Developing a market strategy in Conde Nast Campany

MARKETING STRATEGY

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Introduction

Business and the current economy require constant upgrading in order to keep up with the competition in the global market. A case study on Conde Nast as the company of choice will create a picture of the current market and the challenges it has faced over the years. This paper seeks to develop a marketing strategy in order to come up with a competitive advantage as well as maintain its market share and sustainability.

Conde Nast

Conde Nast is a leading publisher of consumer print and online titles globally. It covers over 150 million readers in about 23 countries, 127 print titles which include Glamour, Vogue, Vanity Fair, GQ, and wired, and 84 websites. This company has a reputation for being the most innovative publishers who have embraced mutual support and synchronized portfolio of offline and online publications. The sudden increase of the use of the Internet as a media channel over the last ten years has resulted in several publishers facing the challenge of digitising their content. Publishers of consumer titles with many challenges face a critical one of moving important proportions of marketing communication budgets to the Internet.

In the face of such competition, Conde Nast came to the conclusion that there was a need to ensure that their print titles like the Glamour, GQ, AD, Vogue and Men’s Vogue engaged their wider network of readers on a more personal, deep and relevant level than it had ever done. By doing this, there would be editorial satisfaction, and brand relationships would be strengthened resulting in an increase in unit sales, retention of readers and improved advertising revenues. For this strategy to be a success, the marketing team had to gain a deep and immense understanding of its consumer audience. They would have hastily and cost effectively involved in varied and frequent research on consumers to understand their interests thus enabling core publications to increase attractiveness to advertisers as well as consumers.

The insight team in Condé Nast started its customer immersion expedition by first embracing the pace and cost effectiveness of online market research (Aaker 2002). Further, the company understood that, with its list of subscribers, enormous web traffic volumes and the possibility to use its print publications for recruitment, it could utilise the existent assets to convert its customers to a branded panel community. The Panel Portal solution was selected based on five key performance criteria for this conversion. These performance criteria’s were simplicity of use, speed at which they could be implemented, support services and expertise, multilingual support, and scalability to integrate into future web community projects. With the Panel Portal platform, Condé Nast was now equipped with an easy-to-use solution which would enable quick and highly effective gathering of consumer insight. From the start, Condé Nast embraced the potential of Panel Portal and conducted research studies to solve a wide variety of business problems.

Definition of Strategy

Strategy is the art of coordinating the means that is human resources, money, and materials to achieve the ends, which in this case are customer satisfaction, profit, and company growth as defined by the company policy and growth. It can further be defined as actions to achieve long-term objectives which exist at three levels.

First is the high level of corporate strategy where one aims at coordinating and deploying company resources toward the fulfilment of the company’s vision for the future along with the related long-term objectives. This means implementing the company’s strategies with a view towards understanding the changing market conditions, keeping in mind the long-range potential for its future development and profitable growth (Brennand n.d.). The second level is the mid level strategy which operates in the division, business unit, and department or within the product line. This one is more precise than the corporate strategy as it covers a period of three to five years focusing on quantitative and non-quantitative objectives.

This level bears the intent to penetrate existing markets with existing products, in this case the production titles. Then, expand into new markets with existing products as well as develop new products for the existing markets. Launching this company online will create a window for establishing a new market and acquiring an even bigger share of readers. The marketing team will also be in a position to create new products for the new market acquired as well as attract more subscribers. The final level is the lower-level strategy which is tactical and requires a shorter time frame than the two higher levels. Usually it correlates with the company’s business plan and the budgetary process.

David Aaker and Michael porter define marketing strategy as “The process that allows an organisation to concentrate its resources on the optimal opportunities with the aim of increasing sales and achieving a sustainable competitive advantage. Or as Porter puts it, it’s defining your position, making trade-offs and forging fit among organizational activities” (Hill & Jones 2008). Aside from these two, many others have attempted to define marketing strategies in different ways. One would ask why there are so many definitions, but this is due to the fact that marketing as a profession is very versatile. This results in a difference in situations and no two marketers find themselves in the same one. It is therefore understandable to say that there cannot be a consensus when it comes to the perfect definition of a marketing strategy.

PEST Analysis

PEST is basically the study of the market in respect to politics, economy, social aspect, and technology. PEST analysis may be incorporated within a SWOT analysis to achieve the same effect.

