Modified Marketing Communication Issues - Example

Running Head: VRROOM ENERGY DRINKS Vrroom Energy Drinks IMC Plan Student’s Name Course Title Instructor’s Name 27th September 2012 Executive Summary Vrroom has been existent in the food service sector for sixteen years with over 5 million servings sold in 2011. Recently they introduced a new liquid concentrate Bag-in-the-Box (BIB) system, for large volume requirements. Vrroom Beverage provides its customers with great point of sale signage, cups, and product at a prize that is far less than bottled drinks. Vroom Beverage is a healthy lifestyle beverage program that provides consumers with an excellent profit centre and a great tasting product. Due to an extremely high competition with large and resourceful brands such as Red Bull and Pepsi, Vrroom has began to realize the need to re-evaluate its marketing communication practices in order to protect the brand and build its position in the growing market (Books, 2011). The aim of this report is to highlight all the issues involved in making the IMC plan for Vrroom Energy drink. Vrroom and is non-alcoholic drink that comes in two variants: sugar free and normal. It is packaged in an aluminum can that has orange and black colors with images of a person in a gym and a person on a motorbike. This non-alcoholic drink is a product produced by Melbourne Manufacturing Industries. The other major competitors of Vroom include Monster, Rockstar, and Red Bull (Weeks, 2010). An analysis was created that related to vroom drinks and they were: Internal Analysis These factors make Vroom energy drink to stand out as a non-alcoholic drink. Some of the benefits associated with Vroom Energy Drink include increased diligence, energy, alertness and presence of important supplements. The unique features associated with Vroom Energy Drink include the coloring of the container and the shape of the container. Moreover, include sports images on the counter creates a distinctive difference from other brands in the market (Malinauskas & Aeby, 2007). External Analysis The external analysis took in other soft drinks that were competing with vroom like Red Bull energy drink, Rockstar Energy drink and Monster Energy drink and could pose as a threat in making large volumes of sales. It also took in an analysis of the consumers in respect to demographics, needs of the consumers and the motivation point of view (Boyle & Roth, 2012). Vroom energy drink target market is young people on the move. Moreover, the people should be active in nightlife and enjoy extreme sports anywhere between 18-30 years. In addition, the group enjoys new media such as social media networks and they can easily be reached through traditional communication strategies e.g. newspaper and magazine (Bohlmann, 1999). Introduction 1.1 Vrroom Energy Drinks Vroom is a non-alcoholic drink packaged in an aluminum can that has orange and black colors with images of a person in a gym and a person on a motorbike. Vroom can is friendly to handle and utilize and also the contents increases diligence, energy, alertness and presence of important supplements. The tagline of the drink is “Vrroooooooooom” meaning continuing or increasing pace on what someone is working on. Vroom energy drink appeals to three segments of the market but the most important targeted segment is people aged between 18-30 years and active in sports (Bean, 2010). The product will be marketed within Melbourne and Victoria regions. Vroom energy drink will be sold at the convenience store, grocery store and gas station. 1.2 Target Market Analysis Consumer Data Vroom Company mainly targets the youth leading active lifestyles, urban males involved in sports such as athletics, hockey, motorsports, skateboarding, car racing and basketball. Additionally, this group may have other interests such as dancing, listening to music, and playing videogames (Olson & Lopez, 2009). Brand Loyalty In order to increase brand loyalty Vroom has utilized social networks such as Twitter and Facebook to increase communications with consumers. With time, the number of Vroom’s followers in the social media has increased. On top of using social media to reach targeted consumers, Vroom is associated with several sporting activities that have helped increase its brand loyalty (Gitman & McDaniel, 2007). 1.3 SWOT Analysis Strengths The main strengths of Vroom Energy Drinks Inc are the brand repositioning, product extensions, and the product versatility. One of the most important strengths for Vroom Energy Drinks Inc checking into the opportunity is their product repositioning as an energy-revitalizing beverage that comes in different flavors. Vrroom is also available in premium tasting slush and is formulated to rehydrate and quench thirst. This is also an effective repositioning strategy because research shows no other drink has attempted to do this leaving an untapped market for Vroom Energy Drinks Inc (Miller, 2008). Weaknesses A weakness that is evident with the Vroom is its major competitors who unlike Vroom, that supplies only energy drinks, have a variety of products that are popular. This is a weakness in that their drinks become a second choice to those of its competitors. Another weakness is Vroom’s previous failures in brand extensions. The company has tried numerous times to introduce new flavors such as; 3 Berry Buzz, Raspberry Arctic Chill, Peach Stone, Cool Cola and Loaded Lime.  The failure to do so indicates that consumers are unwilling to buy product extensions of the drink (Reissig, Strain, & Griffiths, 2009). Opportunities The opportunities for Vrroom Drinks are social media, promotion of their website, health conscious trends, repositioning their brands, and producing further memorabilia. Social media is without a doubt the largest opportunity for Vroom. One reason for this is that compared to competitors Vrroom Energy Drinks Inc has significantly less fans. There are two major features of social media that Vrroom can utilize; Facebook and Twitter. The pages that are currently on Facebook for Vroom seem to be created by individuals who wanted to share their admiration for their favorite energy drinks. By coming up with a better and more thought out of page, Vroom can utilize Facebook to reach out to young people. Facebook is also advantageous considering the fact that consumers want to interrelate with their brands and these connections can lead to better purchases as well as heightened brand recommendation (Pelttier, Schibrowky, & Schultz, 2003).  