Marketing Education Part 5

Conclusion

What alternative recommendations could have been made? The creative process was completed and the commercials were “in the can.” The only thing left to do in this case was to find the most cost effective budget to reach the goal of a 6.0 market share.  Recommendations for future marketing plans include a recap of weaknesses as laid out in the SWOT analysis. Castle Coffee can not continue using the old-school business approach of separating sales, service, advertising, promotion, PR, and distribution. All of these elements must be coordinated by a CMO. A company with multiple departments, each with its own message, all striving for similar goals, is a company that spreads its ability to drive sales too thinly. Replication and contradiction of services must be eliminated.

There is also a danger in relying on one format of marketing communication to keep the company afloat. Living and dying with advertising ratings is no way to run a company. Take this from a person who is passionate about advertising, “advertising and its messages whether they be product, PR, promotion etc. must be driven by the sales department, not the marketing department.”[1] The process is then handed to marketing for implementation. Also, “a current trend is that promotion revenue growth is outstripping advertising revenue growth.”[2] We feel that that this is significant because people purchase coffee at the point of purchase, not through the TV. There are so many possibilities for Castle Coffee to get things right but any further analysis would just be conjecture.

[1] Cappo, Joe, Future of Advertising The (On Penny’s shelf) P.46

[2] Ibid