MCOM4040 : Marketing And Communications

The promotional mix refers to promotional aspect of marketing mix and consists of the advertising, personal selling and sales promotion (Buil, De Chernatony and Martinez 2013).

The elements of the promotional mix are as follows:

Advertising: This refers to the audio and the video form of marketing communication that involves an open sponsored non-personal message for promotion or sale of a product.

Personal Selling: This involves making use of people for selling products after direct interaction with customers. The aims of the sellers remained in encouraging and informing the buyers in making purchase.

Sales Promotion: This element of promotional mix makes use of both the media and the non-media communications in marketing for predetermined and limited time in increasing the consumer demand.

Discussion of the Promotional Mix Element the Body Shop Adopts

The Body Shop adopts advertising as the element of its promotional mix in putting across a message regarding its fight against animal testing of the cosmetics. Advertising enables in making a huge potential body of the target audience not only aware of promotion but driving them towards making a compelling decision (Khan 2014).

The advantages of Advertising are as follows:

1. Help in easily delivering the message against animal testing
2. Helps in market expansion
3. Enables increased number of people to be part of the campaign

The disadvantages of advertising are as follows:

1. Advertising leads to additional cost
2. Sometimes leads to the undermining of the social value
3. Leads to confusion amongst the buyers

The Channels that The Body Shop undertakes for its fight against the animal testing includes advertisement through fashion magazine and social media platforms. The chosen channel for promotion will enable the brand in generation of the leads from the mediators and at the same time persuading reader in identifying themselves and extending their full support towards ban on the animal testing for cosmetics (Okazaki and Taylor 2013). The channels also created pressure on the mediators for encouraging the customers in signing and supporting the petition.

The Communications Key Message   

The video campaign related to the fight against animal testing tries to put across a message that The Body Shop believes in harming no animals in testing of its cosmetics and is therefore trying to put a ban on the animals for testing of its cosmetics (thebodyshop.com 2018).

 The key message of The Body Shop lay in the achievement of the eight million signatures in support of the company’s fight against the ban on the animal testing and forward it to the United Nations by 2018. The company started of its campaign in United Nations and then went global with it in the year 2017.                            

Discussion of the Key Target Audience  

The Body Shop targets the well-groomed and educated women and men between 18 to 55 years of age. This consumer group not only believes in taking care of themselves but also is ever ready in paying more for a beauty product (Zadek, Evans and Pruzan 2013). Moreover, they also express interest in products that are environment friendly and ethical. The target audience represents the urban political class who are not only conscious about fashion but also their appearance. The target consumers of the beauty product brand not only look out for healthy and natural beauty product but also are concerned with the significance of sustainability.

Marketing Theory such as ‘AIDA’

Attention:

The Body Shop tries to draw the attention of the clients through an attractive video campaign comprising of attractive pictures, the company logo in white color and visuals in reference to its ban on the animal testing.

Interest:

The video campaign tries to retain the attention of the customers by putting across the message through two of its senior managers. This aspect not only makes the campaign interesting but portrays the depth of importance of the undertaking a campaign against animal testing

Desire:

Through the campaign, The Body Shop tries to put forward that it made its campaign global thereby strictly putting a ban on the animal campaign.

Action:

The Body Shop through its campaign tries to urge and encourage its customers in signing the petition that will enable it in reaching the 8 million mark.

Discussion of One Method to Gather Feedback

To gather feedback, The Body Shop can undertake in-message surveys that it can generate via chat or an email. On clicking on the answers, the recording takes place and the remaining survey opens up in a new browser (Rzemieniak 2015). The questions of follow-up are placed there or it can be reverted with a ‘thank you’ message. Nevertheless, people express more likeliness in responding to such a survey.

Conclusion:

The report ends with a discussion on the method for collection of feedback. The report also discusses about AIDA theory of marketing with a focus on the urban educated cosmopolitan class as its target audience. One also gets an insight into the key message of The Body Shop in trying to put a ban on the animal testing and how its adopts advertising as its key promotional mix element in portraying the message across the world.

Introduction:

Marketing campaigns refers to the key method adopted by the companies in communicating with the market as well reinforcing the position for acquisition by the customers. Good marketing campaigns depend on themes and include touch points with market (Al-Dmour et al. 2016).

The marketing campaigns are the ideal means of reaching the clients, customers and the leads. They also act as game changing move thereby securing meetings with the prospects and the customers. Marketing campaign also helps in grabbing customer attention in comparison to single advertisement. Through marketing campaign, an organization can explain its services thereby leading to the better promotion of the brands.

References: 

Al-Dmour, H., Al-Madani, S., Alansari, I., Tarhini, A. and Al-Dmour, R.H., 2016. Factors affecting the effectiveness of cause-related marketing campaign: moderating effect of sponsor-cause congruence. International Journal of Marketing Studies, 8(5), p.114.

Buil, I., De Chernatony, L. and Martinez, E., 2013. Examining the role of advertising and sales promotions in brand equity creation. Journal of Business Research, 66(1), pp.115-122.

Khan, M.T., 2014. The concept of'marketing mix'and its elements (a conceptual review paper). International journal of information, business and management, 6(2), p.95.

Okazaki, S. and Taylor, C.R., 2013. Social media and international advertising: theoretical challenges and future directions. International marketing review, 30(1), pp.56-71.

Rzemieniak, M., 2015. Measuring the effectiveness of online advertising campaigns inthe aspect of e-entrepreneurship. Procedia Computer Science, 65, pp.980-987.

thebodyshop.com 2018. [online] Available at: https://www.thebodyshop.com/en-gb/about-us/against-animal-testing [Accessed 3 Jul. 2018]. 

Zadek, S., Evans, R. and Pruzan, P., 2013. Building corporate accountability: Emerging practice in social and ethical accounting and auditing. Routledge.