A media plan that my group and I made for the Boatyard Grill, a local restaurant in Ithaca, during our Spring 2014 Media Planning course. The goal of the plan was to drive more attention to the restaurant during the non-summer months.

1. the boatyard grill
media plan
fall 2014-fall 2015
Kyle James, Mollie Wiener, and Maria Buitrago
the boatyard grill
the boatyard grill

2. situation analysis &
marketing objectives
Relevant Information:
Target Markets & Audiences:
The target markets of the BoatYard Grill include graduate students, families of those 35- to
45-years old, and those who are older than 50, especially retirees.
The BoatYard Grill is the premiere waterfront restaurant in Ithaca, New York. Located just
by the water, the BoatYard invites customers of all ages to come to the restaurant to not only
enjoy American grilled cuisine, but also to have a wonderful dining experience that can be found
nowhere else in the area. Outdoor seating options, fresh ingredients, and reasonable prices make
the BoatYard Grill a great dining option for families.
What has posed a problem for the restaurant is the traffic changes that come about during
the colder seasons. While the summer is an extremely busy time for the BoatYard, it is extremely
slow during the winter. The BoatYard also would like to appeal more to college students. However,
living on a student’s budget makes it hard for those in college to justify spending approximately $25
on one meal. As such, most people use it as a “special occasion” restaurant - which is not how the
BoatYard wishes to be seen. While students are eager to recommend visit the restaurant when their
parents are in town, they rarely ever consider it as a regular dining option when there is no special
event to celebrate. This, the BoatYard wants to change.
Consumer attitudes toward the BoatYard Grill vary. Those who have visited the restaurant
typically see it favorably, according to rating aggregate websites like Yelp and Urbanspoon, which
give the restaurant 3 out 5 stars based on 73 reviews and a 76% approval rating based on 275
votes, respectively. Customers note the excellent and personalized service as being one of the
restaurant’s best features.
As for geographic potential, the main focus is to reach those in the Ithaca and greater
Tompkins County area, such as residents of Cortland. Also desirable, however, are residents of the
Elmira-Corning area nearby.

3. SWOT Analysis
strengths• Good location; on the water
• One of the only waterfront restaurants in the
area
• Hosts an array of events - weddings, sorority
parties, private parties, corporate, etc.
• Large bar
• Quality food
• Lots of repeat business
• Philanthropic
• Kids eat free on Monday
• Customer familiarity
• Small plate section of menu
weaknesses• Seen as a “destination” restaurant
• Expensive for college students
• Building is old
• No catering
opportunities:• Retail sales expected to increase 2% this
year in Tompkins County
• Area with tourism
threats• Winter drives down traffic substantially
• Students leaving during winter and summer
seasons
• In a highly competitive area for dining options
• TCAT stop does not drop passengers off
directly at restaurant
• Reluctance of community to build facilities on
the lake
• Large student population means that
many residents are uninterested in a more
expensive dining experience

4. Marketing Objectives
1. Increase the traffic that the BoatYard Grill sees in the winter seasons by 20% in the next year.
2. The BoatYard Grill needs to maintain its current customer base in order to keep profits at a
stable rate and develop personalized service with their returning customers. As such, a major
marketing goal is to keep repeat customers at the current levels.
3. The BoatYard Grill is interested in growing its customer base in order to raise profits and add
new people to its list of returning and regular customers. In response to this, a marketing
objective is to grow a new customer base, especially within the student market and those who
are new to town. We want to grow college student visits by 10% in one year as well as grow
overall new visits by 20% in that same time period.
4. The BoatYard Grill wants to make their bar a more popular spot in the restaurant in order to drive
up traffic and appeal to a wider audience. As a result, we hope to use increase bar activity and
activity during Happy Hour at the BoatYard by 15% in the next year.
The number one task that this media plan is looking to address is to increase the traffic that
the restaurant receives during the winter season, primarily between the months of November and
May, as those are the times when restaurant traffic is reportedly at its lowest according to the client.
More specifically, we would like to increase the number of diners at the BoatYard Grill by 15% during
the winter season in the next year as a result of this media plan.
The secondary goal of this media plan is to increase the activity of the Happy Hour at the
BoatYard Grill by 10% in the next year. We believe that this will be beneficial to accomplish because
it will drive up profits for the restaurant as well as bring in more college students who are newly legal-
ly allowed to consume alcoholic beverages to the restaurant.
Task Definition

