This strategic analysis was an assignment in a business writing course as part of the Northwestern Organization Behavior – Business Leadership degree I am seeking. While others wrote through a lens of finances, logistics, etc., my analysis came from the marketing perspective.
The Assignment Prompt
Imagine you are a Marketing Associate at Genie, a wireless service provider, and your supervisor has asked you to perform research into a competing provider’s products and services for the over-65 market, paying special attention to the ways in which the company successfully appeals to the needs and interests of its audience.
Case Background
“You’ve seen this?” Adriane Carpenter asks you.
You look at a report she has on her desk. “I haven’t,” you say.
“It’s a Pew survey on senior citizens and technology (Links to an external site.). Listen to this. Sixty-seven percent of adults age 65 or older are online. More than a third use social media, a seven-point increase from 2013. Four-in-ten seniors now own smartphones, more than double the share that did so in 2013.”
Adriane is your supervisor at Genie, a wireless service provider, where you’re a new Marketing Associate. “How can I help?” you say. You’re still getting used to Adriane’s style. She doesn’t come right out and tell you what she wants. She starts talking and works toward it.
“Look at this,” she says, turning on a projector, which displays a screen from the website of GreatCall, a competing wireless-phone provider. “And this,” she says, pulling up another Great Call screen.
“I see,” you say, nodding your head, although you’re not exactly sure what you’re supposed to be seeing.
“These guys are clobbering us. Every market segment except seniors is saturated. And these guys,” she says, her hand waving at the images projected on her wall, “the stuff they’ve got for seniors—the phones, the apps, the plans, even the … even this site—what are we going to have to do to get some of this?” She stops talking, which means it’s time for you to figure out what she’s asking.
“Would you like me to take a look at the site, see what they’re doing?”
“Yeah, that’s a good idea,” Adriane says. “Get back to me, then. Okay?”
“Absolutely,” you say.
You go back to your office and start looking around GreatCall.com (Links to an external site.). Adriane was right: everything about the site—from the phones to the calling plans to the apps and the site itself—is designed to appeal to the needs and interests of a single population: baby boomers, now in their sixties and seventies. You send Adriane an email letting her know that you will send her a memo about GreatCall in a couple of days. She says that would be fine.
It has been a week since you sent Adriane your memo. The memo impressed her. She asks, “Could you pull together an oral presentation to rest of the marketing team, walking us through the main points from the memo?” Using a program such as PowerPoint or Prezi, create a set of graphics for a 15-minute presentation about how the GreatCall site appeals to the needs and interests of its audience. Include the speaker’s notes for the presentation (either in the Notes section of PowerPoint or in a separate document for Prezi).
Case adapted from Markel, M. (2015). Technical Communication (11th ed.). Boston, MA: Bedford St. Martins.
MarketingMichelle 