Robert Williams
American Intercontinental University
Developing SwiShoe Brand Positioning
July 24, 2016
Abstract
This report will take you through the steps we are taking to launch SwiShoe. You will see a review of the industry along with a competitive analysis and position map. You will also see our brand strategy and the different methods of advertising we will undertake.
Developing SwiShoe and Brand Positioning
Introduction
The following report will show you the steps we have already taken as well as those we will take to launch Swishoe. Once you are finished reading this report, you will have a full understanding of our launch goals and the steps needed to follow through to reach those goals.
Industry/Category Analysis
An industry analysis consists of analyzing or considering the geographic area (local, regional, national or international), industry (trends and outlook), product, buyers (target consumers) and competitor information (Industry Analysis, n.d.).
Geographic area – There are approximately 33 states including Alaska and Hawaii that are coastal (Oceans and Coasts, n.d.). This is great for sales. This means that we can target consumers in those areas. Some of those states will only be targeted during the summer months because no one is swimming or snorkeling during the winter. While with other states, we can target year round. That gives us our local, regional and national markets then we can look at international markets after we conquer the national market.
Industry – The industry is quite small. We are not a fashion brand like Nike, Puma or Adidas and therefore will not compete with those brands in that market segment. Fila does have a large market share with product ranging in price from $30 to $250. There are also several smaller manufactures occupying shelf space in this market like Vibram and KomodoSport (Competitors, n.d.).
Product – Our product is unique in that consumers are always trying to find ways to make a product have multiple purposes. It following the trend of more bang for your buck. If the produce has multiple uses, this justifies that purchase even more. It’s like the tiny house movement we are seeing now. People don’t want to be tied to one location but still want to own. So they buy a tiny house that can be relocated to just about any state or city. Within those houses, because there is limited space, everything has to have a dual or be multi purposed. Stairs that double as storage or bookshelves. A sofa that is also a bed. A washing machine that is also a dryer. You get the meaning.
Buyers – Our buyers will be those weekend snorkelers, island vacationers and cruisers. We will also have those that are avid snorkelers because our product will alleviate the need to have or put on your swim fins. You’ll be able to carry our product just as you would a pair of sneakers.
Competitors – As stated above, our main competitors are Fila, Vibram and KomodoSports with Fila being our biggest competitor. In addition to footwear, Fila U.S.A. offers apparel and other sports products for golf, tennis, basketball, soccer, yoga, and running, as well as sports-inspired streetwear (Fila, n.d.).
Competitive Analysis (Positioning Map)
There are very few competitors in the swim/walk shoe market and therefore we have the opportunity to set ourselves apart. Here is our SWOT analysis for our shoes.
Strengths – Because there are very few competitors in this market, our brand will set itself apart by being very different and offering something the other brands do not. The ability to not only swim in our shoes but to be able to use them as a form of flipper for snorkeling, thereby relieving the need to don swim fins.
Weaknesses – The retail market being very price sensitive. As retailers try more and more cost savings to consumers, our profits will be squeezed for those cost savings will come out of our sales to those retailers. Another weakness is that our biggest markets will be coastal states like California and Florida. We will have some markets in other inland states but there will not be much call or use for them there since they are not swimming in an ocean.
Opportunities – With the swim/walk shoe market being so small, we have the unique opportunity to bring to market something that is not already available. Other opportunities are moving into the global market for countries that are around lots of water and selling to cruise ships for their passengers who are traveling and are in need of swim/walk shoes. This will put our product in markets we are not currently in and bring brand exposure without the additional advertising expense.
Threats – Because the retail market is very price sensitive, we could operate with very low profits. Consumers are always looking for a bargain and therefore when one retailer has a sale or lowers the cost of an item it almost forces all of the retailers to do so because if the item is comparable, the consumer is going to purchase the lower priced item.
