Developing An Integrated Marketing Communications Strategy For Muller

Current Positioning

Muller is positioned as a dairy producer in UK that is attaining increased profits in the nation. The organization is a subsidiary of German Dairy giant Muller Group is one of the largest manufacturers of chilled yogurt. The company offers a wide range of yogurt based products such as Muller Light, Muller rice, Corner and Little Stars (Muller.co.uk 2018). The dairy company also manufactures dairy-potted desserts and some other dairy beverages. The consumer base of this organization has increased to develop convenience stores that indicate its strategy to market. Implementing effective integrated marketing communications strategy can facilitate the company in developing a loyal consumer base in the UK market (Allida et al. 2018).

The objective of this paper is to analyze the integrated marketing communications strategy developed for Muller in order to develop an effective promotional campaign and grab increased target consumer attention. It will also analyze the integrated marketing communication models those can be implemented in promoting the new packaging of Muller within a new market to attain an increased consumer base within the target market. The marketing communication channels those will be analyzed for Muller includes PR or advertising strategies along with use of marketing communication models such as TCB, BSM, hot air baloon and Percy grid.

Muller Company is positioned as a yoghurt company that operates in the dairy industry and ensures through its effective brand positioning statement that consumer requirements of smaller pot and lower fat content yogurt. The brand positioning statement of the company is “To offer tasty and healthy yogurt through making the most of the world now”. Through promoting this brand positioning statement, Muller joined within the dairy market by selling its yogurt brands as healthy and tasty food. This indicates that innovation has been its major spirit in promoting its brand. After successful launch of this company, Muller turned out to be a market leader in UK dairy industry. For attaining a leader advantage, the company attempted to add more services through launching different product lines. To promote its brand positioning statement, Muller innovated its service and product offerings to add more yogurt products that includes Muller Light low-fat yoghurt) and Muller Crumble Corner (a two-split pot yoghurt) with the rowing years of its business. In addition, Muller also established its processing chain within the UK region and it owns its dairy to offer most of the raw materials in order to position its brand as “lowest cost, higher price” in the upcoming years of its business.

The marketing communication objectives those are set for Muller based on the review of its brand are indicated below:

• To increase awareness of the Muller brand after developing promotional strategies for the UK market by 10% in the first year of the company’s launch of new promotional strategy
• To increase brand awareness among the target consumers by 5% in the first year of the company’s launch of new promotional strategy
• To grow the market share of the Yogurt products of Muller by 15% in the first year of the company’s launch of new promotional strategy
• To enhance consumer relationships by 10% in the first year of the company’s launch of new promotional strategy through innovative packaging of its products

The target market of Muller is divided into a broad target market and within different segments through taking into consideration the demand characteristics along with addressing precise products, services and marketing strategies along with the demand characteristics. The target audience of the company includes children in UK and generally belongs to the age group of 5-17 years. The packaging of the Yoghurt will be based on the consumers’ interests and new celebrity characters they follow. Moreover, the target audiences will also belong to the medium income group and prefer having healthy substitutes for their snacks that will include parents particularly the mothers in UK market. These target audiences are also deemed to have increased preferences for chilled yoghurt products and constantly look for flavour variants for instigating healthy habits among their children (Andrews and Shimp 2017). As the company will change its packaging to include cartoon characters in their products, it is considered that the target consumers are fan of cartoon characters and are highly motivate to purchase goods those comes with packaging of their favourite cartoon character. Moreover, its target audience also includes the consumers those have a busy life schedule and seek for healthy and readymade food from the dairy companies (Schultz, Kim and Kang 2014).

Marketing Communication Objectives

The target market of Muller is divided into a broad target market and within different segments through taking into consideration the demand characteristics along with addressing precise products, services and marketing strategies along with the demand characteristics. The target audience of the company includes children in UK and generally belongs to the age group of 5-17 years. Moreover, the target audiences will also belong to the medium income group and prefer having healthy substitutes for their snacks that will include parents particularly the mothers in UK market.

