Sample Essay
Another promotional technique which is being used by Philip Morris is that they are providing more ways to their consumers to cash in their Marlboro. This program is known as Marlboro Miles and according to this program consumers can trade in their money in each pack for goods. Live auctions were held by the company in which consumers can bid on items like CD players etc. in the beginning this program was only designed for a particular state but now it has gone nationwide.
Another important reason behind this point of sale advertisement was to create and event in which the brand can get visible to the consumers. In this way a connection was build with the smokers by rewarding them for being loyal to the brand. Apart from this it also helped them to communicate with the consumers and try to identify what they associate with the brand. Also this saved time and money while focusing on only the smokers and avoiding extra resources that would have been put on the nonsmokers.
There have been several critics’ of this type of promotional technique which is used by Philip Morris. Among them is Rob Campagnino who is tobacco analyst at the Prudential Securities. According to Rob Philip Morris should be using all the available venues for promotional activities. He also said that magazine advertising can be an effective technique in influencing consumer choice (Dipasquale, 2002).
Place:
One important reason why Philip Morris is not using the traditional way of marketing which is through print or electronic media is because growing segments of the world looks towards tobacco advertisement very suspiciously. This factor was identified by Philip Morris and they changed their marketing approach while shifting their huge marketing budget into alternative sources of building their brands.
The alternative approach on which Philip Morris worked towards building their brand was diversification of the brand and in other words brand stretching. Similar kind of activity was done previously by RJR Nabisco’s Camel brand when they launched their Camel shoe brand and Dunhill which had their Dunhill luxury goods range. Marlboro followed this trend of brand stretching and started on a new venture which was named Marlboro classic leisure wear which is today the second largest mail order brand in the US (Direct marketing: Marlboro, 1997)
Another similar kind of an activity was done with the collaboration of agency Tequila Option One (TOO). The campaign was named Get the Gear in which TOO collected a database of smokers who came to clubs and pubs. The consumers had to give their name and addresses, after which the incentive was the consumers, can get Marlboro-branded belt, sweatshirts, zippo lighters, rucksack, watches, and denim jackets. For example a consumer can get any of this merchandise in exchange of the foil papers which are present inside the Marlboro packet. Again this campaign was targeted towards creating brand loyalty and giving value to the customer. Besides creating brand loyalty another important objective which was achieved through this campaign was that the company was able to get inside information of the consumers’. Like for example the consumer’s occupation, their preferred brands, number of cigarettes’ smoked per day, etc. all these information proved on to be vital for the company as they were able to design their product line accordingly and also get new business with the help of this information (Direct marketing: Marlboro, 1997).
This is just a sample term paper for marketing purposes. If you want to order term papers, essays, research papers, dissertations, case study, book reports, reviews etc. Please access the order form.
