Do the assignment asap

Case Study: The Cannon Company

Student’s Name

Institution Affiliation

Case Study: The Cannon Company

Introduction

Dannon Company was among the US subsidiary of Danone, which was one of the largest health-focused companies in the whole world. Its global business centered on fresh dairy such as active yoghurt, medical nutrition, baby nutrition and the bottled water. In 2008, Dannon did manufactured and also marketed the fresh dairy products in US and they became number 2 player in domestic yoghurt market. Dannon’s marketing efforts did focused on the growing US yoghurt consumption and expanding the category, and this was while growing the brands. Dannon has been maintaining some strong commitment to CSR, which was integrated into the overall mission of the company. They have internalized its CSR commitments and programs (Marquis, Et al, 2010).

Danone took some holistic approach to social responsibility and this was indicated by the mission statement. The social values were embedded deeply in the company’s culture and also the business. Antoine Roboud, who was the CEO, communicated the vision of Danone double commitment to the economic performance and social responsibility in 1972. According to the senior leadership, the social responsibility was the basis to the purpose of Danone as the economic performance. This was the double project and it stipulated some equal respect for the social influence and the financial results of the business decisions (Marquis, Et al, 2010).

To Communicate or Not to Communicate?

Dannon should begin to proactively communicate to consumers its CSR plans. Communication with the consumers will improve on various issues with customers. First, it improves education on nutrition and health. If Dannon will communicate with customers, company’s CSR activities and Dannon being the nonprofit organization with some mission, will develop and also disseminate the scientific knowledge on nutrition and diet to benefit the public health via some collaboration with scientists and academics on health professionals and nutrition research. Communication with customers will help in focusing efforts around the children’s nutrition education in manners that are pertinent to any region. The other benefit is that communication will help in the development of customers via various activities such as the “danone way”. This is a management tool that is meant to enable managers to assess the performance among the multiple dimensions such as environment, ethics, and quality among others. In addition, there is the integration of the social goals. In essence, the company did create the nutritional education initiatives and updated the nutritional formulas of many products to be healthier. Communication will also help in bringing closer the customers and the company, and this is achieved mostly by actively involving the local communities through provision of product donations (Marquis, Et al, 2010).

Communication will improve the nature. In essence, Dannon have taken some stance on sustainability, and this will make them achieve some target of carbon neutrality of the most of his products by 2011. Communication will help Dannon and their suppliers to promote environmentally farming practices and also plan on advancing tools that incorporate sustainable development indicators into supplier monitoring and evaluation. Danone trains and communicate the broader company values. The communication of programs ensures there is cultural cohesion and it helps in outlining the practices that Dannon operates. The communication of company values helps in the communication of humanism, enthusiasm, openness and proximity. There are no major risks unto the company if promotes communication in the company (Marquis, Et al, 2010).

Impact of a Corporate Parent

Having a corporate parent played a great role in Dannon’s decision concerning whether to externally communicate its CSR programs. The corporate parent helped Dannon value collaborative decision making and hence, the major strategy and resource allocation decisions were presented to the executive committee, in which case it represented the major parts of Dannon’s business. Therefore, the corporate parent’s global strategy and mission did influence the decisions of Dannon. The corporate parent also had some impact on products of Dannon. Dannon was able to sell and also produce six million cups of yoghurt per day in almost 100 favors, sizes and styles. Then it covered various categories such as light, proactive light among others. The practice even became the vital area of growth and competitive differentiation for Dannon since the launch active (Frynas, 2009)

Corporate parent also had some impact on marketing strategy of Dannon. In essence, Dannon was able to benefit from growth in the US yoghurt consumption, and hence it centered its marketing strategy on rising category relevance per capita consumption. The corporate parent made Dannon to focus on providing products that can deliver some high health benefit, and then communicating such benefit in order to make yoghurt quite significant. The other impact of corporate parent is the people. The corporate parent had the philosophy of engaging with the social environment. Dannon are able to support the community organization via volunteer time and donations. In fact, some of the initiatives provided the volunteers at some local charities to provide help to children in need during the holiday season. Dannon also have to work to ensure the wellbeing and health of the employees via the development of some comprehensive work-life wellness program. Such programs involved the tuition assistance, the scholarship programs for the children of employees, financial assistance and exercise programs (Marquis, Et al, 2010).

