IMC - Written Report Team 2 - Skiing in Afghanistan - Version 2

Integrated Marketing Communication Written Report – Team assignment

Skiing in Afghanistan

Team 2 Stefania Aresta Una Barković

Ana Marija Gečević Tamara Mazuth Hrvoje Radeljak

Dora Šaškor Mandana Stahr

Integrated Marketing Communications Skiing in Afghanistan Lecturers: Dominik Mahr, Olivera Jurković Report – Team 2

Content

1 Afghanistan ........................................................................................................ 3

1.1 Environmental analysis – SWOT ................................................................... 4

1.2 Industry analysis – Porter`s Five Forces ....................................................... 5

1.3 Competitor analysis – Untamed Borders ....................................................... 6

1.4 Market analysis – Target group ..................................................................... 6

2 The Trip ............................................................................................................... 7

3 Marketing Plan .................................................................................................... 9

3.1 Advertising ..................................................................................................... 9

3.2 Direct Marketing - E-mail Newsletter ........................................................... 10

3.3 Interactive/Internet Marketing ...................................................................... 10

3.4 Sales promotion........................................................................................... 11

3.5 Support Media - Flyers ................................................................................ 12

3.6 Event ........................................................................................................... 12

3.7 A process for monitoring and evaluating performance ................................ 13

4 Simple Budget Plan .......................................................................................... 13

5 The Customer Journey .................................................................................... 15


1 Afghanistan

Afghanistan is located within Greater Middle East and is the world's 41st largest country. It borders Iran in the west, Pakistan in the south and east, China in the far east and Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan in the north.

Picture: Afghanistan’s map - http://www.lahistoriaconmapas.com/atlas/country-map01/bamiyan-afghanistan-map.htm

Although there are mountains, the country has never been a place for skiing or other winter sports. Afghanistan is one of the most dangerous country in the world but something is changing. Bamian, located in Central Afghanistan, had been for centuries an important stop on the Silk Road trading route and is becoming nowadays a tourist destination for skiing. The magnificent Koh-E-Baba Mountains are becoming a backcountry skier’s paradise. It is possible to do raw skiing because there are no ski lifts and skiers have to hike up the mountains. The region is very poor and is famous also for its historical sites such as the site of the Great Buddha Statues, the ancient ruins of Shahr-E-Gholghda and Shahr-E-Zohak. Each year, few adventurous skiers make a long trip to Bamian to do an unforgettable wonderful experience in one of least explored ranges in the world. Ali Shah Farhang is the Afghanistan’s number one skier and champion of the annual Afghan Ski Challenge. Thanks to his knowledge of the mountains, he works as a local ski guide for the rising number of tourists. “I think Bamiyan is perhaps the fastest-growing ski destination in the world”, he explained for a magazine. “Before, no one came here, now every year in February and March we are welcoming more and more adventurous visitors from Australia, Picture: Ali Shah Farhang

Source: http://www.sidetracked.com/ski-afghanistan/

http://www.afghanskichallenge.com/

http://www.afghanskichallenge.com/


New Zealand, the UK, France, Germany, Switzerland and even the US, sometimes as many as 30 people in one month. They love the dry snow, the fast runs, the jumping from rocks when they go off-piste; Afghanistan is a real challenge, even for experienced skiers. [...] Forget about explosions, this is far away from the crazy mullahs. Come and see for yourselves. You will experience many great things, especially the real Afghan hospitality. Then, when you get home, you can show off your passport stamp, and best of all, tell your friends that you are one of the few people to have ever skied Afghanistan! “

1.1 Environmental analysis – SWOT

With the SWOT analysis, we want to evaluate our strengths and weaknesses and the opportunities and threats that we may face. Strengths

We offer a unique experience in an exclusive location, a challenge unlike any other.

No mass tourism: few adventurous ski tourists make the trek to Bamian every year and the mountains are virtually untouched.

Extreme sport experience. Skiers can come back to the roots of skiing.

Natural scenarios, cultural and historical sites.

From a technical point of view, the ski conditions are good.

Bamian is quite safe for tourists and is not under threat from insurgent groups.

