This paper discusses how Under Urmour gets noticed by the customers. It does this by; making its brand personally relevant, surprising, and easy to process; use of objective and subjective comprehension through sponsoring up-and-coming athletes and ensuring that the consumers can clearly see different models as well as its mission and guarantee on its website. The paper also discussed how Coca cola and Pepsi are marketing their brands to teens worldwide via music.
OPTION 2 – HOW UNDER ARMOUR GETS NOTICED
What is Under Armour doing to make its brand personally relevant, surprising, and easy to process?
Initially, the company positioned itself as a brand for the athletes of the next generation by sponsoring upcoming athletes; which is in contrast with its competitors such as Nike who only sponsor established athletes. The audience interprets this as a gesture of community service by promoting new athletes who are known for their dedication and athleticism. The Under Armour’s brand gains customer attention and visibility as these sponsored athletes perform well.
Additionally, Under Armour has put tremendous effort to attract women to its brand. In the past decade, the company has increased its credibility by investing heavily in terms of time and energy to reach the female consumer. In Sept 2010, the company launched a Facebook fan page for women called “ Under Armour Women,” where members can get to upload various videos articles, and workouts. The aim is to market its products to the females just the same way it does to their male counterparts (Mick, 1992).
The company gives incentives to its customers such as wholesale discounts or discount on new products. To further maintain the element of relevancy and surprise, it sells variety of sports gear both light and heavy for both sexes. The company has also established a healthy long term relationship with its retailers, wholesalers as well as their customers. The bottom line is; persuasion is the primary element of the company’s marketing goal which consists two key ingredients: credibility and relevancy (Mick, 1992).
The role of objective and subjective comprehension in Under Armour’s ability to market its products by sponsoring up-and-coming athletes
Objective comprehension is usually understood as the extracting or grasping of a pre-specified meaning from an advertisement; these meanings are normally given or rather directly implied by the advert as intended by the advertiser. Thus, objective comprehension is basically a one-dimensional construct with the major aim of ensuring the recipients of the message draw accurate amount of meaning from the message. On the other hand, Subjective comprehension is understood as the creation of meanings by an individual through the activation of mental perceptions related to the advertisement and the processing context (Mick, 1992).
By using the objective and subjective comprehension in the adverts, consumers can easily draw practical comprehension inferences that cannot be linked directly to the advert message. Thus, through sponsoring up-coming athletes, the consumers draw practical comprehension conclusions that the company is not only promoting a high-quality product but also promoting the community welfare. The use of the objective and subjective comprehension in the advertisements makes the consumers feel more involved and also helps them to acquire higher product knowledge which in turn increases their comprehension elaborations. As a result, Under Armour does not personally sell of their products; the advertisements helps customers know what the company is all about (Mick, 1992).
Why would Under Armour want to be sure that consumers can clearly see different models as well as its mission and guarantee on the brand’s website?
Unlike its competitors such as Nike; Under Armour has an optimistic perspective of helping athletes develop their careers. Additionally, for the past decade, the company has provided its customers globally with precisely superior products engineered with their unique fabric construction, as well as absolute moisture management proven innovation in all its products.
The company has been building a strong brand image over the past years giving it the following strengths: a strong brand equity for both the company and customers; innovativeness couple with professional & armature athletes’ sponsorship giving it good public relations; a superior brand; has a strong brand name; has a unique, recognizable logo; rapid growth; and produces high quality apparel. Thus, with the unique and practical mission statement coupled with the company’s distinctive strengths, Under Armour wants make sure that the consumers understands that they are getting the best products in the market as well as getting a good value for their money (Business Teacher, 2012).
OPTION 3 – Marketing to Teens Worldwide via Music
The long-term results that Coca-Cola and PepsiCo hope to achieve by investing heavily in marketing to teens around the world.
The long-term result that Coca-Cola and PepsiCo hope to achieve by investing heavily in marketing to teens globally is brand loyalty. Brand loyalty refers to the continuous preference by the customer for the products of an existing company. Companies create brand loyalty through; relentless advertisements of their names and brand; protecting their products through patents, product inventions and innovations through continuous research as well as, through development of programs that emphasis on development of high quality products and high-quality after-sales services. Brand loyalty has a positive influence to the manner in which the consumer perceives the product or the company. To create brand royalty, a firm has to relate a brand to human personalities which in turn creates feelings of affection, warmth and belonging to a product (Bryson, 2010).
The best way of creating long term brand loyalty to a product is by cultivating feelings of warmth, fondness, and a sense belonging towards this product in people while they are young. The two companies recognize the need to reach the younger audiences because the teenage demographic is expected to represent a third of the worlds’ population by 2020. Human beings a generally habitual creatures thus, by creating the brand loyalty with teenagers, they will remain royal to this brand even as they grow older.
Marketing advantages and disadvantages of associating a soft drink brand such as Coca-Cola or PepsiCo with musical groups that are just beginning their careers.
Music is integrating in mass electronic media (internet, tv and radio) advertisements so as to enhance it’s the advertisement success.
Advantages
Entertainment
Music has the entertainment aspect that makes advertisements more appealing to the audience. This increased attractiveness enables an advertisement to capture more attention. Thus, music enhances the brand’s, product’s or service’s value by connecting it to music (Bryson, 2010).
Memorability
It is easier to recall a piece of music than images or spoken language because music tends to linger in the listeners mind for long. New music groups mostly have new songs that have not yet bored the audience. As the listeners get to learn the new songs, they also get to learn more about the product. These new songs enable listeners to remember company details such as the company name, webpage or even an appealing slogan linked to the brand (Bryson, 2010).
Authority Establishment and Targeting
Certain kinds of groups or life styles attribute themselves to certain kind of music. This makes it is possible to appeal to a particular group through use of certain kinds of musical genres. The company can also easily use the new musical groups to target a particular kind of groups or lifestyles than. This is because new music groups are more flexible than established music groups because they are more willing to experiment with various music genres. In this case music serves as a nonverbal identifier.
Growth of brand as well as The musical Group
As the sponsored musical group gains popularity, the company’s brand gains attention and visibility.
Disadvantages
Not all sponsored music groups end up becoming popular: poor performance of a musical group results in less advertising revenues. Brands have the ability to make up-coming artists into stars but at the same time, these artists have the ability to destroy the brands name by not being successful enough (Bryson, 2010).
The reason why the two companies emphasize new music and emerging performers in their ads, rather than well-known songs and groups
Brands are identifying and embracing the new ways in which various kinds of audience access music and are finding ways and means to capitalize. With their major targets being teenagers globally, the two companies have realized that, teenagers have a high affinity for new music and also emerging performers. Thus, the up-coming musicians promote their brand while the companies sponsoring and also give their new music some exposure. This is more or less a collaborative process, by leveraging the power of each. It is a fact that there is a greater association to the product or brand being promoted by a new talent than renting an existing talent. This is because the young people love the element of surprise in the brand image (Bryson, 2010).
