[Old Navy-Case Assignment]
Marketing strategies are not always free from risk of failure. Marketers should consult as much as possible with internal as well as external consultants to make the campaign more feasible and productive. Old Navy has introduced a new marketing campaign for targeting young customers through online videos. These days’ online videos are considered as future of content marketing. Almost 65% of the marketers expect the online videos to dominate their marketing strategies in nearby future. I am writing this memo as per your request to evaluate the inns and outs of the new marketing campaign. The memo will help you to evaluate the choice of new marketing strategy.
Initially, I will analyze the choice of young adult males as new target for Old Navy promotional strategy. The company has targeted the young males as they are independent in making their dressing decisions and can be convinced easily. According to study conducted by Ernest and Young (2009) young media is easily convinced through new media technologies. Young are much inclined to new technologies and can be easily convinced through the online media. The new target customer will be much more effective in generating the profits and increasing the sales for the Old Navy. This group is having high percentage in the overall population of the countries in which Old Navy operates. But according to my view you should incorporate another segment into your campaign. Because targeting a single customer can be dangerous for Old Navy. Company can incorporate the young and professional men into their target segment. Professional are also much inclined towards digital technologies. Although their choices are dependent upon their female counterparts but still this group has much inclination towards the YouTube videos. In short it can be concluded that choice of young as new target customers for Old Navy is good but it can become best by incorporating another segment into this marketing campaign. This segment can be professionals working in different sectors.
Secondly I will evaluate the choice of this new promotional strategy. Old Navy has selected the video marketing strategy assuming some basic factors.
- First assumption is about the inclination of young customers towards the video advertising. Marketers assume that young watched the video more precisely and are much inclined towards the message given through the digital technologies. So the decision goes favorable towards the target segment.
- A quantitative research followed by Old Navy research team indicated that Men are dependent in their clothing decision to their women. But this trend is changing gradually. Men are getting independent in choice of their clothing. So Old Navy selected the young customers assuming that there clothing choice are no more under the effect of their female counterparts.
- The choice of male was also made under the assumption that they always buy in the bulk. There's a no-BS mentality to the way men shop. Men always know what they want, what they like. Unlike women they select the thing that fit them and serve the purpose. Reports also suggested that if men found something that suits them of serve their purpose well they can buy it even in multiples.
According to me these assumptions are valid but there are some small loopholes in validity of these assumptions. The first assumption about the male inclination toward the digital technologies is valid but it is also observed that young have flexible choices. Their choices can be varied under the effects of small stimulus. They switch from one brand to another brand swiftly as compared to other mature professionals. Professionals have much more stabilized choices and preferences and thus they can stick to Old Navy and can prove to be a loyal customer for long terms. So keeping alone the young as target customer for video advertising can have drastic impacts. The second assumption is also not appropriate. Men are not always free from the women interference in their clothing decisions. There is still some interference from their female counterparts. So only targeting men through mobile technologies is not an effective media. Undoubtedly, internet facilities are immense, but as consequence of youth environmental, economic performance, compared to the rest of channels that are used for marketing, still not very significant.
I would prefer to extend the both your quantitative and qualitative research in the field of mobile and digital technologies to obtain more valid results. Next I would recommend to use integrate marketing approach. In which you can use one or two marketing approaches simultaneously. An integrated market approach is much more valid and effective as compared to single marketing campaign. In using the integrate approach, you can incorporate other digital tools such as Adver-gaming, a term used as combination of “advertisement” and “games”. This will help spread your message to more customers.
The next part will evaluate the innovation and creativity of the new marketing strategy. The strategy behind the new campaign is to target single customers with intensity that reduces their diversions to other brands. Old Navy is very famous brand so there is need to target more and more customers from single customer base. The online videos strategy is very effective these days. Social media is the ideal medium to reach young people as they spend more time on internet as compared to other customers. And this allows brands to create very specific campaigns aimed at the young. And if they create a social media campaign that gets to identify with the brand and interact with it and share it with their friends and followers, they will have a successful campaign.
- The essence of the marketing is that, thing should be seen from long term perspectives. Keeping this in mind and the loopholes in the targeting and marketing strategy I would like to recommend some of the ways to improve the marketing campaign. The recommendations are as follows;
- Online videos should not target young customers but they should have an essence that can make people feel young. People will purchase products only when they realize their needs and preferences. Old Navy’s videos are lacking this essence. This must be incorporate into the videos to get higher number of customers.
- The creativity is the essence of the success of video campaign. Creativity wins over the cost of production too. So rather than focusing on other factors, much focus would be tilted towards the creativity of the videos.
- Success of the campaign is also dependent upon the engagement of the targeted customers. The videos or content of the online marketing campaigns must have some sort of social aspects to cater attentions of its viewers. It can create some celebrity endorsement or can attach it with some social media events can increase the level of engagement of viewers.
I have tried to out all my suggestions in this small manuscript. I hope these evaluations may helpful for you from long term perspectives.
References
Armstrong, C., & Collins, R. (2004). Digital Dilemmas for South African TV.LINK Centre Public Policy Research Paper, (6).
Atkinson, R. (2011). Myths and Realities of the Internet Era.
Burgess, J., & Green, J. (2013). YouTube: Online video and participatory culture. John Wiley & Sons.
Cha, M., Kwak, H., Rodriguez, P., Ahn, Y. Y., & Moon, S. (2009). Analyzing the video popularity characteristics of large-scale user generated content systems. IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking (TON), 17(5), 1357-1370.
Noble, S. M., Haytko, D. L., & Phillips, J. (2009). What drives college-age Generation Y consumers?. Journal of Business Research, 62(6), 617-628.
Scott, D. M. (2009). The new rules of marketing and PR: how to use social media, blogs, news releases, online video, and viral marketing to reach buyers directly. John Wiley & Sons.
