By: Vera Ndrecaj BA (Hons). MBA.
1.
Introduction
The aim of this
report is to describe the components that lead to the success of the strategic
marketing of MBA ‘Panel Debate’ event. The report will create the whole
picture of the event itself by recounting the work, actions, building,
re-building, achievements, deliverables, and difficulties, obstacles and
outcomes of the whole process. Specifically,
the report will focus on the various marketing aspects on the preparation of
this event preparation and explain in-depth about the
marketing strategy and operations related to the entire process of the event. Furthermore it will highlight the three key elements of
marketing for this event 1) Segmentation - targeting and positioning, 2) Marketing mix, and 3) Methods of communication.
The above elements will be considering as an essential ingredients of marketing strategy of the event. The marketing mix will be developed on the lights of 7Ps framework suggested by Booms and Bitner (1981)
·
Product
·
Price
·
Place
·
Promotion
·
People
·
Process and
·
Physical evidence.
The effectiveness of implementation
process, marketing communicating methods and techniques for the positioning,
promoting the product to our potential customer groups will be also evaluated considering marketing communication element as crucial to the success. It will also describe the communication tools exercised between the external
and internal stakeholders and utilisation of the different frameworks and
concepts. SMART, DAGMAR, AIDA. Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC)
concepts were use to clarify/identify the appropriate objectives, approaches,
and methods to be used. The report
will explain sequentially what happened during this execution of project; and
evaluate possible strategic marketing planning process. To analyse and
implement the appropriate method/tools for this event it is essential to address
the following questions:
Why do we need to host this event?
Who will host, implement and execute the necessary identified activities?
What is the nature and purpose of targeting the audience?
Who are the key stakeholders – (primary and secondary)?
When should the event be held and why was that choice selected?
Where should we hold this event to achieve the objectives successfully?
What methods or tools worked and what did not and why it did not?
2. The
event:
The purpose of the event will be
to offer MBA students a broad range of experiences and opportunities that
transcend the boundaries of their own commercial fields. We selected and arranged a ‘Panel Debate’,
where the focus of the topic is to serve the interest of the participants and MBA
cohorts. The debate’s focuses
broadly on how education providers might work with employers to tailor the MBA
courses to their requirements in order to improve their employability.
Questions were sourced prior to the event from the audience.
The audience was comprised of past, present and future MBA graduates, employers
and academics. We have secured the participation of five panellists from public
and private sector organisations, plus a senior representative of the University
of Glamorgan and keynote speaker that added significant value and credibility to
the debate, and provided clear concise context along with the very necessary
link between employers and the University of Glamorgan.
The panellist composition is shown below:
Chair - Lyn Daunton - University of Glamorgan
The Key speaker - Mr Peter
Williams - Head of Technology Planning, Telefonica 02 UK [private
sector]
Aled Rowlands - Researcher for BBC Wales [private sector]
Mair Barron - Public Services Director for Hays Recruiters Wales [public sector]
Jon House - Chief Executive Officer of Cardiff Council [public sector]
Paul Davies - Glamorgan Full Time MBA Cohort Leader
3. Conceptualisation of Ideas:
After the process of idea
generation, we agreed to chose the title ‘Value of MBA to Employers’, which
was agreed as a title that permit the MBA cohorts team to achieve objectives.
The team decided to use a concept that is flexible and acceptable to serve the
different stakeholders, which should be achievable with the available
resources. The first step in creating the event concept was in defining that
the event’s purpose is to exercise an experiential learning (realistic
reflection for writing assignment). We identified this definition fully and
accurately in order to provide a sound starting point for determines the event
concept.
The next step was to identify and
agree the event’s target audience (see table.1). The needs and expectations of
panellists were clearly similar to other groups of the audience. The audience
encompassed a wide range of age and background from students to academics, from
employers to senior managers. The important decision was made about the
duration of the event, and we also choose the event venue which was able to
meet operational needs of the event in terms of health and safety, access,
refreshment, staging, facilities and convenience.
This enabled us to establishing a strong concept tailored to
suit the specific context and needs of the event. The event also created an
opportunity to present a unique and memorable experience for the MBA September
Cohorts. From the author’s perspective, the event was seen as a consciously
designed to experience intricacies and challenges posed by the complexities
involved in achieving the marketing and communication objectives. The topic is purposefully
selected to reflect the interests of the stakeholders, as well as to fulfil the
event’s mission statement- its aim and objectives. The topic is relevant and appropriate in relation to current
labour market issues and ongoing controversial debates about future prospect of
MBA students.
