Marketing Speak

Slippery Salesmen

2008-06-30T12:00:00.000-07:00

I attempted a different format. Do check the slideshow below.

Interview: Eric Schmidt

2008-06-30T03:38:00.000-07:00

The Line of Google's perception of privacy:
"People are ok with ads that are targeted on what they are doing, but not necessarily with who we think you are. We are very careful about that" - Eric Schmidt(CEO, Google)

There are many such interesting insights in this interview of Eric Schmidt by Ken Auletta.

(Link : Total length 56min)

Fiction mein Dum nahi hai

2008-06-24T13:11:00.000-07:00

SET Max and Star Plus launched high profile quiz-game shows this summer, spending close to a crore on its hosts for each episode.Sadly for them, the two game shows on television aren't doing well at all. Dus Ka Dum hosted by Salman Khan on SET MAX delivered 2.5 TRP ratings on the day of its debut (June 6). Shah Rukh Khan's quiz show, Kya Aap Paanchvi Paas Se Tez hain, on Star Plus got a first rating of 4.61 on April 25, before it dropped to 1.97 on June 6. For comparison: the inaugural IPL match between Kolkata Knight Riders and Bangalore Royal Challengers had 7.2 TRP. [Source]

Definition of TRP (For those who aren't clear about it)
TRP is measured by TAM Media, a joint venture between AC Nielsen and IMRB. They monitor TV habits in Class I towns (population greater than 1 lakh). One TRP point indicates that 1% of the population was watching the show. When used for the broadcast of a program, usually the average rating across the duration of the show is given. [Sources 1,2,3]

I was amazed to note that the sample covers only approximately 7000 households (translating to 30,000 respondents) across India, represnting around 35 million television households. Whereas across India there are close to 100 million households with a television set! Anyway, I'll continue the article with the assumption that the data collected is representative of the whole population.

What went wrong ? Was the problem in the show promotions ? No. In fact, both channels made heavy investments for that too. Star Plus definitely did a better and more rounded campaign than SET Max:

- Lots of humourous TVCs about normal people claiming that they are better than 5th graders(like this)
- A song-and-dance featuring Sharukh and the kids featured on the show (here)
- game tie-ups with Indiagames [Source]
- some viral campaigns too [Source]

In comparison, DuskaDum's campaign had been lacklustre.

- There were a bunch of brief 10 seconds promos announcing the name of the show followed by a key sponsor. These were mainly airted during the IPL matches (Note to SET : the fact that L'Oreal or LG is the sponsor is not an incentive for me to watch the show!)
- In a few others, Salman Khan would swagger up to the screen and mumble something about Dum.
- A song-and-dance sequence featuring the host himself (here)
- And of course, they had to start a blog about the show by Salman. They didn't even give the poor thing its own domain, hosting it on Blogspot. It is regularly updated, boring and clearly fake.

When the magic doesn't seem to be happening, they try to tweak the format a bit: Like Sony attempting to change from a generic music reality show to K for Kishore to decide a KishoreK prodigy. The singers, saccharine praises and judge antics however remained the same.

Then they try to add more drama: Like the RocknRoll Family show on ZEE where the whole family jiggles on stage in moronic costumes, and Ajay Devgan& Kajol try to cook up praises while adjudging awards like 'Best Dada' and 'Best Dadi'

Then when all ideas dry up, they just up the prize money hoping that'll be the clincher (like DusKaDum).

Me-too ideas have bombed multiple times!

Entertainment channels have a nice spectrum of shows spanning Fact and fiction. Fiction is when you know you are viewing imaginary characters, in an imaginary world - irrespective of the vivid depiction (like the K Serials). Fact is when can relate to the participants - you enjoy the rush of 'Had I been in his position' (like in Antakshari or KBC or Aaja NachLe). Reality shows forcibly plonked themselves somewhere in between, where we know the contestants are for real, but the scenarios are increasingly unreal.

Lets have a recap now!

Females with oodles of makeup giving each other the stink-eye in K serials: Fiction
Amitabh Bachchan doing an impression of Deewar on request from a KBC contestant - Fact with a sprinkling of fiction
Singing Contest Participant's candid outburst along with inputs from mummy, papa and the neighbours - Fact with dollops of fiction

In a recent promo for DusKaDum, the contestant (female of course) expressed her predilection for a song from 'Maine Pyaar Kiya'. Magically, they happen to procure the same song during the show. And then Salman and she danced while the audience cheered. Don't you think this time they went too far ?

