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Executive Summary:Life Savers are refreshing and tasteful mints that are packaged in a way that allows you to enjoy the mint yourself and share the bliss with others! Life Savers are packed together in a large bag that enables a generous distribution. We want to emphasize the positive benefits that Life Savers have to offer in order to increase sales and create more brand awareness. While working closely with our client, we have devised numerous advertising tactics in order to reach our goal. We plan to produce print and Internet ads, TV commercials, and billboards in order to reach our target audience effectively. Our brand activation ideas will work hand in hand with our advertising in order to reach the primary goal as well. In order to reposition Life Savers it is extremely vital to express to our target audience that Life Savers is not only a revitalizing treat, but a mint that you can share with those you care about.

Overview:Mints are usually associated with making your breath clean and fresh. However, for this campaign, we wanted to focus on another benefit that Life Savers has. Our main goal is to position Life Savers as a mint that is worth sharing or in other words “Made to share”. According to our research, our target market consists of women ages 18-49. Our research participants expressed that they were likely to share their mints. By repositioning Life Savers as a mint that is worth sharing we hope to create more brand awareness and allow people to spread the word about Life Savers. We plan to implement different advertising strategies in order to accomplish our communication goal and also increase sales by 3%. With a $10 million dollar budget, I.O.N. Advertising is ready for this campaign to flourish and be successful.

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I.O.N. Advertising, short for In Other News Advertising, is an advertising agency that was established in 2011. With a total of five dedicated employees, I.O.N. Advertising has efficiently and effectively worked to achieve success for each of their clients. I.O.N. Advertising stops at nothing. I.O.N. Advertising will never succumb to any hardships. The team works together to create a communica-tion and sales goal for their client. Once the goal is established I.O.N is able to research the client’s target market. When the target market is determined, I.O.N. Advertising sinks their claws into creative concepts and generates various ideas that will work hand in hand with their initial goal. I.O.N. comes full circle and will not stop until the client is completely content and happy.

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Competitive ForcesThe mint market has been and continues to be a fairly consistent and favorable market. Life Saver’s main competitors are Altoids, TicTacs, Mentos, Icebreakers, and Certs.

Economic ForcesIn these tough economic times, shoppers want the best and most for their money. Life Savers mints are offered in bulk and personal size packaging, allowing consumers to have diversity in their options. The bulk bag is a more economic option that offers individually wrapped mints. The Life Savers “roll” provides a quick mint for individuals and tends to be a more impulsive purchase.

Sociocultural ForcesIn our current society, people are heavily concerned with cleanliness and sanitary conditions. Hand sanitizer is now offered in most public places and it is not unusual for someone to have a portable hand sanitizer in their bag. Life Savers is one of the only brands that offers individually wrapped mints guaranteeing cleanliness. Since the mints are guaranteed to be clean, consumers will be more likely to share them.

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Marketing ObjectiveOur main marketing objective is to increase sales by 3% by the end of this campaign.

Advertising ObjectiveThe primary communication goal is to create a 65% awareness of Life Savers mints for women ages 18-49. Due to the fact that the com-prehension has dropped 60% it is imperative to stay on track with our goal.

Time FrameOur plan will be to implement this campaign over the course of a year. The campaign will commence January of 2013.

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I.O.N. advertising was given a budget of $10,000,000 to create an effective campaign for Life Saver mints. Our final budget that we calculated was $9,384,107 which is $615,893 under our given budget. We have divided our budget among four different media with the results of:

Media Cost

Television $3,180,000

Magazines $2,798,933

Internet $450,000

Billboards $1,975,174

Production $980,000

Total Campaign Cost: $9,384,107

Budget Summary:

•Find out what consumers think about Life Savers and mints in general through quantitative methods

•Determine Life Savers competitors and compare their advertising strategies

•Find out history of Life Savers marketing

•Utilize MRI for insight into the Life Savers mint’s target market and their media channel preferences

