Promotion: A Marketing Mix Resource

In times of economic crises marketers, more than ever, tend to get more conscious and alert about how and where they invest their budgets.  This is the point where professionals in the area have to do research in order to understand where and how they reach their target audience.

In general terms, marketers count with the support of their media agencies, experts on where and how reach a specific target, however and because segmentation and hyper-segemntation marketers are looking into new outlets where their products and services can be showcased to niche markets in a more effective and accountable ways.

The usages of promotions as one of the key main aspects of the marketing mix tend to be a great solution during hand times where budgets are tights and consumers are insecure about what to buy and how to spend their money, if they are spending any.

Promotions have many outlets to expose bands and services at the same time. In the following pictures there are some interesting samples that where taken around Prague, June 2009. These types of promotions can be applied to any city during economical hard times or even when abundance is as high as the NYC skyscrapers.

The first picture is a round magnet with the Coca-Cola logo on it. As you can see there is no difference between this or any other Coca-Cola promotion you might have seen, but what matters is the outlet they used and where they place it. This magnet was part of a café dinning set at a metro station at Prague, 2009.

Another interesting thing about the magnet was the fact what you could move it around and place it at the back or seat of the chair. Moreover, and in order to reinforce the brand, Coca-Cola was running a promotion on their bottles (see second and third picture). The promotion on the bottle consisted on the usage of the back of their label; and it was designed so the consumer will pill the label off the bottle and submit the code online at a special website: www.cokerewards.com for a reward (if you are the winner).

This promotion was definitely created not only to encourage people to drink more Coca-Cola in order to get rewarded by the brand (boost sales), but also to increase website traffic.

Beside these promotions, I found interesting the fact that Coca-Cola placed its logo on top of the tents ceilings at most of the restaurants and cafes in the area where touristy site seeing towers where, therefore people will notice the logo and think about the brand by looking down without noticing, most of the time, the presence of the brand.

In conclusion, promotions in its many ways to be represented can be a very effective and economic way to reach a specific target audience no matter how good or bad the economy can be.