Media Campaign Plan for Sony Winter Competition

The Sony Winter Competitions are held annually amongst students in dynamic courses related to mass media and visual arts. All the students must be based in the United Arab Emirates. The competition is sponsored by Sony UAE. The objective of the competition is to expose young budding students interested in photography with professional experiences and competition in the real world so that they can have some experience with the industry environment and what is expected of them once they complete their training. Another objective is to promote their new camera to the young generation in UAE and show the youth in the region that they still have formidable products in the industry. One of the long-term objectives is to gain an edge in future customers through the students after they are done with their university curriculum. A brief overview of the organization Sony would suffice in helping the plan understands the situation analysis of the media campaign. Sony UAE is 100% a subsidiary of the Global Sony Corporation. The subsidiary was formulated primarily to head the company’s activities in Africa and the Middle East. Therefore, as a subsidiary, it is independently empowered to hold events that facilitate the exposure of Sony products and their sale in the region. Sony UAE’s role in hosting the competition is its social responsibility. It is achieving several objectives through the competition. One of the objectives is to cultivate a competitive edge among students taking courses in university related to mass media and visual art. Sony believes that if the students are interested in a photography career, they should understand first hand how that industry is shaped. The competition exposes the students to the works of other photographers in the region. A second objective of the company is to popularize its camera products and presence in the region as the leading electronics provider. However, while the company is exposing the youth to their profession and increasing its popularity, it is expected to improve in sales and improve its market share in the region. Therefore, addressing some of its issues related to losing its market share to competitors and reduction in sales.

Situation Analysis

The Sony Winter Competition is a large event taking place in the entire UAE region. Sony UAE and plan for the event to be an enormous one, and that is dependent on the number of students the competition can reach. Therefore, there is no limitation on the number of people who can participate in the competition. The only condition is that the participants are from a tertiary institution in the UAE. The students should also be enrolled in a course linked to mass media and visual arts. The primary aim is to promote the competition information to different regions in the UAE and hype the event so that more students can become aware of the competition and participate in it. A larger part of the organization will be promoting its cameras and equipment that come with the camera, which comes about symbiotically when Sony UAE and Africa FZE are marketing the event. A major part of sensitizing eligible participants in the UAE is the use of media and media relations to popularize the competition in the entire UAE region. The aspect of using media is playing into the use of media instruments and channels that will effectively carry and distribute the required information to the targeted audience. The formula for the activity is to identify instruments and channels that are effective, efficient, and cheap in achieving the objective. The current era is prevailed by various technological enhancements that will facilitate its agenda in popularizing the competition in the region. For instance, mainstream media has been the prevailing power in getting information out to the people. However, it has soon become redundant when people have become well interconnected through social media. More is being achieved through social media, which began as an entertainment tool and soon developed into an effective marketing tool that corporate organizations use to reach their audiences. It is also important to note that the target audiences for the Winter Competition are the young adults in colleges and universities in the UAE. In 2018, there were about 1.9 million students at university and college levels. By 2020, the number would have been expected to increase to over two million. Out of the two million, there is a smaller percentage of students who have taken a course in communication and visual expression. These courses include photography, graphic design, and marketing design, among others. However, the media campaign is not construed to target the smaller percentage. Releasing the information should target the entire student population and the general public who would still inform the targeted audience.

Event Description

Sony Winter Competition begins on 14th February 2021 with Sony UAE tasked with the coordination of launch and competition for six weeks geared towards promoting a new camera to communicate to the young cohort that the new camera is the best in the industry among its competitors like Kodak and Fuji. The completion venue is expected to be at the University of Jazeera Campus grounds. The completion targets college and university students pursuing courses related to mass media and visual arts. The completion will run for six weeks, and at the end, the winners will be announced on 1st April 2021. The winners will be chosen by seven judges adjudicating professionals in the field of photography. Their objective is to make sure that the right candidate is chosen according to current industry standards. The standards are vital to introducing the students to the professional world. The seven-team judge panel will select three winners who will receive prizes at the event. The prizes to be given at the event after the six weeks from the third position to first is listed as follows:

The third prize will be Sony Alpha A7r II Mirrorless Digital Camera with Sony FE 50mm F/1.8 Lens worth about 5,000 AED 

The second prize will be a Sony FE 85mm f/1.4 GM Lens worth 7,000 AED 

The first prize will be Sony Alpha a7S III Mirror-less Digital Camera worth 14,000AED.

