Q1.

You’re meeting with Paulo, a newly promoted Marketing Manager to review the figures for a Signal toothpaste promotion
which includes a free toothbrush with each purchase. Reviewing the figures before the meeting, you’re concerned that the
promotion will cost 10% of the total marketing budget for this brand, which would be the largest spend on a single promotion
for that brand to date. You’d also like to see a stronger return on investment and more financial controls in place. At the start
of the meeting, it’s clear that the newly promoted Marketing Manager is passionate about the promotion going ahead and
quickly. He predicts it will be a key lever in regaining market share from the competition and is keen to make a positive start
to his new role.

How would you go about winning the newly promoted Marketing Manager’s respect and trust?

How would you share your concerns with the newly promoted Marketing Manager?

How would you ensure that the newly promoted Marketing Manager takes your concerns seriously?

How would you go about building an ongoing relationship?

Before attending the meeting, I would try to do little research on my end pertaining to Paulo ranging from his past projects and experiences to his work
style so as to understand how he is at the workplace.This, I believe, would mutually benefit us in understanding each other’s perspective. Upon meeting
him, first of all, I would convey my heartiest congratulations to Paulo for all his hard work that paid off which resulted in his successful promotion and
what he further aspires to commit in his upcoming assignments, by inducing more innovation and efficiency. After this, I will familiarize him with my
credentials to date, consisting of the type of projects that I have worked in previously pertinent to Marketing to build in the credibility and justifying the
fact that I have some kind of prior exposure to the type of work I will be discussing with him. And if he is convinced enough then he could approach me
for any finance related work in future, even if I wouldn’t be on that assignment.

After building my rapport, I will discuss my concern regarding the promotion cost of the signal toothpaste. To back up my arguments, I will present the
past figures to showcase the historical trends and run the scenario analysis using different arbitrary numbers to express my worry regardigh high promo
cost. What could act as the huge added benefit is the fact that being from the finance division, I would have unique insights into the customers and the
related stakeholders, which the marketers could leverage to create more targeted and lucrative campaigns. By running the forecast, using the figures
given by the marketing team – it could be presented that the sales and cash flow numbers doesn’t seems to be very impressive considering the cost
incurred. In sum, in the end the return on the investment does matter. Comparative analysis of other FMCG companies marketing campaign of
toothpaste could be perused to examine the different marketing techniques used by them and their success with respect to the cost incurred. Since this
would be the largest spend on a single promotion for the given brand to date, I would want to dive deeper into the risk analysis portion of the project with
Paulo, identifying the risk factors involved and the appropriate steps that could be taken to mitigate them

Most importantly, I would also want to emphasize on the point that in the past couple of years Unilever has done a lot through Sustainable Living Plan
by introducing innovative strategies to foster green and clean world. In 2021 only, Unilever announed to convert their worldwide toothpaste portfolio to
recyclable tubes by 2025. And giving away a free toothbrush with each purchase of toothpaste tube could undermine the progress of Sustainable Living
Plan, because on one side we are trying to reduce plastic waste, while on the other unnecessarily generating the supply of plastic toothbrushes. And
even if we use the recyclable plastic with replaceable head , the manufacturing in itself would turn out to be a big cost for it to give for free. After
providing such inputs, we could come up with an alternative strategy by setting up more meetings or the existing proposal could be modified wherein
instead of providing a free toothbrush with the purchase of single piece, consumers could have a free one upon purchasing multiple toothpaste – which
would reduce costs and generate higher return. In the end, I would ask for his detailed feedback on my analysis and how is it different from what he had
thought that led to him to the conclusion that the campaign would help in regaining market share. Finally, in order to not rush, I will propose to setup
another quick meeting in a few days so that we could both ponder over each other’s opinions extensively and come up with more concrete analysis

Q2. You’ve been given four days to prepare a presentation to the Vice President of Personal Care in Kenya on the impact of a
community product awareness campaign for soap. You’d normally ask both members of your team to help you prepare for
this, including sourcing data from different departments, analyzing and interpreting the data, and preparing the presentation
materials. Unfortunately, one of the members of your team is on holiday for the next five days.

How would you approach organizing this project?

