Walmart Threatened by Internal Complacency

Few companies can be number one in an industry, these companies are innovative, ahead of their time, deliver to consumers what they want and change industry expectations. Walmart has held a choke hold on the supermarket industry since 1972 when they first appeared on the NYSE, opened their 51^st store and achieved record sales of $78 million. Walmart through the late 1900’s and early 2000’s pushed innovation in logistics, marketing, satellite communications, and inventory. Since 2004 when E-commerce started to take off Walmart has quickly begun to lose their chokehold on the market.

               Due to Walmart’s complacency through the rise of E-commerce, they have entered a state of crisis management. Amazon is a significant competition to Walmart’s business model due to their logistic advancements and bringing the supermarket to their customers home via the internet. Walmart has finally wisened up by updating their website to look eerily similar to Amazon’s. (see picture below)

 

   












   
    Walmart has also initiated a marketing campaign to combat one of Amazon’s weaknesses, membership only free two-day shipping. Throughout these ads and on Walmart’s webpage they explicitly emphasis their free two-day shipping to everyone. (see ads below)

  

What is Walmart doing?

Walmart at this point is copying Amazon and frankly, that is one of the best moves they can make at this point.

What should Walmart have done?

Walmart given the vast amount of assets they had over the competition should have been doing market analyses. While they maintained the lead in the industry they should have been adapting to changes to ensure that their company thrived into the new age of the internet.

What can Walmart do now?

Walmart given their vast network of distribution centers and supermarkets should emphasis their E-commerce platform and expand into the grocery and produce delivery market. Amazon for years has tried to take hold of this market and due to the logistical challenges of bringing produce to customers houses has seen little success in this market. Due to the high density of Walmart’s within the united states, Walmart would have no problem converting Walmart’s centralized within highly populated areas into delivery nodes in their logistics network. Additionally, Walmart should market themselves as directly against Amazon before it is too late. They can accomplish this by continuing to emphasize the barrier to service that Amazon has which is their membership fee. (see distribution of Walmart’s vs Amazon Fulfillment centers below)

Amazon Distribution & Fulfillment Centers

Walmart Distribution Centers & Stores              

Listening to Brands: Tide Pod Challenge

    The company’s social media presence I observed was one of Procter & Gamble’s products: Tide Pods. Tide has a value proposition of providing reliable quality laundry detergent at a reasonable price. Recently, their marketing department has been faced with threats to their brand image with the introduction of the Tide Pod challenge into social media culture.

    Throughout the entire year of 2017, there were a reported 54 intentional poisonings. However, during the peak of the Tide Pod challenge (January 2018), there were a staggering 134 intentional poisonings in just one month. The Tide Pod challenge is being spread predominantly by people between the ages of 12 and 16. This is supported by the statistical increase in intentional poisonings, as well as the influential nature of this age group. Through my social media observations, I noticed numerous people joking about the challenge unknowingly perpetuating this very real and dangerous “challenge.” This challenge has negative effects that are quantified by the increase in the number of people poisoned and people killed. To my surprise, four months after the height of the Tide Pod challenge, there are still hundreds of posts with the hashtag (#tidepodchallenge) every day, here are just a few examples:

Most of these posts are meant to be satirical and from a superficial perspective, these posts possess some degree of comedic value. Despite all this, the comedic value does not offset the negative effects this has on the influential age group involved in the challenge.

    The real challenge here is the challenge that Tide Pod's marketing team faces; their brand image is under attack. This trend has the potential to undermine all Tide's past marketing campaigns to construct their brand image. The loss of control the marketing team would face if their brand image gets hijacked by social media trends is detrimental to the company's success in the long run. This trend could re-correlate the message people receive when they look at Tide's brand from their value proposition "providing reliable quality laundry detergent at a reasonable price," to a message with a much more negative connotation.

   The company responded hesitantly as to not fuel the trend with the following video:

What should Tide PODs be used for? DOING LAUNDRY. Nothing else.

Eating a Tide POD is a BAD IDEA, and we asked our friend @robgronkowski to help explain. pic.twitter.com/0JnFdhnsWZ

— Tide (@tide) January 12, 2018

    After posting this video, Tide did not respond further to this trend. By breaking their silence and making a stance, Tide was able to drastically reduce the negative attention focused on the company.

   I believe Tide did the best job they could to mitigate the damage to their brand given the situation they were in. They did this by responding promptly with a clear stance. If I were in this situation, I would do everything Tide did because it was effective at minimizing damage. In addition to the actions they took, I would emphasize the severity of the situation. Specifically, I would make a public statement that we are doing everything in our power to ensure that trends like this involving our products do not happen again. Finally, I would make a point of increasing warning label visibility and making the emergency contact information more clear.