The modality for participating in the competition entails eligible students registering with the designated team at Aljazeera University and is expected to last for two days. The purpose of the registration is for the concerned committee to vet and confirm the identities of the participants and also ascertain that they are members of their institutions as well as attending a course in mass media and visual arts. Therefore, the vetting process is expected to begin on 14 February 2021, where the Aljazeera University competition committee will vet whether all the students meet the requirements. All students that do not meet the criteria will be disqualified and notified that they did not meet the requirements required in the entry of the competition, like not being in a university or enrolled in a course related to mass media and visual arts. The participants who qualify for the procedure will be notified of their success and urged to continue with the competition. Once the students have submitted their ideas, each student is allocated presentation data and a slot to present their best photo portfolio. The allotment is expected to meet the competition’s theme while the presentation is done in front of a seven-team judge of renowned professional photographers. The judges will analyze the works of all the participants and grade them to come up with three winners who will be presented on 1st April 2021.

SMART Objective and Goals

SMART is an acronym for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely goals. In regards to the Sony Winter competition, the specific goal of the media campaign is to reach as many people as it can and settle on a number that closely resides with the total number of students under training visual arts and mass media in their respective universities. The intimate goal is to get them to participate in the competition and advertise the vent to other people who cannot participate in the competition as a way of marketing, advertising, and creating hype for the organization. Marketing and advertising for the organization are achieved through the analogy of the organization’s social responsibility for the youth in nurturing their talents for future career paths. The competition is targeting about 100,000 students taking mass media and visual art-related courses from universities and colleges. The number forms about 1% of the total number of students taking visual art-related courses. The idea is to give these students a synopsis of the competitive world of photography in the real world while capturing a future generation as Sony UAE now specifically knows who to target for their camera products after they complete school. The main objective is attainable because of the efficient tools that the organization has at its disposal. Social media will play a great deal in helping the organization attain its goals. Apart from reaching the targeted audience, the media campaign can also be utilized to influence new followers. The goals are supposed to be relevant to the overall objective of the media campaign. Therefore, the set goals in reaching the required amount of students can be broken down to the number of applications made on a weekly or daily basis before the deadline is reached. Another goal can be focused on the number of new followers Sony Dubai gains, social media likes, and engagements it garners from each social media post on the competition. The aggregate objective for the organization is to enlarge its footprint in the region and increase sales for Sony products in the UAE. The minor goals should, therefore, be relevant towards increasing the organization’s footprint and sales. However, the goals should also have a timeline to make them SMART. The media campaign has to attain about 100,000 students by the time it gets to the deadline date of 14th February, 2021. However, this does not mark the timeline in posting information about the ongoing competition. The competition takes six weeks, and during that time, Sony Dubai can continue posting through social media to encourage participants to take great photos while building a name for the new camera and the brand.

Specific – For the media campaign to reach all students undertaking mass media and visual arts related programs in university

Measurable – The media campaign should reach over 100,000 students in the UAE.

Attainable – The media campaign has one months prior to the competition. Sony UAE should strive to reach 1,200 students every day.

Relevant – Reaching the target audience will yield more applicants for Sony Winter Competition.

Timely – Sony UAE has one months prior to the competition to achieve its goal of reaching over 100,000 students through its media campaign.

Sustainable Media Relations Strategy

A sustainable media relations strategy will play a critical role in getting the message to the targeted audience. Media relations include partnerships and agreements with other entities that can play a critical role in marketing the event. The Rolling of a media relation strategy has to happen sometime before the competition begins. Since the competition is an initiative to expose young intellectuals in the hope of pursuing a career in mass media or visual arts, the universities can play a role in augmenting Sony UAE’s need to reach the various students in the university. The best kind of partnerships entail a mutual benefit for each party; hence the university will need to benefit too. Sony UAE can use funds pooled from other sponsors for the competition to fund university programs. The university can also empower some of its students, for instance, teams of ten students, to manage the sensitization of competition information for eligible students to apply. The team can also be used to collect registration information for each participant and send it online to the University of Aljazeera team to verify before the competition commences. The same team can also play a role in reposting social media content authored by Sony UAE. However, the organization would still require a social media marketing consultant to work for the organization.

Social media marketing consultant organizations are specialized to the task at a level the Sony’s subsidiary may not be able to handle in their capacity while handling other normal business tasks. Therefore, outsourcing the task to a different organization would relieve the company of the stress it may have to endure. Such an organization fully deals with media campaigns and skilled in the task of understanding a thing or two about target audiences, media targets, and how to appeal to different audiences. Engaging them would be an added advantage to the team. Social media has its perks, like the need for younger generations to follow celebrities and popular characters in social forums. Sony UAE can approach some of the popular ones and convince them to play a role in convincing about 100,000 eligible students to participate.