However, we had only six weeks to complete the project and
even less to develop our product (panel debate). The product has short life-
cycle that has been through four stages. The first stage of the life cycle was
feasibility. The idea of the event was conceived and its broad objectives were
identified, its feasibility was reviewed and the initial estimates were
generated. The second stage was planning
and designing - developing the details of the event and its outcome; deciding
who will do what, and when – to hold the event (Table 1 Appendix). The third
stage was ‘product’ design and development stage – here all activities were
exercised to full potential where most planning took place. However, effective
monitoring and controlling of all tasks helped us to identify our needs, finding
out what already has been done, and what needs to be done within the available time.
By the end of this stage the event preparation was substantially completed and
ready for ‘show-time’. The fourth stage was termination – the event was to hold,
positive feedback received from panellists and audience, eventually closing the
event and disbanding of the team after a review session.
The concept of the event was evaluated through marketing,
operation and financial screen suggested by Shone and Parry (2004). The
‘marketing screen’ helped us to examine how the target audience of the event is
likely to respond to the designed concept. We determined this through
environment scanning in order to find out current trends. A further factor in
environment scanning process was to examine the competition provided by other
event held at University of Glamorgan (UOG). This step examined whether there
are other events on the similar theme or similar time frame.
The investigation of the competition intended to answer the
question ‘what is on at university’? Avoiding direct competition with other
events. Through operation screen we considered skills and resources needed to
stage the event successfully. Fortunately, the financial screen was not
explored due to budget extended by the university, however at the end of the day it was about people. Their creativity, adaptability, and
energy was needed to plot, plan and manage the event, they were all involved
and interested in this process despite the cognitive dissonance in cultural and
personality influence of the team members.
4.
Team - Structure
and Formation:
The team was formulated by fourteen MBA September
2010-2011 Cohorts, with varying experiences and backgrounds and with specific
skills set from specific areas, like management, marketing, finance, human
resources, journalism, and supply chain. All members of team are capable enough
to contribute effectively in all stages of the event process. Although we all
work in different ways, some of us are analytical, logical, careful and
considerate to work as a team. However, usually it takes time for the team to
complete the ‘journey’ from the collection of individuals to a cohesive
supportive, flexible and support team, to do so we must change develop and grow
all together as a team.
This experience have taken us from the inhibited
watchfulness of first meeting the conflicts and development of our own rules
and standard to and eventually finally becoming a professional team in spite of
us not going through the four stages (forming, storming, norming, and
performing). A flat simple team structure was implemented in order to allow for
in quick decision making process due to time constrain. Nevertheless, the team communication
was not effective enough, and also there was lack of clarity on the leadership role.
The team and leaders alike due to consequences of shared leadership concept
adopted. Belbin team role framework was not employed effectively to assess the skills
and knowledge of the team members. However, everyone was clear about the
process and size of the project, goals and targets, skills required, and team
working approach. Despite the fact that there were some linguistic issues,
leading to dissonance due to lack of effective communication, which projected a
negative image of the team.
Strategic marketing planning (SMP) of the event was mainly of
responsibility of team leaders. The process of strategic planning context
involved the event leaders moving through a numbers of sequential and
interrelated steps such as;
Ø Development of event concept (discussed above)
Ø Event feasibility analyses (discussed above)
Ø Establishment of team structure (discussed above)
Ø And strategic planning
o
Establishment of the
vision/mission/ and purpose
o
Development of the
event goals and objectives
o
Conduct suitable
analyses
o
Identification of
strategy options
o
Development of
operational plans
o
Creation and
implementation of the control systems
o
Evaluation,
termination an reporting
The SMP process for this event included; research and
analysis of i) internal and external environment, ii) demographical and
philological factors, iii) segmentation of costumers into target market
segments and iv) targeting and positioning using IMC. The setting to marketing
objectives, and decision-making of generic marketing strategy and marketing mix
as shown in figure 2.
The starting point for any SMP is mission and vision of the
event organisers and its objectives, which we arrived during an event’s
strategic planning process. Figure
3 shows that, stakeholders requirements and personal values of implementers are
the forces that influence the strategic marketing process. The mission
statement of the event was not well defined and unawareness of its importance
due to lack of experience and ignorance by some members caused the dissonance.
