International Marketing Management: Fiat's 500X Crossover and Blendtec's 'Will it Blend?' Campaigns

Task 1 (Report, 75 marks)-Minimum 3000 words

 Tasks:

Assessment Brief: Task and General Guidelines- Total Marks: 100 (Minimum word count: 4200 words)

This assignment consists of two tasks.

For Task 1, learners are asked to prepare a report based on the case scenario given below and by answering the questions given.

For task 2, learners are requested to answer the questions in regard to the case study given (the details of which are provided along with Task 2 below).

Task 1 (Report, 75 marks)-Minimum 3000 words

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.

You MUST follow the Project Report format, which should contain the following sections:

1. Executive Summary: You should summarize your marketing report briefly (hopefully on no more than one page of A4 paper). [8 Marks]- 300 words

2. Introduction: You should provide some background information on the case study organisation and a brief explanation on the various aspects of International Marketing management that are relevant to the product launch mentioned in the above case study. [8 Marks]- 400 words

3. Literature Review: You should conduct a review of relevant academic literature using at least 6-8 articles taken from reputed research journals/ article publications, as well as in addition consider any other secondary literature reports, company data/ any other relevant data, to critically analyse the available literature. The literature review should be based on:-

1. A brief critique on the current issues in marketing relevant to the case study organisation.[8 marks]- 300 words
2. The changing global business environment and the challenges this poses on the marketing management practices employed by the case study organisation. [8 marks]- 300 words
3. The development of a Marketing plan by applying relevant tools, models and techniques to support your analysis. The plan should be developed with regard to the case study organisation. [8 marks]-  300 words

4. Application of theory to practice: You need to compare actual practices in the case study organisation with the key academic thinking established in the review of literature. It may point out similarities and differences, agreements and contradictions, arguments and counter arguments, and suggest explanations for these relationships. The focus of this section needs to be: -An evaluation of marketing mix for the case study organisation. [8 Marks] 300 wordsTo evaluate the relationship between three elements of consumer analysis and to establish how these three elements help the Brand (for the case study organisation) develop effective marketing strategies [12 marks]- 600 words

5. Conclusions and Recommendations: You should summarize the main findings, including their implications, and provide recommendations that directly relate to this analysis. [10 Marks]- 500 words

6. References: You should use the Harvard Referencing System (HRS) correctly throughout in your report. [5 Marks]

Task 2 [Case study, 25 marks]- Minimum 1200 words

‘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 

Please 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 [10 Marks]- 500 words
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). [15 Marks]- 700 words