Promotional Campaign Is the Combination

¶ … Promotional campaign is the combination of various advertising, public relations, sales promotion, and personal selling activities used by the marketer over a period of time to achieve predetermined goals. Either promoting a long-lived strong brand, a small business or one-time price reduction, a promotion campaign is much more than just the advertisement seen on TV and the larger is the campaign, the more budget it needs and more people are employed to derive the outcomes that the campaign was initially worked out for. The promotion campaign I will focus in more details is the Watershed Awareness campaign of public education to bring water quality issues to public forefront consciousness.

The first and most vital step in carrying out a successful promotion campaign is the necessity to clarify the specific purpose for the campaign. The meaning can be to grow the initial size of the market or grow company's sales volume, improve distribution, attach a competitor's offer, support a sales drive, develop awareness of your product, influence the customer's needs and desires or effect the customer's perceptions of your positions and so on. Thus the campaign main serve many purposes, but in a perfect situation, which of the purposes should require own promotional campaign to increase the effectiveness. This is linked with the one of the most important rules of the communication which states that the message received is much more important that the message sent. Customers have existing perceptions of the majority of the producers and the products, thus, the message initially sent by the campaign will be adjusted by these perceptions. The goal of the Watershed Campaign is 'to increase public awareness of regional watershed issues, pollution prevention, and the region's efforts to improve water quality and protect communities from flooding; to improve and maintain water quality under applicable water quality standards and to provide information that will help the general public identify linkages between daily behavior and the impacts on water quality'.

The proposition is only the beginning, then the effective communication must be used serving the functions of reaching the target audience, penetrating the audience's attention through the combination of timeliness, relevance and simplicity, communicating the intended message and bonding the message to the brand name. Unfortunately, practice shows that the price of the advertisement does not guarantee its' quality. In order to do this, a promotion plan should include a well-articulated distribution plan which will drastically increase the exposure of promotion item. The mass media source choice to transfer the idea to the target group should be based on the preferences of the target group. For the Watershed, the audience analysis suggests that the target group is 'the people who maintain households, pay utility bills and influence children's life skills are the primary targets of this campaign; by increasing watershed and water quality awareness in the citizens that decide how property is maintained (yards, cars, pets, sidewalks), this campaign will make steady progress toward achieving its goals'.

For the media sources, Watershed has chosen to buy annually advertisements on five community buses and metro buses. The buses are movable billboards comparing to stationary ones, and thus the message with the logo of the campaign is transferred to more recipients. The radio promotion will include the campaign message running twice a day during the promotional campaign time. During the message, the info on the campaign pamphlet with more campaign information and the company site will be delivered. Print advertisements will be used only together with the partner print media sources to reduce the costs for the campaign. The campaign will also develop a 60-second public watershed awareness video for broadcast on cable-access television stations, city stations and university stations.

Campaign news releases will be sent out regularly to local media, organizations and strategic partners about every seasonal message, event or campaign development. The campaign deliverables will be also available. Pamphlets will serve as the second level of information, expanding on why certain behaviors impact watersheds, while giving multiple recommended actions to minimize water quality impacts. Prior to printing, the pamphlets will go to city managers, school boards, libraries, public information officers. Pamphlets will be available to all public inquiries and a PDF will be posted on the campaign web pages. Initial minimum 2003 print run of 50,000 per season. If municipalities require more, they will be available at cost in quantities of 1,000. Campaign 12-page booklet will be available at gardening stores, nurseries, public works departments, and other participating organizations. A very smart finding of this campaign's creators is to insert brief, two-page versions of the pamphlet designed with more visual appeal to the water utility bills which will show the direct connection between the problem and its' salvation that the company is providing.

As the importance of Internet access to any information grows, the need to make the campaign materials available online increases. Thus, an extensive campaign site with many downloadable materials will be available. 'An interactive metro watershed map will be designed to show watersheds of the region, their detailed information and how they overlap in multiple counties and cities'. Thus, almost all the printing and other media sources will be exploited to serve the goal of the campaign and increase its' effectiveness.

The third step in carrying out a promotional campaign is developing its' theme. 'Creating a noticable insignia or logo of some sort, and limiting the entire campaign to a few striking colors really makes your promotional activities come together as people will remember what they see. This coalesces into a recognizable platform and image for your organization'. Watershed chose the theme is that the individual's household behavior, water usage in this case, has the impact on the company as a whole.. As the company is connected with water theme, the campaign will encorporate the light-blue and yellow-green colour as the major working tones as well as it will be consistent in using fonts and printing styles.

The fourth step is reinforcing the theme with the central message which will make the campaign stand out and the perspective target group will delineate the campaign by. Watershed has chosen 'Good Neighbours Care About Clean Water' as the logo for this promotional campaign.

When the campaign starts, several educational and interactive activities will be conducted to reinforce the influence of the campaign message received through mass media resources. Seminars, training, public attitude surveys will be conducted and the data collected can be used to develop future public educational strategies. A very important after-campaign step is the follow-up analysis by the means of surveying community which will be carried out 2 years after the campaign is completed.