My blog experience

Until a couple of months I had never posted a blog and i did not realise the relevance of blogs for the hospitality industry. Since it is part of the course I am studying I was assigned the task of posting eight blogs, this being the final one. As any reader will observe at the beginning I did not really know of anything relevant that I could write about, but as I progressed through the list of blogs I became more comfortable writing them and I will admit I even kind of enjoy writing them. I feel that writing the blogs almost has a therapeutic quality as I am getting my thoughts expressed and whether they are read or not I still get a feeling that my opinion has been articulated.

As far as the importance of being confident in writing blogs go, I think that it is vitally important for me and my classmates as we most likely will have to do this in our future careers. Blogs are a great way for hotels etc. to pass information on to their customers and I suppose in a way make them feel part of the company which would increase the company’s brand equity.

To conclude, I was hesitant at the beginning of this task but now that I am at the finish line I have enjoyed it and I have learned how valuable blogs are as a marketing communications tool.

Benji

Diageo- A presentation on the Guinness brand

Today at college we had the global marketing officer from Diageo in to give a presentation on their brand and the way in which they market Guinness. It was very interesting indeed. Andrea gave a rundown of the history of Guinness as an organisation and how they have operated and how they do today. She outlined that the core values that existed within Guinness are very similar if not the same as they were a couple of hundred years ago. It seems Guinness is an excellent organisation to work for and have been for as long as it has existed. I was surprised to hear that they introduced pensions for their employees in 1860 along with health care and a number of other things. Andrea really believes in the brand and so do all the marketing ambassadors as they are known within the company. Guinness follows strict rules as to what message the marketing communications portray and it was good to hear that the organisation really promote responsible drinking.

The product is in 150 markets globally and although they consider it a global product they insist that there is no such thing as a global market as depending on the country or region and each of their individual cultures etc. one market can vary much from another. They do however group certain markets together as they have similar characteristics.

I’d like to finish by writing that Andrea was very interesting and a very down to earth person and that after having listened to her today that I have a lot more appreciation for Guinness and what it stands for as a brand.

My Exposure to Media

Although I am exposed to many forms of media, in this blog I will give an insight into the media I have been introduced to since this time last year before enrolling in the Event, Hospitality and Tourism Management Degree at DKIT. Less than 365 days ago I had never been on Twitter, I’d never even heard of Linkedin as far as my memory serves me and I most certainly had never posted or even considered posting a blog. Today I can say that I am an active user of Twitter and have “tweeted” on a number of occasions, I have recently become a member of Linkedin and have increased my profile on it to 80% and also I have posted a number of blogs on this site, blogger.com.

Since taking this course I now can see how important social media has become in both our private lives and in the business world. It is an invaluable tool for companies to advertise on and to use to communicate with their customers and potential customers.  In an article I read today Levi Strauss: The secret to being authentic by Michael Estrin the global chief marketing officer Jaime Cohen Szulc mentioned how he thinks that social media is an excellent marketing and communications platform as it is very cost effective and it is available to all companies including very small ones. I agree with this and I can see how social media has given companies access to consumers that it never had access to before. I can relate to this as every day I am exposed to companies on Facebook for example advertising their products to me. Also as recent as today I noticed on a poster (another example of exposure to a form of media) in the opticians that I use, that they were holding a competition to win a night away in a hotel and to enter you merely had to “like” them on Facebook. This is an example of media that i would not have been exposed to a few years ago. Honestly, I was surprised to see that they were doing this and I really cannot see the benefit to them other than increasing awareness of their brand as the poster was in the shop where only their existing customers could see it.

To conclude, it is apparent that I and all of us aside from the odd hermit or two are exposed to many forms of media throughout a day. Whether we “like” it or not there is no getting away from it so I think we should all embrace it and use it to our advantage.

Benji     

Re-branding The Glencarn Hotel Project

'The Glencarn Hotel, good food in comfortable surroundings with a friendly atmosphere'

My group undertook the task of developing a re-branding plan for The Glencarn Hotel for an assignment for the college course we are enrolled in. The hotel itself is quite successful as it has been established twenty five years and is still going quite well. The hotel’s marketing communications however are not well integrated and their on-line presence is very minimal. We decided on redesigning the website and all print media so that they would portray a “one voice, one look”. As the hotel is successful we recognised that the management are currently targeting the correct markets for it. We did also recognise that they are not marketing to these markets very effectively. We came up with strategies to better target the chosen markets such as leaflet drops to promote the leisure centre, search engine optimisation to increase leisure stays, developing links with golf clubs to promote golf breaks in Castleblayney which would increase revenue for the hotel as it is the only one in the town and also to redesign the wedding brochures to impress potential wedding customers. These were only but a few of our recommendations and it goes without saying that they would all portray the same message in relation to the hotel brand. We also proposed a new symbol and slogan to further strengthen the hotel brand.

This was an interesting and most beneficial project that gave us a real opportunity to apply the knowledge and skills we have learned at Dundalk Institute of Technology to what could be a task we will encounter in industry when we leave.

Benji