Write an Email Memo Based on Business Situations to International Audiences. This means you are responsible for coordinating marketing activities and contributing to sales growth of the General Mills’ line of breakfast cereals. You have been in your position for two months and have never met most of the international members of your team face to face.
Although you are the key person who manages the global brand and budget there are many other General Mills country subsidiaries that also have marketing directors for General Mills products for those countries (a table with a list of some director names and countries is attached below).
As the new global marketing director, you are responsible for communicating with the marketing directors in other countries regarding new product offerings, marketing plans, sales programs, and other brand-related issues. Although you have met your international team in virtual meetings, you do not know any of them well.
Unfortunately, sales for most General Mills cereal lines have been flat for several years. The company is hoping that expanding some products internationally might be a good solution to this problem. General Mills along with its partner Nestle has already expanded the Cheerios cereal brand to many international markets. Now General Mills has decided to expand the Chex line of cereal as well.
For the Cheerios expansion, General Mills paid to bring all the marketing directors from the expansion countries to the US for a week of special training and marketing planning. You know that your international team is expecting that the company will again bring everyone to the US to plan this product launch. However, you have just been told that due to a 25% decrease in marketing’s travel budget and Covid restrictions, you can no longer afford to bring everyone to the US. The planning for the Chex launch will have to take place via phone and video conferencing.
You work in Golden Valley, MN, and you are in charge of drafting the email communication to the marketing directors at the other GMI subsidiaries regarding this new cereal line. Although they speak adequate conversational English, most of them are not completely fluent in the language.
The Assignment Direction:
Pick one of the General Mills’ subsidiary countries listed below.(Attached in the uploaded file below) Research that country’s business email writing conventions and expectations. Some you should find doing your own research or based on a team member’s experience and knowledge. Find out about the country or culture’s business email/memo writing expectations regarding formats, titles, formality, greetings, openings, persuasive style, delivering negative messages, organization, length, etc. Apply the business writing conventions you have discovered that are specific to the country you researched and the international English writing techniques we have covered in class.
Write an email (300-500 words) to your colleague that communicates the following messages to the marketing director in the country you chose:
Single-spaced memo/email format: 1″ margins, 12 pt standard font, left-justified block paragraphs, and email heading (to, from, date, subject).
300-500 words long
free of spelling and major grammatical errors
Announce that the company has decided to expand the Chex cereal line to his/her home country. Assume that your counterpart is not very familiar with this brand.
Because the travel budget has been cut and there are Covid concerns, the company will not be able to bring this marketing director to the US for a weeklong planning session for this launch. You know that this team member will be disappointed. Trips to the US are usually considered a desirable perk.
Set up a video conference meeting (give a specific date and time) to discuss the best ways to plan this launch.
Based on your research into this country suggest the key demographic you think General Mills should target for its Chex expansion, the Chex flavors that you think will be most successful, the mediums that might best reach those customers, and the messages you think they will respond favorably to. You would like your international team member to consider these ideas and discuss them at your video conference meeting. However, you know that your knowledge of the expansion country is very superficial compared to your international colleagues. Be sure to let them know that you want honest feedback about these ideas—they need to let you know if this is a bad initial plan–and that you want them to make recommendations as well.
