Brisbane--Brismark

We got up at 5 am on the second day in Brisbane, heading to Brismark which is a fruit and vegetable wholesale company that provides space for farmers and retailers to sell thier products. 

Vanessa Kennedy shown us around Brismark. Brismark contains hundreds of shops offering fresh fruit and vegetable for retailers such as Coles, Woolworths, ect. It is so interesting to look around and see how they operate thier daily business, because it's such a huge place, products there can not be stored for a long time, therefore, managing time for selling is crucial in Brismark. there are something i learnt  from Brismark visit:

• In Brisbane Market, price set by supply and demand. Price simply set by customer; they tell Brismark what to charge.
• Quality is a critical issue Brisbane, as customers compare the quality of fruit and vege of Brismark with other competitors.
• Keeping good relationship with customers, understanding what customers need, developing trust with customers are key to Brismarket.
• Customers buy fruit and vege based on instincts, their attitude, perception toward the products are really important for successful sales.
• Brismark thinks consistency of the product is one way of keeping consumer repurchase the products.
• Therefore, quality control is vital for Brismark by carefully select fruit and veges from trees and farms.
• At the retail level:
• Brismark assumed consumers know what they want, for both consumers and Brisbane, time is money, fully understanding of what consumers want can make save time for them.
• Most of transactions in Brisbane come from word of mouth and referrals, therefore, sellers often communicate with customers face-to-face, advertisings often depends on word of mouth.
• Business plan is important for BrisMark, it helps Brismark looking forward, predict the trend of consumers demand.
• Retailers have to make sure customers take the products home, back up the products so that customers will tell what they really prefer and what they really want.
• Researching and survey are also important for Brismark, for the reason of easier to control and know the price.

Brisbane--Super Retail Group(SRG)

Super Retail Group is the first company we visited after arriving Brisbane. At that day, I got up at around 5.30am in the morning, and met other MMSP members in the airport. everyong seems excited about the trip but look so tired, as some of our group members just came back Melbourne from their home countries. I can imagine it will be a super tired trip for all of us, but full of fun and marketing knowledge!! 


after one and half hours' flight, we arrived Brisbane, a beautiful and peaceful city. After we dropped our luggages in hotel, we started our first company visit--super retail group. There are some points that I get from super retail group during the presenation:

• SRG selects their communication channels according to the ways customers searching product information and the ways they shop.
• Communication streams became fragmented
• Customers right now are:

1. Empowered
2. Have and expect different choices
3. Are shopping in their ways
4. SRG speak to customers on their terms, must be relevant.

• SRG are building capabilities that are focused on:

1. Providing customers with the ease to shop the way they want, when they want.
2. Building engagement both online and in-store
3. Building relevancy and personalisation into marketing and communications through CRM
4. Provide mass/niche solutions
5. Linking like minded people through clubs and social media

• Future integrated multichannel model:

1. SRG intended to stimulate customers to generate ideas via social media, blogs, magazines, TV, radio, EDM, Web.
2. As a result of using different communication channels, customers can purchase from SRG via in-store and online.
3. All these communication channels allow SRG to track customers through tablet, PC and smart phone. Through PC customer have choice to buy online through their website. On the other hand, customers can search information about SRG through smart phone and tablet.

• Doing online research customers can:

1. Review prices
2. Comparisons of site
3. Nearest Store location

• Purchase channels in SRG:

1. Buy in store, take home
2. Special order                      
3. Buy from store, deliver to home
4. Buy online, pick up in store
5. Buy online, deliver home
6. Online deliver from overseas
7. Online deliver from vendors

• Multiple choices of payment methods:

Credit card, paypass, phone, EFIPOS, Cash

• Get feedback through:

Survey, web chat, text, email, call centre, personal.

• SRG offers EDM to targeted customer through CRM system: discount messages sent to customer email address.

