4 Ps

For my final post, I want to talk a little bit about the 4 Ps of my marketing plan. After completing the product portfolio matrix, I was able to identify 5 main Play 60 products, their attributes, and their relative importance. My list of products (in order of importance) follows:

1. After-school activities sponsored by Play 60: this includes sports teams, leagues, and other activities held after school that are ran and managed by Play 60. A good example is NFL Flag, which is a Play 60 flag football league that attracts children in my target age range. The main search attribute for this type of product would be "a chance to spend time with a group of my friends or make new friends" and the main experience attribute is "a fun activity".

2. Special Play 60 community events: Play 60 frequently holds big events where children can come and participate in different athletic activities and skills competitions with NFL players and personnel. Play 60 recently held an event like this in Central Park for the NFL draft. The main search attributes are "a day full of activities", "the chance to interact with NFL players and coaches", and "an opportunity to have fun with a large group of kids my age".

3. In-school promotion with NFL players: Play 60 sends NFL players to local schools to emphasize the importance of physical activity and get kids excited about athletics and other Play 60 products. A search attribute is "the chance to spend time with local NFL players" and an experience attribute is "learning fun ways to get active".

4. Play 60 challenge: this is an online planner that encourages children to log the time spent doing physical activities and helps them track their progress.

5. Interactive website with activity suggestions: the Play 60 website is geared towards children; it is an online community where kids can talk about sports, their favorite physical activities, and recent/future Play 60 events. It also provides activity suggestions from NFL players and trainers.

Promotion/communications

Since I have chosen an acquisition/earn share strategy, I want my communications objective to be informational and behavioral. For the informational aspect, I want to communicate to my target that getting active can be a rewarding social experience and fun with the help of Play 60 events, after-school athletics, and the interactive website. I also want to make a call to action in my marketing communications. This involves directly asking children to start actively playing for 60 minutes every day. Although the behavioral component of my communications will be tricky to execute, it is crucial to the success of the Play 60 campaign. In planning my communications, I want to focus primarily on the research and purchase channels. Within the research channel, I want to employ word of mouth (testimonials would be especially relevant here), in-school promotion, website, and TV spot marketing communications. In the purchase channel, I would use marketing communications such as public relations campaigns, local print ads, and the website to improve access to the product.

Pricing

In Play 60's situation, the cost of the products is not monetary, but is an opportunity cost instead. Specifically, it is the time children could be spending doing other activities. I think trial pricing makes a whole lot of sense here. For inactive children, physical activities can be very difficult at first. With trial pricing, I would urge them to start slow, with only 15-30 minutes of exercise every day. From there, they could work their way up to the full 60 minutes every day. Competitive pricing would also be effective. Play 60 could say something along the lines of: "in the same time it takes you to play a game of Madden 2010, you could be having fun playing real football with your friends". I identified Play 60's customer benefits as "improved self-esteem", "positive social interactions", and a "healthier lifestyle" whereas the costs are "time" and "difficulty of getting into the routine of exercising". When thinking about the benefits/costs in terms of customer lifetime value, I believe the benefits of Play 60's products far outweigh the costs.

Place

Since I am hoping to steal share from other voluntary activities, locational convenience is extremely important. Play 60 events should be held in major metropolitan areas because they would offer the best access for the largest number of children in my target. Additionally, Play 60 should coordinate activities with schools in as many regions of the country as possible to further expand its reach and accessibility. The most important channel members I identified were schools, the Play 60 website, parents (this is the most important channel member, in my opinion), sports teams sponsored by Play 60, NFL club members, and partners like the United Way. All of these channel members add value to the "product" and "place" aspects of Play 60.

In conclusion, I want to thank all of you who have taken the time to read my blog and provide valuable feedback. Social marketing can be confusing at times and its been nice to have so many people constructively comment on my ideas. If your project is one that I will be reviewing, I look forward to seeing your completed marketing plans. I am sure they will all be great!