STOP
SHO
GROW HAYS
Media Campaign
Drew
Christina
Jordan
Alfredo
Executive summary:
For this advertising media project, we began by identifying the short and long term goals and
by preparing a SWOT analysis, analyzing the Hays Area Commerce’s STOP-SHOP-GROW
campaign strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. After discussing the short-term and
long-term goals, SWOT analysis, and the current media plan for the STOP-SHOP-GROW
campaign we chose to market to three different market segments in the Hays area. Two major
goals that we to accomplish with this media is to create brand awareness and customer loyalty
among our target markets. We will measure our goals throughout the entire media plan’s
timeline by the evaluation of increased local sales and business memberships by 2018, along
with an increase in awareness among all our target market segments. Because this campaign has
already begun, we are using the current budget of $3,000. We will divide this budget up through
the use of our medias, newspapers, posters, radio ads, and social media. The goals and SWOT
analysis for this campaign are listed below.
Short Term Goals:
·
Increase awareness, especially amongst our three target markets, Hays residents ages 25-35,
Senior Citizens and College students.
·
Increase local sales by 15% in a six month time period
Long-Term Goals:
·
Increase brand loyalty among Hays residents ages 25-35, Senior Citizens and college
students.
·
Increase business membership by 20% by the end of 2018
We first need to accomplish our short-term goals before we can tackle the long-term goals. Our
short-term goals are pretty basic for the overall media plan; increase awareness amongst our
three target markets and increasing the local sales by 15% in a six month time period. The longterm goals will help this media plan become successful by increasing brand loyalty among our
three specific target markets and by increasing the amount of business memberships by at least
20% by the end of 2018. After discussing the Shop Local campaign with the Chamber of
Commerce Executive Director, Tammy Wellbrock, we chose to stick to Hays Area Chamber of
Commerce’s current media and advertising plan and add a few ideas here and there to really
build up more brand awareness and loyalty. Evaluating the success of this media plan will be
less difficult due to our specific deadlines and measurements we have set in place. The longterm and short-term goals will help the Hays Area Chamber of Commerce’s Shop Local
campaign build brand awareness and create enough buzz that the campaign can thrive for many
years, with multiplying businesses and repeat consumers. This media plan will help the residents
of Hays see that supporting your local businesses is an excellent opportunity to put revenue back
into the community. With a “ You Scratch my Back, I’ll scratch yours” attitude, small
businesses can survive in rural America.
Plan:
The main objective of this media plan is to increase awareness of the Stop Show Grow
campaign. Through brand awareness, customer loyalty, and new membership we will be able to
accomplish this marketing objective. By keeping the current media plan and placing our own
new ideas in it we can establish a sense of customer involvement. We will be targeting three
major market segments; Hays residents ages 25-35 years old, senior citizens and college
students. To meet these market segments needs a SWOT analysis was prepared:
Strengths:
·
Small town bond
·
·
Partnerships within the Hays Area (Victoria, Schoenen, Ellis)
Variety of Services
o Retail
o Motor
o Financial
o Restaurants
o Medical
o Professional
Weaknesses:
· Small Town
·
Constant competition with corporate stores (i.e. Walmart and Dillons)
·
Lack of community involvement
·
Limited resources and involvement
·
Small budgets for promotions and budgets
Opportunities:
·
Potential growth of among target market segments
·
Brand loyalty among target market segments
·
Chamber cheques to increase and encourage local shopping
·
Increase campaign awareness
·
Expanding local business services
Threats:
·
Competition-Wal-Mart and Dillions
·
Pressure to compete at the expense of competition
·
National budget crisis
·
Public Perception-“Hays has nothing to do.”
·
Not a one stop shop
Advertising Objectives
The advertising objectives are very similar to the marketing objectives that we have set for this
media plan. The objectives consist of customer loyalty and campaign awareness for our three
target market segments. The advertising objectives will not only bring awareness to the Stop
Shop Grow campaign but also help change the perception of the surrounding Hays area
communities. For our market segments consisting of the 25-35 year old residents and senior
citizens living in the Hays area, we are promoting a call to action to utilize the local
businesses. Supporting the area local businesses is vital to the economy of any small rural
community. Without the support these businesses are not able to complete with big box stores
such as Wal-Mart and Dillions. To target these specific target markets we will attract them by
using traditional media types such as radio and newspaper advertisements and with a series of
posters. When targeting our younger target market, the college students, we chose to use all the
media types listed above but we chose to add in a popular tool used by this generation, social
media. With this media we will be able to post discounts and deals available for at live time for
students to see.
