Marketing Communication Plan for Costa Coffee's Bamboo Straw Initiative

This report includes a communication plan to do cause marketing with the new initiative of Costa Coffee's bamboo straw. It covers internal and external audit, target audience, creative strategy, marketing communications mix tool, media mix channels, and campaign management proposal.

BMM5562 Individual
Marketing
Communications

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
TASK...............................................................................................................................................1
Internal Audit..........................................................................................................................1
External Audit........................................................................................................................2
Overview of cause campaign proposal...................................................................................3
Definition of the target audience............................................................................................3
Creative Strategy....................................................................................................................4
Marketing communications mix tool......................................................................................4
Media mix channels................................................................................................................5
Campaign management proposal...........................................................................................5
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................7
References:.......................................................................................................................................8

INTRODUCTION
Marketing communication refers to the techniques or methods which are consider as
really useful for the business organisations for conveying the information linked with the
products and services to the target customers (Juska, 2021). Primary goal of marketing
communication planning is to do the evaluation of tools of marketing which help the
organisation in attaining the marketing goals and objectives. The chosen organisation for this
report is Costa Coffee which is a British Coffee house chain having headquarter in Dunstable,
Bedfordshire, England, United Kingdom. This report include a communication plan to do cause
marketing with the new initiative.
TASK
Internal Audit
Internal audit of brand include auditing of brand which help the organisation in
examining how employees, managers and other members of the company brand perceive the
brand. While developing communication plan, it is crucial to do internal audit form making
vision, mission of organisation more clear. Below mentioned is the internal audit of Costa
Coffee: Purpose: Purpose of Costa Coffee is to serve delicious coffee to the people of several
countries. Mission: Providing authentic coffee flavour to the audience of different countries is the
mission of Costa Coffee. It represent the passion and love for good coffee (Costa Coffee
mission statement, 2022). Values: Costa coffee is valuing their customers as well as their employees. They had
developed the culture of equality, so that all the employees can work together. In addition
to this, they are trying their best to provide best possible flavour of coffee to their
customers. Target audience/Market Position: Target customers of Costa Coffee include both male
as well as female aged between 18 to 45. Competitive advantage: Costa Coffee is consider as the 2nd largest coffee chain in all
over the world. There are more than 3400 stores in more than 30 countries. It help the
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organisation in gaining higher competitive advantage as it cover almost all the customers
and target them.
 Marketing Strategy: The management of Costa coffee is not majorly focusing on the
advertisement on several sources as they are following the most essential marketing
strategy of mouth publicity from their customers.
External Audit
Below mentioned is the PESTLE analysis of Costa Coffee: Political factors: Costa Coffee is working in all over the world. Hence, its operations are
being effected from political decisions of different countries. The respective organisation
have to consider all rules developed by the government of country (Lahtinen, Dietrich
and Rundle-Thiele, 2020). Changes in the tax rate is the another political factor which
can effect the operations of Costa Coffee. Economic Factors: Higher the economic growth in developing countries such as India,
act as huge opportunity for Costa Coffee to expand in the market. Higher the income of
people living in UK result in higher demand of coffee offered by Costa Coffee. Social Factors: Various social factor also implies affect on Costa Coffee. Change in the
preferences of people act as both threat or opportunity for the organisation. In today's
world, people are mostly preferring to go out in cafe for hangout. It work as huge
opportunity for Costa Coffee as it help the them in making making more stronger
customer base. Technological Factors: Costa Coffee is using advance technology for the smooth
functioning of HR activities and payroll procedure. Through the use of Ceridian's
Dayforce Workforce management Technology, the management of Costa Coffee is
planning staff scheduling for the purpose of delivering the correct payment to their
employees. Such technological changes are helping the organisation in smooth
functioning of operations. Legal factors: Costa Coffee is providing safe and healthy working environment to their
customers as well as their employees because it is necessary for them to follow laws and
regulations related top the working environment. In addition to this, the respective
organisation is providing food products as per the standard set under respective laws.
