Promotional Marketing Campaign for Hookey - Business Plan Example

Introduction

Hookey is a fashion magazine publication that will mainly target Chinese students between the ages of sixteen to twenty-eight. The main purpose of this Magazine will be to give fashion ideas to young people in respect to the appreciation of Chinese culture. Moreover, this magazine will provide information for not only the Chinese audience but also individuals from the general Public with a desire to learn about Chinese cultural practices through fashion. Further, Hookey will provide a channel whereby students can interact and share ideas, meet through various magazine- sponsored activities to exchange knowledge and portray their talent to the public. Generally, this magazine will not only entertain the audience but also educate them about the latest fashion trends derived from Chinese culture, provide a platform for students to exploit their potential and inform them about ideas, ways and tips that relate to their day to day lives in regards to fashion (Moeran, 2006).

Vision Statement

Hookey will give a unique perspective about the way Chinese fashion culture is viewed. It will build a place where all individuals can not only be entertained, but also access information about the latest Chinese fashion trends and share ideas with one another through interaction. Moreover, it will provide an interesting way for students to boost their knowledge.

Mission Statement

To encourage, inspire and promote long term learning of male and female fashion trends. Hookey will not only educate, inform and provide knowledge to students and the general public who wish to expand cultural know-how of Chinese culture as well as fashion trends which reflect appreciation of Chinese beliefs and ways of life.

PROMOTIONAL MARKETING CAMPAIGN

Product

The product should serve the purpose it is intended for by the buyer. Moreover, it should suit the customers’ expectations. The product Hookey will focus on selling to the public is a fashion magazine. This will be able to satisfy not only the needs of Chinese students aged sixteen to twenty- eight, but also other individuals who are interested in the world of fashion and more particularly Chinese culture. Further, this magazine will provide service to the target audience by giving insight to knowledge, skills and expertise in regards to fashion and culture. Students looking to pursue a career in fashion will be able to get a source of fashion stories that could be used to pitch ideas to potential clients as well as start their own businesses. More so, this magazine will create an understanding about the logistics, paperwork and administrative work that is required to start not only a fashion magazine but also any desired field of business. Lastly, by giving the audience a chance to contribute to the magazine, students will especially gain experience which may benefit them in future (Mc Grill, 2004).

Price

The price based on the product should be such that it gives value for the consumers’ money. The price for purchasing Hookey magazine will neither be cheap or expensive but rather affordable. Considering the target audience for this product is students, it is a fact that this particular group is not yet financially stable. Moreover, students have many priorities when allocating their finances whereby purchasing a magazine may not be a necessity. Therefore, this magazine will not only ensure the magazine is attractive enough to give students value for their money but also ensure that the price is friendly in such a way that the target audience is in a position to spare some amount of money to purchase it. Notably, Hookey will be careful not to underprice the product. The reason behind this is that some individuals may correlate a low price to poor quality of the magazine. Also, it may lack the ability to get the required income used to improve the quality of a product (Hubberman, 2011).

Place

The product should be easily available for the buyer to access it. There will be various channels whereby Hookey can be distributed to be easily accessed by consumers. To start with, these magazines will be placed in physical stores such as supermarkets, retail stores, and book-shops also through vendors mainly found in the streets. They will be strategically placed in places like the entrance in such a manner that they will attract potential customers to spot them. Another practical channel will be an online shop whereby this product can be accessed at the comfort of an individual’s home. When the magazine has created a good customer base, they will be able to peruse online including through mobile applications and order the preferred edition. Lastly, there will be door to door distribution in strategic places where mostly students reside. This method will be useful even to new customers who have heard little or no information about the magazine but are interested (Hui, 2004).

