Question

Brand: Montblanc Pen

Questions:

• Design an Integrated Marketing Communications outline for your brand. Explain your reasons for using different media.
• You need to recruit a new sales team for your brand. Explain the different steps that you should follow and also, the profile of the sales professionals that you are looking for.
• Marketing Myopia: Explain what do you think your brand should do in order to stay strong along time and avoid decline.
• Suggest the launching of a new product or service from your brand. Explain how would you cover the different steps of New Product Development in the case of your brand.

Formalities:

• Wordcount: 1,000 – 1,500

Answer 1

Brand: Montblanc Pen

Integrated Marketing Communications- refers to incorporating all the forms of communication tools to form the most suitable promotional result. Advertising, sales promotion, sponsorship, public relation, social media marketing, etc. all come under integrated marketing communication. For Montblanc Pen, the combination of sales promotion, social media marketing, sponsoring university and corporate events and advertising will be the best. We should use different media to capture a wider audience, reduces the cost per piece of product, induces better positioning in the minds of consumers, and increases the goodwill of the company.

To hire a new sales team, one must keep in mind a few steps that will help in recruitment:

1. Define all the roles clearly

2. Use appropriate networks and websites to collect data of interns

3. For the higher roles or executive heads, prefer searching in your own company and then look for headhunters

4. Consult the old and existing sales team for better insights

5. Factors or qualities essential for the sales team will be -

• presentable posture
• diligent and smart working individuals
• attentive and active candidates
• out of the box thinking
• good communication skills

Marketing myopia- refers to the short-sightedness of a company's marketing roles and goals to achieve only the needs of the company and just selling our product instead of looking at the consumer's need for the product. To focus on our brand's existence and growth, we must move ahead of marketing myopia and go for an in-depth study of the consumers and work on marketing as a whole. We must focus on long term goals and ambitions of the brand and try to innovate the product keeping in mind the consumer's changing taste and preferences. Change is the only constant and to avoid the decline of a brand, we must replenish our thoughts and improve and constantly strive to be better than we were yesterday. From introducing new variants, new designs, to new models, and eventually new products, we can grow in many shapes and sizes.

If Mountblanc were to launch a new product or service, given its popularity and it's luxury status, a new product will be Bluetooth handsets which will be an extension to the already existing headphones it sells.

For any new product, we have a new product development strategy. So, for Bluetooth headsets, we follow the following steps:

1. Market research

2. Invest in Research and development

3. Product design and development

4. Competitors analysis

5. Product distinction

6. Colour, model, shape, and size of the product- the outlook of the product

7. In-built features if any

8. Potential audience and segmentation

9. Targeting techniques

10. Positioning of product

11. Marketing strategies

Since our brand is a luxury brand, it will be easy to locate our potential customers and positioning will be easy for loyalty purposes. Also, associating will sales promotion activity or product launch at showroom would increase sales.

Here, first, we will do the market survey as to how many people use and like our brand. Following questions will help us here:

• Is there a need for Bluetooth headsets in the market?
• How many competitors are there in the market?
• What are they lacking?
• Rating the attachment to our brand

Followed by our product design and styling, the color should signify our company's sleek style and format.

The price should be in line with our headphones and also keeping in mind the competitor's pricing strategy.

Promotion should be done through online and offline modes, sponsorships in university events, sales promotion discounts, etc.

This is an overview of what the brand should do to introduce a new product. It can be explained further in any way suitable by the answerer.