Sales Pitch for Muller’s Yoghurt

Customer
Who are the target consumers	Children between age group of 5-17 years. Parents and particularly mothers in the UK market
What are major needs of consumers	Parents look for healthy snacks for their children. Children look for catchy offers or new flavours offered by any brand
Consumer demographics	Children will belong to age group of 5-17 years those belong to middle to high income group. The targeted parents will belong to medium to high income group and reside in popular areas in UK
Market
General product category	Yogurt with new flavour variants · Maple pancake · Butter popcorn · Pina colada · Nutty yogurts · Red liquorish · Caramel · Cheese cake · Bacon · Yogurt with Chocó crunches in them
Typical competitors	Dairy UK and First Milk are major competitors those offer organic yoghurt and pro-biotic yoghurts which attracts attention of parents to purchase them for their children

Integrated marketing communications is a concept which makes sure that all types of communications along with messages are carefully associated together. In addition, IMC indicates integrating all the promotional tools in a manner that they work together in a better manner. IMC plan is a strategy that is focussed on attaining objectives of a marketing campaign by means of well-coordinated application of promotional techniques those are intended to reinforce one another (Caywood 2016).

The above diagram indicates the BSM model that is deemed to be built upon stages associated with the choice of brand, recognizing the touch points where the marketing communications is likely to impact Muller decision of brand promotion positively. From analysis of the aspects described in the above grid it is evident that as Muller is making decision to deeply penetrate its products within the UK market and the quality of its newly developed products with new packaging s considered to support the sales growth of the company’s products (Caywood 2016). As the target consumers of the company are observed to be the children segment it will promote its use of natural ingredient in its products. The table above also explains that re-packaging if its major branded goods by imprinting children’s favourite cartoon character within the products which can also ensure the benefits they associate with the brand. The dairy company will also consider advertising with the cartoon characters that the yoghurt product offerings of Muller has no sugar, artificial sweetener, preservatives have 100% real fruit content (Fill and Turnbull 2016).

Moreover, the advertising campaign of this product is also focused on promoting the yogurt through developing a cartoon video for target children consumer group in order to make them aware of their healthy eating habits. In addition, cross promotions can also be done by Muller through the products packaging in the form of claiming health benefits and great flavour through child-oriented cartoon graphics. Moreover, the child oriented graphics that can be used for persuading the process of children’s arousal, visiting store, deciding on the preference of the yogurt brand and them purchase it (Gambetti and Schultz 2015).

TCB model stands for Target, Category and Benefit that facilitates in brand positioning of Muller’s yogurt products as well as its new packaging. This model implementation in the company can facilitate in identifying the target audiences based on whose preferences the cartoon character based packaging will be developed (Manser Payne, Peltier and Barger 2017). Category aspect of this model will consider finding a content niche, highlighting the unique value of a company’s products and creating compelling video game based on the favourite cartoon characters along with promoting the Yogurt brand. Benefit aspect of this model will facilitate the company to communicate the benefit of the products to its consumers (Munoz-Leiva, Porcu and Barrio-García 2015). TCB model for Muller’s Company is prepared below that can facilitate in communicating brand promotion message for its newly packaged flavour variants in Yogurt offered.

• Target- The target market of Muller is divided into a broad target market and within different segments through taking into consideration the demand characteristics along with addressing precise products, services and marketing strategies along with the demand characteristics (Andrews and Shimp 2017). The target audience of the company includes children in UK and generally belong to the age group of 5-17 years. These target audiences’ areas also deemed to have increased preferences for chilled yoghurt products and constantly look for flavour variants. As the company will change its packaging to include cartoon characters in their products, it is considered that the target consumers are fan of cartoon characters and are highly motivate to purchase goods those comes with packaging of their favourite cartoon character (Batra and Keller 2016). Based on the motivation factors for children, new video game on their favourite cartoon characters and with creative concepts from new yogurt flavours can be developed which can facilitate in endorsing the products with cartoon hero describing health benefits of the product. These target children audience base is observed to attain increased attention through cartoon hero endorsements and video game launches in the market (Allida et al. 2018).
• Category- The innovate product ranges of Yogurt from Muller will come with different flavours that can include cola, salted caramel, cheese cake, maple pancake, bacon, yogurt with Chocó crunches in them, nutty yogurts, red liquorish, butter popcorn and Pina colada. The company is observed to have issues with decreased sales margin, less product development initiative and low investment in promotional strategies (Bruhn and Schnebelen 2017). To attain the brand loyalty from a new consumer base, Muller can make the decision of targeting new consumer segment that is children that remained un-served and new product ranges will be offered to this market segment as they are observed to look for variations in their snacks. Moreover, through offering these product variants, Muller will communicate the health benefits of consuming yogurt for children along with explaining unique value offered by the company different from its competitors.
• Benefit- Through implementing mentioned marketing communication strategies, Muller can consider promoting its goods through explaining the health benefits of consuming each new flavour variants in Yogurt introduced by Muller within the UK market. The cartoon heroes will facilitate in promoting the benefits of this brand through communicating the health benefits of having yogurt in all its flavour variants (Andrews and Shimp 2017). This advertising strategy can also promote the brand with communicating that consumption of Muller’s Yogurt can make children avail a wide range of essential nutrients. The fats and carbohydrates in Yogurt can provide energy, protein that is necessary for growth along with calcium and phosphorus that can support the development of teeth and bone ad necessary vitamins that can help children in fighting infections.

