Marketing- Case Study

Case Study- Tasks One & Two

Marketing is the way in which businesses promoting their products and services by advertising and selling towards them.  Public relations (PR) are the ‘middle men’ to the businesses or organisations and their consumers. Both of marketing and public relations work together to build and maintain the reputation of organisations and it’s goods/services, to engage with their consumers to create a strong relationship and to create product awareness. For me to be able to explain the purposes or marketing and public relations, I will base the case study around the chocolate, coloured sweets- M&M’s.

M&M’s are colourful button shape candy shells filled with chocolate and variations of peanuts or crisped rice most widely known in the UK, but other flavours include dark chocolate, mint chocolate, almonds, orange chocolate, pretzel, wild cherry, cinnamon and peanut butter. They were first made in 1941 in America, and named after their creators Forrest Mars and Bruce Murrie of Hershey’s. Today, they are a part of the Mars Incorporated group, along side other chocolate bars such as Mars, Galaxy, Milkyway, Twix etc. Like all companies, M&M’s marketing and branding is important so that they appeal to the right target audience, send across the right message about their products and gain as much positive publicity as they can.

The most common ways of marketing is through market research and advertising. Market research is when the businesses branch out to their target audience to see what their wants and needs are in the products/services they are providing. M&M’s try to appeal to a mass market, although essentially their target audience is children and families. Their brand is fun and quirky compared to their competitors. Adults have grown up with the sweets and the image changing, and children growing up with it are experiencing it’s changes.

In 1960, M&M’s were only available in yellow, green and red until in 1995, Mars branched out to their target audience to vote for the colours they next want to see in the packets. The winner was blue, and therefore was added to the collection of colours. The same happened in 2002 when purple was added. But now, every shade of the rainbow is available, to celebrate different occasions. These can be seen in their M&M shops worldwide. One of their marketing strategies is that they use the red and yellow ‘Spokescandies’ in a lot of their adverts, especially seen in the cinema.  In the media industry film focus groups are used to gain feedback from their target audience. They are a group of people from which a film is targeted at (the target audience) who will be able to give relevant feedback to enable the directors and producers to make adjustments to their film to make it more suitable to their possible consumers.

Advertising is publicly promoting a product/service. M&M’s have animated figures often seen in their adverts on TV, in the cinema, in print and on their website are bright and colourful and all have their own personalities and traits. They have turned their sweets into characters, to appeal to their target audience, wanting them to favour some characters and create a greater bond towards the consumers and company. This shows how their advertising strategy differs from other companies. Instead of simply promoting the brand and product, they are using their animated characters to get the attention of children and teenagers. M&M’s print advertisement on the right goes against their conventional adverts though, and boasts their service of personalising M&Ms with letters and words you choose. They keep the advert simple, as they are easily recognised and known worldwide. Advertising is seen a lot in the media, in print, television, on the radio, on the Internet and in a lot of other platforms. Magazines only normally have one page to make an impact to their target audience about their product, television adverts conventionally have 30 seconds. Everything in the adverts should appeal to their target audience, whilst reflecting both the product and its company. For example, an advert that is seen on both television and magazines are ‘Magnum’ ice creams. On both the television and print adverts, they appeal highly to women, by showing only women in the adverts and by using colours such as pink and purple.

Public relations are all about influencing the beliefs and opinions of what people think about your company. What people think and express about what they think about products and services that your company may produce can either stabilize or destroy and company and their reputation- thus making their marketing strategies almost defeated. Public relations are the discipline which look after the reputation, with the aim of earning understanding and support and influencing opinion and behaviour. It is the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organisation and its publics.[www.cipr.co.uk]  After researching, this quote is something which I found very simple to understand the role of public relations. It explains that PR is what looks after the reputation of companies by continuing to encourage the desired opinions of their consumers. An article I found on the internet about M&M’s PR tells that they had a competition in the US to win $1 million to anyone who found grey ‘imposter’ sweets in the bags of M&M. This news story came out the same week as the James S.Mcdonnel Foundation wanting to give research grants of $1million dollars young scientists. Because of the strength of the public relations in M&M, their story had no competition on out-doing the grants fund and also became and advertising campaign, unintentionally through the news stories being published. The media industry uses public relations a lot. In an evolving media platform is internet blogging. Bloggers and journalists that write and review about a certain area of products will have PR companies contact them to try out new products, often for free. Obviously, the companies will only contact them if they think it will be beneficial to themselves and will create a higher demand for what they are producing and will maximise their esteem.

Although the chocolates were created in 1948, the ‘m’ (which the sweets are well known for) was not stamped onto each individual sweet until 1950, when it was stamped in black rather than white. At this time, the cost of a packet only cost 5 American cents. The price of M&M’s today is quite reasonable, considering the massive inflation of living costs and chocolate making. Making sure that they are charging the right price for their target audience of families and children is crucial. A small bag of M&M’s costs around 60p, whereas their larger pouches cost around £2.

