august 2014 6th anniversary edition

Head of Marketing Services & Product Planning, PCBU - International Business, Regional Head Europe

Tata Motors

Marketing Magazine of IIM Shillong Volume 6 | Issue 2

August 2014

Vartalaap with Mr. Sujan Roy

MARKATHON

MONEY MATTERSAnniversary Edition

From The Editorticle gives an overview of Marketing automation and the various myths vs facts associating it.

To make this anniversary edition even more special, we have included all the specials just for you. The brand story talks about Xiaomi, a company that has managed to breakdown the stronghold of the likes of Apple and Samsung in just 4 years. Ishtihaar section talks about how In-film promotions are going to the next biggest thing in India. Radical thoughts discusses about the ever haunting “Skip Ad” feature and the workarounds marketers have adopted to make it ‘unskippable’. Jab they failed high-lights a very pertinent issue of brand extension failures through Harley Davidson. To cap it off, we have our fun corner section and our monthly Addicted plus Updates section to keep you abreast with the latest happening in the world of marketing.

With so much in line waiting for you, flip through and let us know your comments and feedback by writing to [email protected] . We promise you we will make it bigger and better with every upcoming magazine and once again a big thank you from Team Markathon.

TadaTeam Markathon

Before you dive deep into the world of marketing, we would like to take this moment to thank each and every reader who has supported us all these years. We take im-mense pride in releasing our sixth anniversary edition of Markathon and we once again thank all the contributors and readers for taking this magazine to a higher level ev-ery year. And indeed what a year it was. Markathon wit-nessed a change of guard, added new section to its ever expanding array of offerings, saw a tremendous increase in the subscriber base thanks to the outpour of interest-ing, insightful articles and most importantly a lot of love from our readers. A BIG HEARTFELT THANK YOU!

Our cover story for this anniversary edition would delve into the less glamourous but all the more crucial, financial aspect of marketing. Times are changing and marketers are running out of excuses to quantify the revenue gener-ating potential of any marketing activity. Our cover story “Money matters” deals with this vital aspect of marketing and a must read for all the marketing folks out there!For our Vartalaap section, we have an exclusive interview with Mr.Sujan Roy, Head – Product Planning & Marketing, Passenger Vehicles in International Markets of Tata Mo-tors. Read on more to find about his 2 decades of experi-ence in auto marketing and product development in India and abroad.

The perspectives for this months as some very interesting articles. The first titled “Idea Cellular: The master Strat-egist” talks about the various Idea Cellular’s campaigns and promotions that made it the third largest telecom operator in India just Airtel and Vodafone. The second ar-

Editors

Amit Sonwani | B Ushashree | Nishant Prakash |

Ramanathan K | Varsha Poddar |Yash B. Bhambhwani

Creative DesignersMalini Aishwarya B |

Swati Pamnani

The Markathon Team

IIM ShillongMARKATHON

Markathon august 2014

ContentsPerspectives

Idea Cellular - The Master StrategistAabir Chatterjee | SIBM Pune

Marketing AutomationSuryanker Saxena, Vatsal Gupta & Vishal Kumar Singh | TAPMI

Money MattersB Ushashree, Nishant Prakash & Swati Pamnani | IIM Shillong

VartalaapMr. Sujan RoyHead of Marketing Services & Product Planning, PCBU - International Business, Regional Head EuropeTata Motors

Eye 2 EyeBig Data is the next big thing in Marketing. Agree/Disagree?Suyash Chandra | IIM Shillong & Ashwin Shenoy | GIM

Silent VoiceTeam Brazil (FIFA World Cup)Aayushi Singh & Deeptiman Dasgupta | Fore School of Management

