Marketing Essay
We were assigned the task of carrying out promotion of a real project at the Wilkes University. We were a team of three members who got involved in serious efforts to create awareness and promote acceptance of the project at the university campus. We are delighted that our efforts turned out to be positive and yielded results as per the expectations. We worked on the promotion of the concept of Multicultural Student Coalition as a team of three members namely W, K and D. W was in charge of setting up the poster for promotional activity whereas, K and D got involved in other activities mentioned later in the paper.
During the process, we learned from several marketing concepts such as the 4P concept of marketing and tried our best to incorporate the idea into our research. The four P’s of marketing help a business in designing and effective strategy and carrying out its successful implementation (Hoffmann 10). Before we begin by discussing the details of the project, we would like to highlight our understanding of the 4P’s of marketing.
Product
The product we have chosen to market is basically an intangible concept which has a very strong meaning. The concept is called Multicultural Student Coalition. According to this concept, diversity in any organization around the world has to be appreciated. At Wilkes University, students from all over the world study in various departments- they all belong to different social classes, backgrounds, religion, and culture and have entirely different values. The aim of Multicultural Student Coalition is to ensure that all students understand the concept of diversity and view it from a very positive angle. Bell mentioned in his book that people coming from diverse backgrounds bring diverse knowledge and skills which are shared and learned by people in the circle. Resultantly, the overall knowledge and learning of students at Wilkes University are enhanced and they are able to progress better than students of other colleges in their personal and professional lives. The product which in our case is Multicultural Student Coalition has to be promoted and ensure that the concept gets widely accepted by the students of Wilkes University.
Pricing
Coming to pricing, we would say that Multicultural Student Coalition is a service which comes with the only purpose of ensuring that cultural diversity at the Wilkes University is viewed from positive perspectives by students so that differences in the background are valued and cherished and prevent the occurrence of any kind of prejudices and conflicts. There is as such no pricing for this concept. The concept has to be promoted and accepted by students at the campus. Pricing is not usually required when such kind of concepts for general well being are being introduced.
Placement
During the process of creating awareness about Multicultural Student Coalition, we made use of a number of placement opportunities. We learned from our experiences and knowledge sharing activity of the team that placement for the society has to be done carefully so as to ensure that the true essence of the concept reaches the target audience (Ashworth, Gregory J., and Voogd 42). It was mentioned by that every organization whether it works for profit or not for profit must carry out the activity of placement with precision and accuracy because once the image of the offering has been created in the mind of customers; it becomes really challenging and sometimes impossible to change.
Based on this learning, we created awareness and significance of Multicultural Student Coalition by using the online platform. Students and teachers were informed using special online groups and chats. The website of Wilkes University was also used to post the details of Multicultural Student Coalition so that even the outside visitors could get an idea that the Wilkes University values diversity and ensures that no discrimination occurs on the premises. Similarly, official emails were sent to students which consisted of details of Multicultural Student Coalition and how they can participate and make the society a huge success. One to one marketing campaign was also used as a placement tool for promoting the idea of Multicultural Student Coalition.
Promotion
Belch, George, and Belch suggested that promotion plays the biggest role in letting the target market find out the benefits of the products or service being offered. Without using the tool of promotion, no organization must assume that the target market would come to it themselves-awareness and knowledge have to be generated by the organization to ensure that the right messages reach the target market and the offering is treated as essential (Abraham, Magid, and Lodish 57). We made use of social media to promote the idea of Multicultural Student Coalition on the Wilkes University campus. Pages of Multicultural Student Coalition were created on Facebook and goodwill messages were promoted through Twitter. People discussed the concept with enthusiasm and expressed willingness in providing their support in spreading the message of Multicultural Student Coalition. We reached the professors and asked them to let their students know the importance of Multicultural Student Coalition and how its adaptation would strengthen the image of the Wilkes University as well as improve their moral character and enhance their thinking abilities.