In an attempt to the have the best of both, you are left with neither. When you try to entertain the audience, yet use 'one of them' in the nautanki, you have the risk of confusing them. When forced to innovate within the same format, the only immediate fix that occurs to the show developers is to dramatize things further.

Well, it doesn't work that way.

Related Readings:
Afaqs did a great analysis of a peculiar Indian phenomenon - of families still persisting on owning a single television set. They site some detailed and interesting reasons for it.

Motomusic in India

2008-06-18T19:56:00.000-07:00

"Motorola is expanding its business in Asia. Recently, they launched another one of their Motomusic service in India. It is an added service provider for music or radio and net purposes of mobile phones. Bharti Airtel will be the first telecom to offer Motomusic." [Source]

Although the official website for Motorola isn't reflecting this change yet, I am hoping for an early rollout of this service. Given the proliferation of MP3 enabled mobile devices, a formal channel for music download is an imperative for the music business. I also happened to watch this video in the series Authors@Google with Don Tapscott. He is the author of the book Wikinomics - How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything . He made a wonderful statment about the music industry.

"Music should become a service, not a good....Nobody will steal music. You will never want to take possession of a song, if for say $7 you can have access to any recorded music ever, and any kind of service around it - say Mike Jagger's favourite folk songs."

The first statement is quite astonishing. What it implies is that once re-engineered, the cost structure of music business will be completely different. we won't be paying for the storage, manufacturing or distribution costs for music. Since the medium will be MP3 (or evolved versions of that), those heads come down to almost zero. Instead the payment will be for useful information. The MP3 will just be a part of the service. All the tagging, ranking and 'iLike' activity on platforms such as Facebook will actually be little computational activities that help sort the music according to taste, popularity etc. As such music choices is heavily weighed down by a bandwagon effect (choosing what others seem to like). Hence I'd gladly pick and choose those titles that are popular or sorted well. Another interesting effect of this shift is called The Long Tail - which is a shift in revenue proportion from mass-market v.s niche titles.

I hope the Indian music industry will embrace this well :)

p.s - Seth Godin recently wrote a similar piece for the publishing industry, which itself is going through a major shift. Read it here.

What makes Chetan Bhagat a Success

2008-05-27T22:54:00.000-07:00

Chetan Bhagat recently (8th May) launched his third book titled 'The 3 Mistakes of My Life'. Is it a success ? If sales are your primary criteria, then yes! His first two books 'Five Point Someone' and 'One Night @ the Call Centre' sold over 7 lakh copies. While this book sold two lakh copies in the first two days of the launch! [Source]

What we'll attempt to do in this post is break down this success into parts, so that it makes sense.

The Book

Remember, this is the 3rd book by Chetan Bhagat (CB). So the story is spelt out quite differently for the launch. Expectations for the new book are defined by the previous experiences with the author, which have been quite encouraging for readers. There have been others who tried to emulate his success - like Joker in the Pack. These have not succeeded. In fact, it was a pain to unearth their book titles. They just didn't deliver.

Of course book number 3 can't purely ride on the success of the previous books or the hype associated with the launch. Yash Raj's movie Tashan provides an excellent analogy for "Overpromise and Underdeliver." The reviews for the movie (online and WOM) were so vile that it sank within 3 weeks. The hype won't ever be a substitute for the book.

The reviews for the book over the last 2 weeks have been satisfactory. Given the positive vibes for this release, sales should match or exceed that of the previous books.

CB will be conquering the 'Pop Curve' - which Seth Godin depicts in this graph above. The curve to the right caters to a bigger market - the people who don't want to try things too edgy or focussed - a wide set of customers who want to read books that are good (not necessarily great) and don't really want to get into make specific choices (jargon: dissonance reducing behaviour). John Grisham is another example of an author riding the right curve, while Jhumpa Lahiri would definitely be on the left.

(On a different note, I find the music business in India to be focusing solely on the right curve. There aren't any niche artists at all.)

