IMC Campaign of Surf Excel

 

IMC Campaign of Surf Excel

Surf Excel is a Unilever brand that is currently marketed as the counterpart brand of OMO detergent in the India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka markets.

The Surf Excel was the first detergent powder introduced in Pakistan (1948) and India (1959). Initially, Surf Excel positioned on the clean proposition of “washes whitest”. However, with the emergence of numerous local detergent manufacturers and the entry of other global brands, Surf underwent various changes in its brand communication and was replaced by Surf Excel in 1996.

Surf Excel believes in the unique philosophy that “Dirt is Good”. Surf Excel believes that getting dirty is an essential part of a child’s development; that it is a gateway to experiencing the world around them and also learn in the process.

Surf excel is a champion of unleashing human potential. It believes that children learn best when left to discover things on their own. It understands that children tend to get very involved in whatever they are doing – so much so that without noticing they can get dirty in a matter of minutes. Surf Excel is always there with its powerful stain removal formulation.

Let’s examine –

Integrated Marketing communication

Mission of Surf Excel

The main mission of surf excel is to encourage creativity. When a child creates something using his own imagination, then he may et dirty. No matter how dirty are the clothes because surf Excel will take care of this.

Objectives

The main objective of Unilever for Surf Excel is to gain market share. For this, they are doing various types of promotional activities and ensure their customers the best laundry services.

Goals

Unilever’s goal is to add vitality, social value to our life, and lessened environmental impact. And Surf Excel aims at washing and caring for clothes which is a constant challenge and which may encourage to creativity. It may work for the purpose of adding more vitality and social value in our lives. And their internal goal is to make Surf Excel good to the best brand in this category by managing the overall activities properly.

 

Integrated Marketing is an approach to creating a unified and seamless experience for consumers to interact with the brand/enterprise. Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) blends various promotional tools and communications/marketing/advertising services and techniques to maximize profit. IMC is ultimately achieved through concise and consistent messaging that fosters familiarity and consumer affinity. Effective IMC messages and images are meaningful and useful to consumers and messaging and branding consistency – a proven IMC concept – yield customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Marketing Communications Mix:

v  Advertising

v  Public relation and publicity

v  Personal selling

v  Sales Promotion

v  Direct marketing

v  Word-of-mouth-marketing

v  Events and Experiences

v  Interactive marketing

IMC Strategy Development

Marketers must do the following things:

 

 

 

 

 

Figure-1: Steps of IMC strategy development.

IMC Strategy Development at Unilever regarding Surf Excel:

Unilever follows certain strategies regarding Surf Excel to develop IMC. The company is working trying hard to promote their brand and new offer to the target audience. The steps of developing effective communications that Unilever Ltd follows are described below:

Identify the target customers: Before launching any kind of promotional and advertising activities a company must have to know the target customers. Because without knowing the target group the activities may not be successful. Because based on target audience the tools depend more. They target for both their existing customers and potential new customers for the offer. The main target market of surf excel is the modern, energetic and outgoing female having two or more kids. Women who are outgoing and get very short time to make up their homes, they often face the problem of dirty clothes. So, they stay less time at home and spend few times in washing clothes. Surf Excel is a detergent which can help her in washing clothes easily. With the use of surf Excel, women can quickly wash their clothes and other things which reduce their time and effort in this work.

The customers of Surf Excel are-

Demographic:

            Age: Women, 25 and above

            Gender: Male & Female

            Occupation: House wives service holder, students.

            Income: Median to High

Geographic:

            Location: Urban, sub-urban, rural

            Area: All over Bangladesh

Psycho-graphic:

            Preference: House wives, students, service holders prefers.

            Perception: Performance.

            Attitude: Have a strong belied for the performance of this product.

            Life style: Median to high.

Designing the communications: After being sure about the target audience Unilever may decide about the way of communication. And they should always try to follow the artistic way so that they can reach and adapt to the customer easily. The brand department directly controls these activities regarding their need. The Ad firms design the message and they make everything as per company need. They bring ideas.

Communication Channels: Unilever generally uses a non-personal communication system in order to select the communication channels including media, sales promotion, events, and public relations to affect the customers' behavior directly. In different phrases, the company uses communication channels to send the message. Unilever goes for different ad agencies like Adcomm under the supervision of the brand department. The company gives responsibility to design the communication message to the firm to ensure that the message appeals, themes or are ideas are different and sustainable.

