Chapter 10: Marketing Services

When it comes to advertising, products can be easy to advertise because they are a physical item that one can see and touch and grasp their mind around, but for services advertising can be much harder. Services can range far and wide, including everything from insurance, to airlines and hotels, to something as simple as getting your lawn mowed. In the following paragraphs I will show three examples of service advertisements and analyze just how they did it.

                In this first video, Verizon Wireless is advertising their cell service. They are focusing on the important point and concept “rule the air”. Throughout the commercial they are building up through different scenes showing the viewer how important it can be to have a service provider that gives you service everywhere and how helpful and assuring that can be- especially in the most important situations.

                In the ABC news commercial, ABC is trying to demonstrate their traditions and how they attempt to deliver the news. They talk about the “honor” and “accomplishment” of their former anchor and how that will be carried on in a new chapter of news reporting. They are demonstrating their ability to portray the news in the best way and hoping to hook viewers with these points.

                The final commercial and the one that I think demonstrates a service in the most creative way is the Progressive commercial. They are taking intangible things such as “24/7 live support insurance coverage” and “pet injury coverage” and turning them into physical items and presents. Obviously when you buy these coverages, they are not a physical item, but this commercial is making it easier for the viewer to observe them in this fashion and making it easier for the viewer to get a grasp around what service they are marketing.

                Whether you have a product or a service, the marketing aspect is incredibly important and something that simply can’t be passed up no matter how hard it may be to market a specific thing. Creativity is key and the more eye catching an ad is, the more powerful it will be.

Chapter 12: Pillsbury's IMC Process

An essential part of marketing a product is in Integrated Marketing Communication. This creates a voice of the product and gives it a universal image. For example, when you walk into a supermarket and see this product, if the IMC worked properly, you will hear the marketing jingle from the ad in your mind. A certain product that has had this specific effect on me is Pillsbury so I will run through the steps Pillsbury took to get to this point.

                The first thing Pillsbury had to do was identifying the target audiences and base their campaign around these people. There is no point wasting recourses on customers who aren’t interested in your product in the first place. The next thing Pillsbury did was establish communication objectives. With this they would want to make their customer aware of the product such as with the ad I have added to this blog. These objectives have been very effective due to their importantness down the road. Step three of Pillsbury’s process is setting up the budget and this will ultimately come down to how much they want and need to spend as well as how much exposure they want their product to receive. This can either be expensive or at times rather cheap or even free- such as the Facebook page of the Pillsbury Dough Boy. After the budget is finalized, the company needs to decide what to spend this money on and how much per project. This is step four which is developing the promotion mix. It is imperative that these promotions are effective and draws in customers. The final step, as in any process, is evaluating the promotion mix’s effectiveness and understanding whether or not it is getting the job done. If it is, then you either want to continue the current campaign or possibly add or subtract from it to make it fit what the evaluation said. This is also very important because you don’t want to waste money, but you also don’t want to waste market potential that is out there waiting to be tapped.

                The promotion portion of marketing is very important and something that can’t be overlooked or underestimated. This is one of the four factors that will determine the success of your product and without it, you may lose something that could easily have been gained with better promotion.

Distribution: The Supply Chain Process for Potato Chips

In order to do anything with your product, you have to first have and utilize a supply chain. These chains can and will vary from product to product and depending on what product you are looking at, it can vary in huge, drastic ways. Today, I will look at a specific product and go through and explain the supply chain for this product. The product I will look at will be potato chips.

The first step in the supply chain is raw materials and the gathering of these materials. Therefore, for potato chips, this is the gathering of the main ingredients and especially the potatoes which would come from local farms. The next step is the supplier and the supplier is the firm that would gather the potatoes in the first place (for example the farm). From there the supplier would ship the potatoes off to the manufacturer. This is where the conversion will take place from potatoes and other main ingredients (salt, flavoring, oil) into potato chips. This is the Frito Lay or Tostitos factory that is responsible for the “creation” of these chips, as well as the packaging.

From there, the potato chips enter the logistics phase where they are shipped via truck, train, or boat to the retailer. In this case, the retailer will be a grocery store, gas station, or possibly sports arena just to name a few. From here, the finished product is sold to the consumer.

Although the supply chain is long, in some cases this process must take place in a matter of days- especially for products that have an expiration date. With a streamlined process and intelligent logistics, it is amazing what firms can do when taking a raw material and transforming it into something completely different and much more valuable.