Appropriate Tactics for Media Campaign

The media campaign is strongly going to utilize social media as the main tool for popularizing the event. Social media is one of the most important tools in reaching the target audience. To come up with an effective social media marketing plan, it is paramount to understand the two aspects of the main attributes involved in the business. One is social media as an instrument of communication, while the other is its employees and how it arrives at its target market. Social media was invented as a platform for the main purpose of socializing through an online platform and facilitated by internet connectivity. The main purpose of the social media platform was entertainment with content created by individual users. The major functions of social media are communication, collaboration, cultivation, and conveyance within interdependence and interconnected networks of people, societies, and now organizations. Therefore, Sony as an organization can utilize social media to communicate its message, influence, and connect with its desired audience. Social media have now transcended into the business world through organization boardrooms and are playing a vital part in the selling and buying processes of such businesses. Social media is a recent phenomenon but has managed to prove its effectiveness in the corporate world, especially when compared to the traditional marketing sector. The focus on social media shows that its evolution its intended purpose. Facebook was made to enhance personal connection, and it did but later grew to morph into an effective tool for businesses to market their content besides social connectivity. The scope has later developed to social communities based on business products and services. Social media categorizes the social community as social commerce, which is a whole new experience explored by the modern organization. Social commerce is the ability to get business answers from social media circles that would influence consumer decision-making. The conclusive analogy is that social media has transformed to become an essential tool for businesses in modern times.

Sony UAE will use various social media platforms to reach its target audience through their mobile phones, tablets, and computers. The biggest platform on social media is Facebook, with over two billion active users. Sony UAE will make Facebook the main social media tool in its media campaign. However, the company will also utilize other formidable social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter to push its media campaign. The media campaign will also utilize mainstream media to push its agenda. Therefore, Sony UAE will market its idea through TV, radio, print media, and other forms of campaigns like university drives.

The Target Audience

The target audience is dependent on what Sony UAE wants to achieve with the media, campaign, the competition, and the organization as a whole. Sony UAE requires that most students apply for their Winter Competition and participate. The overall objective is to popularize their new camera and influence more people to know about their products. The ultimate goal is to increase sales of their products, which will lead to gaining more market share in the industry. Therefore, for the immediate cause, the company is targeting young scholars undertaking a course inclusive of mass media and visual arts training. The demography is of young setting translating to the need to create relevant content that is influential of the young. A distorted message will not appeal to the young population at universities and deter its role in influencing students to participate in Sony’s winter competition. The target audience helps Sony understand the kind of message it wants to use to persuade students into participating. The other target is the entire population of the UAE region. While targeting students, Sony UAE will tailor their media campaign to also touch on other contingents of the population. For instance, one of the posts can be tailored for the women in photography, of course applying the cultural essences that are fostered in the region. Another message can apply to the seniors who have grandchildren taking courses in mass media. The message is targeted to them and beckons them to urge their grandchildren to participate in the competition. However, meanwhile, they too can purchase a camera and learn photography to join their grandchildren in their hobbies to share quality time. If not interested in photography, then grandpa can look for other electronics under the brand. Therefore, the post ends up targeting the students but also upselling other products to the general public.

Key Messages for the Campaign

The key message for the campaign is for university students in the field of mass media and mass media to participate in an annual event dubbed Sony Winter Competition and stand to win profound cameras and a chance to interact with seven renowned photographers from the judge’s panel. Looking at the key message, it can be determined that who, what, and why have been addressed. Who is the target audience, and in this case, the student? What is Sony’s winter competition, and why is the chance to win profound cameras and a chance to meet and greet established renowned photographers in the industry? Without who, what, and why elements, the message seizes to be effective and may not play towards gaining the desired objective of garnering the right amount of students to participate in the competition. If the objective is not reached, then there is a possibility that the Sony UAE would have wasted resources in a lost cause. The mechanism for the media campaign is to invest limited resources, including time, and get an exponential outcome to reflect that the input has solicited profit in the endeavor. However, to make sure that the media campaign yields positive results, it is paramount that the campaign has a secondary message. The message should target the general public in knowing about the organization’s social responsibility, the new camera product, and other products under the brand. The message will be effective if more people begin following Sony UAE on social media and their regional sales increase in the long run. The phenomenon would have ensured the viability of the media campaign in terms of the resources employed.

Models of Measurement 

Most social media platforms have different metrics that they used to measure the success of a social media marketing campaign. They are mostly referred to as analytical tools, but the organization may want to use their specific metrics to measure the success of their posts. Therefore, Sony UAE has the liberty to go into its social media accounts and generate analytical data that it can use to check the performance of a post and the media campaign. One of the metrics could be the number of engagements if the platform is Facebook. The other could be the number of likes the post or account received, comments, feedback, dislikes, trending issues, and engagement time, among others. The mentioned metrics are on a light note, but social media platforms have other metrics that are in-depth to analytics. For instance, it is also possible to get analytics in terms of the best time to make posts to get more engagements, the age group of the audience getting the posts, and the region where the posts are most viewed. The metrics can also show the number of clicks to the website as a result of the social media posts. The organization can ask their incoming customers how they got to know about the firm, but basically, they can monitor the activities following the media campaign, for instance, sales of more electronic units and improvement of their market share in the region after their media campaign. The metrics are critical to offering Sony UAE insight on the direction of the media campaign and give them room to change strategy in areas that are not performing. However, this task can be made easier if the company engages in an external marketing agency conversant with in-depth analysis.

