ALT is a brand of soft drinks that is being sold by Woolworths which is an Australian supermarket, the parent company of the supermarket is company is Woolworths limited. Only Woolworths sell the soft drinks of ALT. It is available in several varieties like, passion fruit, pineapple, cherry and apple. Woolworths has planned for certain activities in its Integrated Marketing Communication for the promotion and advertising of soft drink brand named Alt, the brand has soft drinks like Alt tropical passion fruit, Alt blood orange and citrus soft drink and Alt mixed berry and apple soft drink. The report will have details of all the activities that will be carried out within a period of six months. The total budget for carrying out the various (Woolworths Group: Quality Brands and Trusted Retailing, 2017).
(Woolworths Group: Quality Brands and Trusted Retailing, 2017)
The market segment of the product is people of all age who like soft drinks. However the focus of the company will be on people from the age group of 5 to 50 years since the sugar content of the soft drink is not high old people who are cautious about their health can also enjoy the soft drinks. The aim is to grab the attention of the people who visit the supermarket through the activities that will be carried out for promotion of the brand, which will be done by giving discounts, free samples so that the brand can increase its customer base (Dickenson & Crawford, 2017).
(Dickenson & Crawford, 2017)
The creative message behind the strategy is to communicate to the customers that ALT soft drink is safe because the sugar content is not high. It wants to communicate to all its customers that it is not like other soft drinks that are carbonated and high on sugar content. They want to communicate to the customers that the brand is offering the best quality at a reasonable price. It is safe for people of all the ages. To its loyal customers the company will be providing free coupons as a token of appreciation for their loyalty (Armstrong et al., 2014).
The brand ALT has planned to promote and position themselves in the minds of the customers as as a brand of soft drinks that does not offer carbonated and high sugar content drinks to its customers because it cares about their customers. (Moriarty et al., 2014)
.
Perceptual map of different brands of soft drinks: Moriarty et al., 2014
The following perceptual map shows the different brands and people preferring those soft drink brands. It clearly shows brands like Pepsi Light, Diet Coke, Coke Zero and Pepsi Max have high in caffeine and low sugar content females between the age group of 15 to 30 years prefer it. Coke and Pepsi are two brands that have high caffeine and high sugar males, between the age group of 15 to 30 years prefer these brands. There are no soft drinks that have both low caffeine and low sugar, which is preferred by females above 30 years. Fanta and 7-up are two such brands that have low caffeine and high sugar children between the age group of 5 to 15 years mostly prefer Fanta (Moriarty et al., 2014).
The supermarket has decided to launch two five-advertisement campaigns in print media. In print media newspapers, billboards, banners and flyers will be used. Woolworths will be sending personal mails to the existing customers to make them aware about the discounts and offers of the brand.
In social media, facebook and instagram will be used for advertising campaigns. The website of Woolworths will be updated and offers and discounts will also be available at the online portal of the company. For public relation activities the company will be selecting three location for press releases. They will be conducting media tours in three locations will be Sydney, Perth and Canberra, in the media tours the PR agent of the brand will go to the locations and conduct editorial meetings to create brand awareness, they will communicate about their plans of introducing more flavors of the soft drink and health drinks. They will also have audio releases, these are pre recorded messages that will be distributed to local radio channels of Australia. Two events will be organized which would be sponsored by Woolworths’ Alt brand of soft drinks. One of the events will be a cricket match between Australia and New Zealand and another will be a cultural event, a musical Orchestra by Darwin symphony group. Woolworths will sponsor the entire cricket match and ALT soft drinks will be provided to the cricketers as refreshments (Wells et al., 2014).
There are variety of activities that will be carried out by the company under the IMC plan that has been designed. The purpose of the plan is to create awareness of the product. The activities that will be undertaken fall under the following categories.
Advertising- For advertising Alt brand of soft drinks have decided to select print media electronic media and outdoor media.