Specials

AddictedSwati Pamnani & Yash B. Bhambhwani | IIM Shillong

Brand StoryNishant Prakash | IIM Shillong

Fun CornerMalini Aishwarya B | IIM Shillong

IshtihaarRamanathan K | IIM Shillong

Jab They FailedB Ushashree | IIM Shillong

Radical ThoughtsVarsha Poddar | IIM Shillong

UpdatesAmit Sonwani | IIM Shillong

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IIM Shillong1MARKATHON

Think of brand Idea Cellular, and the first three things coming to mind would probably be good ads, social messages and its big yellow logo. Such is the posi-

tive brand recall that Idea Cellular commands, and has carved out for itself, owing a great deal to its consistent and innovative marketing campaigns. From humble be-ginnings in the year 1995, at which Bharti Airtel, Essar and BSNL were seen as the only stable telecom operators in the country, to the year 2000, where the brand ‘Idea’ was conceptualized after a merger between the Birla’s, the Tata group and AT&T, to at present, the year 2014 where it has emerged as the 3rd largest telecom operator in the country, by both subscriber base and market revenue.

In the TRAI 2007-08 Telecom report, Idea was listed trail-ing at 6th position, behind companies R.Com, BSNL and Tata, with a market share of 9.19%. Shift to the 2012-13 report; with a share of 14.01%, Idea was just behind Reli-ance (14.17%) at 4th position. And, as of September 2013, it has overtaken Reliance for a comfortable 3rd position, behind Airtel and Vodafone.The steady rise of Idea cellu-lar can be attributed to numerous factors, ranging from determined and efficient heads of the company, to having its regional offices empowered. But the one which stands out, and perhaps the reason why the company is famous for, (and is listed consistently as one of the ‘Most Trusted Brands’ in India) is its innovative and socially-themed ad-vertisements.

Lowe Lintas, the agency handling Idea’s varied cam-paigns, always seem to develop ads which have common themes of optimism, hope, a basic premise and always end up with giving up a simple idea. In other words, the ads do justice to the tagline of Idea Cellular – “An Idea Can Change Your Life.” And changing our lives, is precisely what Idea’s marketing team aims to do. In 2008, Idea re-leased an Educational campaign. It not only highlighted

BY aABIR CHATTERJEE SIBM, PUNE

perspective august 2014

IDEA CELLULAR

The Master Strategist

what an impact mobile telephony could have on a rural landscape, but also catered to a very basic requirement of our country, that of better primary education. All in one campaign. And perhaps, most importantly, every single ad brought a smile to your face. After all, positive impact implies better recall.

In early 2010, another campaign, that of saving paper came up. This time Idea highlighted the reduction of use of paper, and therefore, saving trees, through the use of cellular phones. With a waiter handing out menu cards on mobiles, to writing the order on another mobile, to stu-dents receiving digital degree certificates, all was shown in the ad. Once more, highlighting its socially responsible brand image.

While it is clear that the steady growth of Idea Cellular can be attributed to its marketing strategies, but the question is, what did Idea do right in its marketing strategy? First, Idea had the vision to tap into the rural India, an emerging sector of telecom in India. It did not go up against established players like Airtel and Vodafone, in the crowded urban telecom market. But, what made Idea stand out? It was its brand image. That of it being acces-sible to all, be it a rural or urban setting, be it a child or


august 2014perspective

a grandfather, or be it a rich or a poor person, its ads catered to everyone. Therefore, it is not surprising that Idea has the highest subscriber share per total subscribers in rural areas of India. Specifically, the ‘What an Idea!’ campaign, which usually had a rural background in its ads, was not only in-novative in its approach but also helped in building a strong image of Idea, in the rural parts. And, as of March 2013, Idea occupies a 19.21% market share of rural subscriber base. Second, Idea’s brand promotion has been achieved steadily through its ads, which always seem to capture the attention of the consumer. Consider one of the ads- a quite serious theme of rioting, religious intolerance, was depicted. But, Idea in its ad, made this grim situation to one where a person would likely to end up with a smile on his face. Caste differences could have been

reduced simply by “koi apne naam se jaana nahi jayega”. Instead of names, the identity of a person was to be his or her mobile number. No caste, no religious difference. Simple enough idea, albeit with an underlying sense of seriousness. And the ad ends with one villager saying to the iconic brand ambassador of Idea, Mr. Abhishek Bachchan, “What an idea Sirji”.

