Unit 9 P1, P2
The promotional mix is a set of tools that a business can use to communicate effectively, a benefit of its products or services to its customers. In our group we used sales promotion, public relations, advertising and direct marketing.

For advertising, we used posters and leaflets. As a group, we decided to use posters as one of our promotional materials to promote our event. The reason we used posters is because it’s easy for us to place the posters around the neighbourhood. We also used leaflets which was easy to make, and they were free which helped us save money. Also, leaflets are a high impact form of advertising because we were directly giving the leaflets to our target market.

For sales promotion we used this presentation show below to persuade students and staff to come to our event.

 
For public relations we used social networking. As a group we chose Facebook because it is the top social media platform nowadays and there are numerous advantages associated with it. Not only can people use it personally for connecting with friends and family, but it has also turned out to be a handy tool for promoting and advertising a business.

For direct marketing, we used free sampling which immediately increased the awareness of our brand 'sweet tooth' and also our product by allowing our target market to spread our brand with others in their friendship group.

The marketing mix refers to the set of actions, or tactics, that a company uses to promote its brand or product in the market.The marketing mix allowed us to analyse information about our potential customers.

 

Product-
Before coming up with a service as a group we held meetings with agendas, where we analysed what our customers want, and what type of potential customers they will gain with the service we will come up with.

Price-

When pricing the services, we had to consider are local threats such the shops outside the college, because if are prices were higher than theirs this will make are potential customers go to our competitors. We held a meeting and half of our group members, Mary, Na'Rae and Alban went  around the college and to local shops to compare pricing with ours

Promotion-

As a group we decided to promote our service through posters, Facebook, leaflets and presentations as these are all free. Instead, we spent this money on ingredients for our milkshakes allowing our Sweet Tooth's menu to expand. We also wanted to consider how much money we spend on promotion, which we had meetings to discuss.

Place-

After holding meetings and seeing potential customers at the farm and at college, we decided to hold our event at the college as this was more suitable because our target group were students.

In this part of the assignment I am going to explain the role of promotion within the marketing mix for McDonald's. I chose this business because they are similar to ours allowing us to develop how we can use the marketing mix to help our service grow by having a good plan.

Product-

Before coming up with a product McDonald's had to analyse what customers wanted, and what potential customers they would gain with the new product they came up with. McDonald's produced a Big Mac by developing a cheese burger which was one of their existing products.When McDonald’s introduced the Big Mac they had to consider the size of the product and the features inside it, ensuring it will appeal to as many customers as possible

Price-
When McDonald's came up with the price for the Big Mac they had to consider a lot of things. Firstly, the customers own mental picture of what the product was worth. This had to be considered because if the customers thought the product quality was not worth the price at which McDonald's had valued it, it would have meant the product would not have sold enough to gain enough profit. What McDonald's had to do was analyse their sales and set a range of prices which would be beneficial for them and also a reasonable price for the customers. McDonald's also had to think about the price not being too low because it would make the customer feel like the low price was indicative of compromised quality. Furthermore, McDonald's had to research their competitors’ prices because if they were lower than theirs it would mean they will lose customers. 

Promotion-

McDonald's promotes their products by advertising it on TV, radio, cinema, online, using poster sites and in the press (newspapers and magazines). McDonald's can also use promotion methods such as vouchers given to the public and sale display. They also have to consider how much money they spend on the techniques they are using to promote the product. They should not spend a lot of money on promotion because if the product does not sell enough then the money they used on promotion will be wasted.

Place-

McDonald's will consider selling the product in some branches to see the success of the product, if the product is successful then they can think about making their product worldwide.

http://www.mcdonalds.co.uk/content/dam/McDonaldsUK/People/Schools-and-students/mcd_marketing.pdf (assessed on 17/06/15 09;32)

Unit 9 P3-
In this assignment I am going explain the role of advertising agencies in the development of a successful promotional campaign. An advertising agency is a service business dedicated to creating, planning and handling advertising for clients. Advertising is used to communicate and persuade an audience (viewer, reader or listeners). Advertising agencies play a big role in creating and developing adverts for many different organisations.

