Assessment Description

In this assessment task you will take on a role in the advertising department of a company and provide suggestions to management regarding an advertising campaign based on the brief provided.

Scenario

You are the newly appointed Marketing Coordinator at Bickford's Australia, managing brand and advertising activities for Bickford's Premium Juice products.

Bickford's Australia is a family business founded over 175 years ago that today employs more than 140 people. Manufacturing facilities are located in our very own South Australia. Bickford's portfolio of (non-alcoholic) beverages includes cordial, soft drink, juice, syrup, and water products.

Your boss, the Marketing Director, has identified the need to promote Premium Juices in a highly competitive and slowly declining category. She informally briefs you that the company would like to build awareness of Bickford's Premium Juice range and generate interest to attract new customers, particularly young females aged 18 to 32 years. She also wants to limit the campaign to focus on Victoria, where the juice category is declining most rapidly.

Your boss recently attended a marketing conference where some speakers stressed the importance of differentiating brands by building strong USPs and targeting a specific group of highly loyal customers. Your boss feels that Bickford's needs to work these strategies into the planning process and is seeking your advice on whether you also think this is necessary.

The budget for the campaign is $750,000, which includes creative development and media placement. In terms of media, your boss thinks that continuing to invest in outdoor is the best option.

Your boss sees you as knowledgeable about advertising, so she wants both your academic thinking and practical suggestions for Bickford's advertising. She asks you to provide feedback on her ideas and suggest alternative ideas if necessary, so long as they are well justified. These ideas will then be used to improve the brief that is provided to advertising and media agencies.

The following are areas where you might like to make suggestions:

How you think the campaign will work to achieve advertising objectivesDraw on theories of

how advertising works and judge whether the proposed objectives are reasonable.

Creative strategy and tacticsIdentify any creative devices or messages that are important to

include and explain your reasoning.

Selected media (noting that it could be a multi-media campaign)Justify the choice of media and

how those media might be used to maximise effectiveness.

Appropriate target audience specificationsIdentify whom the campaign is talking to and explain

your reasoning.

Effective media placement, including scheduling and timingsDescribe how the campaign will be

deployed/distributed in the market over the time period. 19

How to evaluate campaign effectivenessSpecify methods and measures to identify success (noting limitations of the budget available).

Other factors, e.g. regulation, links to other marketing activities, etc.

Your assignment should represent a professional response to an employer and will be assessed on its realism (e.g., compelling language, clear structure). Your discussion must demonstrate rational thinking, flow well, and be delivered in a succinct manner that is supported with appropriate referencing. Because the document may be shared with different groups (e.g., board members, stakeholders, agencies) please avoid overuse of jargon and define/explain key terms and concepts; that is, don't assume any prior knowledge.

Similar to a traditional report format, we do encourage you to use headings throughout your assignment. Hint: these could be based on the dot points above. However, please do not include an executive summary; we would prefer that you use the words to provide a fuller discussion in the body of the report. It is desirable that you include a short introduction to outline the purpose of the report and any relevant background on the brand and/or category (in brief).

Procedure

Get to know the brand (e.g., brand evolution, past advertising activities) and wider category to appreciate the competitive environment. You are meant to be working for the company/brand, so you should have this knowledge. Noting that this information will primarily inform your ideas: we do not require a detailed brand and market analysis as part of the assignment - the campaign is your focus.

Establish the heading structure of your report and match the topic(s) taught throughout the course to each heading. This will help to identify the most relevant key learnings from the course content to sufficiently address all parts of the assessment task. It will also indicate any appropriate readings that could be used to support your arguments/use as references. Wider reading than the reading list is strongly encouraged.

Advice or Tips

These are some useful resources to start your desk research on the brand and category:

Company website - http://www.bickfords.net

Premium Juice website - http://www.bickfordsjuice.com.au

YouTube channel - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUMOhtJjvwug4EJHaYPFRag

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/bickfords

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/bickfords/

Ethicshttp://aana.com.au/self-regulation/codes/

Marketing news websites such as Mumbrella, Ad News, B&T, etc.

Being Creative

We encourage you to make suggestions about what the advertising campaign should include in terms of creative content, but you do NOT need to design/create the ad yourself, i.e., you do NOT need to draw storyboards, or write body copy/broadcast scripts. That is the job of an advertising agency! Hence any such materials will not be taken in to consideration when marking.