IMC Hawks Blog

Tag: Promotions

  • Campus Dining: Fueling Your Education

    Students can be hard to please, but that doesn’t stop schools from trying. Universities cater to their students needs in many ways from providing tutoring services and career building seminars, to fulfilling the most basic and necessary task of feeding their students.

    Campus Dining
    facebook.com/uncwcampusdining

    UNCW Campus Dining has a large customer base that has a high turnover. With each new generation of Seahawks and the constant evolution of food trends in society, Campus Dining must stay updated on their consumer needs. An effective IMC plan begins and ends with research. Each semester Campus Dining sends out surveys asking students and faculty what changes they would like to see. Questions include asking for locations where students and faculty feel dining options are lacking and also what variety of food options they would like to see offered.

    Campus Dining stays relevant through a nearly constant evolution of dining locations. Anyone who has had a meal plan for more than a couple semesters has probably seen Dub’s remodeled multiple times. With redecorations, menu changes, dietary need additions, we don’t have time to get bored before it is new again. Currently Dubs has an emphasis on local and healthy options.

    Campus Dining brand also embraces sustainability efforts. You may have heard about the fish tank in Wag. This aquaponics system (a small ecosystem that raises plants and fish in a mutually beneficial environment) is just one of the most recent updates. This semester the cafeteria provides more fresh fruit and veggies (due to survey requests) and wag sushi on Fridays. These are just some examples of Campus Dining improvements.

    Aside from keeping up with the foods that students request, UNCW goes one step farther to keep their students happy by offering a variety of promotions. This semester, along with the updated meal plans, UNCW has a “VIP” option for students in Non-Traditional housing who purchase meal plans. By getting a meal plan between May 18th and August 24th, eligible students were enrolled in a rewards program that allows them free surprises every month.  Some of these specials include free coffee at Port City Java, a free bagel, a free sandwich at The Landing, a free Chick-fil-a sandwich, and other exciting surprises. This IMC strategy is an incentive for students who are not required to purchase a meal plan to do so, and a way for UNCW Campus Dining to retain more customers.

    All these initiatives show Campus Dining’s commitment to generating consumer enthusiasm and engagement to keep their brand relevant against off-campus dining competition. In addition to their guaranteed return on investment from students living on campus who are required to get meal plans, Campus Dining’s IMC plan draws in extra revenue by encouraging everyone to make them their choice for nutritional value.

    Want to learn more about campus dining? Follow them here:

    Twitter: @UNCWDining

    Instagram: @uncw_dining

    Facebook: www.facebook.com/uncwcampusdining

    -Carey Poniewaz, Aki Suzuki, Alexis Trimnal, Carey Shetterley and June Wilkinson

  • The “Instructional” Campaign

    According to the calendar, Spring has officially sprung. And while we are still experiencing some chilly days, it’s undeniable most of us are ready to shed our winter gear for shorts and sandals. As with all season changes, clothing companies are eager to help you exchange your wardrobe.

    Recently, clothing company Lands’ End launched their new “How to Spring” advertising campaign, showcasing, “How fun and fashionable it is to add bright colors, graphic prints and floral patterns with a few perfect pieces from the women’s spring collection”. It could be argued that every spring campaign that will launch this season will have a similar goal; however, Lands’ End decided to do something a little different this season by adding a sweepstake to its promotional and marketing strategy.

    The sweepstakes works by first connecting with Facebook or entering your email. Once you’ve connected, you are asked to fill out your name, email, and zip code. Filling out this information unlocks the game. The rules are simple, select an outfit and click “spin”. If the outfit that the player selected matches the three tumblers, the player automatically wins a gift card with a balance of $25, $50, or $1,000. That’s it! Simple right? Not to mention, everyone is eligible to enter every day for the grand prize of $1,000 shopping spree. You can view the official rules of the sweepstakes here.

    While we like to think that games, contests, and sweepstakes’ only motives are for fun and entertainment, they are actually a smart marketing move – encouraging consumption of the product by creating consumer involvement. This involvement builds fan base, engages the audience, and enables consumers to do your marketing for you. Not to mention, user generated content often provides quality, innovative, and creative ads for free.

    In addition to promoting brand visibility, contest and sweepstakes are strategies that provide valuable quantifiable benefits for companies as well. They are cost effective, they help build search engine optimization (SEO), and increasingly important, they provide a rich source of consumer data for the company about existing and potential customers – emails, product preferences, location, etc.