We are reliable and we offer a safe trip: this is a fundamental aspect, otherwise anyone will buy the trip.

Opportunities

This is an emerging market, there are not still many competitors and there are many future opportunities for success.

Tourists may have a higher willingness to pay for this unique and new experience.

Tourists have plenty of opportunities to interact with local people. They can discover typical tastes and meet local people.

The annual Afghan Ski Challenge is an incredible event where local and foreign skiers compete in a race and it can attract tourists.

Weaknesses

We need local guides and international guides. We have to introduce modern equipment and training.

Organization of the trip is very complex and difficult, especially because the country is not safe and we have to protect our customers.

Difficulties to provide transportation (dangerous streets, not well connected). We should take great care with respect to safety and security.

Lower quality standards in hotels, restaurants and other tourist facilities.

The trip is expensive.

Costs may be high, especially at the beginning, because it is necessary to invest

in advertising, since the destination is not well-known by tourists.


Threats

Competition from other destinations.

Competition from the existing firm that has better knowledge and experience about the country and related issues.

Wars and social unrest can destroy our investments and prevent departures for Afghanistan.

1.2 Industry analysis – Porter`s Five Forces

With Porters five forces we now want to analyse the skiing industry in Afghanistan by looking at the different aspects that influence the attractiveness of this specific industry. Threat of substitute products We decided that the threat of substitute products is moderate to high, depending on the view you take. If you look at skiing in general one could argue that the threat is enormous as customers can decide to go skiing in so many different countries like Switzerland, Austria and Italy. The options the customers can choose from are countless. But if you take a more narrow view on this adventurous and extreme skiing trip, the experience of skiing in Afghanistan is really unique and can’t be found everywhere. For an extraordinary trip like this there are not many substitutes to choose from. Bargaining power of buyers The bargaining power of the buyers we estimated to be moderate to high as there is doubtlessly a wide range of substitutes available. Nevertheless as mentioned above not so many cover this sort of unique experience. Furthermore the main reason why we believe that our buyers are relatively powerful is because we have a rather small target group, just because of the characteristics and the natural design of the trip. When our target group decides whether to book our services or not, they will decide on the success or failure of this business opportunity. Bargaining power of suppliers In our case we identified the local tour guides as our suppliers, as they supply us with their local knowledge and guidance for the customer throughout the whole skiing experience. We came to the conclusion that the bargaining power of the suppliers is however low, as Afghanistan is a relatively poor country and fair paid jobs are rare. We believe that they will be helpful and happy to be employed by us and earn more money to create a better life for their families. The only issue that could arise is that we would have to compete with the existing company to recruit the best tour-guides. And even if they are open and inviting they might be able to negotiate their wages by knowing about the competitor’s payment system, which we have to establish first also oriented by the competitors pay. Threat of new entrants We assessed the threat of new entrants into this sector to be between low and moderate. There is a lot of upfront investment a company needs to pay to create a successful business in Afghanistan, to build up the partnerships and infrastructure. As the region is still described as dangerous and often only associated with war, we doubt that many firms want to invest into this area right now. But we don’t expect it to stay


like this forever as there is increasing interest in places like Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan especially among the younger generation Y. Rivalry among existing firms Last but not least, we think the rivalry among the existing firms is low to moderate. This industry is at an early stage of the competition, as there is only one more company that offers such a trip to Afghanistan. As there are no other operating firms it can’t be described as a very competitive market. But of course we don’t expect to enter the market effortlessly, but it should not create a huge rivalry between our firm and the existing one. Taken all the five forces into consideration we believe that this industry is highly attractive and can be a very lucrative business expansion.

