Using all the data below answer this question related to Kimberly Clark.

 

What Promotional decision should Kimberly Clark take to drive sales. Would it be Advertising, personal selling, sales promotion, PR and publicity, sales plan, sponsorship, direct marketing, packaging, digital marketing strategies?

 

Motivate your answer it should be detailed and well thought out.

 

 

Marketing in Kimberly-Clark South Africa is a multifaceted approach beyond merely selling products. It involves creating value for our consumers by understanding their needs, preferences, and behaviours and crafting products and strategies that cater to them most effectively and efficiently. Our marketing philosophy is grounded in leveraging the substantial brand equity of our iconic brands, such as Huggies, Baby Soft, and Kotex, to create winning propositions for consumers across all income levels. With the influx of cheaper alternatives from new entrants, mainly from China, and the cost-of-living crisis affecting consumers' purchasing power, our marketing investments must yield the highest possible return. This necessitates a strategic and innovative approach, which includes leveraging digital platforms and data to establish direct connections with consumers and ensuring product availability at the right place, time, and price. Ultimately, our marketing efforts are directed towards fulfilling our vision of becoming South Africa's number one personal care brand and facilitating sustainable growth for the company. It is about leveraging our brand in the total lifetime value of our consumers. If we consider we are there when you start your life with our Huggies products, we support you in the toilet tissue throughout your life; when you move into womanhood, we are there with Kotex and eventually into incontinence with Depend. For this reason, we must ensure we give the best experience for the consumers to improve their lives. Living our purpose "Better care for a better world."

 

The marketing department at Kimberly-Clark South Africa is tasked with developing and implementing strategies that align with our business objectives and vision. Our primary objectives include achieving forecast accuracy of 95%-105%, driving gross margin growth in line with business objectives, penetrating white spaces through market development into traditional trade, and meeting our DPSM (Distribution, Pricing, Shelving, and Merchandising) goals and targets for the year. Mix Accuracy: 80% Huggies Diapering Value Share: 70%. Value Share of total Category to increase by 20%, capitalising on market penetration, DPSM goals and targets for the year with a keen focus on Shelf occupancy of 50% in DPSM. In addition to this, the marketing department will focus on several key areas to achieve these objectives:

Brand Management: Building and sustaining robust brand equity for our core brands, Huggies, Baby Soft, and Kotex. This will be done through insight data driven by Nelson and Power score elevation.

Product Development: Innovating products that cater to consumer needs and stimulate category growth. Key product innovations and portfolio changes will be the focus for the next year, as well as packaging artwork changes to strengthen our brand purpose. Execution of Project Panda on Diapering and Project Cushy on Bath Tissue will need to be delivered with excellence on time and meet the business deliverables on gross margin and share. We have not always excelled in this area and must ensure we leverage the right go-to-market strategy to unlock scale speed and through the till output.

Pricing: Establishing prices that mirror the value of our products while remaining competitive in the marketplace. The price strategy will align with our purpose and vision of serving all income levels. It will be about partnering with retailers with a lower cost to serve and are more collaborative in their approach. As we are the leader in the market across several products, Kimberly Clark must act as a responsible supplier and leverage market dynamics and price elasticity information. Leveraging the strength of our brands and ensuring brand innovation and differentiation stay top of mind.

Distribution: Guaranteeing product availability at strategic locations and times. This is measured in our OTIF objective, which is on time in full.

Advertising and Promotion: Crafting impactful advertising and promotional campaigns that resonate with our target audiences and stimulate purchase intent. The key focus will be POME (Point of Market Entry products) like Newborn diapering and Kotex Young. The formal measure of success is that the $ 2 million A&P spend will deliver a 2.5% market share growth by focusing on new sales at the market entry point.

Digital Marketing: Utilising digital platforms and data to establish direct connections with consumers and glean insights into their behaviours and needs. The marketing department collaborates closely with other departments, such as sales, finance, and operations, to ensure strategic alignment and effective execution.