Target Market

Integrated Marketing Communication model considers using advertising and Public Relations (PR) for Muller. The suitable advertising and Public Relations models that will be analyzed in case of this company includes BSM model and Rossiter Percy grid.

	Low Involvement	High Involvement
Informational	Products · Maple pancake · Butter popcorn · Pina colada Consumers · Brand loyal · Switchers of brand · New category users	Products · Nutty yogurts · Red liquorish Consumers · Brand loyal · Switchers of brand
Transformational	Products · Caramel · Cheese cake Consumers · Brand loyal · Children	Products · Bacon · Yogurt with Chocó crunches in them Consumers · Experimental consumers · Switchers of brand

Bansal and Bharti (2014) defined Rossiter Percy grid as an advertising or public relations campaign through casting the products offered by the brand into low-involvement made high-involvement goods. These researchers also stated that the term involvement is directly associated with purchase in which the low-involvement brands are considered as low-risk purchase goods based on which the marketers get to decide the suitable advertising strategy for their offerings from transformational and informational advertising strategies. Transformational is considered to provoke positive observations to purchase a good and informational is associated with invoking the negative motivations to promote the brand (Batra and Keller 2016). The Percy grid for Muller Company is indicated in the table above from which it can be stated that a new consumer segment will be the people those brand loyalty is low for the yogurt brands.

The products of the company might be appealing for the children sector as healthy and energy fuelling snack to children (Tsekouropoulos, Andreopoulou and Misso 2015). The product is so developed that it changes or appeal to a new segment and packaging can be changed as well. In the advertisement strategy offering cartoon character images with vibrant graphics with each yogurt might be appealing for the consumers so that children have to collect all players for the England national team or even club teams therefore influencing them to buy more until they collect all (Belch et al. 2014).

The innovative product development idea will come with different flavors that can include cola, salted caramel, cheese cake, maple pancake, bacon, yogurt with Chocó crunches in them, nutty yogurts, red liquorish, butter popcorn and pina colada. The advertising campaign will involve changes within the packaging of the company’s products that can even be a video game where children can enjoy a fresh energy tasty yogurt providing that can provide health nutrients (Bhupathi 2016). The informational strategy that can be considered by Muller is to generate awareness and desire to purchase product within the target market, the children needs to be approached with a persuasive message of marketing communications that focuses on the importance of pure ingredients containing effective health benefits are used in developing the rich range (Raju 2014).

Promoting such health benefits can be done by the company to children through portraying the health benefits of having their yogurts by advertising through cartoon characters in the UK market. In addition, the transformational strategy that can be considered by Muller through changing it packaging that will be designed with famous cartoon characters, each promoting each flavour variants newly developed by Muller (Blakeman 2018).

Using attractive colourful packaging with children’s favourite cartoon characters on the Yogurts can attract children’s attention trough visualizing the content and flavour variants offered by Muller in a fun and engaging manner. Use of cartoon characters can make the products of the brand recognizable in the market. As the cartoons can facilitate in providing the emotions among children to get attracted towards all the flavour variants in yogurts offered by Muller along with provoking purchase intention among them as they get associated with the brand (Bruhn and Schnebelen 2017).