The Author

Chetan Bhagat has a cheerful and chubby face. Seriously - you don't expect an IITian to look this smart. In fact, when I googled IITian, one of the first pictures turned out to be of another IIT-IIMA guy. This one is more stereotypical and realistic!

(I don't know who this guy is. Guy, if you are reading this, you're welcome :D )

Hmm....Like I was saying, apart from writing a good book, CB has made sure India discovers more about him as a person. A dozen references to his IIMA wife and twin kids on the media and soon he doesn't seem like a distant author at all - instead what is conceived is an image of an aspiring IITian who has found his calling for writing books relevant to Indians. So any Big Bazaar customer with an additional hundred in his pocket, a soft corner for CB and with even substandard reading habits will think "Why not! I'll try out his book now!!"

Though I admit that's not the only way. you can emulate Melvin Udall and be a prick, but CB's strategy is definitely better! Some of his quotes which support my argument.

“I started writing when I was in class 5, and in those days, seeing your name in print used to be a big thing. Since then, this desire to become an author was there inside me,”
"Hey, one more thing. I am Chetan Bhagat, and I just want to be known and remembered as that.”
"What I want to do is entertain people, and I want to do it by writing nothing serious or highbrow." [source]

Beyond the Book

There are two key elements in for the explosive sales for the new book.

Pricing it at 95/-
A tie-up with Big Bazaar for greater reach

I am sure the J.K Rowling route of pricing books at ten times this price has some logic behind it. But they suffered a loss of over 40% sales due to pirated copies. As a contrast, books priced below 100 will hardly have a piracy market. (I am quite astonished that music CD's are still priced in India in the range of Rs 300-500/-)

The tie-up with Big Bazaar has turned out to be a symbiotic extravaganza. The book launches have been planned with sessions for Book Reading and Meet-the-Author. Shake hands, get a signed copy of the book - and turn into loud megaphones for the book. Its perfect. Of course, by the time the 5th author tries the same stunt....

CB also started blogging around 3 weeks prior to the launch. (This is much better than the Aamir, BigB, Salman crap). It talks about his reasons for writing the new book, his style of writing, the book launch schedule - same ingredients mentioned above: the book, the author and going beyond the book.

To sum it up,

1. Maintain a quality level to please your book reader (critics and literature knights can go to hell!)
2. Give them a reason / lower their hesitation for trying out the product (in this case the pricing of the book)
3. Look beyond being just an author - be a whole person to your reader - online and offline.
4. Be visible - people want to know more so that they can talk more about the same to their peers.
5. Hope for the best!

p.s: I know this should be followed by a normal review of the book (looking beyond Chetan Bhagat's face to judge it :D). I'll have that in the next post!

Mango Drinks - A comparison of TVCs

2008-05-20T17:21:00.000-07:00

To provide some base to the analysis, I'll briefly describe the fruit based beverages market in India- divided into 3 categories shown below.

I personally feel that the consumer does not differentiate between fruit drinks / nectars. Frooti, Maaza, Slice all fight for the same mindspace. The juice category (spearheaded by Real) however has clearly scooped a separate space for itself. If you are preparing the strategy for a product (marketing followed by communication strategy), you need to have an idea about the consumer's buying behaviour before deciding how to action communciation objectives. So here are two suppositions:

1. Beverages are low involvement products. In simpler words - They are low cost and I do not go through extensive information search prior to purchase.
2. There are few differences between the brands - in terms of features, taste, pricing etc

Hence, the brand choice is driven by habit rather than any sort of loyalty. (reference: Assael Consumer Behaviour)

Thus the communication objective is that through constant repetition I need to connect with the consumer (who passively receives such inputs). In simpler words - after all the hoochamoocha of marketing, as my consumer stands at at Kirana store, he/she should say "Bhaiya ek Frooti dena" before coming down to option2 or 3 (A similar scenario holds for modern retail outlets, where the consumer should pick up my brand over the other stacked products).

Now that we are thinking on the same platform, let us explore what such products require from TVCs. The framework used in this discussion is the Rossiter-Percy grid. I've summarized the grid recommendations here. (More details are available here). The grid splits ads across Level of Involvement and -ve/+ve reinforcement. Beverages are clearly benefit based products (As a contrast Harpic, Insurance, Clearasil would be -ve reinforcement). The Grid suggests that:

Sell on emotions - try and trademark an emotion
Visuals on their own must do the selling (as contrasted with an informative narration)
Sparse Copy, Strong Slug Line
Celebrity Endorsements and/or humour works well here

Bless the Admakers for dovetailing the theory. Makes our analysis easier! Now lets indulge in the fun activity of nitpicking advertisements.