Media Objectives:
The campaign will use various sizes of posters that have been redesigned, and will
continue to use the radio and Hays Daily News advertisements that were created in the original
campaign. The radio and newspaper ads are being used again because the advertising team
believed the original advertisements were impactful for the Stop-Shop-Grow campaign. The
radio and newspaper ads will be ran in tandem with the original campaign. The new posters will
be run in 8.5” x 11” and 11”14” sizes, and will be displayed at various locations in the
community. Also, social media will be used to target younger demographics.
Messages creativity:
The posters that were created were based off the idea of Hays having a unique community
personality all of its own. A series of photos were taken by Christina Smith, a member of the
advertising team, which showcase some of the exceptional opportunities that the Hays area has.
Different areas were chosen as the focal point of the pictures to speak to the different
demographics that were chosen by the advertising team. For the college-age demographic a
picture of Picken Hall was used because it is a well-known building on campus that most
students will interact within their college education. A scenic picture was taken of the downtown
area to speak to the 25-35 year-old demographic because it is the new up and coming area of
Hays that has many businesses and services that this demographic will be interested in. Finally, a
picture was taken at Old Fort Hays that will speak to the senior generation to show the rich
history that the Hays area has. Also, this picture can speak to a lot of people who have attended
the tour of the historic Fort or have heard the reveille reenactment. The posters will feature the
background picture, the redesigned logo, and a small informational section about events or
promotions that the Hays Area Chamber of Commerce will be holding. This strategy works well
for any time of year and allows changes to be made without risking changing the overall design.
The stoplight that was used in the current advertising was the basis for the logo that was
redesigned. The slogan STOP-SHOW-GROW was also used again to tie in future advertising
with the original campaign. Stop is in the red portion of the stoplight to show that people should
stop going to outside communities to shop and should stay here in Hays to purchase what they
need. The shop is in yellow to signify that we all need to slow down and look around at all of the
opportunities the Hays area has for shopping and services. Finally, the Grow is in green to
visualize that once more people of Hays and the surrounding area begin to put money back into
the community it will grow and prosper. The outline of the stoplight was used as a “nod” to the
original design in the campaign, but it was made more modern to stand out from other logos in
the area. The logo also used different fonts to make it visually appealing without making it too
distracting from the message. The fonts also will add a bit more modernity to the overall design
of the logo. Steps were taken to make the logo readable not only in color but also in black and
white so it will be legible for any situations that may arise.
Media tactics:
As we’ve stated previously the main focus of our media plan is to cause a call to action in all
three of our target audiences. This was the biggest challenge for our group, since it required us to
figure out an effective use of our budget as well as reach each of the target audiences. Due to the
high brand and current campaign awareness, we felt that we needed to increase the frequency of
their current campaign and branch out to other forms of media to cause our audiences to act and
shop locally.
In our college student aged group, we knew that we’d be dealing with a number of negative
brand associations that was tied to the Hays Chamber of Commerce. We asked various students
ranging from freshmen to graduate levels and we heard a number of the same general remarks
about the Hays Chamber of Commerce.
o
“Hays has nothing to do besides partying.”
o
“Hays doesn’t have “cool” stores.”
o
“Hays needs more technology based businesses.”
o
“The local Business are too expensive.”
o
“I’d shop at local businesses more, if they’d give me a reason to.”
In order to change the current perspectives of this group we needed to utilize media channels
that would show that the Hays Chamber of Commerce and Local Businesses are willing to cast
aside traditional media, to reach and interact with students. To reach these young adults we plan
on utilizing various social media sites to promote and distribute various sales and promotional
opportunities to students. We plan on using three social media sites (Facebook, Twitter, and
instagram) to help promote chamber cheques, as well as a sales promotion for college students.
In this promotion chamber members who were interested would offer a discount on selected
services or products for students who shopped at their store and brought their tiger card. Since
the tiger card is handed out for free to all students, there would be no cost in developing a card
for this promotion, and it would already be distributed to all students. We would establish the
social media pages at the start of the campaign in July and will have them continually run
throughout the six month period. Along with the use of social media we plan on using an on
campus poster to help promote “The Shop Local Shop Hays” campaign. As we’ve previously
mentioned this poster campaign will consist of customizable posters that we will be able to focus
around each of our target audiences. In the case of the college students we wanted to use familiar
images of the campus as well and images of students having fun in various hays locations, to
help promote the image that Hays can be fun, interesting, and cool. The posters will be released
at the start of August since that is the month that the college is starting to heavily prepare for the
semester and will run for three months ending in October right before the big holiday rush. This
way it is uniform with the other poster campaigns we plan on running, and it provides enough
awareness to the Hays Chamber of commerce that we will have best potential reaction to the
radio and newspaper ads which will act as a call to action to shop locally, stop leaving hays, and
grow the community of hays. These ads will be ran for 3 months total and will split up at the first
month of the campaign to raise awareness and then reinstated back into the campaign for the
Holiday season in November and December.
