The Marketing Director for Consumer Products, Essay Example

The Marketing Director for Consumer Products, Joshua Edwards, has suggested multiple paths for marketing efforts to increase the appearance of our products and the sales.  Upon hearing his plans, I do have a few questions for him.  The first question is to find a proposed growth rate in total sums of money.  Edwards mentions numerous cases of growth and advancement that will yield a $2.00 profit on each new product that is sold.  In many cases, the investment required to yield these profits are too high.  My additional questions include, what are the benefits?  What are the total profits for the end of the year as compared to total marketing investments?  What additional unknown costs are required for these advancements i.e. hiring new promotional staff?  The overall goal of my questions is to determine the costs versus benefits analysis that will allow me to make a strong proposal to the CEO of our company.

It is clear that our company will be able to expand upon its current successes.  Our growth of 150% over the last year makes for an exciting scenario to invest in future endeavors for financial and marketing advancements.  We have two phenomenal marketing directors in Consumer Products and Commercial Products that have promoted multiple ideas to help increase the growth of our company despite any budgetary problems we may have been experiencing previously.  It is my full belief that we can achieve strong future growth through applying an integrated marketing communications (IMC) campaign that will help promote our products and services through advertisements and other promotional actions

Overall, our Consumer Products Marketing Director has proposed five alternatives for our company to advance the consumer products sales of this company.  These suggestions include a new television and print advertising campaign with “Good Housekeeping” magazine, engaging in co-operative advertising efforts, creating an on-package advertising coupon for in-store sales, development of a trial size of our product as a co-operative effort with Dupont Premium Carpets, and an aggressive green campaign for environmentally-friendly cost-efficient products.  Each of these efforts will yield a $2.00 profit one each new product that is sold, and they will increase our number of customers by at least 1 million by year’s end.  In total, this effort will maintain a 47% retention rate, which is not where I would like to see it, but it is definitely an improvement for consumer products.

My greatest concern is the cost of these new initiatives as we compare them to our projected benefits.  Further research must be conducted to determine firm estimates of proposed profits.  Unfortunately, each of these five efforts requires more funding than the current projection for benefits except for the proposed co-operative advertising efforts.  The investment is roughly $1 million in total and it is projected to produce profits to cover the entire costs of advertising in addition to providing an increase of 500,000 new customers next year.  These benefits are well worth the financial risk; however, the other suggestions must continue to be analyzed for more specific costs versus benefits information before a precise decision can be made.  However, our financial analyst ensures me that the additional costs will eventually lead our two departments, Consumer and Commercial Products, to even out with one another.  We may even be able to cut costs in advertising efforts for both departments, if we can find an advertising and media buying agency to handle both departments.  Currently, we have both departments hiring independent agencies and our costs slightly higher than they need to be.

I learned a lot from analyzing this case study, especially when it comes to cost-benefit analysis.  Many of the suggestions that Joshua Edwards proposed are very strong and will likely yield very strong benefits, but they do not show long-term projections or specific financial profits compared to the costs that would accrue to perform the advertising efforts.  Growth is important with every company, but it is important to spend wisely and ensure that the overall benefits exceed the total costs.  It was very good to see that the Commercial Products Marketing Director and the Financial Analyst for the company were available to help make suggestions.  Teamwork is important for overall success, and I was able to receive the input of both sides of the company instead of the apparent beneficial suggestions that Edwards was promoting.  This was a very good exercise to learn new marketing techniques, cost-benefit analysis, and using multiple resources for information gathering and product promotion.