SCALE
Integrated Marketing Communications Plan 27 April 2018
TABLE OF CONTENTS
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CONTEXT ANALYSIS
PAGE 04
COMMUNICATIONS OBJECTIVES
PAGE 08
PROPOSED COMMUNICATIONS STRATEGY
PAGE 10
COORDINATED COMMUNICATION MIX
PAGE 13
BUDGET, IMPLEMENTATION AND CONTROL
PAGE 18
REFERENCES
PAGE 21
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CONTEXT ANALYSIS
CONTEXT ANALYSIS
Envision an eco-friendly world where every tangible man-made item is made from renewable sources. True “circle of life� products everywhere you look. Such a world seems unattainable at the present, but the future could be closer than we think. SCALE aims to be a leader in the renewable/eco/green initiative movement with its water filtration products (carafe pitcher filters, tap filters and bottle filters) made entirely from recycled plastic waste from the ocean. SCALEs core product material is salvaged by volunteers through SCALEs voluntourism program where groups of individuals help clean our oceans and protect marine wildlife while also experiencing local culture in an authentic and fun way that immerses them fully into international regions before the waste is sent to be transformed into our products line.
Our target audience is millennials aged 21 - 35. Not only are they the main age group to make up the majority of solo/backpacking travelers worldwide most likely to take part in our voluntourism program, but they are also the most eco-conscious age group inclined to buy a product based off the company's values of sustainability. Millennials usually value experiences over material things and spend their money more freely than any other groups whether they have the monetary budget or not. If they feel that the product is truly worth it, relate to the brand on a personal level or feel as if they are contributing to a good cause (i.e. TOMS shoes or Patagonia) then they will pay more for a product that they perceive to be a reflection of themselves. Millennials were raised by their Boomer parents with the ideals that they deserve anything they are willing to work hard enough for, that their voice is important and that equality is worth fighting for (Solomon, 2014). With all this in mind regarding our Gen Y audience, it is important to know that the decisions they make are often spontaneous yet positive, financially impulsively yet expressive, and built upon equal relationships (you can especially recognize the latter as we see millennial couples move away from the traditional mindset that the man is the breadwinner transform into both the man and woman sharing the cost and responsibility of the relationship).
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“
People don’t buy what you do.
They buy WHY you do it. SIMON SINEK Optimist and Founder at Start with Why.
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CONTEXT ANALYSIS
SCALEs brand identity has the intention of relating to its customers in a meaningful way that will embolden who they already are while also enlivening their outlook on recycling and becoming more sustainable. Our brand personality resembles that of our target audience; adventurous, dutiful and imaginative, with our brand relationship focused on kindness, commitment and inclusiveness. Reaffirming the way we plan to communicate to our customers, business partners, and our home, Earth.
SCALEs positioning strategy was all about the consumer and how we could add better value to their lives over our competitors. Luckily, the entire existence of SCALE being based off of sustainability is what gives us the most strategic advantage at an economical price; filtered water filtering oceans. Both of these aspects play a significant role in our target audiences purchasing factors.
SCALEs tone of voice ties back into our brand identity and positioning strategy, concentrating on our sustainable actions in an adventurous, dutiful and imaginative way with remarks like “we will always think outside the box on a global scale”. The idea is to inspire our target audience everytime we communicate with them and put the choice of making a difference into their hands while being relatable and “woke” versus coming off as authoritative. Communication will take place on our website and all social media platforms, including additional creative avenues, in a “v” chill and relatable way yet with respect to those with a different point of view.
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COMMUNICATIONS OBJECTIVES
COMMUNICATIONS OBJECTIVES
SCALEs communications objectives are focused on growing brand awareness, increasing overall customer satisfaction and reaching our target sales performance by the end of campaign year 1. Following enough content marketing exposure both on and offline, sales will in turn rise, as will the trend of owning and/or experiencing our voluntourism program, throughout San Francisco and into much of the Pacific West Coast by the next couple of years and then continue in the majority of the United States. Our S.M.A.R.T. communications objectives are detailed below starting from our first years campaign launch date:
1.
GROWING BRAND AWARENESS. Attain strong brand recognition/recall from 1% of our target population in San Francisco by the end of month 3 (with a total population around 860,000 and millennials making up almost half that, 1% would include approximately 4,050 individuals). Reach 500 followers on both Facebook and Instagram by the end of month 1 with a growth rate of 5% by the end of campaign year 1 (around 10,000 followers by month 12).
