Direct mail campaign strategy for Redbox

Redbox

Direct Mail Campaign for Redbox

The Target Market (an overview description of the target market -- you should select a specific target. The market needs defined in terms of your research demographics, psychographics (including lifestyles and trends, etc.)

This direct mail campaign concentrates on the core demographic segments of students attending colleges and universities on Long Island NY, primarily focusing on Hofstra University, CW Post, NYIT and Adelphi University. Students between the ages of 18 and 26, both undergraduate and post-graduate, with incomes below $30K a year and a median income of $15K a year are part of the target market for this marketing campaign. 73% of this target market fits within the income classification of having a median income level of $15K and the remaining 27% have incomes that range to $44,000 a year. In this target market, age correlates to income as the older students have postgraduate degrees and many (67%) are working two more jobs to make ends meet. In addition, they are racially mixed with 56% being Caucasian, 19% being African-American, 14% being Hispanic and 11% being Asian. Nearly one in ten of them are parents (11%) of a child between newborn and three years of age and 36% have a child between 3 and 12 years of age. An analysis of the demographic data shows that the younger the student, the more likely they are to live in a dormitory. The older the student, the more likely they have their own apartment or are renting a room close to their university. This aspect of where a student lives has implications on the campaign concept and its execution and the frequency of rentals as well.

Segmenting the target market from a psychographic standpoint shows that those students who define themselves as energetic (.73), happy (.65) and fun >64). These psychographic attributes were significantly different that the introvert-based set. Second, students respond more positively when they are perceived as methodical (.48) and intelligent (.47), versus being portrayed as lazy (.46). Creating a marketing campaign that communicates these attributes positively will have a much greater potential for success, versus being unfocused or tentative in messaging to prospects. Figure 1, Factor Analysis of College Student's Psychographics, provides a table of survey results from the study, a psychographic analysis of Generation Y college students (Wolburg, Pokrywczynski, 33 -- 52).

Figure 1: Factor Analysis of College Students Psychographics

Source: (Wolburg, Pokrywczynski, 44)

Psychographics studies how consumers define themselves from a group membership standpoint (Dobson, Ness, 659). The dynamics of how students join and participate in social networks also defines the psychographic characteristics as well (Bernoff, Li, 36). College students rely on social networks to define their identities and stay connected with their friends and family. Another aspect of the psychographics of college students is the reliance on a cell phone or smart phone as a means to further define which group(s) and market segments they are members of (Totten, Lipscomb, Cook, Lesch, 13). The millions of Apple iPhone users who are fans of Apple is a case in point. The interaction of global brands and psychographics is a very powerful combination consumers rely on globally to also define their group affiliations and interests.

How Brand Benefits Influence Psychographics

Global brands gain passionate fans by creating products that empower and enable core values that customers are seeking to accentuate and strengthen in their lives. The power of psychographics is accentuated when a brand can create more opportunities for a prospect to attain their goals, define themselves more clearly, and have their life more enriched by trusting a brand and its products (Wolburg, Pokrywczynski, et.al.). Figure 2 provides a psychographic analysis of how students perceive time (Dobson, Ness, 663), followed by Figure 3 from the same study of student psychographics showing clustering of attributes and the resulting psychographic segments that emerge based on factor analysis. What these tables illustrate is that the older a student gets, the more significantly their perception of time changes, from being somewhat non-urgent to very urgent. While at the same time, the need to manage shopping trips more effectively to maximize time is also seen when both tables are analyzed.

Figure 2: Attitudes and Constructs of Psychographics for College Students based on Undergraduate students' attitudes towards food shopping & time

Source: (Dobson, Ness, 663)

Figure 3: Attitudes and Constructs of Psychographics for College Students based on Undergraduate students' attitudes towards food shopping and attitudes to time

Source: (Dobson, Ness, 666)

Based on this analysis of psychographics and demographics data for the region of interest for this marketing campaign, it is evident that the older the student, the more the time shortage. The greater the time shortage, the more the need for consolidating trips to the store for entertainment and food, which is the trigger event in many student's lives for renting a video as well. For those older students with children, they have chronic time shortage challenges.

What the demographic and psychographic data also suggest is that the largest potential market for Redbox will be male students who see entertainment as event-related yet very convenient (Dobson, Ness, 664, 665). In other words, they want to rent a video for having friends over yet not have to hassle with going to an inconvenient location or having to make a separate trip. This audience of the target market wants to entertain friends yet not have to spend hours getting ready to. Finally, the older students who have kids are a large potential segment as well, as they will be chronically time challenged and will want to pick up either their kids' favorite movie to get some peace and quiet in their homes or have a relaxing evening with their families watching a movie.

All of these audiences or sub-segments of the target market share a common psychographic need, and that is the preservation and efficient use of time. For the young male undergraduate, who wants to have friends over yet doesn't have the hours to prepare, the time aspect and perception from his standpoint is one of quick convenience. For the graduate students without kids who consolidate shopping trips due to time considerations, their perception of time is much more finite and valued as they have projects, studying and papers to get done. For the students who are parents, their perception of time has been and continually is shifting given the heavy demands of raising children and going to school at the same time. This segment understands and appreciates time in an entirely different dimension due to the heavy demands of raising children. Time then is the currency that the marketing offer needs to trade in, so to speak. Opening up the opportunity to gain time is crucial for this campaign to be successful.

The Offer (a description of the program assortment and all additional elements of the offer). Cannot be one that is currently being used by the company/

The primary target market for this campaign relies on cell phones and smart phones more than any other communication device or platform. For many members of the target market, this is the only way to contact them. As a result, this campaign needs to have a heavy component of social networking and social media to be effective. While Redbox already has 1.6M followers on Facebook and 14,752 followers on Twitter, they are hardly using these social media channels to their maximum effect. Apart from the coupons on Facebook, the company is dormant in some of the most vital and vibrant channels available.

To add some excitement to Redbox, this campaign proposes that a contest be created to give customers an opportunity for a lifetime of free rentals for creating the best viral video and posting it on the Redbox YouTube channel. The intent of this context is to get customers thinking about how Redbox helps them host better parties, have friends over and stay sane with their young kids running around the house. This contest gives each psychographic segment a chance to speak up and say what Redbox is, and most importantly, what it can be. While Redbox has done extremely well on Facebook and Twitter, they are horrible on YouTube. They created their campaign on November 7, 2005, have just 22 subscribers and only 41,620 views in five years, which is incredibly ironic and bad frankly for a company whose core business is videos.

The campaign runs for 120 days and is open to anyone who wants to create a viral video of Redbox and what it means to them. It can also be futuristic and focused on how Redbox could challenge Netflix eventually over the Internet, an area of explosive growth for Netflix right now. The theme of Redbox: RX for Boredom could be used. The concept of the viral videos is to show creatively what Redbox means to customers. The concept of the Redbox Happiness Machine could also be promoted to serve as inspiration for the contest as well. Here is a clip from the Coca-Cola Happiness Machine Campaign:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZ_20DC_evc&hd=1

Conclusion

The marketing campaign's objective is to significantly increase awareness throughout the target market and induce trial of the service so customers can qualify to compete for a year of free videos. The promotion of the campaign can be viral, using the best contributions to the context to promote it. In addition, the best entries every month will be shown on regional TV and over the Internet on the Redbox website, Facebook and promoted through Twitter feeds. This marketing campaign gets away from using social media to shout at prospects or customers and supports a best practice many practitioners support, which is enabling a two-way conversation with members of a target market or audience (Jackson, 56). Measurement is in how many videos are made, their quality, originality and creativity and how many new customers sign up during the promotion period.