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Primary Research Through an online survey, I.O.N advertising gathered the perceptions of both male and females. Our survey yielded 138 responses. Of these respondents, 82.6% were female, 94.9% were between the ages of 18-24, and 61.5% were employed. The survey asked what emotional and functional benefits mints provide. Our survey found that consumers buy mints because they enjoy the taste and the product makes their mouth feel clean. Contrary to our initial belief, consumers do not buy mints because they provide a feeling of attractiveness or heightened esteem. The majority of respondents said that they did not care whether their mints were individually wrapped or not. However, 92.5% of our sample said that cleanliness was important or strongly important to them. 81.1% of respondents said that they share their mints and when asked if they accept mints from other people, 84.9% also agreed or strongly agreed. These findings provide an opportunity since respondents regularly share mints but also want to be clean. Since Life Savers mints are individually wrapped, they are more sanitary and therefore easier to share with others. By highlighting that Life Savers are easier to share, the brand could have a unique advantage over the competition. We also asked respondents which three brands came to mind when they think of mints.The question was open response, ensuring a smaller bias. Out of 131 respondents, 66 named Life Savers as one of the three most recognizable mint brands. Altoids received 75 responses, identifying them as a more recognizable brand.

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Secondary Research I.O.N advertising researched competitors websites and marketing strategies. We found that Life Savers website was lacking in interactivity and originality. The website offers information on flavors and nutritional facts, but fails to offer anything else. In comparison, Altoids’ website offers product information, an interactive summary of its history, and ten different games. Using the information provided by MRI+, we were able to determine the target market and their media preferences. The database informed us that the target market for Life Savers mints are women 18-49. This demographic regularly consumes media concerning daytime dramas. This media includes daytime television soap operas on channels like Soapnet and magazines such as Soap Opera Digest and Soap Opera Weekly.

Functional Benefits Lifesavers are a strong, sweet mint that freshens the mouth without a harsh aftertaste. The product line has a plethora of flavors including traditional mints, fruit-mints, and sugarfree mints allowing users to choose

Emotional BenefitsMany respondents claimed that they enjoyed mints because the product provides a sense of rejuvenation. Also, majority of sur-vey participants expressed that they would be likely to share their mints. Since Life Savers come in a large bag they can be easily shared and distributed to others. Satisfaction is an emotional benefit for sharing mints. Customers will also be viewed as very generous and therefore it will be very rewarding.

Self-expressive Benefits Since the majority of respondents expressed that cleanliness is important to them, using the individually wrapped Life Saver mints will place consumers in the desired reference group of being clean individuals. This is so through using the mint for fresh breath and the fact that the mint stays clean in its’ individual package. Also, consumers will be placed in a group of those who are giving. The individual package makes the mints ideal for sanitary sharing.

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The survey showed that 80-85% of our our respondents either share their mints or are willing to accept mints from others. In contrast, 92.5% said that cleanliness is important or extremely important to them. With these two statistics in mind, we plan to highlight Life Savers individually-wrapped mints and large bag size in order to promote sharing form the consumer. We will not be highlighting sexuality in our campaign because contrary to our initial belief, respondents did not use mints for a boost in self esteem or attractiveness. Instead we will be proposing that Life Savers are a mint that is easy to share and easy to accept from others, which will promote use for the product. Our campaign will focus on how Life Savers are a mint that you can share more easily than other mints. With this information in mind, we have created the slogan “made to share”. This phrase clearly and simply captures the essence of our message to our market. We will integrate our message across different mediums in-cluding print, television, and Internet.

THE BIG IDEAThere are some things that you share, and some you don’t. Life Savers are made to share.

MINTS

Made To Share

Creative Strategy With our target market being so broad—women between ages 18 and 49—we needed a campaign that could appeal to this entire group. For our campaign we will humorously contrast things that you do and do not share. All ads give an absurd example of some-thing that people do not share and contrasting, our message will offer . Following this will be the our message: “Life Savers: Made to share”. The bottom of all our ad will integrate the Internet with the call-to-action: “Learn how to share at Facebook.com/Lifesaver”.

Art DirectionThe print ads will contain situations of people trying to share things that they should not. The background will be the Life Savers’ Peel Bag design that uses different shades of one color and lines with a central vanishing point. In each example, the subject will be a silhouette centered and the text will be above and below them. Our examples include a couple on a date, a woman taking a bath, and a couple having an intimate moment while another person tries to pull them away.

CopyWritingThe headline for our print ads will name the examples of things you wouldn’t share. This will be on the top of the print ad. Our ex-amples include, “You wouldn’t share: (example)” in the power left. The example will be of something that you do not normally share. Under the example will be the tag line “Life Savers: Made to Share”.