2.
INCREASE OVERALL CUSTOMER SATISFACTION. Using Customer Service Management (CRM) software, we will track each customer interaction via online user journey analysis weekly so that the Customer Services team can respond, in line with our company’s tone of voice, to questions or concerns efficiently and effectively and boost employee productivity and create a customer satisfaction rate of 95% at the end of month 7.
3.
REACH TARGET SALES PERFORMANCE. Use the data from CRM software to measure the value of online sales opportunities won/lost to acquire 15,000 sales by following up with leads after 5 days and give consumers a more affable and delightful experience that falls in line with our brand personality. This goal is expected to be achieved by the end month 12 with a profit of $600,000 at $40/carafe pitcher.
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PROPOSED COMMUNICATIONS STRATEGY
PROPOSED COMMUNICATIONS STRATEGY
The tasks SCALEs proposed communications strategy will need to complete will focus on some of the DRIP Elements of marketing communications by Bowersox and Morash (Fill, 2013). These include differentiate, inform and persuade.
Launching a new brand in the personal use water filtration market in San Francisco, California, SCALE will be competing against trusted, well-known, global brands that have been established for quite some time. It is important that we market ourselves strategically in order to stand out amongst our competitors and remain more attractive to our target audience, millennials.
In order to do this we must educate our target audience of the benefits our brand offers them, be it the affordable, trendy and modern water filter products that we craft or our ties to sustainability by helping clean up our oceans and using the plastic waste as the core material for our products. We will also focus on informing our target audience of our voluntourism program, showcasing that they can help us make a difference by volunteering with us to salvage the plastic waste from a beautiful, tropical country that they will be able to experience locally and immersively and that their efforts not only help the earth, but they are literally a part of our brand, filtered water filtering oceans.
The “endgame” will be to persuade our target audience that our brand really takes it a whole level further in the green initiative movement and that by purchasing our products, they are contributing to a positive force in the recycling world. We hope that the carefully curated content we communicate through our marketing efforts will spark “word of mouth” advertising and make the persuasion segment of our tasks that much easier to fulfill.
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PROPOSED COMMUNICATIONS STRATEGY
Our key strategic priorities will focus on supporting our communications objectives: growing brand awareness, increasing overall customer satisfaction and reaching our target sales performance. The relationship between these is vital in providing a balanced Integrated Marketing Communications Plan. In order to produce brand awareness, we will implement a Customer Service Management (CRM) system, use social and offline media to generate buzz and in conjunction with CRM, develop leads. We will also improve Search Engine Optimization (SEO) with strategic keywords that will rank us higher in organic search results, thus better connecting us to our target audience. To increase overall customer satisfaction, our use of the CRM system will allow our Customer Services team to better interact with our audience in a timely manner that coincides with our tone of voice. Discount codes will be utilized in the event of an unpleasant experience and also with second purchases for encouragement. Referring a friend discount codes will be applied as well and work alongside our persuasion task and fulfilling “word of mouth” advertising. Finally, reaching our target sales performance, online we’ll send follow up “cart deserted” emails with incentives for new customers and, using our CRM software, develop strategic pricing based off opportunities won/lost data.
The core message that SCALE will communicate to our target audience is that our filtered water filters oceans. Climate change is a growing topic that isn’t going away and we want to position ourselves in support of making a change in personal daily habits that has environmental consequences most people aren’t aware of. Our message is about saving our oceans and it’s marine life, and that our products are the perfect companion for wanderlust millennials everywhere. Our content will always be informative yet written in a relatable way versus authoritative, almost as if you were dishing about some “goss” with your BFFs.
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COORDINATED COMMUNICATION MIX
COORDINATED COMMUNICATION MIX
The content of the proposed communications effort will be informational and emotional. In our case, the two basically go hand in hand. Any informative communication we relay to the public will usually have an emotional piece tied to it due to the harmful and sad effects our plastic waste has on our earth and marine life. The saying “a picture is worth a thousand words� really hits home when one sees a straw stuck in a turtle's nose being pulled painfully out, a seal caught in a soda cans plastic ring or once beautiful beaches littered with plastic trash due to overtourism. Once tapping into that emotion, we want to turn the vibe into a positive one, putting a call to action into our audience's hands to help us be the change. You can see something similar to this present in our brand manifesto or sample infographic.