5. media objectives
Our first objective is to increase the number of people who visit the BoatYard Grill during
the winter season. Our target audience for this task is residents of the Ithaca and greater Tompkins
County area, as tourists do not come to the area during this time. More specifically, we are
interested in targeting families during this time, as the student population of Ithaca is either not in
the area for the winter season or extremely busy with schoolwork and the stress of finals. Families,
being the restaurant’s main customer base already, are who we want to increase their number of
visits during the winter because they have proven to be reliable customers in the past. Research
shows that 20.5% of those who visit family restaurants and steakhouses do so with children under
the age of 12, and 11.7% visit with children between the ages of 12 and 17. Also important to note
is that people who are currently married make up 57.5% of those who visit family restaurants and
steakhouses. Those who already visit the BoatYard Grill during the summer are the most viable
people to target as they already enjoy the restaurant and their experiences there and have proven
to be loyal customers who come back. Thus we want them not only to continue dining at the
restaurant during the summer, but also to consider it just as much in the winter season.
Secondarily, we want to increase the number of people within Ithaca and the greater
Tompkins County area, the Cortland area, and those living the Elmira-Corning area who visit the
BoatYard Grill and consider it as a dining option on a regular basis. In particular, the BoatYard is
interested in increasing its number of student visitors due to the presence of college students,
both at Ithaca College and at Cornell University. In order to attract more students, we want to
target those who are juniors and seniors at their respective institutions, as they are more likely to
live off campus and therefore not rely on a prepaid meal plan, and it is much more probable that
those students will have transportation and jobs that pay them enough to make them feel like
they are at leisure to spend money on dining out at a restaurant. We believe that attracting more
students is possible, because of people who are aged 20, 75.5% of them visit family restaurants
and steakhouses, while 75.2% of those aged 21 visit the same restaurants. Additionally, 81.4% of
college students visit family restaurants and steakhouses.
Third, we want to increase the activity at the bar in the BoatYard Grill. The client wants to
emphasize how many options the bar has to offer in terms of alcoholic beverages, and feels that
it is currently being underutilized by patrons of the restaurant. We conducted research using
Simmons Oneview in order to determine who is most likely to visit bars and/or drink alcoholic
beverages at restaurants. People between the ages of 30 and 49 make up 37.6% of those who
often drink alcoholic beverages when out to eat at restaurants, and they make up 41.6% of people

6. who go to bars and nightclubs. Of people between the ages of 24 and 29, 43.1% go to bars and
nightclubs and 12% regularly drink alcoholic beverages at restaurants. 43.6% of people who often
drink alcoholic beverages at restaurants are over the age of 50, however only 10.3% of people over
the age of 50 visit bars and nightclubs. These statistics indicate that we should focus on targeting
people between the ages of 24 and 49 primarily, and secondarily people above the ages of 50.
As stated earlier in the Target Audience breakdown, we would like to focus the bulk of
our media plan on people within the Greater Tompkins and Cayuga, Cortland, Tioga, Chemung,
Schuyler and Seneca county areas. Because these counties are the counties that contain and are
adjacent to Ithaca, they are the ones that have the most frequent visitors to the restaurant. We also
want to put some media executions within the Elmira-Corning market as well, however, this will be
significantly less than the money in the first area we mentioned. We plan on utilizing this plan to
keep our current market strong while supporting growth in another potential market.
As for timing, we plan to advertise mainly in the winter seasons and the summer does not
need any help getting the restaurant business. As such, we will focus our marketing efforts to be
mainly between the months of November and April in order to position the BoatYard Grill as a viable
dining option during these months in the minds of our target audience. We plan to make use of the
effective reach communication model to reach the student demographic because we believe that if
we make the restaurant present in the minds of students without bombarding them with information,
they will be more likely to choose the BoatYard Grill as the restaurant they want to go to the next
time they decide to go out to eat. With our family target markets, we want to use the recency model,
as families are more likely to make spur-of-the-moment decisions when it comes to dining out. For
this reason, we will advertise at times we believe that they will be feeling hunger and thinking about
lunch or dinner plans in order to make sure that they have the BoatYard Grill fresh in their minds and
that they are inspired to go there for lunch or dinner.
media objectives, continued