Promotion

Correct communication tools should be put into effect so as to create awareness about a product to the target consumers. Hookey will use a number of promotional strategies to attract new customers he and retain existing ones. Firstly, influential members of the society such as idolized super-models, designers and artists will be used as ambassadors to inform the target audience about the magazine content. Students are especially more likely than not or emulate the ambassador’s perception of the magazine which will in turn boost the sales. Putting advertisements such as billboards as well as online banners will increase the brand visibility of Hookey which in turn will attract more consumers. Thirdly, Hookey will manipulate the power of social media by constant interactive communication with potential customers who will be beneficial in increasing publicity through word of mouth. Lastly, Hookey will be involved in community service responsibility projects such as offering aid to disabled children in the society. This will create a good reputation on the public eye, thus boosting its brand credibility and loyalty.

Physical evidence

A physical location is necessary to ensure the buyers about the tangibility of the products and services they are paying for. In order to reassure Hookey customers about its product and services, it will have a modern and attractive office located in the town center. This physical evidence is important because it will assure customers of a legit organization where they can rely on factual information. Moreover, Hookey will ensure that it is equipped with well-trained, skilled and professional staff that will come in handy to produce an attractive and informative magazine as well as provide practical assistance to employee ideas, queries and concerns. Furthermore, an attractive, functional and interactive website will be formulated. This will enable both new and old customers to log in and find more or less everything they require to know about the magazine. In particular, customers will be in a position to interact with the Hookey staff, order for magazine copies and share ideas with one another.

Process

In order to avoid losses and wastage of resources, it is important to have systems that enable smooth execution of services. Hookey will look to partner with organizations who have similar goals and objectives. Despite the fact that most of these organizations will be considered rivals, it is important to approach companies whom if they partnered with Hookey would result to mutual benefit in terms of profit increase, brand equity and publicity to their target audience. Moreover, Hookey will be open to partner with designers, models and artists who will come in handy with their professional skills which will increase the quality of products and services Hookey already provides. In return, these partners will gain the visibility they require to inform the general audience about what their companies provides. Furthermore, through partnerships, Hookey will be at a less risky position when it comes to sharing the costs and losses that can come up throughout the process of designing the magazine. Also, the profits that come up will be shared equally.

People

It is important for any organization to have the right people involved in the process who include the staff, clients and managers. As mentioned above, Hookey will mainly target Chinese students aged between sixteen and twenty-eight. Students are likely to be interested in fashion and entertainment which makes them a good target for this magazine. Also, the fact that Hookey is more of an informative magazine, it will create a base for most of them to build their careers in fashion. Another reason for selecting the above audience draws back to the fact that Chinese students will acquire knowledge about their cultural practices. As a result, students will be in a position to appreciate their culture and express it through fashion. Further, Hookey will recruit skilled, professional and experienced staff in order to provide the best quality for the magazine.

CUSTOMER PROFILE

Targeting

Marketing targeting essential entails choosing and defining the market for a product or service (Lee & Mathur, 2007). The target needs to be the right clients who have a need that needs to be satisfied by the product or service on offer. Through targeting, Hookey will be in a good position to identify the appropriate population to approach in terms of buying the magazine. Moreover, this identification will boost efficient use of capital and energy in the long run. At the same time, knowing the target audience will enable Hookey to research and meet the needs of their clients.

The ideal customers for Hookey will be students aged between the ages of sixteen to twenty-eight. The primary audience will be Chinese students, whereby the secondary audience will rely on young students interested in fashion. In this case, students understand the value of fashion, but lack the expertise, knowledge and skills to actively pursue their passions. The industrial market will focus on designers as well as advertisers from various fields who seek to gain publicity for their products and services. Moreover, these organizations will require Hookey’s good and credible reputation to help them boost their brands and draw productive traffic. Also, the reseller market will involve agents, brokers, hawkers, retailers, middlemen and wholesalers who will be interested in buying the complete magazines in bulk then reselling to consumers for a profit.

In general, these customers require a magazine that can not only entertain, but also inform and educate them on fashion trends in relation to the Chinese culture. Majority of Hookey’s target audience live in middle class modes of livelihood. This means that they have many needs that require priority before they can invest on magazines. As a result, the prices for purchasing a Hookey magazine will be fair enough to be afforded by the target customers. Since it is impossible to create a product that appeals to everyone and satisfies their needs, it is important for Hookey to select a large, measurable but reachable target audience.