Integrated Marketing Campaign of Muller	Competitors and their Positioning	Competitive advantage of Muller’s Products
TV advertisement with celebrity: Such advertisement will promote through promoting a statement that to children that “consuming Muller’s yoghurt will give you superhero powers”. Moreover, famous superhero celebrities will promote the brand on TV advertisement.	Dairy UK is one of the major competitors of Muller that offers exceptionally packaged goods through promoting the brand as “hygienic and rich in quality”. The company has attained huge consumer base through innovative advertising strategies attaining them wider reach such as television ads and billboards.	The competitive advantage that will be attained by Muller’s is to promote its brand to mothers and children with its brand positioning statement “Muller yogurt is the yogurt that families and children love”
Offering free football player toy: Muller’s will offer free football player celebrity toy to children each time they purchase the company’s product. This will encourage children to purchase the company’s products.	First milk is another major competitor of Muller that promotes its brand as “taste and enjoyment with super snack” along with using advertising campaigns like television and social media advertisements with eye-catching visual imagery that promotes appetite.	Competitive advantage of Muller Company in comparison to its competitors is that it has introduced new flavours introduced first time in the market along with packaging the flavours with vibrant coloured cartoon characters that can attract children consumers.

Market Segmentation

For developing an effective integrated marketing communications campaign for Muller along with analyzing the effectiveness of the campaign will consider implementing two vital models such as hot air balloon and TCB.

Hot air balloon strategy can be used by Muller in communicating its brand promotion message to the children. To attain increased attention from this target audience group, Muller can consider promoting the brand through developing hot air balloons of the cartoon characters in UK such as of Mr. Bean, Horrid Henry, Sponge Bob Square Pants, Tom and Jerry and Bob the Builder. These cartoon character shaped balloons will depict the new flavours of Yogurts introduced by Muller (Karjaluoto, Mustonen and Ulkuniemi 2015). This marketing communication strategy is deemed to be suitable in promoting the new packaging design of Muller as it is highly visual, cost effective, media friendly, attention grabbing and highly engaging. The hot air balloons will have the logo of the yogurt brand and the hot air balloons are considered to be highly visible by thousands of people as it flies over them (Pluta-Olearnik 2018).

Hot air balloons for Muller is observed to be highly engaging and interacting for enhancing interest among the target audience and acting as an unique marketing vehicle. The products of the company might be appealing for the children sector as healthy and energy fuelling snack to children (Kelly, Jones and Hagle 2015). The product is so developed that it changes or appeal to a new segment and packaging can be changed as well. In the advertisement strategy offering cartoon character images with vibrant graphics with each yogurt might be appealing for the consumers so that children have to collect all players for the England national team or even club teams therefore influencing them to buy more until they collect all (Kitchen and Tourky 2015). The brand positioning statement of Muller’s for its target consumers will be “Muller yogurt is the yogurt that families and children love”. This positioning statement will reflect the company’s commitment to deliver a positive food future through offering healthy yoghurt in constantly innovative flavour variants.

1. Television advertisements:

Theme: Television Advertisement using Hello Kitty Cartoon Character that will develop interest among target audience to purchase an innovatively packaged good. The advertisement would be completely animated and would contain animated creature.

Time duration of advertisement: 6 months through TV channels like Pogo and Cartoon Network

Target consumers: Children and mothers

A dummy:

1. Physical toys:

Theme: Toy of Football Player “Leo Messi” that will be free with Mullers Yoghurt that will motivate people to purchase the brand than its competitors

Distribution: In retail shops. Free offer will be for 6 months duration.

Target consumers: Children and mothers

A dummy:

1. Youtube/ video advertisement:

Theme: You Tube Advertisement of Muller’s Yoghurt which will portray consuming Muller’s Yoghurt will give children superpowers

Duration: 6 months advertisement

Target consumers: Children and mothers

A dummy:

1. Hot air balloon advertisement:

Theme: Hot air balloon Advertisement of Muller’s Yoghurt which will portray consuming Muller’s Yoghurt will make children feel light with consuming all natural ingredients. This will attract attention of mothers those look for healthy snack substitute for their children.

Sales Pitch for Muller’s Yoghurt

Duration: 6 months advertisement

Target consumers: Children and mothers

A dummy:

The success of implementation of such integrated communications can be analyzed through observing increase in the sales of newly packaged yoghurt with varied flavour variants. Moreover, the success of this marketing strategy can also be evaluated through observing increase in the loyalty of the children consumer segment after implementation of creative advertising strategy. Moreover, positive response to such marketing campaign can also be observed through analyzing an increase in brand awareness aiming children through becoming the scene of attention (Lovelock and Patterson 2015). A huge population of children and their parents in UK are observed to visit children parks during the weekends. Considering the same, Muller can promote new packaging of its unique yogurt flavours to the children through promoting its brand in the large outdoor events in children parks and near the retail shops where parents visit the most (Shkurkinet al. 2016).

