Contest Update – The Marketing Plan

After the intensive marketing and business brainstorming session with Max and Lyle from RAG, Beth got to work on the marketing plan, researching and planning strategies for reaching Renaissance Adventure Guide’s (RAG) target markets. The marketing plan for RAG was a little different and more complex than your typical small biz marketing plan, because Lyle and Max are intent on growing fairly aggressively, and they have 3 distinct markets they’re trying to reach. So that means their marketing plan will have 3 channels, each of which has a unique set of goals, tactics and collateral, all of which have to establish their own identity without contradicting or undermining RAG’s corporate brand.

For example, if RAG wants to establish a family friendly identity to attract tourists to their rafting trips, but also wants to capture, young, male locals who snowboard to the kayaking trips, they’ll need 2 distinct sets of materials. These 2 sets of materials will be targeted to 2 totally different audiences, so they’ll have different content and imagery, will aim for a different call to action, and will be distributed differently. And at the same time, both of these campaigns must reinforce the company identity.

A similar example: several years ago Disney had an opportunity to establish a cable channel in Europe, but their partners in the venture wanted to also show, on the same channel but during different dayparts, films with some adult content. This would have been a completely different audience (obviously), but the ads for the adult content would have appeared with the Disney logo, and other branding. This is a case where the new product brand contradicted and may even have damaged the company brand – in this case, so seriously that it’s hard to imagine what it would have looked like or how it would have succeeded. And the Disney folks must have felt the same way, because they ultimately decided not to take the plunge.

In the case of RAG, the stakes are not quite the same. We need to establish an image that is attractive and empowering to families, while emphasizing that some of the products on offer are tailor made for rough and tumble thrill seekers. Reaching such different audiences effectively has made this a more complicated than usual marketing plan, and I’m glad it’s Beth’s job to sort it all out rather than mine.