Maaza (view storyboard)

Maaza has continued to use Satish Shah ~~Kaushik~~ in their campaigns. The baseline is 'Bina Gutli Waala Aam' - claiming Maaza is as pure a version of mango as any other variety. They have used an obvious version of humour - a cheeky kid outsmarting an older person (usually handled by confectionery commercials like Candyman, Mentos). The visuals are below average - long footage for small narratives. At the end, the baseline clearly stands out - so Maaza earns points for that.

Slice (view ad)

They have used a fresh/unique baseline of 'Aamasutra' (a play on the word 'Kaamasutra'). This matches with the suggestion of trademarking an emotion - though I feel its a weak tagline for a mango drink. They have used Katrina in the ad - the first actress to endorse a juice brand. Visuals are again unique for a mango drink, but the excess white reminds me of Air Conditioner Ads!

Will Katrina help break away from the beverage clutter ?

Frooti (view storyboard, ad)

They have reinforced the impression that Mango in India is synonymous with Frooti - explicitly connecting the brand with indulgence in consuming mangoes. Unlike the cheesy nature of Maaza humour, this one is more understated and contemporary (like Vodafone, Virign Mobile commercials). The visuals are a treat, especially the kids getting whacked for mango aspirations! Makes one nostalgic and giggle at the same time.

I personally feel that Frooti has created the best advertisement of the three. I hope that some data on sales would validate these opinons. Till then, enjoy the season of mangoes.

p.s: I hope your understanding and respect for Marketing theory has inched ahead :)
Sources:
Afaqs: 1,2,3
Beverages Industry: 1,2
Blog : Marketing Practice

Cinthol - Analysis

2008-05-06T18:47:00.000-07:00

[Warning - A bit heavy on marketing concepts and jargon. Reader discretion is advised :) ]

Ironically, this product has a tagline '24 hour confidence'. When I read this recent article on Cinthol's strategy, it scared me. In a typical MBA marketing course, we were trained to confidently handle such hypothetical scenarios. Say you are the brand manager of a X year old brand. The market share has dipped from 9% to less than 2% over the last few years. You need to define activities to be undertaken to revive market share to X%. Here's what we'll usually come up with:

1. We'll understand a) what are the new/changed/evolved consumer needs b)perception of our brand
2. We'll do repositioning based on existing brand values and on insights from the previous step.
3. We'll use heavy advertising campaign - print, TVC, Outdoor to communicate the change.
And of course we'll throw in some social networking, a bit of online experience and web2.0 jargon to boot.

(And this is a best case scenario. Usually MBA class participation is diminished, the objectives blurred and the output a khichdi of activities)

The brand is doing all of that.
And that's what scares me.

Cinthol Activities

1. Understand changed consumer needs
'Cinthol has always been associated with the alpha male personality. We have revived it, but in a more contemporary manner'
2. Reflect the change in product communication
'The new communication has a masculine tonality, but it is targeted at young adults who aspire to an active lifestyle.'
3. Have a distinctive celebrity endorsement(which according to HarishB was the right thing to do)
4. Reflect the change in packaging (view)
5. Run a planned campaign for 12-18 months bringing together all the above elements
6. Have a website for interacting with customers and creating tribes of like minded users.

One half of me (the MBA part) is acknowledging that Cinthol has been pumped with all the right ingredients. The other half (the consumer part) is indifferent to the efforts being made for the brand. A website for this brand ? So what! ( Objective according to them - 'It will bring together like-minded individuals who keep on moving, irrespective of the hurdles in their life.') Maybe, just maybe some Cinthol loyalists will reach the website.

The Cinthol Website

Interactive ? I don't think so

There are a total of 3 links. One is a link for the TVC, already available on youtube. The other two are static pages - one of which gives banal advice on being physically fresh. The second page has a dumb flash game, I didn't care to play it through.

Loading Screen

Every click is followed by a annoying loading screen, which a visitor with just passing interest (rather than an inquisitive disposition) would have avoided and quit the 'experience'.