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 Environmental factors: Costa Coffee is using paper made cups for serving to the
customers. Through this act, the respective organisation is showing their concern related
to environment.
Overview of cause campaign proposal
Costa Coffee is bringing some innovation in their operations i.e. bamboo straw for
serving the customers and saving the environment by not using plastic. In order to reach to the
customers and communicating them related to the new idea, the management of organisation is
required to develop campaign. Below mentioned is the cause campaign proposal developed by
the Costa Coffee: Purpose: The major purpose of introducing the bamboo straw is to make environment
safe through avoiding the use of plastic. They are replacing plastic cups from paper cups
and plastic straw with bamboo straw. Mission: Mission of cause campaign of Costa Coffee is to provide the best flavour of
coffee to their customers by saving environment.
 Campaign Objectives: For the purpose of performing grabbing success in the cause
campaign of marketing, the Costa Coffee have to develop SMART objectives. These
objectives help the management in analysing the success of marketing campaign. Some
of SMART objectives of Costa Coffee related to the introduction of bamboo straw are
given below:
 Bringing improvement in the sales of coffee with 10% within the duration of next 3
months.
 Performing business operations by saving environment.
 Increasing the level of engagement of audience by 12%.
Definition of the target audience
The primary goal of market research is to learn more about the intended audience. Market
research assists management in trying to reach out to people that are actually interested in buying
the product and services provided by the company. Costa Coffee uses segmentation to analyse its
target audience. Segmentation is defined as a method by which several groups, such as
demographic, psychographic, geographic, and behavioural groups, have been developed
(MASUD, 2020). Costa Coffee's marketing communication plan for bamboo straw includes
females and males between the ages of 18 and 45. As a result, it has been determined that the
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chosen segmentation for the respective bamboo straw campaign is demographic geographic, as
the company operates all over the universe. In addition, the coffee offered by Costa Coffee is of
high quality and taste. As a result, they charge exorbitant fees for creation and consumption.
Costa Coffee's primary target audience is people with high amount of income. Majorly, the
management of Costa Coffee is targeting the people who are looking for sustainable products.
The new invention of Costa Coffee i.e. bamboo straw attract the customers who are looking for
using the products which are environmental friendly.
Creative Strategy
Costa Coffee's management must develop creative strategies to attract customers to the
organisation and its offerings when planning a marketing communication plan. Marketers are
rolling out a new and appealing concept of bamboo straw to add creative thinking while also
saving the environment. Furthermore, Costa Coffee's marketers are using a creative
communication strategy to communicate that they are using bamboo straws while serving their
customers the best taste and quality of coffee that is completely environmentally friendly.
Marketing communications mix tool
Marketing mix is defined as the aspects of marketing that assist a business organization's
management in making decisions about the products and services it offers. It consists of four
main components: product, price, location, and promotion. Costa Coffee is aimed to create the
implementation of marketing mix plan during creation of marketing communication plan. The
following are the essential components of a marketing mix plan: Product: It refers to the physical goods and services that a company provides to its target
customers. Costa Coffee's product lines involve food and beverages items such as coffee,
snacks, and breakfast, among others. Customers can purchase edible items from the
respective business organisation. Costa Coffee is using bamboo straw and paper based
cups for serving coffee to the customers. Price: It is defined as the monetary value received by a business in exchange for
providing goods to consumers (Nieves-Casasnovas and Lozada-Contreras, 2020). Costa
Coffee offers premium-priced food and beverage products to their customers while also
delivering superior quality products along with using the environment friendly products
including bamboo straw. They are implementing premium pricing strategies.
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 Place: It refers to the location where customers can purchase goods and services. This
component of marketing mix also determines a company's distribution system for its
products and services. Costa Coffee provides coffee to their customers both online as
well as offline. Customers can purchase the products from Costa Coffee's offline
locations. Customers can also order coffee from an online website as well.
 Promotion: It is the method by which a company's marketers communicate with their
customers about their products and services in order to persuade them to purchase them.
