Indian Marketing

Congratulations, Star TV Network !

2011-05-01T11:56:00.001+05:30

A big round of applause to Star TV, whose AsliHD campaign just proved that an advertisement featuring Karan Johar can be one of the best of a series. Not a trivial feat to achieve.

Seriously, what's with the other ads ? Two Indian dudes in an old beatup car travelling across what looks like the Wild West, explaining to each other the benefits of HD ? The car, the drive, the unnecessary over-acting and histrionics in all the current ad spots just dilute the message.

Sure, the value proposition intended to be communicate is commendable, and unique in the Indian scenario at this point. But the execution of the campaign is way off mark. There are much better ways to have messaged this - one off-the-cuff situation being a geek and non-geek combo, in a home setting.

Pop Quiz : How many times does KJo nod his head in the ad ?

Marketing "Research" ?

2010-04-08T16:35:00.000+05:30

On a lazy Saturday afternoon a few months ago, there was a salesman-type person at my front door. Only, he was not a salesman but a person who wanted me to fill in some product survey questionnaire. He had been hired by one of the top Research companies in India.

He had a sheaf of papers, and rapidly asked questions about local eateries, fast food joints, frequency of eating out etc. Funny thing is,

* For some of the demographic data and details, he continued filling the forms without waiting for an answer
* Got me to mention on the form, that the interview took 20 minutes (while he had completed it in 5 :)
* Got a couple of other surveys, done in 2 minutes, and stated as 15-20 minutes each. (He probably just filled it out himself, and needed some name/address to show to his boss).

This is the kind of primary data that is collected by the most prestigious marketing research firms. Which are used by Brand managers, Product managers, marketing teams to devise their product portfolio and brand strategies - getting these right with the correct data itself is a herculean task; no wonder things go haywire when the state of the data collection is like the above.

Finding a Niche

2010-01-11T00:48:00.005+05:30

Here's a good example of creativity in finding a niche market segment for a product/service !

We all know that Matrimonial sites are a dime a dozen, and are one of the key areas which have benefited with the prevalence of internet. Go to any cybercafe, and you generally find a boy/girl, sometimes with parents, engrossed in a serious search for their better half.

There have been attempts at innovation in providing services, with segmentation based on caste or location (specific matrimony sites catering to a specific demographic). However, the latest one I came across is a novel attempt at differentiating itself:

Named "OverweightShaadi.com", this one's for people who are looking for "full figure" spouses. This is a good way to ease the search, given that however much we say that beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder (and is not skin deep), our society compels us to think otherwise.

Their website's byline ("For the Large Hearted") is weird, given that they are targeting not the heart, but the head (and physical appearances). At best, it is a failed attempt at being sensitive.

Size does matter, after all :)

Fair & Lovely Versus/And Samsung

2009-06-13T13:04:00.001+05:30

Fair & Lovely gets unexpected competition from Samsung. Got this image below over email today!

From this, I assume what we see on the left (Beauty Shot OFF) to be the real face.

I really feel F&L and Samsung should take joint efforts towards this – Imagine an ad like this: You have the audition for the next model hunt in the next 4 weeks – but to qualify for the audition you got to send your photo right away! What to do!!

Tadantadan.

Buy a Samsung camera, take a picture with ‘beauty shot ON’ mode and send it. And yeah, use the F&L you got free with the camera for the next 4 weeks and you are ready! Cool, huh?

I cannot also understand the social implications of this ‘beauty shot ON’ thingie! Imagine you search for your wife-to-be at your favorite matrimony portal and she has uploaded a ‘beauty shot ON’ photo there. You shortlist and go visit her at your favorite coffee shop to see the left side? Not funny, eh?

Retail Displays - Are they Child-Friendly ?

2009-05-11T17:21:00.004+05:30

The Great India Retail Rush has led to the transformation of shopping centers and malls from a shopping place to a recreational area. People are expected - no, encouraged to come with their families, kids, and hang around (and if interested, buy a few things).

