MKT 2010 Module 6 Promotional Decisions Assignment Example

Telling the Bog's Story on a Small Budget: Integrated Communications, Advertising Evidence and Selling Pine Barrens Crunch

Student Name

Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, Thomas Edison State University

MKT-2010: Introduction to Marketing

Mentor Name

Month Day, Year

Telling the Bog's Story on a Small Budget: Integrated Communications, Advertising Evidence and Selling Pine Barrens Crunch

Bog Iron Farms, the composite cranberry grower whose snack these assignments follow, has a first-year promotion budget of about $38,000. That is too little for broad advertising and enough to do a few things well. This assignment applies Module 6's concepts to plan the promotion of Pine Barrens Crunch: an integrated communications approach, the role of advertising and shareable digital content, and the sales promotion and personal selling that will move the product off shelves and into school menus.

Question 1: What Does Integrated Marketing Communications Mean Here?

Integrated marketing communications coordinates all promotional activities, advertising, public relations, sales promotion, personal selling and digital media, so that they deliver one consistent message (Kurtz & Boone, 2022). For the farm, the message is the positioning set in Module 3: one ingredient, nothing added, grown by a farm family in New Jersey's cranberry bogs. Every element repeats it. The pouch states it, the website opens with it, tasting staff say it in the same words and press materials lead with it.

Integration also means coordinating timing. The heaviest activity will fall in two windows: late August for back-to-school, when parents restock lunch supplies, and October during harvest, when the bogs are flooded and red and local media already cover the cranberry season. Spreading a small budget evenly across the year would dilute it; concentrating it when attention is naturally high makes each dollar work harder. The budget splits roughly into $12,000 for in-store tastings and samples, $9,000 for digital content and targeted social ads, $7,000 for school and office sales materials, $6,000 for trade show attendance and $4,000 for public relations and the harvest open day.

Public relations completes the mix at little cost. Regional newspapers, local television and food writers already cover the cranberry harvest each fall, and a fourth-generation family launching its own snack is the kind of human story they look for. A simple press kit with harvest photos, the family's history and samples, sent in September, can earn coverage that no ad budget this size could buy.

Question 2: What Can Advertising and Digital Content Do?

Advertising works, but less dramatically than many marketers assume. Sethuraman et al. (2011) analyzed hundreds of advertising elasticities from 56 studies and found an average short-term elasticity of about .12, meaning a 10% increase in advertising was associated with roughly a 1.2% increase in sales on average. Elasticity was higher for products early in their life cycle than for mature ones. That supports some advertising for a new product, but a tiny brand cannot buy enough to move sales through paid media alone.

Shareable content can stretch the budget if it gives people a reason to pass it on. Berger and Milkman (2012) studied which New York Times articles were most often shared and found that positive content was shared more than negative content, and that content evoking high-arousal emotions, such as awe, spread more widely than content evoking low-arousal emotions. A harvest on the bogs offers natural awe: aerial video of a flooded bog turning crimson as berries float to the surface is striking. The farm will publish short harvest videos each October, with a family member explaining what viewers are seeing, and use a modest paid social budget to show them to parents in the target counties. Engagement and website visits from each video will show which content to repeat.

Measurement will separate what works from what merely feels busy. Each video's link will carry a tracking code, coupon redemptions will be counted by store, and the website will ask new subscribers how they heard of the product. After the first harvest season, the farm will cut the weakest third of its activities and move the money to the strongest.

Question 3: What Role Do Sales Promotion and Personal Selling Play?

Sales promotion gives a short-term incentive to try or buy. For a new snack, trial is the main barrier, so sampling is the most important promotion. Family members and part-time staff will run about 150 tastings in the first year at independent grocers, farmers' markets and school events, each paired with a coupon for a dollar off the first pouch. A loyalty card at farmers' markets, buy five and get one free, encourages repeat purchases among the most engaged customers.

Personal selling matters most in the institutional channel, where a few decisions bring large orders. The farm's marketing lead will call on food service directors in about 25 school districts, using a consultative approach: ask about the district's snack requirements, budget and students' preferences before presenting the product, then provide the specification sheet, pricing per serving and samples for a student taste test. Each call will end with a specific next step, such as a taste test date, and every district's status will be tracked in a simple customer database. Combined, these efforts give the farm a promotion mix in which free trial, word of mouth and direct selling carry most of the load, with paid advertising playing a supporting role.

Sales promotion also needs limits. Coupons that run constantly train shoppers to wait for a discount, so the farm will use them only during launch windows and for first purchases, keeping the regular price intact the rest of the year.

References

Berger, J., & Milkman, K. L. (2012). What makes online content viral? Journal of Marketing Research, 49(2), 192-205. https://doi.org/10.1509/jmr.10.0353

Kurtz, D. L., & Boone, L. E. (2022). Contemporary marketing (19th ed.). Cengage Learning.

Sethuraman, R., Tellis, G. J., & Briesch, R. A. (2011). How well does advertising work? Generalizations from meta-analysis of brand advertising elasticities. Journal of Marketing Research, 48(3), 457-471. https://doi.org/10.1509/jmkr.48.3.457