Moreover, using Facebook to expand the characters while promoting the brand is fine as the most significant aspect of Facebook and social media on the whole, is data extraction. With Facebook Vroom can not only observe what the people’s opinions are about their products but can collect important consumer information like age and gender, location, and interests, attitudes, and opinions. This information will help to them to fine-tune their positioning strategy and monitor the changes associated with their consumers. For the same reasons Facebook is useful, Twitter is also valuable in the sense that it is also another way customers can interact with their trade name as well as another way Vrroom can gather information about their consumers. Therefore, rapid development can only be seen as an indication of what is to come to Vrroom if they develop a solid social media communication strategy to reach the users of the social media sites (Schultz, Tannenbaum, & Lauterborn, 2003). Another opportunity for Vrroom is that society is becoming more health conscious. Although Vroom is not an overly healthy beverage since its only substantial ingredients are Electrolytes and Vitamin 'C', the most important perspective is that it is healthy. With society becoming more health conscious and especially with rising incidences of diabetes, parents and the general public are looking for a drink that will provide a steady supply of sugar to the bodies as well as prevent sudden rise in either sugar or insulin in their bodies (Davis, Lockwood, Pantelidis, & Alcott, 2008). Vrroom has already established itself as an outstanding supplier to a variety of organizations: from recreational to educational to military to athletic organizations. While this is a good beginning, a continuing effort in this regard will help promote the nutritional attributes of Vrroom as clients correlate the companies together progressively.  Threats The main threat facing Vrroom is the direct competition with other energy beverage companies such as Red Bull. Vrroom, unlike its rival companies is not that popular since it seems to operate in only a few countries. In addition to that, Vrroom is now threatened by the abundance of substitute energy revitalizing products in the market. Many consumers are opting for yogurt, fruits, glucose and more (LLC, 2010). On top of that, most consumers do not see the importance of energy drinks altogether especially if they are not working out. Based on these analyses, looking forward Vroom should focus on promoting the versatility of their beverages as well as increasing their appeal to populace. It should go international (Meusburger, 2009). 1.4 IMC Plan The IMC plan contributes to increase recognition of Vrroom energy drinks and this will make the soft drink to have brand credibility. Once the customers recognize the drink, this will create a competitive advantage of the drink over the other various types of energy drinks and lead to a high sale thereby increasing profits in the company. An Integrated Marketing Communications also known as an IMC is used to illustrate the complete plan by which a marketer or company executives communicate with their clients. The spirit, face or personality of the corporation as well as products should blend to present the same message (Kelley & Jugenheimer, 2010). The aims of an IMC plan is to notify, convince, and pay attention to each one stakeholder. This connection constituent present IMC with a stand on which to put up a more publicly dependable structure of advertising communication than a few of the precedent applications in direct marketing or advertising that view customers exclusively as targets. Critics dispute that MC has formed an acquisitive background of clear use. People are not only influenced to purchase goods as well as services they do not need or want, but product messages as well give an unrealistic outline of glamorous individuals, opulent standards of living, and contentment that can be possessed by purchasing the precise products and services. In this way, critics dispute that marketers influence the way we run our daily lives (Hackley, 2010). On the other hand, those defending MC stress that marketers are presented a great deal of acknowledgment for convincing power for instance, out of the many brand ads customers hear as well as see every day, not many are kept in mind. They say that out of ten innovative product ideas, nine are not a success, which would not be if the ones marketing were as calculating as the critics declare they are (Hackley, 2010). An IMC plan is not the same as a marketing plan, but simply a part of the market plan that takes in the promotional features of a marketing plan. The entire contacts with customers, taking in however not limited to: personal advertising, promotions of consumer sales, trade promotions, marketing, product as well as corporate positioning, public relations as well as consumer service familiarity are incorporated in an entire IMC plan. Every one of these diverse communication styles must be brought into line with and in maintenance of all the others and the general position or the Value Image of the firm (Shah, 2009). Marketers come across regular tension between the spirited drive of developing the most efficient and attention-grabbing messages and the fear of going beyond what is ethical, legal as well as socially up to standard. Marketing communication, since it is so open by in nature, is continuously analyzed for fake assurances, misleading reports, or the deflation of social morals. In the market of product communication, constant anxiety is present among marketers, who would like to make use of all ways that they can to convince the public to purchase their goods and services, and the countless laws controlling marketable communication as well as the numerous societal customs against which product messages are regulated (Percy, 2012). Responsible firms wish to expand the most efficient, attention-grabbing advertisement operations achievable; however, they are familiar with the fact that if they go beyond up to standard restrictions, which