Brannigan Foods: Strategic Marketing

Planning
(Question and Answer)
By: Group 4

Shounak Dasgupta

Tanisha Sharma

Mayur Lalwani

Nikhil Agarwal

Krishna Banarjee

Soumya Sen

1) Clark considered both positive and negative aspect of proposals given by his manager.
Srikant being the category manager proposed to increase the advertising and promotional
spending to $18 million as he anticipated that the new product launched such as fast and
sample soup and heart healthy soup lines were attracting market and only required
reinforced awareness of the new products. But on the contrary, Clark anticipated in order to
invest on advertising and promotions he might have to revise profits down for 2013. He
analysed the pros and cons of every proposals given by the managers to find out his best
bets of investment in the coming year.
2) According to our analysis, considering all the four investment proposals, we believe that
Clark should go for Bob Pugh’s ‘’investment in the core’’ proposal. This proposal puts
emphasis on price cuts, increase in the A&P budget, and attracting the younger customers
through bringing back the Brannigan’s ‘’Boys and Girls Love Soup’’ Campaign. According to
Clark, the idea behind this proposal was supported by the company senior management as
well as the sales force. Considering a situation in which constraints related to resources do
not exist, Clark should go for Anna Chong’s proposal of investing in organic growth from
internally developed new products. Her report suggested increasing the advertising and
promotional expenditure for the company’s new products. Also, the development of the
products would be far less expensive as compared to acquiring other companies. The new
RTE flavours built on the most popular soups, as suggested by Anna, would lead to a price
increase of $0.1 a can (est), resulting in increasing net earnings, which would ultimately
move the growth back to 3-4%. We believe that the second-best strategy which can be
adopted by Brannigan is the one proposed by Claire Mackey, which emphasizes acquisition
 of product lines to complement the core products in the growing sectors. This venture
would ensure Brannigan’s entry in market segments offering new flavours and healthier
soups. Also, the cost of A&P would decrease if Brannigan’s brand could be used instead of
the acquired brand. The least viable option is Anna Chong’s proposal of investing in organic
growth from internally developed new products because the R&D budget would shoot up by
$5 Million which would not be feasible. Moreover, gaining shelf space for the new RTE
products had about a 5% chance of occurring, which was pretty low for the success of the
products.
3) If Clark favours invention on core products i.e. sales and marketing and re-promoting old
products it will have minimal effect on Srikant’s proposal because he stressed on promoting
and advertising of new items which were introduced in past years. In finance and planning
department there will be no effect since there are no new ventures planned by the
company. On innovation front the progress would be slow over the years as Clark is not
planning to increase the budget as proposed by Anna Chong. The main effected area is
research and development so, to mitigate the damage he can invest a bit to invest a bit
more on market research and improve the taste of the product so that it suits the targeted
customers.
4) Changes in market branding as division

(i) Old Loyal population

(ii) Non-targeting of new generation
(iii) Healthy meals demand
(iv) Demand for meals prohibiting obesity
(v) Demand of simple meals

Effect on branding as division

(i) High sodium food and processed food consumption decrease

(ii) Market share decrease
(iii) Profit decrease

Impact on investment decision

(i) Selection of best strategy for improvement of overall health of company

(ii) New product launching decision
(iii) Preferring innovation in product.
5) The main motto for the company this year would be to promote & advertise the existing
product line of the company. The main target must be to increase the sales of low sodium
RTE (Ready to Eat) Annabelle’s fast & simple and dry soups, which holds approx. 20% of the
sales figures of 2012. This would also fulfil the strategic proposal given by Srikant Tipha.
Keeping in mind the future ventures of the company they may also increase the annual
invest in R&D to introduce promising new fresh flavoured product lines as shared by Anna
Chong. This venture would take quite a few years to give profitable returns as, they need to
plan their investment upfront and in small segment over the years to avoid any resource
constraints.