1.3 Competitor analysis – Untamed Borders

As mentioned above so far there is only one operating company that organises adventurous skiing trips in Afghanistan. Untamed Borders was founded by Kausar Hussain and James Willcox, a local and a British tour guide that shared their love for countries that are often described as dangerous and inhospitable. Since 2011 they organise tours around Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, former Soviet Central Asia and the Caucasus, but also arrange trips to other off-the-beaten track destinations. One a skiing trip to Bamian Untamed Borders take a maximum of ten people. Their next trip is going to be in February 2017, which will last ten days and will cost approximately US$ 2.650. As our main and only competitor their clear strength is that they already have six years’ worth of experience. They have an existing infrastructure and the local knowledge of their tour guides. These are the relationships we have to establish first to create a solid foundation for our operations. Our advantage for having an already established competitor is that we can look at their weak spots and to offer our customers a unique selling proposition that differs from Untamed Borders. By looking at the design of the trip to Bamian one can clearly see, that it is not a care-free package as the travellers need to book their own flights and pay for them separately. Dinner is not included during the whole experience and lunch is only served on skiing days. On top of that you always have to bring your own skiing gear, which might be problematic or really expensive depending on the flight the customers chose to book. So when deciding on an exact trip design, including dates and budget, we need to take all that into consideration.

1.4 Market analysis – Target group

But before we can design our trip we need to segment the market and decide on our target group. As our client is a Croatian tour-retailer we first of all want to geographically segment the market and concentrate on the Croatian customer.


As skiing in Afghanistan is a very physical experience, we decided that the customer has to be in a stable and healthy condition. As we believe female and male customers have the physical requirements for this trip we definitely want to target both genders. Considering that nearly 68 percent of the Croatian population is between 15-64 years old, our next step was to identify the group of customers we want to target with our skiing trip. As a trip to Afghanistan comes with risk and danger, we decided not to allow underage children to go on this trip even with parent permission. We want our customers to be fully aware of the risks they are taking, be in full control of their body and to know how much they can handle. For the low mark we therefore decided that our targeted customer needs to be at least 25 years old. We set the bar a little higher than the legal age of 18, because this trip is not going to be the cheapest. We don’t expect for example students to be able to finance these kind of trips all by themselves. We believe for this sort of skiing experience you have to be fit, relatively strong and sporty as well. So for the high mark we set an age limit at 40 years, just to make sure that customers don’t endanger themselves or the others on a trip, when they are not as fit as they might think. Of course our trip targets adventurous and extreme sports customers just because of the nature of the trip, but we also want to attract people who look for a unique experience and something special, that they can tell their grandkids about.

2 The Trip

We've organized the trip in a way that it gives the traveller the opportunity to explore local customs, cuisine and culture apart from skiing. DAY 1: Zagreb – Kabul We’ll meet at the airport and fly together to Kabul. Check in to the hotel upon arrival. DAY 2: Kabul We’ll explore Kabul with local guide. We’ll visit the city centre and interesting sights like Kabul museum, OMAR landmine museum and ruins of the Darulaman palace.

Picture: Ruins of the Darulaman palace, Source: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/4785143327786501/


DAY 3: Kabul – Bamian We’ll travel to Bamian by plane. Bamian is known as the home of the Hazara people. The Hazara are a Shia minority who are ethnically related to the Mongols of Genghis Khan. They have suffered a great deal of persecution under a number of Afghan governments and only now have the opportunity to build schools and hospitals in their mountain homeland, the Hazarajat. DAY 4 – DAY 9: Bamian We’ll ski on Koh E Baba Mountain. For the less experienced we will be working with local guides on fairly simple runs. For the more experienced we will enlist the help of a western qualified ski guide to find slopes deep in the Hindu Kush, some of which have never been skied before. You’ll also have the opportunity to ski race with be invited into their home for a cup of tea. As well as skiing we will be able to show you around the lively Bamian Bazaar, visit the remains of the giant Buddhas of Bamian, explore nearby Dragon Valley and summit Shah e Golghola (the City of Screams), left in the same state as when Genghis Khan sacked it 800 years ago.

Picture: Remains of the giant Buddha, Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/06/world/asia/06budd.html?_r=0

DAY 10: Bamian – Kabul We’ll travel back to Kabul where you’ll be able to see the famous Chicken Street and Babur’s Garden and have enough free time to do last minute shopping. DAY 11: Kabul – Zagreb We fly back home to Zagreb. The price of the trip is 2800 EUR. The price includes all accommodation, all transport, breakfast, lunch when skiing (day 4 to day 9), security and guiding. The price excludes visa (visa is required for the citizens of Croatia), insurance, entrance fees, lunch and dinner, drinks, tips and ski equipment.


