International Marketing Management: Analyzing Fiat's Marketing Strategy for the 500X Crossover

Learning Outcome

1. Analyse the changing business environment(s) globally and how they pose challenges to marketing management functions in organisations.
2. Develop marketing plans with application of appropriate marketing models, tools and techniques
3. Evaluate the processes involved in brand management and how they influence consumer behaviour
4. Evaluate the skills set needed as a creative marketer to launch new products/services in a dynamic global marketplace.

Scenario: -

FIAT's 500X Crossover Ad Drives Audience Engagement on YouTube

After successfully revamping its iconic 500 model, the Italian automobile manufacturer FIAT launched the 500X crossover. To compete in an ultra-competitive market, FIAT France partnered with YouTube to produce an ad and measured impact in terms of ad recall, brand awareness, and search volume.

Fiat’s approach was to stream video ad exclusively on YouTube before launching on other media. Fiat was also determined to measure the incremental impact of the campaign with a Brand Lift survey.With 13 million views, the FIAT 500X YouTube ad remains one of the top three most-viewed videos during the 2015 Super Bowl, with an impressive completion rate of 84%.

Full article available at:- https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-resources/content-marketing/fiats-500x-crossover-ad-drives-audience-engagement-on-youtube/ Based on the above scenario of Fiat’s marketing strategy to launch the 500X crossover, learners are requested to analyze the various aspects of International Marketing Management by preparing a Marketing report.

Case study ‘Will it blend?’ 

Source: - ‘Consumer Behaviour: a needs perspective’ https://sites.google.com/site/cnsmrbhvr/consumer-needs/marketing-implications/case-studies Blendtec is a division of K-Tec, Inc. and sells commercial and residential blenders. The company was founded in 1975 and it’s popularly known for its ‘Will it blend’ marketing campaign. Blendtec’s signature series and stealth line of blenders were awarded the 2013 Gold innovation award. 

The ‘Will it blend’ series (Blentec, 2013) is often viewed as a great example of a brand turning its marketing materials into something the consumers want to share. It features the simple premise of using one of the company’s blenders, to see if something seems difficult or impossible to blend, will blend. Items previously blended include everything from the latest iPhone to magnets, there is a particular focus on items in the zeitgeist or that is the topic of discussion at that moment in time. One such example is the blending of the much-maligned vuvuzela which was so talked about during the 2010 World Cup (VOA, 2010). The Blendtec blender has successfully blended everything to date with videos still ongoing.
The end result is a viral that is current and interesting; it makes consumers want to share it with each other. At the same time they have put their product at the centre of the campaign and made it look best in class, demonstrating the lack of risk associated with the product. Blendtec’s campaign exploits the fact that not many consumers know much about blenders; not many consumers have a favourite blender brand. By appealing to the mainstream in such a simple, yet interesting way consumers are exposed to a brand of blender that holds a high level of social standing and carries no performance risk in that it will seemingly never fail to blend something. In this way Blendtec has grasped the consumer’s attention and provided a compelling argument to be the consumer’s favourite blender brand.

Here are some YouTube videos from the popular series ‘Will it blend?’ by Blendtec

“Will it blend? IPhone X” https://youtu.be/KWqw5SpITg8
“Will it blend? IPad” https://youtu.be/lAl28d6tbko
“Will it blend? Ford Fiesta” https://youtu.be/xRAz6fkr5RQ

Answer the following questions based on the case study provided:-

1. Provide some background information about the Company and the Brand given in the case study. How do you gauge the success of the ‘will it blend’ series and the role of creative marketing in this scenario.

2. Establish the role of marketing models concerning the given organisation; you should include at least one model among (Porter’s Model, SWOT Analysis, and PESTLE) and at least one Model among (BCG Matrix, Ansoff Matrix and Product Life Cycle Model).