Sitting total communication budget: Determining total promotion budget is a quite difficult task science company has to set it before the promotion campaign in setting up total promotion budget and mix Unilever uses the combination of affordable method and percentage of sales method at first the company's fees how much they can afford on promotion and sailing the budget at a certain percentage of the unit sales price. The company does it to manipulate promotion is spending selling price and profit per unit.

Media advertising

Unilever as a big brand they use TVC, RDC, newspaper, Billboard, and magazine for promotion purpose. Though they are successful regarding the Surf Excel ad they should continue their advertising as a reminder ad. They give print and broadcast advertisement of their offer at the daily star, Bangladesh Pratidin, etc. newspapers and also in various business magazines and directories

PVC and RDC: Unilever also focuses on TVC is highly as they are a giant company. They usually focus on high channels like NTV, ATN Bangla, Independent Television, GTV Ekattor TV, channel 24. Unilever may use Somoy TV and Jamuna television, especially because in this pandemic situation most household people see Jamuna television. Unilever’s mobile radio station is the world's top campaign for effectiveness strategy. Besides, they also use printing ads in newspapers, magazines and billboards to grab consumer attention.

A sample ad for Unilever regarding Surf Excel:

Advertising objective: Brand awareness.

Let’s wash your clothes in one minute.

Raihan 08-years-old boy. One day, his grandmother let the pickles dry in the yard and many crows are bothering to eat the pickles. Then his grandmother with a stick chased the crows and called out to Raihan. Raihan was watching his grandmother's condition from one side and replied that he was coming in 1 minute. How to chase away the crows, he painted a cuckoo image with many colors on his T-shirt and put it on the side of the pickles. And in a few moments, his grandmother saw that all the crows left away. Then his grandmother looked at him and was surprised and smiled. During this time his grandmother became emotional. Just then his father called him from the house and he got scared because of the painted T-shirt. Then his grandmother replied that Raihan was coming in 1 minute.

Actually, this is a moral appeal to help someone. For this type of ad Unilever may use a positive tone, slice of life, mood or image, musical message execution regarding Surf Excel. By this ad, they can engage more customers, increase customer satisfaction towards the brand, make customers loyal to this brand, build strong customer relationships and so on. They can also use this ad as a reminder ad as they are a great brand on the consumer’s mind. Besides, this ad also a consumer-generated message. So, in this viewpoint they will be benefited because a consumer-generated message can boost consumer involvement and get consumers talking and thinking about a brand and its value to them. Advertisement time preference is very important. For this ad, they can choose the time between 8 pm to 11 pm as most mothers see television within this time.

Public Relations:

Advertising doesn’t build brands, public relation does. The birth of a brand is usually accomplished with public relations, not advertising.

Public relations tools are companies’ websites, media relations, social media, newsletters, employee relations, special events, ranging from news conferences, press tours, grand openings, hot air balloon releases, multimedia presentations, educational programs, etc. Unilever uses public relation as a contest on story sharing, Surf Excel chose The Daily Star, The Independent, Dhaka Tribune, PR news. BD, Naksha of Prothom Alo, EProthomalo for their advertisement of this campaign as a press release.

Unilever has a good relation with the press and key political persons. They can arrange a tour in winter. That will build a strong relationship with those persons.

People have a positive perception of Surf Excel. Surf Excel is very concerned about their CSR activities this is how they built a strong public relation. They always arrange some programs that children can participate in and enrich their mental happiness.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Outdoor Events: Sometimes they take advantage and make a better plan for promotion from their previous experience. For example-

Surf Excel Protibhar Lori:

Surf Excel always encourages the activities and creativity of children. That’s why in 2006 they have arranged a program named, “Surf Excel Protibhar Lori”. It was the inter-school contest among the school going children organized by Unilever Bangladesh Ltd. The contest is designed to help children express their creativity through a range of exciting and challenging games with the participation of nearly 200 reputed schools from all over Bangladesh.

To make a good relationship and establish their proposition with the general people Unilever may use the same various activities regarding Surf Excel. They can sponsor programs. They can use various outdoor events from time to time. For example- in Pohela Boishakh they can organize different events in important places.