3 Marketing Plan

Objectives Design an attractive integrated media campaign to raise awareness, attract potential customers and accustom the general population to the idea of skiing in Afghanistan. Communication process Skiing in Afghanistan is a high involvement decision, considering its cost and distance. But, regardless of that we believe the main trigger that motivates people to purchase our trip is emotion-based. We want to awaken their need for freedom, adventure and adrenalin by the usage of attractive visuals and messages that appeal to emotions and that appeal to our target group - adventure seekers, extreme sport lovers and skiing enthusiasts. We would also include a detailed itinerary with costs to also appeal to logic. We have decided we won´t advertise on mass media, such as TV, radio or billboards. Instead, we will focus on specialized websites and magazines. Our media mix consists of: online and print ads, banners, e-mail newsletters, social media marketing, sales promotions, PR and support media, such as flyers.

3.1 Advertising

Objectives Raising awareness about skiing in Afghanistan and creating a favourable image - making it appear “cool” in the eyes of adventure seekers, extreme sport lovers and skiing enthusiasts.

Messages

Pure adrenaline. Experience freedom and test your limits on unique beauty of Afghan mountains.

For the dare-devil in you. One hour up. 2 minutes down. Dry snow. Fast runs. Jumping from rocks. Sounds fun?

Be fearless.

Test your limits. Media strategy Our target audience are extreme sport lovers and adventure seekers, thus we decided we won´t advertise on mass media such as radio and TV, but instead we will focus on specialized media vehicles which have our target market as an audience. We will advertise on the web magazine skijanje.hr (skiing), in the magazine Outdoor, adventure-sport.net, Men´s Health. We plan to put banners on their websites and buy space in the print magazines. Schedule We would use the flighting schedule and advertise it before the ski seasons.


Examples of banners we would use:

3.2 Direct Marketing - E-mail Newsletter

Objectives Inform the interested customers about our news and activities and offer them discounts and special offers. Media strategy Put an opt-in form on our website, where interested customers could sign up for our newsletter. We could also offer a freebie in exchange for their email addresses, such as an e-book about the various skiing routes they could take on the Afghan mountains. We will send out a newsletter once a month.

3.3 Interactive/Internet Marketing

Objectives Raise awareness about skiing in Afghanistan, reach our target audience and get them interested in our offer through engaging and creative pictures and videos.

Strategy We will create pages on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. We will post pictures and/or videos of the mountains, people having fun while skiing and inspiring quotes with pictures of Afghan mountains. Posting schedule

Facebook and Instagram: once a day

Twitter: several times a day

YouTube: once a week

We will also take advantage of user generated content and repost their pictures and videos to get social proof. We would hire famous skier Ivica Kostelić to try skiing in Afghanistan and record a vlog while doing so. He would record his whole journey/adventure from the beginning to the end and we would upload it on our


YouTube channel, share it on other social media channels, and also send it to TV stations. We will create banners and ads and send them to above mentioned specialized websites. We will also use Google Adwords.

3.4 Sales promotion

Objective Motivate potential customers to try out our offer. Strategy We would create a graphic with a coupon and put it in specialized magazines and websites.

Example of a gift certificate:


3.5 Support Media - Flyers

Objectives Raise awareness and inform our target audience about our offer. Strategy We will create several flyers and put them in specialized stores that sell outdoor equipment or ski or sports equipment (e.g. Intersport, Hervis and local stores). We would also put it in adequate coffee bars, e.g. Booksa.

Example of a flyer:

3.6 Event

There will be an event starring our brand ambassador Ivica Kostelić where we would present to the public his videos, which he filmed during his trip to Afghanistan. We chose him for that kind of sponsorship because he is the most popular skier here in Croatia and he already has experience filming his trips. This summer he visited Croatian islands with his friends and filmed their trip, as they were visiting different


restaurants, landmarks and trying some of the adventurous activities such as scuba diving, climbing, rafting etc. So when visiting Afghanistan, he would experience their culture, traditional cuisine, unique landmarks and try a little bit of skiing. The main goal of his trip would be to get our target audience closer to the Afghanistan, to prove that it can compete with all the other skiing countries such as Austria, Italy and France.

