Integrated Marketing Communications Strategy For Carman’s Muesli Business Relaunch

Background of Carman’s Fine Foods

Question:

Discuss About The Marketing Organizations Can Make Connected?

This essay is about the integrated marketing communications strategy of Carman’s Fine Foods for re-launching its Muesli business. Carman’s began its journey 20 years back and since then, the Company has carved for itself an enviable position in the fine foods business. Headed by Carolyn Creswell, this Company came into being quite by chance. It so happened that when Carolyn heard that her employer was on the verge of selling his muesli-based business, she offered to buy it out for just AUD 1,000. She was just 18 at that time and was a student in a university. Over a period, she has built her business by focussing upon the core product of her company-muesli (Kaplan.2009). Currently, the product mix of Carman’s Fine Foods comprises Muesli Bars, Porridge Oars, Crunchy Clusters, Protein Bars, Muesli, Nut Bars, Oat Slice, Bliss Balls etc. The Company is headquartered at Melbourne, Australia.

When muesli was first developed, it was made up of toasted whole oats, nuts, fruit and wheat flakes. Muesli has fewer calories and less sugar than its close variant, granola (Kelly, 2016). The most obvious health benefits of muesli are that it regulates the digestive system and helps in weight control. It has also been found that muesli is an anti-oxidant and helps reverse aging. This substance also has protein and omega-3 fatty acids (Sutherland, 2013). The milk variants of muesli deliver protein.

1. Professionals who are health conscious
2. Diabetics
3. School going children
4. Obese people who want to control their weight
5. University students

Members of this target market consume different media and have varying media consumption habits. Most of these people live in big urban centres like Adelaide, Perth, and Sydney. Now let us understand the media habits of the members of this target group;

• Professionals who are health conscious- newspapers, magazines, digital devices, TV
• Diabetics- TV, digital devices
• School going children- Digital devices, TV
• University students- Digital devices, Newspaper

Carmen’s Muesli-What a beautiful world 

Rationale- Since muesli is all about health, the positioning strategy should be about health. However, there is several other competitor brands like Kellogg’s that also speak about health benefits. So to harp on just health alone would not position the brand effectively.

Since Carman’s Muesli delivers health tastefully, the positioning statement must talk about the twin benefits of health and taste in a holistic manner. The strategy should be talk about life as a whole and not just about benefits. This way, Carman’s Muesli would acquire a larger than life platform and be at liberty to redefine the brand in future. When you describe life as beautiful, essentially you are encouraging all the unwell people to give another shot at leading a healthful life. There is a ring of optimism to this statement and it positions the brand on a plank of positivity, encouragement and warmth. People do not like to be told about health benefits in a direct manner; they consider it to be case of overselling (Stephen’s 2012).

Health and Benefits of Muesli

The positioning strategy of Carman’s tries to smuggle the brand into people’s lives in a non-obtrusive manner. The word, ’beautiful’ means several things to several people. For an obese person, a beautiful world is one where she can slip into her favourite dress, easily. For a diabetic, this word represents an opportunity to eat her favourite dishes without fearing about blood sugar levels. For the permanently busy professional, a beautiful world is about meeting objectives without losing healthcare. So this positioning strategy is all about appropriating the ‘beautiful world’.

The main communication goal of Carman’s Muesli is to daily remind people of their health. Through, integrated marketing communication, the Company is trying to gently remind its target audience that life can be made even more beautiful by taking home a pack of Carman’s Muesli.

1. Message retention goals
2. Benefits comprehension goals
3. Top of the mind awareness goals
4. Recall of commercials goals
5. Units purchased goals
6. Footfalls into select retailers’ shops goals

Each of these sub-goals is closely tied with the individual members of the media mix. We will see the nature of these connections in one of the subsequent paragraphs.

While the main communication goal is the make people know that Carman’s Fine Foods is all about a beautiful world, there are various strategies at work for achieving this goal.

Integrated communication marketing strategies are not deployed round the year. They are used during a specific time period. Those periods can be related to:

1. Falling market shares that lead to steps for establishing brand credibility
2. Picking up sales in a particular market(Harris, 2015)
3. If your target audience is spread across demographics like age, gender and profession then also the brand uses IMC.
4. Sometimes, to occupy the top of the mind awareness, brands use integrated marketing strategies.