Website & Facebook: Unilever has a special website and Facebook page for Surf Excel, in which they give updates about surf excel, its price, packaging, special events, contest etc. They can directly engage with customers about customers’ questions.

Business events: For Surf Excel Unilever may arrange a business event on television or in their Facebook page because there are opportunities for business people to gain exposure for their businesses, promote new products or services and make sure accurate information reaches targeted customers. In addition, events are a chance to counter customer doubts and build customer confidence. Form these events they will get some complains about their product from customers and then they will research their market and competitors, that will be batter for product’s development. 

Personal Selling:

Unilever has strong, well-educated, well-trained professionals who always maintain good relationship with customers. Actually, Personal selling uses in person interaction to sell products and services. This type of communication is carried out by sales representatives, who are the personal connection between a buyer and a company or a company’s products or services. Salespeople not only inform potential customers about a company’s product or services, they also use their power of persuasion and remind customers of product characteristics, service agreements, prices, deals and much more.

For more customer engagement they reward their seller so that they can feel positive to sell more product. Because todays, sales is about building customer relationships not just to sell product. They can arrange training workshop to perform their job effectively. Because effective personal selling addresses the buyer’s needs and preferences without making him or her feel pressured. Good salespeople offer advice, information and recommendations and they can help buyers save money and time during the decision process. The seller should give honest responses to any questions or objections the buyer has and show that he cares more about meeting the buyer’s needs than making the sale.

Sales promotion:

To encourage the consumers to purchase Surf Excel, they follow some sales promotion tools. Such as, sometimes they offer price of promotion. For example, suppose previously the price of 500 gm surf Excel was 99tk and now it is 93tk only. That offers 6% off for each 500gm Surf Excel. This is also called rewarding consumers with value discount. This really works well for sales promotion.

Sometimes they do a bit of sampling for sales promotion. Like they produce a new type of Surf Excel and go to some areas, give some samples of new Surf Excel to the home makers. They use those and if they become satisfied, the marketers influence to make more purchase of the product.

For brand promotion Unilever uses another strategy regarding surf excel that cross promotion. They offer customers some other product of their own company in this detergent category like Wheel Power White, While Lemon etc. or some other related goods like wheel soap, Surf Excel bar etc. at a lower price which may encourage them to purchase more.

 

Trade Promotion:

For trade promotion they offer discount to the distribution channel. Sometimes they give discounts to their loyal distributers. That may work as their trade promotion. They can arrange a program about best dealer ceremony within a specific region who has generate more revenue rather than others. And at the same time maintaining good relation also.

Direct Marketing:

Any product that is sold through the market goes through and elaborate system of production, transportation, procurement at market place and subsequently one or two steps before reaching the end consumer. In the entire value chain, some value is added either in transportation, storage, delivery or product improvements. As we know traditional marketing involves a variety of players before it reaches the final stakeholder-the consumer to customer. The Direct Marketing strategy reduced the number of stakeholders to possibly two or three-either the company directly sells to consumers or in some cases a carrying and forwarding agent would stock the goods in various cities for final delivery to consumers.

Direct marketing tools are text messaging, catalogs, brochures, postcards, flyers, coupons, online display ads, phone calls, mail, telephone, kiosk marketing etc. As a great brand surf excel is good at direct marketing.  As direct marketing, they can give surf excel display on YouTube because it is less expensive rather than TV commercial as many people see YouTube against TV. So, it will be a great opportunity for them. Besides, many e-commerce sites sell surf excel which also add value for the company.

Events and Experiences:

Though it falls in public relation but in surf excel it is different. Surf excel has an own YouTube channel. In this channel, children can share their experience. They arranged many campaigns with school students.

 

 

 

A sample campaign for Surf Excel-

Learning Through Play

Surf Excel brand may arrange a program in different parks. They can install some playing equipment. And also, they can attach neighboring schools’ students to each park for free. In there, guardians will present to see the program in that program they can arrange different games. Children will participate those games. At the end of the program, they can collect some T-shirts or school dress from boys or girls to trial with surf excel whether it is good or bad at cleaning. In this way, they can make guardians that it works. From this live program definitely customer engagement will increase, they can generate more revenue rather than before. At last, they can give some prizes who stand first to different games.

Note: Many information and photos have collected from the internet.