    With every click essentially producing some sort of user information, online contests are growing in use on websites and especially on social media. The most popular initiatives include: photo and video contests, tagging contest, hashtag giveaways, and website raffles.

    Top Rank, an online marketing blog, named some of their picks of the best contest use on social media.
    Facebook: When Frito-Lay began their campaign for searching for new potato chips flavors, the company bypassed focus groups and turned to Facebook to connect directly with the customers who would be eating them.
    Pinterest: AMC Theaters have an entire Pinterest board, AMC Giveaways, where all users have to do is follow the board to stay up to date on the latest AMC contests. The basics are simple, when users see a prize they want, clicking on the image takes them to a landing page that collects their information.
    Twitter: In a “retweet to win” twitter contest, Doritos tweeted a message that simply asked followers to retweet for a chance to win. The tweet was retweeted over 500 times in a day with winners snagging products that ranged from Doritos to widescreen tvs.
    Instagram: As many clothing company are starting to do, Vera Bradely’s instagram contest asked users to post pictures of them and their favorite Vera Bradley bag using the hashtag #VBStyleShare. At the end of the contest, winners received a wrislet, followers of the hashtag could receive fashion inspiration, and staff could see how consumers were pairing their products.

    The benefits contests can provide seem like an almost no-brainer for companies to increase brand awareness while also gaining consumer data, but as they start to trend they are also subject to overuse. To combat becoming another form of clutter, companies will have to make sure their contest are increasingly interactive, engaging, creative, or lucrative.

    Have you ever participated in an online contest? Did you win? Did it make you feel more favorable towards the brand? Scrolling through your social media feeds have you seen brands using contests similar to the ones above? What are some of the best/most creative ones you have seen?

    – Elizabeth Harrington, Caroline Robinson, Savannah Valade

  • “Here comes the… Promotions”

    Tis the season to…get married! As summer is rapidly approaching it seems that more and more couples are tying the knot, and Wilmington, North Carolina is a state ‘hotspot’ for weddings. What does this mean for the vendors? That they could potentially be overflowing with customers if they play their cards right, and by this I mean, promoting their brand. Cape Fear Wedding Show throws an expo every year around October to attract the blushing brides and their beaus to meet with vendors who will potentially make their big day a memorable one. However, we all know that weddings are not cheap, and if you didn’t…. well they aren’t. Therefore, the vendors are competing with each other for business, basically, by who has the most appealing promotion. They have to use a lot of pathos. The event itself is practically one huge promotion, even for the Wilmington area as a prospective location to have a wedding.

    Image

    The Cape Fear Wedding Expo invites photographers, videographers, caterers, cake bakers, event planners, party rentals, DJ’s, bands, etc. all lined up in the Wilmington Convention Center with their ‘pick-me’ face on. Cape Fear Weddings promotes their event opportunity to all vendors, getting paid for the spot they reserve, and the vendors get many potential customers. It is a win- win. They are encouraged “make the best of this great sales opportunity” by promoting the expo to vendors promising them “on-air promotions” for their company. It is huge, and it only happens once a year, making that much more of a big deal. Here is a comical video that local videographers, Life Stage Films, used as a promotion for their company against competitors:

    Essentially brides, and whoever accommodates them, will pay a small fee (like $5) to get in and then it is game time. Let the special offers, discounts and incentives begin!  Lets take a look at what Seth Godin has to say about promotions. In his blog entitled “Promoting the Promotion” he states, “Promotions work when they’re seen as generous or unique or tied into our needs and dreams.” Every bride has their dream wedding, and they have been dreaming it for their entire lives so according to Seth these promotions could potentially be quite effective. Godin goes on to say, “They also work as brand builders when they’re so ubiquitous we associate the brand with the event itself.” This is the incentive for the expo. The event itself is associated as a haven for dreams to come true.

    The goal here is to make everyone feel like one big family, like they are receiving help from experts (help with a price tag of course) to make one of the most memorable days of their life just that… memorable. This ties in to what we know as CMM where meaning is being cultivated within a community. The Cape Fear Wedding Expo serves as a model for a community gathering of all the brides in the area to collaborate. However, by the promotional advertising utilized, brides truly feel as though these vendors want to help make their special day unforgettable by offering even a small discount. So, come October let the promotions begin!

    –Katelyn Alston and Laura Tippett