The paper is mostly based on our promotion experience. We tried a number of ways to promote the meaning of Multicultural Student Coalition across the campuses of Wilkes University. The online pages contained details of the Multicultural Student Coalition society and mention clearly that the purpose of Multicultural Student Coalition is to bring an end to intercultural conflicts and appreciate the diverse ethnic, religious and values of every culture. In this regard, the security ensures that it maintains a record of all students belonging to different backgrounds and importance calendar dates of their religious and cultural celebration days. Several inter cultural occasions will be celebrated at the campus where the relevant ethnic group will inform the crowd the significance of such event and how thankful they are to the Wilkes University and participants for brightening their day. On some days, speeches will be made by students belonging to different cultures so that any confusions can be clarified and students collaborate with each other without having any negative feelings such as prejudice or discrimination of any sort.
It was clearly mentioned during the promotional campaign that the Wilkes University has allocated a special fund for the promotional activities of Multicultural Student Coalition and ensures that a small amount of fund is added to the funding for Multicultural Student Coalition. It is really important to inform that target market of every hidden dimension so that they can participate in accepting the concept of diversity from a positive perspective.
Poster
We have also made a poster for the promotion of Multicultural Student Coalition at the Wilkes University campus. The poster has been attached with this assignment for your review. It must be noted that we made use of an online website. The link of the website is https://magic.piktochart.com/templates. We made use of a template to make this poster. The poster was placed at various places on the campus of Wilkes University so as to catch the students’ attention. As you can see from the poster image, we have made use of an excellent promotion tool to create awareness of the idea of Multicultural Student Coalition. The idea is to host an event where the concept of diversity will be highlighted. As it is not possible to pull in a significant number of audiences for the speech on diversity and the entire perspective of Multicultural Student Coalition so we made an announcement with the help of posters to attract young university public.
According to the details on the poster, Wilkes University has decided to hold a talent event between the students of Kings College and Wilkes University. The idea behind this talent show is to encourage the students to showcase their hidden talent on this glorious platform of Wilkes University. The core aim is to let the public know how much potential, skills and capability the brilliant students of both colleges are hiding within their personality. By participating in the talent show, students will gain confidence and trust their abilities fully. The talent show will provide an equal chance to all students to express any of their hidden talents to the public irrespective of their cultural and religious backgrounds, ethnicity, color, race, and religion. When such an environment is created where students of all nationalities and backgrounds are encouraged to perform on the stage, this will put an end to the prejudices and stereotypes created and accepted in our society. The nature of this competition between the two educational institutions is supposed to be on a friendly basis where the losing and winning teams will not tease each other and enjoy the whole event to the maximum. The Wilkes Universtiy has also announced cash prizes for the winning teams. The winning team or individual participant will receive prize money of three hundred dollars; the runner-up would receive two hundred dollars whereas hundred dollars would be given to the first runner-up. There will be door prizes for all the participants. A DJ will also be present at the talent show who will offer the best of music which would make the participants and the audience feels enthusiastic at the event. The publicity of the event will be done on social media such as Facebook and Twitter. The venue of the talent show would be the ballroom of the Wilkes University. The date and timings of the event have been mentioned at the bottom of the poster which is 7th of April and 7 to 9pm respectively.
References
Abraham, Magid M., and Leonard M. Lodish. "Getting the most out of advertising and promotion." Harvard Business Review 68.3 (1989): 50-1.
Ashworth, Gregory J., and Henk Voogd. "Marketing and place promotion."Place promotion: the use of publicity and marketing to sell towns and regions(1994): 39-52.
Belch, George E., and Michael A. Belch. Advertising and promotion: An integrated marketing communications perspective. The McGraw− Hill, 2003.
Bell, Myrtle. Diversity in organizations. Cengage Learning, 2011.
Hoffmann, Stefanie. Are the 4 P's of international marketing of equal importance to all firms? What factors might cause some to more or less important than others?: A short article. GRIN Verlag, 2008.
