Timberland Welcome to My World Marketing Campaign, Essay Example

Introduction

Timberland LLC is a company that engages in the design, development, marketing and distribution of apparel, accessory products, and primarily footwear. The company has existed for the past 42 years and is renowned for its authenticity and heritage embodied in the Timberland brand. The company has considerable market strength in North America and has seen a resurgence in its market share since 2013 (Timberland, 2015). This has been buoyed by a rejuvenation of the brand with new and stylish products that appeal to the younger and modern generation. The company currently designs and markets basic, premium and sports footwear that range from boat shoes, casual footwear and hand sewn oxfords. While the company has recently become known for its accessory products, its true origin was stems from a history of high quality, waterproof and performance footwear. This has enabled the company curve out a name in American History as the most reliable long-lasting footwear for outdoor use. 

Target Market

According to preliminary analysis of the market, the Timberland brand is predominantly popular amongst the younger demographic. Most of the previous marketing campaigns by Timberland have concentrated on targeting the millennial population, predominantly aged between 25 to 30 years old. This marketing camping seeks to target middle-aged individuals between the ages of 35 and 54, according to the US Census List. This section of the market is particularly non-responsive to the commodity and an increase in popularity within this age group would be considerably beneficial to the company financially. The middle-aged group comprises of the most number of employed and accomplished individuals. This segment of the market has a much higher purchasing power but are generally cautious spenders compared to the millennial age segment. The target market can be defined below

Demographic

• ? Occupation: The product mainly targets both employed and unemployed middle-aged men
• ? Marital Status: the product also targets both married and single men
• ? Education: the product has been found to be more appealing to the educated man
• ? Age: the product targets middle aged individuals mainly between 35 and 45
• ? Gender: the product has been found to target men mainly

3BL Marketing Goals

The Timberland brand is conscious about its role and responsibility within the economy and society as well. It is for this reason that all its marketing campaigns adhere to the triple bottom line requirements of sustainable organizations. This marketing campaign is founded on three specific goals that addresses the economic, social and environmental aspects of business operations. 

1. 1. The campaign aims to increase sales of Timberland’s Men’s Revenia shoe line by 50%. The Revenia shoe line is a relatively new design and model that could gain considerable appeal within the desired target market.
2. 2. The campaign aims to increase market awareness of Timberland’s efforts to use recycled material in footwear. Timberland only employs best practices in its productions processes. These practices ensure that the company uses recycled material as opposed to renewable and organic materials. Timberland currently uses over 90% of its production raw materials from recycled material (Timberland, 2015). This takes care of the company’s obligation to the environment.
3. 3. The campaign aims to acknowledge and increase the synthpop music culture and genre that is synonymous with individuals between the ages of 35 and 54. This is done through affiliation with artistes within the genre. The brand seeks to identify with this genre to attract individuals who are avid fans. This gives back to the society by providing it clientele with an avenue for music, being affiliated with their favourite musicians or artistes.

Section II: The 3P’s

Product

The marketing campaign will seek to promote the Men’s Revenia Suede shoe line. This men’s shoe line distinctively stands out in the men’s shoe line with its distinctive from among the most recent design in the men’s category. All the shoes in this line are suede shoes. Within this line, there are two sub categories, (1) the Chukka Shoes, and (2) and the Oxford Shoes. 

The Revenia shoe line is from the Erath Keepers boot design. This unique design employs a thermo-plastic rubber that is injected into the midsection of the sole. The feet are kept comfortable and dry with an additional water-based plastic-free silicon dioxide water repellent. The sole is synthetic while the laces are 100% organic cotton. The pet canvas lining of the shoe is 100% recycled (Timberland, 2015). The shoe is designed from manually cut leather, a process that ensures the high quality, definition and personal touch that sets Timberland footwear apart. The most detailed aspect of the shoes is the extremely detailed hand-stitching. This meticulous attention to detail is what defines Timberland’s enduring appeal. 

