Developing an Integrated Marketing Campaign for Kimpton Hotels: Brand Management and IMC in Action

San Francisco-based Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants is the first and leading collection of boutique Hotels throughout the United States and Canada. Kimpton Hotels offers services and design elements focused on care, comfort, style, flavor and fun. Every Kimpton hotel reflects the energy, personality and pulse of its location, history and architectural style. With presence in several big cities across the United States, Kimpton fuses art, social responsibility and fine cuisine into its hotels and restaurants such that each hotel is uniquely branded to reflect the characteristics of the cities where the hotel is located. Kimpton uses this strategy to target specific market segments in these key cities. In doing so however, a significant challenge that they faced, was a lack of overall recognition for the Kimpton brand. This originated from the fact that travelers usually remembered each individual hotel that they visited in a respective city, but failed to recognize that particular hotel was a part of the Kimpton chain. This was because Kimpton’s efforts to give each hotel its own unique theme culminated in the individual hotels’ brands becoming more famous, prominent and identifiable than the parent brand itself. Moreover, bookings done via online mediums such as Priceline failed to identify a certain hotel as a part of the Kimpton group. Another problem Kimpton faced with these websites was that of inability to allocate points for their “In-Touch” loyalty program. Also, efforts to communicate information about this program were undertaken by local properties and failed to target the specific customer groups identified by Kimpton. Based on online research, Kimpton Group identified the likes of The Ritz-Carlton, Four Seasons and Peninsula Hotels to be their specific prime competitors. From a broader perspective, it is reasonable to infer that competing hotel chains offering similar services and within the same price bracket, but with superior parent brand awareness may also pose a significant threat to Kimpton.

     Of the identified target audiences, if Kimpton were to focus on Pet lovers and Eco-conscious travelers, they can tailor their “In Touch” campaign in the following ways. Redesigning all the forms of communication such as e-mails, posts. Etc. to reflect an environment and animal friendly theme, preferably with the use of earthly colors like blue and green. They should also highlight these aspects of the hotels’ overall theme and any environmental or animal rights programs that they may be a part of. A few minor adjustments to the hotels decor could go a long way in procuring the interest of these target groups. This could include the introduction of creative customer centric methods of beautification such as the use of self-sufficient fish tanks and small botanical gardens, which could make for a picturesque ambience as well as be used to leverage the appeal of these audiences. Some kind of association with environmental protection groups and animal right’s activists such as PETA is another way to attract desired attention to the program. The use of social media to propagate these messages, ideas and initiatives whilst subtly advertising the “In touch” campaign could prove equally effective. Alternatively, the “In Touch” program can be integrated into their communications mix with the use of PR. The best way to communicate various aspects of this program to the masses effectively is directly and so it would be useful to host invitation based complementary events for the Kimpton faithful at select locations for the sole purpose of spreading awareness about the “In-Touch” program as well as the association of the parent brand. If these events can include a presentation by the group’s management or PR division promoting a catchy campaign tagline such as ‘Live and Let live’ (Live being a Pun for living at the hotel as well as supporting harmonious and holistic living with the environment and all life forms by and large), it could prove paramount to achieving the established goals.

     The utilization of client centric and customer specific media vehicles such as the Internet advertising, forms of new media like SMS and e-mail, localized print ads and targeted narrowcasting should suffice for introduction of this campaign. This is primarily because it is easier to assess effectiveness with a concentrated low budget media campaign rather than the highly risky, expensive and unnecessary use of larger media vehicles such as Broadcasting. With the exception of narrowcasting efforts such as radio commercials, the performance of social media campaigns can be easily and cost-effectively measured using tools such as Facebook analytics. Similar tools are available to numerically quantify the response rates of SMS and e-mail communications. 