PEST becomes more useful and relevant to a large and more complex business or proposition, but even for very small local businesses a PEST analysis can still throw up one or two very significant issues that might otherwise be missed. It is often utilised for business development and marketing assessment and decision-making; the PEST template stimulates proactive thinking rather than relying on instinctive or habitual reactions (Aaker & McLoughlin 2010).

Political

Political issues, legislations, and policies can be analysed through this method of analysis. It allows a company to be in touch with the happening around the political arena that affect them and react accordingly. The government of the UK has also taken to the Internet in its policies and initiatives hence giving access for any person with interest in any political field to learn something. In the business arena, this is good as an online research regarding political issues and legislation makes the mentioned company to be ahead in terms of the legalities they need to comply with. They are also in a good position to involve the government in any program that they have or even ask for funding. The government and businesses can also monitor pressures from international bodies as well as wars and conflicts.

Economic

With the current home economic situation, most families are trying to cut costs rather than incurring it hence the need to have cost effective publications. Having such publication will also see overseas embracing the products because they will be at an affordable rate. The company will also need not to go at a loss when it comes to publishing. This highly supports the idea of having the online marketing especially for the overseas market (Drejer 2002). Consumers will not have to wait for the deliveries unless, of course, they request for it, and the company will save on the cost of material. Taxation will cease to be an issue as the goods will be online but as a service hence no need to pay for tax while exporting to markets overseas. Interestingly, launching products in the online market gives the company a competitive edge with other competitors. It is also very good for the economy of this country.

Social

The current lifestyle trends change very fast, and one needs to keep up one way or the other especially in the United Kingdom. To cover the demographics and ever-changing trends, the online publication is a perfect remedy, especially in the world of fashion where a trend may appear overnight, and it has to be documented. It allows one to keep up with whatever is happening at all times. The real time that the Internet offers gives immediate feedback, and the company gets real time consumer attitudes and opinions (Competitor analysis n.d.). Monitoring is also made easy as the company is able to track sales and consumer patterns. It also allows gauging when the time is right to rebrand or change the technology in use. Featuring fashion and role models as well as major events in the UK gives a platform to advertise other brands within one brand while cutting costs and increasing sales.

Technological

Research funding is laborious, especially if a company seeks to make profits, but with the use of technology, research can be done online. It also gives employment to software developers to come up with new techniques that will heighten competition in business. In regards to Conde Nast, manufacturing capacity is greatly increased because various publications can be worked on simultaneously and sent out almost at the same time. Immediately, they are placed in the market where consumers can make a choice of the publication they want, and the company is able to see sales from the comfort of the Internet wherever they are.

Internal Market Place Analysis

Conde Nast measures and communicates the value of digital magazine editions with relevant, real time responses and has proven to be unmatched in the world of magazine publishing. Having adapted very well to the changing times, Conde Nast boasts of having 18 consumer magazines, 27 websites, for B2B (business-to-business) publications and well over 50 apps for tablet and mobile devices. However, this does not mean it has been a smooth sail as the company has had some challenges adjusting to the digital shift. This came from the need for publishers to rethink every aspect of creating and presenting content as well as how it is being consumed online and offline.

In regard to this, the executive director sought new ways of providing Conde Nast and its advertisers with clear measurements of how each of its publications’ brands was performing across channels. His efforts helped to attract advertisers and build revenues as the company presented the most complete and accurate view of audience engagement on websites and with emerging tablet publications. The result was a detailed, issue level insight into the behaviour of readers of digital editions. Marketing tactics delivered a 50 % increase in traffic as well as real time responses on emerging trends in digital readership (Oster 1999). Enabling the issue-level viewing of analytical data related content in digital editions allowed better development of the next issue based on the view and opinions of the readers.

Some of the challenges that Conde Nast faced were the uncovering of the most important metrics of digital editions. Communicating more relevant, timely audience data to advertisers was the other challenge Conde Nast went through as well as isolating data by magazine issue for more intuitive understanding (Thakur 1997). The biggest challenge yet was to build ad revenues by proving to agencies the value of placements. A publication is more successful with an ad running and getting agencies to place ads on the online publications was also a task that arose.

