Successful Marketing
Introduction
Imagine COVID free world and it is spring break time. Your family has planned a nice vacation in Europe to travel to a few different countries. You are excited to see all the new places, new cultures, and try new food. Your plane lands, your first destination is Sweden, you step into the airport excited, you’re starving and the first thing you see is a McDonalds. You are underwhelmed and continue looking for something unique to Sweden but all you are seeing is the same restaurants and fast food as the airports in the states. You get to your hotel and after a long day of travel and flying you decide it’s time to sleep. You wake up for breakfast at your hotel and you see the same breakfast that you have at home. Now you’re confused why you haven’t experienced new food yet.
Contrary to popular belief, Europeans actually crave the “American” style or “Hollywood” style. Big fast food companies are successful at marketing and selling overseas because of three simple and practical reasons. When looking at many articles, the most common themes that I noticed are the use of social media, marketing directly to children, and lastly their products. The use of social media has allowed companies to reach people all over the world from a touch of a phone. Through the use of social media, companies have taken advantage of that to reach their main target group, children. Children are their main focus group because their products are appealing. Kids don’t care if it’s healthy or not; they just want good tasting food and most fast food companies can make that happen. Another shocking thing in my opinion is that companies tend to not change their brand or food depending on where they are marketing. After an interview I had with a Director of International Marketing for Post Consumer Brands, I learned that Europeans want that American style, or the Hollywood style food that they lack. After doing the research and interview I have determined there are three things that make companies successful overseas, Social media, target audience, and the company’s products.
The use of Social Media
The use of social media has allowed anyone to connect to people all over the world. It makes marketing for companies extremely easier to reach people on the opposite side of the world. For example, in an article, written by Morrison (2012), she goes into detail about the use of social media and how it has no borders. The article examines a video campaign from McDonalds that was directed towards Canada. Due to the use of social media, the video campaign gained roughly 6.9 million views on YouTube. America ended up having the highest views on a Canadian commercial. Maureen describes that because of the borderless social media, McDonalds grew in sales in the U.S. because of social media.
Now that was just one example of social media. We all have heard of Facebook I assume, but now you can order to pick up or to have delivered through Facebook. In an article, written by York (2008), she interviews Bob Kraut, the VP of marketing communications for Pizza Hut. When this article was written, 2008, Pizza Hut just hit over 1 billion dollars in online sales, and the majority of those sales came within the last 18 months. Due to that success, Mr. Kraut describes his plan to use Facebook to order pizza. While York interviewed Mr. Kraut, he told her his plans to get more customers “To attract those customers, Pizza Hut is launching a promotion with eMusic.com that gives customers 75 free downloads in exchange for buying a pizza online. The chain is hoping to boost awareness of its online ordering, up its cool factor and build its customer database”(York, 2008, para. 9). York explained how they were hoping for a boost in awareness of their online ordering. Pizza Hut isn’t the only company getting creative though, Emily describes how Subway, Chipotle, McDonalds, and many more are allowing text orders, and other creative and convenient ways to order food through social media.
Target Audience
Fast food companies’ favorite audience to sell to are children and adolescents. According to Boelsen-Robinson, Backholer, and Peeters (2016), in their article, they go through three major companies that give data on how much they are distributing their advertisements towards adolescents and children. About 92% of Coca-Cola’s activities were mainly targeting adolescents. They claimed that half of McDonald’s promotional campaigns were targeted at children, and half of Cadbury’s marketing strategies were targeted at children with an extra 25% at adolescents. These three authors looked into three major companies, Coca-Cola, McDonalds, and Cadbury Dairy Milk. When looking into these companies the three authors found out that the companies were using social media to promote unhealthy food by targeting children and adolescents. They later found these three companies were audited with 21 promotional activities identified. To continue on the Australia theme, the country has high food standards and tough regulations on fast food companies. According to Sacks (2014) in his article, he states that Australia and Fiji focus on the reduction of salt consumption but doesn’t address the saturated fat and added sugar. He states “Product formulation policies, where they exist, focus mostly on salt reduction and changes to the make-up of overall product portfolios, and do not generally address saturated fat, added sugar and energy reduction. ” (Sacks, 2014, para.1).
With the expansion of social media and websites, also comes with the expansion of marketing. In a research project done by Ustjanauskas, Harris and Schwartz (2014), these three researchers looked into the percentages of website ads for fast food on kids websites. Some of their websites included Nick.com, CartoonNetwork.com, and FunBrain.com. These three sites were their top three with the highest number of views per month. Around 30% of their audiences were children. When looking at Nick.com’s stats they averaged about 2,690 visitors a month with 29% being children. On that website they had 84,769 food advertisements per month, making 32% of those advertisements were food based aimed at the children. Similar to this study done, there was another one done by Teinowitz (2006). Teinowits did a study on viral efforts, advergaming and interactive TV, Congress and watchdogs. Similar to Ustjanauskas’s research, Ira found that 85% of the top food brands target kids through TV and the web.
