This is definitely one of the most fun experiences I had in a course. This is the last course of my MBA at Ross School of Business and I’m glad that I got an opportunity to do a social project. After getting some useful feedback from Prof. Nordhielm I have submitted my report officially. If you want to look at my report you can reach me at abhiana|at|umich|dot|edu
I just want to thank my reviewers who had given some excellent comments on my blog and those feedback helped me a lot to refine the report.
Now that I came to an end of this class and finish my MBA here at Ross. I think the below quote from Ursula K. LeGuin is most appropriately describing my feelings.
“It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters in the end.”
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Updated 5 Box Statement
First of all, I want to thank Megan and Amanjeev for their insight on my STP analysis. I have created an updated 5-box statement based on their feedback. I hope this will make sense with my acquisition -> stimulate demand strategy. My category is "drinking water crisis" so I'm stimulating demand for this category. However, my ideal customer is one who does make donations but not for this cause. Therefore, I’m pursuing acquisition to this category (drinking water crisis). I'm trying to make donors aware of this issue so that they make donations to Charity Water. I'm not trying to earn share from other global causes where I have to do a comparison positioning strategy. I will try to catch up with my reviewers in the class.
Monday, April 12, 2010
Marketing Execution
Before moving to the Marketing Execution part of my project, I just want to reiterate that I’m pursing an “Acquisition -> Stimulate Demand” Big Picture Marketing strategy. The category is “drinking water crisis” especially in the developing world. It is essential to mention these crucial facts of my plan so that you can validate the consistency of the execution plan.
The first thing I have to do is to define some of the search, experience and credence attributes of Charity Water:
Search Attributes: The search attributes in this case are two-pronged. First, it revolves around all the facts surrounding this issue. For example, 1/8th of the world population don’t have access to drinking water and similar other facts which I discussed in my first blog. The next set of search attributes are related to Charity Water’s performance so far. Attributes such as, its financial performance, the list of projects it has funded, the socio economic impact in the project areas, its volunteer strength and so on.
Experience Attributes: I think Charity Water has done a great job by building the technology infrastructure through which donors can evaluate some of the experience attributes. As I mentioned before Charity Water provides features in its website via which donors can track their charities irrespective of the amount. There are numerous testimonials, case study, etc which can definitely help donors to make an informed decision.
Credence attributes: Because of Charity Water’s strong social media presence, extensive PR coverage and above all a dynamic founder has really contributed significantly to an image of savvy, efficient and modern non-profit organization.
Marketing Communication: To be consistent with the Big Picture framework the communication obviously has to focus on raising the basic awareness on this issue. Although, most of Charity Water’s competition in this category communicates similar facts on drinking water crisis I think someone has to do a better job in increasing the importance of this issue in people’s mind. It becomes especially difficult when the crisis is happening at a geographical distant place from the donors. However, I think Charity Water is in the best place to raise awareness on this issue by executing some of the innovative and creative communication strategies. If you visit the website of Charity Water you will find that it tries to promote a message of hope and possibilities. This is consistent with the philosophy of promotion vs. prevention and its impact on donor’s behavior. When most organizations in this category show gloom and doom scenario Charity Water tries to provide a positive spin on this issue.
In addition, Charity Water has to differentiate itself by providing some of the informative message that it is the only organization in this category which is a symbol of transparency and efficiency.
Channel: Lastly, in terms of channel, Charity Water is getting the donations via its website (direct), via volunteer hosted affiliate website, twestivals and some brick and mortar fundraising bash. Except the volunteer organized fund raising Charity Water can control and monitor its channel very well which is essential for acquisition -> stimulate demand campaigns.
Today, I look forward to the discussion on volunteers in social marketing. Like many non-profits, Charity Water has to reach its donor base with very limited resources. However, you lose certain degree of control with volunteers. How would you make sure that your volunteers are executing your strategy effectively?
I will be also looking forward to the pricing discussion. How much should I ask for donations? What is the best way to price discriminate based on my fundraising campaigns? I’m not a great fan of – give us what you can – pricing plan. As a donor I tend to respond better when I was asked a definite amount such as $5 a month will allow a child to attend school.
Monday, April 5, 2010
STP Analysis
I’m fairly comfortable with the organizational objective, marketing objective and source of volume sections of my project. I have discussed my findings and general direction in my last blog. I’m still looking for some objectivity in how to determine the percentages in 4B analysis. May be this will be revisited in today’s class as we were running out of time last week. If you want to look at the draft of my analysis so far I would be happy to share those with you.
The next stage of this project is to define the Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning (STP) aspect of this marketing plan and the first step is to define the set of category and dynamic variables. Remember that my customers for this marketing plan are the “donors”. Therefore, from a donor’s standpoint what are the category and dynamic variables when evaluating non-profits who are involved in “developing drinking water infrastructure”?
