Battling Hunger : Marketing Strategy

Battling Hunger: Marketing Strategy

-??????By Saloni Singh

Introduction

This essay revolves around tackling the wicked problem of hunger by a burger franchise-based brand called Burger Anytime. This is an original idea and Burger Anytime is not currently taking any prominent measures in this direction. Therefore, this essay is based on an idea and assumes that Burger Anytime has agreed to take the first step in this direction. From the first-hand experience of working at Burger Anytime, I have seen food wastage as a routine task. Employees, as part of their job, are required to throw away perishable items such as meatballs that are left after the day’s sales. This essay is based on the premise that Burger Anytime is launching a new service called “Battling Hunger Program” which aims at distributing leftover fresh food on a daily basis to homeless people in the city of Dublin via various NGOs and shelter homes across the city. I, being the champion of marketing for this service, am designated the task of recommending how the marketing element of this project will be strategized and planned. Throughout this work, we will apply principles of Design Thinking to get to a viable solution by the end of this essay. While this essay focuses more on some elements of strategic elements than others, it touches upon all the main ones relevant to this wicked problem.

Strategic Marketing Elements: Segmentation, Targeting, Positioning (M-School tools)

?Segmentation: The market taken into consideration here is a portion of the Irish market, that is, Dublin. Once “Battling Hunger Program” becomes a success in the Dublin area, Burger Anytime will look into expanding this service in Ireland and gradually in other countries as well.

Targeting: The first clear audience for this service is the group of homeless people residing on the streets of Dublin, who urgently require shelter and food. But there is also another segment that can be targeted for remodeling the image of Burger Anytime in the eyes of its existing and future customers. The second target group for this service is the existing customer base. As customers will see Burger Anytime doing great work in serving people, the brand image and trust factor in the brand will go up. In the future, as the role of ESG further gains importance, this service might even lead to an increase in the share price of Burger Anytime (Kostelijk and Alsem, 2020).

Positioning: This is the focus of this essay. An extensive analysis in the area of positioning will help devise the value proposition or the unique selling proposition (USP) for Burger Anytime (Davidson and Leavy, 2007). While tackling the area of positioning, we will take the help of the Design Thinking framework to devise feasible steps for implementation (Kotler and Keller, 2008).

Design Thinking (D-School tools)

The Design Thinking approach comprises 5 steps namely, empathize, define, ideate, prototype and test. With respect to the wicked problem of hunger that Burger Anytime attempts to solve, our main focus areas are the ideate and prototype steps (IDEO Design Thinking, n.d.).

Empathize: This step involves empathizing with the solution provider of the wicked problem. As a marketing champion for this service, I need to truly understand the challenge of providing food to the people on the streets who have no idea about this service of Burger Anytime. Therefore, the first problem area is to spread the word about this service in different ways so that it reaches the needful audience. At the same time, I shall utilize this opportunity to create an improved image of Burger Anytime for the existing customer base. Thus, the other problem area for Burger Anytime would be to involve its current customer base in solving the problem of hunger in a way that they feel like an important part of the process. This will, in the end, make customers fall in love with the brand as they continue to feel great about buying from Burger Anytime.

Define: The specific problem statement I have devised as the marketing specialist is- “How might we offer food to homeless people in Dublin through a process of involvement for customers and at the same time enhance the brand image?”

Ideate: Plenty of ideas emerged at this stage, of which the main ones which would be implemented are-

a.????Social Media Campaigns with hashtags (#battlinghungerprogram) will spread the word of this new service widely to existing customers, thus creating inquisitiveness and interest among people.

b.????Burger Anytime must join hands with NGOs working for homeless people and send them the leftover food for the day by 7 pm every day.

c.????Special Coupons will be available at the Burger Anytime outlets that can be handed to interested customers. These customers shall give the coupons to the homeless people on the streets who can use the coupons in exchange for free food from the nearest shelter home or NGO that Burger Anytime has collaborations with.

Prototype: Based on the above-mentioned ideas, the prototype is a 5-step storyboard. In simple words, a customer who visits any Burger Anytime store in Dublin notices the new service “Battling Hunger Program” which says “feed 10 people to get a free sandwich of your choice” placed on posters where it is easily visible to customers. This would make them interested to know more and they will end up asking the staff about it. If the customer is interested to participate, he/she takes a few coupons which are scanned and thus get tagged to the customer’s Burger Anytime account. This customer then gives these coupons to different homeless and needy people. The coupon will have the address of the nearest NGO which has collaborated with Burger Anytime. The homeless people can then go to this location to collect their food. At the NGO or shelter, the coupon would be scanned again which will now start reflecting on the customer’s account who distributed the coupon. Finally, after the coupon is scanned, the homeless person gets the food. For every customer of Burger Anytime, scanning 10 coupons at the NGO by homeless people will allow him/her to avail of a sandwich of their choice free of cost. Additionally, posting about their stories and experiences about helping people and, tagging Burger Anytime (#battlinghungerprogram) on social media and getting at least 5 reposts will get them a free drink from Burger Anytime.

Test: First, this prototype will be tested in Dublin. The measure which will govern whether the prototype is a success or a failure is the number of homeless people fed in a span of 30 days.

Through the above process of Design Thinking, I can make a strong value proposition for this service: “We help feed homeless people by collaborating with NGOs and our customers’ support.” The first and foremost recommendation is to get together with NGOs and discuss the implementation plan devised above. Once the plan is discussed, the test period of 1 month should be considered and the results evaluated at the end of 1 month. If needed, this whole cycle of Design Thinking can be reiterated.

?Conclusion

Burger Anytime is one of the largest American fast-food franchises with more than 150 outlets in Ireland alone. The strategic tools used above are very precisely focused on Burger Anytime’s solution to tackling the problem of hunger in Dublin. Some areas need deeper insight going further, such as collaborating with NGOs and shelter homes, devising a mechanism to transport food from Burger Anytime to these locations daily, etc., which are out of the scope of this essay. Along with solving the problem of hunger, “Battling Hunger Program” service will also make customers fall in love with the brand. It will also reduce food wastage which is one of the major concerns today in any major food chain in the world.

References

1.????Davidson, A. and Leavy, B., 2007. Interview with innovation guru Geoffrey Moore: seeking solutions to intractable problems.?Strategy & Leadership.

2.????IDEO Design Thinking. n.d.?IDEO Design Thinking. [online] Available at: <https://designthinking.ideo.com/> [Accessed 19 April 2022].

3.????Kostelijk, E. and Alsem, K.J., 2020.?Brand positioning: Connecting marketing strategy and communications. Routledge.

4.????Kotler, P. and Keller, K.L., 2008. Marketing strategy. In?London: London Business Forum.