According to Sameer Penkar, general manager, marketing, Godrej Consumer Products, “The site will be modified in phases. Currently, what you see on it is part of Phase 1. In the second phase, we will be tying up with portals such as Yahoo!, Rediff, Google and Zapak in order to direct traffic to our site.". Though I don't agree with the phased approach. There won't be a revisit by an online user unless it is enjoyable the first time.

Is there is any piece missing in their campaign ? It would be naive to applaud the strategy and impute execution quality for any poor results. Even if you get all the steps right, follow the tenets of good marketing, how can you hope you've done good work ?

Sources
The Cinthol Ad (indianbrands)
Cinthol on Marketing Practice
Cinthol on agencfaqs (here and here)

Happy to Yelp!

2008-05-01T19:03:00.000-07:00

Did you read this news about the Animal Welfare Board of India (AWBI) issuing a legal notice to Vodafone for indulging in cruelty to animals ?

http://www.headlinesindia.com/more/index.jsp?news_code=74993

AWBI claims - "The pet dog was made to run, gallop and chase the school van for a long time on a public road. Thereby, the dog was made to undergo severe pain and suffering due to the exhaustion caused by chasing (the bus)."

Dear AWBI,

It's a dog.
Its name is Rocky.
Dogs are happy chasing objects.
It was the dog chasing the bus and not the bus chasing the dog, which could have been interpreted as bullying behaviour (in which case you could have also filed a complaint against automobiles).
Had the Ad been made for say a Sumit Mixie or Ambuja Cement, then you might have had a point - since a heavy bag or carton isn't a dog's favourite play object.

But the pug is carrying a tie.
A tie!
Get a life you losers.
And find some other way to gain attention.

regards
A Vodafone Fan

In line with Vodafone's positioning of VAS (Value Added Services), the Customer Care TVC is one of the best ads aired in year 2008 (close competition being the 'Kabhi Kabhi' ad again made for Vodafone).

Nirvana Films, aware of such inanities, had also got a 'post-shoot fitness certificate duly signed by the veterinary doctor'. But apparently thats not enough for AWBI.

Maybe we viewers should file a petition against AWBI, for making us undergo severe pain and suffering due to the exhaustion caused by their stupidity.

On a completely different note, IPL is turning out be an awesome entertainment avenue. Here are two interesting articles providing more insight about its marketing and success.

Shoppers Stop - Analysis

2008-04-28T20:43:00.000-07:00

Delhities were greeted with a fake front page ad last week (the kind of advertisements only the mighty ones can afford) - Shoppers Stop advocating a message of 'Start Something New' in an a classy b-w ad. It drew corollaries from Manmohan Singh's and the Indian Cricket team's success.

I was curious because it looked silly. So I did a bit of research on this to figure it out.

Business Objective

Being in the retailing business, Shoppers Stop has been a pioneer - and that's not just a juicy compliment. They were the the first in India (since 1991), they have a fruitful IT setup, and they have constantly expanded their product line, encouraging even unconventional tie-ups like Om Shanti Om movie clothing line. They have also pioneered in developing their B2B sourcing technique. Some online interviews revealed that they intend to rapidly expand to over 50 stores in 2 years, from the current strength of 22 in eleven cities.

The original logo now functions as the Raheja group's logo for retail stores. I was surprised to know about their diverse investments. Apart from Crosswords, they own other speciality store brands including HomeStop, mothercare, Brio and desicafe'.

Old logo

New logo

The Ad Campaign

The current campaign speaks of a logo change and a untenable 'Start Something New' tagline. Such rebranding campaigns communicate an underlying reason for the change, benefits (if any) to the consumer. This campaign seems to starkly lack that. Here's the comment from Ravi Deshpande, the man who suggested the idea:

"Shopping is a treat. It makes you feel like a new person. I felt that this could be made into an idea like “start something new”, so that life is looked at completely differently, something as different as responding to the environment and its issues, saving trees, recycling, being a child again, or just doing nothing. All of this with a fashionable twist to it."

