Location does matter..........

2008-09 was the age of Social media in terms of the mainstream acceptance, 2011 and beyond represents the same for the location based services like Foursquare which allows the users to transmit their locations by checking in option with their mobile phones.The adoption rate for the same has been phenomenal and holds a tremendous impact on marketing.
Services like Foursquare have enormous potential for brands to drive awareness. I remember a program that I did long back with the collage kids to understand the shopping patterns and places they loved to hangout. The objective was to maximize the return on dollars spent on the consumer experiential activity for a brand. We had given college kids mobile phone with the connection and students were told to text back their location on regular basis to a specified number. This gave us lot of insight about the youth preferences and places they love to hang out which in turn helped us to select the venues and timing for the youth experiential activity. I see a similar possibility with location based services which would help the brand to study people’s shopping habits in ways that previously weren’t possible. Many brands are using both Foursquare and their own proprietary location tools to drive loyalty programs, advertise directly to consumers who are near a retail outlet, and gather data on shopping patterns and other preferences.

"Think Different"? In Schools: Mostly Not.

I was reading “The Real Story Behind Apple's 'Think Different' Campaign”, a fascinating story about Apple‘s “Think Different” ad campaign. It actually brings out the fact that both the people behind the campaign were the masters in creativity. Every revolution in whatever field is a resultant of the “Think Different “approach and this is the mantra for the corporate world too.

But how is creativity really treated, beyond the field of such misty-eyed ad campaigns? When I look back at my school days I was always told to be obedient, sincere, reliable and expected to obey the rules and regulation without even trying to understand the logic behind the laundry list of do’s& don’ts. Things are still the same and I realized it during my trip to my son’s school for the parent-teacher meeting. I was told to make my kid to understand the importance of obeying the R&R and ensure a disciplined approach. In other words, teachers like the idea of creativity as long as its manifestations are not disruptive. It’s high time that we implement democratic education theory of learning and school governance in which students and staff participate freely and equally in a school democracy. In a democratic school, there is typically shared decision-making among students and staff on matters concerning living, working, and learning together. C’mon wake up…….Don’t kill the creativity.

Accounts Redefined

Five Common Strategy Mistakes - Joan Magretta - Harvard Business Review

Interesting read


http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/12/five_common_strategy_mistakes.html

Craft of working on Diwali ads

The most overrated and under worked ad's you get to see,during the Diwali season and the worst part is that every second ad seems the same. The main ingredients of creating a Diwali ad are diya and happy family image with colorful lights in the back ground. From apparel to sweets to consumer durable to Cars, every brand would follow the same tried and tested model year after year. And so, over the years, the one line brief of 'Link brand to Diwali' became the scourge of creative teams across the country.

So here's an out-of-the-box solution - a headline template that could be used forever and ever.

(L suresh conceptualized this frame work in one of his article and is quite interesting too.......)

"This festive season, ............... the/your ................. with ........................"

To fill in the blanks, he created a little table with three rows, each of which applied to one blank.

 

Now, a mix-n-match of a random word from each of the rows could result in an option. For instance, a line for a retail brand could be: "This festive season, celebrate your style with the perfect wardrobe", or, "This festive season, brighten up your life with Brand X".

Hate it, 'Unhate it', but you cannot ignore it

‘Unhate it’ Campaign-The campaign that featured the prominent political and religious leaders kissing each other is one more addition to the series of controversial ad’s from Benetton. Whether it is German Chancellor Angela Merkel kissing French President Nicolas Sarkozy, President Barack Obama pecking his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao, or Pope Benedict XVI smooching Egyptian Imam Benetton has clearly created a disruption.

The campaign finds leaders from opposite sides of the political and religious divide kissing each other, with the underlying message of peace. What we find out is hate it, 'Unhate it', but you cannot ignore it and Benetton really scored a home run here…………

Coffee with Sensory Marketing

Starbucks understands sensory branding, and in particular olfactory marketing. The wonderful aroma of a good coffee shop is a great selling and branding tool – this is particularly important since research shows that the majority of the experience of drinking espresso comes from the coffee shop experience itself. Now, Starbucks has announced that they will quit serving breakfast. Why? Because the smell of heating egg and cheese sandwiches interferes with the coffee aroma.

