Ch. 16 - Advertising, Public Relations and Sales Promotion

Godiva's Sales Promotion & Advertising 

How significant is it for a company to advertise its products and have sales promotions? Well! It is an important aspect of a company's growth as advertising helps to ultimately increase the sales of a product as well as to strengthen or alter a brand's image. Since Godiva was the first Campbell Soup Company to launch a website in the mid 1990's, the company expected that the website would increase 15% of its direct mail business in the coming years.This exclusive website of luxury chocolate includes online ordering, recipes, a list of new Godiva products and occasional holiday's sales promotions. With changing technology in recent times, Godiva's team launched the newly designed site and re-approached the creative direction of photography, creating richer chocolate imagery to stimulate user's appetites as they browse through the site. All of these enhancements with newly designed checkout process allows customers to make their purchases quickly and easily. I'm a great fan of Godiva chocolate myself and not only for the taste but with its visually appealing website, I'm continued to be a loyal customer and make my purchases at times.

Public Relations

Although many of us have witnessed the public relations campaigns launched by different companies, but how many of us know the importance that it has for the companies. In reality, public relations helps businesses to bring repeated as well as new customers for its growth. Unlike advertising, this is a direct connection with people through campaigns that allows a company to disseminate its exact image. Godiva Chocolatier has maintained its reputation among its clients through many campaigns held at different occasions over the years. Not only for the company's own benefits but Godiva has continued to be dedicated for different causes. One good example is Hurricane Sandy. When people suffered from this devastating storm, besides delivering the best service to its clients with minimal interruption, Godiva stayed committed to donate $100,000 to American Red Cross Disaster Relief, and encouraged its customers to donate as well and show their support. This was one good gesture of Godiva to build strong customer relationship as it helped people out for a good cause. For many reasons, the implementation of PR strategies have helped Godiva in a big way to be more successful over the time.