Misadventures of Teenage Drunk Driving Campaign

Perfexia Inc., a multinational company, has launched a marketing campaign to educate people about the dangers of drunk driving, particularly among young generations. The company has employed various marketing strategies including the 4Ps (Product, Place, Price, and Promotion) to spread awareness about this social issue. The campaign aims to reduce the damage caused by drunk driving through education and empowerment. The report highlights the importance of upstream and downstream marketing, message framing, and creativity in making the campaign effective. The company will evaluate the success of the campaign after six months and prepare a report based on the feedback from people and professionals.

Introduction
The following report highlights the social issue called drunken driving that has become an
obnoxious menace to our society. Such drunken driving is being resulting in lot of accidents day
in and day out. Therefore, thousands of precious human lives have lost in the process and our
urban areas are not safe any longer. The urban elite is getting increasingly habitual of late night
parties due to which there is a clear and present danger not only for the drunk driver
himself/herself but for the people of the society at large. According to a report submitted by
British Medical Association, alcohol even if taken in small and moderate quantities, diminishes
attention and control, affects reasoning adversely and affects negatively the ability of making
movements that are completely dependent on natural coordination of eyes, hands and feet. In
other words, being intoxicated adversely affects our efficiency of driving properly. (Eisenberg,
2003)
The report essentially presents the CSR activities of a Company in spreading awareness about
the disadvantages that come along with drunken driving in the society. It will summarize the
various aspects of the marketing strategies which would be responsible for its maximum
penetration in people’s lives.
Company Profile
The Company Perfexia Inc. deals in the production and marketing of software solutions for their
clients all over the world. Perfexia has a separate division for Corporate Social Responsibility
(CSR) which is solely responsible for spreading awareness about the prevalent social issues. This
division has been very active for the past two decades in the United States to bring in to
everyone’s attention about dozens of issues that our society is grappling with. One such issue as
mentioned above is drunken driving. The findings of the professionals of this division have
illustrated the marked differences in knowledge and attitudes between offenders and the people
of society.
Problem/Situation Analysis
It is needless to say that there are far reaching consequences of drunk driving as its effects do not
always harm the drivers but many others as well. There are a number of other people that get hit
by the drunk drivers and the mental trauma they suffer on account of that is equally problematic
as the physical injuries that they sustain. The teenage alcoholism and driving is even more
menacing and getting serious with each passing day. According to a recent survey, the underage
drinking and driving has been considered a grave problem in the US which claims around 5000
annual deaths. Although, the fundamental problem with the drunk driving among teens is
vehicular homicide and injuries but there are economic costs, legal issues as well as long term
consequences. ("Teenage Alcoholism -- Getting The Right Treatment", 2016). Which is why
educating teens and various social groups about the hazards of drunk driving can go a long way
in dealing with this public menace.

Goals and Interventions
The goals being set by the CSR of Perfexia are ambitious and greatly helpful for the society if
properly achieved in stipulated time. The team has proposed a plan that in the next six months at
least 10% of the people being targeted will be made fully aware about the hazards of the drunk
driving. On the completion of one year, the figure would be made to move up the ladder and
touch 25%. On the completion of two years, there is a plan of conversion of this figure into 50%.
The objective are pretty clear to the whole team and are taking strenuous efforts towards
achieving these stated targets.
Market Segmentation
Market segmentation refers to such a marketing strategy and the process that subdivides a
relatively significant homogeneous markets into distinctly identifiable clusters that have identical
needs, requirements as well as demanding characteristics. Its main purpose is to create a
marketing mix according to the expectations of the customers in the targeted region (Wedel &
Kamakura, 2000).
The primary market being targeted for the company’s awareness program has been identified as
people belonging to the young generation. The teenagers who are involved in the activities of
drunk driving are more particularly the ones that are needed to be targeted under the campaign of
spreading social awareness issue taken up by the CSR of Perfexia.
The team has been actively involved in measuring the effective size of the segment of the
teenagers to educate them about the serious consequences of drunk driving.
The accessibility of this segment through promotion, although, may be a herculean task, but with
the help of numerous techniques and effective approaches would become relatively easy for the
team. However, this is the most effective part of the campaign that is needed to be carried out
accordingly. As a matter of fact the teens often fail to consider the far reaching consequences of
drunk driving because of the lack of proper education and awareness. Therefore, they are needed
to be made morally responsible whenever they try to embark on such misadventure.
The teenagers are the individuals who, more often than not, have the propensity to think on the
same lines with almost similar interests and hobbies. The way they come with each other’s
influence so easily makes them obvious and important target of the campaign taken up by the
company’s CSR campaign management team. Therefore, it is of imperative need on the part of
the concerned department to design policies and locate resources that would be immensely
helpful for addressing the problem.