I was at one of these big malls which span across multiple floors, and has a huge floor devoted to :

Household decor items
Kids / infant clothes
Toys

What's wrong with the above ? Household decor and kids don't gel well :)

What's more, some of the expensive household items - Corelle Dinner Sets, "Toiletry sets" , etc - were displayed very nicely, at a very low elevation from the floor.

And, what happened was predictable - a 4-5 yr old kid took one of the toothbrush holders costing around 400/-, and dropped it (or maybe she just brushed it while walking - no pun intended).

The excellent and efficient customer support staff immediately forced the hapless father to foot the bill, and he in turn vented his frustration on his daughter.

I find this wrong, somehow. It was a small mistake, and the person paid without resisting even though he clearly looked like someone who had much better need for money than to pay for a broken luxury item he would never have bought.

The only saving grace is that there were much costlier items nearby,that may have broken, and had to be paid for the whole set.

Request to retailers: please be a bit more practical about your store layout (unless, of course, you want to make money by charging people for broken items). And, if you want people to bring kids and spend more time, think about ways to increase movement within your store without this constant fear of breaking things.

Junk at Big Bazaar

2009-03-15T10:40:00.007+05:30

Image by seaview99 via Flickr

Big Bazaar seems well on its way to crush the unorganized retail (though it may take decades if at all it will happen - Martha Alen says here that India has successfully accepted & acknowledged informal economy).

Their latest target are the raddhi-walas who come home and pick up old newspapers, bottles etc. They offer close to ten times the amount the raddhi-wala may pay. See the price list image. It of course comes with a caveat - you need to buy 4 times that amount etc etc. Notwithstanding the caveats, there was a huge crowd in Big Bazaar, Koramangala, Bangalore last weekend. There was no sign of recession anywhere to be noted.

The funny thing was that Big Bazaar advertised this all across their shelves as - Start collecting JUNK now - For a moment, I thought Big Bazaar started saying that what it sells is junk - with a beaming Hemamalini as the model. (See picture to understand what I mean).

Nevertheless, this is another great move by Big Bazaar to get customers to their outlet. As noted by my spouse (who was actually shopping while I was shooting these pics), they seem to give even bigger discounts than SMART, another low cost food & grocery retailer in Bangalore.

The crowd in BB did put me off (it took a full 1 hour after shopping, to get the bill done). I would rather go to a neighborhood Smart for my monthly groceries than go all the way to BB but that is only me - and I might not even figure in the target segment of BB.

When will a worthy competitor to BB emerge? Bharti-Walmart, anyone?

Localization in Advertising

2009-03-15T10:12:00.004+05:30

Why do many advertisers not care about ‘properly’ localizing their ads? They make an ad in Hindi and just plainly dub it for different regions. I suspect most of the dubbing also happens in Mumbai/Delhi. One can clearly see the difference in execution, the models that appear and the language spoken (accent, choice of words etc) between ads made for a regional market separately and one that is dubbed. There is no care taken to have 'neutral' models also - that is, why do not look atypical of any one region.

Some people really mess it up with localization. An example is the insurance company Aegon Religare. In Hindi, they had their teaser as KILB (Kam Insurance Lene ki Bimari - A disease that causes you buy less insurance). Nice creative stuff. The same ad in Tamil said KIVV (Kammi Insurance naala varra vyaadi - A disease that occurs because of less insurance). Do you see the difference in the meaning between the two? Or have I understood it wrong? I have not seen it in Kannada, Telugu etc and I suspect they may have their own meanings also. To top it all, they ran a teaser for about a week in national (cricket) and regional channels. I saw the Tamil one first and was discussing with a friend about what KIVV could be. He said it was KILB and not KIVV. I was confused. I then see a cricket match and find it as KILB. It took a while for me to understand that both KILB and KIVV are correct. The biggest fun was when a Tamil friend opined that this will be an ad for using condoms. He likened KIVV to HIV. :-) That said, the new ones (again featuring Irfan Khan) on local bus tickets costing 150 bucks has been done well in Tamil also.