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COORDINATED COMMUNICATION MIX
Tools from the 4C’s framework are chosen in order to support our communications strategy tasks: differentiate, inform and persuade. The combination of public relations and direct marketing will be used to accomplish this because both are focused on building relationships with the consumer, something our target audience values. With these two tools, we can produce mass and personalized messages as these tools complement and/or balance each other out as seen in Fill’s 4C Framework of the tools characteristics:
PUBLIC RELATIONS
DIRECT MARKETING
Low
High
Medium
Medium
Low
High
High
Medium
Absolute costs
Low
Medium
Cost per contact
Low
High
Wastage
High
Low
Size of investment
Low
Medium
Ability to target particular audiences
Low
High
Management’s ability to adjust the deployment of the tool as circumstances change
Low
High
COMMUNICATIONS Ability to deliver a personal message Ability to reach a large audience Level of interaction
CREDIBILITY Given by the target audience
COSTS
CONTROL
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COORDINATED COMMUNICATION MIX
Our media strategy will first kick off with a Grand “Awakening” Event at the Coachella festival in Indio, California in April 2019. This is one of the most popular festivals in the world with the majority of the festival demographic made up of millennials. Our vendor booth at the festival will be interactive and have a native San Franciscan DJ, Mia Moretti, perform and help draw a crowd. She is also part of a coalition called, DJs FOR CLIMATE CHANGE, with whom we will partner up with to bring awareness about both DJs4CA and SCALE’s efforts to help make a difference in our world's future. Our event booth will also offer free refill water stations filtered by our products where consumers can taste and see the difference we make. We will offer a “Besties” discount that
@miamoretti
allows consumers to buy two bottle pitcher filters with
30% off during the two weekend event only. We will also promote our Instagram contest #CHANGEWITHSCALE at the festival and online where we encourage participants to post pictures/videos of them recycling/picking up trash in their hometown. The top three winners shown making the biggest effort will win a free voluntourism trip with SCALE for them and one friend. These winners will then become our social media influencers for the brand as we have them document their travels and experiences with us every other two months in line with our relevant media/event timeline. This contest will start one month later in May 2019 following the Coachella festival and winners will be announced on July 4th, a “god damn patriotic reveal”. Sponsored ads will also be marketed to those online with social media tools (i.e. Facebook’s Ads Manager) to target our audience more effectively with a native advertising technique. Sales promotions will continue throughout the entire year with our referral program of a 10% discount for every friend you get to purchase a SCALE product.
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COORDINATED COMMUNICATION MIX
If a participant gets 10 referrals, they will be entered into our yearly drawing for a free voluntourism trip with us (a participant will get their name entered into the drawing additional times for every 5 extra referrals they get). The sales promotion referrals will start after the instagram contest winners have been announced. Sponsored ads will be our main media focus. Finally, a publicity stunt with San Francisco’s Aquarium of the Bay will also be made in an effort to recognize the marine life SCALE is trying to protect in partnership with the Bay. SCALE will hold an evening awareness party on New Year’s Eve, with whom DJs FOR CLIMATE CHANGE will perform as entertainment. With a projected turn out of 500 attendees and NYE tickets selling at $150 each, a profit of $75,000 is expected. 20% of remaining profits from ticket sales after costs of the NYE party will be donated to the non for profit ecotarium’s conservation initiatives to help build the partnership SCALE will maintain with the Bay and it’s investment in the community and it’s oceans. After all, we will always think outside the box on a global scale.