frequently are usually gray instead of black and white, they might smear their representation in addition to risking fines as well as public disgrace. To complicate things further, different listeners have diverse values with which they assess brand communication. Marketers have to constantly deal with remaining competitive while being ethical and legal in all the statements they utter say and the way in which they utter it. This is the reason why advertising communicators should have a fundamental perceptive of what is socially acceptable or not, what is lawful and unlawful, and the things that are ethical as well as unethical (Bohlmann, 1999). Ethics and Marketing Statements Ethics can be defined as moral and value principles that work as behavioral instructions for people living in the society. Unlike regulations and laws, these codes of ethics are not in writing. Examples are: I) Stereotyping where marketers must not create messages that reinforce negative attitudes towards the targeted audience: Women may feel offended at the manner they are from time to time labeled in MC messages. They may be offended by a number of the unconcealed sexual images that are set up in various MC messages that target men, mainly youthful men. The most unpleasant and most unreasonable from an advertising point of view, is the employment of sexual suggestion and images that is humiliating to the female gender in messages that target both male and female (Bean, 2010). Targeting susceptible groups for instance the children, the minorities, the elderly, the developing nations and the elderly: Some cultural groups may be upset by advertisements that depict them in a “gesture” type, purely to appeal to the widest probable viewers. Legal Subjects Relating To Marketing Advertisements Issues that are legally related to marketing communication are advertisements of particular products for instance tobacco, drugs or liquor, making misleading statements that cannot be substantiated, using exaggeration or hyperbole to endorse a brand, selling fake products, having dubious business-to-business activities and puffery. National Advertising Division abbreviated as NAD is a partition of the National Advertising Review Council (NARC) monitoring advertising as well as reviews grievances from consumer groups, consumers, local BBBs, competitors, trade groups, and others. On being presented with a grievance, it probes the matter and requests for claim validation, if necessary. Where needed, it recommends that the promoter amend the advertising in question (Clow & Baack, 2006). Companies should have self-regulatory policies that may seem like a weak substitute to government control but can be the best for various advertisers. For instance, agencies have to present a draft of a projected television commercial to system television “censors” as a form of approval of the point. The censors are able to decline certain visuals or texts if they do not match to the guidelines provided by the network and need the promoters to make amendments ahead of the spot airs (Clow & Baack, 2006). Companies may as well have internal guidelines and incase of any doubts of these policies then they might as well confirm with their lawyers. The industries should have some set standards that all companies within the industry should adhere to and the media houses can refute any questionable advertisements handed to them. The government should set a Federal Trade Commission and should be given the powers to assenting substantiation, assenting disclosure, corrective ad and the cease as well as desist order. It can also make use of the Trademark and Patent office, Local and State regulation and the foreign guidelines. Consumers are also a major factor since they are the main stakeholders and can be the basis of either positive or negative word-of-mouth product communication (Kelley & Jugenheimer, 2010). All these issues can be managed through social marketing shared ethical principles and endorsement processes. The communication objectives include: - Brand awareness - Brand knowledge - Brand image - Formation of favorable attitudes of Vrroom energy drink - Usefulness of the product Benefits of Vrroom Drinks Some of the benefits associated with Vrroom Energy Drink include increased diligence, energy, alertness and presence of important supplements. Vrroom Energy Drink should mostly be associated with sports and those activities that require a lot of energy (Bohlmann, 1999). Marketing Budget A marketing financial statement normally covers expenses for public relations, promotion and advertising. Each sum differs founded on the magnitude of the dealing, its yearly sale as well as how the amount of money the competition is marketing. Depending on the trade, marketing budgets may be able to range from one percent of the total sales to more than thirty percent. New firms may use as much as fifty percent of total sales for initial marketing plans in the initial year. Businesses that are not as big may simply attempt to go with the expenses of their direct opponents. The general marketing budget ought to include: - broadcast and Print advertising -Printing and design expenditure for the entire print resources, for example press and brochures releases, direct mail costs, newsletters -Web site improvement - Trade shows -Public relations -Every other exceptional event desired Media Schedule Table Publication January February March April May June Total TL weekly, Circ: 1.5 million, Target: Everyone, Pub: 20x@yr $25,000 $25,000 $25,000 $75,000 Peak Hotels, Circ:150,000, Target: Those dining in hotels $20,000 $20,000 $20,000 $60,000 CRM, Circ: 100,000, Aiming: VARs, Pub: Once in two weeks $10,000 $10,000 $10,000 $30,000 Business weekly journal, Circ: 2500, Target: Wholesalers, Pub: 10/yr $8,000 $8,000 Patterson supermarkets, Circ: 900,000, Target: All, Pub: 13/yr $25,000 $25,000 $25,000 $ 75,000 Total $ Expenditure $10,000 $55,000 $78,000 $80,000 $25,000 $248,000 References Bean, A. (2010). Anita Bean's Sports Nutrition for Young Athletes. A&C Black. 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Shah. (2009). Advertisement And Promotions: An Imc Perspective. Tata McGraw-Hill Education. Weeks, C. (2010). Energy Drinks Pose Serious Health to Kids: Canadian Medical Journal. The Globe Mail , 17. Read More