The marketing world is a fast-paced environment where business promotes the buying and selling of products and services. While marketing includes advertising, selling, and delivering products to consumers or other businesses, there are many facets that need to be considered when developing a marketing strategy to ensure success for the business as well as the consumer.
take on the role of a marketing professional to develop a persuasive marketing strategy for good. Your goal is to help society while being cognizant of the organization’s mission and goals. Your task is to design a social media/social marketing campaign for your organization that would promote diversity and inclusion and could help benefit the company. Your decisions must align with the company’s mission and goals. You may choose a well-known company or make up a mock organization and identify the tactics, strategies, and influencers needed to ensure your campaign will reach a diverse audience.
For the purposes of this exercise, here are some guidelines:
You will choose the company (or type of company) and create a narrative for the specific opportunity the business is considering (in other words why the company wants to do this and what benefit or position this campaign could give the company, as well as how it could promote positive change).
Your selected organization could be a company where you have worked or with which you are familiar, or you could locate an example of a company and use it as the basis for your narrative.
Note: If you select a company with which you do not have personal experience, some of the questions related to the campaign specifics may be more challenging to answer; however, you should feel free to use your creativity to respond to the questions.
Provide information that will help you craft your narrative for the campaign. The purpose of this activity is to demonstrate your ability to think through and develop marketing solutions to business problems, not to have all the “right” answers.
Once you have selected your organization, you will need to identify a positive-social-change-related outcome/goal for the organization.
With those thoughts in mind, begin constructing your marketing campaign design document, being sure to incorporate appropriate examples, where applicable, as well as citations for relevant academic sources from the classroom, the Walden Library, and/or other appropriate scholarly sources to support your work.
Anticipated Benefits and Positive Change
This campaign is designed to benefit both society and the organization synergistically.
A. Benefit to the Organization (Alignment with Goals)
Brand Equity & Relevance: By aligning the brand with D&I, Lego increases its cultural capital, making it the preferred brand for socially conscious consumers. This aligns directly with the goal of strengthening brand relevance.
Market Share Expansion: Actively targeting and validating previously underserved groups (e.g., girls in engineering, culturally specific communities) opens new sales channels and increases market penetration, fulfilling the goal to expand global market reach.
Talent Acquisition: A strong, visible D&I campaign improves the company's reputation as an employer, aiding in the recruitment and retention of diverse, top-tier talent (Hadi & Khairat, 2023).
B. Promotion of Positive Social Change
Challenging Gender Stereotypes: By actively showing girls and boys equally engaged in all types of sets (technical, creative, domestic), the campaign directly works to achieve the goal of decreasing gender stereotyping in play, which has downstream effects on career choices and self-perception.
Increasing Representation: Featuring products and narratives that include a wide range of ethnicities, family structures, and physical abilities normalizes diversity, fostering greater empathy and social acceptance among children—the "builders of tomorrow."
Empowerment: The "Build the Real You" challenge empowers children to define their own identities through play, reinforcing the psychological benefit of self-expression and autonomy rather than conformity.
Sample Answer
Organization's Mission | "To Inspire and develop the builders of tomorrow." | | Organization's Goals (Relevant) | 1. Expand global market reach by appealing to diverse cultural backgrounds. 2. Strengthen brand relevance among Gen Z and younger consumers who prioritize social values. 3. Foster creative play that is inclusive and reflective of the real world. | | Campaign Title | "Unbox Your World: Build the Real You" | | Specific Opportunity and Rationale | The toy industry has historically faced criticism for gender and racial stereotyping in packaging and advertising. Lego has recently made strides (e.g., gender-neutral sets) but needs a proactive, unified campaign to solidify its stance as a leader in inclusive play. This campaign offers Lego a competitive position by: 1. MitigatingOrganization's Mission | "To Inspire and develop the builders of tomorrow." | | Organization's Goals (Relevant) | 1. Expand global market reach by appealing to diverse cultural backgrounds. 2. Strengthen brand relevance among Gen Z and younger consumers who prioritize social values. 3. Foster creative play that is inclusive and reflective of the real world. | | Campaign Title | "Unbox Your World: Build the Real You" | | Specific Opportunity and Rationale | The toy industry has historically faced criticism for gender and racial stereotyping in packaging and advertising. Lego has recently made strides (e.g., gender-neutral sets) but needs a proactive, unified campaign to solidify its stance as a leader in inclusive play. This campaign offers Lego a competitive position by: 1. Mitigating