Here's one of the Print Ads (source Agencyfaq)

In the formal rebranding ceremony held on April 24th, Shahrukh Khan tries to dispel the same cynicism evoked within viewers - "Its not just a logo change. Its much more". They have also plonked a CSR angle - "Think Green - Awareness for the environment". Don't see anything useful happening here (source video)

As a contrast, the AXIS Bank rebranding campaign focussed on a single message - we are still the same, using twins and other analogies. Or my favourite Vodafone campaign, used the pug and colours to simply imply change - Hutch is now Vodafone.

I am sure the management of Shoppers Stop have got strong business acumen. I just feel they have been a little confused about the utility/objective of the ad campaign and hence the poor output. Lets wait for the consumer response now.

Links

Detailed information on the Ad campaign (agencyfaq)
Shoppers Stop business investments in IT (DNA)
Interview with the CEO, Shoppers Stop (pdf)
Shoppers Stop homepage

About the blog

2008-04-10T08:47:00.000-07:00

This blog has been initiated by IIM Lucknow Alumni as a platform to put forward our views on Marketing topics, primarily in India. That covers a wide spectrum from Advertising to Business strategy to Distribution to Virals. Occasionally we will also put up recommendations for articles, videos or slides put up by others on the net.

We look forward to your views and opinions on content that can be introduced here.

cheers
Editors - IIMLMarketing

Contact

2008-04-10T01:02:00.000-07:00

A brief profile of the authors is given below:

Arvind Iyer - He's been working at P&G as Assistant Brand Manager since July 2008. He also maintains a personal blog.
arvindiyer84 (at) gmail (dot) com

Atul Gupta - He's been working at Motorola since June 2008.
atul.g8 (at) gmail (dot) com

Suhaib Iyaz - Working at Bharti Retail since June 2008.
suhaibiyaz (at) gmail (dot) com

Amazon: Reinventing The Book

2007-11-19T12:38:00.000-08:00

(A shortened article on what promises to be the net big thing for Amazon - Suhaib)

"The book," says Jeff Bezos, 43, the CEO of Internet commerce giant Amazon.com, "just turns out to be an incredible device." Then he uncorks one of his trademark laughs.

This week Bezos is releasing the Amazon Kindle, an electronic device that he hopes will leapfrog over previous attempts at e-readers and become the turning point in a transformation toward Book 2.0.

As well placed as Amazon was to jump into this scrum and maybe move things forward, it was not something the company took lightly. After all, this is the book we're talking about. "If you're going to do something like this, you have to be as good as the book in a lot of respects," says Bezos. "But we also have to look for things that ordinary books can't do." Bounding to a whiteboard in the conference room, he ticks off a number of attributes that a book-reading device—yet another computer-powered gadget in an ever more crowded backpack full of them—must have. First, it must project an aura of bookishness; it should be less of a whizzy gizmo than an austere vessel of culture. Therefore the Kindle (named to evoke the crackling ignition of knowledge) has the dimensions of a paperback, with a tapering of its width that emulates the bulge toward a book's binding. It weighs but 10.3 ounces, and unlike a laptop computer it does not run hot or make intrusive beeps. A reading device must be sharp and durable, Bezos says, and with the use of E Ink, a breakthrough technology of several years ago that mimes the clarity of a printed book, the Kindle's six-inch screen posts readable pages. The battery has to last for a while, he adds, since there's nothing sadder than a book you can't read because of electile dysfunction. (The Kindle gets as many as 30 hours of reading on a charge, and recharges in two hours.) And, to soothe the anxieties of print-culture stalwarts, in sleep mode the Kindle displays retro images of ancient texts, early printing presses and beloved authors like Emily Dickinson and Jane Austen.

But then comes the features that your mom's copy of "Gone With the Wind" can't match. E-book devices like the Kindle allow you to change the font size: aging baby boomers will appreciate that every book can instantly be a large-type edition. The handheld device can also hold several shelves' worth of books: 200 of them onboard, hundreds more on a memory card and a limitless amount in virtual library stacks maintained by Amazon. Also, the Kindle allows you to search within the book for a phrase or name.

Some of those features have been available on previous e-book devices, notably the Sony Reader. The Kindle's real breakthrough springs from a feature that its predecessors never offered: wireless connectivity, via a system called Whispernet. (It's based on the EVDO broadband service offered by cell-phone carriers, allowing it to work anywhere, not just Wi-Fi hotspots.) As a result, says Bezos, "This isn't a device, it's a service."