The other groups that we want to focus on is the post college working adult as well as the
senior adults living in Hays. In specific we wanted to reach out to young parents between ages
25-35 who have just started a family and are settling down in Hays, as well as member of the
community who are ages 55-65 who still are active in the Hays Community. We feel that these
two groups of individuals in general have the same overall goal. To better life in the city of Hays
for their Children, Grandchildren, nieces, nephews, ect. and they have the expendable income to
do it. Currently through our research, we found out that currently the brand recognition for the
Hays Chamber of Commerce is actually quite high, and for the most part seems to have fairly
positive associations.

“I Support Local Businesses.”

“Shopping locally is convenient and quick, but I wish they would have a
larger variety of business to choose from.”

“ I like to shop locally, I feel like I’m helping my community and I’m
making it a better place to live for my kids.”
For these demographics we wanted to implement the use of both social media along with more
traditional advertising options. Once again we feel that having them interact with the chamber
directly through social media will be a great opportunity for the chamber to promote sales as well
as a sense of connection with these demographics. We plan on using the social media as a device
that various businesses involved with the Chamber can use to post sales or specials that they
might have. Along with the social media we plan on using the current radio and print
advertisements that the chamber has developed. These advertisements will act as call to action
and will implemented the month In addition to these advertisements we plan on releasing
another poster that business will be able to tailor to these age groups. These poster campaigns
will run in tandem with the student posters and will be used to create general awareness for the
campaign. We want to build the association that supporting the Hays Chamber of Commerce
will result in the betterment of their own lives.
Calendar:
July
2013
Poster
August
2013
September
2013
October
2013
X
X
X
November
2013
December
2013
Radio
X
X
X
Hays Daily
X
X
X
Social Media
X
X
X
X
X
X
Budget:
Posters:
 3 (11” X 14”) posters at $9.99 per poster
 100 (8” X 11”) posters at $3.99 per poster
o $430 total for 103 posters.
Social Media:
 Twitter: Free
 Facebook: Free
Radio:

$300 per month for a set radio plan x 3 months
o $900
Newspaper:
 3”X 3” inch ad
o $13.67 per column inch in the Hays Daily
 $1477 (at 1 ad per week/ per month)
Total costs: $2,807
o This leaves $193 for any other promotional needs. This also leaves additional
funding if complications arise with our proposed budget.
CPM
Radio
Print
Posters
Social
$97.51
$160.03
$30.97
$0
Evaluation:
We plan on evaluating the media campaign at three specific points during and after the
campaign. Our first evaluation of the campaign will happen, at the end of July. We hope that by
this point of the campaign, we can get an idea if our campaign is successfully drawing in
potential customers, after being exposed to the first round of advertisements. At this point we
will survey random local businesses involved with the chamber of commerce to see if they have
experienced an increase in revenue from the campaigns. During this evaluation, we will also
survey the chamber of commerce to see if they have gained any new members since the start of
the campaign. We will also use this first evaluation to see if we need to make any adjustments to
the media plan. If we find that one media form is out performing another, the client can use the
leftover finances from the initial budget to make appropriate changes. The second evaluation will
happen at the end of September and will follow the same format as the first. The final evaluation
will happen at the end of the campaign after the holiday season at the start of January. We will
follow the same evaluation format and once again survey both the local business and the
commerce to see how the campaign has performed overall. Also, throughout the campaign we
will be monitoring the number of likes and followers on the social media web pages. Observing
the social media will allows us to gain feedback from the public, and it will also give us a
general idea of how many people are aware of the campaign and from that we will get an
approximation of the number of people who are actively shopping locally.
Sources:
"DiscoverHays.com." DiscoverHays.com. City of Hays. Web. 12 May 2013.
"Eagle Radio of Hays Advertising." Eagle Radio of Hays Advertising. Eagle Radio. Web. 12
May 2013.
"Latest News." Hdnews.net. Hays Daily News. Web. 12 May 2013.
"Posters." Custom Photo. Walgreens. Web. 12 May 2013.