Newspapers- In print media the brand has decided that it will advertise on the local newspapers, the local newspapers selected are, The Australian, The Herald sun and The Daily Telegraph, these three newspapers are selected because these are the most popular newspapers of Australia. The advertisements will be done on every alternative day for the next six months. The brand is very much sure that through these newspapers they would be able to target more customers because their R&D team has researched that these are the most widely circulated newspapers and hence have the most number of readers.
Magazines- The brand has decided that it will use the magazine “Media Week” which is one of the most popular magazines read in Australia. Magazines are second most effective tool of advertising after newspapers. Magazines are attractive and hence many people prefer reading magazine and Media week is one of the most popular magazines in Australia (Benavides & Leiva, 2014).
Electronic Media- In electronic media the company has decided to choose the local radio channels. Televisions were not selected for advertising because the cost of television advertisements is very high. The local radio channel that has been selected for advertising would be Double J, this channel is also the media partner of the brand. As per the IMC, the advertisements of the brand would be aired very frequently. Radios are very effective tool for advertisements because the success result of radio advertisements in creating brand awareness is very high. With the help of advertisements in radio, the brand will tell the customers about the offers that Woolworths is going to give in its brand Alt, which sells soft drinks of different flavors (Albarran, 2016).
Outdoor media- In outdoor media the brand has selected billboards and flyers for advertisements. Five billboards will be
Billboards- The most busies streets of Sydney will be selected for billboard advertising. The streets selected for billboard advertising are George Street that is one of the busiest streets of Sydney, second location would be central hall Sydney. Third location would be in Wellington Street Perth fourth location will also be in Perth. Last two billboard advertisements will be displayed in Canberra (Ju & Chung, 2016).
Flyers- Flyers containing the details of the product and the offers will be distributed outside the Woolworths stores and other market places of the different cities of Australia where the products wherever the stores of Woolworths are present in Australia (Hudson et al., 2015).
Online Advertising-
Web banners- Under online advertising web banners will be used for the promotion of the product and the website.
In online advertising the brand has decided to search engine optimizing and direct mails as its tools for advertising. It would send mails to all its customers whose address they have collected from the their previous purchase records. In this customers the brand will send details of the discounts as well as aware them about ALT soft drink (Li & Kannan, 2014).
Social Media- Social media is one of the economic platforms for advertising. The brand has decided to raise as many campaigns as possible through its social media advertising. Social media is accessible and used by many people and one one of the best features about social media is that one can instantly get feedback of the campaigns. The companies can hence get the opinion of the customers about the products. They have selected facebook and instagram to raise campaigns; in these two platforms, they will organize three advertising campaigns. There is no facbook page of ALT soft drink so first a facebook page of Alt will be created and then few contests would be conducted and the winners of the contest will get a ticket for the orchestra that will be held in Sydney. ALT will have its own instagram account where a small contest will be held where the participants will have to post pictures with an catchy caption the best the winner will get a ticket for the cricket match that will be held in Perth (Singh & Bisawa, 2016).
Website development- The official website of Woolworths where the soft drink is available will be developed and the same offers that are available at the store will also be available at the online store. For promotional purpose the website will be slightly modified. Assessing the website will become easier than before.
Search Engine optimization- with the help of search engine optimization the brand owners will increase the visibility of the website, the digital marketers will ensure the website is visible to the users.
Sales promotion- For promotion of sales Woolworths will be giving offers and discounts on the soft drink. They would also be providing free samples of soft drinks to its customers, this would be available to those customer who will purchase more than $50 per day apart from that it would give free samples to some random customers through the help of lucky draw. Woolworths will give the customers one bottle of soft drink free with two extra bottle of soft drinks. A local celebrity will be hired for promotion of the product. The brand for its loyal customers will give certain gift hampers plus a bottle of the soft drink of whichever flavor they would like to choose (Van Heerde & Neslin, 2017).
Direct Marketing- Under direct marketing the company has decided that it will be sending mails to their loyal customers. It will also use other tools for direct marketing like, telemarketing and voice mail marketing. The sales executives of the brand and Woolworths would make cold calls to its customers and make them aware about the product and the offers that it would be giving to its customers. The sales executives will also handle the queries of the customers and give them all the details about the product in case any of the customers are curious about getting more information about the product.
