Kellogg’s is redoing it’s marketing strategy for the Special K cereal brand with an application called “myPlan” that lets users manage their weight loss goals through the mobile phone, desktop, twitter, broadcast, and print.
This is all part of Special K’s bigger marketing plan to promote the Special K diet. The question that I want to figure out is how is Special K using the mobile electronics to capture the diet market? The Special K diet allows a young and old person to take the challenge and turn it into something that is worth wild for them.To promote this, Kellogg’s users can sign up for four different weight loss programs that let them track their stability as they go along so they can reach an ideal weight, or prepare for an event. As they get closer to the goal or challenge and track their Special K eating habits, they receive virtual badges as rewards for making it so far. If customers of the Special K diet, or challenge, are satisfied with the job Kellogg’s has done, they would like you to recommend them to friends and family or whoever you think might want to take this challenge.
Also would like to make them aware of the health food for conscious women who are taking the Special K diet; Mostly Females from 15-35 in urban and suburban areas, the middle and upper class mostly2. To analyze this further, I will be using Ansoff Matrix, the 7p’s, and SWOT analysis. The first tool that I will be using to examine this more is Ansoff Matrix. This tool of analysis, allows the marketers to consider ways to grow the business via existing and/or new products, in existing and/or new markets.
This helps the companies decide what course of action should be taken.So in this case, Kellogg’s is trying to promote their Special K challenge, or diet to help user’s lose weight by having an app called “myPlan”. For them to do this they will need to know their market penetration, the competitors’ customers, or attracting non-users and convincing current clients to use more of the Special K challenge. Attracting mostly females from the age of 15-35 in urban and suburban areas, the middle and upper class2 are going to be the biggest part of the market penetration. You could also attract people who use different weight loss programs and get them to try the Special K Challenge.
Then they will need to know the product development, the sale of new products or the existing ones in the existing markets. So basically they need to know what’s out there and come up with new things that will help also. Kellogg’s is a producer of cereal and convenience foods like crackers, toaster pastries, cereal bars, fruit-flavored snacks, frozen waffles and vegetarian foods3. So if they have diet things for these products but they taste the same as the regular ones, the customers will love it and want to keep using the Special K Challenge.
There is also a “What will you gain when you lose” campaign.This campaign wants women to have access to moment-to-moment functional support when they are on the challenge4. The “myPlan app complements all of this with motivating, easy and engaging functional tips, tools and recipes that will help the women stay engaged and motivated. The third thing that the Ansoff Matrix analyzes is the market development. The market development will be used as a strategy to earn more money for this challenge.
The Special K Challenge was being marketed to a range of ages but now rebranded to mostly middle aged women that are being targeted for this, due to that they want to lose weight.By targeting these women, we can see the market development coming along very smoothly; the last thing in the Ansoff matrix analysis is diversification. Using diversification, Kellogg’s can determine new products that will help the customers with the Special K Challenge. Like giving them a chance to step on the scale4, this will capture the emotional benefit of achieving the goal they want.
Another appropriate tool for this paper is using the “7P’s”. This marketing mix is a promising way to get people to take the Special K Challenge.The 4 main P’s are product, price, promotion, and place. The other 3 P’s are related to marketing services-people, process and physical evidence. This tool will be very helpful for the promotion of the challenge. One aspect of the 7 P’s is product.
The type of products that the challenge has to offer will help it. For example, Weight-loss solutions. The “myPlan” app has daily eating plans based on a variety of factors. You have three lifestyle options that customize the type of recipes, caloric needs based on gender and age, typical activity/exercise level and height and current weight 5.This date plus more helps determine a reasonable healthy weight loss-goal for the period that you are doing this challenge. It also offers registrants/participants access to support from the brand community and social media sharing; customized support newsletters; coupons and journaling.
The journaling function enables easy and daily logging of an individual’s mood, as well as weight and exercise. This all ties into Special K’s marketing emphasis on encouraging challenge participants to focus on what they plan to gain emotionally by losing weight, rather than fixating only on the numbers on the scale5.The second aspect of the 7 P’s is price. The price of this challenge is a yearly thing. When you first start the participants have to pay a fee and then if you want to keep on doing this you pay every year and you just repeat the cycle if you don’t feel like you have accomplished what you wanted. To keep this challenge going, you don’t want to set the price to high because then many will be unable to afford it, but then again you don’t want to set the price to low because consumers may lose confidence in the quality of the challenge.
The third aspect of the 7P’s is promotion. The promotion part must be effective. What this whole paper is really about is promotion. Kellogg’s’ has so many promotional strategies to start this challenge and to keep it going so I won’t really talk about this because we really already know.
One last tool that will be effective would be a SWOT Analysis. By using the SWOT analysis, we can identify the internal strengths and weaknesses of the challenge and external opportunities and threats that could influence the future direction and success of the challenge.The Special K Challenge internal strengths are as follows: Kellogg’s has been in the market for a long time, it is a well known name in the market, has built up on their brand value, and has a very well established distribution channel2. The internal weaknesses are as follows: Kellogg’s does not have well established products in the healthy snack department, and people don’t stay on this challenge for more than 2 years.
2 The external opportunities are as follows: people are becoming more health concerned, there is an increasing demand for healthy products, and segments of Kellogg’s are expanding.The external threats are as follows: there is competition with other weight loss-programs, a number of competitors’ are already in the nutritious market, and there is a slowdown of the economy, which is affecting the Kellogg’s business. 2 The purpose of this SWOT analysis is focus on the key issues of Kellogg’s and the Special K Challenge. This approach helps the managers of the company assess the most likely successful future strategies and the constraints on them. In conclusion, to promote the Special K Challenge you can use the three tools that I talked about.
You could use Ansoff Matrix, the 7P’s (the most helpful one), or SWOT Analysis to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the challenge and the diet itself. By using all of these tools Kellogg’s can build on the marketing strategy that they have now and turn it into something that participants would recommend to others and go back and use it again for themselves if they think it worked for them. The mobile app “myPlan” helps participants get tips, shopping lists of what to eat and personalized weight-loss management plans for use on the go. So this will also be very helpful for the promotion of the Challenge.
