A Japanese restaurant Aja (http://www.aja-newbrunswick.com/ (Links to an external site.)) in New Brunswick has hired you to help plan an integrated communications campaign around its upcoming 5th anniversary.
The idea would be to use the anniversary (a recognizable milestone for consumers) to generate additional interest in coming to the restaurant, learning about the Japanese culture and food and securing favorable word of mouth recommendations.
A few things:
- Assume we are no longer on COVID-19 lockdown.
- You can pick the date of the anniversary and when it is promoted in order to have enough time to plan and execute. For instance, you can decide to have the celebration sometime in November.
- Aja has a sister location in Matawan. (I’ve eaten there, it’s DELICIOUS!)
- I don’t really know if Aja has been around for five years; I made that up for the purposes of the assignment.
Develop a campaign plan following the 8-step planning process. Your paper will be around 3 pages.
8-step Planning Process
- Research
Summary of research conducted about your client, including background information on the organization, industry-related news, competitors, trends and important issues. This will be the longest part of the paper. - Objective
Define the objective of the campaign. This is a simple sentence or two. - Audience
Identify the various audiences you will target and explain why they are important to the campaign. You should have at least three audiences to target for this campaign.
Develop a key message specific to EACH audience, taking into account needs and self-interests.
An explanation of how you will shape your message so that they are both timely and newsworthy. - Strategy
What is the overarching approach to achieving your campaign objective? This is the most important component of the plan as it established how the communication efforts play out. - Tactics
What types of activities will you use to reach your objective? This is where you can get really creative! Think special events, social media campaigns, website updates, media relations. You should have at least three tactics. For proactive PR efforts, what types of media outlets or channels will you target? Provide a brief description of each tactic, i.e. theme for an event, the topic of the press release, the content added to the website, the topics highlighted in a social media campaign. - Calendar
Provide a time frame in which your campaign will be conducted and a sequence for the campaign’s activities. This can be a simple list of what you will do each month in preparation for the campaign launch. Include how long the campaign will run as well. - Budget
Assume there are no budget constraints. - Evaluation
How will you evaluate the campaign’s success? What metrics will you monitor based on the tactics you execute. Remember what the restaurant hired you for….
