Introduction
Co-ops are non-traditional third party plans that came into existence with the passage of the Patient Protection and Accountable Care Act of 2010. At one time, there were 23 co-ops in operation; however, the vast majority failed to remain financially solvent and ended up shutting their doors not long after going into operation.

While there are many reasons for the failure of these companies, marketing and branding challenges have been cited as one reason. In this scenario, there is a small group of venture capitalists that have been approached to make a sizable investment in the formation of a new health insurance co-op to replace Iowas now defunct CoOpportunity Health.

You work for an advertising firm that has been hired to develop an overall marketing and branding strategy (plan) that will ensure the successful launch, and then growth of the co-op should the VCs elect to invest their capital in this venture.

This graded activity is designed to familiarize you with concepts typically associated with strategic marketing to include, but necessarily limited to: target marketing, advertising and promotion management, brand management, social media, website and search engine marketing/search engine optimization, Internet marketing, and marketing research to include analytics and qualitative analysis.

Unit Learning Outcome
ULO 6: Produce a plan to promote a firms brand.

ULO 7: Create an advertising and promotion strategy that employs an appropriate mix of message objectives and methods.

ULO 8: Analyze qualitative and quantitative data in order to better understand consumer preferences and purchasing trends.

Initial Posting

To aid you in successfully completing this assignment, you might consider using scholarly and credible sources to lookup topics related to branding, advertising, and promotion management; target marketing; digital marketing platforms; and the principles of Internet marketing.

Additionally, you may want to consider topics associated with the strategic importance of brand and its management; representation import of branding to consumers; activities involved in managing an advertising campaign; and marketing analytics. This is neither intended nor to be construed as an all inclusive listing of topics related to this assignment, but may serve as a good starting point for your review of the existing literature.

The initial posting should be prepared as a Microsoft Word document, and then attached to the unit discussion thread. There is no minimum or maximum in terms of the word count; however, the response should explicitly address all required components of this discussion assignment. The document should be prepared as a practical business deliverable (single-spaced) and reflect higher-level cognitive processing (analysis, synthesis, and evaluation). 

Support the initial posting with at least 3 references of credible or peer-reviewed sources. The in-text citations and the list of references should be consistent with the APA writing style (7th ed.). To earn the maximum number of points for the initial posting, the overall quality of the writing should be consistent with that expected of a graduate student and industry professional.