Marketing Mix of Snickers

Author - Kaarthikeyan GM

Marketing mix is a set of 4P's which defines any product in the company, Product, Price, Place and Promotion. The Marketing mix is defined as "set of marketing tools that the firm uses to pursue its marketing objectives in the target market".

Even though nowadays there are more P's like People, Packaging and positioning are getting added in the marketing mix, the 4P's are dominant framework for any marketing decisions.

Product: It refers to an item which is being sold by the company like books, phones, shoes, etc.,

But this does not stick with the physical product. Even intangible deliverable like bank accounts, insurance policies, online streaming platform, food deliver services also referred to a product in the marketing mix.

Any company will have to do market research for the product which is going to be introduced in the market by them for the demand and the exact need from the target customer.

Price: It refers to the value which the customer has to pay for the product or the service. This will be basically derived on all direct and indirect cost of the product right from the raw materials to the distribution of the product to be available in the market.

There are several pricing strategies which the company will decide based on the product, like value-based pricing, cost-based pricing, penetration pricing, price skimming, competitive pricing, economy pricing, geographic pricing, etc.,

Place: It refers, how the company is reaching to the customers with the product. It differs with the type of product. For example, product like Biscuit has to go through a channel of distributors, retailers to reach the end consumer, whereas the product like Netflix subscription is through the Websites. This always differs with B2C and B2B also.

Promotion: Promotion refers to the marketing communication, where the companies do certain activities to reach their product or service to their target customers. Companies do various activities like TV advertising, social media campaign's, contests, direct marketing, sales promotions, etc.,

Example of 4P's with the brand "Snickers"

Snickers as a brand:

In 1930, Franklin Mars created Snickers bar and first sold in US market. In the UK, Ireland markets it was sold under the brand name ‘MARATHON’. Mars tried a trial for 3 months in US market to sell under Marathon brand in 1990, later changed to the brand name Snickers globally. Snickers offers both nutritious and fulfilling chocolate products sold in more than 100 countries. More than 15 million Snickers are produced each day which has enormous number of product line varies from one geographical area to another. It has an annual sale of around $2 billion.

Product:

Snickers is a confectionary product which has the ingredients of Nougat topped with peanut butter and caramel inside the milk chocolate. Snickers is more than a chocolate, it’s a portrayed by the company as a food product that satisfies the hunger of the person. Snickers is a health bar with nutrition content and a great taste. Snickers has diversified product portfolio with many variants. It has around 26 products.

Price:

Snickers target all age groups of people from children’s to aged persons. They target both the genders and all class people high, low and medium class people. So they have adopted mid-range pricing for all their products, so it can be easily affordable and can be purchased by every persons. So, this pricing resulted in good sales volume and revenue. In India the price of the product starts from Rs. 15.

Place:

The product snickers is sold in more than 100 countries which includes Australia, Italy, Portugal, Bosnia, The Netherlands, Sweden, Israel, Slovakia, Austria, Latvia, Poland, Egypt, Romania, Germany, New Zealand, Hungary, Denmark, Norway, India, etc. Snickers takes the help of its parent company to distribute their products efficiently in the market. Their channel of distribution as follows,

The retail outlets include grocery stores, convenience stores, pharmacy, department stores, shops at airports and discount stores. Now they do sell their products in various online stores like Amazon, Big basket, etc.

Promotion:

The company has adopted both ATL and BTL (Above the line and below the line) promotional policies which basically includes print media, magazines, newspapers, television, Facebook, twitter and YouTube. They also do many promotional schemes and strategies as part of their BTL promotional policies. The promotion created brand awareness because of the brilliant humorous advertisements. Snickers promote their product with their popular campaign which is successfully running from 2010 “You’re not you, when you’re hungry”.

Other than the advertisements the company also promotes their products by sponsoring many events like WWE’s Wrestle Mania, UEFA European Championship and FIFA World Cup.

“You’re not you, when you’re hungry” Campaign:

In the period of 2007 – 2009 the sales volume declined so the company came up with an idea to do a new campaign “You’re not you, when you’re hungry”. Where the company have actually portrayed that the product is more than a chocolate and satisfies the hunger. And this campaign actually tells the people are not themselves when they are hungry and people can have a snicker when they are hungry to get rid of the situation. So, it is promoted with the tagline “Hungry? Grab a snickers!”

This campaign is actually done on the basis of survey done from the consumers, where snickers will be meeting the consumers and ask “Who you are, when you are hungry?”

Over the past 8 years this campaign has won many awards at every major creative gathering which includes Cannes Lions, The One Show, D&AD and the Emmys. It has also got major effectiveness award, including two Effectiveness Lions, an IPA gold, and global and local Effies and AME Awards.

In its first year of its campaign itself the campaign helped snickers to increase global sales by 15.9% and it helped to grew market share in 56 out of 58 markets in which it ran. The focus of effectiveness is led this campaign to become one of the world’s best loved campaign

Snickers do the same campaign in all the countries where the sales are available in their context. This campaign has many commercials which includes, Video

This Ad is shown in 60 countries which comes under this campaign, the reason why this particular Ad is shown in 60 countries because the person casted in the Ad “Mr. Bean” is well known in many countries.

Snickers also do package design to align with its marketing campaign. The situations that the persons will be if they are hungry is portrayed in the wrappers. Snickers also have the separate video commercials for their packages with the situations.

This YouTube video shows a person is confused because he is hungry. Here a person is confused and dancing in a debate competition.

Takeaway:

1. Need of Marketing mix and 4P's of marketing mix.

2. Understandings of each P's. Product, Price, Place and Promotion.

3. Example of marketing mix with the brand "Snickers"