Read the scenario and address the checklist items of this competency assessment.
Sybil’s Artificial Flowers* —The Gift That Keeps on Giving
In 2021, Sybil Jones put the final touches on a product she had worked on for years in her garage. Sybil graduated with a degree in chemistry from a well-known school in Indiana. However, she has always had an entrepreneurial spirit. Initially called Sybil’s Artificial Flowers, the product broke new ground by creating patented, artificial flowers that look real and smell like a flower. In other words, roses smell like roses, and tulips smell like tulips. However, Sybil’s flowers will never expire. The scent typically lasts three months and can be replaced with new scented cartridges. As a lover of flowers and the environment, Sybil has always felt flowers should remain on the earth.
She launched a website and opened a small store in a strip mall at the beginning of 2022. With modest sales, Sybil hired several employees to assist with manufacturing, sales, and administrative duties. In the summer of 2022, a popular morning show interviewed Sybil about her new product. This interview led to many other popular media coverage, in magazines, blogs, and podcasts. Because this product was starting to break on a national scale, she could secure a business loan for $500,000. Sybil’s biggest concern was her lack of business knowledge, mainly in marketing.
Sybil has just hired you as a marketing manager/consultant to assist her in taking the business to the next level. In your initial consultation with Sybil, she suggested that many sales were purchased as gifts. Another segment of customers applied to the home furnishings category. The raw materials required for artificial flowers are paper, cotton, parchment, latex, rubber, sateen (for large, bold-colored flowers and arrangements), and dried materials, including flowers and plant parts and berries, feathers, and fruits. For more upscale silk flowers, silk, rayon, and cotton are the fibers of choice. The cartridges that provide the scents are produced in Sybil’s manufacturing facility. Sybil believes her company needs a better communications and distribution strategy.
There has been a downturn in the economy and Sybil’s sales are stagnant. Compounding her challenges, her distributors have been slow to supply her with the materials she needs to produce her artificial flowers because of her lackluster sales. She wants you to help her with the promotion and distribution problems.
Generic Goals:
- Sell several hundred thousand units.
- Create awareness of new product line to new, prospective clients.
- Incorporate digital marketing.
- Hire more employees.
- Target B2B clients.
- Identify the best distribution model for selling to customers.
Checklist:
- Develop a communication plan using the six elements of an effective communication program.
- Integrate the four distinct levels of integrated marketing communication (IMC).
- Design an integrated marketing plan using a combination of traditional and online media.
- Create a proposal for implementing the six steps in the personal selling process to business accounts (Figure 14.1).
- Recommend a multichannel distribution strategy. Defend your recommendation.
- Propose a mobile retailing strategy.
Directions for submitting this assessment. Combine Parts 1 and 2 into a 900- to 1,150-word paper with additional title and reference pages.