1. Identify a goal and understand the limitations for achieving it- The broad goal is here to convince people that the brand is about a healthy world. Limitations can be related to budgets or manpower issues. Typically, the biggest limitation is one about budgets.
2. Defining target audience- This is a critical strategy. Target audience definition happens on two levels- primary audiences are those people who buy products and secondary ones are those that influence the purchase of those products (Stealingshare, 2017).
3. How are you special- Brands need to identify their competitive strengths. How are they different from the competitors? How is your brand weaker than your rival (Joybynature, 2015)?
4. Execution- No matter how big and creative is your idea, until it is executed well, you won’t taste success. Many big companies simply fail because they lagged in execution.
5. Plan – Planning the entire process is of course the key to success. Draw up several scenarios while planning.
6. Budgets- While budgeting is important, more important is how to work within the budgetary constraints. Going over-budget means bad planning and that further means not achieving the desired results.
7. Monitor

1. Activate the sales and marketing teams, allocate responsibilities and delegate the authority.
2. Inform and involve the retailers and other secondary audiences- It makes no sense to inform them a week before your marketing initiative starts (Fayram, 2015).
3. Get the collaterals ready(Ferghuson,2011)
4. Keep a sharp eye on the competition- It is probable that the competition may get a word about your marketing and sales strategy and thwart you by reducing prices. Be ready for Plan B in that case.
5. Involve and partner marketing communication agencies- there are specialized agencies for special jobs. For example, a media buying agency is an expert in media related jobs. For direct marketing, Carmens’ will have to partner with a DM firm. Digital agencies-planning, buying or creative have their particular strengths and insights.

Since the target audience is spread over multiple touch points, the strategy of Carman’s Fine Foods is to use media judiciously. Let us understand the media strategy of the Company;

Digital devices and platforms- Digital means different things to different people. For a young university student who is a fitness freak, digital would mean wearables like watches and other gear that track kilometres run, calories burnt, and number of heartbeats in a minute. Such kind wearables have a special chemistry with the wearer. Since the athlete trusts the stats displayed by his fitness watch, ads that appear on these platforms have also a ring of truth and credibility. There are other digital platforms as well like digital videos, news platforms, sports channels etc.

1. Television is another important part of the media mix of Carman’s Fine Foods. TV commercials deliver impact and carry a larger than life image for the audience.
2. Press comprises magazines and newspapers. Press is important in the media strategy of the Company as this media is all about credibility. Of late, this media has been shrinking because of falling circulation as many readers have switched over to digital formats.
3. Radio and Outdoor- These two platforms work closely with each other. Radio adds to the excitement of the brand. It also encourages consumers to contact the brand for immediate purchase. Outdoor media, on the other hand adds effectiveness to the radio ads which are targeted toward car drivers. When they see the same ads displayed on billboards and other outdoor media, recall of the radio ads is strengthened.
4. Point of Sales- This media mix works for those consumers who are generally away from the media. Such consumers can be reached by displaying POS messages that encourage her to buy the brand without too much coaxing (Muesli, 2017)
5. Events- Perhaps this element of the media mix of Carmen’s Fine Foods is the most interesting and rewarding. Events encourage potential consumers in a variety of ways and finally succeed in getting them to buy the brand. Events also help the user to try out the product real-time and this helps in establishing a physical connect with her (simconblog, 2017).

Conclusion

Carman’s Fine Foods started out as a muesli-based business nearly two decades ago out of the conviction of its founder that health based foods are here to stay. However, the biggest worry of the founder was how to take the brand to the market which had other competitors like Kellogg’s in the same category. After brainstorming on several possible solutions, it was concluded that rather than talking about the health benefits of the brand, it was preferable to dwell upon the world being a beautiful place. This positioning strategy made sense as it helped all the members of the target audience interpret the world in a different way. The next challenge was how to take this positioning statement to the TG (Wax Marketing Inc., 2015). An integrated marketing communications strategy was thought out and an over-arching communications goal was also formulated. This goal was further broken into several sub-goals. Each sub-goal was later tied to a specific media channel. The idea was to come up with a media mix that helped the Company on several levels. The IMC had several strategies and those strategies were further subdivided into various time bound tactics. Each specific media channel was chosen keeping in mind its uniqueness and its ability to deliver to the Company goal.

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