Maintaining Awareness with Advertising


Publicity was effective in achieving initial awareness of Zicam. The company realized, however, that it would have to conduct an advertising campaign in order to maintain this awareness. The decision was made to use primarily television advertising for the cold remedies because of the ability to make visual demonstrations through this medium. The media plan included one thirty-second television commercial run on morning network stations and two sixty-second direct-response commercials on cable television. A print campaign was used for the allergy and decongestant products.

The media strategy for the cold remedies was to start advertising in mid-October and finish in mid-March. This would result in these products being advertised only during the cold season . The print campaign for the allergy products and congestion relief products started in April. The two sixty-second television commercials would include all of the copy from the thirty-second commercial plus an additional thirty seconds on swabs in one case and on Extreme Congestion Relief in the other.

Direct-response television advertising was used for the sixty-second commercials on cable television in order to get a rate break. The cable television industry is set up in such a way that the price of a sixty-second directresponse commercial is approximately the same as that of a thirty-second non-direct-response commercial. Direct response was used, therefore, because the additional media exposure for swabs and Extreme Congestion Relief could be obtained at no significant additional cost. In the direct-response commercials, consumers were given the Zicam.com web address and were told that they could order Zicam over the Internet from either drugstore.com or walgreens.com.

The Zicam advertising campaign was extremely successful. The company-received weekly sales data from Wal-Mart, and it could actually tell on what day the advertising was running because sales increased substantially on that day. In other words, the dollars spent on advertising actually paid off over the course of a season. Matrixx management felt that it was getting a real return on its investment in advertising, and it tried to put every dollar it could into media expenditures.

Future advertising plans for the Zicam brand include trade advertising for the first time. Matrixx management plans to go to trade shows and advertise in trade journals. It is also going to try to get some articles published in trade journals. The goal of this trade marketing effort is to firm up trade support and to enable pharmacists to discuss Zicam intelligently with their customers. If people ask their pharmacist about Zicam, the company wants the pharmacist to know enough about the product to explain it to them.




Powerhouse Marketing Plans(c) 14 Outstanding Real-Life Plans and What You Can Learn from Them to Supercharge [... ]aigns
Powerhouse Marketing Plans(c) 14 Outstanding Real-Life Plans and What You Can Learn from Them to Supercharge [... ]aigns
ISBN: 735621675
EAN: N/A
Year: 2006
Pages: 172

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