Personal selling- Woolworths would focus on personal selling of the product to the existing customers. The sales executives of Woolworths would recommend the soft drink to the customers, since they have to promote the soft drink brand they will recommend the product to the customers and tell them about the offers that Woolworths would be giving if they buy the soft drink. Handling the queries of the customers and giving them all the relevant information about the soft drink is an important task of personal selling it is not about pushing the product to the customers (Erevelles & Fukawa, 2013).
The company for public relation activities has kept public relation- A lot of fund because there are a number of activities that the company has decided that it would carry out under public relation (Erevelles & Fukawa, 2013).
The company has decided select media tours, audio releases, newsletters, and two events that would be sponsored by the company.
Media Tours- For media tours three locations have been selected, Sydney, Perth and Wellington, New Zealand, the reason behind selecting New Zealand for media tour is that Woolworths stores are also available in New Zealand with another brand name Countdown, ALT soft drinks are also available at those stores and hence Wellington has also been selected for media tour. The PR agent of the brand will go to all the three locations and communicate and create brand awareness, free samples will be distributed to some of the random people who would be selected through the lucky draw (Ryan, 2016). Small press conferences would be held in these places to create the brand awareness. The aim of these media tour would not just be creating awareness about the product rather they will focus on the sustainability of the brand, apart from sales growth most importantly they will focus on business growth through aggressive marketing. The media partner for the media tour is Double J, the local radio channel of Australia (Sharma & Bhatia, 2015).
Audio releases- Since the media partner of the brand is Double J radio channel, all the audio releases will be done through the local radio channel (Armstrong et al., 2014).
Newsletters- Newsletters are report of information about the business, the report of the brand will be sent to the customers through mail.
Press releases- The press releases will be done through the local newspapers for creating awareness of the brand so as to make the business grow by showing their media presence. The newspapers selected for press releases are The Herald Sun, The Australia and Daily Telegraph, press releases would be done bi-monthly for the next six months of the IMC plan.
Concert- In the third month of the integrated marketing plan the company has decided to sponsor a concert of the famous Darwin Symphony group, which is a famous orchestra of Australia. The concert will be held in Sydney. A major portion of the budget would be allocated for the concert. Approximately $ 10,000 has been kept as the amount for organizing the concert (Rinrattanakorn, 2012).
Cricket Match- On the sixth month of the marketing planning activities a friendly cricket match between Australia and New Zealand. Woolworths and the soft drinks brand ALT would sponsor the cricket match. Woolworths would sponsor the uniform of the cricketers and the softdrinks for the refreshment of the cricketers would be sponsored by ALT. The total cost estimated for this cricket match would be 15,000 Australian dollars (Palmer et al., 2014).
The budget for the various activities that would be carried out will be 55 thousand Australian dollars. The cost of all the activities is $ 53,400 but $6,600 has been kept for other miscellaneous costs, since it is a huge plan so budget has been designed accordingly. The budget will be allocated for the advertising, press releases, media tours and the two events that will be sponsored by the company. A portion of the retained earnings will be used for the funding and the rest of the amount will be raised from the banks and other financial sources. 11 percent of the total budget has been kept for national marketing and 10 percent for local marketing. For public relations 63 percent of the fund is allocated. The social media marketing has been allocated 2 percent and 1 percent is for content marketing. One percent of the budget has been allocated for online marketing and for advertisements, 3 percent of the budget has been allocated. 2 percent of the total budget has been allocated fir market researches. The sales campaign budget is 4 percent of the fund. Other costs, premiums, corporate branding and business cards has been allocated 3 percent of the budget. (Ryan, 2016).