Brand Strategic Plan (Vision/objectives/strategies/tactics)
Your brand strategy defines what you stand for, a promise you make, and the personality you convey (Branding, n.d.). Our slogan will be: From walking to snorkeling and back to walking without changing your shoes. Our vision is to be the first and best swimming and walking shoe on the market. We are the first out of the door with this and it was planned that way. Today, more and more consumers are taking beach vacations and even more are getting into cruising. We want to supply all those vacationers with their snorkeling shoes. Cruise ships are booking at 103% occupancy (FCCA, 2011) and if we can strike up a deal to have our brand onboard, we are golden. As we grow, we will be known for more but this is our vision right now.
With our brand objectives we want to build customer awareness, promote the website and build or add value. We will build customer awareness by advertising in vacation magazines, being visible on cruise ships and at top beach vacation spots. In addition to those, we will also buy advertising on television and radio stations during the summer months for those summer vacationers and the winter months for those trying to escape the snow. With all of those, we will promote the website www.SwiShoe.com for consumers to access and if there are questions or concerns, they can address them there. You’ll even be able to online chat with a representative from our website if you wish. We will add value by donating a percentage of all SwiShoe sales to Save Our Seas. Save Our Seas promotes research, conservation and education on sea life and keeping our waters clean for them (Save Our Seas, n.d.) Consumers who snorkel are usually also concerned with the sea life. There may be more organizations in the future but we will start off with that one. Our strategies and tactics were outlined above. We are striving to compete with brands that have been doing this for a long time but not with our mission. We will do something no other brand is doing and that will set us apart and put our brand on top.
Target Customer Segmentation Analysis
Analyzing potential target customer markets is a key step in the marketing process for companies. A market segment is a select group of potential customers in a larger audience that your business views as its most profitable, long-term opportunity (Kokemuller, n.d.) Our segmentation will be by geographical location since we are a water and land shoe. We are not marketing ourselves as a walking shoe even though you can use them as such. It is a beach shoe that you can use for walking or swimming. In addition to segmenting by geographical locations and prime beach vacation spots as well as snorkeling shops, we will target parents of children 10 years and older as well as single adults 18-30 years old. Many singles are vacationing as a group and doing beach vacations that include snorkeling. Married couples 25 years and older as well as the 45 years and older crowd. Married couples are doing more and more water activities and our SwiShoes fit the bill and more older adults and seniors are branching out in their later years. They are retired or approaching retirement and are still relatively healthy so they want to do things that they were too busy or too afraid to do when they were younger. With our targeting the beach locations and snorkeling shops we will capture many more consumers than we are targeting and that’s a good thing. Let us not forget the sea life activists. Those who would purchase from another manufacturer will look at and purchase our product because of our commitment to donate a percentage of every sale. That alone will push some sales.
Customer Insight
To sustain growth, they must be customer-led not product-led. We cannot just aim for the top of our pyramid. Our pyramid being the avid snorkeling at the top, the vacation snorkelers in the middle and everyone else at the bottom. We have to address them all. Capturing just the top is going to stall growth of our brand. To understand what our consumers want, we will spend time at Divers Equipment and Marketing Association (DEMA) trade show as well as other smaller trade shows. We will also listed to the feedback from consumers with questions, concerns or interests and doing a lot of work at the grass root level will pay off in the long run. Of course, we will not be able to address all issues but we feel that with our finger on the pulse of our customer, we will meet and exceed their expectations. To understand customers, get out to where they are buying/using the products and services you provide – see how they use it, and listen to how they would improve it. To achieve scale, design products and services based on the common needs across target customer groups, rather than focusing on the differences between them (Roberts, n.d.). Not everyone commits to an activity long-term so we will promote value and access.
Brand Essence/Equity Elements
Brand equity is the value of that brand. We add value to our brand by association with conservation but our initial value comes from our name. Everyone knows the basketball she Jordan’s or Air Jordan’s but they are still a Nike shoe. If we start by calling our SwiShoe Nike SwiShoe, our brand has value from the start. Once we are on consumers’ minds we can then drop the Nike part and just be ourselves, SwiShoe. Creating a strong emotional connection with our consumers will help with brand equity and differentiate our brand from the next. Focusing on the ocean and the sea life you see when diving or snorkeling along with the magnificence of it evokes the “Aww” moments and thus gets the consumer thinking of our conservation efforts and support. Remember what Amazon’s Jeff Bezos said about your brand being “what people say about you when you aren’t in the room”? This is what brand essence is all about (JenniferC, 2014). We want our essence to be fun, underwater adventure and conservation.