7. media strategies
Media Mix
Our media mix will consist of traditional elements, including newspaper, radio, and
billboards, but will also include digital components, such as online review sites and search engine
optimization.
For newspaper, we have selected The Ithacan, The Ithaca Journal, and the Cornell Daily Sun. In
order to attain our goal of reaching college students and bringing a younger demographic to The
BoatYard Grill, we decided to place half-page ads in both The Ithacan and The Cornell Daily Sun,
during particular times of the year in which students would frequent restaurants, namely during
parents’ weekends in the fall and accepted student weekends in the spring. It is our belief that
attracting students to The BoatYard Grill when they have a financial backing (i.e., their parents’
buying them dinner) will allow them to cross the threshold from first-time visitors to frequent visitors.
Once students have sampled the food at The BoatYard, we are confident that that factor will entice
them to return and strengthen their conviction to visit the restaurant. The advertisements in The
Ithacan and the Daily Sun will help to create top-of-mind recall when students are contemplating
where they should go for dinner.
In addition to the two campus newspapers, we have also elected to place half-page ads
in The Ithaca Journal, in order to reach our older demographics, aged 35-49 (primarily) and
50+. Because people in older age groups tend to subscribe to or purchase traditional, tangible
newspapers, we feel that The Ithaca Journal is an appropriate choice to reach these markets. In
addition, the small business package that The Ithaca Journal offers includes online ads, which will
help us to reach those subscribers or visitors to the site who consume primarily digital media. This
will help us achieve a balance between the younger and older demographics that The BoatYard
currently seeks.
Next in our media mix is radio, for which we have selected three stations: WFIZ Z 95.5 FM,
WHCU 95.5 FM, and WNYY AM. To reach the student demographic, we believe that Z-95.5 is the
ideal choice, with a top 40 radio format. Students regularly tune in to listen to Z-95.5’s pop format,
especially students who have cars on campus--which is fitting, because they face fewer barriers to
get to the Boatyard, such as a lack of transportation. WHCU 95.5, on the other hand, with its news
talk format, is suitable for reaching the older demographic discussed earlier. In particular, WHCU is
the only radio station with a live local morning and afternoon show. In addition, WNYY AM’s morning
talk radio is perfect to access the same demographic, as well, but during another daypart. WNYY is
also a progressive talk station, which is important to access a mostly liberal population like Ithaca’s.

8. For out-of-home media, we elected to place a bulletin on a billboard on Route 13 at the exit
leading to the Shops at Ithaca Mall. Rather than spend on multiple, smaller boards in less trafficked
areas, we chose to invest in the largest possible billboard on a frequented patch of Route 13 in
order to garner the largest amount of impressions possible and reach the most people. In addition,
we chose to buy another board on Route 96-B incoming to Ithaca, in order to capture the attention
of families on their way into Ithaca.
In digital media, our team examined the BoatYard Grill’s organic Facebook presence and
found their social media to be very active, with constant updates on daily menus and special events
taking place at the restaurant. Because their Facebook presence is already strong, we thought it
wise to buy promoted posts on Facebook in order to boost page views and draw more attention to
the events posted there. With the highly shareable aspect of social media, the BoatYard Grill should
receive a bump in both new and repeat customers.
Finally, we decided to send out three direct mail pieces during the slowest season for the BoatYard
Grill—the winter months. These pieces will be targeted to those postal routes in the 14850 and
14853 zip codes, which will serve to cover the majority of the Ithaca area. We limited the target
of our direct mail pieces to the routes that contained a concentration of at least 35 percent of
our target audience, aged 35-49. We believe that this will be an extremely effective way to drive
customers to the restaurant during the winter.
Our media mix effectively combines newspaper, radio, out-of-home, online, and direct mail
media sources to reach our target market of 35-49 year olds as well at those who are 50 and
older and create a memorable, synergistic effect on the audience. We hope to use the newspaper
sources as a way to get our target market thinking about the BoatYard Grill at the beginning of their
day, every time they read the paper. This will create a lasting impression of the Boatyard Grill in our
target market. This will be combined with our radio executions on morning drive radio. By exposing
our market to two different forms of media in the morning, we will make sure that BoatYard Grill
stays fresh in the minds of our target market. We also want to combine our radio on the way home
from work with the out-of-home billboards so that when our target market is traveling around or into
Ithaca, we can hit them with two reminders of the BoatYard Grill as a place where they can get a
hearty, refreshing meal, potentially with family or friends. We also hope to remind our target market
that the BoatYard Grill has a great bar scene as well. In combination with our local radio ads and
our advertisements on restaurant review sites we hope to reach the “Ithaca visitors” market. The
BoatYard Grill shows off many great things Ithaca has to offer, and we want more visitors will be
able to know about that through media. Finally, the last thing we want to do is use our direct mail as
physical, tangible reminder of the BoatYard grill. Studies have shown that people are more likely to
media strategies, continued