As given in the case that one of my team members is on a holiday leave for the next five days, and now only the two of us are there to prepare a
presentation in 4 days. Therefore, we will have to be little strategic in our approach to complete this project on time. Firstly, I will ask my team mates to
not stress about it at all and then shall discuss the roadmap extensively with the other team member, taking his opinion on how and why he thinks we
should go about it. After the discussion, we will collate the ideas given by both of us that seems time efficient and logical at the same time. I follow the
principle that irrespective of what the situation is, every group member should feel visible, valued, and involved. The other team member who is
on leave should also remained updated about the latest developments in the team, so I will make sure that he is there in the circuit whenever there is
any communication pertaining to the community product awareness campaign for soap. The strategy that I will put in place is to Divide the work
uniformly with deadlines set on regular intervals and then mutually discuss if everything is happening as per desired. Leveraging cloud based project
management software shall help in gaining visibility into team bandwidth and historical data from past projects as once we know what everyone’s
working on and how long a similar project took lst time, you can be more realistic about future deadlines, building in a bit of a buffer for unexpected
developments. On day 1, we will gather the information relating to the framework of the presentation that we finalized. The second and third day will
be the data sourcing from different departments such as production and sales as well as the analyzing of data sourced from each
department. On the fourth and final day, will be the collation of the result of analysis and the preparation and finalization of the
presentation
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 My most important priority here will be to prepare the presentation on time while utilizing best efforts possible and at the same time
taking care of the fact that my team member working alongside with me doesn’t feel bogged down about the workload under tight
deadline. While its necessary to complete the project with full dedication and commitment. However, working under stress would do no
good to the project as a whole, because you won’t be able to function to your 100% capacity which would subsequently reflect in your
analysis and hence the final presentation. So, I will make sure he is comfortable with the kind of work assigned to him and is happy in
doing it.

To ensure that my team member and I perform well in this task we could take constructive feedback from our colleagues in the other
team who would have worked on the similar project before, so their insights and learning could prove fruitful to us and they could help
us in identifying the gaps, if any

Q3. Working in Sales Finance in Pakistan, you’re on a one-week placement with the field sales team selling products to very
traditional and small corner shops in a remote and rural area. You’re particularly interested in a promotion for new dry
shampoos; however, the field sales team don’t appear to have recognized that it’s performing below expectations. One of
your many insights from the experience is that consumers often don’t ask for brands by name, instead shopkeepers select
one for them. You know the sales team have much more experience than you in direct sales, but you’re convinced you could
bring a fresh perspective based on what you’ve seen so far.

How could you better understand consumer needs in this situation?

Being on a one-week placement could be very fruitful in better understanding the customer needs. As now I could completely absorb
myself into the market and see how rural consumers live. By conducting one on one conversation with the consumers, asking them
simple questions relating to their current usage, lifestyle and satisfaction level I could get a fair idea about their needs and aspirations.
Also, I could go over to the local shops to see the range of shampoos available and then could take the sample survey by involving the
shopkeepers to get the insights on what leads them to pick a particular product for a given customer.

How could the company exploit this opportunity?

As given in our case, the shopkeepers have a crucial role in increasing the sales of our product, therefore by working with the sales
team we could come up with the strategies that would lure them to sell our product the most. For eg. The ones who have the greatest
sales of our shampoo with get an incentive from our sales team on completion of targeted sales figure. Secondly, as the rural areas are
still community based and closely knit, hence partnering with key local influencers – teachers, doctors, members of local village
councils, for example – can be a vital part of an outreach program. Thirdly, we could customize the product design and prices which
would exclusively cater to the rural consumers, for e.g. pioneering the use of low-cost, single-use packets to make the shampoo
affordable for lower-income consumers who often shop daily for necessities as they earn money more on a daily or a season-to-season
basis rather than a monthly basis. Also, it is important to reach out to the rural consumer in his/her language it is possible that a rural
consumer understands the language of colors. Visual appeal is very important. In fact, people go to stores and ask for products based
on colors or the packaging. Further, as we know that women in rural Pakistan are not employed, so we could exploit this opportunity by
training them as sales agents who will sell Unilever products door to door in their communities - - this shall act as the source of income
for both Unilever and women who can’t freely travel to distant places to work in corporate companies, which will in turn contribute
towards Unilever’s aim for inclusive society!