Company Products
A company will not succeed if they don’t have products that people want. In this case, it works out great for companies selling overseas. In an interview I conducted with Tausif (2020), head of international marketing for Post Consumer Brands, I found out when he is marketing his companies products which is primarily cereal, his company doesn’t change the product based on where they are selling. During this interview, Tausif gave insight on how they decide what to sell and where. Post Consumer Brands will use a distributor to help decide which cereals would sell best based on their competitors and what they are selling. They will then pick their cereals and dive into the market. Tausif gave an example on why they don’t change their products when selling in Europe. He explained to me that when selling in Europe their breakfast usually is a sit down meal with eggs, some sort of potato, bread, and meat. While America is all on the go, breakfast is made to be easy and fast. Europeans crave that “American breakfast” where it is high in sugar, fast, and easy to eat.
Similar to Tausif and what his company does, Bragg (2017) did research on how certain companies market certain foods based on the average income of a country. In her article, She looked at six countries in total. Germany and the United States were her two high income countries (HICs), China and Mexico were her two upper-middle income countries (UMICs), and India and the Philippines which were her two lower-middle income countries (LMICs). She looked at three major companies that have a presence in each country, Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC), Coca-Cola, and McDonalds. When looking at the HICs she found that these companies tend to market healthier foods, “HICs’ websites promoted diet food or beverage products/healthier alternatives (e.g. baked chicken sandwich) significantly more often on their pages (25%), compared to LMICs (14·5%). Coca-Cola featured diet products significantly more frequently on HIC websites compared to LMIC websites” (Bragg, 2017, para. 1).
ANALYSIS
The companies explained above, McDonalds, KFC, Coca-Cola, Pizza Hut, and Post Consumer Brands have made a lasting impact on the food industry with how successful they have become. Looking at an article, by Ang (2019), McDonalds started out as a small burger shop, but with how good their products are, the audience they target, and the growth of social media they have been able to climb to become the most profitable fast food company in the United States by making 40.41 billion dollars in revenue a year. With Pizza Hut and KFC cracking the top 20 most successful with Pizza Hut earning 5.38 billion dollars and KFC 4.82. According to Scully (2019) in her article, she lists the top 100 food companies in the world. On her list based on revenue and sales, Coca-Cola is listed number 9 in the world while Post for being mainly a cereal company has cracked the list coming in at number 63. These numbers prove that these companies have become extremely successful by using the three themes and tactics I have explained above. All of these companies were mentioned using these strategies and it seems to be working.
Since companies have such a wide access to social media, they use that to their advantage and reach their target markets all over the world. A majority of these companies tend to target a younger audience, children and adolescents. With the growth of technology that these children and adolescents have had access to it has allowed companies to target them whenever they wanted to. Companies’ products have become designed to appeal and attract children and adolescents and once they see it on their phones, or in a commercial, then they start thinking about it and it doesn’t leave their minds until they get a chance to have it.
INTERPRETATION
If I were head of marketing for a multinational company, I would use social media as much as possible when marketing my companies products. When reading an article by Ustjanauskas, Harris and Schwartz, they had data about children’s websites and gaming sites that show direct connection between companies and children. They showed that companies were putting most of their efforts and advertising into gaming sites that were meant for older kids and young adolescents.
Secondly, I wouldn’t change any of my products, I would keep them as it is and find markets that my products would be successful in. After my interview with Tausif, I learned that his companies and many other ones tend to keep their products the same and only market where their products are successful. In my head I thought most companies will change their products based on where they sell to meet the cultural health standards instead of selling the unhealthy American version. I was wrong though, so after my interview with Tausif I would look for markets where I’d be successful instead of trying to blend into a market where I could potentially fail.
Lastly, after learning about how companies tend to market overseas I would have to tie together all the three major aspects I found. Using these three common themes would make any company successful. Having the right products, marketing to the right audience, and with the growth of technology and social media, there is no limit to how successful you can become not just locally but globally.
EVALUATION
When we were assigned to do this paper, I immediately wanted to do something towards my major, marketing. Being a marketing major, I wanted to find some common aspects that make companies successful overseas. I did, use of social media, target audience, and products. While doing this research and finding these themes, I have found that while other cultures are very different from the states, they are similar in ways that can connect us together and that is through food. We all have different tastes, but when it comes to marketing for these big companies it shows that it can connect us.
In my opinion I believe that the way companies are marketing their products is a very smart way to do it. Sometimes it may be annoying having all the advertisements, long commercials, and annoying pop-ups but it is extremely effective as you can tell. There are many ways to go about advertising and it all depends on what you are trying to sell, but for my research it was food and for food they have adapted with the growing generations and they have made a large profit off of it. So in conclusion, I do support this type of advertising and if I ever become a head marketer for a big time company, I will be using these strategies to sell my products.
Works Cited
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