Task 38. Role plays. A. (1). Nowadays day-to-day business includes outsourcing certain projects, either to save time and/or money

A. (1). Nowadays day-to-day business includes outsourcing certain projects, either to save time and/or money. A German high-tech company decides to outsource one of their development projects in the field of software programming. To take part in such a contract a company interested in this has to introduce itself, as well as its resources and references to the ordering party. Your task is to introduce the company, its legal form, the number and qualification of employees, references, partners, work experience in English to the ordering party.

(2). A Ukrainian company decides to put up a website, which includes the company’s history. You are hired by them to write the history of the company in English to be put on the company’s website. It should give business visitors an idea of the development of the company, as well as the current situation of the company. The history should include milestones in the business development, changes of legal form, entrance of investors to the company, rewarding contracts and references etc.

Example: Lalanet is a technology vendor that develops high-value specialised optic fibre networking products for the broadcast, film and entertainment industries with a strong emphasis on research and development.

Founded in August 2003 in Krakow, Poland, our staff currently counts fifty employees, which are mainly skilled as system developers, software engineers and broadcasting engineers.

The company is the brainchild of visionary and founder John Doe, who has been influenced by his diverse jobs during his career having worked as a camera man, a university lecturer in electronics and head of new technologies at TARTAERIs, the world leader in air traffic control technologies.

B. Work in groups of four to five people. Design an advertising campaign for your product. Use the following information for preparing your advertising campaign. Behind all effective advertising there lies a lot of careful thought and planning and much of it goes into ensuring that the advertising objectives are the right ones. If these are wrong, everything else which follows is doomed to failure.

First of all, decide which market or market segment you will be addressing. The next step you make should be to choose the marketing objectives for this market/segment. The following list will help you (select the most appropriate objectives, i.e. those that look the most promising to help your company to lead a successful advertising campaign): to establish an immediate sale; to promote the idea of a unique product; to support the sales force; to reinforce attitudes of existing customers; to open up distribution; to improve company image; to demonstrate the product capabilities; to generate inquiries; to impact information; to reassure customers; to ‘score points’ off competitors’ advertising; to enter new markets; to give reasons for buying; to create awareness; to support retailers; to convey the idea of ‘value for money’; to reach new geographical areas; to remind customers about your product; to reinforce the company image; to defend market position; to support the launch of a new product/ service; to explain new uses for product; to emphasise range and choice; to reinforce brand recognition; to inform about product availability; to educate customers; to communicate company strengths; to build customer loyalty; to say how much people like the product.

The next step would be to decide exactly what you want to communicate – your creative platform. Before doing this, however, you must switch your focus of attention to the target population you hope to influence: Who are they? What positions do they hold? What is their influence on the purchasing decision? What personality traits do they exhibit? What socioeconomic groupings do they belong to? What lifestyles do they have? How old are they? What sex are they? Are they married? And so on.

Therefore, you must assemble as much information as you can about the target population. The more you know about them, the better chances you will have for selecting the best medium for your advertising platform. The accompanying worksheet gives a list of possible advertising media. Study this list and select what would be the best choice, taking into account your objectives and the profile of the target audience. In making your choice, you will need to take four factors into account:

1. The character of the medium – the geographical coverage it gives, the types of audience it reaches, its frequency of publication or showing, its physical possibilities (such as colour, sound, movement), its power or potential to reach special groups etc.

2. The atmosphere of the medium – its ability to convey an image consistent with your objectives, e.g. hard and punchy, discreet, elegant, exclusive etc.

3. The “size” of the medium – the number of people exposed to the medium in terms of being aware of the contents. For example, a newspaper might be read by two or three members of a family, whereas a technical journal might be circulated to a large number of managers within a company. Alternatively, a poster might be passed by tens of thousands of people.

4. The comparative cost – how much will it cost to reach a specific audience?

In the following worksheet there is space to make note about these factors as you are required to keep a record of what influenced your choice of medium.

	Medium	Characteristics	Atmosphere	Sise	Comparative cost
Printed media	Local newspaper
National newspapers
Trade and technical press
Magazines and periodicals
Direct mail
Leaflets
Directories (Yellow Pages, buyers’ guides etc.)
Others	Television
Posters (static)
Transport (on trains, buses, vans etc.)
Cinema
Radio
Other (specify)

Unit 5

FINANCIAL AND RISK MANAGEMENT