Result:

ROMI: $561.53

Sales: $16846

Cost of campaign: $30

We spent three days in Brisbane, went to bridge, parks, casino, lots of fun!! The thing i want to mentioned--me and David won 10 dollars in Casino, that was my first time to go gambling and first time to earn money from there!! lol

Melbourne--Salmat

Salmat, the last company that we visited in Melbourne! Salmat is an advertising and communication agency aims to help organizations research, develop communication strategies, and provide services on designing communication tools to cope with organization current problems.

Sean and Thomas, two nice guys gave us a very detailed presentation according to our research topics. In Tom’s presentation, he explained Salmat’s vision to us: to enhance the engagement our clients have with their customers, improve the efficiency of our clients’ business. He continued: in today’s media environment, noice is everywhere, organizations who want to cut through noice must maximizing ROC by means of focusing on customers, develop database and research programs, decisions must be made based on what customer’s want. In addition, according to different situations, strategies should be varied. For example, push strategy, like catalogue, it did increase frequency of purchasing, however, it did not much effects on consumer final action to purchase. Whereas, pull strategies such as company website, consumers may not go on their website frequently, but they did take action to buy things after visit. Tom also explained the development of catalogue, he talked about ‘’how has the role of catalogue been impacted by multichannel retail and what can we expect in years to come?’’ He further explained, catalogue is not die, but it’s changing, we are not moving away from print but we integrated it together.

There are several facts that support the reasons for using catalogues:

• Australians love their catalogues
• Readership is healthier than ever
• Catalogues find reliant readers
• Reach and frequency are key factors to consider

Tom continued, he said people online because they want to browse the catalogue, catalogue is the best strategies for push. However, for pull strategy, digital marketing is recommended. A digital consumer may have less shopping frequency but they have more choices—more basket size. Retailers can not reach the mass audiences through radio, TV and traditional channels as before. Therefore, digital marketing plays an important role at broader channels selections and increase ease of product purchasing. Consumer is another resource to help company promote, as the word of mouth create effective effects on sales, customers who satisfied with the products are more likely to recommend to their family and friends. Digital marketing provides a platform for these customers to talk about performance of the brands.

In the next 40 minutes, Sean talked about multichannel shoppers. Multichannel shoppers spend two to three times than single channel shoppers and consumers that engage with the brand across three or more channels spend six times more than the average customers. Several questions should be addressed for multichannel retailers:

How to get parts of our stores experience as good as our website.

How to make our website as good as our stores

How to make it easy for customers to find the stuff

Thanks for Tom and Sean who gave us great help in our topics, Salmat is a wonderful company that provide organizations insights for customers and competitors.

Melbourne--Myer

The second last company we visited is the retail company Myer. The office decoration in Myer is modern, bright and comfortable. We led by Lenore, while we intended go into the elevator, we figured out an interesting thing—the buttons are installed outside the elevator, we have to push it before we go into the elevator, which is quite different compared with the normal ones. After we got in a meeting room which tables set as a round cricle, we noticed goodie bags were put on the tables with Myer logo. After we sit down, Lenore started gave us an overview of Myer history:

• Myer brand has been synonymous with style and fashion for over 100 yrs
• Deep community affection for Myer, supported by long-standing philanthropic and community
• engagement
• Iconic retail heritage

The ambition of Myer is to be an international class retailer providing inspiration to everyone. Their values is to know their business, focus on customer, make it happy, involve with people everyday. Myer operated 80 exclusive brands, include Jack Stone, BIB, Brband. However, as competiton among retailing company is intense, Myer is challenged in attracting more retail consumers, and retaining old customers in a way that they prefered. These challengs include:

• Challenging retail and economic environment
•  Domestic and global uncertainty
• Increase savings rate
•  Increased costs of living
•  New taxes and rising unemloyment
• Share market voltility

Therefore, by studying consumer behavior in terms of increased online shopping tendency, Myer moved focus on digital marketing, putting catalogues magazine online, launching facebook page, mobile and ipad app and so forth.