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To test our advertisements and figure out ways to improve our ideas, we ran our concepts by various females in our target market. They all agreed that Life Saver mints are perfect for sharing with their individual packaging and were really drawn to this idea. Initially, we were trying to incorporate both cleanliness and sharing into our tag line and creative concepts. The women felt that it was much more important to focus simply on the sharing aspect and making a connection. From this we developed our more simple tag line - “Made to Share” and based our ads around various things women would not want to share, to compare to our product.

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Media Objectives• Reach the Target AudienceOur target audience is women ages 18-49. In order to reach our target audience we plan to advertise by using television, print advertisements in magazines, the Internet, and billboards.

• Geographic Scope of the PlacementFor our campaign, we have decided to go with a combination of national and regional advertising. Our commercials, print advertisements, Internet advertisements will all be placed nationally. Our billboards will be placed regionally in metropolitan areas. This is to attract women going to work or driving their kids around. These areas include - New York City, Seattle, Washington D.C., Tucson, Atlanta, Madison and Denver.

• Message WeightSince we are only focusing on national placement of our advertisements, we want each different media - television, print, Internet, and billboards- to receive equal message weight. We want each different form of media to be heavily weighted because we find each one to be very important to achieving our goal.

Media StrategiesEffective Reach: 65%Effective Frequency: 3Continuity: We are planning a continuous campaign because we feel there is no set time of the year that Life Savers mints should be more advertised more. We feel our campaign will be most effective if it has a steady place in the media over a year.

Length/Size of Advertisements

Television: 30 second commercials

Print: 1-8.5 x 11 page spreads

Internet: Roughly 280 x 336 pixels (vertical and large rectangular skin)

Billboard: 14 feet x 48 feet

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TelevisionGeneral Hospital on ABC 3pm Mon-FriGeneral Hospital also places in the top three Daytime programs for women. As a classic soap opera airing five days a week, this gives our commercials a great deal of exposure, especially to the older portion of our target market.

The View on ABC 11 am Mon-FriThe View is Daytime’s number one program in women ages 18-34. This is ideal for our target market and a great daytime time slot for our commercials.

Sex and The City on Style 3-5pm SunOur research from MRI showed that the women in our target watch Style Network heavily. This popular syndicated show for women continues to bring in high numbers.

American Idol on FOX Weds-ThursWith American Idol starting in January, just like our campaign, this is a good place to start off our commercials. Running through May, and as the most watched TV series in the Nielson ratings, this prime time show has a huge following of younger, but especially older women.

Millionaire Matchmaker on BRAVO 9 pm TuesdaysFor a Fall prime time spot, Millionaire Matchmaker gets about 1.4 million viewers per episode, majority who are women.

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MagazinesAll of our print advertisements will be a one page spread.

Soap Opera Digest - 417,429 circulationThis magazine appeals to middle aged woman who want to track their favorite and latest soap opera celebrities and stories.

Cosmopolitan - 3,032,211 circulationBeing a women’s magazine since the 1960s, Cosmopolitan continues to attract young and hip women looking to spice up life.

People Magazine - 3,556,753 circulationThis weekly magazine based around current celebrity news has a huge appeal to a broad range of women.

Parenting Early Years Magazine - 2,227,351 circulationParenting Magazine attracts new parents and parents to be through its family oriented material.

Woman’s World - 1,308,599 circulationA weekly supermarket magazine that features famous woman and addresses popular female issues, and is read by middle aged woman.

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MINTS

Media SchedulingBillboardsLife Savers has chose to put billboards in the following cities for three months each: (chosen based on geographic location)

New York City - 8,008,278Seattle - 563,374Washington D.C. - 601,723Tucson - 546,569

Atlanta - 420,003Madison - 233,209Denver - 600,158

InternetFor our Internet campaign, Life Savers had decided to advertise solely on Pandora. Our choice was a “skin” advertisement, which is when the whole background of the website is taken over by a brand with their campaign. The skin will follow the same concept as the print ads. We have placed our skin to come up whenever a user begins to listen to a country music station. Country music has a huge following of women in our target market.

