Strategic Quadrant

This weekend, I started working on the strategic quadrant section of my marketing plan, which I have found to be far more challenging than outlining the business objective of Play 60. When thinking about Play 60's customer definition, I had to decide whether I would focus on the donors or beneficiaries. Since the NFL has such deep pockets and so many players/other employees to volunteer, I chose to use the beneficiary model. Thus, my "ideal" customer is a six to thirteen year old child who is either obese or at risk of becoming obese, but is working on living a healthier lifestyle through participation in Play 60-sponsored events and daily physical activities suggested by Play 60. In contrast, Play 60's target audience would be a child in the same age group who is suffering from obesity or being overweight, rarely engages in physical activities, and eats an unhealthy diet. Additionally, I want to focus on changing the behavior of the target customers of Play 60. Through this campaign, the NFL hopes to get kids who currently do not exercise enough and potentially eat poor diets to begin exercising more frequently and eating healthier.

Determining the source of volume in the strategic quadrant was significantly more difficult, especially because the SOV is far different in social marketing campaigns than in for-profit campaigns. Since I am focusing on the beneficiary model, Play 60 is not competing with other organizations for customers, but instead with alternative lifestyles. I chose to define the category as "physically active lifestyles"; although Play 60 combats childhood obesity by promoting nutritious diets in school and at home, its primary focus is on physical activity.

This is where I hit a roadblock. What exactly are the category benefits of a physically active lifestyle? And what is the category leader? After thinking about it, I decided that the category benefits are "fewer health problems caused by inactivity" and "enjoyment/satisfaction". For many children, these benefits do not have to be a trade-off; most children in the US enjoy physical activities. Obese or overweight children, however, are often overweight because they do not like physical exertion and therefore get less satisfaction out of physical activities. Although I have no data supporting this, I assume that the majority of children in the US value some physical activity and therefore the category leader would be "some physical activity as a part of children's lifestyles". According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, 32% or people aged 2-19 years are overweight, suggesting that the majority of people in this age group do indeed engage in some form of exercise (note: I know this logic is flawed! I cannot account for genetics and eating habits. I do believe that most people who are not dangerously overweight exercise at least once in a while, though).

Most children may exercise occasionally, but Play 60 encourages children to exercise or play for 60 minutes every day, which is significantly more than "occasional exercise". Therefore, the campaign is looking to change usage behaviors from "little or no physical activity" to "frequent physical activity". For the purpose of this project, I define Play 60's overall strategy to change behavior as an acquisition/earn share strategy. The choice between acquisition and retention was easy for me because Play 60 is primarily concerned with changing the behaviors of overweight children who currently do not engage in physical activities. Deciding between an earn share and stimulate demand SOV was tough, however, because it is possible to think of kids who do not exercise as "competitive segment users" or "potential segment users". I like to think of Play 60's targets as being the former because Play 60 is mainly competing with other non-physical activities that children do with their time, such as watching TV or playing video games.

I have to do some more research to finalize the 4Bs section of the strategic quadrant. Specifically, I want to determine how many overweight children there are in the US, how prevalent physical inactivity is among children in my target age range, and how many could realistically be converted by this campaign. Next week, I will talk more about the STP section my marketing plan and any struggles I am experiencing.