The period for all the activities to be carried out will be six months. The two major events to be organized will have a gap of three months, in the third month the musical orchestra will be held and in the sixth month. The friendly cricket match between Australia and New Zealand will be organized because the event is big so the company requires ample time for all the arrangements its needs for the sponsoring the event, including the fund raising. Advertising will be done throughout the six months of the plan, the sales will have to be promoted every now and hence the sales promotional activities will also be carried out throughout the six months. The same is for direct marketing which has to be almost every week therefore its duration will also be six months. The orchestra will be organized on the third month of the marketing plan. The cricket match will be organized after a three month gap from the orchestra, at the sixth month of the marketing plan. After the cricket match, an impact study will be conducted to measure the impact of the integrated marketing mix. (Hair et al., 2014).
|
Action/Tool |
Objective |
Target |
Timing |
Responsibility |
Detail / Integration |
Progress |
|
Advertisements |
To create brand awareness of the product and to communicate to the customers about the offers of the brand |
Customers of all age group who like soft drinks |
1st to sixth month |
To use various media platforms for advertisements |
Print, electronic and social media would be selected for adverting the brand ALT of soft drinks which is offered by Woolworths supermarket. |
The media has been selected and the responsibility is given to the marketing department to plan the advertisement campaigns |
|
Sales Promotion |
To promote the brand and create interest among the customers |
Target would be people who live in Sydney, Perth, Canberra and Wellington and those who visit the Woolworths stores. |
First to sixth month |
Sales executives will promote the product to the customers who visit Woolworths supermarket. |
With the help of discounts and free samples sales promotion would be done |
Offers would be given to the customers from the month of November. Employees are given training so that they can approach the potential customers in the most appropriate manner |
|
Direct Marketing |
To communicate to the customers about the offers and discounts that will be available under the marketing campaign |
Existing customers of the company |
First to Sixth month |
Cold call will be made to the existing customers to communicate about the offers. Newsletters would be sent to the customers |
The existing customers who frequently purchase from Woolworths would be called and mailed for product promotion |
The marketing team has collected all the details of now the existing customers |
|
Darwin symphony Orchestra |
To increase the customer base of the brand |
Target would be the people who would come to listen to the orchestra |
3rd month of the IMC plan |
The Woolworths would sponsor the event. |
The event will n Sydney and Woolworths would provide fund to the orchestra and also organize the event |
Event managers have been hired. |
|
Cricket match |
To increase sales of the company |
Target would be cricket lovers |
Sixth month of the IMC plan |
The cricket match would be co sponsored by Woolworths and ALT soft drinks, they will be sponsoring the sports uniform and soft drinks during the event. |
The match will be conducted in Perth. Woolworths and ALT with some other sponsors will provide funds for the organizing the cricket match. The winning team of the match will get $5000 cheque |
|
For the evaluation of the marketing plan, impact studies will be conducted, in the fourth month and the sixth month of the IMC plan. The impact studies will help the marketing team to know the reaction of the customers after the activities are conducted. Other tools that will be used for measurement of the marketing effectiveness would be search engine traffic, identification of unique customers. Page views of facebook and instagram and most importantly the increase in the number of customers (Bobbitt & Sullivan, 2012).
Conclusion
ALT is a soft drink brand that is available at all the Woolworths stores. The product sales was falling hence the brand owner and Woolworths decided to promote the product to the customers and increase the sales. An integrated marketing plan will be implemented in the time span of six months, which aims at creating awareness and promotion of the brand through various tools like, advertising, sales promotion, public relations and personal selling. Integrated marketing mix is a very effective tool that helps in promotion of the brand and further increases the sales of the company. The purpose of IMC is not just to increase sales rather long term sustainability in the market.
References
Albarran, A. B. (2016). Management of electronic and digital media. Nelson Education.
Andrews, J. C., & Shimp, T. A. (2017). Advertising, promotion, and other aspects of integrated marketing communications. Nelson Education.
Armstrong, G., Adam, S., Denize, S., & Kotler, P. (2014). Principles of marketing. Pearson Australia.
Armstrong, G., Kotler, P., Harker, M., & Brennan, R. (2015). Marketing: an introduction. Pearson Education.
