The Marketing Campaign
Companies exist to sell products or services. There are many ways to accomplish this task, but some ways are more effective than others. The following are two scenarios of businesses and their approaches to sell their product in their quest to become successful.
SCENARIO 1
The Blair Witch Project
If you were pretty aware of the happenings in the movie world I’m sure you would have heard of Blair Witch which was released in 1999 ( but still its part of this decade) and the buzz it caused all over the world just days before its release. Blair witch wasn’t a big budget movie such as Avatar as it had just 300,000 and neither did it involve anyone like Johnny Depp in it. So they didn’t have money for marketing , they didn’t any good actors either, but still how did the movie gross over 250 million.
The secret has already been revealed, but still not many people know about it even today. For any horror movie success depends on how realistic the movie actually is, and thats what the producers did to get attention towards their movies. The first thing they did was make up a fake story calling it the history behind their move which is that 3 young film-makers died while making this movie and 3 years later they got the details of the movie and went forward to recreate it, after making up this story and practicing it in their own words they targeted many shows related to movies as well as supernatural entities and over night their movie became the word of the season and went ahead to have the largest budget is to earnings ratio in the history of hollywood. (click here to see the video)
So if you can see this example you’ll know that at times an existing audience isn’t very necessary, all you need is something which is of great quality and a bit of creativity.
SCENARIO 2
Blockbuster Video
Sometimes your campaign literally kills your entire company. In 2003, Blockbuster unveiled an amazing new idea: no late fees on movies. An aggressive ad campaign followed, letting the world know that Blockbuster had rescinded their late fees and renting from them would henceforth be a permanent vacation.
But was it economically feasible to indefinitely loan out so many units, especially while promising to have new releases in at all times? The growing popularity of Netflix also didn’t help their finances. It turned out that there were, in fact, late fees. If the movies weren’t returned by a certain date, the entire cost of the movie was charged to the account. If the movie was returned later, the customer was refunded for the charge, but only in store credit and after paying a ten dollar restocking fee.
Blockbuster went from a video rental giant to a bankrupt business. This year they announced the return of late fees — no more pretending. Soon they will most likely no longer exist as a place of business. As part of the company’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing, Blockbuster is closing 145 stores immediately. Most of the remaining 3,000 stores are also expected to close. The Internet wins again.
"The Marketing Mix"
Review the image below, then click on the Coaches and answer the questions.
YOUR ASSIGNMENT
You have read about a successful marketing campaign as well as a failure. Now, I want you to think of a recent commercial you have seen during the Superbowl 2011. In order to research further, click on this link and see all the best commercials in one place. Thinking about the marketing mix , choose one commercial and think about how each company may have addressed each factor in the mix. Then, create a book such as this one to present your campaign. Create one page for each of the 4 "P's".