You have been asked to help your familys restaurants rethink

You have been asked to help your family\'s restaurants rethink their media planning, which includes two upscale Italian restaurants and a small chain of five grilled panini sandwich shops.

(a) Is there any difference in how they might use traditional advertising versus the new online forms of brand communication? Why?

(b) What media mix would you recommend for each type of restaurant? Explain the thinking behind your recommendations.

Solution

(a)

The two upscale Italian restaurants will definitely need brand building. We also need interaction with the prospective customers to make the brand and its attributes more relevant with respect to the customer needs. This requires valuable contents for communication. Furthermore, we may be exploring the opportunity to go global and attracting international travelers. So, we need to spread the marketing communication on a global scale. To do this economically, we should leverage on online forms of brand communication (such as websites, blogs, or social media).

On the contrary, for the five grilled panini sandwich shops, our objective should be to reach the target audience as easily as possible. Undoubtedly, there will be so many competitors around and we need to make sure that the customers retain the marketing communication information with them so that the message can be reminded again an again. The average customer needs to have a good understanding of the offering and will want to depend on an online form of communications for that. So, traditional advertising is more suitable in this case.

(b)

For the Italian restaurants, the company should build a website and collaborate with professional bloggers to create quality contents to attract potential customers. The continued focus should be given on interaction with the customers so that quality content targeting the needs and adding value to the target audience can be generated which can provide significant value and lead generation opportunities. Moreover, the company must also connect with the target audience using the social media (Facebook, YouTube, Instagram).

For the grilled panini sandwich shops, the best media mix will be obtained by publishing ads in daily newspapers. Other traditional advertising opportunities will be found on local Radio and TV. The focus should be given primarily to the local community because people there will be the majority potential customers. Furthermore, flyers can be sent along with the newspapers r directly to the mailboxes of the local residents to attract their attention.