Estimated Budget

The estimated budget for the media campaign is about 300,000 AED for the entire media campaign. Sony UAE can rely on partners for the event to contribute to raising funds. Part of the money will be used in buying the prizes, printing promotional material, hiring a marketing agency, facilitating influencers, and paying for ads on social media and mainstream media for three months before the competition and continues to the entire period of the competition. A portion of the budget will go into financing the flash camera sales during the competition, the Mazurka sales campaign in the last week, and the celebrity sales gala. Therefore, the budget will cater to five months of the media campaign.

Guest List

The guest list for the final event includes the following:

UAE TV media representatives from each media house

Radio representatives from various radio stations

Daily newspaper representatives

Periodic magazine representatives

Social media consultant representative

Aspects of the Campaign

Before the event, the media campaign is expected to take one months. The strategies laid in the media campaign are generally meant to cater to the media campaign. It is important to note that the plan is not rigid. Therefore, it can be adjusted following the kind of feedback Sony UAE is getting from the campaign. The main objective of the campaign plan is not to get it right the first time but to be flexible to meet the required objective. Challenges are expected to hinder the campaign plan, but hasty resolutions of problems and teamwork are the key to implementing the campaign plan. Sony UAE should also work towards fostering media relations which play a critical role in the success of the media campaign. Sony UAE would have sensitized young professionals on what to expect in the working world. The company will have also gained more following, increased sales, and improved its market share.

The campaign timelines will be as follows. Campaigns will start on January 17, 2021 and will end on February 13, 2021. During the first and second week of the campaign, brochures and newspapers will be released to the various students’ campuses so that students can get copies and read them. During the third week of the campaign, officials from Sony will appear physically in the various students’ campuses to address students while popularizing the competition. They will do this using tents erected within the respective campuses. During the fourth week of the campaign, Sony officials will visit the various students’ campuses with branded Lorries and cars moving round with public address systems to popularize the event and educate students regarding the details of the competition. Social media handles for Sony will also popularize the competition throughout the four weeks. Students will also use the sites to reach representatives from Sony concerning any questions they may have on the competition. 

The Sony Winter Competition entails participants making themed portfolios. 

At Sony UAE we focus on nurturing young skills and talents because we believe they are the future of tomorrow.

The company is keen on offering participating students updated modern photography knowledge that matches our modern cameras. Some of the lessons the students will gain from the competition will be on the field of:

Photographic skills and techniques

Execution in photography 

Sony Winter Competition 

2021

Telephone: 8000 357 03946

Email: sonycustomercare.mea@ap.sony.com

Web: www.sony.com/en-ae

Newsletter 

Sony UAE is pleased to inform you of the 2021 annual Sony Winter Competition Awards 2021. The event will be conducted at the University of Aljazeera, United Arab Emirates. The objective of the event is to award the winners of the 2021 Sony Winter Competition. The event is an opportunity for participants to showcase their work to the UAE and the rest of the world. It is also an opportunity for the world and UAE to appreciate its culture. Through the exercise, we aim for the participants to garner new insights from renowned practicing professionals in photography. The platform that we offer the students will help them get inspired to further pursue their careers in photography moving it to exceptional levels from the UAE to the world.

Registration is a must for all who to wish to participate. Registration commences on February 14, 2021 and will e. Thereafter, the vetting committee will validate the students’ identities and only those who pass the vetting exercise will be allowed to take part in the competition. 

Students who pass will proceed with exploring their photography skills and submit their finished works after 6 weeks.

The awards ceremony will take place on April 1, 2021, beginning at 9:00 am, and it will end at 5:00 pm. The attending guest list will comprise of Sony UAE CEO and executives, Minister of Education and executives, judges, participants, and few members of their family. 

The first three students will be awarded camera prizes. Their ranking will be determined via the total points acquired after their presentations. The prizes awarded are as follows:

The third prize will be Sony Alpha A7r II Mirrorless Digital Camera with Sony FE 50mm F/1.8 Lens worth about 5,000 AED 

The second prize will be a Sony FE 85mm f/1.4 GM Lens worth 7,000 AED 

The first prize will be Sony Alpha a7S III Mirror-less Digital Camera worth 14,000AED.

There will also be other activities on the final day. These are

Flash Camera Sales Campaign: 

Flash sale of Sony products will take place in various Sony stores and Campus grounds

The Mazuka Sales Campaign:

This will take place in the last week of the competition. During this period, there will be the lowest drop in the prices of Sony Cameras like never before.

Celebrity Sales Gala:

This will take place in the final day of the competition and participants will be allowed to interact with more than three celebrities, one being a Dubai nationalist. 

Lastly, please purpose to register and have fun.