AMB202 Integrated Marketing Communication Assessment Item 3: Final Report Sem 1 2014Student name: Andrew Sckaf Benjamin Webster Christopher Thomas Linda Nguyen

Student number:

N8332177 N7574142 N5650836 N8090874

Tutorial time: 5:00 - 6:00pm Monday Tutor: Elaine Brady Word Count: 1633 words

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BUMS ON SEATS!

A United

Table of Contents

Table of Contents 3

1.0 Problem and Client Objectives 4

2.0 Target Market 5

3.0 Situational Analysis 5

3.1 Internal analysis 5

3.1.1 Strengths 5

3.1.2 Weaknesses 5

3.2 External Analysis 6

3.2.1 Opportunities 6

3.2.2 Threats 6

4.0 Solution/Recommendations 7

4.1 Tangible Campaigns 7

4.1.1 Branded Merchandise 7

4.1.2 Guerrilla Marketing 7

4.1.3 University Groups 8

4.1.4 Screening Nights 8

4.2 Integrated Online Tactics 9

4.2.1 Unified Platform Approach 9

4.2.1 Metrics and Ease of Use 9

6.0 Timeline and budget 10

6.1 Measurement and Evaluation approaches 11

7.0 Reference List 12

8.0 Appendices 14

Appendix A 14

Appendix B 15

Appendix C 15

Appendix D 16

Appendix E 16

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1.0 Problem and Client Objectives

As the United Brisbane Roller Derby (UBRD) was established in November 2013, the

non-for profit organisation is in its infancy stage and has identified a number of

objectives to achieve:

• To increase awareness of the UBRD and its events. The organisation has limited

resources and is seeking the most efficient strategy to build public awareness.

This is a prerequisite to the UBRD’s following objective;

• To increase attendance at bouts. The UBRD relies on funding and donations to

sustain its activities. Therefore, compelling the market to attend the organisation’s

events is imperative to its sustainability.

• To create positive consumer perceptions. The UBRD has identified that a key

barrier to consumer interest in the sport is the perception that it is violent and

reckless. There also exists a discrepancy between the Roller Derby skaters, who

view themselves as athletes competing in a sport, and a general public perception

that roller derby does not possess these attributes.

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2.0 Target Market

For the purpose of this document, the most attractive target market will be focused on

for the next twelve-month period, after which, campaigns can be broadened to include

other market segments. Jobber (2010) states that the identification of these individuals

with similar characteristics have significant implications for determining a marketing

strategy. So it’s imperative to focus at the start.

As the UBRD has had limited exposure to the market it does not possess conclusive

information on its relevant target market. Therefore this information is anecdotal and

so research indicates that its initial target market is 18-35 year old consumers (WFDTA,

2010). The following strategies should be targeted towards these markets first as they

will form a foundation to extend overtime and capture a broader and more inclusive

market in the long-term.

3.0 Situational Analysis 3.1 Internal analysis

3.1.1 Strengths

The UBRD has a number of strengths such as the rich history and culture that

surrounds the sport. As a niche sport, the organisation has attracted and maintained a

loyal following of players and spectators, all of which embrace the roller derby culture

as a form of lifestyle and identity.

3.1.2 Weaknesses

As a non-for profit organisation during its infancy stage, the UBRD faces restrictions in

the financial and resources sector. The organisation’s budget is currently limited to

$2000, which affects its ability to utilise high cost campaigns, and host bouts.

Additionally, the UBRD do not own any locational resources, and currently rely on hiring

venues such as the Griffith University campus. Furthermore, there is a dearth of market

research data for the UBRD as the organisation has only operated since November

2013.

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3.2 External Analysis

3.2.1 Opportunities

The external environment presents numerous opportunities in the market that will help

UBRD formulate their promotion strategy. For instance, UBRD relies on funding and

donations to sustain their activities - allowing collaboration opportunities with social

and charity organisations. Considering the uniqueness of the sport, collaborative

opportunities can also exist with other, like-minded, niche market organisations. These

could be in the form of music (local bands, and independent radio) and art (graffiti and

tattoo culture).

UBRD also has an attractive market of young adults (see 3.0 Target Market). 81% of this

consumer group use social media on a daily basis (Dawn, Valentine & Powers, 2013).

Therefore, creating a sophisticated online presence- including integration between

social media and an official website, are essential strategies for engaging this segment.

Word of Mouth (WOM) marketing and buzz marketing are also two important and

financially viable strategies for engaging this consumer group (Dawn, Valentine &

Powers, 2013). According to the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association (WFTDA, 2014),

WOM is responsible for attracting the majority of fans, either by having a friend or

family member involved (34%) or hearing about it through a friend (23%).

