A communication strategy for Continente: Practical, low priced and healthy eating solutions

A Work Project, presented as part of the requirements for the Award of a Masters Degree in Management from the NOVA – School of Business and Economics

The objective of this field lab is to develop a communication strategy for Continente, a client of the communication agency FUEL, in order to respond to four trends predicted for 2012: cocooning, resistance to temptation, food loving and need to make savings. The document begins with the situation analysis of the market in which Continente competes, for which I decided to use the Creative Business Idea (CBI) strategic process. Therefore, this analysis consists of analyzing the market momentum, which is split in three separate analyses (category momentum, prosumer momentum and brand momentum), in order to reach the creative business idea that will define the overall communication concept that I propose. To this end, I did research on the food retail sector and analyzed the trends predicted for it. Then, to understand consumers and their relation with the brand, I did open-response questions to some people and, together with 3 colleagues, developed an online survey. Based on the market momentum, and looking specifically to the trends food loving and need to make savings, I chose to develop a communication strategy focused on low priced, practical and healthy eating solutions, more specifically, on solutions that adapt Continente’s already existing products and expand its already existing services in order to be close to customers while providing them with eating alternatives that answer to their current needs and fit in their daily routines. Consequently, after defining three different sub-concepts, I developed some proposals and organized them per sub-concept and also per Continente’s type of store. The document ends with the strategy test and the implementation plan for my proposals. To test the strategy, I developed an online survey and made close-response questions to the human resources department of some companies. To develop the implementation plan, I analyzed the data from the answers to the online survey and close-response questions, and did research on the stores, products, and services that already exist and satisfied the needs that I propose Continente to satisfy as well.