An Report On Darlie Toothpaste’ S Integrated Marketing

1.0 INTRODUCTION
1.1 Authorization
The CEO of the Haolai Company requested this report on 16, May. The purpose of this report is to provide an analysis of Darlie toothpaste’s current marketing situation and integrated marketing communication program (IMC). It aims to create a new promotional tool to for the target market.

1. 2 Limitations
There’re some limitations in the production of the report. To begin with, there’s not much information about the Darlie’s company can be found in the web. I just can find the Haolai Company is a chemical industry company.
Besides, there is also not much information about the Darlie toothpaste in some authority business magazines and books. Sometimes, I just make a realistic assumption. 1. 3 Scope The scope of the report limited to integrated marketing communication in five areas: the current marketing situation analysis, the used IMC program analysis, the IMC plans will be developed, media plan and some recommendations for the Darlie toothpaste.
2.0 BACKGROUND
2.1 About the company
Darlie is a brand of the world’s best oral care products manufacturer which is named Haolai chemical industry. In the 1930, the recipe of Darlie was developed.
At the beginning, Darlie’s production and operation is in the Kowloon, Hong Kong. In 1997, Darlie transferred all the toothpaste products from Hong Kong to the Chinese mainland. Today, the Darlie has become one of the best-selling brands in toothpaste market in China and south Asia.
2. 2 About Darlie
The main products of Darlie are toothpaste and toothbrush. The concept of Darlie is healthy white teeth and pure fresh breath makes you every day full of confident smile. Darlieh has different kinds of toothpaste according to different effects too satisfy the different needs of consumers.
It has four Series: fresh breath, teeth whitening, anti-sensitivity and for children.
2. 3 Competitor analysis
In the current toothpaste market, it exits many competitors such as: Crest, Colgate, China, bamboo salt, Amway and so on. Analyzing Crest, it is one brand of Procter & Gamble which was born in 1955. It’s famous for excellent high-decay toothpaste. And it is the first to be recognized by the world authority on oral-organization – the American Dental Association (ADA) decay toothpaste. Compare with Darlie, Crest’s market share occupy all over the world not just Asia.
In June 1996, Crest came to China and after one year, it has already been known by everybody in China. The brand concept of Crest is: ‘keep your smile healthy and beautiful ‘. There are two types of Crest toothpaste: series of healthy and series of whitening. Besides, every type of Crest has different products. For toothpaste, Crest has the similar benefits with Darlie such whitening, fresh breath and so on. But the most famous benefit of Crest toothpaste is preventing tooth decay and protecting tooth effectively. About Crest’ s promotion, advertisement on television and internet are the main ways.
But crest has advantages of Darlie, because crest’s advertisement is high-frequency.
2.4 Target market
The toothpaste market can be segment into different parts on the basis of geographic, demographic, psychologic and behavior variables. According to Hawkins, Mothersbaugh & Best (2007, p16): ‘Perhaps the most important marketing decision is a firm makes is the selection of one or more market segments on which to focus. ’ Firstly, Darlie toothpaste is in consumers’ good graces in Southeast Asia because of its advanced technology and unique recipe of product.
Besides, it is popular in coastland of Guangdong province. On the side of demographic, there are not many people know the brand name and features of Darlie In addition, females will pay more attention on choosing toothpaste than males. In terms of psychological, consumers’ individuation demand is increasing with the development of economy and technology. In other words, consumers pursue new feelings, health, white, nature and useful in the modern society. Moreover, young consumers prefer to the multi-functional toothpaste which can provide special feelings like tea fragrance.
From the perspective of behavioral, toothpastes are necessary products in people’s daily life and consumers will buy toothpastes routinely. Besides, young consumers will choose the new products and abroad brands because of their individuation demand. Furthermore, spinsterhood will buy fewer products once than married people and promotion methods affect consumers heavily. In this report, the target market focus on the consumers who like the tea fragrance and want to fresh breath.
2. 5 The Darlie toothpaste’s positioning strategy
There are five competitive advantages for Darlie. Firstly, it has a good management system. Darlie encourages its employees to innovate with a reasonable remuneration and reward. It can motivate the employees to work out the new technology to enrich the products. Secondly, Darlie is good at research and development. As the needs of consumers are changing quickly, so it often makes the change of products like in quality, style and shape, and it continue to introduce new products to meet customer needs. In addition, Darlie has a strong channel advantage.