Brand Positioning
Proper branding can result in higher sales of not only one product, but on other products associated with that brand (Kuehn, n.d.) Brand positioning refers to “target consumer’s” reason to buy your brand in preference to others. It is ensures that all brand activity has a common aim; is guided, directed and delivered by the brand’s benefits/reasons to buy; and it focusses at all points of contact with the consumer (Positioning, n.d.). As stated in the target customer analysis above, we are targeting parents of children 10 years and older, the 18-30 year olds, married couples 25 and older and those 45 years and older whether married or single. We want to show how using SwiShoe you have more fun family time and more time for that family activity – snorkeling. There’s no need to bring sneakers or flip flops, water shoes and snorkel fins. SwiShoe covers all three needs and are still stylish. For the parents with young children, we will have ads showing the children and parents going from dressing in the morning for the day out to them snorkeling then out for a casual dinner all without having to change shoes once. For the other targeted customer segments we will show how there is less that has to be carried, less time changing which equates to more time with family and friends doing what you love to do.
Brand Concept
SwiShoe’s brand concept will focus on simplification of moving from two, three and more activities without having to carry half of your shoe wardrobe. In addition to having the webbing in between the toes for snorkeling, SwiShoes will have holes for draining and venting. Therefore, your feet and shoes dry fairly quickly. My competitors Fila, Vibram and KomodoSports do not specifically target coastal states or cruise lines and therefore that is where we will the competitive advantage with our concept. This along with our commitment to donate a portion of every item sold to Save Our Seas will definitely set us apart.
Strategic Brand Promotional Mix: Traditional promotions with rationale
Our traditional methods of promotions for SwiShoe will be television commercials, radio ads, and print ads to include newspapers and magazines. For the television commercials, we will advertise on the major networks but will also focus on other networks like Discovery Channel and The Travel Channel. Those channels will give us great exposure to this interested in diving and snorkeling and our sea life especially during programs that feature tropical vacation and locations with snorkeling and diving opportunities. For radio, we will spread ourselves from Top 40, Contemporary, Country and Adult Contemporary. Along with these we will also advertise on Scuba Radio. ScubaRadio is the first and only nationally syndicated radio show devoted to diving (ScubaRadio.com, n.d.). ScubaRadio covers all aspects of diving, including the best dive sites, dive gear, live-aboards, shark diving, and much more (ScubaRadio.com, n.d.). Scuba Radio will give us great exposure with the avid and hardcore diver because most scuba divers also snorkel. For our print ads, we will advertise in the travel section of newspapers for greatest exposure. This will be nationwide but will be more concentrated for those coastal states and cities. For magazines, we will limit ourselves to travel magazines like Travel + Leisure Magazine, The Travel Magazine and National Geographic Traveler. But we can get good exposure in DiveIn which is a magazine dedicated to diving. Just like ScubaRadio, DiveIn is dedicated to serving divers and where and what gear to buy. Our dedication to Save Our Seas will serves us well on these sites. We will also advertise in cruise magazines like Port Hole Magazine and Cruise Travel Magazine. For those we will stick to the issues highlighting the tropical destinations. Advertising in most of the newspapers and magazines will also give us advertising on their dot com sites as well. We will discuss this more in the next section – New Media Promotions. If you look at the intended media and example magazines and radio, you will be able to see the rationale behind the thinking for this. We will have to do more research on specific times that will benefit us best for television and radio ad well as specific months that are best to place ads in the magazines.