The examples for bad localization are plenty. There was this HDFC ad with a father saving for his daughter's higher education thereby not having to ‘jhukaa’ his ‘sar’. In tamil, his ‘thalai’ has ever ‘thazhdhadhillai’. Good emotional stuff. Good translation also. End of it, they want the consumer to send an SMS as PAPA to some short code. Why can't it be APPA in Tamil? It is just addition of one more keyword to the short code, no? In Tamil, PAPA means something else. (Hey nothing nasty. It just means, 'kid') The recent ad of Tata Sky (featuring Aamir Khan as a Sardar & Sardarini) also might not have resonated well with South Indians. Thinking of set top boxes, Dish TV has this tag line, Dish Karo Wish Karo thing and the same thing is told in Tamil. How can a Tamilian understand Dish Karo Wish Karo? When this is put up with the high decibel campaign of Sun Direct (with the gorgeous Tamanna dancing around), will Dish stand a chance to grab the customer's attention? Sun Direct, when they launched nationally, have taken care to have localization done well - the one featuring the models who first came in Bajaj Discover ads.

There are a few advertisers who take enough care in localizing. Companies like Airtel go to a great length to do this - they have separate brand ambassadors too - Shah Rukh in Hindi and Madhavan in Tamil. Even the ad where a grandfather and grandson play chess over mobile was customized to different regions - with the grand mothers being different, wearing different stuff. The latest one with a kid calling his father has been translated well too. If I noticed well, they might have shot separately for Tamil because in close-up shots, I felt the kid was actually talking in Tamil. The Nokia ads have also been customized well enough. In most of their ads, they do not have much content to change but only the voice over needs to be changed. The ad (with Nokia positioned as a radio) with music from 70s, 80s and 2000s was well done in Hindi and in Tamil as well. The song choices were excellent also.

Parting thought - The localization is all done by the same agencies or is it all outsourced? Can that be developed as a business model? You think of only the creative part for one language and we give you creative translation/dubbing services! Are these such companies already?

CashURDrive? Not lose your prestige?

2008-12-06T17:34:00.004+05:30

CashURDrive is a three month old Indian start-up. It is all about 'advertising' on the cars, just as we see in public-transport vehicles!

Their proposition is here: Once advertisers & car owners (users?) sign-up with them, they would do a matchmaking based on the car owners' demographics and the advertisers' target segment. Then the advertisement would be painted/stuck on to the car for 3-12 months based on the length of the campaign! The car owner is paid through petrol redemption cards of Rs. 1500 to Rs. 5000 (no information about any specific petrol co to use is found)

Content Sutra claims that they have a user base of just 14000 drivers now! Monthly turn-over of Rs. 84 lakh is expected from April 2009 (from 8.4 lakhs now). It is claimed that thwy will capture 10% of the market share available - I wonder if the other 90% available or is there any other company operating in this business!

There are a few concerns that come to the top of my (cynical) mind with this service:

* Would car owners (who are not expected to be in a huge dearth of money) be really interested in this? Would they not think about losing their prestige by having an advertisement (so prominently displayed) on their cars? What amount of earning a month would offset this feeling?

* There is no information if a car owner can turn down an advertisement! What if the owner dislikes a brand and does not want to endorse it?

* What if the car owners have the advertisement in their car but use another brand themselves? While not having a Ford car ad in a Hyundai car can be taken care by this company, what if the owner uses Airtel while the car has a Vodafone ad? (Well, if the ad is just about catching eyeballs in the traffic and not about convincing the car owners' contacts, this concern goes away)

* When most of the cars we see on roads are going to carry ads (most unlikely, IMHO), will we even notice them? I cant imagine being in the road with advertisements all around :-)

While these concerns do exist, I salute the innovation brought about by this company in outdoor advertising and wish them all the very best. (No one in the management team is older than 25!)

Cisco to Buy IM Pioneer Jabber

2008-09-19T23:37:00.011+05:30

Cisco plans to buy Jabber, the company which provides IM services based on the open XMPP protocol.

