Question: 

What are the primary marketing and communication activities that need to be
implemented for the impending launch? Justify your answer.     
Primary Marketing and communication activities before launch

1) Segmenting the audience

PDB’s Target segment is in the age group 18-30 year old with a household income of <25k.
PDB first needs to study the market for the 3 launch cities to identify potential demographics
and their respective purchasing psychologies. Based on results they need to define the
target segment as this helps identify where they can see maximum penetration. There needs
to be a cycle of customer profiling done before locking onto a particular target segment.

2) Positioning & Campaigning

PDB needs to position the product contingent on thorough market research, perceptual
mapping. Positioning will depend on factors like Nutrition, Hydration, Taste, Energy, Pricing
strategy and capacity constraints. The market Competition & opportunities along with it’s
size also influence strategic positioning. Post this, company needs to design a marketing
campaign for the product using its $750000 advertising budget.

Keeping in mind the overall product attributes, a generic recommendation would be to

market Crescent Pure as an energy drink
 Potential to boost energy and mental focus
 Health benefits where contain no artificial chemical additives are used and even the
caffeine is derived from natural products with much lesser sugar content together
with natural flavours
 Pricing advantage as it sold at $ 0.24 cheaper than other drinks in the category
 Trending market growth by 40% between 2010-2012

However, keeping in mind the long term viability of the product:

 Energy drinks seem to be under pressure of long term survival due to negative
media coverage which may impede high volume strategy of PDB
  The already declining frequency of energy drink is a negative sign for the industry.
PDB needs to analyse more data to understand the impact of negative media
coverage to accurately determine the reduction in volume and its measures
 PDB needs to use part of its advertising budget of $750000 to devise an alternate
product pitch to ensure that it bypasses PR hurdles.

A recommendation in this respect would be as follows:

With consumers becoming increasingly health-conscious and making their food and
beverage choices accordingly, sale of energy drinks like Crescent’s, containing lower levels of
caffeine and organic ingredients, is bound to increase.

PDB, hence, needs to strongly communicate Crescent as an all-health organic energy drink
that’s friendly on the pocket of it’s target segment. Such communication aligns with both
PDB a less expensive volumes retailer and crescent which focussed on the health conscious
organic market.