Understanding Business Objectives and Audience – Module 1

   1.     What are your objectives?

a.     According to our CMO, Mark Addicks, GMI’s business objective for marketing is to “[focus] not just on growing our brands, but on outgrowing the category."

   2.     Who is the target audience?

a.     Our target audience is global, and consists of every age, demographic, race, and gender. From those families seeking a quick and easy dinner, to the mother making a school lunch for her child, General Mills products are there to “nourish your life.”

   3.     What is important to our audience?

a.     Our three most important factors are: health, convenience, and price. General Mills leads the market in cereals containing more whole grain than any other ingredient. We continue to innovate and drive the market toward faster, healthier convenience meals with products like Progresso Meal Starters and Green Giant Vegetable Steamers. Finally, we achieve a highly competitive price point by utilizing Holistic Margin Management across our business segments to ensure that our business is as efficient and effective as possible, and our prices remain as low as possible for billions of consumers around the globe.

   4.      What motivates people to buy our products?

a.     For more than 125 years, people have turned to General Mills’ products for a convenient, easy to prepare, breakfast, delicious desert, or a great dinner. Our reputation for quality, consistency, and ability to deliver each and every time drives millions of Americans, and billions of customers around the globe to purchase our products every day. In fact, a box of General Mills cereal is sold in America every 60 seconds!

   5.     What are our “key messages?”

a.     Our key messages are health, price, and convenience. We want millions of families to enjoy our products because they make making a healthy, great tasting meal easier, more affordable, and more convenient in today’s hectic world.

  

   6.     What influences our audience?

a.     Our global audience is influenced by a myriad of factors, including, but not limited to:

                                               i.     Competing Products

                                              ii.     Health Concerns / Studies

                                            iii.     Television and all other forms of media

                                            iv.     Price

                                              v.     Convenience

                                            vi.     Product Availability

                                           vii.     Product Favorability

1.     Taste

2.     Smell

3.     Prep time

4.     Prep difficulty

                                         viii.     Culture

   7.     How do we distribute product?

a.     Our products are distributed through several channels, including:

                                               i.     Retail Sales

                                              ii.     Food distribution services (i.e. Sodexo, GFS).

                                            iii.     Online

                                            iv.     Restaurants (i.e. Olive Garden, Red Lobster)

b.     Our most profitable segment is retail sales, specifically, Wal-Mart.

   8.     What do we do with the information we gather?

a.     The information we obtain is utilized in several ways, from determining how a product tastes, to how it’s marketed, where it’s sold, and for “how much?”

   9.     Are other areas of the business affected by measurement?

a.     Yes. In fact, the entirety of the company performance is based on our measurement system. Everything from our stock performance, to employee bonuses is determined by company (and BU) performance.

   10. What other measurement programs are in place?

a.     General Mills measures everything. From company performance and profit, to individual employee contribution – everything at the company is tracked, measured, and evaluated regularly.

References:

http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/general-mills-cmo-talks-growth-sustainability-104695