This is a fairly amazing reason to drop what was supposed to have been a major growth product line, and shows that some companies really DO understand sensory marketing and branding. With McDonald’s also competing with Starbuck’s on the beverage front (coffee), this becomes even more interesting.

If you look at the Indian market, CCD gave Indian consumers the Starbuck’s coffee experience and catered to the new generation of coffee drinkers. Some of the CCD’s have also stared serving breakfast and I am sure that’s doing well in terms of topline and bottom line contribution. I am sure CCD would also face a similar problem that Starbuck’s is facing but are they ready to give up the major growth product line just to ensure a right SENSORY MARKETING AND BRANDING.

WAIT AND WATCH……………

Black Swan and Marketing

I was reading this post by Steve Deming in his blog at Forbes.com:  The Dumbest Idea In The World: Maximizing Shareholder Value.  Both Steve Deming and Roger Martin are two of my favorite management thinkers.

A snippet from that article:

“Although Jack Welch was seen during his tenure as CEO of GE as the heroic exemplar of maximizing shareholder value, he came to be one of its strongest critics. On March 12, 2009, he gave an interview with Francesco Guerrera of the Financial Times and said, “On the face of it, shareholder value is the dumbest idea in the world. Shareholder value is a result, not a strategy… your main constituencies are your employees, your customers and your products. Managers and investors should not set share price increases as their overarching goal”

So what we are seeing in recent times is not just a failure of the value creation models of the past that executives live by, but even celebrated theorists and practitioners alike are now admitting they were wrong – some openly like Jack Welch.

This is again beautifully told by Taleb in Black Swan.What we call here a Black Swan is an event with the following three attributes. First, it is an Outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations, because nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility. Second, it carries an extreme impact. Third, in spite of its outlier status, human nature makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it explainable and predictable.

What does all this mean to a Marketing manager?   Make products customers would use, you would use and let the market decide.  Don’t waste your energy in things like managing analyst expectations – not just financial analysts, but also “industry analysts” and looking at the fancy market prediction reports.  There are far more powerful mediums where you could get social worth for your products and services by going directly to the users – that is where and for whom, value is created. So talk to them directly

Marketing Myopia

Marketing myopia is a term used in marketing as well as the title of an important marketing paper written by Theodore Levitt. Little I felt the importance of it till the Kingfisher airlines/ fiasco.

At some point in its development, every business can be considered a growing business, based on the apparent superiority of its product/service. But in case after case, businesses have fallen under the shadow of mismanagement. Kingfisher airlines just took 6 days to undo the efforts it took to build the brand in last 6 years. The efforts the marketing team had put in creating the brand Kingfisher evaporated overnight with thousands of passengers stranded at various airports.

One thing I fail to understand is that why customer should be the scapegoat for Mr.Mallaya and his so called efficient team’s inefficiencies?

 King of good times making fliers to go through bad time……..Not Justified

Customer Service

India.the backstage of the customer service to the world often ignores its own customers. The customer service is the most challenging and often the most ignored factor in the race to the top by most of the corporate's. This can be felt the moment you enter the brand showroom vis-a-vis the brand service centre. The world changes from the time you move from store to service center and though every brand claims,customer service to occupy numero uno in the priority list they conveniently ignore it during the investment planning.

Long live the Indian Customer

Personalized In store Advertising

The increasing importance of in-store advertising is gaining momentum with every brand trying to win at the last mile. Mainstream news sources have been talking about how companies are running from traditional media such as network television, etc., and moving their spending to in-store activities. This is an understatement. The real problem is that there are not enough viable vehicles to absorb the movement of advertising dollars. I’m very bullish on this and I believe very strongly that in the next 2-3 years, we’re going to see the emergence of a number of new ”consumer-specific” advertising vehicles. I’m not sure exactly how these will appear or where, but I do know that there will be a lot of money spent developing new advertising mediums.

In the words of the vintage broadcast networks, “Stay tuned. We’ll be back shortly.”

