently to the targeted market segments. As a result, there will be a greater return on marketing investment. Bloom (2005) stated that inadequate segmentation could cause an organization to miss a great strategic marketing opportunity or not to cash in on the tactical campaign rewards. Having segmented the market, targeting should then be done. This involves selection of the segment that should be reached out to. It involves distinguishing the major segments of the market, targeting the segment and developing marketing programmes that are tailored to each segment so that the company can focus on the customers that it is most likely to satisfy highly (Bharadwaj, 2010). The positioning of the company is also paramount to helping it get known. It develops the image of the company and will help in making the festival unique and attractive to many people. By establishing a corporate identity, Laneway Festival will attain a unique brand and this will help the company attain recognition. The key mode of communication between the company and the market shall be advertisement. Melewar and Vemmervik (2004) stated that there exist two dimensions used in advertising strategies. These are standardization and individualization. Standardization involves the assumption that faster communication has brought about the convergence of markets and consumers have become more similar. Therefore, the adverts should be made on a standard basis and that the same advert should be used to reach out to many people. The individualization approach indicates that there are many cultural differences and therefore adverts should be made to adapt to the culture and the customer. Jones (1999) purported that advertising campaigns can be easily done through a planning cycle. Laneway Festivall should therefore use this cycle in planning for the advertising. The cycle is planned in terms of questions. The first two questions that the company should ask itself are where it is and why it is there. This helps the company in understanding how customers perceive it in functional as well as non-functional terms. It also helps the company understand the customers and the trends that exist amongst the customers. Jones (1999) stated that these questions have to be answered because they help understand the company’s brand market position and its perception by the market. These have to be done before drawing the company’s advertising strategy. It therefore brings about the third question that is “where could the company be?” This is the stage at which the company writes its strategy and approves it before begin works on creative expressions of the strategy. The company has to carry our research to enrich and generate ideas and to screen the ideas that are most promising and remove the less promising ones. Laneway Festival will therefore have to carry out a qualitative research that will involve interaction among the participants. This is ideal because it leads to sparking of ideas from the interaction and gives promising directions to the company. Focus groups can also be used to uncover the reactions to the advertising ideas and this gives the company an overview of what and how the people will perceive the festival. The fourth question is on how the company will get there. This involves the creative process where ideas on campaigns are planned and generated. Here, research should also be done to evaluate, screen and refine the ideas. Since the adverts are at advanced stages and the research will be carried out for quality control as a way of justifying the investment on media. This research is also carried out so as to support the decision by management to often spend a significant budget on media. It means to give evidence that underpins the recommendations made by the brand manager when submitted at high managerial levels hierarchy. It predicts the place of the company in the market. It is important that the company is aware of its place in the market at this stage since this helps to realize the progress made and to make any necessary positive changes. Having identified whether it will be able to get there, the company should investigate if it is getting there in actual sense. The advertisement’s effect of the market place campaign is evaluated at this stage so as to improve the productivity (Jones, 1999). According to Stoklossa and Rempen (2010), advertisers seek to get new ways of getting the interest and appetites of their target market. Use of provoke-interesting words is deployed. In addition, use of images that pull the viewers up and force them to look at the advert again is a great strategy. This advert should aim to get the viewer to give it a second look. Stoklossa and Rempen (2010) stated that the second look is always key to successful communication since it makes the onlooker to analyze the details. Therefore, the images that evoke such a reaction are a trick that is indispensable to the advertising trade. Therefore, it is highly recommended that Laneway Festival develops an image that would reflect a type of festival taking place together with other aspects that the company can include and use this as an advert for the festival. Graphic design can also be used in making images for the advert. Pricken (2008) argued that to make an advertisement hit hard and be memorable, the creative processes behind the advert have to be brought out by the advert itself. The advert should seek to entertain as well as convey the message. The advert should invoke ways of visualizing the intended concepts and invoke an illusion from the viewers. The designers should consider using some of the shock tactics and humour, together with using metaphor and analogy. Through this, the viewer’s attention is attracted and they are able to get the information that is being relayed by the advert. Therefore, the images that are used for advertising by Laneway festival should use the above stated design. The target audience The target audience has been stated to be the group aged 18-24. According to Park (2010), music festivals have various genres that tend to appeal differently