Case study. For your better understanding, let us practice how to design an effe
ID: 2746316 • Letter: C
Question
Case study. For your better understanding, let us practice how to design an effective IMC strategy with target customers for marketing communications while considering its maximum effectiveness. Read the following marketing case and consider your creative ways to figure out what types of major marketing tasks should be identified to solve the implicit communication problem(s) given the use of Hierarchy of Effects model. If it Quacks like a Duct? (By Zikmund and Babin 2007, pp. 2-3 in the Textbook) "If you're hurt and you miss work" : This is the tag line for one of the most popular U.S., advertising campaigns " for AFLAC Insurance. The tag line is accompanied by the familiar duck constantly reminding people with a loud" AFFLLAACKKII? Recent show that the AFLAC duck has become one of America's favorite icons coming in second only to the Mars M&Ms.; But, how has the duck's favorable fan status affected AFLAC's business performance? Certainly, AFLAC's marketing strategy goes beyond creating the most popular duck since Donald ! Through its thirty year history, AFLAC, like other firms, has faced important decision about how to create brand awareness, how to build consumer knowledge at the brand, and how to build sales and loyalty. Leading up to these decisions, the firm must first assets its current situation and its brand awareness relative to its competitors Approximately two dozen AFLAC duck commercials ago, research revealed that must consumers were unaware of AFLAC. The vast majority of consumer would not list AFLAC when prompted to name insurance companies, instead, names like Agitate, State farm, and Prudential proved more familiar. Not surprisingly, these companies enjoyed greater market share. Based on this research, AFLAC decided to invest in a national television campaign to build awareness of the brand name - "AFFLLAAACCKII' The phonic similarity to 'QUACK' proved successful. Today, AFLAC has built great awareness of its name, but this hasn't necessarily translated into business success. Despite the tag line, fewer than 30 percent of consumers who recognize the name know that AFLAC specializes in supplemental disability insurance. This accounts for over three-fourths of AFLACs nearly $14 billion dollar annual revenue. Thus, while the initial research suggested the need for building awareness, their more recent research is addressing difficulties in creating the right "knowledge" of AFLAC. What communication medium is best for building knowledge? Can knowledge be built in the same way as awareness" Will knowledge lead to increased intentions to do business with AFLAC? What role does personal selling play in building knowledge? All of these are questions that should be answered. Marketing research will be directed toward answering these questions. The answers will then be used to try and erase the knowledge deficit faced by AFLAC. If the answers are half as effective as those that lead to the AFLAC duck, the company should enjoy tremendous success. Discuss why the above advertising campaign did generate less-than-expected sales for AFLAC, given that it was assumed to use the AIDA Model for the design of ad campaign. Using the Hierarchy of Effects model (or Buyer-Readiness model), develop your IMC strategy in order to resolve the identified promotional problem(s) and as the result, generate large amount of sales at the purchase stage.Explanation / Answer
a)
The advertising campaign was for brand awareness as AFLAC identified that people don’t know AFLAC as the insurance firm instead the name like state farm, prudential was positioned as insurance firm in the consumers mind. Finally AFLAC advertises as AFFLLAAACCK to create the brand awareness. AFLAC was successful in creating the brand awareness and was expecting to sell more insurance product to the consumer. But the part that AFLAC missed was that it didn’t aimed to increase the knowledge about its product. Now the consumer knew that AFLAC is an insurance firm but consumer donot knows what kind of insurance product of AFLAC is better than other competitors in the market.
AFLAC specialises in the supplementary disability insurance and has over 3/4th of revenue form this product but only 30% of the consumer who knows AFLAC knows the particular insurance product AFLAC specialises in.
Thus the product knowledge is the major reason tha the advertising campaign dis generate less than the expected revenue for AFLAC.
b)
Hierarchy of Effects model