Assignment The assignment will contribute 100% of the assessment. It will be

Assignment

The assignment will contribute 100% of the assessment. It will be in the form of an essay and should be typed or word-processed; it should comprise no more than 4,000 words (excluding executive summary and references).

The assignment will require knowledge of the module material up to and including Unit 8.

Assignment aim

The assignment allows you to apply your knowledge and understanding of the subject areas explored across all areas within the module and then relate this learning to a real organisation.

You will work on developing a strategy that should serve as a springboard for converting the engagements with a brand into new customers and revenue, as well as retaining and building loyalty with existing customers.

Assignment task

You are to take the role of a brand consultant and develop a brand revitalisation strategy and a communication plan to generate better engagement for a consumer or corporate brand of your choosing (this could be the brand belonging to the organisation you work for).

Write a 4,000-word report with references/evidence drawn from both academic and market/industry sources that you will present to the CEO and board of Directors. Focusing on the market of one country (such as UK, UAE, Sweden, South Africa, etc) or region (North America, Singapore-Malaysia, Western or Easter Europe, EU, etc), you are expected to develop a brand revitalisation strategy including a communications plan to generate engagement around the brand.

Guidance for developing your report

The below structure provides a broad and indicative outline of the components and sections required to be included in the report.

1. An executive summary providing an overview of the focus, key analyses, findings and proposals made within the report (no more than 200 words). [5 marks] 

2. An introduction to the report specifying the chosen brand, its business, the chosen country/region market. [10 marks] 

3. A situation analysis of macro and micro environment in the chosen country/region market (clearly identify this in the introduction). This should result in the identification of key strategic issues with respect to the challenges/and opportunities posed by the market situation to the chosen brand. You must specify the frameworks used for macro and micro environment analysis. [20 marks] 

4. A brand audit and a concept map for the chosen brand (based on secondary research). For brand audit, you should apply a brand model of your choosing from those covered in the module. For brand concept mapping, you should support your analysis with the literature on concept mapping technique covered in the module. You should explain the key perceptions and associations of the brand and evaluate these critically (e.g. strength vs. weakness). [20 marks] 

5. A brief summary of the characteristics of the brand’s main current customers. Further, develop two profiles (personas) of new potential target audiences (i.e. a group of people who are likely to be future customers), drawing on demographic, psychographic and webographic characteristics. [20 marks] 

6. A plan for a new communications campaign aiming to engage new target audiences and convert them into new customers. [25 marks] 

The plan should cover:

Media landscape analysis of your chosen market in relation to your two profiles from the preceding task – what media are available in the market, what sort of reach and influence do these have on new audiences for which you developed profiles (personas)? Discuss specific media that are of relevance (e.g. Instagram, radio channels, specific trade magazines) instead of grouping them together (e.g. as social media); go beyond a summary of media a brand uses currently.

A detailed communications plan, specifying a set of objectives and detailing how you propose to engage the two new target audiences with a view to ultimately recruiting them as customers/clients. Drawing on the analyses of media landscape and the characteristics of target audiences identified in their profiles, create a customer journey map for each profile to summarise and present your communications strategy. The journey map should comprehensively consider offline and digital customer-brand touchpoints. In the strategy, specify what type of message, method, medium you will utilise to engage the audiences (potential customers) at each relevant touch-point.

Provide a summary of what relevant metrics and performance evaluation mechanisms you will incorporate into your communications strategy – you may use an augmented version of the customer journey map from the previous task to achieve this.

Further guidance

Please treat this as a business report, and therefore whilst addressing all the requirements above, sections need to be succinct and impactful. Use well-structured paragraphs and include headings and sub-headings. Ensure that the sections are well linked to each other. Keep to the word limit of 4,000 words.

Consider the impact on the reader, please use tables and graphs to synthesise key analyses findings and creative/visual techniques to demonstrate application of frameworks, models and techniques and to make and strengthen your arguments – e.g. infographics, graphs/charts, and mock-ups of social media pages or webpages. 

You can use appendices if you wish, for supplementary information to the main contents of your report e.g. to show how a new and innovative marketing technique has been effectively used for another campaign – a point which you have made in the main body of the report but would like to supplement with the contents in the appendix. However, please do so judiciously, and bear in mind that the marker has no obligation to award marks for your appendices. In other words, there is no benefit in having several pages of appendices because marks are, strictly speaking, awarded only for the contents of the main report.

As this is a business report, lengthy descriptions of basic theory do not add value. So, please use only brief descriptions, if needed. If you use an advanced theoretical approach (e.g. a framework proposed in a recent journal article) or refer to something very technical (e.g. DMP – Data Management Platform), then it might be worth providing a description or explanation for the benefit of the reader.

Good use of references is essential, including academic articles, market research reports, and credible web-sources (referenced according to the University’s referencing guidelines – see next section). Use these to add credence to your arguments, to support your points, or illustrate your understanding of techniques, theories etc. However, there is no benefit in simply stacking-up references to support obvious points, or basic theories (e.g. 4Ps, Segmentation criteria etc).

Please familiarise yourself with assessment criteria (see below).

The provided example sections (see below) are examples only – you do not need to follow their format, although you may wish to browse them for a general understanding.

Assessment criteria

See attached file

Example sections

3 Situation Analysis – Redacted.pdf (attached)

4 Customer Profiles -Redacted.pdf  (attached)

Brand Audit – Redacted example.pdf  (attached)

Harvard referencing style

Students will be required to provide references to the sources used to produce work. This shows what students have read, supports the arguments and acknowledges the work of others. The referencing system used in this programme is called Harvard. The reference consists of two parts:

A citation in the text. This appears next to the information you have used. It consists of the family name of the author followed by the year of publication. Each citation is matched to a reference.

The reference goes in a reference list at the end of your work. The list is in alphabetical order. It contains the full details of all of the sources referred to in the text.

For details on how to create your reference list, go to: 

Academic integrity reminder

It is important for the University to maintain and uphold its high academic standards. If you haven’t done so already please remind yourself of University’s regulations on the presentation of work for assessment following the links below. Please also note that the University’s position is that unauthorised use of any generative AI (such as ChatGPT or Google Bard, among others) in development of work for assessment is unacceptable and is considered a form of academic misconduct (cheating). This assignment brief does not authorise use of generative AI.