Paper is finished!

This afternoon I put the finishing touches on the paper and submitted it to the professor. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, but would love any feedback you have concerning the paper. You can download the pdf at the link below.

Link to Marketing Paper

Final Leg!

Met with the professor this afternoon and it looks like things are on track. The only change is plans for right now is changing my main variable from a need for social acceptance to a need for fun. This will make it easier to justify a acquisition/stimulate demand type plan, plus it allows me use the experience attributes of responsible drinking rather than the credence attribute of social acceptance. Break from the work tonight, tomorrow we plow ahead.

Preview of my final work

So today I'm heading to Ann Arbor to do a quick run through of what I have so far for my marketing plan. Little nervous, little excited. I have attached a link below to the PDF so you can get an idea of where I'm heading so far. If all goes well today I'll be spending the weekend finishing up the hardcopy of the report.

Link to PDF of my Marketing Plan Presentation

Metrics for the Marketing Plan

Update to Communication Objective

The marketing plan I am putting together for SADD will have a communications objective of basic awareness. This is a new campaign that SADD is launching and will most likely succeed if we are focusing on basic awareness of the target audience to changing their drinking behaviors to be more responsible. Once SADD has created a base level of awareness they can look at an informational awareness program or even a behavioral program, but the focus at first needs to be base awareness.

Metrics

Once a marketing plan is in place, we need to identify ways to measure the progress of the campaign and ultimately how successful it was at achieving the stated goal. For this plan we will be focusing on using surveys (both qualitative and quantitative) to help keep track of how well the marketing plan is progressing at getting students to follow responsible drinking behaviors. Below are a list of the different surveys to be performed:

1. Baseline Surveys - Before the campaign takes place, SADD would need to take baseline surveys to help identify the current state prior to the effect of marketing. SADD could do this with quantitative surveys (e.g. how many nights a week do you drink? how many drinks per night?) and qualitative surveys (e.g. Do you believe 5 drinks in one sitting are to much? Why or why not?) I would also suggest that SADD perform focus group meetings / interviews with students as another way to identify their drinking behaviors and views on drinking.
2. Regular surveys throughout the time frame of the marketing plan - Again similar to the baseline surveys, but now we would be asking questions about whether the respondent has been exposed to the SADD marketing message. We could also contact respondents to the initial baseline survey to see if their particular views and habits have changed.
3. Surveys at the end of the plan - Again, qualitative and quantitative surveys will be needed to see how well the program is, though here we would have SADD focus both on surveying the target audience in general, but also focus on contacting respondents to prior surveys to see how the behaviors of specific data points has changed throughout the marketing plan.
4. Miscellaneous Data - Although our primary source of data will be through surveys, we need to also look at other data sources. For example, SADD could look at incidences of emergency room visits for alcohol poisoning or similar diagnosis at campus medical facilities or hospitals. The same could be done by looking at incidences of arrests for DUI, minor in possession or public drunkenness involving members of the target audience. Lastly, SADD could conduct focus group like meetings with students to identify their current attitudes towards drinking.

Please let me know what you think of the different metrics I have listed above or if you have any suggestions of other metrics or collection methods I should consider using. I appreciate all your feedback!

Through Three Stages, A Path Becomes Clear

So through four weeks of working on this marketing plan and I think I've finally lined up the different parts in an orientation that makes sense. The highlights are still:

• Fundamental Entity - SADD (Students Against Drunk Driving)
• Core Competence - Education and Information dissemination to help young people deal with the dangers of substance abuse and other difficult situations
• Goal - To reduce the percentage of irresponsible drinking behaviors (mainly binge drinking) exhibited by college students by 30% in 5 years. The five years goal is to try to address the potential peer effects that could lead drinkers to drink irresponsibly.

See the pdf of the Value Proposition Worksheet for more details, the next step will be to work on the 4 P's of marketing - (Product, Price, Place, Promotion).

Product / Service - One of the key issues to look at here is whether I think SADD's campaign will be a product or a service, though right now I'm leaning to service (providing counseling and education). Still I am considering that SADD's educational materials and information could be a product, which the SADD chapters distribute. I'll need to think that one over before finalizing a point of view.

Price - Price seems straightforward in that SADD doesn't charge for being a member or receiving any counseling or help from them. There is a price based on time a person would spend interacting with SADD to receive the message or counseling, but this would be variable since a consumer could end the contact or consumption of the message at any time.

