Strategic Marketing Solutions

Overview

You are required to respond to various marketing challenges over Weeks 5-8, which tackle different strategic marketing problems. This will result in a greater understanding of key stakeholder perspectives, including clients, customers, employees, and competitors, and will also hone your problem-solving skills for job readiness.

This assessment aims to develop your capacity to write, present, and critically analyse various components of strategic marketing under the pressure of tight deadlines, all of which are key skills for contemporary professional practice. Specifically, as a marketer (e.g., marketing communications specialist, marketing manager, brand manager), you must know how to write succinctly to get your point across in the most direct way. You will also need to learn how to present your work effectively to managers and executives to help them make decisions. You will call on your critical analysis skills to find innovative solutions to various internal and external problems (often, there will not be one correct solution, but multiple options). All of this is within tight deadlines. In other words, you are replicating what often occurs in industry.

There are two tasks to be completed. We have provided more details in the table below to help you understand the requirements for each task.

Select the headers to learn more about each challenge.

Format: 1-page report (can include tables, graphics, infographics, bullet points etc...)

Client: Apple Music

Due date: 06/04/2025 at 11:59 pm (AEST)

Resources:

• Apple MusicLinks to an external site.
• Apple Music SubscribersDownload Apple Music Subscribers
• Digital Music Market DataDownload Digital Music Market Data

Marketing issue:

Apple Music is one of the many music streaming services providing consumers with digital music listenership. Apple Music is also one of the many service extensions of the Apple brand. While Apple Music subscriptions grow yearly, they trail behind Spotify (the market leader) in market share. The recent forecast of digital music revenue is estimated to increase at a compound annual growth rate (CARG) of 11.7% from 2017 -2027 (Statista 2023). Australians spend the most on digital music services (Statista, 2023). Yet, Apple Music's market share is small and trails Spotify by a lot (see diagram below).

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Apple management is turning to you to help fix the issues and increase the number of digital music subscribers to grow its market share. This is what they’ve asked you to do:

• Break the digital music subscribers into 3-4 segments
• Select and justify with evidence which segment Apple Music should target (where you want to consider the current market size and potential growth. You can take a global perspective if needed)
• Using AI (via Adobe Express), develop an advertisement to reach this market and justify what channel you would use to reach them. Use Adobe Express Firefly to AI-Generate your advertisement.

Go to Adobe ExpressLinks to an external site.

Task details:

• Word count: 1 page (you can use a second page for a list of references, meaning you should have in-text references)
• Value: 15%
• Layout: Use the 1 page as you wish, but remember professionalism is key, especially if going to a client
• Submit via Turnitin

Key advice:

• Given page limitation, how can you best explain your segment(s) to Apple Management?
• Write succinctly
• Sometimes pictures/graphics/graphs/tables say more than words
• You can suggest any strategic marketing changes, but this challenge does have a comms focus

Format: 1-page report (can include tables, graphics, infographics, bullet points etc...)

Client: Monos

Due date: 04/05/2025 at 11:59 pm (AEST)

Resources: MonosLinks to an external site.

Marketing Issue: Financial acumen is an essential strategic marketing skill; however, it often passes marketing students by. Well, not in this course. Here, we recognise that C-Suite managers (CEOs, CMOs) make decisions based on dollars. With this, we want you to enhance your financial acumen skills. This is why you will do the following challenge:

You’re a marketing graduate working at Monos. The brand’s product development team has developed an ultra-futuristic Smart backpack. This backpack is ergonomically designed and eco-friendly, features biometric fingerprint access, seamless anti-theft security, modular systems where compartments within the bag can be organised to your preference, and RFID protection to keep users' cards and personal data safe from digital theft.

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Image created by AI.

Your marketing manager has asked you to do three key things to help guide their decision-making:

• Determine how much it will cost to produce this (Monos already has the machinery to make this futuristic Smart backpack, so this doesn’t need to be included in costs). They don’t want a best guess either; they want you to provide evidence (via references) of this cost.
• They want you to determine the price they should charge customers for the new travel backpack based on costs and other market forces. Outline your thinking here so they can make informed decisions.
• They’re thinking about their launch strategy and market projections and want to know the best way to do this. Remember, they’re a global brand, but they also need to keep costs reasonable. Again, they don’t want guesses or assumptions; they want firm recommendations based on evidence (usually gathered through secondary research). Based on your market projections and launch strategy development, how much profit do you anticipate they will make after the first 12 months of sales on a budget of AUD$4 million?

Task details:

• Word count: 1 page (you can use a second page for the list of references, meaning you should have in-text references)
• Value: 15%
• Layout: Use the 1 page as you wish, but remember professionalism is key. Your manager wants to be able to show your work to the CMO, CFO and CEO, so it’s a big deal.
• Submit via Turnitin

Key advice:

• Examine costing in detail; don’t just settle for the first price you see
• Succinctly justify your decision, including what market forces have been impactful.
• Sometimes pictures/graphics/graphs/tables say more than words
• You can suggest any strategic marketing options, but this challenge does have a price and projections component

Submission Instructions for All Challenges

• Submit written work in PDF to maintain formatting
• Submit through Canvas, which will include Turnitin
• You have one submission only
• Ensure that you read the instructions for each task carefully and that your submissions follow the specified word/time limits.

Questions?

If you have any questions, check the discussion board or course materials to see if they have been answered. If not, post your question or ask your teacher about it in your tutorials.

Learning outcomes

This assessment is linked to the following Course Learning Outcomes:

• CLO1: Identify problems and questions in relation to contemporary strategic marketing and be aware of strategies to investigate them.
• CLO2: Critically evaluate advanced strategic tools, concepts and theories and understand the complexities associated with the application of these in marketing practice.
• CLO4: Adapt your knowledge in relation to marketing theory and/or practice to be a more effective strategic problem solver.

Marking criteria

Please see the assessment submission pages for the marking criteria of each challenge.