To enable consumers to easily purchase the products and services they want or need, there are nine marketing functions that are like a ‘holy grail’ for those providing the products and services to their publics. The nine functions are all equally important as one another because of the impact they can have on the way that their target audience think about what the companies are providing but also the accessibility of them.  These functions are:

·         Buying

·         Selling

·         Financing

·         Storage

·         Transporation

·         Processing

·         Risk-Taking

·         Market Information

·         Grading and Standardising

Buying is the first step of the functions. It gives people the firm opportunity to buy the products or services they want. Without people having the benefit to be able to buy these things, there would not be a need for marketing to exist. M&M’s provide people wanting chocolate with the products they want, just as much as other well known chocolate companies do, such as Cadbury and  For example, it would be pointless and false advertising for a company to market something that they are not sure- or have no intention of providing to their customers. For example, film trailers are marketing strategies in the media industry. They advertise films to their consumers that will be coming soon. Obviously there is nothing wrong with this, but if a film trailer was made and publicised to an audience who would be interested, but the film never actually came out, this would not only be a waste of the companies time, but also a waste of the future consumers but it takes away their buying opportunity.

Selling is enabling producers to sell their products to their consumers. For M&M’s this would be with help from shops, vending machines, cinemas etc. This can happen any way down the line when selling products or services, from the wholesaler to the business and from the business to their customers. In the media industry, selling could be from a company selling cameras to enable them to produce their films of television programmes and then could be from the film company selling to cinemas and dvd producers.

Financing is providing funding (money) for a person or enterprise. Businesses and companies starting out their business often get their funding either from personal savings of loans from banks. As M&M’s are part of the Mars Company, and the chocolates weren’t being produced until 1941 for the soldiers in World War 2, they would have had funding from their other products and their profit, which they put into making M&M’s. When making films, the directors have to gain funding for them to be able to create the film, pay their actors and crew, pay for their equipment, their copyright etc. Depending on their sector of the film industry depends on where they can gain their funding from. Hollywood films are those that are known as the ‘blockbusters’, the majority of what you will see in cinemas and those made in Hollywood with lots of well- known actors and mostly by well-known directors. They gain their funding from the film companies such as Warner Bros, and from being in the Hollywood sector itself. Independent film companies on the other hand have to find their money from elsewhere, from places such as the arts council and fundraising. Because of their often lack of funds compared to Hollywood, their budgets are a lot lower, often resulting in less famous actors, but also the films don’t always fall into the generic films which are seen a lot in Hollywood. An independent film company is Film 4.

Storage is about if where products are stored until they are needed is suitable, which is most important for goods that are easily spoiled, such as food. M&M’s are stored in thin, plastic, airtight packaging, which keeps them from rotting from air and conditions around in. Magazines and newspapers are goods which can easily spoil if not kept in the right environment. If, before they were ready to be distributed, newspapers and magazines were kept in very damp, wet and cold conditions, the paper in them would soon spoil; pages would stick together, much like books left out in the rain. This mistake could spoil the products and give off a bad impression to their consumers, ruining it’s reputation.

Transportation, or distribution, in the functions of marketing is crucial to selling goods especially, to customers and consumers. The distribution of them can either be by lorry, train, boat, aeroplane or an easily accessible telecommunications (communication by distance through cable, telegraph, telephone or broadcasting). Goods, like M&M’s will have travel routes of aeroplanes, lorries, trains and boats. Determining what methods of distribution suit your customers is key, as if the products or services are not easily accessible, consumers will be unable to obtain and use them. Radio channels and shows are services to the public. They are services rather than products because you cannot physically touch them, making them non-tangible. This means that for their audiences to be able to listen to them, they have to be readily and easily available to listen to. Strategically, the easier it is to come across and listen to a radio station, the higher the listening figures will be.

Processing is the making of goods from raw materials or products to something useful to organisations consumers. For example, the main ingredient in the chocolate of M&M’s is coco beans. The raw products are the coco beans, and they are then made into chocolate, along with other ingredients such as sugar and milk, to create the final product.

Risk taking is covered by insurance companies who protect the properties and products of their clients. These risks could be due to circumstances that can’t be helped, such as natural causes (floods, earthquakes, tornados etc), from fires, theft or loss of products. Something that companies who produce goods have to think about is how they will allow for shrinkage. Shrinkage is how companies loose money, and this in itself is a risk in any company. Shrinkage in M&M’s could be theft or wasted products.

Market information is something that can effects the marketing process a lot. Depending on political issues, market conditions and price movements depends on the market research results and information you can gather. The television, internet and phone can all provide market information, through online and phone questionnaires and audience interaction on television. The Mars Company would have had to start market research before producing M&M’s, to make sure that they are fulfilling the needs of their target audience- who at the time was soldiers in the World War Two. As time went on, they changed their target audience, and this would have involved more market research.

Lastly, grading and standardising of products is when they’re graded to fit previous quality standards. Products will feel they have to live up to their names and reputations, and not slack with product quality as they develop. For example, if a toothpaste claims to be the best on the market, it’s aim will be to stay the best on the market.

The four utilities of marketing are the use and satisfaction a consumer gets from using the products/services. These are:

·         

Form Utility- a raw product that must be processed into a form before given to the customer to satisfy their wants/needs. e.g. trees made into paper

·         Place Utility- Transporting good to where customers can buy them e.g. transporting bananas to the UK.

·         Possession Utility- The proof of legally owning a product, e.g. getting a receipt in a shop or a user license for computer software

·         Time utility- Storing products ready for customers to buy, e.g. a stock room in a shop.

Overall, marketing and public relations plays a big part in both M&M’s and the media industries. The nine functions of marketing help to make the marketing process successful and to get the products and services to their target audience and consumers.  

Overall, marketing and public relations plays a big part in both M&M’s and the media industries. The nine functions of marketing help to make the marketing process successful and to get the products and services to their target audience and consumers.  

The Biliography can be found on my original coursework.