Relaunch of Cadbury's Wispa Bar. Marketing Plan

2 Marketing Communication Objectives

• Promotional Objectives: Initiate grass root, interactive, and experiential campaigns, over a six-month period, throughout the United States, to increase brand awareness, trial consumption, and long-term end-users. Target the college and college-aged segment, and college beach territories. Track consumer activity through specialized giveaways and promotions one to 1.5 years to determine the number of resulting repeat, long-term users. Aside from branding results, promotional efforts, with a budget capacity of $300,000, aim to secure at least 20,000 new long-term users or $250,000 in traceable sales, within one to 1.5 years.

• Branding Objectives: Maintain and augment a fun, celebratory brand image for Wispa bars. Contract brand ambassadors to foster brand awareness among 250 U.S. colleges, and reach 250,000 U.S. college-aged students with gratuitous Wispa bar samples, over a six-month period.

• Sales and Business Development Objectives: Establish relationships with five new major retail distributors in the United States, and ensure at least 200 additional U.S. locations retailer hold the Wispa bar line. Eliminate "zero Wispa bar inventory" scenarios with retailers; expedite product shipments and maintain accurate retailer inventory counts or estimates. Endeavor to maintain a constant inventory of at least 20 Wispa bars in a retail store.

• Market Testing and Research Objectives: Test five specialized Cadbury vending machines that solely feature Cadbury products and Wispa bars. Test five vending machines that display a hybrid of Cadbury products and other sweets or convenient foods, particularly Kraft Foods brand products. All vending machines should be tested for at least three months in highly trafficked areas. Aim to increase overall consumer convenience and access to Wispa bars. A favorable performance indicator for a vending machine would average at least five sales per day.

Section 4: Marketing Communication Strategy

Marketing communication strategy for the Wispa bar relaunch includes both pull and push positioning marketing. The marketing communication objectives of this plan highly focus on push positioning. For instance, to promote the Wispa bar brand concentrate on direct outreach to the consumer, and convey predetermined messages. Furthermore, contacting retailers to hold the Wispa brand and monitoring retailer inventory constitute push positioning strategy (Marketing Made Simple, 2012).

However, the Wispa marketing communication strategy also entails marketing along social networking channels, and use of pull positioning strategy. Through pull positioning, consumers can interact with other consumers on social or collaborative sites to discuss the Wispa brand. In addition, to exemplify the positive effects of viral marketing as a pull positioning strategy, one can examine Cadbury's recent success on using Twitter, a viral social micro-blogging and networking site.(Mcmillian, 2012) writes "Cadbury and Twitter have put out some interesting numbers on the relaunch of Cadbury's Wispa Gold chocolate bar, which used Twitter and its Promoted Trend product to increase positive mentions by 1,800% and drive a 25% engagement rate for the "Retweet for Sweets" promotion." He adds, "Cadbury ramped-up interest for the [Wispa Gold] relaunch by building a follower base of enthusiastic Twitter followers who would be vociferous about the chocolate bar" (Mcmillian, 2012).

Section 5: Marketing Communications and Tactics

5.1 Media Selection & Timing

Table 5: Media Selection & Timing

Media Selection

Timing

Viral videos on social networking sites

-- infrequent use and reserved only for new product announcements

-- estimate at least announcement delivery at least twice a month

-- daily for two months when consumer produced videos are encouraged for us

Interactive micro- website

-- launched in line with college-aged promotional campaign

5.2 Creative Positioning and Message

Wispa consumers are encouraged to "self-express and indulge," through marketing. Self-expression can translate to voicing one's opinion about Wispa's taste, or how an one decides to demonstrate fun and excitement around the product. Indulge connotes indulgence in chocolate, or engagement in corporate activities supporting the Wispa bra brand. Additionally, the marketing plan creatively has selected the use of self-produced videos to show and generate a fun, celebratory product, through self-expression.

Section 6: Implementation and Costs

Cadbury's select marketing staff consists of more than an adequate number of personnel to help implement various marketing tasks according to this marketing communications plan. However, Cadbury will also need to complete some external contracting of promotional professionals. Per this plan, Cadbury shall contract numerous brand ambassadors to facilitate the large college-centered outreach. Also, under the grass roots plan, marketing costs are minimized and inexpensive in comparison to other forms of marketing. Implementation costs estimates follow in Table 6.

Categorical Expenditure

Cost

Promotional Campaigning

$300,000.00

Vending Machines

$20,000.00

Section 7: Control and Evaluation

Not only does this plan require an initiative for implementation, but it also needs a measures to mitigate risk, evaluate progress, and assess overall initiatives in regards to plan reform. From a financial standpoint, the overall risks of plan implementation are low, and the comprehensive could align with reserved research or testing expenditures. Total costs will be fractional in contrast to corporate annual revenues and profits. However, promotional implementations are not without risks, especially when moving toward creative, interactive marketing involving self-publishing of video content. Hence, Cadbury will continue to consult with a PR firm to locate any potential issues before they even manifest or become problematic. In addition, performance indicators are measurably established in the Marketing Objectives section. Finally, minor adjustments of this marketing plan are expected under significant industry changes, newly emerging competitors, or optimizing marketing approach.

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