Depeche Mode

This is a British Synthpop band that was formed in 1980. The band is currently made up of three members; Dave Gahan, Martin Gore and Andy Fletcher. The band has a rich style of music that transcends the 80s through to the present day. The band’s genre is however described as new wave, synthpop, alternative rock, dance rock, electronic rock. However the band is synonymous with experimenting with a number of genres that give their music a rich mature sound. Some of the experimental genres include soul, techno and pop. 

The band’s music style has had considerable influence on the generation of listeners that have followed the band since its inception. The band’s unique lyrical themes capture issues such as politics, religion, society and sex. This makes their music resound to their most active audience, the middle-age demographic. Some of their greatest albums than span the ages include Construction Time Again (1983)

The band is currently preparing for their North America the Delta Machine World Tour. This provides an opportunity for a collaborative marketing campaign. Apart from marketing Timberland Revenia Suede Shoe line, the campaign will also involve Depeche Mode. The band will market the Timberland Revenia Suede shoe line in conjunction with the Delta Machine Tour. They would get to wear Revenia Suede shoes in their concerts.

Table 1: The Delta Machine World Tour – North American Tour Dates

Pricing

The Men’s Revenia Suede Shoe Line has a varying price range to cater for customers of different levels of purchasing power. The Revenia Chukka line retails at $110.00 online while the Revenia Oxford retails at $100.00 (Timberland, 2015). The campaign will seek to increase sales by offering competitive prices to potential clientele. The new price for the campaign will see the Revenia Chukka line cost $90 while the Revenia Oxford line will cost $80

Depeche Mode concert tickets usually have a varying price range owing to a number of reasons. The regular tickets usually range between $45 and $100 depending three factors;

• ? The different ticket providers offering different competitive prices.
• ? The location of the concert seats; seats closer to the stage usually have a better and view and fetch a higher price.
• ? The time of purchase relative to the concert date. The earlier a ticket is purchased the lower its price. Tickets purchased closer to the actual concert date are usually more costly.

Depeche Mode concerts also have the provision of VIP tickets. These fetch a much higher price, usually between $120 and $150. The prices of VIP tickets are also subject to the three factors mentioned above. 

The campaign seeks to attract fans to Depeche Mode concerts while at the same time expose them to Timberland products. The campaign will seek to institute a standard price for regular as well as VIP Tickets. Regular tickets will cost between $50 and $55 while the VIP tickets will cost between $130 and $140 (Depeche Mode, 2015). While the campaign will offer Timberland merchandise at a much cheaper price than the retail standard, the ticket prices will generally remain within the regular range. This is critical in ensuring the ticket price does not lockout any potential clients.

Place

The Timberland brand as permeated the retail, wholesale and online distribution channels to the market. The company currently employs a rich sales system that incorporates physical retail locations, online e-commerce sites as well as through directly owned outdoor retailers. The company currently enjoys a considerable strong market presence which makes its distribution channels considerably strong, reliable and somewhat flexible, relative to the company’s financial position and prevailing market conditions. 

Depeche Mode on the other hand employ a very robust distribution channel that is predominantly dependent on online platforms. Most of Depeche Mode’s tickets are currently purchased online. However, the band also employs indirect channels such as ticket sales through major retailers, such as retail chain stores, music stores and ticketing agencies. 

The campaign seeks to employ both direct channels and indirect channels. The direct channels mainly involve Timberland selling directly to its clients through its own online platform through its official website. This website is the main place where Timberland’s clients can remotely view and purchase Timberland merchandise, in this case the Revenia Suede shoe line. The company currently uses its own website (www.timberland.com/shop/mens-shoes) to offer a variety of men’s shoes to its customers. During the campaign, individuals will also be able to purchase or win Depeche Mode Concert tickets as a result of an online purchase from Timberland’s official website

The campaign will also employ the indirect channels, taking advantage of the partnerships Timberland and Depeche Mode has developed with retailers to increase its products exposure to the market. This includes retail stores and shops such as Bass Pro Shops and Cabela’s. These retail stores will sale Depeche Mode Tour tickets while also providing the clients the opportunity of purchasing any of the shoes from the Timberland Revenia Suede shoe line at a 35% discount.

