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!
This is a good break down of the issue of your objective being a behavior change vs. awareness. I am in a similar position of having to make a choice between focusing on a acquisition/steal share vs. acquisition stimulate demand. I hadn't even thought of it that way until Megan Bensette made the comment on my blog about competition with Marijuana use.
ReplyDeleteI think for you the switch to behavior change is appropriate and in line with your cc and mo. I am wondering if it would be the right choice for my plan as well....
lol what is this? Get me off of here. haha.
ReplyDeleteGreat thought process here. I'm finding as I look at a lot of our plans that earn share is almost always easier than stimulating demand (at least in social marketing). Yours is funny because if you stimulated demand, you'd be bringing in new drinkers who previously did not, right? Haha. But then you run the risk of losing them to the competitor, which is not so bad in marketing, but kind of unethical in social marketing.
Tough decisions for you! Good luck!
Thanks for the feedback. Funny enough Megan, I am going to try Acq / Stim Demand and encourage responsible drinking instead of trying to focus on people not binge drinking. This would also help because I've had a little difficulty nailing down a consistent definition of binge drinking (they vary in amount consumed and in what time frame).
ReplyDeleteI think acquisition/stimulate demand is the correct route to take. I really like how you outlined the exact steps you took to figure this out, very helpful for learning about how to approach the social marketing process.
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