Costa Coffee uses social media channels such as Instagram, Facebook, and others to
communicate with clients and persuade them to buy coffee.
Media mix channels
It is defined as the plan under which a business organisation make the decision of their
investment on several media tools while executing marketing communication plan. Below
mentioned is the distribution of costing of Media tools by the management of Costa Coffee while
developing marketing communication planning:
Tools Costing
BuzzSumo 10000
Google Trends 15000
Buffer Publish 5000
Canva 20000
Unsplash 7000
Total 57000
Campaign management proposal
It refers to the framework prepared by Costa Coffee's management in order to carry out
all campaign activities in an effective and timely way. A stronger promotional management plan
aids in avoiding waste of resources, time, and money (Rėklaitis and Pilelienė, 2019). The
creation of a campaign management plan assists marketers in reaching out to their target
customers and persuading them to purchase a specific product or service. The following are the
various stages of Costa Coffee's campaign management plan:
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 Production Plan: It refers to the plan that is used to plan the entire process or all of the
activities associated with the manufacturing process. Costa Coffee plans all of their
production activities during this phase. It entails the planning of all machinery, the need
for resources, funds, and human resources. The management of Costa Coffee is
contacting with the bamboo production companies and planning to do the production of
bamboo straw. Budget Plan: It refers to the plan through which the management of business
organisation plan their activities of campaign. On the basis of budget plan, the respective
business organisation make the decisions of doing investment in several sources. Below
mentioned is the budget plan prepared by Costa Coffee for Cause campaign of marketing:
 Evaluation Plan: It is defined as the planning of actions that appropriate actions in trying
to analyse or evaluating the success of the prepared marketing communication plan's
performance (Thabit and Raewf, 2018). Costa Coffee employs the Benchmarking
technique to evaluate the performance of an organization through the advancement of a
marketing communication plan. Costa Coffee's management is measuring the difference
between the final results and the anticipated outcome using a benchmarking tool.
Benchmarking technique can be applied through measuring the sustainability of
organisation in the society. Sustainability of organisation can be measured through the
goodwill and increase or decrease in the range of sales.
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CONCLUSION
According to the above report, developing a marketing communication plan is critical for
a business organisation when working on marketing a specific product or service. Marketing
communication plans assist management in carrying out market marketing activities and
reaching out to target customers. In order to sell products and services, management cultivates
strong relationships with their customers. A campaign management plan also aids in the effective
execution of campaign activities. Marketing mix tool plan assists in making decisions about an
organization's offerings, as well as decisions about costing, physical distribution, and other
factors.
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References:
Books and Journals
Juska, J.M., 2021. Integrated marketing communication: advertising and promotion in a digital
world. Routledge.
Lahtinen, V., Dietrich, T. and Rundle-Thiele, S., 2020. Long live the marketing mix. Testing the
effectiveness of the commercial marketing mix in a social marketing context. Journal of
Social Marketing.
MASUD, M.F., 2020. Marketing research and integrated marketing communication plan.
Marketing research and integrated marketing communication plan, 65(1), pp.24-24.
Nieves-Casasnovas, J.J. and Lozada-Contreras, F., 2020. Marketing communication objectives
through digital content marketing on social media. In Forum Empresarial (Vol. 25, No.
1, pp. 57-82). Centro de Investigaciones Comerciales e Iniciativas Académicas.
Rėklaitis, K. and Pilelienė, L., 2019. Principle differences between B2B and B2C marketing
communication processes. Organizacijø Vadyba: Sisteminiai Tyrimai, (81), pp.73-86.
Thabit, T. and Raewf, M., 2018. The evaluation of marketing mix elements: A case
study. International Journal of Social Sciences & Educational Studies, 4(4).
Online
Costa Coffee mission statement, 2022 [Online] Available Through <https://mission-
statement.com/costa-coffee/#:~:text=Its%20mission%20is%20to%20provide,world's%20most
%20loved%20coffee%20brand.>
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