Strategic Brand Promotional Mix: New Media Promotions with Rationale
According to Kari Porter on Millennial Marketing, millennials “control $1.3 trillion of direct spending power and account for 21 percent of consumer discretionary spending”. This generation cannot be ignored and we have to “speak” to them on their level. This means advertising on mediums that millennials interact with. The internet and mobile marketing is a great way to reach this demographic. Research shows that 51 percent of millennials use a smartphone or tablet to research products and services for shopping purposes. This is where digital content becomes key when marketing to millennials (Porter, 2016). Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest are just a few examples of how we communicate in today’s social media society. No longer do we pick up a telephone to call a friend or family member to get a recommendation on a product we are considering purchasing. We look to the internet and social media to see what consumers are talking about. Do they like a particular product over another? What is on trend? What’s the company’s environmental footprint? Social media and the internet provides these answers and more. 52 percent of Millennials and 33 percent of boomers say that they use social media to say they “like” a brand. 39 percent say they post product reviews, 35 percent say they share a product link and 32 percent of millennials say they follow a product on Twitter (Barton, C., Koslow, L., & Beauchamp, C., 2016). This tells us that we need a strong social media footprint. With more consumers interacting with products today we have to have our own page on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. if we want to attract, retain and gain consumer confidence. This is not just geared to the millennials either. With over 2 billion smartphone users worldwide, not having a large social media footprint is akin to committing brand suicide. With boomers living longer, becoming more active and more technologically savvy, we have to give them a way to interact with our brand. I’m not just talking about having a page on each social media platform that is posted to and checked once or twice a day either. These sites will have to be manned and constantly monitored. If not, it really does no good. If a consumer has a bad experience or has a question you want to respond in a timely manner in order to save the sale, get the sale or prevent a negative review.
Conclusion
As you can see from everything above we have to be diligent and consistently monitor and evaluate or advertising. In today’s society, everything changes sometimes in a matter of days and we have to stay on top of this and keep abreast to what consumers want. Our campaign will do this for us.
References
Barton, C., Koslow, L. & Beauchamp, C. (2016) How Millennials Are Changing the Face of
Marketing Forever. Retrieved from https://www.bcgperspectives.com/content/articles/
marketing_center_consumer_customer_insight_how_millennials_changing_marketing_
forever/?chapter=3
Branding (n.d.) Brand Strategy. Retrieved from http://www.marketingmo.com/strategic-planning
/brand-strategy/
Competitors (n.d.) Retrieved from https://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&page=1&rh=n%3A71
41123011%2Ck%3Askele-toes
FCCA (2011) Cruise Industry Overview; State of the Cruise Industry. Retrieved from
http://www.f-cca.com/downloads/2011-overview-book_Cruise%20Industry%20Over-
view%20and%20Statistics.pdf
Fila (n.d.) Retrieved from http://www.hoovers.com/company-information/cs/company-pro
file.fila_usa_inc.89e7bbb194faf6a9.html
Industry Analysis (n.d.) How To Conduct An Industry Analysis. Retrieved from http://www.
sbtdc.org/pdf/industry_analysis.pdf
JenniferC (April 2014) Brand Essence: Tell It Like It Is. Retrieved from https://blog.udemy.com
/brand-essence/
Kokemuller, N. (n.d.) Target Customer Segmentation. Retrieved from http://smallbusiness.chron
.com/target-customer-segmentation-analysis-77625.html
Kuehn, C. (n.d.) Concepts of Brand. Retrieved from http://www.ck2design.net/branding
Porter, K. (June 2016) Connecting with Millennial Mindset Consumers in Three Steps. Retrieved
from http://www.millennialmarketing.com/2016/06/connecting-with-millennial-mindset-
consumers-in-three-steps/
Positioning (n.d.) Retrieved from http://managementstudyguide.com/brand-identity.htm
Roberts, P. J. (n.d.) Nike’s Growth Fueled by Customer Insight. Retrieved from https://pjdroberts
.wordpress.com/2013/03/02/nikes-growth-fuelled-by-deep-customer-insight/
Save Our Seas (n.d.) Retrieved from http://saveourseas.com/our-philosophy/
ScubaRadio (n.d.) Retrieved from http://scubaradio.com/
SwiShoe Market Fila 2 8 2 KomodoSports 8 2 2 Vibram 4 7 2 0 0 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 Fila 2 8 2 KomodoSports 8 2 2 Vibram 4 7 2 0 0 2 2 2 2 2 2 2
2
2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2
marusk
robert_mkt665.docx
0