It is interesting how Cisco is transforming from being the provider of invisible pipes and heavy gear locked away in the ISP's closets, to a more visible entity in both the Consumer and the Business space.

With the focus on collaboration and it being touted as one of the key multi-billion dollar markets in the feature, Cisco is gearing up to be a serious contender for providing collaboration solutions (not just services!).

What started with the acquisition of Webex last year, providing the base of the collaboration platform (Webex allows online meetings with collaboration tools such as desktop sharing), was coupled with the purchase of PostPath very recently. And now, Cisco has treaded into another key territory, one which is an established, critical requirement of every enterprise - IM.

The beauty of the choice of Jabber is the fact that it is an Open Protocol, and used by various IM providers such as Google (Gtalk), IBM/Lotus Sametime, and AOL. In addition, any organization can run their servers on their intranet, ensuring privacy. Having an open protocol increases the attractiveness of Cisco's collaboration solutions.

It should also have positive ramifications on Cisco's brand identity, and give a boost to its attempts to connect with the non-ISP/network provider crowd (B2B). While this may not have immediate impact on the B2C segments, Cisco certainly is in a position to enhance its brand image with this segment by upgrading the protocol and related offerings (server, clients).

What other products/services/organizations would round up Cisco's collaboration solutions ?

The "Best Global Brands" Awards 2008

2008-09-19T23:37:00.004+05:30

Interbrand has released its 2008 rankings of the Best Global Brands. Coca Cola still retains the top spot, but some shake-ups immediately below. More specifically:

IBM displaces Microsoft and attains the 2nd Position
Google jumps into the top 10 (at 10th place), up from 20th last year
5 out of the top 10 companies are in the ICT area
Cisco, Apple, and Amazon are some of the companies with significant (>15%) increase in Brand Value since last year. Of course, none of them can rival Google's YoY increase of 43% !

More later ..

Aegon Religare Insurance - It's Different

2008-08-14T21:59:00.005+05:30

Aegon Religare, the new kid on the Life Insurance Block, has come up with a refreshing positioning and communication strategy - and one which will strike a chord with a lot of folks.

To realize the clever positioning and communication, we should look at the current crop of insurance firms and their strategies. All of them convey the message that one should have Life insurance for various reasons -

Control on Tomorrow's Uncertainties (Kal Par Control - Aviva)
Financial Independence in the future (Sar Utha Ke Jiyo - HDFC Standard Life)
Someone is there for you (Hum Hain Na - ICICI Prudential)

All of the above primarily communicate with the premise that a person needs insurance. However, Aegon Religare has created an entirely new positioning and expanded its market - it is aimed both at the person who does not have insurance (thus competing head-on with the above mentioned firms, and more importantly, also forces existing insurance holders to relook at their coverage - thus resulting in possible sales from a lot of people already having some amount of life insurance coverage. The result - they can target prospective as well as current insurance holders - effectively increasing the size of the market. In addition, they can reap the benefits of being the first mover in the latent segment of existing policy holders.

The Advertisements:

and..

The use of a simple acronym with some teasers before the full ad campaign (KILB - Kam Insurance Lene ki Bimari translated : The "disease" of taking lower than required insurance cover) increases the awareness and creates an enduring memory aid for the brand.

Apart from being a clever marketing strategy, it also creates a perception of the company being socially responsible, in that it is urging people to evaluate their coverage irrespective of the firm with which they hold their insurance.

The choice of brand ambassador is also very optimal. Irfan Khan has a no-nonsense image, be it his films (even the comedy roles like "Life in a Metro"), as well as advertisements (most notably, the Hutch ads). This personality association is bound to be reinforced by the Religare ad, and it enhances the credibility of the communication.

It would be interesting to see how the other Insurance firms respond to this new competitor which has won the opening round of the marketing salvo !

Hello, world !

2008-05-30T15:20:00.000+05:30

The obligatory first post !