Jarrod Tuck introduced Myer One program to us. He explained Myer One prgram is simple purchases at Myer  equate to shopping credits which automatically turn into gift cars to be spend at Myer

The The reasons to use Myer One include:

• Channel: a direct line to our custoemrs
• Information: customer insight
• Targeting: respond to customer needs 
•  Measurement: level of engagement
• Rewards: giving something back

Myer one channle implemented through Email and SMS. It provides a flexible, interactive tool for target customers to select products and be aware of new product launch. However, I noticed that Myer One does not performed to collect data from customers and using these data to improve communication with customers.

After the presentation, we took photos in front of a huge Myer logo board.

Melbourne--Western Bulldogs

The bulldogs, we went to Western Bulldogs for company visit as the second station of our first day. A gentle man Nick Truelson gave us a nicely presentation about Western Bulldogs and its future strategic plan.

 The future organizational goals in five years can be covered as:

• 5 years plan to aggressively increase members
• Growth focus on Melton and Wyndham membership
• Continuous fan and community engagement
• New brand positioning- begin with the western Front

Nick Truelson explained Western Bulldogs has the intention to target customer in Wyndham and Melton (west Australia) for the following reasons:

•  In Melbourne west, there is a potential group of customers that Western Bulldog interested in: Wyndham and Melton together have 18,000 people to move in 2009. The largest number of population moving in.
• $180 millions new retail spending will be generated
• Lend Lease is going to build shopping centre in western Australia: is important for Western Bulldong as once it built a building in some where, WB got prospective customers to target for.
• Big businesses or companies also have great influence on WB. Engagement with these businesses is good for WB to enhance their brand.

WB has launched a campaign aims to inspire western Australians and bring their attention to WB.

• Campaign objectives:
• Brand positioning : link identity to the west, positive and growth focused
• Celebrate growth in west
• Tell a new footballing story
• Turn fans into members

Strategies that will be employed in the future:

•  Localised campaign
• Continuous use of messaging and imagery: Ad in the Herald Sun in a half front page in newspaper, SMS, television
•  Initiate season’s fan engagment activities-junior programs and match day experience
• Customer service is also important—car park
• Choose the right time and right place to put the ads
•  Iphone, andorie and blackberry apps launch before the season

Currently, in terms of using social media, WB has already build a big community for its members and customers to share ideas and enjoys their experience. WB have 33,500 members, 7500 twitter followers, 37000 facebook fans and 80000 unique website users.

 Challenges of using social media : media or press may use the photos or stories in the wrong way

that it does not need to be.

Melbourne--L'Oreal

The first station of Melbourne second day company visit is L’oreal which is one of the most successful companies in skin health and cosmetic industry. We did not spend a lot of time in the workplace visit, but we spent a lot of time to listen! Listen to the presenters explained how L’oreal marketing team create magic! Have a glance at the goodies bags beside us, I guaranteed this would be the most excited company visit for girls.

The first presenter is Helen Prudy, a beautiful lady in green dress, she gave us a brief introduction of the schedule of today’s presentation, mentioned L’oreal also recruit interns and employees from Monash, which made us all excited. The second presenter introduced by Helen. She is Sarah Keating, who is the HR director of L’oreal Australia and New Zealand. The history and achievements of L’oreal can be summarised into:

• L’oreal is created in 1909
• Owned 23 global brand, covered 130 contries 
• $19.5 billion sales in 2010, which made L’oreal
• became the No.1 cosmetics company worldwide.
• Spent $665 million on R&D investment in 2010
• 64,000 employees, 47 billion units manufactured
• annually.