If Idea’s advertisements are the ship, then Abhishek Bachchan has to be its captain. He joined as Idea’s brand ambassador in the year 2007, and has to be one of the most iconic brand ambassadors of recent times. Lowe Lintas specifically developed and tweaked the campaigns based around him. A noticeable trait which can be seen in the ads is that they don’t use him with an image of a star, but rather depict him as a common person, and is always referred with an affectionate ‘sirji’. In the ads, he has portrayed almost everything from being a catholic school principal, to being a painter, to a member of a panchayat, to even being a talking tree!

Idea does not only restrict itself at identifying differ-ent social causes, but also its marketing strategies, has a healthy dose of human emotions and Indian cultural references. These can generally be seen in the festival-


themed advertisements of Idea which also have a com-mon theme of ending with the slogan “–acha idea hai”. Be it a north Indian or south Indian playing Holi, to es-tablishing a relationship between the public and police during Raksha Bandhan, to a particular stand out adver-tisement aired during last Diwali, having the apt slogan – “apne andar ke Ravan ko jalana acha idea hai”, all send out a positive and lasting impression. Idea, from the start, has been focused on a primary goal that of establishing itself as a generic telecom service provider. In its marketing, it does not focus only upon the varied services it provides, or how good its services are, rather they aim to create a lasting impression on the audiences mind, and hence, have greater chances of re-call value. Perhaps, this is the reason why, Idea has the highest no. of active subscribers- a staggering 97.5% as of October 2013. In comparison, competitors like Airtel and Vodafone focus heavily on their value-added-services, which is evident from their advertisements. The Zoozoo’s of Vodafone are always depicting its different services. And, Airtel’s marketing campaign has shifted focus from being a youth-centric brand to its affordable data plans, after the change in its CEO the last year. When the mobile number portability was intro-duced in India, Idea Cellular once again, shifted all its marketing focus on it, and once again primar-ily through its advertisements. This time around the campaign was named ‘Get Idea’. And still now, after several years, “No Idea? Get Idea.” seems to ring a bell of familiarity. This campaign resulted in Idea gaining the maximum number of subscribers, close to a figure of 10 lakh, as of 2011.

august 2014 perspective

Apart from the innovation, Idea also puts a right step for-ward by identifying when its visibility was going to be the highest. Idea has been a sponsor of the Mumbai Indians team in the initial editions of the IPL, it is the title spon-sor of popular TV shows like the ‘Khatro Ke Khiladi’, it has sponsored shows which have high TRP ratings, like Bollywood award functions such as the IIFA Awards. Idea even hosts the ‘Idea India Rocks Concerts’ which has al-ready completed four editions. Thus, by focusing on one goal at a time, having innovative ad campaigns, to having high visibility thoughout, Idea has established itself as a top player in the highly competitive Indian telecom sec-tor, and there certainly is ‘no ullu banaoing’ in that!



BY Suryanker Saxena, Vatsal Gupta & Vishal Kumar Singh TAPMI

MARKETINGAUTOMATIONWinning Customers

Ultimate goal of the marketing is to reach and persuade.Modern marketing starts from being present at the right place at right time with the right product. Gone are the days when marketing was perceived purely as an art, as now it turns towards science. Customer is king and should not be interrupted intermittently, but to impact bottom-line, organisation needs to sell. So the dilemma appears how to drive profits without disturbing the customer.The answer to this dilemma is delivering value content to the target audience. Modern marketer is bestowed with some impressive powers, marketing automation being one of them.Marketing automation is the trending topic in B2B mar-kets as it is used extensively by the major players. It is used to generate better leads and increase the lead con-version ratio. It focuses on defining, segmenting and tar-geting a customer thus assisting to generate high quality leads. Marketing automation provides insights about buy-ing behaviour of customers and helps the marketing team to create customer specific campaigns.Customer, now-a-days are taking informed purchase de-

cisions using the broad array of information available at their disposal. Therefore it becomes an imperative for marketers to track the activities of customers on social media, webpages and emails so that they can gauge the intent of customers in availing their service or buying their product.