On addressing the question ‘what are we here for? We
perceived using “Effective communication for efficient marketing”. The mission
statement was an important foundation for marketing approach that has reflected
the interest of stakeholders and helped us to achieve marketing and
communication objectives. Mission and vision are conditioned by the needs
of various stakeholders group, and
also are starting points of any strategic marketing planning.
However, vision statement can be separated from an
event’s mission. Our vision intended to describe what event organizers are
seeking to achieve in long term through the conducting the event. . However, is
ongoing debate on strategic field, some of the views are that vision statement
do not necessarily need to be written down, the most important point is to
share it and make sure this vision is understood from all team members.
Once an event mission was decided the focus moved to
establish goals and objectives of the event, which very often are used
interchangeable. The goals of MBA team were broad statements, which provided
the direction. While objectives were used to quantify progress towards events
goals and such set performance benchmarks, to allow us to assess what aspects
of marketing communication plan have succeed or failed. The panel debate was a
small-scale community event, establishing effective marketing and communication
objectives. The event marketing
objectives were to attract more participants, to improve the stakeholders’
satisfaction, and also add value to our brand and improve the image. It was
essential for us to establish SMART( specific, measurable, achievable, relevant
and timing) objectives.
Specific: Yes,
because of high interest from current, past and prospect MBA students as well
as employers and academics due to current challenges facing by labour market as
a result of economical and political situation.
Measurable:
Yes, empirically measured by registration, tickets, attendances records and
feedback.
Achievable: Yes,
because we had all necessary support from facilitators and resources [infrastructure,
technology, administrative support, venue etc] and time.
Realistic: Yes, because of the small size of the event objectives were
appropriate with our resources and time available.
Time: Yes, six weeks was realistically
enough time to complete this project.
However, to identify
communication objectives of the event we considered using two useful
communication models (DAGMAR or AIDA). We decided to implement AIDA (awareness,
interest, desire and action) because it was more appropriate and easier to
implement model. The marketing objectives of the event were to bring various
groups of people together with the same needs/interest and provide networking. But
communication objectives depend
heavily on how many people know already about the product , that why we used
UOG brand and image in order to attract past, present and potential future
students. The communication objectives was to send clear message to targeted
audience and affect their ‘mind’, sell the product.
6.
Segmentation - Targeting and Positioning of the event:
The heart of marketing
strategy of the event was marketing, segmentation, targeting and positioning (STP),
in order to provide the broader framework for strategic success in market
place. The product was designed in
the way that can satisfy some certain groups with same interest, through
quality, service and value.
Therefore we started the process of identifying small groups of people
with similar needs. This was
achieved by answering the following questions; who might be interested in our
products? Who ‘buys’ our product? Who ‘buys’ what? Why do they ‘buy’ it? The
ability to segment the market accurately was a key skill that we spend time
revising the marketplace and think about how it will be broken into segments.
The aim of the team was
to identify geographic segmentation base around Wales, potential recruitment
companies, the public and private sectors. Demographic segmentation relies on the characteristic of
people, such as age, gender, occupation, education, race, and nationality. We also identified convergence
segmentation through marketing niche strategy. The segmented market analysis
reveals that opportunities to offer the debate product in the best effective
and efficient way were possible. For the measurable aspect of segmentation it was
quantifiable. In this context we identified various companies (employers) from
private and public sectors in order to find out what their expectations of this
event were.
Representative from various
sector and reasons were targeted
i)
Wales Assembly
Government (public sector); academics from University of Glamorgan (UOG) (internal
stakeholder to assess suitability and tailoring of course module)
ii) UOG MBA graduates
from, past, present, and prospective (Full/part time/executive/undergraduate) to understand the importance and
relevance of doing MBA
iii)
Employers
(private/public sector) explain the rationale of their expectation from the MBA
graduates
The team explored the substantial aspect, posing questions like, how many
delegates fall into these segments
and if there are sufficient numbers to justify the hosting the event targeting
. The team then focused on accessibility aspect of this segmentation process.
Here, many issues were raised, ‘can these senior individuals or companies be
contacted?’, ‘Do we need specific media and distribution channel to deliver the
message which may require accessible issues, like authorization permission etc?’
However the benefit of the product (debate) offered by MBA debate event must be
relevant to the target, and that is no point picking measurable, accessible,
and substantial segments if are not inters in the ‘panel debate’.