3.7 A process for monitoring and evaluating performance

It is a process for measuring marketing outcomes from the consumer points of view, including all marketing activities measured across a continuous time period. Best method for monitoring and evaluating performance is KPI (Key performance indicators). It is used to evaluate success of marketing activities in which the company is engaged. It must meet the minimum requirements such as: measure marketing outcomes from the consumer points of view, include all marketing activities, be repeated over time and meet statistical and technical criteria required. So we would monitor our website, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube account to see how many customers are attracted to our service. Throughout the week we could monitor how many new customers started following our social media accounts after seeing our ad and how many customers are sharing our posts, photos or videos. Other tool we could use would be measuring the number of visits to our website or social media, using the statistical data gathered throughout the week. It would be the best indication to our sites overall traffic. For us the best and cheapest option to evaluate performance would be using a customer response. It would help us determine what type of reactions our marketing activities create. We would conduct online surveys on our website, Facebook and via e-mail newsletters. From that we would gather general customer feedback which would reveal what our customers think about our marketing strategies and which campaign (magazine ads, extreme sports websites, social media, flyers, e-mail newsletters...) has the best impact. After conducting that process we would have answers about success of our marketing campaign, knowing whether customer response is in line with our aim and objectives and we would identify which marketing activities work well and which may be improved.

4 Simple Budget Plan

Budget In Euros

Specialized website and magazines 6.000

Social media 6.500

E-Mail newsletters 20 €/Month

Promotional video with Ivica Kostelić 5.000

Event 20.000

Discount coupons 8.000

Banners and print ads 6.000

Flyers 500

TOTAL 53.000


The detail budget plan is very important in creating the IMC plan. As it is shown in the budget plan table our costs are divided in eight parts, and we will explain each part separately how we will divide our funds. Specialized websites and magazines We will advertise are program by posting our banners on specialized sites as Skijanje.hr where our potential customers who are interested in those kinds of vacations and adventures would search for their trip. The cost of magazine ad website add depends from time of the year (if is it a skiing season or not) or position in the magazine. The price of that kind of advertising will cost us 6.000€. Social media (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube) There is a cost of making promotional pages of listed social media; also the ads will be designed for the target customer who is searching for such an adventure. The costs for all four social media will be 6.500€. E-Mail newsletters Cost of designing newsletters are around 20€/month and we will send them to the customers who will search for our trip on social media and specialized web sites. Promotional video with Ivica Kostelić The cost of transportation, equipment, accommodation, and making video are around 5.000€. The cost may be lower if there would be sponsors but for our based plan, we are financing by our self. Event Cost of planning and organizing event includes costs of finding location, herring staff, purchase of food and beverages, inviting Croatian celebrities and all media operators in Croatia. Total cost of this event is 20.000€. Discount coupons Discount coupons will be enable for those customers who will repeat their trip in next 12 months, and it will cost us 8.000€. Banners and print ads Designing and purchase of media space; the designing, printing and releasing of print ads and banners cost 6.000€. Flyers The price of creating promotional flyers and their realization is 500€.


5 The Customer Journey

Our customer journey begins with creating a desire to our customers. We would accomplish that by using a different advertisements and social media profiles where our customers would get interested in a trip such as skiing in Afghanistan. After the desire is created they decide to conduct the research on the internet. Customers are suspicious about going to Afghanistan because it is an unknown and hostile territory, and everyone associates it with the war that was going on. So people who like skiing and other extreme winter sports were never thinking that there are possibilities to ski in Afghanistan. But after researching the internet, they found our website and all the needed information about the trip such as prices or dates. So because our target audience are mainly adventurous people, they decide to go to a new adventure in Afghanistan. They purchase the tickets in the travel agency and are a little bit sad because it costs a lot of money, but at the same time they are excited about the trip. During the trip, customers are always excited because it is a unique experience to them and are happy that they chose to go to Afghanistan. After the trip, they share their experiences and feelings, good or bad, with their friends and families on their social media profiles.

Documents

IMC - Written Report Team 2 - Skiing in Afghanistan - Version 2