Media Buying is a sub function of advertising management. An advertising agent will be expected to negotiate as they will need to discuss pricing to ensure that the best possible value is secured. It is like media real-estate within any given media. They also identify the target audience for a particular media campaign and decide on the best way to communicate to that audience.

The agency will create and organise visual artwork to be used to advertise products and services of any organisation. Advertising agencies partner up with graphic designers to make the advert more efficient.  They combine copyright, graphic design and typography.

Lastly, all the little pieces have been created get put together by the advertising production team. The production department, in essence, ensures the TV commercial or print ad, etc., gets produced. Once the ad is sold to the client, the creative account team will collaborate with production to set out a secure budget. This can be anything from getting original photography or illustration produced, working with printers, hiring typographers and TV directors, and a myriad of other disciplines needed to get an ad campaign published. Producers are involved in all aspects when creating an advert from creative briefing to execution and how it will be delivered to their target audience.

Unit 9 P4-
In this assignment I am going to explain the reasons behind the choice of media in a successful promotional campaign. Promotional campaigns are a series of advertisements using various marketing tools that share the same message and ideas to promote a business or event to a target audience. The typical campaign uses different media resources including internet, newspapers, television, radio, and print advertising.

There are many different types of media that businesses use such as:

·         Local

·         Regional

·         National

·         International

Local

Local organisations are small business like: car washes, hair dressers, window cleaners and restaurants. Small business will use media types like local newspapers, billboards, local radio, leaflets. When advertising locally, there is a high chance that is will be much cheaper than any other type of media. But unfortunately it may not reach a wide range of people.

Regional

Regional media covers a larger geographic area. Regional organisations are businesses that are located within a county, cities and states. When an organisation is only based in one county it makes it harder for them to expand as their target market is much smaller. However, it is easier for them as they get a much more loyal customer base. A business like farm foods is a regional organisation.

National

National organisations are for national businesses like: Boots, Superdrug’s, Iceland’s, H&M etc. National businesses use similar media types to local businesses but on a larger scale, so when they are advertising they use thing like bus adverts, television, social network, magazines, radio etc. but directed to people in the same region as the organisation. Advantages of this are they are advertising to the most necessary target audience, but once they consider expanding it will be much harder as they have never been seen.

International

An international organisation is a business that is operated worldwide. Such as; McDonalds, Footlocker, Topshop and Barclays. International business use media on a much wider scale such as international magazines such as Vogue, social network sites, television etc. But the organisation would be directed to people globally. The Advantages of international media is that it allows the business to be more popular which could increase the potential customers or product wanting your service and decrease completion in their market. Another advantage is that it allows the organisation to grow because your product or service is being advertised globally which could mean an increase in sales and profit. However the organisation could face problems by running an international organisation such as different countries have different laws and regulations on media. Such as the UK which only allows an average of 7 minutes per hour on commercial channels.

In conclusion all media types use different media types to support their campaign to success.

 http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/promotional-campaign.html#ixzz3e41Cah7G

   

P5-

 Unit 9 M1-

In this part of the assignment I will be talking about Coca-Cola and explaining how promotion is integrated with the rest of marketing mix to achieve its marketing aims and objectives.

Coca cola history began in 1886 with Dr.John S. Pemberton, he created a distinctive tasting soft drink that could be sold at soda fountains. Their history has helped to create a global brand that provides billions of moments of refreshments today. The first marketing offers in coca cola were done through coupons promoting free samples. In the 1970s coca-cola advertising started to reflect a brand connected with fun, friends and good time and they still continue to advertise this way.

The aim and objective for Coca-Cola is to be global and to be known as a business that conducts business responsibility and ethically and to accelerate sustainable growth to operate. They also want to provide the best product they can to the public and create customer satisfaction.

There are four promotional elements that Coca-Cola use that helps them to achieve their aims and objectives, this is through advertising, branding, sales promotional and sponsorship.

Advertising is the activity of producing advertisements for commercial products or services.
Coca-Cola advertise their products in different ways which are though TV ads and these adverts have appeared on television screens around the globe in many different and often memorable forms. Coca- cola also uses online advertising to make you feel like you want their products, online advertising means that coca-cola has greater control over who sees their ads and allows them to build brand image and create awareness.