3.2.2 Threats

The UBRD has identified that a key barrier to consumer interest in the sport is the

perception that it is violent and reckless. There also exists a disconnect between the

Roller Derby skaters, who view themselves as athletes competing in a sport, and a

general public perception that roller derby does not possess these attributes.

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4.0 Solution/Recommendations

The following strategies have been developed for the UBRD to achieve its

aforementioned objectives.

4.1 Tangible Campaigns

An integrated mix of interactive marketing communication tactics should be utilised by

UBRD to increase awareness and promote a consistent brand image.

4.1.1 Branded Merchandise Selling inexpensive merchandise at bouts is an effective tactic for UBRD

to not only make money but more importantly spread the brand

throughout Brisbane. A revision of the UBRD logo is created that

embraces the sport’s heritage, adds friendlier humanist fonts, and

builds on the positive existing branding (Appendix D, E)

This will form a strong foundation for the brand’s identity and

heightened brand equity. Designs can be found in Appendix A.

4.1.2 Guerrilla Marketing It is recommended that the UBRD Skate through the CBD handing out

flyers and interacting with the public. The same campaign should be

executed on the Goodwill Bridge to target university students to attend

night time bouts. According to Levinson (2007), the key advantages of

guerrilla marketing are that it attracts attention (surprise effect), can

target mass numbers of consumers at once (diffusion effect) and is

relatively inexpensive to execute (low-cost effect).

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4.1.3 University Groups The UBRD should consider partnering with QUT, UQ, and Griffith

sporting groups to build another touch point (Chitty et al., 2012).

Aligning with university sporting groups will also create positive

consumer perceptions that roller derby is an exciting, inclusive, and

athletic sport (Roy & Berger, 2007).

4.1.4 Screening Nights To further educate and promote the culture of the sport, UBRD should

consider hosting “screening” nights at various universities. Relevant

audiovisuals such as the Australian Documentary, “This is Roller Derby”

and film, “Whip It” can be shown. We will also provide viewers with “take

home packs” comprising of brochures, vouchers and merchandise.

The three tactics above establish the say and do functions of the consistency triangle

(Chitty, et al., 2012); first by generating awareness and excitement about the brand

through public guerrilla marketing and university activities and secondly attracting

consumers to bouts and providing consistent value and entertainment. The integrated,

online tactics below support these functions by confirming culture and benefits of the

UBRD brand.

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4.2 Integrated Online Tactics

4.2.1 Unified Platform Approach

Online and social media elements are deeply integrated into this

marketing strategy, with a focus on cost effective implementations that

are highly impactful. The key to this is the adoption of responsive

design in an all-new website. This allows UBRD to employ a write-once,

deploy-anywhere format for web content that empowers our client to

create their own, diverse web media rapidly and effectively — across

mobile, tablet and personal computing devices (Crawford, 2013).

(Appendix B).

This approach enables the use of the same user-created content across

multiple potential touch points, dramatically increasing strategic efficacy

(Barlow & Thomas 2010) (Appendix C). The website integrates a first

party e-commerce solution to manage UBRD merchandising as part of a

single web platform.

4.2.1 Metrics and Ease of Use

Ease of use is a key factor in the creation of social media, and a

constant-content-creation strategy encourages repeat viewing, social

favouriting, liking and following (Everett, 2010). This was combined with

a social strategy that pushed for a unified brand across all social media,

with a clear set of guidelines and parameters for how content would be

published — consistent with established values and goals (Mortleman,

2011). Additionally, the plan adopts a strong focus on metrics to drive

further growth, using the web platform’s built-in analytics engine to

follow traffic and social activity to better understand usage patterns and

user interest (Russell, 2009). These social resources in turn would feed

back to — and be heavily integrated with — our web strategy, driving

targeted community outreach, enhanced recruitment and fan

engagement through a single web portal.

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6.0 Timeline and budget

As discussed is section 4.2, a continuous social media presence in conjunction with the

brand new website will be the backbone of this ongoing campaign. Posts to social

media need to be succinct, intriguing, and must tell the UBRD story driving the message

of attendance at bouts. Below is a brief summary of how often to be utilising social

media. (Fig.1)

Focusing on low/no-cost measures allows the $2000 budget to be spread over a period

of 3 months. This short-term campaign will consist of printing flyers for guerrilla

campaigns, and hosting screening events. Once the revenue from merchandise and

ticket sales becomes consistent, the budget can be revised. A two-week social campaign

promotes the launch of the new UBRD website leading up to the site’s availability (Fig.2)

Network

Frequency Daily Multiple times daily 3 posts per week Fortnightly

Goal A new photo every day to keep fans involved and aware.

Engaging in banter with other teams, sponsors and fans.

Tell the UBRD story, one post per week should be about incoming bouts to drive attendance.

Videos communicate the UBRD story, showcase the team and upcoming and past events.

June July August

Instagram

Twitter

Facebook

Youtube

Website Deployed

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Fig. 1 Summary of social utilisation.