Hookey will have a pictorial section which will appeal to individuals who are looking for Chinese-inspired fashion trends to emulate. Moreover, there will be an advertisement section which will benefit individuals who are interested in other products and services related to the fashion industry. Lastly, there will be a commentator’s section which will enable readers to air out their views, submit their articles and learn from one another (Lee & Mathur, 2007).

Segmentation

Targeting too many customers will not only damage the available promotional strategy, but also lead to dissatisfied customers whose needs will not be met. It is very costly for a new firm in the market to market its products and services to the entire (Doyle & Saunders, 2015). Therefore, based on this many organizations are required to identify their market niche or segment where it will concentrate its market efforts. Markets can be segmented based on various attributes based on the product or service on sale. Hookey will use its budget efficiently by selecting a desired group of potential customers and dedicating time as well as capital to satisfy their needs. This segmentation will enable Hookey to speak directly to the consumers and meet their immediate market needs. Moreover, apart from Hookey’s target market, the company will divide the audience into smaller groups that share common characteristics. In this way, different promotional strategies as well as marketing mixes will be used to meet the requirements of the specific segmented groups.

Geographically speaking, Hookey will segment its potential customers in relation to where they are located. Chinese students will likely be found on campus or around the areas nearing their universities. During holidays, this particular market is not likely to be found since they would have travelled to visit their families. As a result, fewer magazine copies will be produced to avoid wastage.

According to demographics, customers will be grouped on the basis of their desires, wants and abilities to buy the magazine. Therefore, Hookey will divide their target customers on the basis of gender, level of income and level of education. For example, final year students are likely to have different needs such that relate to their career paths, unlike freshmen students who will more often than not read the magazine for entertainment reasons. Hookey will emulate psychographic segmentation in order to meet the emotions, attitudes and beliefs of their target consumers. In this case, students who are the primary target audience will require a magazine that portrays class, trend and modernization. Due to students’ desire to be termed as fashionable, aggressive and sophisticated, this magazine will satisfy their emotional needs.

Lastly, using behavioristic segmentation, Hookey will determine the purchasing trends and habits of their customers. This will depend on factors such as frequency, loyalty and brand equity. Therefore, learning this habits will enable Hookey to make the necessary changes to appeal their customers.

Positioning

Hookey will position itself as the unique magazine that offers Chinese-inspired fashion ideas, trends, information and knowledge to Chinese students as well as the general public. Its direct competitors will include other organizations publishing fashion magazines especially those that are culturally based. These competitors position will have to be analyzed in order to avoid redundancy of their brand positioning with that of Hookey. The different value based positioning idea that Hookey will possess ids the fact that it focusses on Chinese culture distinctively. Therefore, Hookey’s brand positioning statement will be: To students looking to appreciate Chinese culture and values, Hookey will provide a source for cultural appreciation (Doyle & Saunders, 2015).

APPENDIX:

LITERATURE REVIEW

An analysis of people in a network cooperating investigates the relationship that goes on between fashion magazine staff, the advertisers involved and consumers of the magazine. Moreover, it looks at the world and industry that these fashion magazines represent. It focusses on the structural factors that play a role in culture and economy. The world of fashion is analyzed to contain both aspects and commodities of culture (Doyle & Saunders, 2015). Further, the process of creating a magazine involves a large audience which varies from the readers, advertisers as well as the industry of fashion at large. On one hand, the aspect of fashion is able to interact and link with components of culture. On the other hand, it brings a collective concept of what fashion entails. Fashion I looked at as a way of day-to-day dressing. Considering that fashion is not unified, this article argues the fact that cultural values including social, economic and technical practices are put into consideration before consumers make the important purchasing decision (Fan &Xiao, 2008). It is easy to see fashion from observing men and women fashion trends. However, the challenge is on discovering the force that derives fashion and the industrial organization that influences.

