Smell Great My Primary Vals

Smell Great

My primary VALS type is innovator and my secondary VALS type is thinker. "The primary VALS type represents your dominant approach to life. The secondary classification represents a particular emphasis you give to your dominant approach." I am not surprised by these results. I tend to view myself in this way, and the questions that were being asked seemed to point in this direction as well.

The target market for SmellGreat is males and females aged 18-34, with an average annual income in the $45-60K range, a college degree and no children. The way to translate this target market into a buying target for media is to map out the best media channels whose audience most closely fits with this target market. Because the target demographic is fairly broad, it may be that a multichannel advertising campaign is most effective, especially given the way that individuals in this target market often divide their time between media channels, even simultaneously (Johnson, 2011).

The VALS survey has six different outputs. These are the two primary VALS types of innovator and survivor. Each of these has three secondary types. Innovators can be thinkers, achievers or experiencers; survivors can be believers, strivers or makers (Strategic Business Insights.com, 2011). Of these, the target market for SmellGreat is going to consist of the innovators. The target market will be fairly comfortable financially, which corresponds with young people who are innovative in nature. They are motivated people with ample resources. By marketing to this image, SmellGreat will not only appeal to this market, but can expect some crossover into the survivor market as well, due to the aspirational value of the message.

Our media plan focused on direct marketing, radio ad, television, banner ads, Facebook page and Google AdWords. Of these, most are fairly congruent with our target market. There is a case that perhaps direct marketing is not, however. Direct market is a costly approach for a fragrance, except for in-store promotions. There is guarantee that it will be any more effective at reaching our target audience than any other form of promotion. However, our audience does watch TV and use the Internet extensively. They may not listen to as much radio, however. Thus, the only refinements that need to be made will be to cut the direct marketing component of the strategy. The radio ads will be subject to effectiveness, but they are inexpensive so might be a better option than television early in the product life cycle.

Step 3: Ideally, we want to be able to reach a large portion of the potential audience with this product. As a result, exposure among our target audience should be 60% name recognition within six months. Exposure among the total audience should be 10%, ensuring that we have some spinoff. We want to have a fairly strong reach, and this will be supported by an extensive campaign. The idea of having a high level of reach is that our competitors all have a very high brand reach. The brands against which we are competing tend to be household names. In addition, new brand introductions in the industry have entered the market with a very high level of saturation marketing. This allowed such brands to capture significant market share relatively quickly. Lastly, brands that are not widely known are typically viewed with suspicion by consumers, especially brands trying to compete as premium.

The average frequency will be five times per week. For those consumers that we are reaching, we want to be able to bring the SmellGreat name to their brains and eyeballs with a high degree of frequency. The five times per week reflects the ability of the company to reach the consumer during the work week, either on radio or television. Our target market is active during weekends, and therefore will be much harder to reach, but because they make a good living they must work all week to make that happen. As a result, these weekend warriors must receive our message at least once per day during the work week. Through this high level of exposure, we hope to achieve not only brand recognition but some excitement about the brand as well that will translate into an intent to purchase.