9-11 Attack on Civil Liberties in the United States

¶ … advertising strategy and the branding strategy are all integrated with the larger concept of marketing strategy and, on the highest levels, with the company's overall business strategy. The way that a certain brand is advertised depends on what the company decided for that brand, namely what the strategy for it is. It also depends on a variety of marketing-related elements, such as product positioning on the market or the targeted group of consumers. For example, a brand that is #2 on the market and aims to be #1 may have an advertising campaign that targets the leader.

In correlating the advertising strategy with the branding strategy, our company needs to consider several elements. First, this is a new company, as well as a niche company. The first objective of a successful advertising strategy is to relate to the characteristics of the brand and understand how to reach the targeted group of consumers. In this case, because the company is new and operates in a niche, the first objective of the advertising strategy needs to be increasing brand awareness. Brand awareness is not only essential in ensuring that the targeted consumers hear about the company's products, but also differentiates from competitors (Gustafson, Chabot, 2007).

With this in mind, given the nature of the company, the advertising strategy aimed to promote brand awareness should focus on the sexual content of the products. Sexuality, including in advertisements, is catchy and could eventually even lead to "top of the mind" awareness, by which the client could immediately associate the company's brands with the name of the company.

Another way of increasing brand awareness is to use a strategy similar to the one Victoria's Secret is using, namely of hiring well-known models and other public figures (actresses, singers) to advertise the company's products. This may prove more difficult for some of the more sexual products the company sells, because actresses, models and singers are careful about protecting their image, but could be functional in the case of lingerie items, for example.

2) Measuring how effective advertising is essential for any organization, this company included. It allows a proactive, dynamic decision making process, whereby the efficiency of the advertising strategy is evaluated, leading to potential alternative approaches being attempted and undertaking an analysis as to whether the results are worth the costs.

However, despite these aspects, measuring how effective advertising is remains a challenge because of several different aspects. Among the elements that make this a complicated endeavor, one can refer to the fact that large budget would be required for effective measurements, including large sample populations for the analysis, as well as the fact that the signals from the marketing this area are generally weak (Lewis, Rao, 2013).

In the case of this company, the effectiveness of the advertising strategy can be measured by starting with simple metrics, such as the number of consumers, the number of return clients, the volume of revenues. Presumably, one can argue for a direct correlation between these metrics, as expressions of how the business is running, and the advertising campaigns.

Subsequently, a more in-depth analysis can be undertaken. This would attempt, for example, to measure whether the consumers match the targeted groups that have been identified as potential clients during the marketing analysis. Such a measurement would divide, among the different segments, according to demographics or socioeconomic variables, the company's clients. If the actual clients are not reflecting the initial marketing strategy, then this would need to be rethought.

A potential problem in measuring the effectiveness of the advertising strategy, as reflected in the previous paragraphs, is the fact that it may be difficult to manage the entire database of clients and to have a reasonable amount of information about these customers (such as birthdates etc.). To overcome this, the company could analyze the opportunity of implementing advertising instruments such as newsletters, which would offer contact information and other additional elements about the buyer.

3) Brassington and Pettitt (2000) have proposed five main categories of promotional strategies. These include, other than advertising, sales promotion, public relations, personal selling and direct marketing. Each of these will be briefly discussed below and analyzed in terms of how useful they could be for the company.

Sales promotion has, as Meidan (1996) pointed out, the quality of bringing attention to a certain product or service. Although this does not necessarily support the brand in the long run, as clients who prefer sales promotions are not particularly loyal to a brand, for this company, an initial sales promotion could significantly help its brand and increase brand awareness. The company and its products are not yet well-known and an initial sales promotion could introduce the product to people in a particularly favorable way, namely through a low price. However, this can also backfire, if the clients will start associating the company's product with traditionally cheap products.

Public relations will also be important as a promotional strategy, especially given the particularities of the company and of the product it sells. A proper public relations campaign will both stimulate the existing basis for clients and customers and drive away potentially negative publicity from the company. The company should consider different PR venues, including erotic magazines for a particular category of products and mainstream magazines and fashion shows for its lingerie collection.

Finally, direct marketing can also be considered by the company as a promotional strategy. The company will look to consolidate a database of contacts for its clients, something that can be achieved through different means, including a newsletter that is delivered only to subscribed participants. Through the newsletter, the company can subsequently promote its product directly to the recipients, existing and potential clients.

4) Likely, the best market research approach in this case is the survey. The company will select a representative sample from the group that has been determined as the target group for the products that the company sells. Within this group, a questionnaire will be created and delivered, with questions referring both to the existing mix of products and to potential new products that could be introduced on the market.

Such a questionnaire would help the company better understand both which products are selling well (and why) and what products could sell well in the future. It would also help the company be consistently in touch with its main client base, better understanding its requirements. To reduce costs, the company can consider using the newsletter as a mean of sending out an electronic survey, for which the persons who agree to complete it could receive a free product. An electronic survey would have other advantages as well, notably discretion, given the nature of the products that the company sells and the fact that some of the participants could refuse to answer questions that would give away their sexual and erotic preferences.