Description
Winchester School of Art
ARTD3064 Assessment Brief – Academic Year 2024/2025
Module Code ARTD3064
Assessment Type Illustrated Marketing Campaign Plan (in two parts)
Part 1: Analysis
Part 2: Strategic Marketing Plan
Module Title Digital Marketing
Weighting 30% Analysis
70% Strategic Marketing Plan
Module Leader Alice Janssens
Module Leader Email a.g.janssens@soton.ac.uk
Launch Date 30 September, 2024
Word Count Part 1: Analysis – 1500
words Part 2: Strategic Marketing Plan – 3500 words (References not included in word count)
Submission Date and time by 16:00
Analysis Week 5: 31/10/2024
Strategic Marketing Plan – Week 15: 09/01/2025
Assessment Brief Details:
The assignment is set to ascertain that you have grasped and can apply key learning points taught during your module. The point is to encourage you, in a marketing and consultancy capacity, to evaluate, judge, analyse and make decisions using the material provided in addition to your own knowledge and research. Your ultimate objective is to present a coherent, creative and convincing illustrated Marketing Campaign which is strategic, tactical, and compelling enough to persuade a stakeholder to invest money in it.
The case below is that of an imaginary organisation. It includes descriptive facts and figures that you will be expected to work with within your brief. There is no ‘model answer’ to follow because it is up to individual marketers to interpret the brief and we do not wish to inhibit your creativity. The information below will guide you through how to approach your assignment and what you need to include. The Digital Marketing Assessment Guidance document on Blackboard has further details about how you should complete the brief.
The Company:
Your brand is an online gender-neutral streetwear brand focused on sustainability, quality, and supply chain transparency. Prices range from £150 to £800 across the product range. The company has built a niche following of sustainability and transparency focused streetwear lovers who feel that the drop system that has typified the streetwear sector encourages unnecessary and harmful overconsumption.
Despite very little marketing action on their side, the UK-based company has built a strong, but niche reputation thanks to name drops and wears by British, American, and European musicians, actors, and influencers. Word of Mouth (WOM) and organic searches driven by their focus on longevity, transparency, and lasting style have allowed them to develop a small but engaged customer base which appreciates the brand for its values, products, and excellent customer service.
Their range includes
– Clothing: trousers, tops, jumpers and sweaters, skirts, dresses, and shorts
– Accessories: bags, hats, scarves, socks, and keyrings
– Sizes: 6 – 24
– Style: Streetwear aesthetic
– Strong brand identity (you will need to creatively display this within your report)
Current Audience:
The brand has never really considered their market in detail as they believe their community is less about demographics and more about common fashion sense, interests, and values. Their business so far has succeeded because of WOM and organic community development which they have largely not been involved in. Provisional research has shown that their customers are broadly sustainability focused career professionals in the creative industries who live in the UK (currently where the brand ships to). Their audience have a tendency to follow minimalist lifestyles, focusing on quality rather than quantity of owned[1]items. They often shop organically, follow active, vegan or vegetarian lifestyles and have a strong love for culture and the creative industries. They place a premium on transparency and are vocal within their communities and social groups about social change, environmentalism, and overconsumption.
*Note: The brief requires you to prepare more detailed target segments/ personas for the brand to achieve better ROI through clear alignment to segments and digital marketing activity/ spend.
Campaign Activity:
The brand was set up by three UK-based friends in 2022 who bonded over their love for streetwear, gender neutral clothing, and a passion for sustainability. The negative impact that the COVID-19 Pandemic and the grounding of the ‘Ever Given’ ship in the Suez Canal in March 2021 had on global supply chains by slowing the production and delivery of goods, made the friends think about how many goods there are travelling around the world and how reliant we are on international trade networks. They researched the supply chains of their favourite streetwear brands and felt increasingly uncomfortable about their previous purchases and love for streetwear drops. Following much discussion, they decided to set up their own brand to lead change in the streetwear industry by means of transparency and trendless style. The brand’s launch activity focused mainly on social media (Instagram), WOM, and a basic website presence showcasing products and their supply chains. A printed Zine created by one of the founders was also directly mailed to circa 500,000 prosects using cold call lists and was supported by an online search campaign.
In line with other clothing brands, the company experiences seasonal and event related (e.g. Christmas) peaks in demand. They continue to mail their Zine twice a year (direct marketing) in February and September to all opted-in contacts on the database.