The distribution channels to be employed by the campaign will remain the same as ones initially used before. However, these distribution channels will blend Depeche Mode Tickets and Timberland Revenia Suede Shoes sales to provide a mutually beneficial end result for both the band’s tours and Timberland.

Section III: Promotional Plan Using AIDA+

The promotional Plan for the Revenia campaign will employ the AIDA+ model. This model is critical in highlighting the cognitive stages that any client goes through when purchasing Timberland footwear and Depeche Mode concert tickets. As defined by the acronym, AIDA involves five stages that will define the promotional plan.

Awareness

As the initial stage of the promotional plan, this will mainly entail making buyers conscious of the Revenia Suede shoe line and the Depeche Mode Delta Machine World Tour North American Leg. To capture the attention of the audience, the campaign at this this point will employ an outreach strategy that will mainly involve 4 outreach channels. They include;

1. 1. Photo and Video Sharing: Primary outreach will be achieved through channels that distribute and share videos and still images of Depeche Mode members wearing the different colors of the Timberland Revenia Timberland Revenia Suede Chukka shoes and the Timberland Revenia Suede Oxford shoes. The channel that shall be employed will be YouTube.
2. 2. Publishers: General media sites and Niche sites will be employed in generating awareness as well. They handle most of the content generation within their respective online media sites. These media publishers will complement the Social Networking channel. Google + is the most widely used publisher channel.
3. 3. Social Networks: The social networks will formulate a considerable portion of the awareness phase. Twitter and Facebook are currently the most popular social networks and would generate considerable exposure to the campaign and its products. Facebook and Twitter are the most ideal channels.
4. 4. Own Brand Properties: The campaign will also employ Timberland’s own brand property to channel awareness for the campaign. These will include banner, poster and digital ads in Timberland retail stores as well as the company’s official website.

This phase of the awareness program will adopt the title, “Welcome to My World”, one of Depeche Mode’s songs in their tour album Delta Machine. This message will feature still images and videos of Gahan, Gore and Fletcher wearing Timberland merchandise, with pronounce attention towards the Timberland Revenia suede shoes. The following still image could be used as a desired model for some of the still image ads.

Interest

After raising awareness about the campaign, the interest of potential Timberland and/or Depeche Mode customers will have to be attained by developing a message and theme for the video and still images ad. This theme will be strongly associated with Depeche Mode’s history. The band has had a rich history that is generally accepted within the United States. During this phase of the campaign, the title theme “Try Walking in My Shoes” will be adopted. This will feature a short video clip about the band’s history, their struggles, failures, successes and achievements. This would strongly appeal to sentiment that most fans hold as regards their music and lifestyle.

Most of Depeche Mode’s fans have been listening to their past 12 albums with an avid following. Fans readily identify with most of Depeche Mode’s content for its lyrical richness and unique musical style. Associating the Timberland Revenia Suede shoe line with this content would go a long way in generating the interests of the target market.

Desire

While the first two phase will mainly feature Depeche Mode, this phase will accentuate the features of Timberland Revenia, Suede shoe line. This phase will feature a complete overview of the design and make of the Timberland Revenia Suede shoe line including the materials used, the process of design and development and the hand-crafted final touches and finishing that give the product its authentic and age-old look.

Action

This is the final phase of the promotional plan. This will essentially inspire potential customers to action, i.e. purchasing the Timberland Revenia Suede shoes and/or Depeche Mode’s Delta Machine tour tickets. This will indicate to the customers their last chance to pre-order the Timberland Revenia Suede shoes while their still on offer at an affordable price, a deal that includes two tickets to one of the concerts in Depeche Mode’s Delta Machine Tour. The desired still image design could be borrowed from Tesco’s online Skyfall 007 ad depicted below.

Timberland.com Website

An analysis of the traffic the company’s website generates depicts that 710,000 visitors to the website with, 304,292 unique visitors in the month of June (SimilarWeb.com, 2015; SIteAnlytics.Compete.com, 2015). The table below depicts an analysis of the traffic over the past six months. The six-month average will be employed to give a general estimate for the month of August.