Branding is the process involved in creating a unique name and image for a product in the consumers mind mainly done through advertising campaigns. Coca cola have a "one brand" strategy, with their new brand they are putting four distinct brands under coca-cola including; Diet coke, Coca-Cola Zero and Coca-Cola Life. This will play an important part in their goal to achieve more than 50% of Coca-Cola sales from lower or no calorie colas in Great Britain. Advertising will now start to show their full range of colas to represent their brand.

Sponsorship means the financial support received from a sponsor or the position of being a sponsor.
Coca-Cola is proud to have a long history of sponsoring major events, organisations and projects all over the world. Coca cola maintains the longest relationship with the Olympic movement. This helps their brand to get recognised globally. 

Sales promotion is an activity that is implemented to boost the sales of a product or service temporarily. Coca -cola uses sales promotion for example they hold competitions for people for example they launched football promotion to celebrate 2015 FIFA world cup, this gives winners the chance to win up to one million limited edition coca cola footballs, through this promotion coca-cola hopes to inspire people to get to know their brand and gain awareness.

http://www.worldofcoca-cola.com/about-us/coca-cola-history/

http://thecocacolacompany-sabrinayang.weebly.com/objectives.html

http://smallbusiness.chron.com/cocacola-use-technology-gain-advantage-27339.html
http://www.coca-cola.co.uk/stories/health/choice-and-information/coca-cola-one-brand-marketing-strategy/  
http://www.coca-colacompany.com/history/coca-cola-sponsorships  
http://www.coca-cola.co.uk/newsroom/press-releases/win-a-ball/ 

Unit 9 M2-
In this part of the assignment I am going to explain the advantages and disadvantages of using professional agencies in ensuring promotional success.

An advertising agency creates, plans and manages all aspects of a clients advertising. Ad agencies can specialise in specific areas such as interactive advertising, or they can be full service that creates advertising materials like brochures, catalogues, radio and TV commercials.

The advantages of using an external firm to advertise for your company is that advertising agencies have extensive skills and experiences, which means they will have the previous skill and knowledge to produce something that is effective, they can specialise in certain fields whether that's for creating promotional campaigns for a specific product type, specific target group or media. Some agencies even employ specialist staff to cover nice promotion activities. The disadvantages of using an external firm is that it is more likely to cost more than an internal agency, they also may not understand the firms vision which could lead to an advert not giving the right message this would affect the company as they would have wasted a lot of money.

The advantage of creating an advert at home is that that you will not need to spend as much money as you will be using your own resources and you will know your own vision which will make it easier when creating the advert. The disadvantage is that the person making the advert may lack the skills and experience which may lead to the advert being less effective compared to if it was made externally.
Overall I think businesses should use professional advertising agencies as it will save the firm time and they also have the skills and knowledge to make a good advert.

There are two types of agencies that provide different service to their clients, full service and limited service. Full service is an agency that handles all aspects of the advertising process, including planning, design, production and placement..
Limited service is an agency that has a limited amount of service they offer. These agencies generally supply one or two basic services, their main interest is too create publicity.

http://www.learnmarketing.net/Advertising_Agencies_Advantages_and_Disadvantages.htm
http://www.learnmarketing.net/advertisingagencies.html

Unit 9 M3-

This is the pitch that involves all of our promotional materials and elements of the marketing mix

 https://prezi.com/hn6028zgh4nz/promotional-materials-we-used/

Unit 9 D1-
In this part of the assignment I am going to justify the use of an appropriate promotional mix in relation to marketing objectives for Coca Cola. I will be talking about 3 promotional mix which are sponsorship, sales promotion and advertising

Some of the advantages of  sponsorship are;
-Brand enhancement, partnering up with another event or organisation that has a strong reputation can enhance a company's reputation simply by association
-Awareness raising, the company's brand name will gain visibility ad could be included in media coverage
Some of the disadvantages of sponsorships are:
-Sponsorship clutter, an overload of sponsors normally at high profile events such as Olympics, can tun of the target audience and ensue that no one sponsor stands out.
-lack of control, many of the variables ( e.g. weather, media coverage and attendance) are uncontrollable

