Marketing to Students.

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 489.

IV. Read the article and match the companies 1-4 with the promotion method they use. One company uses 2 methods.

READING

(1)The student market in the UK is estimated to be worth £ 13 of spending power in a year. It's a market no company should ignore. Marketers are desperate to get students' attention before they become high-earning graduates. But students are hard to reach. How can brands target them?

(2)Youth market trend analyst Sean Pillot advises companies who hope to market to students. He says there's no single strategy. Students organize their life in mobile phones, respect brands that are ethical, but worry more about how they are going to pay off their debt than world peace. To get students attention marketers must offer them something that adds to their lives. It isn't enough to simply sponsor music tour, they have to make the event happen. For example, Carling (a beer manufacturer) introduced live music on the Tube*.

(3)Offering students help with their education and career is an effective marketing method. The Guardian newspaper runs careers fairs and offers discounts on its products, such as Guardian Student, a 32-page newspaper.

(4)Red Bull, a successful energy drink brand, uses what it calls “energy teams” on university campuses. The company recruits teams of students and gives them a Red Bull car, which has a fridge. The students offer samples and give information about the product benefits. They do this on campus at sporting events and at times of the year when students might need energy boost. “It's extremely important that it's students doing this and not a company sales rep”, says the company's consumer manager who runs the scheme. “You need to have an approach that doesn't look like sales pitch”.

(5)Having an insider on campus can help marketers understand student life. Youth marketing agency, Virgin D3 has a database of students who act as “field staff'. They ask them for help when planning an event in their university. Perhaps, by getting ideas from the students themselves, companies can find way to reach the difficult market.

*Tube – London's underground train system (informal) - метро