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BUDGET, IMPLEMENTATION AND CONTROL
BUDGET, IMPLEMENTATION AND CONTROL
An overview of resources to support our integrated marketing communications plan will require a total budget of $96,000 for the entire campaign year. Budget will be allocated between the following media segments of the plan accordingly: ●
$5,000 for the two weekend Coachella event (vendor booth, DJ Mia Moretti, water stations)
●
$6,000 / #CHANGEWITHSCALE voluntourism trip winner/influencers + one friend
●
$60,000 for sponsored ads across all social media platforms during campaign year 1 leading up to Coachella, #CHANGEWITHSCALE contest, NYE party, next festival season
●
$6,000 referral program voluntourism trip winner/influencer + one friend
●
$7,000 charity NYE party with Aquarium of the Bay (event space, horderves, drinks, DJ)
The implementation chart shown below will give a more indicative look at our approach. 2019 MEDIA APR MAY JUN JUL
AUG SEP OCT NOV DEC JAN FEB MAR
DIRECT DIGITAL MARKETING Facebook Sponsored Ads Instagram Sponsored Ads Influencers PUBLICITY Coachella NYE Event CAMPAIGN CONTESTS #CHANGEWITHSCALE SALES PROMOTION Referral Program
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BUDGET, IMPLEMENTATION AND CONTROL
Evaluation will be completed for our three communications objectives: growing brand awareness, customer satisfaction and reaching our target sales performance. All of which we believe, if successfully executed, will help put SCALE on the map next to our competitors.
Growing brand awareness will be evaluated in two stages. First at the end of month 3 with a brand recall/recognition of 1% within our target population. This will be completed via online survey. We hope our Grand Awakening Event at Coachella will have a huge impact on our target audience and can be shown through social media statistics at the end of month 12 with 10,000+ followers.
Earning a 95% customer satisfaction rate will consist of reports generated from our CRM system that tracks all online and social interaction (i.e. reviews, comments/posts, likes, shares) with our customers. It will also include a satisfaction survey once our target audience completes a purchase online.
Our target sales performance of 15,000 SCALE filtered products sold will be measured at the end of month 12. With each communication piece and event carefully spaced to lead up towards something to look forward to, we expect to achieve this goal by the end of our campaign year thanks to the carefully planned communications execution.
Our target audience is a social group, so we expect to communicate to them the way they do with each other. Social media, travelling and festivals/parties. What a time to be alive.
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REFERENCES
REFERENCES
Consumer Reports. (2016) Water Filter Buying Guide, Consumer Reports. Available at: https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/water-filters/buying-guide/index.htm [Accessed March 10, 2018]. Ellen MacArthur Foundation. (2016) The New Plastics Economy: Rethinking the future of plastics, World Economic Forum. Available at: https://www.weforum.org/reports/thenew-plastics-economy-rethinking-the-future-of-plastics?utm_content=buffer528b9&utm _medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer [Accessed February 28, 2018]. Fill, C., Dawsonera, & Askews. (2013). Marketing communications : Brands, experiences and participation (6th ed.). Harlow: Pearson. Glass Packaging Institute. (2014) The Millennials: A Generation Invested in Health and the Environment, Glass Packaging Institute. Available at:http://www.gpi.org/sites/default/files/GPI-TheMillennials-11%206%2014-FINAL.pdf [Accessed March 8, 2018]. Kapferer, J.-N. (2012) The new strategic brand management : advanced insights and strategic thinking 5th ed., London: Kogan Page. Labrecque, L. I., Patrick, V. M. and Milne, G. R. (2013) ‘The Marketers’ Prismatic Palette: A Review of Color Research and Future Directions.’, Psychology & Marketing, 30(2) Niche. (2017) Living in Mission Dolores. Niche. Available at: https://www.niche.com/places-tolive/n/mission-dolores-san-francisco-ca/ [Accessed March 7, 2018]. Salesforce Canada. (2015) How to Create a Succinct and Effective Brand Voice, Tone, and Style. Salesforce Canada Blog. Available at: https://www.salesforce.com/ca/blog/2015/03/brand-voice.html [Accessed March 12, 2018]. Sinek, S. (2009, September). Retrieved April 10, 2018, from https://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action Solomon, M. (2014) 2015 Is The Year Of The Millennial Customer: 5 Key Traits These 80 Million Consumers Share. Forbes. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/micahsolomon/2014/12/29/5-traits-that-define-the-80million-millennial-customers-coming-your-way/#4bef93c425e5 [Accessed March 9, 2018]. World Health Organization, UNICEF. (2018) Progress on drinking-water, sanitation and hygiene: 2017 update and SDG baselines, World Health Organization, UNICEF. Available at: http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/publications/jmp2017-highlights/en/ [Accessed February 20, 2018].
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KIMBERLY VONFELDT | kvonfe200@caledonian.ac.uk | Global Branding & Integrated Marketing Communications