to different people. Some festivals are meant to target small communities while some target international audiences. The type of genre should therefore be selected depending on the audience. For instance, Gibson and Connell (2005) stated that classical, opera and jazz festivals are associated with upper class audiences and the highly educated while folk and popular festivals are meant for the middle class audiences. Therefore, the company should not restrict itself to the age group specified but rather, it should consider various types of genres for the presentations in the festivals to suit various segments of people. The company could schedule the festivals to have various sessions that will be varied to suit various audiences. Alternatively, the festivals could be arranged to be performed at different times for different genres so that they suit the various audiences at different times. Broad media recommendations The choice of media has been made difficult by the evolution in the media. The traditional media channels have become saturated and most media channels are seeking to get customer attention. Therefore, one media channel cannot have an impact since people are changing their channels to get a variety of information from the various media channels. Companies are also becoming more innovative in the approach they take to communications. Therefore, through detailed segmentation, the company can be able to tell the right media channel for use in advertising. For instance, it is not logic to use twitter for advertising yet the target market does not regularly use twitter. Therefore, it is recommended that the company uses the market segment to determine the type of media to use. Use of social media would be the most appropriate method for the audience aged 18-24 since majority of these people use social media like facebook, twitter, Google + and blogging sites. Using the social media also has the advantage of users sharing about the experience they had at the festival and this further promotes the festival. Social media marketing has the reputation of reaching out to very many people at a very short period of time (Baker, 2009). To get better results in advertising, highly targeted communications can be used. Therefore, use of the company website can also be a useful tool and customers can subscribe for membership. Through this, they can be emailed on regular basis and this would lead to an increase in returns. The choice of media should ensure that the message is seen by the customer. The choice is also reported by Marketing Made Simple (2012) to be a compromise between the volumes of people against the message. The budget should be split according to the type of media chosen, for instance, social media will require use of the internet and this will involve internet data and communication to the customers. This would be a cheaper method as compared to other sources like publications in magazines, TVs and other traditional methods of media. Scheduling of advertisements Flighting should also be considered so that the adverts posted on the media appear at specific intervals of time. It is a way of scheduling the advertisement so that it appears at intervals that will ensure that maximum audience is reached at every time. For the periods when the number of people accessing the media is low, the intervals of advertising can be low. On other hand, the times when the number of people on the media is high could experience a high number of intervals of the advertisement so that the target audience is constantly reminded of the festival. These advertisements come in concentrated forms. This mode of scheduling minimizes the amount of money that is spent on media advertisement. In addition, it is a way of ensuring constantly reminding the customers of the festival (Management Study Guide, 2012). Conclusion Laneway Festival has a great opportunity for growth in the market. The company should therefore ensure that it reaches out to as many people as possible so that it can be known. For instance, use of social media can effectively help the company to reach out to the many people who are currently considered to be the target market; that is the group ages 18-24. Since social media can reach out to many people at the same time, it will be the most important choice for media. Besides, the features of sharing can be of use to the company since customers will share the messages with their friends. Bibliography Marketing Made Simple, 2012, Promotion & Advertising Strategy, Retrieved on January 16th 2013 from: http://www.marketing-made-simple.com/articles/promotional-strategy.htm#.upalc-t0dgu. Baines et al, 2005, Market segmentation and Positioning, Journal of Marketing Management, 22. Pp 216-263. Bloom Z. Jonathan, 2005, Market Segmentation: A Neural Network Application, Annals of Tourism Research, Vol. 32, No. 1, pp. 93–111, Great Britain. Bharadwaj, 2010, Segmentation,Targeting and Positioning, India.  Melewar T. C. and Vemmervik Claes, 2004, International advertising strategy: A review, reassessment and recommendation; International advertising strategy, Journal of Management Decision Vol. 42 No. 7, 2004 pp. 863-881, UK. Jones P. John, 1999, The Advertising Business: Operations, Creativity, Media Planning, Integrated Communications, Sage Publications. Stoklossa and Rempen, 2010, Advertising: New Techniques for Visual Seduction, Goodreads Publication, Australia. Pricken Mario, 2008, Creative Advertising: Ideas and Techniques from the World’s best Campaigns, Goodreads Publication, New York. Park HyunHee, 2010, Communicating with Audiences: The Strategic Marketing of Music Festivals, University of Oregon. Gibson, C., & Connell, J. (2005). Music and tourism: On the road again. Cleveden: Channel View Publications. Baker, B. (2009). Your customer is talking-to Everyone: Social media is the new channel for customer connection. Information Management, 19 (4):20. Management Study Guide, 2012. Models of Advertising, retrieved on January 16th 2013 from: http://www.managementstudyguide.com/advertising-scheduling-models.htm. Read More