Overcoming these challenges, leveraging data from Adobe Site Catalyst and Insight was taken to learn about the behaviours and digital readers and combine with Audience Research to uncover in greater detail how readers engage with specific content in digital editions. For magazine publishers, Audience Research makes it easy to focus on activity within particular magazine issues as opposed to just capturing higher-level views of activity on a webpage. This also allows the company to zero in on the performance of specific content within each magazine issue. The flexibility of Audience Research makes all the difference, according to Reynolds, enabling Condé Nast to offer its managers and eventually its advertisers a clear, issue-by-issue view of trends in content consumption over time (Varghese 2012).

Competitor’s Analysis

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Objectives

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CompetitorResponse Profile

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Resources& Capabilities

Source: Competitor analysis n.d.

Michael porter presented a framework of analysing competitors based on four aspects.

The competitor’s current strategy says that the major sources of information about it are what are said by the competitor and what he does. However, it could differ if what the competitor is doing is evident in where its cash flow is directed. A competitor’s objective says that knowing the objective facilitates a better prediction of the competitor’s reaction to different moves. Competitor’s objectives may be financial or related to market share, growth rate and technology leadership. Competitor’s assumption: the assumption that managers hold about their firm and their industry help define the moves to be considered. Competitor’s assumptions may be based on a number of factors including industry trends, regional factors, past experiences with a product among others.

Competitor’s capabilities: knowing the assumptions, objectives, and strategies is useful in understanding how the competitor might respond to a competitive attack. Capabilities and resources determine the ability to respond effectively. Competitive response profile: analysis of the assumptions, objectives, capabilities, and strategy of the competitor can be compiled to make a response profile. The profile includes both defensive moods and potentially offensive ones.

Conclusion

Conde Nast has made the big step to switch to the digital market, and it has been able to overcome its challenges. Its publication online gives the consumers real time information and almost real time data feedback enabling the right adjustments to be made in the next publications. The competition from phones and tablets is healthy as it keeps the developers up to date, as well as the advertisers. This company has a reputation for being the most innovative publishers who have embraced mutual support and synchronized portfolio of offline and online publications. The insight team in Condé Nast started its customer immersion expedition by first embracing the pace and cost effectiveness of online market research (Aaker 2002). In regard to Conde Nast, PESTEL was considered. It is basically the study of the market in respect to politics, economy, social aspect and technology. It tends to assess the market, including competitors, from the standpoint of a particular proposition or a business. Internal Market Place Analysis shows that the company has had some challenges adjusting to the digital shift. This came from the need for publishers to rethink every aspect of creating and presenting content as well as how it is being consumed online and offline. Finally, for magazine publishers, Audience Research makes it easy to focus on activity within particular magazine issues as opposed to just capturing higher-level views of activity on a webpage.

Marketing Strategy

The company should involve the government in any program that they have or even ask for funding, and this will enable it to have good reputation.

Having a cost effective publication will also see overseas embracing the products because they will be at an affordable rate.

Launching products in the online market. This will give the company a competitive edge with other competitors. It is also very good for the economy of this country.

Monitoring should be made easy to enable company to track sales and consumer patterns.

Featuring fashion and role models as well as major events in the UK will give a platform to advertise other brands within one brand while cutting costs and increasing sales.

Enabling the issue-level viewing of analytical data related content in digital editions will allow better development of the next issue based on the view and opinions of the readers.

Audience Research will be done. This makes it easy to focus on activity within particular magazine issues as opposed to just capturing higher-level views of activity on a webpage.

Reference List

Aaker, D 2002, Developing business strategies, Wiley, New York.

Aaker, DA & McLoughlin, D 2010, Strategic market management: global perspectives, John Wiley & Sons, New York.

Brennand, S n.d., What is marketing strategy, viewed 5 December 2013, <https://exploreb2b.com/articles/what-is-marketing-strategy>

Competitor analysis n.d., NetMBA, viewed 5 December 2013, <http://www.netmba.com/strategy/competitor-analysis>.

Drejer, A 2002, Strategic management and core competencies: theory and application, Greenwood Publishing Group, UK.

Hill, CWL & Jones, GR 2008, Essentials of strategic management, Cengage Learning, UK.

Market analysis n.d., NetMBA, viewed 5 December 2013, <http://www.netmba.com/marketing/market/analysis/>.

Oster, SM 1999, Modern competitive analysis, Oxford University Press, UK.

Thakur, M 1997, International management: concepts and cases, Tata McGraw-Hill Publishing, New Delhi.

Varghese, J 2012, Competitor analysis, working paper, AuthorHouse, London.