Wednesday, 26 March 2014

Interactive Marketing - BUSM 2042 - Assignment One - 12013728

Student Number:12013728
Assignment 1
Interactive Marketing
BUSM 2042

Over the last ten years new marketing techniques have been introduced which have innovated companies by creating new and exciting ways to interact with customers. While technology has advanced, the key fundamentals have stayed static. “The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits and sells itself.” [1] In this blog post I will be discussing how Pepsi Max use a variety of interacting marketing techniques to increase customer centricity and up hold the company’s value. The term interactive in a marketing context can be defined as “we interpret it, it points to two features of communication: the ability to address an individual and the ability to gather and remember the response of that individual" Deighton, J. (1996) If the marketing tools used by Pepsi Max don’t engaged with these demeanours they can’t be classed as interactive.


Pepsi is one of the largest soft drink companies on the planet. It is a profitable company and has a history of niche marketing techniques to attract and immerse customers. However, I’m studying a product by Pepsi called “Pepsi Max” which is a healthier alternative to the original product. I first discovered the first Pepsi Max marketing tool I’m going to examine on Facebook unintentionally. The video had over ten thousand likes; it’s apart of their “Unbelievable” marketing campaign. The “unbelievable” campaign has been a series of viral videos of people or places doing extra-ordinary things. However I’m going to focus on the video “Unbelievable Bus Shelter | Pepsi Max. Unbelievable #LiveForNow”. Pepsi Max converted a regular London bus shelter and installed technology that would galvanise any commuter’s morning with shock surprises. (See video below)




This digital technology has received a digital spark as it’s received nearly two million views on YouTube (March 20th), multiple major newspaper and magazine articles such as Metro and TIME and a staggering response on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Digital marking is defined by Lexion.com as “The marketing of products or services using digital channels to reach consumers. The key objective is to promote brands through various forms of digital media.” This digital marketing uses technology known as “Augmented reality” the billboard display digital images on a real background setting. As tigers, UFO’s and monsters appeared real in the street it shocked, amused and terrified commuters.


This interactivity is called “User-machine” as there’s a distinction between traditional and modern media. As Digital marketing doesn’t require the internet to interact with customers however Pepsi have uploaded the video onto YouTube. Due to the outstanding response of this marketing campaign you would consider this video as “viral”. Cleverly, Pepsi Max have included the hash tag “#LiveForNow” which encourages sharing on social media to increase the videos exposure. “The definition of viral marketing is the act of promoting information or products that other customers are compelled to give to other friends, colleagues and family”. Pepsi Max have achieved “product leadership, this has been achieved by an innovative idea executed in such small time. Pepsi have also achieved Experiential and hedonic value as the product has caused emotion and an experience for the audience.





The second product I have chosen to discuss is Special K, special K is a cereal owned by the conglomerate Kellogg’s. As well as Pepsi, Kellogg’s is a profitable company. Special K is known has a ‘healthy’ cereal and all of their marketing campaign reflect this. The Marjory of Special K’s audience is Women in the age group 25-45 in A or B socio class.

Special K’s predominant marketing campaign is called "The Special K Challenge.” This entailed people to maintain a diet plan of Special K and aim toward weight loss. To monitor progress of this ‘challenge’ Special K set up the website ‘www.myspecialk.com’ where a uses tracks their diet, track weight lost and interact with friends doing the same challenge. This marketing strategy is called an ‘online community’. Online communities are defined as “a group of people who use a particular Internet service or belong to a particular group on the Internet”. When signing up to ‘MySpecialK’ you have to fill in a number of questions to confirm your identity. By doing this special K have gained customer details where they can direct mail customers information regarding the brand. This is perceived interactivity as the users perception of control, communication and time are crucial in how the ‘challenge’ works.


As like many companies in this modern age, Special K have a strong following on social networks. With our 2.6 million likes on Facebook and a vast following on twitter where it regular interacts with followers, promotes products and hosts competitions. Social media is the term for web based software and services that enables users to unite online and exchange, discuss communicate and participate in any form of social interaction. This interaction can incorporate text, audio, images, video and other media. Ryan, Jones (2012) According to a report ‘a significant 86% of marketers indicate that social media is important for their business, up from 83% in 2012’ Harvey, C.G., Stewart, D.B. & Ewing, M.T. (2011)

Customer Centricty and customer focus are often confused, however there is a big difference. Buttle, F. (2000) “Being customer centric means looking at a customers lifetime value and focusing marketing effors squarely on that real-world, high value customer segement to drive profit” (Dr Peter Fader). Special K’s “MySpecialK” does this extremely well, the campaign identifies the most loyal customers as they’ve signed up to the website to participate in the “challenge”. By doing this, Special K have already attained data from that segmentation of the customer which provides data to help a better understand of it’s audience. Further more gives the company an insight in understanding the customer’s lifetime value.

As well as customer centricity, special K also achieves a great deal of customer intimacy. Customer intimacy is from the value discipline model by Treacy and Wiersema(1994) and is achieved by excellent customer attention and customer service. As “MySpecialK” encourages users to update there progress, customer intimacy has already been achieved as Special K has already became a regular product to the customer.  The customers taking part in this campaign have already became emotionally and psychologically attached with a high level of loyalty. This has also created symbolic and expressive value as the customer has attached to the product.

Porter’s model of value chain is one of the best known and widely applied models of a company’s value-creation processes (Sanchez and Heene, 2004). With regard to Porter’s value chain, each company have approached this campaign differently and affected the companies asserts. Pepsi relates to ‘marketing and sales’ section in primary activities. Pepsi haven’t marketed their product, but instead marketed their company. There use of digital marketing connotes that Pepsi is innovative and different, also demonstrates that their product can cause and experience. In relation to support activities, Pepsi have used technology development to promote their product. To maintain this technology Pepsi should continue surprising potential customers with new and innovating displays of technology. Special K’s challenge relates to the ‘Service” stage in the value chain, as the product has already been sold, Special K offer a service for customers to still engage with the sale on the website and between friends. As the marketing is done online, special K have also engaged with technology development. Toe ensure bets use of this technology special K should often update users there progress, maintain customer centricity and develop an app for mobile users.


In conclusion, both of these marketing campaigns have both being an incredible success. But after studying these separate companies its apparent that each brand can market effectively in different ways. I feel that special K would struggle to pull of a stunt similar to what Pepsi have done, however it would be impossible for Pepsi Max to gain customer centricity in the same way Special K has.

Deighton, J. (1996) The Future of Interactive Marketing Harvard Business Review Nov-Dec pp.151-152 [Accessed 14th March]

Harvey, C.G., Stewart, D.B. & Ewing, M.T. 2011, "Forward or delete: What drives peer‐to‐peer message propagation across social networks?", Journal of Consumer Behaviour, vol. 10, no. 6, pp. 365-372. [Accessed 15h March 2014]

Buttle, F. (2000) The CRM Value Chain. [E-Book] Sydney, Australia. Buttle,F. Available from: www.researchgate.net [Accessed 14th March 2014]



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