Targeting- the event market is
the processes where we identify which of these
segments are the most attractive for the event. For instance; whose needs and wants does the product (debate) best satisfy,
however, there are customers most likely to appreciate the universities our
‘Glam Biz Intellect’ brand promise and UOG image as some informal co-branding
of image (table-cloth logo, letter head, poster etc) was by the event
organizers. However, we started with clear target
audience in mind (see page 12), the target audience have critically influenced
us on ‘what to say’, ‘how to say it’, ‘when we can say it, and to ‘whom we can communicate’.
To indentify the target audience we used other methods such as image analyses
by measuring the target audience’s knowledge of the object by using the
following scale adapted from Kotler (2010:599)
Never heard of
|
Heard of only
|
Know a little bit
|
Known a fair amount
|
Know very well
|
The two last groups who are
familiar with product were favourable target audience.
The aim of positioning is
to achieve competitive advantage through IMC meeting and high deliverable
stands in satisfying the sponsor of event and MBA event participants. This
allows us to create a positive perception of UOG/MBA brand image, where the mission
and vision augments this. Here, the mission and vision can help minimise the
semantic noise and cognitive dissonance generated during the deployment process
of communication channels. The
positioning marketing strategy should employ ‘clarity’, ‘consistency’,
‘credibility’ and ‘competitiveness but this was not adhered to in complete
leading to some conflict and confusion. The differentiation strategy we
adopted was aimed to provide a product that offered benefits for both internal
and external stakeholders in term of relationship, networking.
7. Marketing Mix
To achieve the marketing
event objectives, we consider using 7Ps marketing mix framework as suggested by
Booms and Bitner, (1981). The marketing mix of panel debate refers to
elements of its marketing strategy, which was designed to meet stakeholders’
needs. Figure 5, shows the summery of 7Ps of the ‘panel debate’ product
analysis for product, price, place, promotion, people, process, and physical
evidence.
This is for the purpose
of identifying the right product, right price, right place and right time to
ensure that, stakeholders’ needs and expectation are met through high quality
of product and service. The main purpose of designing a promotion communication
mix is to choose the right communication channels to pass the message clearly to
the different targeted groups whit same result. The success of panel debate was
largely depending on the event’s promotion and packaging. It was a vital
process of creating awareness of the product (debate), desirable to
participants in investing their time and effort to enjoy the benefits of the debate. The strategy was to use internal
and external communication channels (Figure 5) with cost effectiveness. Social networking was mainly used as external
communication channels. E-mails,
posters, and leaflets (administrative cost was covered by UOG) were used as a
internal communication tools.
|
We intended to develop
effective communications by i) determine the communication objectives ii) design the message iii)select the communication channels iv) manage
and coordinate total marketing communication process
However, during this
project we failed to obtain effective marketing communication with our
stakeholders due to linguistic issues, which lead to lack of effective
marketing communication and also have negative effect in image, and also lack
of management. We did implemented ‘pull’ strategy rather than ‘push’, because
our aim was to ‘pull’ as many people as we can to our ‘panel debate’ Marketing
communication was considerate as a central to relationship marketing. We managed to build the relationship
with stakeholders through Elizabeth Lloyd Parker and Sara Hugh which
successfully have managed this process, because we failed to integrate various
messages transmitted and received by various stakeholders. We used traditional
direct marketing communication with external and internal stakeholders. We
failed to use integrated marketing communication as a strategic process (IMC)
instead we used planned communication process which deliberately we delivered
planned messages and receipt of responses, while the interaction process
consists in giving and receiving message through the consumption experience. But
in the end we also used unplanned message ‘word of mouth’. However, we knew
that these planned messages will create expectations, which the stakeholders
will judge the quality of the panel debate (product), failure to meet this
expectation will destroy the trust.
In term of marketing
communication channels we used both internal and external channels in order to
promote effectively our event. We used as internal channels posters and e-mails
channels and also as external channels we used social networks such as;
twitter, Facebook, GBS, Alumni. We
developed communication tactics and tool based in what we learned in research
and planning stages in order to enable as to achieve the objects. We aimed to develop
effective IMC by
taking the flowing steps;
i)
We identified internal and external communications tools that advanced stakeholders’
needs. They included media relations, advertising, direct mail, web site, grand
opening or other special events.
ii)
We started thinking from the viewpoint of the audience. What is on their
minds?
iii)
We gained the audience interest by giving them a sense of involvement in
the communication process. We requested the registered delegates to forward any
questions for panelists to a questionnaire depository.
iv)
We used various channels of communications (Table. 5). We did not use only just one or two,
because we considered that the impact is far greater when our message reaches
people in different channels.
v)
We aimed to maintain consistency in order to avoid semantic noises, so
what is believed (value)on the topic is the same no matter who delivers the
message and in what format. However, in this context we did faced some issues, cognitive
dissonance was occur (thinks has crashed each other) because the message send
to some potential was essentially contradictory with message we end to other
stakeholders.
vi)
We managed successfully to highlight the most important benefits of the
product and clearly stated our position.
vii)
We maintained credibility and consider all ethical aspects.
