Lahore School of Economics

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Promotions Management
June 28, 2013

Promotions Management seminar was held in Lahore School of Economics on June 15, 2013. Mr Usman Bhatty, Country Head Nestle Waters and Mr. Khurram Mehr Malik GM Marketing from Haleeb Foods were the distinguished guests.

Mr. Usman Bhatty discussed the case of Nestle Pure Life with zinc and presented it in a very interesting and attention grabbing manner. The idea behind developing Nestle Pure life with zinc was mother’s instinct to protect. Nestle discussed the idea with its advertising agency which came up with a proposition of adding shield to Nestle pure life’s logo to symbolize protection. The new logo was then sent for approval to Nestle head office in Paris but it got rejected at first. As a result of reinvention the advertising agency came up with a new logo, depicting shield in a slightly smaller size and in a different color.

After launching the product when the sales did not go up, the company came up with the following key findings. There was low awareness and low product identification. It was hard to differentiate the product from other competitors in market and the premiumization was also at a very low level. The idea was again reformed by the advertising agency and market research was done. Mr. Bhatty said that this time the company would be focusing on educating the masses and endorsing their brand on a greater scale.

The speaker also discussed different mediums for advertising the product including Posters, billboards, newspapers, TVCs and so on. He informed the students that cost to viewership ratio was the highest for TV commercials but they were also the most expensive medium used for promotion. Mr. Bhatty at the end also shared a media planning brief with the students which included the details on advertising and media objectives and allocating budget to the advertising agency.

Mr. Khurram Mehr Malik began with describing ATL and BTL promotional activities undertaken by various companies. He defined the whole process of designing promotional activities to the students of the graduating batch. According to the speaker, the initial step should be clearly defining objectives of advertising after considering emotional and functional factors. After this the agency provides the company with the “brand health tracker” that literally explains the health of the brand based on consumer awareness, consumer consideration, purchase, repurchase and loyalty base.

Finally the budget for advertising is determined. The speaker emphasized that point of sales and the path of purchase should be thoroughly analyzed in order to plan successful promotion activities. The honorable guest talked about push strategy, pull strategy and hybrid strategy to decide how to split the budget. The speaker enlightened the students that these days the medium which was going through renovations and remake was the outdoor medium. He said that digital and outdoor activities were the new revolution as far as advertising was concerned. Mr.Mehr also introduced the concept of hologram which is being experimented by a few companies in Pakistan. This concept enables 3-D imaging and interaction with the customers.

The speaker at the end wished best of luck to the graduating class and advised the students to be innovative if they wanted to succeed in an enabling and exciting field of marketing.

Labels: Promotions Management