What Makes Personal Marketing Work?
Personal marketing is a marketing technique where sales personnel visit customer and market the products directly. Personal selling provides that personal appeal where customers can be able to ask questions and receive immediate feedback. The move to use personal selling in the market ensures that customers are knowledgeable about the products they intend to purchase. Dove and Axe are successful in building their brand equity because they are the only representative of Unilever Company in personal care division. The company relies on the two to expand its market and reap more revenue because of increased sales. Dove has been able to establish a unique brand, which has attracted clients for over a decade. The marketing campaign initiated by Dove has generated profits for Unilever. Axe, on the other hand, has been able to receive numerous awards because of its unique and effective marketing strategies. Axe understands how the company values personal marketing. Axe has been able to exploit this channel to reach out to more clients (Armstrong et al., 2015).
Effectiveness of Marketing Campaigns
Marketing campaigns are initiated to achieve specific goals and targets. A marketing campaign is said to be effective if it can realize organizational goals. Marketing campaigns such as personal selling and public relations should be able to generate new sales and increase the overall revenues. The campaign should additionally create customer loyalty and improve the brand of the company. The campaigns should be able to correct the dented image of the company. These marketing campaigns should be able to provide feedback to the organization which can be used use improve products. An effective marketing campaign should be able to widen the market served by the company and generate competitive advantage for the company. At the end of marketing, the position of the company in the market should improve, and its response to customer issues should be swift (Boone & Kurtz, 2013).
Conflict of Interest
Unilever Company has shown a conflict of interest in the manner in which it is marketing to young men and women. One of the marketing campaigns conducted by the company makes use of Axe products targeting men. The campaign uses posters of men who use Axe products to attract women who are perceived to be beautiful. In this campaign, men are depicted to be attracted to slim, tall and beautiful women. The other campaign is designed to reach out to women with the message of real beauty. The intended message of the second promotional campaign is the opposite of the first campaign. In this case, the company uses Axe products to create a conflict of interest where it urges men to date tall and beautiful women while at the same time convincing women to embrace inner beauty. The marketing campaigns, therefore, portray the company to have an interest in two market segments by developing different campaign messages for its different customer base (Keller & Kotler, 2016).
Recommendations
Unilever needs to understand the importance of developing quality-marketing ads that communicate the right message. The marketing campaign has created controversy, which could lead to product boycotts by its customers. As such, the company should consider redoing the entire marketing campaign to ensure that the right message is communicated and real beauty is depicted in a manner that does not create controversy. The company should additionally analyze future marketing campaigns to ensure that it does not generate a conflict of interest from its customers and the public (Kotabe & Helsen, 2014).
References
Armstrong, G., Kotler, P., Harker, M., & Brennan, R. (2015). Marketing: an introduction. Pearson Education.
Boone, L. E., & Kurtz, D. L. (2013). Contemporary marketing. Cengage learning.
Keller, K. L., & Kotler, P. (2016). Marketing management. Pearson.
Kotabe, M., & Helsen, K. (2014). Global marketing management.