 

     An efficient method for Kimpton hotels to communicate their philosophy throughout the internal organization and their community would be by first considering the analogy of the service triangle. They can convey their messages and ‘set the promise’ to their faithful customers through an adoption of the external marketing methodologies discussed above. In order to internally market themselves to their employees, they can arrange seminars and training programs to explain the characteristics of their brand thoroughly. This will be critical because in the service sector, there is a high level of contact between the front line staff and the customers and it is up to an organizations employees to deliver the promises established by the company through interactive marketing. For this, it is important that they themselves understand the mission, values and everything that Kimpton stands for in order to properly enable these promises. A significant challenge that Kimpton may face in doing is that of miscommunicating or not clearly these messages to the customers or even their employees for that matter. This could potentially amount to a breakdown of the entire system and consequently the market themselves in the manner that they so please.

Jeep - America Will Be Whole Again: A review of the 2013 Super Bowl commercial

This emotionally charged commercial opens with two impactful and unavoidable quotes that speak directly to the heart of every patriotic American - an appeal on behalf of the troops and a quote from Oprah Winfrey. The rest of the ad, narrated just as exquisitely by Oprah as well, plucks just as masterfully at the heartstrings with wives waiting anxiously, children playing innocently and people waiting eagerly in hope and anticipation. The icing on the cake is when the fighting heroes, come home - In a Jeep Grand Cherokee or a Wrangler and quite fittingly, the new Jeep Patriot which Jeep is primarily trying to market through the campaign. This is a well calibrated ad for an SUV that excellently tie’s together a call to honor and support the USO with an emotionally pressing appeal to purchase the new offering.  

The intended audience that this Ad looks to target are primarily the most patriotic of Americans, both young and old, who are instantly moved by this campaign’s emotional message. The secondary target audience would include socially responsible Americans who would weigh supporting their nation’s heroes more heavily as opposed to simply buying a vehicle that best meets their needs. It also looks to target ardent Jeep lovers obviously who are quite clearly able to associate the national carmakers brand with certain core American values such as loyalty to one’s nation, integrity and freedom. In whole, Jeep aims at creating awareness about a critical national phenomena that they possible hope will result in consumers making emotionally impulsive purchase decisions to support theirs and their country’s cause. The needs of this targeted category might well be quite diverse considering the alternatives and competition. This could range from performance, design, price, value, mileage and so on. However, by taking an emotional and patriotically significant stand with marketing their offering, Jeep is able to differentiate it by creating a strong lasting connect with their audience that can potentially sway them away from even thinking about the technical specifications of the vehicles, of which no apparent mention is made. 

  

The key benefit claim that Jeep wishes to communicate is expertly presented through this commercial – Buy Jeep and do your bit to support your country and its troops. Jeep has always had a legacy of communicating patriotic and socially intuitive messages through mass media in order to market their products and this stems from their close proximity with the American military operations. Another similar example of this was the 2011 Jeep Grand Cherokee Spot. For decades, Jeep’s have been used as military vehicles to transport troops for combat or otherwise and this reinforces its public opinion as America’s very own SUV. Thus, in a way, this ad goes off of the advertiser’s existing campaign in terms of its central theme although it is unique in a very specific sense of patriotism. It is hence not hard to see why the advertiser selected this kind of emotional appeal for the campaign which also involved American troops acting as brand endorsers in a way. 

In terms of generating awareness about its products, Jeep rather subtly displays flashes of its new and existing models while it does do a fantastic job of reminding people about its role in defending the country, thus reinforcing its brand image as a national icon while simultaneously creating interest among potential buyers to further research the offering. In doing so, it will be able to direct TV audiences to its various selling points such as the website or store front where a desire to purchase the product will possibly emerge. Finally, to initiate action from the consumer, it seems less likely that this ad will instantly result in consumers purchasing the product even impulsively as there is a significant build-up that will eventually and probably culminate in a purchase decision. In terms of effectiveness, this ad certainly creates a very impactful and lasting impression on the viewers that is evident from its immediate publicity that has pushed it up the ranking charts as one of the most impactful commercials ever made. Based on this analysis and also from my own judgment of the potential returns from this communication, I believe that this ad is worth the amount as it looks to be set up for successful long-term impact on account of its strong emotional message that will be well engraved in the minds of the target audience for a long time to come, irrespective of whether or not they purchase the offering.   