(SIteAnlytics.Compete.com, 2015; SimilarWeb.com, 2015)

Assuming the 1% purchase rate rule, the campaign expects that only 1% of the site’s visitors will purchase Timberland Revenia Suede Shoes on offer with Depeche Mode’s Delta Machine Tour tickets. This would generate sales of 13,350 units from the company’s online platform.

This level of exposure will cost Timberland.com $1,200

YouTube

In September 2014, YouTube was found to have a 14% conversion rate on all adverts (AoL Platforms, 2014). This means 14% of the viewers of our third party link would actually click and view the link. This would increase the number of visitors on Timberland.com through back clicks. Assuming that only 1% of those who click on the link purchase the products, we can determine the number of exposures required. 

Facebook

This channel has a 10% conversion rate. Owing to the high number of Facebook users, this channel is expected to yield sales of up to 12,000 unit sales (AoL Platforms, 2014). Assuming that only 1% of back clicks from Facebook will result in Timberland and Depeche Mode unit sales, we can obtained the required number of exposures.

Twitter

Twitter currently has a conversion rate of 1% (AoL Platforms, 2014). However, this is an essential tool owing to the exposures that the product can gain from this platform. With millions of users, Twitter offers invaluable exposure to the campaign and the products. Owing to the number of Twitter users, the desired number of unit sales required from this platform is set at 5,000 unit sales. Assuming that only 1% of back clicks from Twitter will result in Timberland and Depeche Mode unit sales, we can obtained the required number of exposures.

Google +

This channel has a 7% conversion rate, making it quite effective relative to the number of users. Google + is expected to generate 3,000 unit sales (AoL Platforms, 2014). Assuming that only 1% of back clicks from Twitter will result in Timberland and Depeche Mode unit sales, we can obtained the required number of exposures.

Billboard Advertising

Billboard advertising will essentially encompass a considerable portion of the ad campaign. Digital bulletins, posters, rotary bulletins, and junior posters will be used. The costs of using the billboards has been derived from an analysis by LAMAR, one of the largest advertising companies in the United States. While the cost varies from one state to another, the value depicted below are industry averages according to LAMAR. 

References

AoL Platforms. (2014). Myth-Busting Social Media Advertising. AoL Platforms. Retrieved July 26, 2015, from AoLPlatforms.com: file:///C:/Users/Morgul%20Empire/Downloads/AOL_Convertro_SocialMedia_Report.pdf

Depeche Mode. (2015, July 24). Delta Machine Tour – North America. Retrieved July 26, 2015, from DepecheMode.com: http://www.depechemode.com/category/tour-2/

Evans, D. (2012). Social media marketing : an hour a day (2nd ed.). Indianapolis: Wiley.

LAMAR. (2014). National Rate Card. New York: LAMAR. Retrieved July 26, 2015, from http://apps.lamar.com/demographicrates/content/salesdocuments/nationalratecard.xlsx

Lamere, P. (2014, February 13). Exploring Age-Specific Preferences in Listening. Retrieved July 25, 2015, from MusicMachinery.com: http://musicmachinery.com/2014/02/13/age-specific-listening/

McCrea, A. (2013, February 26). Online branding: a digital-centric approach to developing brands. Retrieved July 26, 2015, from SmartInsights.com: http://www.smartinsights.com/online-brand-strategy/brand-positioning/digital-brand-development/

Scott, D. M. (2010). The new rules of marketing and PR : how to use news releases, blogs, podcasting, viral marketing, & online media to reach buyers directly. Hoboken: John Wiley and Sons.

SimilarWeb.com. (2015, July 25). Timberland.com Traffic Overview. Retrieved July 26, 2015, from SimilarWeb.com: http://www.similarweb.com/website/timberland.com

SIteAnlytics.Compete.com. (2015, July 25). Timberland.com Site Analysis. Retrieved July 26, 2015, from SIteAnlytics.Compete.com: https://siteanalytics.compete.com/timberland.com/#.VbR0MLNViko

Timberland. (2015, March 10). Goals and Progress. Retrieved July 26, 2015, from Responsibility.Timberland.com: http://responsibility.timberland.com/reporting/goals-and-progress/#csr-product_ecomaterials