Talking about how technology could be used to engage the field sales team in product performance—

From my given suggestion, technology can be used to engage the field sales team in monitoring the sales during the incentive
program, for the determination of the shopkeeper with the highest sales of the Shampoo. Technology can also be used to run feedback
survey in each participating store by installing a device in which consumers would provide ratings to us after their usage, subsequently
points will be collected which would contribute towards discount in the purchase price. Also, the women who will be trained to become
sales agent could monitor the orders, manage inventory and receive updates on promotional schemes if they are provided with basic
smartphones. These days, the internet and mobile penetration in the rural areas has reached to a great extent , we could leverage this
by equipping the the phones with the maps showing the demographics and market potential of each locality, to improve rural
coverage.Therefore, integration of technology in this way will help in repeat engagement and generating effective returns

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 CASE

After analysing the figures for both Twitter and Facebook in the given table, Twitter seems to be more promising,

firstly because the traffic of its unique visitors is significantly higher than that of Facebook, almost 10 times and subsequently the
conversion rate to sales --which is the key performance metric for us-- is also much greater, while the marketing budget allocation is
very similar on both

2. Also because the visits converted to twitter followers is much higher than that of facebook likes, the principle of reciprocity will kick in
which is the backbone of any social media campaign. With the exponential rise in reshares and retweets the product traction would
increase massively.

3. Other metrics such as sales volume and revenue along with the % market share growth and % sales uplift figures are also greater
than that of facebook.

Gross profit value in Japanese yen: 3230*109= 352070 FB * 3610*109= 393490 Twitter

ROI %: 3230-5042/5042 = -35.9% FB 3610-5119/5119= -29%

Approach

1. Engagement

2. Audience: Japan is Twitter’s second largest market, behind only the United States. The Japanese Like Their Privacy. Approx
50mn users on twitter, in contrast to about 29m on facebook

3. Sales:

4. Time horizon: the forecast figures which are given to us in the table are for 1 month only, I believe for the social media
campaign to actually give us realistic returns we should eye on long run returns and which is why I guess we are having
negative ROI
I believe negative ROI is okay to have until we are able to fulfill our goals of growing awareness, influence and followers. With
the increase in traction if our sales are increasing that means we are going from level 0 to level 1 and proves the viability of
our business. Timing matters in social media campaigns: March-april are not very hot months in Japan, had it been June-July
the sales figures could have been greater. Scheduling the Tweets at the right time can help maximise audience reach and
engagement.

Additional info:

We are given no quantifying data regarding no of retweets on twitter and reshares on both of them, so that we could know how our
sales are getting impacted by harnessing the power of reciprocity of social media. Like that of pinterest is given wherein average pin
generates 78 cents in sales and drives two visits to company websites. 21% of Pinterest users bought an item in store after pinning, re-
pinning or liking the product. If we have the data for our consumers as well who are actually redeeming the discount voucher in the
supermarket. That would better inform our decision.

As per our brand strategy we aim to increase 7% market share in 12 months, as this case focuses on the social media campaign for
one flavour of ben jerry, we have got no information or data on how other flavours of ben and jerry are doing and what the product
prices are in comparison to the other brands.

As we can see, the market is quite competitive with approx. 35% market share owned by private labels and only around 11.6% is with
ben and jerry’s . If we have insights into what strategy the other brands such as private labels and Lotte are following

Historical data on social media campaign for other flavours of ben and jerry, and their performance assessment on several social media
platforms could help in better forecasting the figures.

These days innovation of any sort creates a buzz on social media because of which a particular concept gets highlighted a lot with
subsequent reshares. So if this new flavoured ice cream has some fancy packaging or uniqueness in terms of being vegan or healthy
or catchy slogans so the marketing could go a long way

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 In nutshell, considering the points stated till now and with the missing information in place we should ahead with the marketing on
twitter for a longer period of time and by Proactively engaging with the customers online we could actually achieve positive ROI. This
will definitely be worth the shot also because Investment as % of total marketing budget is not that high and a large proportion of
Japanese are there on twitter.

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