It not only has distribution channels and end-channels, but also has a geographic strategy, so that it can sale the products through different ways in different areas. Besides, quality service is another strength for Darlie. The good service will shorten the checkout process and satisfy the consumers’ needs, and then makes the customers have a good memory to the products. Last but not the least, freshen breath is Darlie’s important characteristic. Many people think that freshen breath is an important function of toothpaste (2011).
The main function of Darlie toothpaste is breath fresh, so that it will have a fixed group customer.
3.0 IMC PROGRAM
3. 1 The promotional elements mix
There are six elements in IMC mix: advertising, sales promotion, personal selling, publicity, internet marketing and direct marketing. Darlie uses three elements of promotional mix in current market, which is advertising, sales promotion and internet/interactive marketing. Firstly, advertising is Darlie’s main way of promotion. It uses mass media such as TV, radio, magazine, newspapers to attract consumers. The most important promotional tool of Darile is TV advertisements.
Darile input much money in inviting stars as its spokesperson. Besides, it also spends a lot of money on broadcasting TV advertising. For Darile, advertising is a valuable tool for targeting mass consumer market. Secondly, in the promotional mix is sales promotion. Darile also has two major categories: consumer-oriented and trade-oriented activities. In supermarket, businessmen always use coupons, samples, premiums, rebates, contests to stimulate short-term sales. And in the current, Darile has many different selling ways such as wholesalers, distribution, and retailers.
The third variable in the promotional mix is interactive/ internet marketing, which changes by the development of technology. For Darile, in traditional market, consumers only get information from advertising and buy toothpastes and toothbrush in supermarket and stores. But now Darile advertise their products on the websites. Consumers can purchase the products on the Internet or by the telephone. Then the products can be de lived to your home directly. Besides, if the consumers have some inquiries or questions, they can call the customer service Hartline or in online message.
The interactive/internet marketing brings many advantages to Darlie’s promotion.
3. 2 The low-involvement hierarchy
As toothpaste is usually used in people’s daily life, so Darlie is belonging to the low-involvement hierarchy of customer response process. The sequence of low-involvement hierarchy is learn-do feel. It means that the involvement in buying Darlie is low and the customers are viewed as passing from cognition to behavior to attitude.
3. 3 IMC objectives
Darile has three promotional mix elements are being used for IMC objectives based on the response process.
As Mothersbaugh & Best (2007, p 8) explans:’Integrate marketing communications involves coordinating the various promotional elements and other marketing activities that communicate with a firm’s customers. ‘ At first, advertising is a valuable tool for building brand equity. Darile’s advertising transfer the name, logo, symbols, design, packaging and performance to consumers. Because Darile is low-involvement hierarchy of customer response process, it needs faithful relationship to repeat purchase. Secondly, sales promotion is a shift marketplace power from manufacturers to retailers.
People can buy Darlie’s products in local retails such as Wal-Mart. And the retailers have more promotional tools than manufacturers to sell. Thirdly,The business of Darlie change from traditional market to Internet with the rapid growth of technology. Besides, traditional media advertising in TV or broadcast is replaced by internet advertising.
4. 0 DEVELP THE IMC PLAN
4. 1 New promotional tool
Personal selling is as a new promotional tool for Darlie toothpaste. Unlike advertising, personal selling is face-to-face communication between buyers and sellers.
In this report, the target consumers of Darlie is people who like tea aroma and want to fresh breath. The Personal contact in selling focuses more on consumers’ specific need or situation than other promotional tools. Sellers can communicate with the target consumers through telephone, QQ, MSN and email to know their needs and give services. It is more flexible and convenient. Besides, Personal selling also is good to get feedback to modify the types of products according to different needs. For example, if the person has Gums bleeding, sell g the Anti-allergic Darlie toothpaste.
And in this way, it can build loyal customer relationships and Brand loyalty.
4. 2 Major selling idea
Darlie’s ideal market share occupy overall all the ages of the consumers. But In current intense toothpaste competitive market in China, it is impossible. Comparing with the other competitor such as Crest, Amway, China, the central theme of Darlie toothpaste is ‘fresh breath’. And the target market is the person who like tea aroma. Before selling, sellers can make a questionnaire for analyzing the toothpaste market. Darcie can develop specific taste and efficacy of toothpaste, according to the customer’s dental health and taste preferences.
And the seller s also needs to provide good after-sales service for audiences. They can send some new samples; tell them some knowledge to protect teeth, and how to brush teeth correctly.
5. 0 GREATIVE STRATEGY
5. 1 Implementation of the creative strategy
The creative strategy including: advertising appeal, execution style, creative tactics, and media vehicle can be used in development and implementation of an advertising message. Advertising appeal has two categories: information/rational appeals and emotional appeals.
