Week 8 EOC : Creative Content for Final

TWENTY ONE VODKA

Don Monroe

Creative Content

I will be creating a few short videos advertisement as well as a few digital print ads. The video will focus on the target audience and so will the digital print ads.

IMPLEMENTATION, EVALUATION, CONTROL

IMPLEMENTATION, EVALUATION, CONTROL

Twenty One Vodka

"Marketing implementation is the process that turns marketing plans into marketing actions in order to accomplish strategic marketing objectives." (Page 56, Armstrong & Kotler, Marketing: An Introduction)

"Marketing control is the process of measuring and evaluating the results of marketing strategies and plans and taking corrective action to ensure that objectives are achieved." (Page 56, Armstrong & Kotler, Marketing: An Introduction)

This part of the marketing strategy pretty much goes in depth of everything gathered from the previous steps that has lead up to this moment. By creating the product and therefore initiating the marketing process it is clear to see how implementing the marketing strategy will eventually lead to evaluating everything and then attempting to control.

Once all of the pieces of the puzzle have been gathered up and everyone is sitting in the office ready to "go public" with the product this is going to be sold it is time to implement everything that has painstakingly been researched and put into motion. 

Now that the product has been made, priced, and distributed it is time to evaluate everything and make "checks and balances" to see if the proper steps were taken in preparing the marketing strategy. Although everything should essentially go smoothly because it was planned it is not always the case and often nothing is perfect in a new, start up company, brand, or product.

Trying to control the market and also control the "flow" of the product marketing strategy is just the first step in a long process of continuing evaluation. What this really means is that the overall control will be revised over and over again due to any data and information that is constantly collected. This means that changes might be made or if everything is going well maybe no changes need to be made right away.

SITUATION OR SWOT ANALYSIS

TWENTY ONE VODKA

Situation/SWOT Analysis

SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats)

"The company should analyze its markets and marketing environment to find attractive opportunities and identify environmental threats. It should analyze company strengths and weaknesses as well as current and possible marketing actions to determine which opportunities it can best pursue. The goal is to match the company’s strengths to attractive opportunities in the environment, while eliminating or overcoming the weaknesses and minimizing the threats. Marketing analysis provides inputs to each of the other marketing management functions." (Page 54, Armstrong & Kotler, Marketing: An Introduction)

Identifying the companies strengths would be the first step in trying to figure out how to go about with the rest of the analysis steps. By identifying the strengths we can pinpoint how well our product may potentially sell in the market. One major strength is the fact that Twenty One Vodka is new to the market and will be targeted towards those who are young, active, and just getting into the legal process of drinking.

One major weakness (that is also used to play off the strength of the brand, ironically) is the fact that the market of vodka is overly saturated and has been for many decades. This also poses a threat because of the many established companies that already have a close and dedicated customer base. How will our product fair in the large market of niche vodkas and how will it sell in the even larger market of liquor overall?

PRICE

Price

Twenty One Vodka

"The company’s marketing strategy outlines which customers the company will serve and how it will create value for these customers. Next, the marketer develops an integrated marketing program that will actually deliver the intended value to target customers. The marketing program builds customer relationships by transforming the marketing strategy into action. It consists of the firm’s marketing mix, the set of marketing tools the firm uses to implement its marketing strategy." (Page 12, Armstrong & Kotler, Marketing: An Introduction)

Setting a price for Twenty One Vodka might be a little bit difficult due to the fact there are already a ton of vodka brands out and about in the market already. But after a bit of searching I have come to the conclusion that very low end vodkas (bottle shelf, plastic bottles) go for $8-15 each. The most common types of vodkas go for about $20 each. Higher end vodkas (that also mean larger bottles) go for about $40-60. The highest end bottles are over $100 and are supposedly made through better processes. So where does Twenty One Vodka stand in this pricing situation?

Considering that it is going to be marketed towards the younger "21 age group" making a ridiculously high priced vodka doesn't seem to make sense. We want the crowd of college kids and new drinkers. This means that most of our consumers aren't going to be making a ton of money at that age. In this way it forces us to enter into an over saturated market of the "middle-affordable" vodkas. 

