Maxiel Corporan Hidalgo
Cuny ID : 23311756
‘Current Event Report- “With Whimsy, Burt’s Bees Introduces Its First TV Campaign”- from N.Y Times, Business-advertising section’
“It’s one thing to tweet to them, but to reach them on their calendars during their lunch break is a delightful way to say, ‘We really appreciate you and want to brighten your day,’ ” Katharine Belloir.
I. Introduction:
Burt’s Bees, the natural personal care brand, is introducing television commercials, the first for the 30-year-old brand, which highlight its flavors more than its moisturizers. The promotion of the lip balm it has traditionally been functionally driven, meaning that marketers only used to focus on its effectiveness, that it was …show more content…
the solution to the dryness in your lips and it was 100% naturally made. But now on this new advertisement, consumers are going to see more of what is called: ‘Personality driven’ and ‘Lifestyle-focused advertising’; with an emphasis on the flavors as a way to reinforce the fun aspect of the brand.
Vocabulary:
- Products: Goods or services with tangible and intangible characteristics that provide satisfaction and benefits. – Campaign: Specific activities designed to promote a product, service or business. A marketing campaign is a coordinated series of steps that can include promotion of a product through different mediums (television, radio, print, online) using a variety of different types of advertisements. – Research Firm: A statement from a brokerage firm or other investment advisory service discussing a specific security, industry, and market or news item. Research notes are usually meant to contain time-sensitive information that applies to the current day 's trading session or some event in the near future.
- TV Commercials: Is a span of television programming produced and paid for by an organization, which conveys a message, typically to market a product or service. – Production: The creation and assembly of components and finished products for sale. Three common types of manufacturing production are make-to-stock (MTS), make-to-order (MTO) and make-to-assemble (MTA).
– Marketing: A group of activities designed to expedite transactions by creating, distributing, pricing and promoting goods, services and ideas.
- Market: A group of people who have a need, purchasing power and the desire and authority to spend money on goods, services and ideas.
– Advertising: Marketing and campaigns that place emphasis on the needs and wants of small sets of people or on an individual consumer, as opposed to targeting a mass audience.
- Brand’s signature: Is a name, term, symbol, design, or combination that identifies a product and distinguishes it from other products.
– Expenditures: Funds used by a company to acquire or upgrade physical assets such as property, industrial buildings or equipment.
– Director of Marketing: Is a corporate executive responsible for marketing activities in an organization. Most often the position reports to the chief executive officer.
- Print ads: Is the process of production and dissemination of literature, music, or information — the activity of making information available to the general public.
– Consumer: Is a person or group of people, such as a household, who are the final users of products or services. The consumer 's use is final in the sense that the product is usually not improved by the …show more content…
use.
- Company’s share: The percentage of an industry or market 's total sales that is earned by a particular company over a specified time period.
– Business partner: An organization in which two or more individuals manage and operate the business. Both owners are equally and personally liable for the debts from the business. Also called partnership.
II. External Environment:
The marketing environment includes very important aspects to companies marketing plan and strategy. Based on the elements within the marketing environment firms may implement new tactics and plans over time to continue to compete with internal and external changes that are needed to stay competitive within the market.
Target Market: A group of people or organizations for which an organization designs, implements, and maintains a marketing mix intended to meet the need of that group resulting in mutually satisfying exchanges.
As the marketing environment changes, marketing managers must also change. Making changes to the marketing mix allows managers to influence the external environment. Environmental scanning, the collecting and evaluating of information on the external environment, enables managers to make intelligent decisions for the marketing strategies as well as better assessing target markets. The factors within the external environment that are important to marketing managers can be classified as social, demographics, economic, political and competitive.
Social Factors:
Social change is perhaps the most difficult external variable for marketing managers to forecast, influence, or integrate into marketing plans. Social factors include our attitudes, values, and lifestyles. Social factors influence the products people buy; the prices paid for products; the effectiveness of specific promotions; and how, where and when people expect to purchase products.