Fig. 2 Visualisation of campaign timeline

6.1 Measurement and Evaluation approaches

There are some powerful tools available to UBRD to measure the success of this

integrated campaign. These include:

• Ticket sales

• Facebook and Google analytics

• Webpage hits and visit duration

With a comprehensive view of these measures, UBRD can measure their growth easily.

It is recommended to evaluate some measures such as social media growth on a week-

by-week basis. Other measures like ticket sales will only be able to be reviewed after

several bouts.

Campaign Element Cost Notes

Website Hosting $48 $16 billed monthly, services provided by Squarespace. Includes access to e-Commerce and blogging platforms.

Design Services $200 Professional modification of the Squarespace platform to UBRD specification, establishment of accounts and setup.

Branding Services $800 Production of revised, friendlier UBRD logo, video and website signage materials.

Print Services $100 Based on a run of 250 business card size flyers, and 500 full colour A4 brochures.

Social Media $0 Campaign produced from volunteer social media curators working for UBRD.

Flash Mobs $0 Volunteers sourced from URBD.

Digital Storefront $0 Clothing line and merchandise produced as print-on-demand, removing tooling costs and potential overstock issues and risk.

Total $1148 Excluding consulting and agency fees.

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Fig. 3 Campaign budget

7.0 Reference List

Barlow, M. Thomas, D. (2010). The executive's guide to enterprise social media strategy :

how social networks are radically transforming your business, pp.75-89, http://

site.ebrary.com.ezp01.library.qut.edu.au/lib/qut/docDetail.action?docID=10437636

(Retrieved 25/05/2014)

Chitty, W., Barker, N., Valos, M., & Shimp, T.A. (2012). Integrated Marketing

Communications (3rd ed.). Melbourne, VIC: Cengage Learning.

Crawford, M (2013) How responsive design adds value to your social media marketing

http://www.socialstrategies.net.au/how-responsive-design-adds-value-to-your-social-

media-marketing/ (Retrieved 14/05/2014)

Dawn, B., Valentine, T. L., & Powers. (2013). Generation Y values and lifestyle segments,

Journal of Consumer Marketing, 30(7), 597-606.

Everett, C. (2010) Social media: opportunity or risk?, Computer Fraud & Security, Volume

2010, Issue 6, June 2010, Pages 8-10, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1361-3723(10)70066-X

(Retrieved 14/05/2014)

Jobber, D. (2010) Principles and Practice of Marketing, 6th Edition. McGraw- Hill

Levinson, J. C. (2007) Guerilla Marketing: easy and expensive strategies for making big

profits from your business (4th ed.). New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Company.

Mortleman, J. (2011) Social media strategies, Computer Fraud & Security, Volume 2011,

Issue 5, May 2011, Pages 8-11, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1361-3723(11)70050-1

(Retrieved 26/05/2014)

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Percy, L. (2008). Strategic Integrated Marketing Communication: Theory and Practice.

Oxford, UK: Elsevier Inc.

Roy, A., & Berger, P. D. (2007). Leveraging affiliations by marketing to and through

associations. Industrial Marketing Management, 36(3), 270-284.

http://dx.doi.org.ezp01.library.qut.edu.au/10.1016/j.indmarman.200 5.09.00

(Retrieved 26/05/2014)

Russell, M.G. (2009) A call for creativity in new metrics for liquid media

Journal of Interactive Advertising, 9 (2) (2009), pp. 43–60

http://www.tandfonline.com.ezp01.library.qut.edu.au/doi/abs/

10.1080/15252019.2009.10722155 (Retrieved 26/05/2014)

Women’s Flat Track Derby Association. (2012). Roller Derby Demographics:

Results from the first-ever comprehensive Data collection on skaters and fans.

Retrieved from http://wftda.com/files/roller-derby-demographics-2012.pdf (Retrieved

13/05/2014)

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8.0 Appendices

Appendix A

Exemplar branded United Brisbane Roller Derby merchandise

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Appendix B

The completed, responsively-designed United Brisbane Roller Derby website. The same

content — with no user modification required — is displayed on a smartphone, a tablet

and a desktop computer.

Appendix C

Screenshots of the same website, taken on three different devices, illustrating content

scaling and a write-once, deploy-anywhere design philosophy to optimise social media

output.

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Appendix D

A new, revised version of the United Brisbane Roller Derby logo is created,

incorporating vintage-style, humanist signage fonts, enhanced art and a cleaner,

friendlier design. Here, it’s shown to the right of the previous logo.

Appendix E

The new logo is designed for multimedia deployment. Here is a 3D-rendered variant of

the shield, as presented in our pitch video. A digital model of the shield was created,

and is costed for in the budget under Branding Services. This allows us to diversify the

brand’s digital reach.

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