Place (Channel) - We have to identify communication distribution channels that are focused on college students. These channels will involve a limited number of intermediaries (short channel length), since SADD will want their message to be controlled and standardized across campuses and within campuses. The Channel Breadth will be minimal, as SADD will control the number of chapters on campuses and ensuring they are all promoting responsible drinking behaviors. SADD will likely not be upset if other groups are presenting the same message, but this would change if other groups were just passing on the same materials and information that SADD was using. The Channel Depth is somewhere in the middle, SADD will control what message and information the chapters should focus on, but will likely not tell them exactly how to promote it (it may offer ideas but not lock chapters to follow them specifically).

Promotion - SADD should try an awareness / informational campaign (inline with trying a Acquisition/ Stimulate Demand plan) using the informational side to focus on the benefits of responsible drinking behavior, while the awareness part is key to making sure that the consumers keep the plan's goal ("drink responsibly") fresh in their mind.

All right, back to working on the plan, hope to have a draft of my paper up by this time next week!

Hmmm That Did Not Work As Planned

So this past Monday I thought I had a good grasp on my Marketing Objective and Source of Volume for my project. I had decided that I would focus on Acquisition - Stimulate Demand because SADD would be looking for more people to listen to their message/educational materials (acquisition) and they would not want to steal consumers from other groups with similar messages (which might be unethical) - instead looking to bring more people into their category (stimulate demand). Sounds good right?

This all changed during class on Monday, where I learned that I had made a basic mistake, the marketing plan is for SADD to help students change drinking behaviors, not to increase their membership or people who see their educational message. Once it became clear I wanted to affect a behavior I had to revisit all of my decisions in a nice large chart our professor provided to help guide us through these situations. Now whether I believe this plan is looking at Acqusition or Retention Marketing Objectives will drive the category I focus on and in turn my source of volume could lead to different slants for my marketing plan. For example, if I kept an Acquisition / Stimulate Demand view, my category would be "responsible drinking" but I would be looking at growing the responsible drinking pool by bringing in people who do not currently drink and having them drink responsibility. (not exactly what I was looking to do) If I switch to a Acqusition/Steal Share view, I could focus on "responsible drinking" as well but here I would be looking to bring in folks who are not currently responsible drinkers (non-drinkers, binge drinkers, alcoholics. (sounds pretty close to what I want to achieve!) On the other hand I could look at these choices with a Retention Marketing Objective, but my concern here is that I would be focusing then mainly on current drinkers or current responsible drinkers, which kind of misses the point I'm trying for in the marketing plan. Confused? Yeah that kind of sums up the last two days for me. :)

Right now I'm shooting for Acquisition / Steal Share with the focus on "responsible drinking" but I'm not setting in stone anything until I take another crack at this spreadsheet the professor gave us. Have any opinions or ideas? I'd love to hear them!

Core Competence and Goal

Now that I've settled on SADD working to minimize occurrences of binge drinking as the focus of my marketing plan, I've started to look at the core competence of SADD and what the goal for this program would be. Here are some thoughts in both areas...

Core Competence - After reading up on SADD on their website (http://www.sadd.org) I think that SADD's core competent lies in being able to Education and Information dissemination to help young people deal with the dangers of substance abuse and other difficult situations they may face. It became clear from reading SADD's mission and reviewing literature about them that, while they do some fundraising its clear their focus is on helping young people through educational efforts and programs. SADD leverages their competence by having chapters throughout the country in various educational institutions that are run by students. Students can identify with the pressures and temptations their peers face, and are best suited to help educate other students about the potential dangers and how to face difficult situations.

Goal - The goal of this program would be to reduce the amount of of college age students who partake in binge drinking behaviors by 50% in five years. The percentage will be measured through surveys of college age students, and while SADD could perform these surveys, it is likely that there are other organizations that could perform the surveys or at least partner with SADD on the surveys (e.g. the National Institute of Health, the CDC or some college education accreditation group?). The 50% reduction is an auspicious goal, but considering the detrimental effects of binge drinking in both the near and long term it is in line with SADD's mission and goals. The five year time frame may be a little short, but it would be the minimum acceptable, considering that in five years allows students who have just entered college to be fully exposed to SADD's program throughout their undergrad years (usually 4-5 years).

I'm spending the next few days working on the next part of the Big Picture for the marketing plan, the marketing objective and the source of volume.