Augmented Reality & Visual Retail: Tesco’s smart phone enabled virtual grocery stores in South Korea

This is an article analysis which I conducted for an IMC (Integrated Marketing Communication) class project and presentation at Atkinson, based on Tesco’s Homeplus and its smart phone enabled virtual grocery stores in South Korea.  

In the spring of 2011, Tesco PLC – A UK based retail giant renamed its South Korean branch operations to Homeplus, in an effort to become the nation’s prime grocery retailer without increasing the number of stores. They adopted an approach that involved expanding their online sales rather than opening new stores. As South Korea has more than 10 million smartphone users in a population of less than 50 million, it made sense to look at mobile shopping just as much.

Based on research conducted by Cheil Worldwide, South Koreans were dubbed as the second most hardworking people in the world. Long work hours, busy schedules and crowded stores made grocery shopping a burden rather than an enjoyable experience as it left little time, energy and interest to perform the task. Thus, offering the opportunity to shop while doing something else had a lot of value and so Tesco aimed at utilizing unproductive waiting times more efficiently. Take for instance, commuters waiting for their train: they have time on their hands, quite likely have jobs and are usually susceptible to dynamic and relevant forms of marketing communication. With Homeplus, Tesco were able to capitalize on this opportunity by building virtual aisles on the platforms at Subway stations in the nascent stages on the concept’s implementation. They created lifelike, enormous and rich images of food items and plastered them across the walls of train platforms, laid out in the same way as they would be in the shop. Every item had a corresponding QR barcode, and people waiting on the platform could check out the items on the huge billboard and scan the QR code of the relevant item using their smartphones. This immediately added the item to their Home Plus shopping basket. The idea was to make online shopping more visually appealing at a time when people were captive and bored. Deliveries of the goods could be arranged to arrive within hours of the order, meaning that in some cases they could arrive just as the commuter gets home. The strategy proved successful and Home Plus online sales went up by 130 percent in three months, and the number of registered users went up by 76 percent. The retailer also closed the gap on its main competitor, E-Mart.

        

Cheil Worldwide – The organization accredited with creating the virtual subway stores for Tesco's Homeplus, won three awards for its marketing, adverting and communications campaign for the concept and brand at the 56th annual Cannes International Festival of Creativity in addition to a Grand Prix in Media and two Gold Lions in the direct advertising and Outdoor advertising categories, for the virtual subway stores.

‘The long tail of PR’ is one of the principles that Scott mentioned in his book “The New Rules of Marketing,” which was what Tesco applied to its model in Korea. Instead of spending millions of dollars trying to attract customers to a normal supermarket, they decided to attract their customers with the use of a ‘push mechanism’ rather than a ‘pull mechanism’. Thinking outside the box and understanding their potential customer persona, Tesco identified a need that even their customers didn’t realize they had, and were paramount in successfully pioneering a strategy to service that need. According to Scott, “Smart marketers understand buyers.” and this is exactly what Tesco’s model focused on. Instead of competing head-to-head with huge supermarkets, they decided to study their consumers’ requirements and lifestyle in depth in order to engineer a service that was designed to best accommodate this lifestyle.

Another principle that Scott mentioned was ‘driving buyers into the sales process’. This is what Tesco did when they created a marketing buzz by the way they presented their services and products to the public. Going after their buyers and having a direct relationship with them was something that Tesco tried to do with building their virtual stores in the subways. At this point, it is crucial to understand that Tesco isn’t only selling grocery products - They are also selling convenience, time-saving and a promise of ‘on-time delivery’ to the consumer. This is another phenomena that Scott explains in his book under the headline “You are what you publish.” One of the questions that a marketer should ask according to Scott’s book is, ‘what do you want your buyers to believe?’ In this case, Tesco wanted their customers to believe that they didn’t need to waste their time and effort shopping in crowded supermarkets and that the experience Homeplus offered was faster, easier, enjoyable, more productive and simply better - They conveyed this message in the most exquisite and ingenious fashion.

Article Link: http://www.travbuddy.com/travel-blogs/96909/Smart-Phone-Enabled-Virtual-Grocery-9