Benavides, C., & Leiva, R. (2014). Identifying the relevant factors in newspaper advertising effectiveness. Palabra Clave, 17(4), 1114-1134.
Bobbitt, R., & Sullivan, R. (2012). Developing the public relations campaign. Pearson Higher Ed.
Dickenson, J., & Crawford, R. (2017). 14 Australasian advertising and the world. Global Advertising Practice in a Borderless World, 208.
Erevelles, S., & Fukawa, N. (2013). The role of affect in personal selling and sales management. Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, 33(1), 7-24.
Hair Jr, J. F., & Lukas, B. (2014). Marketing research (Vol. 2). McGraw-Hill Education Australia.
Hudson, S., Roth, M. S., Madden, T. J., & Hudson, R. (2015). The effects of social media on emotions, brand relationship quality, and word of mouth: An empirical study of music festival attendees. Tourism Management, 47, 68-76.
Ju, I., & Chung, J. (2016). The Effect Model of Billboard Advertising Media. Journal of Multidisciplinary Research, 8(2), 15.
Li, H. A., & Kannan, P. K. (2014, February). Attributing conversions in a multichannel online marketing environment: An empirical model and a field experiment. American Marketing Association.
McCarthy, B. (2016). Consumer Behaviour and PR.
Moriarty, S., Mitchell, N. D., Wells, W. D., Crawford, R., Brennan, L., & Spence-Stone, R. (2014). Advertising: Principles and practice. Pearson Australia. Moriarty, S., Mitchell, N. D., Wells, W. D., Crawford, R., Brennan, L., & Spence-Stone, R. (2014). Advertising: Principles and practice. Pearson Australia.
Palmer, J., Kallio, J., Saarinen, T., Tinnila, M., Tuunainen, V. K., & van Heck, E. (2014). Online grocery shopping around the world: Examples of key business models. Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 4(1), 3.
Perreault Jr, W., Cannon, J., & McCarthy, E. J. (2013). Basic marketing. McGraw-Hill Higher Education.
Rinrattanakorn, P. (2012). Public relations campaign. Sripatum University.
Ryan, A. (2016). T1 2016 MPK732 Marketing Management (Cluster A). Month.
Sharma, D., & Bhatia, A. (2015). Role and Need of Modern Public Relation Practices in Policing: Mapping a Pathway. EDITORIAL BOARD CONTENTS, 16.
Singh, R., & Bisawa, T. (2016). Social Media Technology as Public Relation Tool in Higher Education. The International Journal of Business & Management, 4(4), 274.
Strauss, J. (2016). E-marketing. Routledge.
Van Heerde, H. J., & Neslin, S. A. (2017). Sales promotion models. In Handbook of marketing decision models (pp. 13-77). Springer, Cham.
Woolworths Group: Quality Brands and Trusted Retailing. (2017). Woolworthsgroup.com.au. Retrieved 8 October 2017, from https://www.woolworthsgroup.com.au/
Essay Writing Service Features
Our Experience
No matter how complex your assignment is, we can find the right professional for your specific task. Contact Essay is an essay writing company that hires only the smartest minds to help you with your projects. Our expertise allows us to provide students with high-quality academic writing, editing & proofreading services.
Free Features
Free revision policy
$10Free bibliography & reference
$8Free title page
$8Free formatting
$8How Our Essay Writing Service Works
First, you will need to complete an order form. It's not difficult but, in case there is anything you find not to be clear, you may always call us so that we can guide you through it. On the order form, you will need to include some basic information concerning your order: subject, topic, number of pages, etc. We also encourage our clients to upload any relevant information or sources that will help.
Complete the order form
Once we have all the information and instructions that we need, we select the most suitable writer for your assignment. While everything seems to be clear, the writer, who has complete knowledge of the subject, may need clarification from you. It is at that point that you would receive a call or email from us.
Writer’s assignment
As soon as the writer has finished, it will be delivered both to the website and to your email address so that you will not miss it. If your deadline is close at hand, we will place a call to you to make sure that you receive the paper on time.
Completing the order and download