The future of Cash register at retail counters

http://www.bnet.com/videos/the-future-of-cash-registers/462054

Multi Channel Conundrum

It's become the norm that customers interact with companies through multiple channels. The more channels they use to connect with a given company, the higher their potential loyalty and spend.But in reality, the customers become more frustrated when their experience are inconsistent across channels when interacting with the brand.


Several factor contribute to this frustation including, rapid growth in customer acquisition, poor back end support, silos of customer information that exists between various verticals of the business, inconsistent compensation model.Unfortunately, few companies have equipped themselves to monitor, manage, or optimize their customers' multichannel experiences, thus increasing the chances of dissatisfaction, churn, and decreased customer value by failing to meet customer expectations. 

Crafting great multichannel experiences for customers requires three primary elements,people who are properly incented and motivated to meet customer needs across channels; processes that are suitably designed and integrated across channels; and technology that supports customer interactions across all touchpoints and helps to gather customer insights from each channel 

What's there in a symbol

A study by Sybil S. Yang, Sheryl E. Kimes Ph.D., and Mauro M. Sessarego of Cornell University, $ or Dollars: Effects of Menu-price Formats on Restaurant Checks, looked at several common restaurant price display techniques:

• Numerical with Dollar Sign: $12.00
• Numerical without Dollar Sign or Decimals: 12.
• Written: twelve dollars

The researchers expected that the written/scripted prices would perform best, but they found that the guests with the simple numeral prices spent significantly more than the other two groups.

So result is simple no more currency signs just a number you need to grow you profits...............

We are like this only

The diverse nature of India is a subject of fascination for most foreigners.This is the land of opportunities amidst the political world filled with scams. We in India are used to it simply because its all around us – depressing slums right next to posh residential areas, stories of opulence grabbing headlines along with those of extreme poverty.


Rightly said the Urban Indians are more pseudo Americans than Indians coz we are more bothered about MC Donald's burger price than the cereal prices sky rocketing, we are more bothered about Obama's reaction to middle east problem than PM's response to 2G scam, we are more interested in getting the Barbie and Disney's of the world for out kids than reading out stories from Chandamama or Ramayana.On the contrary the Rural India, the so called Bharat behaves differently.


As consumers too, the diversity is apparent – glucose biscuits could very well be the only breakfast some can afford while there is a market for luxury brands too. India’s consumer buying power – 101 BMWs booked in one day in Aurangabad or the celebration of opulence through TV programmes like ‘Shaadi 3 crore ki‘ have made the news rounds.

Retail Transformation

I was reading this interesting article by Ashish bhasin about evolution of the Indian retail landscape. Author was trying to relate the transformation to the Maslow’s need hierarchy theory and explaining the evolution of the retail landscape. I too agree that need is the mother of invention and this has affected the changes in the Indian retail landscape. The article tries to explain how we have moved away from the dingy Kirana store to the swanky hyper markets which now started fulfilling the basic need of choosing (shopping). The 1^st level of need hierarchy theory i.e.: Physiological needs.

Modern retail started offering a safe and secure environment not only in terms of ambience but also in terms of the price, quality, choice and overall shopping experience. With this the retail slowly graduated to the 2^nd level of Maslow’s hierarchy i.e.: Safety.

Now comes the third need “Love and belonging” and the customer was ready to move into this stage. In order to keep the customer happy and glued to the brand, almost every retailer launched their version of customer loyalty program. Not only the brand s but also the entrepreneurs saw an opportunity here (like I mint). Though these programs seldom gave any substantial gains except for the high end ones but marketing/advertising in this phase highlighted the sense of belongingness to the special class of customers.

From this level, some of the customers quickly graduated to the next level of” Self Esteem” and the platinum card syndrome was born. Specialized high end luxury malls were created especially for these esteemed customers and this phase saw plethora of international luxury brands invading India. Customers were bucketed into Platinum, Gold and silver class and were lured with plethora of offers and incentives to buy more.

The final phase of self-actualization saw the emergence of environment friendly retailers/customers. This phase saw the evolution of jute bags. The journey has come a complete cycle and we are back into the world of jute bags, Organic foods and go green gadgets.