9. Scheduling
Many of the media vehicles in this plan are based on a heavy-up schedule that focuses
our main marketing efforts during the winter season and colder surrounding months, between
the months of October and April. This will be the best for our goals because it will not only
communicate the benefits of dining at the BoatYard Grill at a time that people may not otherwise
be thinking about it, but it will also induce greater numbers of customers to come during those
months, when ordinarily people coming into the restaurant is much more rare. We especially plan
to emphasize our advertising around the holiday season so that people who are hosting family
members from out of town will think to take their extended family to the BoatYard for lunch or dinner
one day. This will serve the BoatYard by drawing in its desired family market.
Because college students are in Ithaca for very little of December and January due to the
month-long winter break, media efforts on vehicles that target that demographic will not be made
during those months. As such, we plan to advertise for 4 months - October, February, March, and
April - in the Cornell Daily Sun, Ithaca Journal, and the Ithacan, as well as on the radio stations
WFIZ and WHCU. We chose those four months because they fall under the colder season, and also
because two of those months - October and April - feature the parents weekends for both colleges
and Ithaca Today respectively, meaning that students whose parents come into town will be likely to
suggest they dine at the BoatYard Grill.
The advertising we plan on doing on WNYY is varied depending on the month, with a heavy-
up at first and then a continuous schedule following. In November and December, we plan to
place 2 ads a day - one during the morning drive, and one during the afternoon drive - in order to
emphasize the BoatYard Grill as an option for adults and their visiting family members during the
holiday season. This will help us to reach the older audiences that are present at the BoatYard Grill
on a somewhat regular basis. Once December is over, we will advertise on WNYY once a day in the
morning drive between the months of January and April.
For our online advertising, which consists of Facebook ads, we plan use a continuous
schedule in order to reach people year round by boosting 3 posts on the BoatYard Grill Facebook
page per week. We also will use a continuous schedule with our billboards, featuring four billboards
in total, with two being on display for 6 months in the winter and the two others being on display for
6 months in the summer.
As for our direct mail pieces, we will have them pulse throughout the winter. We will send one
piece out during October, one piece during December, and one piece during March. This way we
will keep the attention of those within our target markets throughout the entire winter season, as they
will repeatedly see our direct mail pieces in their mailboxes. We expect that they will take interest in
coming to the restaurant the second or third time they see a direct mail piece, if not the first.
read and pay attention to something if it is tangible and addressed to them personally. The direct
mail would do just that and add the perfect finishing touch to the plan.

10. tactical plan
Months September October November December January February March April May June July August Total
Weeks 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4
Newspaper
The Ithacan 1/2 pg ad 1/2 pg 1/2 pg 1/ 1/2 pg 1/2 pg ad $3,420.00
The Ithaca Journal 2 ads per week, 6" in full color $2,730.00
Cornell Daily Sun 1/2 pg ad, daily 1/2 pg ad, daily $1,379.84
Radio
95.9 WHCU FM 1, :30 spot/day, 3-7pm 1, :30 spot/day 3-7pm $7,200.00
WNYY AM 1, :30 spot/day on both Morning & Afternoon 1, :30 spot/day, Morning Drive $3,630.00
Z 95.5 WFIZ FM 2, :30 spots/day, 3-7pm 2, :30 spots/day, 3-7pm $4,320.00
Out-of-Home
Rt. 13 Billboard 12 months of the billboard by the Triphammer Mall $14,854.00
96B Billboard 12 months of the billboard on 96B leading to Ithaca College $12,454.00
Online
Facebook Promoted Posts 3 Promoted Posts per week $15,600.00
Direct Mail
14850 & 14853 Zip DM D DM $23,451.48
Spend $5,220.00 $10,356.30 $5,720.00 $11,972.14 $11,472.14 $13,821.80 $8,251.64 $8,325.30 $3,400.00 $3,400.00 $3,700.00 $3,400.00 $89,039.32
Impressions 774,200 1,915,058 892,046 959,324 921,312 1,829,312 1,888,046 2,114,750 778,200 754,200 811,750 778,200 14,416,398

11. media budget
breakdown