The other impact of having the corporate parent involves the fact that it made Dannon’s CSR initiatives to focus on the environment. Such made Dannon company to identify and also promote methods of reducing the cannon’s environmental footprint. In fact, Dannon had to reduce the amount of its primary packaging by fifteen percent and the offices and plants had the regular recycling programs.

Having a corporate parent had some benefits and few risks. Some of the benefits involve the fact that it promotes the social mission and increases its marketing efforts. In fact, a consumer communication strategy that explains Dannon’s CSR programs will be a natural taste, and this is because it will clearly demonstrate consistency in the marketing message and it could also translate to the increased consumer confidence in Dannon. Via the combinations of various corporate level and brand-level adverting campaigns, the company could differentiate itself as the leading player that promoted the health of its consumers via the product line, including the progress of the society in which it carried out.

Some of the risk that the company might encounter involves the fact that the initiative will be difficult to calculate the return on investments since it only provided the intangible benefits. There would be some limited short-term sales as this leads to some difficulty in measuring. There is no realization of the promotion of healthy habits via the initiative of generating the consumptions of its products.

The communication Strategy

It is quite significant to have an implicit knowledge of how to design the communication strategy in order to suite the products. In essence, the communications should be understood by all the people who manage the customers at Dannon Company. There is need for commitment of every one in Dannon Company and there is need for total customer experience from marketing of product, to sustaining the societies to create tools to programming to creating messages via content and training and visuals. The language design should be audible, articulate and meaning sound as made by the action of vocal organs. The reasons as to why the design should invest in design language are because of differentiation and consistency, to save money by resources and leverage of time, brand definition and communication to customers.

The message that should be passed should be consistent, recognizable and also rest on the emotional foundation. The design language should have some principles. One of them is focus, and this helps in defining the customer’s heart. The other is long-term, and this involves keeping re-invention, it should be fresh and unique and it must be capable of repeating experiences. It should be authentic also, and this involves consistent experience, consistent messages and the experience must be real and bases on commitment. Vigilant is another principle and one should stay on top of the customer experience and should be aware of all customers at all times. The other is being original and the company should know what is good about the product and to take chances and make changes. There is repeatable principle, and the company should do the same item over and over and to keep reinventing oneself. Dannon, in essence, require making trade-offs and also deciding the best messages, and this is because one could communicate at once and easily. Dannon should do marketing around some emotional bond with the company, and this will make some sense (Marquis, Et al, 2010).

Therefore, the communication channel that will work for Dannon involves splitting the shareholder groups into internal and external, then determining the needs of every group or subgroup. There is also auditing the communication channels and determining the effectiveness of changes and make improvements. The company should also develop the key messages and to be constant in the delivery of key messages.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Danone’s social responsibility centered on the main areas that involved the nature, the people and the nutrition and health. The nutrition and health involved the communication or rather the dissemination of the scientific knowledge on diet and nutrition, and this was to benefit the public health. In terms of the people, the company focused on the development of employees via various activities and it enabled the employees to assess performance along the multiple dimensions. On the other hand, the company expects the suppliers to promote environmentally faming practices.

Dannon values collaborative decisions making and hence they make the major strategy and resource allocations decisions. Such decisions are strongly influenced by the corporate parent. They also contain the marketing strategy that involves advertising the corporation Dannon brand. The company also should have a good design of communication strategy.

References:

Frynas, J. G. (2009). Beyond corporate social responsibility: Oil multinationals and social challenges. Cambridge [etc.: Cambridge University Press.

Marquis, C, Shah, P, Tolleson, A & Thomason, B. (2010). The Dannon Company: Marketing and Corporate Social Responsibility. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School

Mefalopulos, P., & Kamlongera, C. (2004). Participatory communication strategy design: A handbook. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations