Essay Sample on Greyhound: Adapting to Beatnik Market Failure with Middle-Class Audience

Introduction

Identifying one's audience is a critical aspect of marketing. In this respect, marketers should create ads that align with the desires of their target listeners and viewers to ensure that the message reaches them as they intended. In the 1950s, the rise of the beatniks led many businesses to target them with little financial success due to their financial constraints and low spending power. Greyhound Travel Bureau recognized this mistake and changed its target to middle-class Americans. The ad Greyhound designed to reach the middle-class audience was useful because it featured couples, vacation destinations, and writings on the offers they had for their customers, along with a call to action but was challenged by too many writings which constrained the aesthetic images included in the ad to catch the potential traveler's attention. Marketing plays an instrumental role in the overall sales and can determine the success of a business or its failure (Kim, Hayes, Avant, & Reid, 2014). This paper will analyze a Greyhound Ad to assess its target audience, effectiveness in selling the product, and how the use of aesthetics such as design and color contributed to the overall ad's success or failure.

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Effectiveness

One of the significant characteristics of the middle class is that, at the time of the ad's publication, they earned a salary of between $5,000 and $13,000 (Rizzo, 2005). The money they made, while not precisely qualifying them the title of wealthy, was enough to enable them to take the occasional vacation. Greyhound recognized this concept and offered customers discounts in the form of additional vacation days if the company saved any money in the course of the trip. They also made them quite affordable. Another middle-class trait was marriage. Although it was not a clear-cut indicator, middle-class couples far outnumbered singles. The ad features illustrations of couples alighting from the bus, by the coastline, and riding horses in the countryside to resonate with their married audience. Also, since many middle-class people were working, Greyhound went the extra mile of organizing the entire vacation for them.

Description

The ad features a large picture of a female swimmer set to start a race. It is complemented by three words that represent the marketing skill of a 'call-to-action' - Get ready, Get Set, and Go! plastered thrice from top to bottom. Behind the swimmer are pictures of the kind of locations that form part of Greyhound's itinerary. These include coastlines, mountains, lakes, and the countryside. A bus that the company marketed as the most advanced technology yet is at the bottom of the poster. Along the right side from the top describe what they consider to be the desires of their clientele, followed a list of destinations below it. Next to the bus image is a short explanation of their perfect vacation, complete with a discount and coupon that a customer may win. The woman in the ad is featured wearing swimming costume which significantly shows that the ad was targeting outdoor activity tourists mainly the office clientele who would love a day out in the open swimming in a lake or the ocean. The red colors are used in the section headlines to emphasize the three stages of travel that the company was offering its potential travelers which involve getting ready for the trip by identifying the potential areas and also indicating how Greyhound Travel Bureau could help potential travelers to choose the best places to visit (Kim et al., 2014). In the second section, the ad focuses on the importance of prior financial planning through savings to achieve the set destination financial requirements. The sections provide key destinations cost plans which are a crucial element of selling a travel expedition to potential travelers. In the last section of the ad, the company showcases its primary selling point, which is the Greyhound coach which are spacious, safe and offers superior traveler comfort at the time.

Audience

The Greyhound ad targeted middle-class Americans who were busy in work all through the year and did not have time to plan for a travel vacation. This class had comparatively changed from their initial target the beatniks, who they later found to be less moneyed and ultimately an unsuccessful venture. The middle-class clients were busy and, as a result, time-constrained (Rizzo, 2005). Therefore, they did not have the time to plan a holiday due to their constrained working timelines. Greyhound Tours offered them the solution of organizing the entire itinerary from the point of origin to the destination transportation and other accompanying services such as places to lodge and food. The middle-class demographics were categorized based on age and occupation. The ad features a young woman who is the depiction of the audience age, most of whom were in their late thirties and starting families. They included women with children, workers traveling to their workplace, grandparents, members of the military, and college students (Rizzo, 2005). On the ad are illustrations of people from different demographics, including what appear to be middle-aged working-class women, horse riders, and fishermen on an excursion, all of whom are a cross-sectional representation of the target audience. The ad features people engaging in outdoor activities which shows that the primary target was the young corporate people who would love to travel over the holidays with their young families. The fact that the ad was found in a life magazine shows that the primary target was business corporates and young couples who would have interest in traveling in a more stylish and arranged manner (Kim et al., 2014).

Analysis

The outlook of the paper includes numerous pictures for visual appeal. The largest one is a female swimmer who appears ready to jump into a swimming pool. It draws the prospective customer in and raises their curiosity about the message. In the background are drawings of Greyhound's ideal customer. By including them, the audience can relate with the type of people the company is looking for and still want to visit the destinations the company is marketing as destinations (Kim et al., 2014). Even with these strong points, however, it is difficult to understand what the middle-class person looks like beyond their distinction from the beatniks. Also, the locations the illustrations represent are not precise. It may have been beneficial for the company to incorporate actual sceneries rather than abstract depictions.

The ad features extensive writings. One advantage of these long texts is that the advertiser gets their message across more easily than they otherwise would. Also, making them large grabs the reader's attention, which may successfully push them to pry further into the rest of the text. The downside, however, is that one may also get distracted before they read the entire length. Consequently, they may fail to notice important details. A critical trait of posters is that they should be readable from far (Iarocci, 2013). This particular one performs rather dismally on this front. The ad includes a call to action, especially at the bottom where the coupon is placed. Like is the case with the rest of the poster, it nonetheless seems a bit crowded. It would have been more effective with fewer writings.

Evaluation

Overall, the ad possesses all the necessary selling points to create travel consumer interest to travel. The choice of the magazine was an excellent strategy to reach to the audience quickly and elicit interest to travel to the destinations provided by the company. The ad shows that the company offered potential travelers with great convenience by organizing their entire trip requirements while they continued with their busy daily schedules in the offices. The ad uses aesthetics such as color to emphasize the critical information such as the type of trips, price, the type of transport and the activities that the potential travelers will enjoy if they choose Greyhound Tours Bureau for their vacation travel needs. The ad provided only the basic and the essential information which provided the potential audience with all the necessary information that is required for travel arrangements and cost expectations. Besides, the choice of placing the ad in a life magazine significantly increased its potential to reach potential travelers. The ad featured the new generation coaches at the time and the comfort potential that the new mode of travel offered the travelers making it the ultimate selling point for the company.

Conclusion / Recommendations

The Greyhound ad contains all the important messages a travel planner may want to pass. It mentions all the selling points of the trips, which include the holiday destinations and the intended audience of their message. Integrating illustrations and voluminous writings create great visual aesthetics. They may improve on the ad by reducing the writings and retaining the essential messages only. Also, actual pictures of the various destinations would suffice in place of the artistic drawings. The layout, however, is quite commendable because the company used every chance to present the information in an organized manner while only including only the important information like the type of travel arrangements and the means of transport. The organization chose to place the ad in Life Magazine was a good decision because it increased the overall potential to reach more middle-class travelers who are constrained by their jobs. At the time, Life Magazine was a household news item that especially targeted young people and couples, making it ideal for reaching the potential middle-class audience.

References

Iarocci, L. (2013). Visual merchandising: The image of selling. Surrey, England: Ashgate Publishing.

Kim, K., Hayes, J. L., Avant, J. A., & Reid, L. N. (2014). Trends in advertising research: A longitudinal analysis of leading advertising, marketing, and communication journals, 1980 to 2010. Journal of advertising, 43(3), 296-316.

Rizzo, M. (2005). Consuming class, buying identity: Middle-class youth culture, 'lower-class' style and consumer culture, 1945-2000. New York, NY: Routledge.