This strategy is deemed to generate extensive media coverage for its new and re-developed packaging of yogurts within a year. In addition, this relative advertising strategy will serve as airborne generator of social media content which generates an emotional connection among the target consumer group (Luxton, Reid and Mavondo 2015). The success of this marketing communication campaign can also be used through analyzing the number of people those took photographs of Muller’s balloon media advertising campaign and liked the company’s yogurt products on social media sites such as Facebook, Tumblr, Flicker and Twitter within a year.

Conclusion

The objective of this paper was to analyze the integrated marketing communications strategy developed for Muller in order to develop an effective promotional campaign and grab increased target consumer attention. It has been gathered from the paper that after successful launch of this company, Muller turned out to be a market leader in UK dairy industry. For attaining a leader advantage, the company attempted to add more services through launching different product lines. In the advertisement strategy offering a single football player icon toy or something with each yogurt might be appealing for the consumers so that children have to collect all players for the England national team or even club teams therefore influencing them to buy more until they collect all. The target market of Muller is divided into a broad target market and within different segments through taking into consideration the demand characteristics along with addressing precise products, services and marketing strategies along with the demand characteristics. It was also revealed that the advertising campaign will involve changes within the packaging of the company’s products that can even be a video game where children can enjoy a fresh energy tasty yogurt providing that can provide health nutrition. Using attractive colourful packaging with children’s favourite cartoon characters on the Yogurts can attract children’s attention through visualizing the content and flavour variations offered by Muller in a fun and engaging manner.

References

Allida, K.J.A., De los Santos, E.M.G., Mateus, C.H.T., Olivo, M.J.A., Pacana, L.A.H., Soriano, S.A.D. and Sagarino, E.V., 2018. Level of Knowledge and Consumer Response on Integrated Marketing Communication of Selected Fast Food Centers in Davao City. Ledger, 1.

Andrews, J.C. and Shimp, T.A., 2017. Advertising, promotion, and other aspects of integrated marketing communications. Nelson Education.

Bansal, H. and Bharti, C., 2014. Social Networking Websites an Emerging Tool of Integrated Marketing Communication. International Journal of Engineering and Management Research (IJEMR), 4(1), pp.258-272.

Batra, R. and Keller, K.L., 2016. Integrating marketing communications: New findings, new lessons, and new ideas. Journal of Marketing, 80(6), pp.122-145.

Belch, G.E., Belch, M.A., Kerr, G.F. and Powell, I., 2014. Advertising: An integrated marketing communication perspective. McGraw-Hill Education.

Bhupathi, M.M., 2016. Integrated Marketing Communications. In Strategic Marketing Management in Asia: Case Studies and Lessons across Industries (pp. 425-445). Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

Blakeman, R., 2018. Integrated marketing communication: creative strategy from idea to implementation. Rowman & Littlefield.

Bruhn, M. and Schnebelen, S., 2017. Integrated marketing communication–from an instrumental to a customer-centric perspective. European Journal of Marketing, 51(3), pp.464-489.

Caywood, C.L., 2016. Integrated Marketing Communications. In The SAGE Encyclopedia of Corporate Reputation. Sage.

Fill, C. and Turnbull, S.L., 2016. Marketing communications: brands, experiences and participation. Pearson.

Gambetti, R.C. and Schultz, D.E., 2015. Reshaping the boundaries of marketing communication to bond with consumers.

Karjaluoto, H., Mustonen, N. and Ulkuniemi, P., 2015. The role of digital channels in industrial marketing communications. Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, 30(6), pp.703-710.

Kelly, J.S., Jones, S.K. and Hagle, R.A. eds., 2015. The IMC Handbook: Readings & Cases in Integrated Marketing Communications. Racom Communications.

Kitchen, P.J. and Tourky, M., 2015. Integrated Marketing Communications: A Contextual International Advertising Approach. In Integrated Communications in the Postmodern Era (pp. 19-48). Palgrave Macmillan, London.

Lovelock, C. and Patterson, P., 2015. Services marketing. Pearson Australia.

Luxton, S., Reid, M. and Mavondo, F., 2015. Integrated marketing communication capability and brand performance. Journal of Advertising, 44(1), pp.37-46.

Manser Payne, E., Peltier, J.W. and Barger, V.A., 2017. Omni-channel marketing, integrated marketing communications and consumer engagement: A research agenda. Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing, 11(2), pp.185-197.