Early in 1949, the new People’s Republic of China elected Mao Zedong as the then head of State (Fan &Xiao, 2008). He opposed the pressure from Yu Xinqing who was the chief of protocol to dress in black leather shoes along with a suit. According to President Mao, the Chinese people had their own customs, therefore, there was absolutely no need to imitate the styles and trends of other cultures. Instead, he proposed that Chinese people should embrace their customs through dressing according to the Chinese cultural ways (Fan &Xiao, 2008). Due to this reason, President Mao chose the Sun Yat-Sen jacket along with a pair of trousers for his civilian dress-code. According to the western states, this outfit came to be known as the Mao suit. Notably, this gesture by President Mao led to several debates about the Chinese dress code for many years. During the mediation process following the Sino-Japanese war, Li Hongzhang requested to know from Hirobumi the reason as to why Japanese people chose to stay away from clothes which symbolized their culture. Over the years, Chinese dress code continued to transform gradually; sometimes faster than social and political events. However, this issue raised a lot of controversy as people had different opinions especially regarding women’s clothes. These many questions regarding whether women’s clothes should be long or short, arms covered or free led Lu Xun in the year 1928 to state that women had several parts in her body which made life difficult (Finnane, 2006).

With the current growth of the economy as well as technology, several products are available to the market. Therefore, young people especially have a variety of products and services to choose from. As a result, organizations especially in the fashion industry have to put extra effort in their creativity so as to stand out from the rest and have a competitive advantage over their rivals (Fan &Xiao, 2008). Notably, young people are very dynamic in their fashion trends in that they do not place their loyalty in a single brand. Purchase depends on what is attractive and trendy at that particular time. Another concern is the availability of counterfeit products. As much as regulations have been set out to halt this vice, it is still existent and negatively affecting fair competition. Moreover, most counterfeit products come at a cheaper price and resemble the original. This makes the products to be preferred by consumers especially the young generation because they still get value, although not as good as the original and save money at the same time (summers, 2016).

Young people put more emphasis to fashion trends more than any other age group in the society. At the same time, they value availability of new technology such as internet, mobile phones and satellite television sets which determine and influence their attitudes and preferences towards fashion trends (Finnane, 2006). Since communication has become easier where the world is considered to be a global village, youths expose similar fashion trends across various countries than that experienced between them and adults of the same country (Hermans & Schaefer, 2004). Moreover, this similarity among youths across various nations has led to common values such as self-reliance, free expression of individual opinions and open-mindedness to new cultures, ideas and values (Finnane, 2006). Marketers in the fashion industry have an easy time because they are able to make mass advertisements that will be received in the same manner across various states. Moreover, the process of production is made much easier and quicker because one product can be sold to a large varying group of consumers without the need for alterations (Fan &Xiao, 2008). Despite the fact that several research has been done about fashion trends for the youth, very little has been covered in regards to their reaction towards fashion in a cross-cultural context. Discovering what the youth prefer in regards to their varying cultures will enable fashion firms to make designs that directly fit their target markets (Hermans & Schaefer, 2004).

According to McGill, (2004) young people have different variations in regards to their cultural differences. Although there are differences, some similarities also exist especially for students who are mixed with various cultures. These group tends to be unifying factor especially in fashion because they possess similar attitudes which correlate directly with their buying power. The World Wide Web, internet and technology has brought about a new culture appreciated by the youth across the world. Availability of satellite television as well as the internet has made Chinese youths to be westernized in their values and norms (Fan &Xiao, 2008). Moreover, they have gradually adopted to the western ways of life which include fashion trends. Due to this reason, youths especially Chinese students in America put more emphasis on the need to appreciate their individual characters, the need to be free to make personal choices and opinions as well as ambition (Hubberman, 2011). As much as global influences determine the fashion attitudes for young people, family, culture and economy outweigh the influence they put on making decisions (Finnane, 2006). Therefore, fashion marketers still require enough information to help them tap foreign markets.