Enterprise Week

Enterprise Week 2008
The Business School of Enterprise and Innovation put together some events for students to attend, as part of the first year course to help them get a feel of the industry and to see what comes of a degree in business and marketing!!

What Next? Experts from the world of advertising and marketing come together to discuss the challenges for the industry in the next decade

In this first event we had a panel of businessmen/women from the marketing industry ranging from a media owner to account planners.
Across the table were:
Rob Laurence-BMRB
Jayne Barr-A Creative Consultant
Allan Rich- Mediacom
Steve Cox- The Media Owner
Ivor Peters- PR
Jamie Matthews-Co-Founder of an agency
Andrew Canter
Don Cowley- Account Planner

Most of the focus of the questions asked to the panel where around the current economic climate and how businesses can surive through it.
Allan Rich told us how any well run business will come through any recession from using their strengths to focus on main brands to keep the company going. The need for enthusiam was key for his success within the media and marketing segment.
One other key point was that times are always moving forward and with the introduction of things like sky+ people cant fast forward through adverts so that the 30 second advert on tv is starting to become less and less effective. Allan Rich therefore pointed out the use of 30 minute adds aka the one Barack Obama used within the space bowl for his campaign. Not only that the use of new technology they are using digital screens in the underground for advertising.

Segmentation

It is one of the most fundamental concepts in marketing and your choice of which approach to adopt will directly affect the impact of segmentation on your business.

What is segmentation?

The process of splitting customers, or potential customers, in a market into different groups, or segments, within which customers share a similar level of interest in the same or comparable set of needs satisfied by a distinct marketing proposition.
Marketing proposition; the 'tools' or means available to the organization to improve the match between benefits sought by customers and those offered by the organization so as to obtain a differential advantage. Often referred to as the four Ps, this is usually the appropriate mix of product features, price, promotion and place (service and distribution). For the customer, this manifests itself as benefits, cost, relevant image and convenience; in other words, a customer value proposition.

Marketers use different profilers these can include:

Demographical bases (age, family size, life cycle, occupation)
Geographical bases (states, regions, countries)
Behavior bases (product knowledge, usage, attitudes, responses)
Psychographic bases (lifestyle, values, personality)

There have to be specific criteria in which a company can segment this can include:

•Effective - truly different needs from other segments?
•Identifiable - how can you find those people?
•Profitable - is the segment big enough to offer real profits?
•Accessible - can you reach this group easily?
•Actionable - can it be done?

So many types of product have a range of segmentation for example SHAMPOO!
All it is really needed for is to wash hair so there could be one type for everyone which there always was. However more recently there are different shampoos for all kinda of different purposes. These include:
Coloured Hair-Blonde, Red or Brunette
Dry or damaged hair
Dandruff
Greasy hair.
There are many more from a range of different brands, however if we only need one why do we spend ages looking through all types of shampoos?
Because of society we feel we need those types of shampoo that are suited to our hair type, when really if you look on the label they most probably have the same ingredients with a few extras so your 50p Tesco value shampoo will do the same job to some extent as the £6 Aveda bottle.
This is mainly down to our perception of different products, we feel we need those that suit our hair and the quality that is shown through the brand or price not necessarily what it will do. Does shampoo for shiny hair really make it more shiny?

What makes an advert memorable? Does it differ for each gender?
'The issue is much more fundamental than the usual myopic media one about where the ads appear: It's about recognizing women [and men's] different approach' (Financial Times, June 2001)

This advert is for a male product, however is it women that will be more attracted to the advert? David Beckham more than half naked?
Is it for the girlfriend to buy for her partner or is it for a man to aspire to?




Everyone knows that if a celebrity appears in an ad it will be memorable because it is familiar, however is that a good thing for the product.
Celebrity endorsements are becoming more and more popular with different brands where David Beckham was always associated with Gillette or Vodaphone, or Kate Moss and Topshop or Rimmel? Do these celebrities increase sales?
Or is an ad memorable for just those who are in them rather than the actual product?

In todays lecture we looked at a range of different ads, and were asked the one that stood out the most and to write down all of those we remembered. We found that not one person remembers the same thing in the same way, and that celebrity endorsements were seen to be remembered for the celebrity and not for the product.

The Famous Dairy Milk Gorilla!
Everyone remembers the Dairy Milk Advert with the Phil Collins music and Gorilla playing drums! However sales did not increase! This shows memorable adverts dont always help with the selling of the actual product.