 

A deep understanding of consumer needs, market trends, competitive dynamics, and other pertinent factors driven by data formed from our data lake systems, Nelson data and social content inform decision-making in the following areas:

Product: Product development decisions are grounded in insights from various sources, including digital platforms, hospital sampling program data, and CRM programs. For example, the Baby Soft brand maintains market leadership while driving category growth and innovation in toilet tissue.

Price: Pricing decisions consider multiple factors, including manufacturing costs, competitor pricing, retailer margins, and consumer price sensitivity. The current cost of living crisis and escalating raw material costs necessitate a delicate balance between competitiveness and margin preservation.

Customer Service Levels: We strive for the highest level of customer service, which encompasses timely and accurate product delivery, proactive issue resolution, and maintaining strong relationships with retail partners and consumers. This is a critical deliverable in our organisation, measured through our OTIF metrics.

Distribution: Our DPSM strategy ensures product availability at strategic locations and times. This involves close collaboration with retail partners and leveraging data to optimise distribution and shelving strategies. It's about winning in-store and being available, leveraging forward share and expanding share of shelf (DPSM) to 45%.

Advertising: Advertising decisions are informed by a thorough understanding of our target audiences and the most effective messages and media channels to reach them. For example, the Baby Soft brand leverages the 'Clean is a Feeling' platform, reaching 6.1 million people. This and the "Hug Visor" will be the critical spending focus. Kimberly Clark SA wants to focus its investment on social media to build a connection with its consumers and become a relevant brand partner in everyday life. There will be a deliberate allocation distinction between TV, Media, Social platforms, and in-store activations, with the lion's share going to real-time app development and social media spend. It is worth noting that even though the spending allocation should be on digital preferences, the marketing team strategy is never go "Dark "philosophy. Our brands should be on some feature, TV, Radio, or promotion throughout the year.

Sales Promotion: Sales promotions aim to increase short-term sales and encourage product trials and repeat purchases. Decisions in this area consider the effectiveness of past advertisements, competitive activities, and retailer requirements. We are generally on an ELP (everyday Low price) strategy, with our crucial planogram dates setting clear promotional periods, like easter, Black Friday and Christmas. We always try to have retailers partially fund promotional activities, but this is not always possible, and our trading terms are still being optimised.

The Sales Force: Decisions regarding the sales force, including size, structure, and incentives, are based on market requirements and business objectives. In our case in Kimberly Clark, we usually apply a ratio of NSV (net sales value) to every sales employee. We look to the sales force to play a crucial role in executing our DPSM strategy and fostering strong retail relationships, so correcting this structure and setup is critical.

Segmentation: Market segmentation is based on various criteria, including income levels, lifestyle, and needs. This enables us to tailor our product offerings, marketing messages, and strategies to different market segments and maximise impact.

Digital Marketing: Digital marketing decisions are informed by analysing our target audiences' online behaviours and preferences. For example, the Hug Visor digital platform addresses new mothers' questions and concerns. These apps help us determine what consumers want and need and understand how better to serve them as we drive our goal of delivering 1 million additional app users and reaching an extra 400000 new moms.

 

Marketing and selling are two interrelated but distinct functions within our organisation. Marketing focuses on creating demand for our products by building strong brand equity, developing innovative products, setting competitive prices, and crafting impactful advertising and promotional campaigns. On the other hand, selling involves fulfilling the demand created by marketing activities. This includes order-taking, distribution, and maintaining strong relationships with retail partners. The marketing department collaborates closely with the sales team to ensure strategic alignment and effective execution. As mentioned earlier, there is a very close link in the Marketing objectives with Mix and Forecast accuracy, which helps deliver OTIF (On time and in full 95% service delivery), a key sales and supply chain metric. Any organisation must have an integrated approach to sales and marketing to ensure a holistic approach. The sales team interacts with customers daily, so this fundamental insight and understanding helps the marketing gather data and information critical to driving business results.