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$3,180,000

$2,798,000

$1,975,174

MINTS

Media Scheduling

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Title # of pages Cost per page Total Cost1 Soap Opera Digest 2 $13,709 $27,4182 Cosmopolitan 4 $244,100 $976,4003 People Magazine 4 $288,500 $1,154,0004 Parenting: Early Years 3 $131,740 $395,2205 Woman's World 3 $81,965 $245,895

Total for Magazines $2,798,933

Program # of times Cost for each Total Cost1 General Hospital 24 $30,000 $720,0002 The View 24 $30,000 $720,0003 Sex and The City 18 $30,000 $540,0004 American Idol 20 $30,000 $600,0005 Millionaire Matchmaker 20 $30,000 $600,000

Total for Television: $3,180,000

City # of Months Total Cost1 New York, NY 3 $1,441,4902 Seattle, WA 3 $101,4073 Washington D.C. 3 $108,3104 Tuscon, AZ 3 $98,3625 Atlanta, GA 3 $75,6006 Madison, WI 3 $41,9977 Denver, CO 3 $108,028

Total for Billboards $1,975,174

Billboards Television

Magazines

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InternetWebsite Reach Frequency Impressions Total Cost

1 Pandora 3,000,000 3 9,000,000 $450,000Total for Internet $450,000

Website“Learn how to share” Educational SegmentSince all of our advertisements direct consumers to our website with the promise “Learn how to share at Life-Savers.com”, the main page of our website will include an educational segment on sharing. The section will feature many “inspirational life-savers”, or philanthropists, of the past century. These are people who have selflessly contributed a great deal of resources, ideas, and effort to benefit others. Viewers will be able to scroll through brief biographies of well-known philanthropists like Mother Teresa, Clara Barton and Bill and Melinda Gates, as well as lesser-known philanthropists like Harry Moseley and Zach Bonner. This educational campaign will show visitors that anyone can share and how average people can make a profound difference.

Objective: This section of the site will aim to motivate consumers to share by educating them on past inspirational philanthropists. The how to share campaign also forwards our overall objectives because it reinforces our brand as “the mint that you share”.

Strategy: We will promote “learn how to share” with a call-to-action on all of our advertisements across every medium. We will also promote this brand activation through the social media. On Facebook and Twitter we will post and tweet small, interesting facts about these philanthropists and provide a link to the website if our followers want to learn more.

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Website“How Do You Share?” ContestION Advertising proposes the “How do you share?” online video contest, for consumers to compete for the next Lifesaver’s television commercial. To promote our new “Made to Share” concept, contestants will need to make a video that shows a unique way or circumstance to share Life Savers mints. The sweepstakes will be open on our website for entries during the months of March and April. Through this time contestants will upload, view, and rate videos through a Youtube account embedded in our website. The winning video will be chosen on May 1st based on the number of positive views and the ad would begin running in September. Through our voting system, contestants will need to share their video and promote awareness of Lifesaver mints to their friends.

Objectives: To promote sharing and teaching others interesting ways to share.

Strategy: All of our advertisements direct consumers to our website with a call to action, but to further to build awareness of “how do you share?” video contest, we will again utilize social media. Through twitter and Facebook we will tweet and post interesting ways to share followed by the call-to-action “Show us how you share at Life-Saver.com/share

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P.O.P Promotion“Share A Saver” The “Share a Saver” promotion involves giving away one Life Savers to each customer for free at checkout counters where Life Savers are sold. We plan to partner with CVS locations across the Northeast since our target demographic is heavily located in that area. CVS is a good selection because their new campaign Beauty 360 aims to attract more women by creating a better customer experience. Individually wrapped Lifesavers will be placed in an open container at the checkout counter. There will be a message behind the container that says, “Please take a free Life Saver. We love to share a saver with you.” The promotion will take place during July and will be featured in 500 stores across the states of Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, New York, New Hampshire, and New Jersey.

Objective: The aim of this is to reinforce the sharing concept and generate customer interest through free samples.

Strategy: We will promote “Share a saver” with the containers and message at checkout. We imagine that this alone will create enough buzz among employees and consumers to sufficiently promote the campaign.

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Our two objectives were to increase awareness by 65% and increase sales by 3%. Since our advertising remains relatively consistent throughout the year, brand activations will be the primary variable in our change in sales and awareness

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