Week 9 EOC: Social Media

Since our brand is about building unique cookies, we decided the holidays would be a perfect time to launch a social media marketing campaign. The idea is to promote user submitted videos and photos of their creations for a contest. The contest is to build the most crazy and unique cookies, structures, or whatever you can make with our edible playdoh cookie dough for Santa Claus to eat on Christmas Eve. Through out the month of December we will bet promoting our contest, and showing user submitted videos on all of our social media handles. The videos will create a buzz and people will want to create better cookie creations. The winner will not be revealed until Christmas Eve in a commercial where Santa will come down the chimney to eat the winning playdoh cookie creation. I think it would be an exciting way to get customers involved in social media and boost sales of the product. The winner will receive a cash prize, year long supply of our product, and their winning structure in a commercial.

Week 8 EOC: Creative Content Pitch

For my creative content I am going to design a merchandising proposal for my Edible Play-Doh cookie dough set. Marketing is important in the packaging of any product. I plan to make a realistic packaging for the toy as if it were to be sold in stores. I will use photoshop and illustrator to create the packaging. It is important to have something that pops out to customers and really sells itself from the shelf. It needs to be appealing to kids, and adults since they will be the ones purchasing it. I want to sell the activity just as much as the product. Anyone can bake cookies with the kids, but I want my product to look much more fun and exciting for the whole family. I will emphasize the creations you can make with the play-doh, and the fun colors. I will emphasize the flavors, and the delicious cookies as well. The product should be appealing to the customer and worth the extra bucks.

Implentation Evaluation Control

Implementation of the marketing plan means executing the plan. This is so important to having a successful plan. This is simply putting into action everything that you have worked so hard planning to do. Sticking to the plan, and executing properly is essential to achieving the goals set by the marketing team. The implementation of the plan makes sure everything happens in the correct time, and sequence that the team planned on. Our team planned to do social media hauls, commercials, and contests. “There are a lot of great ideas that have come and gone in [the digital advertising] industry. Implementation many times is more important than the actual idea.” (Lamb, Charles W. MKTG 9, 9th Edition. Pg 16). Execution to your ideas is the most important! Following up on your execution of the marketing plan is the next step. Evaluating how your plan is doing. “Four common reasons for failing to achieve a marketing objective are unrealistic marketing objectives, inappropriate marketing strategies in the plan, poor implementation, and changes in the environment after the objective was specified and the strategy was implemented.” (Lamb, Charles W. MKTG 9, 9th Edition. Pg 29). You have to evaluate your plan, and make sure you are hitting the goals you set, and it is working. If you aren’t evaluating and making the necessary changes to meet your goals, you will not be successful. “Control provides the mechanisms for evaluating marketing results in light of the plan's objectives and for correcting actions that do not help the organization reach those objectives within budget guidelines” (Lamb, Charles W. MKTG 9, 9th Edition. Pg 29). Usually a marketing audit is a  good control mechanism. It is basically a evaluation of how your marketing plan did. This is important for a company because it lets you know what did well and what didn’t, and how your budget ended up. Overall these 3 steps are important to a marketing plan. They can help you for the future.

Marketing Mix: Price

Our product will be priced at 6.99$ USD. Our price is above the competing cookie dough’s it will be sitting next to, but it is low enough for what we are offering. It is not just cookie dough; it is a toy, an activity, and an experience."All pricing objectives have trade-offs that managers must weigh." (Lamb, Charles W. MKTG 9, 9th Edition. Pg 376) Companies such as Pillsbury and Toll House are offering price ranges from 2.50$-5.00$. Our price is higher than that, but we believe it is justified.  Our product offers 4 different colors, and the opportunity to make different creations besides regular round cookies. We believe our pricing is reasonable and can easily compete with competitors. We want a price that will satisfy the people. Especially for a new product like ours. “To survive in today's highly competitive marketplace, companies need pricing objectives that are specific, attainable, and measurable. Realistic pricing goals then require periodic monitoring to determine the effectiveness of the company's strategy.” (Lamb, Charles W. MKTG 9, 9th Edition. Pg 359). We believe our pricing is realistic. We are not the cheapest dough but we are the only one of its kind.  

Marketing Mix: Disttribution

We plan to distribute to all major grocery stores and stores such as Wal-mart and Target. We want to have a good relationship with everyone involved in our supply chain. Our manufacturing will start small, and hopefully grow worldwide. We want our costs to be as little as possible but not compromise our product ever. It is important to have a good relationship with manufacturers and suppliers. “In today's marketplace, products are being driven by customer demand and businesses' need to balance demand with supply.”( Lamb, Charles W. MKTG 9, 9th Edition.pg. 226). We want to make sure we are meeting our demands and keeping good relationships with our supply chain. We hope our distribution chain only grows larger and keep everyone involved happy.

Marketing Mix: Promotion

Effective promotion to your product is essential to success. To create this we have developed a promotional strategy: “a plan for the optimal use of the elements of promotion: advertising, public relations, personal selling, sales promotion, and social media” (Lamb, Charles W. MKTG 9, 9th Edition. Pg. 276). Since our product is one of a kind, we have an advantage in convincing customers to try our product over others. Our product is unique and gives us a competitive advantage. We plan to broadcast commercials, social media, hold contests, and just put our product out there as much as possible. Listening to feedback on our product is super important for us. Since it is a new product we want to see what people like and dislike. We believe if we use as many advertising options as possible our product will succeed. Social media is the fastest growing avenue of promotion. We plan to focus on that a lot. “Social media are promotion tools used to facilitate conversations and other interactions among people online. When used by marketers, these tools facilitate consumer empowerment. For the first time, consumers are able to speak directly to other consumers, the company, and Web communities.” (Lamb, Charles W. MKTG 9, 9th Edition. Pg. 285). This is more important than ever now a days. People talk. We want to be involved in every aspect of social media, and make sure we are connecting with our customers.

Marketing Mix: Product

Our product is edible play-doh that can be baked into cookies, and comes in four different colors and 3 different flavors. There is nothing else like our product out on the market, so we believe we can capitalize on that. "A product may be defined as everything, both favorable and unfavorable, that a person receives in an exchange. A product may be a tangible good like a pair of shoes, a service like a haircut, an idea like “don't litter,” or any combination of these three. Packaging, style, color, options, and size are some typical product features. Just as important are intangibles such as service, the seller's image, the manufacturer's reputation, and the way consumers believe others will view the product."(Lamb, Charles W. MKTG 9, 9th Edition. pg. 174)  It is important to know exactly what your product is, and offers. You must be cohesive in an all around marketing plan. You are not just selling the product, you are selling everything and anything involved in the project. It is important to consider all factors when putting out your product. There are plenty of cookie dough’s, there are plenty of play-doh type products, but none mix the two together. Our experience is one of a kind and that is what we want to emphasize. Branding and packaging are important factors to a product. We want to provide top notch branding and a packaging that catches the customer’s eyes, and is easy to understand the product. “Packaging does more than identify the brand, list the ingredients, specify features, and give directions. A package differentiates a product from competing products”. (Lamb, Charles W. MKTG 9, 9th Edition. pg. 185). It is important our packing lets the customer know what our product offers. We are not just cookie dough; we are an experience for the whole family. You can build and be creative, and make anything you want. Why choose boring old chocolate chip cookies?