A person’s values are key determinants of what is important and not important, what actions to take or not to take, and how one behaves in social situations. Values influence our buying habits. Today’s consumers are demanding, inquisitive, and discriminating. No longer willing to tolerate products that break down, they are insisting on high-quality goods that save time, energy, and often calories. Shoppers are also concerned about nutrition and want to know what’s in their food; many have environmental concerns as well.
a) Component Lifestyles: The practice of choosing goods/services that meets one 's diverse needs and interests rather than conforming to a single traditional lifestyle. It is important to note that today 's average consumer is more diverse than ever before, and therefore their lifestyles and interests reach a wide range of products and services. A lifestyle is a mode of living; it is the way people decide to live their lives. With component lifestyles, people are choosing products and services that meet diverse needs and interests rather than conforming to traditional stereotypes.
In the past, a person’s profession for instance, banker defined his or her lifestyle. Today, a person can be a banker, a gourmet cooker, fitness enthusiast, dedicated single parent, and internet guru. Each of these lifestyles is associated with different goods and services and represents a target audience. Component lifestyles increase the complexity of consumers’ buying habits. Each consumer’s unique lifestyle can require a different marketing mix.
b) Social Media:
Social media are Web-based and mobile technologies that allows the creation and exchange of user-generated content. These media channels have changed the way we communicate, keep track of others, browse for products and services, and make purchases. Social networking is part of regular life for people of all ages, people ages fifty-five to sixty-four spend more than eleven hours on social media per month, while people over the age of sixty-five spend eight hours per month. The most active users those ages eighteen to twenty-four- spend more than 21 hours on social networking sites every month.
Demographic Factors:
Demography: The study of people’s vital statistics such as age, race, ethnicity and location. The study and research of demographics gives a large resource of information to marketing managers, by improving the 'how ' and 'why ' motivations of potentials customers. Demographic characteristics are strongly related to buyers’ behavior in the marketplace, and understanding the demographics of consumers gives companies competitive edge.
Another uncontrollable variable in the external environment, also extremely important to marketing managers. Demographics are significant because the basis for any market is people. People are directly or indirectly the basis of all markets, making population the most basic statistic in marketing.
Economic Factors:
In addition to social and demographic factors, marketing managers must understand and react to the economic environment. The 3 economic areas of greatest concern to most marketers are consumers’ incomes, inflation and recession.
a) Consumers’ Incomes: With job scarce, many people have accepted pay cuts to keep their current jobs or have taken less paying, but available jobs. Education is the primary determinant of a person’s earning potential. Over a lifetime, an individual with a bachelor’s degree will earn more than twice as much total income as a non degree holder.
b) Inflation: Is a measure of the decrease in the value of money, generally expressed as the percentage reduction in value since the previous year, which is the rate of inflation. If pay raises are matching the rates of inflation, then employees will be no worse off in terms of the immediate purchasing power of their salaries. In times of low inflation, businesses seeking to increase their profit margins can do so only by increasing their efficiency. If they significantly increase price, no one will purchase their goods or services.
c) Recession: Is a period of economic activity characterized by negative growth.
Is defined as occurring when the gross domestic product falls for two consecutive quarters. Gross domestic is the total market value of all final goods and services produced during a period of time.
Political Factors:
Business needs government regulation to protect innovators of new technology, the interest of society in general, one business from another and consumers. In turn, government needs business the marketplace generates taxes that support public efforts to educate our youth, pave our roads, protect our shores, etc.
Every aspect of the marketing mix is subject to laws ad restrictions. It is the duty of marketing managers or their legal assistant to understand these laws and conform to them, because failure to comply with regulations can have major consequences for a firm. Sometimes just sensing trends and taking corrective actions before a government agency acts can help avoid regulations.
Competitive
Factors:
The competitive environment encompasses the number of competitors a firm must face, the relative size of the competitors and the degree of interdependence within the industry. Management has little control over the competitive environment confronting a firm.
III. Marketing Mix Variables.
Product: This is simply the product, good, or service that a company sells and markets for a profit.
Place: Refers to where this product/good/service is distributed, domestically and internationally, through e-commerce, or a variety of specialty boutiques and outlets.
Promotion: These are the different approaches to widening the audience and in turn the sales of that a firms offers, by advertisements, public relations, sales promotion and personal selling which all have the potential to dramatically increase sales revenue.
Price: What a buyer must give up in order to obtain the product/good/service. This amount is completely up to the firm, and is often the quickest element of the marketing mix, to change. The price can be competitive with other companies, both on the higher and low scale, by sending different messages to potential buyers what the quality or value of a product or service.
