Marketing Plan outline – Refer to bottom of page 54 for a general outline for your
marketing plan.
Cable Company WOW!
The deliverables:
1. A marketing plan.
2. Intertwined in the marketing plan you must answer the questions for each chapter as
assigned below.
3. In addition, issues to consider and areas in which to make recommendations in your
marketing plan are:
a. Business strategy changes because of market changes. With a low profit margin in cable,
there is a lack of opportunities.
i. Discuss more in detail as profit margins shrink as part of your marketing plan, what does
it take to compete and what is driving the change besides low profit margins? For example,
is the landline phone business dying or what about demographic trends?
ii. The competitive part is difficult. As profit margins continue to shrink in the residential
side of the business, Wow! is considering expanding its operations by offering cable,
internet, and phone to commercial businesses.
1. How to keep the same brand name (if that is the decision) but portray different image
when expanding your customer base from residential to include commercial? Because
competitors want to set themselves apart from big cable companies, they differentiate by
customer services and customer experience. Wow! is still a little “silly” in its marketing
approach but they continue to provide quality of work.
Background
Wow! purchased Knology in 2012 and is a competitive cable company. Use this map to
show service areas. http://www.wowway.com/home-map You will be focusing on the
southeastern part of their coverage. Wow! stands for Wide Open West and started in
Denver as a small cable company about 12-13 years ago. Wow! has a great employee
culture, and the CEO claims that what is most important is the culture of company. Wow!
uses a bottom up management style.
Prior to Wow!’s purchase of Knology, Knology was publicly traded around 12-13 years.
Wow! is private equity company and one must get a franchise for area. It took 2 years until
see growth when they took over the southeast area and now the company is on the
upswing.
Additional facts
For 90% of markets there is only one cable franchise allowed. There is typically an
agreement of some sort among large cable companies to not compete.
Competitors – Charter, DirectTV, Dish, AT&T, Hulu (owned by Viacom)- as a start.
New strategy – B2B
Wow! made small acquisitions lately to service the nonresidential side. Many cable
companies do this because of low profit margins. There is a lot of growth on business side.
The cable company has cable and fiber and so they have the infrastructure and can provide
same services to internet and data connections.
The challenge on business side for the cable company is that it had mom and pop shops as
customers. As they move upmarket to larger enterprises they eventually run into much
larger markets they have not traditionally served, like banks and medical facilities.
One way to battle increasing prices is to own more areas so can have more leverage with
costs.
Price
Pricing is an issue because of costs going up and content providers are asking for more
money.
Wow! Differentiation
• Making our offers clear and easy to understand
• Offering easy installation options, including flexible appointment windows
• Listening to and genuinely caring about our customers
• Resolving customer issues in one call
• Providing local offices to better serve you
http://www.wowway.com/all-about-wow/wow-is-expanding
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304834704579403090132882148
(you may not be able to access this article).
The questions below are provided for you to answer and integrate into your marketing
plan, and will help you formulate recommendations.
COURSE SCHEDULE
Please Note: The Wow! Marketing Video Group Presentation is due on October 12th by
11:59pm CT.
The plan below follows the Sonic Marketing Plan Chapter Assignments in the back of your
book (A8) very closely. Some tweaking has been done to make it relevant to a current
business issue with the company.
Week One: August 11-17
Read: Chapters 1& 2: Understanding Marketing Management
Read: Wow! outline provided by professor and review Wow!’s homepage and review how
their website is set up and the “personality” conveyed. Review Wow! as needed but come
up with your own mission statement, ideas, etc.
Designate one person from your group to be the contact person with Eric Fligel
(efligel@gmail.com). Only one person from each group should serve as the liaison for
your group and contact Mr. Fligel as needed regarding questions about the marketing plan.
With Chapter 2: As an assistant to Pam Smith, Wow!’s chief marketing officer, you’ve
been assigned to draft a mission statement for top management’s review. This should cover
the competitive spheres within which the firm will operate and your recommendation of an
appropriate generic competitive strategy (research this). Using your knowledge of
marketing, the information you have about Wow! and library or Internet resources, answer
the following questions.
• What should Wow!’s mission be?
o Although you need to answer this now, the mission statement may evolve as you write
the marketing plan.
o Remember to review what a mission statement is and reason for its existence.
For example, review Starbucks’ mission statement at
http://www.starbucks.com/about-us/company-information/mission-statement. It is more
than just about coffee. It is broad enough to leave the door open for many types of business
opportunities outside of coffee.
• In what competitive spheres (industry, products and applications, competence,
market-segment, vertical, and geographic) should Wow! operate?
o Review the Wow! writeup provided by your professor before answering. This answer
will somewhat depend on the strategy you set forth set in your marketing plan.
• Which of Porter’s generic competitive strategies would you recommend Wow! follow in
formulating overall strategy?
Enter your answers and supporting information in a written marketing plan to document