Continuously introduced by Sarah, she explained beauty is a different concept to different people, what L’oreal do is express beauty in different ways, try to understand what customers need. Therefore, research is the core step of L’oreal to understand what customers’ thoughts behind beauty. At the same time, innovation is a permanent quest for L’oreal to create high quality products. The distribution channels in L’oreal include professional products, consumer products, which sell in coles, pharmacy, convenience store; luxury Products,limited distribution brands with their own identity; active cosmetics, for people who have special skin condition. Sarah also talked about the challenges for L’oreal. Such as the co-branding with The Body Shop, the strategic thinking behind it is to enhance sustainable and environmental friendly image of L’oreal. It is an ethical, sustainable move of the company, not just a commercial decision. In addition, Sarah mentioned, as L’oreal is a global brand managing within countries, culture differences in one of the inevitable challenges for company to overcome. Hence, localization strategy is applied for different countries, ensuring the products suit for different kind of skin, and different sense of beauty. That’s why L’oreal highly focuses on technology. Technology always come first when launching a product. With sophisticated technology as a basic support to the company, L’oreal made the sales miracle in the world.

Then, Lauren gave us a case-study based presentation about Garnier new product launch. Research, research, and research, that is the most frequent words I can heard from Lauren, the key to new product launch into the market basically based on whether the company can understand and satisfy customers' needs. Therefore, research is a fundamental step for the company to understand the trend of customer preferences.

At last, George the brand trainer of L'oreal presented to us to explain the charm of L'oreal, his amazing presentation skills impressed everyone. Passion, is truly one of the keys for employees to develop engagement and encouraging them to contribute.

P.S.me and Allan did L'Oreal company summaries.

Melbourne---The Age/3AW

Back to Melbourne! After 8-day travel to Brisbane, Cold Coast and Sydney, we back to home! I don’t know whether I should happy or not, on one hand, I feel exhausted after this 8-day trip, on the other hand, I feel sad, because I am pretty sure I wont easily have another chance to visit all those companies again!!! Anyway, all good things must come to an end. We cant keep time stopped.

bright, modern workplace

After going home, I went to bed without even taking out my stuff from luggage. But I am looking


forward to tomorrow’s visit—The Age. In the morning at 8.45, we met up in building S caulfield and took travel bus together headed to The Age. I passed by The Age building near Southern cross like hundreds times before, but I never got a chance to get in. Now, I feel I am lucky girl! What a modern and beautiful office! Briony, marketing director in the Age show us around the office and introduce The Age current situation. Another marketer show us 3AW radio record system. They are all live show. After that, the FairFax, media company gave us a fantastic 8-person presentation about how marketing works in The Age, and how they create opportunities for the Age to attract new clients.

He was showing us how the system works!

The following is some of the selected presenters and briefly content of their presentation:

Rodney House—Advertising Group Director

l  Engaging our audiences throughout the day

l  Objective: to break a world class exclusive story on multiple channels

l  Choose the Media channels depend on what is the strategies and the date and time

Zoe--Trade Marting



an Obama cartoon

l  Trade marketing is an element o marketing mix that relates to building demand and service in trading.

l  Using marketing communication to:

1.         Inform

2.         Tell story

3.         Keep relationship

l  The use of Sponsorship and event:
1.         To deliver brand
2.         To increase revenue

They are reporting!!

3.         To increase circulation
4.         To reward customers

l  Methods of research

1.         Communicate internally and externally
2.         Report on trends

3.         Inform key information

Sharon Chai--Consumer marketing executive

l  Consumer groups in the Age: Subscribers, trade, internal, causal readers
l  Driving readership, brand perception and awareness, community engagement Brand
l  promotion and content sponsorship
l  ongoing research determines key areas of interest amongst casual and new readers and marketing campaigns are created based on this research
l  campaign development by the mobile applications  


Role of partnership--Craig

l  Partnership is key element of the Age’s consumer marketing strategy

l  Through our partnership, we look to:
1.         Support the brand
2.         Retain and increase readership
3.         Engage customer

l  Partnership checklist

1.         Brand alignment
2.         Strategic priority
3.         Readership
4.         Stakeholder engagement
5.         Commercial opportunity

l  How does the ipad fit in

1.         Opportunities
2.         Video content
3.         Interactive content
4.         Engaging new audiences
5.         Thoughts about partnership

l  Key to success: work as one

1.         Go to the win-win-win
2.         Share the love
3.         Don't be afraid of change
4.         Be a partner not a sponsor, not just putting money together but achieving common goal

group photo for us