The brand has a basic social media presence and a fully functional, but basic, e-commerce website. The website has an option to sign up for updates and the catalogue which requires a name, address, and email and is GDPR compliant. But, this is not very visible. They have continued with broad Pay Per Click (PPC) activity (e.g. ‘streetwear’, ‘unisex’, ‘sustainable’ ‘gender neutral fashion’) spending about £4,000 a month and engage in some social media activity but their digital marketing lacks consistency and planning. On this basis they are generating a stream of new customers, however these activities have not been changed since 2022 and their effectiveness is declining. The Cost Per Customer (CPC) has risen from £40 to £60 as the market becomes more challenging and consumer demand decreases.
The Brand Community:
The brand currently have circa 12,000 customers based in the UK and a slowing growing opted-in prospect list of circa 2,500. The Average Order Value (AOV) of customers is £200. Repeat customers tend to spend more. All transactions sit on their Customer Relationship Management (CRM) database, but purchase patterns have never been analysed.
Challenges and targets:
With the increasing interest rates and cost of living crisis hitting the UK and European markets in 2023 and continuing into 2024, acquisition rates have started to slow. Only 3000 new customers were recruited in 2024 and costs per customer are increasing. The brand team are starting to question what their next steps should be, but are unsure as they have not looked in detail at their business’ successes and failures so far. They do not know enough about their customers – who they are, what they buy, or why they buy. They have relied too heavily on organic search, WOM, and organic community development that was not led by them. They are not testing their approach and therefore not getting the best return on their marketing budget.
Their primary focus now is to explore how omnichannel digital marketing can better support and boost their overall acquisition target of 6,000 new customers for 2025 – 2026. As they see this as a testing phase, they are committed to continuing with existing activities for the next year – forecasting them to deliver 2,500 new customers. But, alongside this they have allocated a budget for a new strategic marketing plan and campaign to support their target. This is based on a higher allowable cost per customer and factors in the need to test and learn, which they expect to be part of the proposal. While new customers aren’t profitable on the first sale, repeat purchase levels are high and generate a healthy payback, especially if customers feel part of a community.
There is currently debate going on within the company about what the best approach for a future campaign should be. Of the three members of the leadership team, one feels that the approach should be based around community, the second feels it should follow a sustainability perspective, and the third is wondering whether developing a rental part of the business would better serve their needs. You may choose one of these approaches to focus on in your report.
Task: You have been briefed by the company team to develop a strategic digital marketing plan and campaign focused on one of the three founders’ ideas (please select one):
- Community development
- Sustainability and transparency
- The company’s new rental service
Your goal is to acquire 3,500 NEW customers with an increased AOV of £300 (in the case of the rental service the AOV will be weighed out over the course of the year). The campaign should run from January 2025 – January 2026. Your budget is £60,000.
You will be required to select your brief focus area on October 14, 2024.
Your digital marketing plan and campaign should include the following- an indication of weightings for each section has been provided to help guide your writing:
Part 1: Analysis Report addressing the first two letters of SOSTAC (SITUATION and OBJECTIVES) – Situation: analyse the business situation exploring external environment and internal environment – Objectives: develop SMART long-term, medium-term and short[1]term campaign objectives for your campaign covering sales, market share, customer service and efficiency gains 30%
Part 2: Strategic Marketing Campaign addressing the last four letters of SOSTAC (STRATEGY, TACTICS, ACTION AND CONTROL). This will include the following:
- SMART Objectives (updated if necessary)
- A segmentation and targeting strategy supported by personas, propositions, messages, and channel strategies for these (20%)
- A digital marketing media plan providing channel details and selection justification, examples of how channels will be used to target audience segments, integration, testing, and timing. (30%)
- A creative brand identity including logo, brand colours, asset mock ups which is embedded throughout the whole of the plan (10%)
- A budget that demonstrates how your plan will deliver on your campaign objectives, showing performance by channel through to sales (customers), Average Order Value, revenue, and Cost Per Click (10%)
Books and Reading List:
Chaffey, D., and Smith, P. R. (2023). Digital Marketing Excellence: Planning, Optimizing and Integrating Online Marketing. Sixth Edition. London: Routledge.
Chaffey, D., and Ellis-Chadwick, F. (2019). Digital Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice. Seventh Edition. Harlow: Pearson.
Palmatier, R. W., Sivadas, E., Stern, L. W. and Ansary, A. (2020). Marketing Channel Strategy: An Omni-Channel Approach. New York: Routledge.
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