This only poses a problem because we are new, but as previously covered we plan on doing intensive promoting so it should help in sales.

DISTRIBUTION

TWENTY ONE VODKA

Distribution

The distribution process of this product is going to be the most difficult by far. There are a few factors that lead to this being difficult. First off it's a regulated alcoholic beverage. In the United States of America it is illegal for anyone under the age of 21 to even purchase alcohol let alone vodka. This means that the number one market of online sales is basically out of the question unless it's under strict "lock and key" of online alcohol retailers that probably have very expensive licenses and processes that they have to go through in order to distribute online. Although this is obviously the best way to distribute, it is unfortunately not feasible for a "start up" vodka company to go about in this manner.

So the main tactic that is going to have to be put in place for distribution is the "old school" process of having trucks hand deliver boxes and crates of bottled up vodka to physical store fronts and marketplaces that can legally sell alcohol. These truck drivers will eventually make hand deliveries to bars, clubs, and other venues where alcoholic beverages are sold. Even though distributing online is illegal there is still the possibility of selling online to legal aged (and verified) clients, but then the process would have to be physically sent through trucks anyways where bill of sales would again be verified before final delivery.

I see no other legal way of getting Twenty One Vodka into the hands of consumers in the USA. Once the product grows and becomes popular in other countries the rules might change because other countries often times don't have such strict rules and regulations as we do.

PROMOTION

TWENTY ONE VODKA

Promotion

"Today’s marketers have ready access to plenty of marketing information. With the recent explosion of information technologies, companies can now generate information in great quantities. In fact, most marketing managers—most people—are overloaded with data and often overwhelmed by it." (Page 101, Armstrong & Kotler, Marketing: An Introduction)

In this day and age the easiest part of trying to sell a product (maybe just my opinion) is the entire process of promoting. How do you go around promoting? OVERKILL.

By overkill I mean make it known that this product exists no matter what. Make print ads, make digital print ads, get a street team to slap stickers on everything, put logos on t-shirts, get musicians to promote, get club owners to promote and start selling, etc, etc. 

Not only is physical awareness a huge part of promotion, but nowadays a huge online presence can easily promote a product far beyond anything that was though possible like 20 years ago. Get virtually anyone to "like" a product page, ad, commercial, video, and pretty much anything related to the product and you are already on your way to worldwide recognition in hopes that it will lead to popularity and therefore more sales. Plus anything that is done in the physical world is going to be online through mobile phone pics and videos that have a never ending reach in who sees it. This leads to an insane amount of promotion that often times cost absolutely nothing at all.

So the key is physical personnel in the real world and a huge, never ending, constantly "grinding" presence online and the promotion process will basically "sell itself".

PRODUCT

TWENTY ONE VODKA

Product

Millennials (or Generation Y)

The 83 million children of the baby boomers, born between 1977 and 2000.

"One thing that all of the Millennials have in common is their utter fluency and comfort with digital technology. They don’t just embrace technology, it’s a way of life. The Millennials were the first generation to grow up in a world filled with computers, cellphones, satellite TV, iPods, and online social networks. A recent study found that 91 percent of Millennials are on the Web, making up 32 percent of all U.S. Internet users. According to another study, 77 percent of Millennials frequent social networking sites and 71 percent use instant messaging. “All generations are comfortable with technology, but this is the generation that’s been formed by technology,” says a Yahoo! executive. For them, “it’s not something separate. It’s just something they do.” (Page 73, Armstrong & Kotler, Marketing: An Introduction)

The product for Twenty One Vodka is...well...Vodka. Pretty plain and simple and straight forward. Or is it? We could run circles forever trying to create "buzz" words and making up facts and other things that would make our vodka look like it's the next new thing, but in reality it is going to be created like 99% of all other vodkas out there today. 

I really wish there was a that I could present some laboratory featuring a ton of scientists toiling over beakers and bubbling equipment, but it is just a straight up process of creating vodka.

The key is selling the image and the lifestyle as the product to the generation of consumers that will be or have already turned 21. So therefore, yes, the product is the vodka, but the actual product being sold is the image.