In order to emphasize the Darlie toothpaste’s feature of fresh breath and transfer the fragrance of tea of Darlie toothpaste to the consumers, information/rational appeal of advertisement is better. Using the advertising appeal, people will know more about Darlie toothpaste not only the brand name but also the specific feature. The creative execution style of the Darlie toothpaste is direct and concise. When people see the advertisement at first glance, they can recognize the brand of the Darlie toothpaste. And it is also beautiful, which make people feel fresh and cool. Creative tactics is used to design the actual advertisement.
It has two different types: for print advertising and for television. In this report, the picture is designed for print advertising. Firstly, the background of the print is Danas. And in spring morning, fog around the Danas, which makes people feel fresh. Secondly, it uses the direct headlines, ‘Daile toothpaste, and the fragrance of tea’. It is in the top of the print, which is not very big. As Mothersbaugh & Best (2007, p 311):’ they are often more effective at attracting reads’ attention and interest because they provoke curiosity and lure readers into the body copy to learn an answer or get explanation. On the left of the words, it is a small teapot. And on the right, it is a new design Darile toothpaste.
The Chinese ‘cha xiang’ and English words ‘the fragrance of tea’ print on the body of the toothpaste. It also has the symbol of Darlie, a head portrait. Secondly, in this print, the body copy is the main point. The picture shows that a toothbrush sends out a ray of tea aroma. And the most important is that the tea aroma uses a figure of teapot. And in the teapot, it prints One Chinese word‘cha‘which is written by Chinese style. This advertisement can be used to two media vehicles, the print media and the support media.
Magazines and newspapers are two types of the print media. And there are many types of the support media, like outdoor advertising, aerial advertising, transit advertising, promotional products, and yellow pages advertising and so on. The designed picture can be enlarged or narrowed according to different sizes.
5. 2 Evaluation of the creative strategy
In this report, the target consumers of Darlie is people who like tea aroma and want to fresh breath. And Darlie toothpaste is belonging to the low-involvement hierarchy of customer response process.
It means that the involvement in buying Darlie is low. Besides, Haolai Company is not as well-funded as Procter & Gamble. So it does not have enough funds to input in advertisement. So this creative strategy for print advertising has its own advantages and disadvantages. First at all, the tea fragrance of Darlie toothpaste is one of the most important advantages. It is a specific smell and taste which other toothpastes have. It has good effects on creating awareness among the target market. Besides, the advertisements on magazines can be accepted by consumers more easily.
Most audiences pay much attention to the magazine when they read it. Toothpaste is a low-involvement product, while magazines can express the information about the product to the target market effectively. In addition, it saves the cost. It does not need Celebrity endorsements and TV ads, which is expensive. While there are also some disadvantages. One of the disadvantages is current market saturation. Too many companies select to use advertising medium. The Darlie toothpaste’s promotional products may be ignored by consumers. Besides, TV ads appear more frequent than print adverting.
The print ads can not impress the consumers repeat by repeat in a short time. Moreover, it lacks of the effect of celebrity, which make low brand loyalty.
6.0 CONCLUSIONS
After analyzing the current market of the Darlie toothpaste, it can be concluded that:
6.1 The current marketing situation of Darlie toothpaste, the including the background about the company, market share, the introduction about the product , competitive analysis, the Darlie toothpaste’s target market and Darlie’s positioning strategy.
6. 2 Three promotional elements of the IMC mix have been used in the report.
Advertising, sales promotion and interactive/ internet marketing, the IMC program such as the low-involvement hierarchy and the Darlie toothpaste’s IMC objectives have been discussed in the report.
6.3 Developing the Darlie toothpaste’s IMC plan. New promotional tool and major selling idea has been made.
6.4 Implementation and evaluation of the creative strategy
7.0 RECOMMENDATION
It is recommended that:
7. 1 As a low-involvement product, the company should pay more attention to the brand when advertising on mass media.
7. 2 Personal selling is as a new promotional tool for Darlie toothpaste.
The company should strength the communication between consumers and sellers.
7. 3 Free samples and bundling can be used. And the company can promote the toothbrushes in the supermarkets by setting an experience place for attract more consumers. The company should develop specific taste and efficacy of toothpaste, according to the customer’s dental health and taste preferences. Besides, good after-sales service for audiences is necessary.
7. 4 The new creative strategy for print advertising can be used. It can build the Darlie toothpaste‘s image of fresh breath.