Coca cola has a long history of sponsoring major events and projects around the world. One of the biggest ones is sponsoring the Olympic games. The benefits that Coca-Cola have with sponsoring the Olympic games is that it allows them to gain unique marketing opportunities for some of the most largest sporting events in the world. Coca cola also benefit from the world cup sponsorship and they are receiving the greatest benefits from it, it found that Coca-Cola, the beverage maker, posted the biggest overall "share of consumers' minds" in each of these markets with regard to spontaneous recognition of their affiliation with the tournament.
A disadvantage that Coca-Cola have with sponsoring is that they may get negative press which will reflect badly onto their business. for example some of the public want there to be a ban on Coca-Cola from sponsoring major sporting events as they now want to a positive health legacy for the Olympics.

some of the advantages of advertising are;
-TV reaches a much larger audience than local newspapers and radio stations, and it does so during a short period of time
-It gives an opportunity to be creative and attach a personality to your business
some of the disadvantages are;
-It could be difficult to effectively target your audience with television advertising
-It can be difficult to make changes, it would me updating your script and reshooting your advert

The benefits that Coca-Cola have with advertising is that their brand will be known globally and they will be fulfilling their aim of wanting to be known across the globe. Coca-Cola can also help to entice people with their creative adverts, such as their Christmas special advert which will stand out to the public.
The disadvantage Coca-Cola could have with advertising Is that they may face problems trying to advertise their brand as most people think that Coca-Cola is unhealthy and bad for you so they may be wasting money on ads that people aren't even watching.

Some of the advantages of sales promotion is;
-It is effective at achieving a quick boost to sales
-It can draw attention to a particular product or service being offered
some of the disadvantages are;
- sales effect may only be short term
-Customers may expect further promotions

Coca-Cola’s “Share a Coke” campaign was effective. Coke banked on the idea that people find personalization downright irresistible. After fighting a shaky start, through integrated marketing techniques, the Coke brand successfully infiltrated social media, retail spaces, and outdoor marketing with its personalize packaging.  Thanks to the campaign, the company saw a 2.5% increase in total sales and soft-drink volume went up by 0.4%. The numbers show that people love to see their names on branded products
Some of the disadvantages they may face is that people may get bored of the "share a coke" campaign which means that sales may start to drop, then Coca-Cola may have to start thinking about how they can further this promotion which may be time consuming

Coca-Cola can improve by trying to use a different type of promotion, they could try to do radio hosting as this is a much cheaper type of promotion.


http://www.straightmarketing.co.uk/2013/03/sponsorship-pros-cons/ 
http://www.coca-colahellenic.com/aboutus/customers 
http://www.warc.com/LatestNews/News/Coke,_Adidas_benefit_from_World_Cup_sponsorship.news?ID=26767
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-18708790

Unit 9 D2
In this part of the assignment i am going to evaluate an existing, national marketing campaign. I will be talking about a fashion shop online called boohoo

Boohoo is a growing international retailers and has evolved into a global fashion leader of its generation. Boohoo is a lifestyle driven, online destination for young, fashion conscious women and men, offering customers access to the latest, on-trend fashions across a range of boohoo branded, value orientated products, sold through inspirational imagery. Founded in 2006, boohoo.com has grown rapidly; developing a brand identity and an international online proposition

Their products are wanted by a lot of people .They have 2.3 million customers, with approximately 140,000 new customers registering on the website per month. Their target market are for 16-24 year old consumers in the UK including men and women with limited finances. This shows that they service is used a lot as they have over 1000 customers registering per month

Boohoo recently launched a new marketing campaign entitled "We are us" the message is to encourage everyone to become stylists of their own, sharing tips and ideas with fellow shoppers across the social media in order to connect with new and existing customers. Advertising across social media website, they have managed in a very competitive online fashion marketing, the brand has only become more widely recognised due to its aggressive and expensive approach of advertising
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbjUyUzhRcY - These are one of their campaigns


http://www.umusicpub.co.uk/en-GB/FilmAndTv/2015/Mar/Years-and-Years-WeAreUs-campaign.aspx
http://www.drapersonline.com/news/boohoo-launches-new-marketing-campaign/5072574.article
http://www.boohooplc.com/about-us/company-overview.aspx
http://www.verdictretail.com/boohoo-coms-aggressive-marketing-tactics-pay-off/