Category Variables: Desire to help people who struggle to access safe drinking water
Dynamic Variables: Transparency to the investments of donor’s money, Minimum overhead costs, Reputation of the brand, Years of experience, Religious affiliations, Cool factor
So with these let’s look at the current competitors of Charity Water:
Competitors: water.org, globalwater.org, dropinthebucket.org, waterforpeople.org and many more. Having so many players in this area is making the competitive analysis a bit difficult. How would you effectively do a comparison when the market is so fragmented? I’m sure you might have similar findings and therefore I’m looking forward to today’s discussion on competition.
Anyways, if I map the main and dynamic variables of charity water vis-à-vis some primary competitors I will have Charity Water dominate the dynamic variables of: transparency, overhead costs, reputation and cool factor but it will trail competitors in: years of experience and religious affiliation.
With the above analysis it becomes easier to visualize the targeted donors for charity water. I will take an attempt to describe my target donor as below:
Target donor description: John and Elizabeth Kaplan lives in a suburban community with their two children. Their household income is $90,000 and they donate between $300 and $500 in charity every year. They often donate to help immediate crisis situations such as the Haiti Earthquake, Hurricane Katrina, Tsunami in SE Asia, etc. In addition, they donate for some of their close to heart issues such as global warming, children education, wild life protection etc. John particularly is aware of world issues and he loves listening to BBC news in NPR or PBS. John loves gadgets and he is always one of the first to buy new electronic items. Lately, he was checking the latest 3D LED TV from Samsung but $3000 price tag is too high for him and he decided to put that wish on hold for now. Elizabeth is a marathon runner and she loves the App in her iPhone which could monitor every aspect of her running. This family loves to travel and stay outdoors and they often volunteer in their community. They live an active lifestyle and believe in having fun in stuffs they do. They have a large circle of friends and are very passionate about their hobbies and beliefs.
With the above TA description let me now define the five-box positioning statement for Charity Water.
• Current Belief
– Believe in making a difference by doing charities
• Current Do
– Donate for Education, Global Warming, Disease and other global issues coz they need attention
• Proposition
– Water crisis is a critical issue of our time having significant socio-economic ramifications
• Desired Belief
– Drinking water crisis is real and people are suffering
• Desired Do
– Donate for this cause to a non-profit which can deliver real impact
The next stage of this project is to define the Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning (STP) aspect of this marketing plan and the first step is to define the set of category and dynamic variables. Remember that my customers for this marketing plan are the “donors”. Therefore, from a donor’s standpoint what are the category and dynamic variables when evaluating non-profits who are involved in “developing drinking water infrastructure”?
Category Variables: Desire to help people who struggle to access safe drinking water
Dynamic Variables: Transparency to the investments of donor’s money, Minimum overhead costs, Reputation of the brand, Years of experience, Religious affiliations, Cool factor
So with these let’s look at the current competitors of Charity Water:
Competitors: water.org, globalwater.org, dropinthebucket.org, waterforpeople.org and many more. Having so many players in this area is making the competitive analysis a bit difficult. How would you effectively do a comparison when the market is so fragmented? I’m sure you might have similar findings and therefore I’m looking forward to today’s discussion on competition.
Anyways, if I map the main and dynamic variables of charity water vis-à-vis some primary competitors I will have Charity Water dominate the dynamic variables of: transparency, overhead costs, reputation and cool factor but it will trail competitors in: years of experience and religious affiliation.
With the above analysis it becomes easier to visualize the targeted donors for charity water. I will take an attempt to describe my target donor as below:
Target donor description: John and Elizabeth Kaplan lives in a suburban community with their two children. Their household income is $90,000 and they donate between $300 and $500 in charity every year. They often donate to help immediate crisis situations such as the Haiti Earthquake, Hurricane Katrina, Tsunami in SE Asia, etc. In addition, they donate for some of their close to heart issues such as global warming, children education, wild life protection etc. John particularly is aware of world issues and he loves listening to BBC news in NPR or PBS. John loves gadgets and he is always one of the first to buy new electronic items. Lately, he was checking the latest 3D LED TV from Samsung but $3000 price tag is too high for him and he decided to put that wish on hold for now. Elizabeth is a marathon runner and she loves the App in her iPhone which could monitor every aspect of her running. This family loves to travel and stay outdoors and they often volunteer in their community. They live an active lifestyle and believe in having fun in stuffs they do. They have a large circle of friends and are very passionate about their hobbies and beliefs.
With the above TA description let me now define the five-box positioning statement for Charity Water.
• Current Belief
– Believe in making a difference by doing charities
• Current Do
– Donate for Education, Global Warming, Disease and other global issues coz they need attention
• Proposition
– Water crisis is a critical issue of our time having significant socio-economic ramifications
• Desired Belief
– Drinking water crisis is real and people are suffering
• Desired Do
– Donate for this cause to a non-profit which can deliver real impact
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