Marketing 4Ps
Product
The product of the marketing strategy is essentially the service that has been deployed to spread
the awareness regarding the social issues, in this case, drunk driving. The service is packaged in
a way that could create optimum level of the interest among the targeted segments with a lot of
education that come along with it. Most importantly, the service is intended for the education for
the masses so that the damage happening to the society could be reduced as much as we can.
Place
The place where this service could be availed by the target segment is everywhere from social
media to all the broadcasting channels. Besides, there are seminar campaigns to be held in
numerous locations belonging to the prime localities that are meant for educating the people. In
addition to that there is a dedicated team of professionals that has been busy in organizing the
trade fairs and producing samples of campaign catalogues as well as online promotional
activities.
Price
The price of the service that Perfexia has taken up in order to dispense to the masses is
completely free of cost. The best part is that it doesn’t matter whether the people are price
sensitive with regards the service they getting. It is completely discernible for the people to
become a part of the company’s promotional campaign for further penetration which in turn
would be in the greater good for them.
Promotion
The promotional part is very important for the effectiveness of the drunk driving campaign of
Perfexia. The messages that are effective are needed to get across the people so that they could
grasp what the marketing campaign want them to (Goi, 2009). The Company has devised many
ways to educate the audience for example advertising online, proper use of spaces in newspapers,
through TV, radio and billboards as well as by using direct marketing mailshot.
Upstream and Downstream
The promotional activities will be done by both upstream as well as downstream marketing. All
the marketing techniques, campaigns and catalogues are to be handed down by the product teams
to the technical teams and finally to the field teams. While, the upstream techniques used will be
responsible for the researches and interaction with the audience in the market in order to define
the long term efficiency and the roadmap of the campaign.

Appeal
The appeal for the promotional campaign is also necessary in that it ensures there are sufficient
attracting points for the marketing. If the people could attract towards the campaign
notwithstanding its gravity, the whole exercise of the promotion and marketing would be futile at
the end. Which is why the company needs to effectively project its credible established image
among the people.
Message Framing and Creativity
One area which can work wonders is the area of creativity and the way how messages are
framed. It is of paramount importance that people could understand the essence of the campaign,
so in the end, the content of the messages can really make a difference. It also depends upon
placement, approach and the kind of language being used for the messages. The approach should
be that it will clearly highlight the urgency, persistency, simplicity and the intended
empowerment that it will bring with it. The use of metaphors could also be regarded as concrete
and understandable (Tykocinskl, Higgins, & Chaiken, 1994).
Some of the slogans and messages being used are:
 Drink and drive will make it hard to survive
 Drive impaired, the driver should be scared
 Been to bar? Please don’t drive the car
 Drinking kills the driving skills
Evaluation
In the evaluation part, the company will analyze the success of the campaign after the completion
of the first six months. The team will evaluate whether the stipulated objectives were achieved or
not. After 15 days of the evaluation, the team will prepare a report based on the feedback of the
people as well as the concerned team of professionals.

Conclusion
The above report has taken into consideration various approaches, methodologies and techniques
in order to effectively put across a campaign regarding drunk driving especially on the part of
young generation. The way teenagers are using and getting exposed to the alcoholism has raised
several eyebrows among us. Therefore, an MNC known as Perfexia Inc. has utilized a marketing
strategy to start a campaign for educating people about the adverse consequences of drunk
driving.

References
Eisenberg, D. (2003). Evaluating the effectiveness of policies related to drunk driving. J. Pol.
Anal. Manage., 22(2), 249-274. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/pam.10116
Goi, C. (2009). A Review of Marketing Mix: 4Ps or More?. IJMS, 1(1).
http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/ijms.v1n1p2
Teenage Alcoholism -- Getting The Right Treatment. (2016). Learn-about-alcoholism.com.
Retrieved 7 September 2016, from http://www.learn-about-alcoholism.com/teenage-
alcoholism.html
Tykocinskl, O., Higgins, E., & Chaiken, S. (1994). Message Framing, Self-Discrepancies, and
Yielding to Persuasive Messages: The Motivational Significance of Psychological
Situations. Personality And Social Psychology Bulletin, 20(1), 107-115.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0146167294201011
Wedel, M. & Kamakura, W. (2000). Market Segmentation. Boston, MA: Springer US.