For any company developing and positively identifying its target market while defining the elements within its marketing mix is crucial to its short and long-term success. After the purchase by Clorox in 2007 Burt 's Bees has continued to push forward by increasing its market share and developing a stronger brand image while increasing profits. In 2008 the company teamed up with Mike Indursky to launch a new campaign for some its existing and best-selling products. Today Indursky is the President of Bliss World, but in 2008 while working with Burt 's Bees his skill and expertise involved increasing awareness for the personal care market place, focusing on natural product innovation and new marketing strategies. It was in this year that Burt 's Bee launched the Natural vs. Campaign. The ads totaled 6 images of Burt 's Bees products with a list of their ingredients versus the ingredients found in other products of the same category; lip balms, body lotions, hand creams etc... The simplicity of the advertisements was hard to deny. Where one product was made with petroleum, Burt 's Bees would use beeswax, royal jelly instead of Dimethicone - a silicone oil which can irritate the skin, milk and honey vs. DMDM Hydantoin - a chemical preservative, all clearly showing how Burt 's Bees products were different from other brands. The campaign went one step further by suggestive asking consumers if they were reading the list of ingredients in the products that they purchased.
Lip balm use among women decreases steadily with age, the inverse of lipstick use, which increases with age, according to consumer research by Mintel, a market research firm. For lip balm, 72 percent of women from 18 to 24 use it, as do 45 percent of women 65 and older; for lipstick, 50 percent of women from 18 to 24 and 82 percent of women 65 and older use it. Recently in 2012 Burt 's Bees launched the Güd (good) line in their attempt to target a younger market. The previous Burt 's Bees customers were older, well-educated, with middle to high incomes, people who were more conscious of the products they used and their own environmental impacts which is why the Burt 's Bees brand would appeal to them. To reach a younger customer Burt 's Bees developed the first fragrance-focused brand in the natural products category.
IV. Lessons Learned.
A business is very dependable on all Marketing Factors:
A business organization, without an accurate analysis on internal and external factors of marketing is nothing, and most likely will be wasting money in non-potential clients, capital will be unbalanced and it might go bankrupt. A smarter way to go is by evaluating which customers and at what age and economical range will be buying your product.
You are your brand:
But also saw the documentary “Burt’s Buzz” 2013, an hour and a half long and it was nice, I learned some good stuff from it, business wise. That even though Shavitz ' hermetic lifestyle has many setbacks--he doesn 't have running hot water, for example--his respect for the mother nature actually reinforces the brand value. He didn’t compromise, just went for what he believed in. The more he seems to be isolated from the urban life, the more customers believe in Burt 's Bees ' commitment to be "natural." This may not be an intended result, but there 's a lesson: Having a leader who represents a company 's values is the most cost-effective marketing strategy. (The company employs him as a brand ambassador and for the use of his image.)
Your business should survive without you.
Your day may be like this: Wake up, check your inbox and reply to some potential clients. On your way to work, you draw down some key points for an upcoming pitch to an investor. At the office, you host a meeting with the employees telling them what to do next. Then your phone rings, someone tells you there 's technical issue you have to fix. It just feels like: Your business will die without you.
All these are done when Shavitz is sitting there in his rocking chair in northern Maine watching his dogs running on his 40-acre land. Yet Burt 's Bees is still thriving. The moral of the story stands true to almost all businesses: A strong business will continue to grow with a strong management team, not just yourself.
V. References: http://nyti.ms/1swibyk (Current event article) http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/22/business/media/for-a-new-burts-bees-line-check-your-calendar.html Class Textbook: MKTG Student 8th edition by Lamb, Hair and McDaniel. Chapter 4, from page 51 to 66.
Extra textbook: M- Business 4th edition by Ferrell, Hirt and Ferrell. Chapter 1, page 4; Chapter 11, pages 223 and 228; and Chapter 12, page 246.
Investopedia.com
http://folasadeonburtsbees.blogspot.com/2013/02/ch-4-marketing-environment.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2014/09/26/burt_s_bees_commercial_a_natural_tv_ad_for_the_clorox_owned_company.html http://www.mediabistro.com/agencyspy/baldwin-brings-burts-bees-to-tv_b72372 http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/237209/burts-bees-uncaps-flavor-in-each-tube-of-lip-ba.html http://workplace.dispatch.com/content/stories/life_and_entertainment/2014/09/29/burts-bees-focuses-on-flavors-in-first-tv-ad.html