However, we did fall is certain aspects of team management and also in some marketing aspects. Positive and negative aspects from marketing and event perspective aresummarised in Table 7 that clearly highlights some avoidable issues such as lack of communication between marketers and stakeholders, lack of coordination between team leaders, semantic noises, and failure of building and maintain effective communication within the team.
9.
Limitations:
Ø Small scale community event
o Short life cycle
o Time constrain
o Informal organization and structure
Ø Resources (restricted budget)
Ø Stakeholders numbers – more stakeholders mean more objectives the event
has to meet
Ø Marketing – ability to respond to market change
10. Conclusion
Through this experience
the researcher learned this; marketing is a clear, structured and coherent
thinking about managing event to achieve objectives related to market,
stakeholders’ awareness, event attendance, and satisfactions. Despite the fact
that is ongoing debate about the
role of marketing in event field, some views describing marketing nothing more than ‘event promotion’. However,
the core of the event marketing was focusing in existing and potential
customer. We intended to implement marketing niche strategy in order to
identify potential groups, which have same or similar needs and interests. The
success of the marketing flows from better understanding of these customers due
to primary and secondary market research and two-way communication with event
stakeholders and consumers. From this knowledge we developed marketing
strategies and tactics that span the product, its place, its delivery process,
its people and partnership, and integrated marketing communication. We did
implemented ‘pull’ strategy rather than ‘push’, because our aim was to ‘pull’
as many people as we can to our ‘panel debate’
Nevertheless, the panel
debate was a small-scale community event, organized by MBA September Cohorts.
The purpose of the event was experiential learning. We use UOG brand to promote
our product ‘panel debate’ because we could not come-up with new brand. It will
be a real challenging for us, impossible to promote successfully the product in
six weeks because of lack of recognition, trust, reputation, perception and so
on. UOG brand was for us more than physical identity, because it is based in
customers’ perceptions, how they relate to the event as well as physical logo.
However, intelligent, integrated and consistent used of the brand helped us to
make intangible phenomenon more tangible for event customers. The mission and
vision of the event was not well defined. Due of the size and short life-cycle of the event there was
no rational strategic planning and formality. However, the author believes
that, carefully planning creates marketing communication synergy, which
reinforces a consistent message or image in ‘cost effectiveness’ manner. We fail to move in strategic stage due
to time constrain and length of the project. We have mostly operated in
tactical areas, and implement contingency planes due to several push and pull
factors which generate vulnerable and invulnerable changes and also some time lead
to uncertainty. We also fail to
develop effective marketing communication and implement IMC because of functional
silo, semantic noise and differences in using linguistics, time and budget
constrain, and also lack of management. These issues lead to lack of effective
communication and also negative effect in image.
The mix of transaction
marketing (TM) and relationship marketing (RM) approach were intentionally
employed in this project, the aim of the team was to fully implement RM because
this could best way to retain customers in the long run by created value and
achieve competitive advantage, but we could not due to high resource demanding,
difficulties to control, and also time – constrained. However, through mix approach we aimed to retain our
customer by gaining their loyalty and commitment that enabled us to achieve one
of our objectives ‘networking’.
The event focus was to attract as many stakeholders as possible, satisfy
them through high quality of the product and service, quality was the concern
of all (RM). Our orientation was on
products value (RM) rather than products features (TM). Our marketing strategy was ‘getting’
customers rather than ‘keeping’ them.
Despite the above challenges faced during this project, we managed to achieve marketing and communication
objectives that lead to the successful ending. This success is measure through participants,
and positive feedback from both panellists and audience. The success is a result of
hard working and commitment of all team members. This success will be also dedicated mainly to Elizabeth Lloyd Parkes and Sara Hugh for their wonderful guidance and support. This experiential
learning has enhanced my confidence and improved leadership skills regardless
of failure in some aspects of project management. It has also boast my knowledge in different arias of
marketing field and strategic planning. This experience has defiantly prepared the author for future challenges.
If there will be an opportunity to be involved in similar projects or
even though large scale projects things will be done differently, in more
effective manner.
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