 

Another pertinent issue highlighted in the interview is the impact of load-shedding on our supply chain. Given that both our manufacturing plants are in South Africa and are affected by this, our brand plans and marketing strategies must be well-planned and agile enough to adapt if supply becomes challenging. Additionally, the increasing cost of raw materials significantly impacts our ability to maintain healthy margins and invest in marketing and advertising. This necessitates a strategic and innovative approach, leveraging digital platforms and data to maximise return on investment. With the added pressure on advertising and promotional spending, it will be crucial for businesses to maximise the impact-to-spend ratio. This means the marketing at Kimberly-Clark needs to be on point and should be a step above the rest. This is a clear objective for me and my team to measure through critical aspects of Revenue Mgt: Promotional Efficiency, Portfolio, and Customer Mix. Focusing on growth with retailers with a cheaper cost to serve, we can leverage strategic growth partnerships. Lastly, it is essential to note that Kimberly Clark will be investing heavily in social community growth and environmental sustainability initiatives, which must also be leveraged as a social benefit to the brand. The field of marketing is experiencing a rapid transformation. Kimberly Clark must leverage the power of artificial intelligence and digitisation to enhance consumer engagement, personalisation, market segmentation, and differentiation. "Although we don't truly understand how this can be leveraged yet and what the full benefits will be if we can unlock it, it's clear we need to get ahead of the game here before we left behind."

 

 

Sales promotion consists of all marketing activities - other than personal selling, advertising and public relations - that stimulate consumer purchasing and dealer effectiveness. Sales promotion is generally a short-run tool used to stimulate immediate increases in demand. Sales promotions can be targeted at final consumers, trade customers or a firm's employees. Sales promotion activities include free samples, contests, bonuses, trade shows, prizes and coupons. A large marketing communication campaign might use several of these sales promotion tools simultaneously.When Gillette launched the SensorExcel, it sent free SensorExcel razors to 1,4 million 18-year-olds in the United States with a note, 'For your eighteenth birthday ... a gift from Gillette.' The giveaway included a razor, shaving gel and $2 in coupons for replacement razor blades. When Gillette launched the SensorExcel in the UK it gave away some 15 million SensorExcels, hanging them on the doors of houses.23
Often these promotions are very successful. When McDonald's did a sales promotion selling Big Mac medium meals for R19,95 in 2015 they sold more than 100 000 of them in the first hour.24 Black Friday can be described as a 'national' version of a promotion. In 2018, online retailer TakeAlot recorded sales figures of R196 million on the day - 126 per cent more than the previous year. This figure also compares very favourably with R1 million of sales in 2015.25
Often marketers use sales promotion to improve the effectiveness of other elements of the marketing communication mix, especially advertising and personal selling

 

In South Africa there are about 1 300 magazine titles, 120 radio stations, 425 newspapers and 74 television channels. A decision on which advertising media to utilise is a complex one, and it depends on a number of factors. Each medium has its own advantages and disadvantages that prospective advertisers will have to consider.MediaShop has analysed adspend trends covering a five-year period from 2008 to 2013 (March to February). They concluded that whilst adspend is growing, the latest data clearly indicates that the positive adspend trend seen in the last couple of years is slowing down. A five-year trend shows that the total adspend for the period March 2012 to February 2013 has increased by only 6 per cent to R34 452 million. This is after two years of good growth (18 and 12 per cent).6
2.6.1 Media types
Advertising media are channels that advertisers use for mass communication. The five major advertising media are newspapers, magazines, radio, television and outdoor media (see Table 12.1). In recent years, however, alternative media vehicles (such as the Internet and social media) have emerged, offering advertisers innovative ways to reach their target audience and avoid advertising clutter.
Newspapers
The advantages of newspaper advertising include geographic flexibility and timeliness. Because copywriters (people who write the text used in advertisements) can usually prepare newspaper advertisements quickly and at a reasonable cost, local marketers can reach their target audience almost daily. However, because newspapers are generally a mass-market medium, they may not be the best vehicle for marketers trying to reach a very narrow market segment. For example, local newspapers are not the best media vehicles for reaching purchasers of speciality steel products or even tropical fish. These target consumers make up very small, specialised markets and most 'ordinary' readers will not be interested in the message.
Newspaper advertising also encounters a lot of distractions from competing advertisements and news stories, and, therefore, a firm's advertisement in a newspaper may not be particularly noticeable in such a cluttered environment. This is demonstrated by the fact that South Africa has over 400 newspapers targeted at a variety of different markets and local communities