   In conclusion, I believe that the Tide Pod challenge had devastating consequences for both the company and the victims. Tide responded quickly with a strong message, which helped to reduce any further damage. With all things considered, I stand strongly behind Tide's actions and agree with their press release to say, "No No No to eating Tide Pods."

    Selyukh, A. (2018, January 30). Teenagers Are Still Eating Tide Pods, But Don't Expect A Product    Redesign. Retrieved April 19, 2018, from https://www.npr.org/2018/01/30/581925549/teenagers-are-still-eating-tide-pods-but-dont-expect-a-product-redesign    Statistics on Tide Pods affect on intentional poisonings

Marketing In The News: The WWF Approach to Spreading Their Message

Looking through the web I saw many potential ads to examine since marketing agencies have been getting more and more clever in the ways they deliver their messages. This ad by WWF caught my attention due to its covert nature, I commend them for the way they targeted an audience and grabbed their attention without initially disclosing the fact that it was an ad.

            This ad by WWF depicted many serene images on 9 of the top travel-oriented Instagram accounts, followed by the hashtag #TooLatergram. A commonality between many of these Instagram pages is the “don’t you wish you were here?” vibe. The interesting thing about these images is that they were photoshopped to take out the terrible environmental effects that humans have had on them. These pristine locales no longer exist and are impossible to visit in their depicted form due to the terrible impact the industrial world has had on them.

The company that leads this ad campaign (The WFF) is a leader in environmental protection and their goal is to raise awareness about the environment, and their value proposition is to mainstream sustainability. This marketing campaign was unique due to how they utilized the social media platform, the hid their message in a place where people looked, where people wanted to see images of luscious environments, and when they grabbed the attention of their audience they dropped their message like a bomb. These places were destroyed by pollution, construction, and climate change and the only way to return to these locations in their original form is through pictures and photoshopped images of the ravaged landscape.

               This ad campaign was extremely effective in capturing their audiences’ attention and delivering an important message, but I believe it could have been more effective. If I was the marketing manager at WWF I would have seeded Instagram with photoshopped images for months, letting everyone enjoy the photoshopped landscapes that no longer exist. Then I would execute the plan, by adding a secondary picture to all the photos we released, that showed the true state of the locations, (polluted, mined, deforested, uninhabitable). People on Instagram would then have a connection to all these environments that were impacted by modernity and then have an incentive to question the way they go about their days and what impact they are having on their local and global environment.

               This ad campaign reinforced a lot of the material we learned in Seth Godin’s purple cow, it was unique, punctual, interesting, and caught people off guard. From this ad campaign I learned how strategic and unobtrusive you can be in spreading your message, this is the guerilla warfare of marketing.

AD CAMPAIGN: http://creativity-online.com/work/wwf-toolatergram/54256

A little About Me and Why I'm In This Marketing Class...

I enrolled in Marketing 223 because I know it's one of the important business functions alongside, Accounting/Finance, Supply Chain Management, and Human Resources. The main focus of my education and my business goals are to eventually fall into the Accounting/Finance business function. Today in the business world I see a lot of cross-integration between the different business functions. Knowing this and getting training in all the different business functions will give me a competitive advantage in the workforce by being able to accurately and efficiently communicate between functions. This will be especially useful due to the rise of cross-function integrated information systems.

    Marketing interests me because it pertains to not only products and services but can also apply to marketing yourself, especially in our social media focused world. I believe being able to portray yourself in a professional and appropriate manner is very important in securing a job since the job market is becoming more and more competitive. My mentality is, you are a service to a business by being employed there, so market yourself as the gosh darn best service you can be. 

    A lot of my passion is in business and maximization in business environments, but that is too closely related to what I do while I'm at work and school so I will steer away from that. The little time that I do have outside of work and school I love to spend playing video games with friends and also exploring the natural parks we have around us. Video games have always been a part of my life and I think that is why they are so deeply ingrained into my leisure time. More interestingly I think is my love for nature because I didn't always appreciate it as much as I do today. I came about my love for nature and our natural parks after I realized how perishable they were... that they weren't always going to be there... This truth gave me a new mindset on nature and gave me a perspective where I could go there and admire what we have and how truly astonishing it is. In all honesty, I'm still exploring my passions and I seem to like a lot of things I would previously be dismissive towards, this excites me because this opens a lot of potential to experience new things that I otherwise wouldn't have.