Fusion 5 - Innovative Marketing - Student post - Project Showcase

Fusion 5 - Innovative Marketing

A marketing innovation is the implementation of a new marketing method involving significant changes in product design or packaging, product placement, product promotion or pricing is a definition of innovative marketing to put it in layman terms.

The effort behind running a pilot campaign on campus was tremendous. Ideating a pragmatic concept to implementing real-world concepts for selling products on campus was more challenging than words can express. Our professor had encouraged us to do an exercise in class where each individual came up with his or her own innovative marketing ideas. When five of us came together in a group, we had a bunch of varied ideas, from beauty salons to restaurants. Zeroing in on a field all 5 members of our group were comfortable working with, was the first hurdle and it did take more than a week to freeze on the options. Food had never failed to excite us, therefore we decided to improvise on one of our concepts of a Quick-Serving fast food restaurant. First step was to decide our offering to the customers. The idea of fusion food didn’t take too long to pop in our minds and naming the baby was even more simple, “Fusion 5”. Fusion represented the food we serve and 5 depicted the 5 members of the group, although we incorporated several meanings in it later. After identifying the four Ps, we set our offering straight “fast food, fast service”. Because, Keep It Simple Silly! Next step was to brain storm on strategies to promote our product in the real-world. Extracting a few ideas from it, we decided to implement the best, practical few on campus. Then we mapped out areas to cover for promotion and advertising on campus. It was no cake walk, it was quintessential to cover all hot spots on campus, which was everywhere! We didn’t fret because we were all in this together. After planning locations, budgeting was the immediate stage. After determining a fixed amount all five of us where ready to shell out, our offering immediately became a matter of discussion. “Fusion food in 5 minutes” was our USP. In order to achieve that. we stuck to simplest yet yummiest of food/ drinks which could be made under 5 minutes. Later, webegan working on the creativity. Posters, banners, pamphlets and even e-mails were drafted for the student body. Being on budget was our ultimate priority, not only because of the budgets we have as students but also because this was a major learning from the course itself, promoting our brand in the smartest ways possible and that included working with limited financial resources. Therefore every strategy we designed were at par with the money in hand.

Creative’s

Creatives were ready, e-mails were on point, fusion food ingredients were in the making, we were almost set. The date of execution came around the corner. 6:30 alarms woke us up and before 9 a.m, our posters were up all over campus. The hostels, the sports office, the canteen, the fields, trees, essential store, ATMs; you name it, Fusion 5 was everywhere. The next set of posters went up at midnight a day later, pamphlets were also distributed to all the rooms in every single hostel. At one point we became desperate that our posters may have covered way too many places. But nothing let us down. It was our first shot at this exercise, our gut instincts drove us and we gave it all we got.

Execution

The day of execution was finally here! Our promotions around campus had bulidupto this day and we were revved up and ready to introduce the people of FLAME, to Fusion 5. After a long day of classes we rushed to prep for setting up our food stall near the sports office. After some really quick chopping of vegetables and crying courtesy of the onions we made our way to the stall. Our colourful, handmade flex was proudly displayed next to the stall, near the sports office, listing our menu letting people know we’re open for business. People across the student body as well as faculty visited our stall, with the Chair of FSC accompanying Sajith Sir for a quick bite. Members of the competing groups too came to the stall, giving rise to a spirit of healthy competition in the class. Due to the location of the stall,as well as the FBL matches, we got to serve quite a few hungry athletes too. Seeing that business was going really well, with Mexican bhel being the best-seller, we decided to extend our activation for one more day. On day two, we decided to set up our stall near the canteen, where the activation of the other groups were being done as well. This experience was quite interesting in its own, as head to head competition pushed us to promote ourselves even more strongly. Some of our feedback on the second day included people coming to us and asking if our activation on campus was going to translate to a real world business, due to the nature of our promotions! Quite a few faculty members and wardens visited our stall on this day. Finally we shut shop around 8:30 P.M with most of our stuff being sold out, our happy but tired bodies retired for the day.

The activation activities on campus were overall a brilliant, fun, experience that took us beyond the classroom learning and I hope all of us can go through more such exercises to deepen and make our learning a more engaging active process.

FSCIM