BUSN20017 Effective Bussiness Communication

Case study: You are the President of the Turkey Farmers Association of Australia, which consists of sole operators, small producers and four big producers who have their own marketing teams. The Turkey Farmers Association of Australia wants to launch an Australia-wide media campaign to encourage Australians to think of eating turkey every day and not just at Christmas, so that turkey producers can expand their sales. Turkey would be portrayed as a healthy alternative to red meat and chicken while being an inexpensive and versatile meal. Each member of the Turkey Farmers Association of Australia were asked for their opinions about the ideas for the campaign. Most smaller producers were happy to go along with the others, but the four major producers submitted marketing proposals.

The solution you decide to implement as the President is entirely your decision, you may choose one of the suggested company strategies above or combine up a maximum of three different strategies due to budget constraints or make an executive decision which uses none of this information. It is the communication from you, as President, to your members that is the important consideration, not the actual marketing strategy itself. Issues you need to address in your memo to your members:

Task:

1. Members have previously complained that they were not being asked for their opinions and decisions made by the Turkey Farmers Association of Australia were not communicated to members, as the first members knew a decision had been made, was when members saw the decision being talked about or advertisements were shown in the media. Therefore, the Turkey Farmers Association of Australia has issues of internal communication.

2. Members of the Turkey Farmers Association of Australia are located throughout Australia which also makes communication difficult and holding a meeting of all members at the same time almost impossible. However, each member’s opinion was sought for the new campaign and each member had a month to comment and give feedback on this campaign to the Turkey Farmers Association of Australia.

3. Emails sent from the Turkey Farmers Association of Australia are also seen to be unprofessional. Due to budget restrictions, many staff are casually employed and student work placements, where students are not paid for their work, are very important to keep the office of the Turkey Farmers Association of Australia running.

With these problems in mind, you undertake research in order to understand these problems more specifically and come up with logical and practical recommendations to solve these problems. As you refine your knowledge of these problems you narrow each one down to one specific issue. So for example for problem one, the issue could be that the members do not understand why decisions are being made. For problem two, the issue could be that members do not feel comfortable asking about decisions made by the Turkey Farmers Association of Australia. As you develop your recommendations you make sure that you clearly link the problems to the solutions (as articulated within the recommendations). Having this information, you now write a memo to all of the members of the Turkey Farmers Association of Australia. You will write the memo based upon the following structure.