Demystifying Marketing Automation- It helps the marketers to see performance of campaigns with usage of advanced analytics and gives complete view of integrated marketing effort.- Lead generation, nurturing and assignment to sales-force is taken care of by automation.- Overlooks the tracks of prospect customers on social media, thus acting as a monitoring mechanism of all the engagements of customer with company’s marketing touch points.- Responses to customers in real time in an automated environment also giving features like open mail person-alisation.Essential elements- perfect marketing automation- Centralized information storage in form of clean data- Quality of database- Excellent quality data enables real-time processing

25% of B2B FORTUNE 500 companies already use market automation

Advantage for organisation- Target audience can be segmented on the basis of geog-raphy, interest, product line and demographics- Demand generated efficiently.- Convert demand generation into revenue generation.- Alignment of marketing with sales objectives.- Acts as storage of all marketing information.Marketing automation platform is provided by handful of vendors such as Oracle Eloqua, Marketo, HubSpot or Par-dot.

Monthly Google searches for term “Marketing Au-tomation” grown by 22% last year



CentricsIT, founded in January 2007, instigated market-ing automation software to enhance its email market-ing strategy. Marketing automation helped the company with a robust e-mail application, lead scoring, CRM in-tegration and advanced reporting. The new technology increased leads by 59% and generated $1.5 million in revenue for the company [1].

Marketing Automation Myths Vs Facts1)Marketing Automation should not be confused with CRM. Marketers at times perceive CRM and marketing automation to be synonyms with similar goal and func-tions. Although having some likeness it differs in some perspectives and overall goal objectives:- Overall Business goals- CRM focus is on knowledge of existing customers and the new customers whereas Marketing automation deals with one to one interaction with leads and converts the new leads by marketing and sales action. CRM was supposed to free up the salespeo-ple’s time to make them more effective whereas mar-keting automation leverages CRM to build on its existing capabilities and address the gaps such as feature of com-munications.

Gartner estimates a 15% savings on creative produc-tion when businesses use a marketing automation

system

- Sales / Marketing roles: CRM is focussed on account management, sales and services where sales team in-

vests most of its time whereas marketing automation focuses entirely on marketing.2)Email Marketing synonym- It includes all marketing channel and is not limited only to email mode of com-munication. It includes CRM platform with web analytics platform, lead management system and other systems.3)Spam sending platform- Ideally the mail mode of chan-nel is associated with spam mails and newsletter but us-ing automation for exceptional marketing truly connects with customer.4)A Solution only for marketing- The marketing depart-ment is not the only department which benefits from marketing automation. The ultimate goal of reaching high revenue and increase customer base can be in-creased using automation across functions in an efficient manner.5)Solution which requires no further effort- People might feel and think automation to be the next Aladdin genie, and companies can relax and sit back to see the revenue growing. But automation does not guarantees success unless backed by dedicated team and right strategy that integrates the overall company’s process with marketing automation.So this is the 360o view of Marketing Automation, which has multiple benefits. Its time companies should go for marketing automation and ride the wave to marketing success

Criteria to choose marketing Automation platform

Just finalized your amazing marketing strategy? Wait! It’s not yet time for a breather. Designing a marketing strategy is just half the work done.

The challenging part begins when you have to allo-cate the scarce resources to put your plan to action and even then you can’t catch a break. It is time for the toughest battle of the year – how do you con-vince the CFO to part with his dear dollars to fund your plan? Firms have been steadily increasing their marketing spends due to various factors. Considering the stakes on this function, the targets and returns on this investment are closely tracked. Thus measur-ing the returns brought by your marketing efforts is an equally important exercise. In this edition of Mar-kathon, we will delve deep into the less glamorous but all the more crucial, financial aspect in market-ing.

The year 2013 saw $505 billion being spent on major media worldwide. In India, Samsung’s Rs 400 crore advertising budget for mobile phones and tablets dwarfed Apple’s Rs 90-100 crore budget on promot-ing its iPhones and iPads in 2013. Sony also pumped in a marketing spend of Rs 150 crore during the year to promote its Xperia smartphones. Amazon.com, the world’s largest online retailer plans to spend about Rs 100–150 crore (US$ 16.68–25.02 million) on advertising in FY 2014–15. Hypermarket chain Big Bazaar launched its biggest ad campaign with the tag-line ‘Making India Beautiful’ and spent Rs 100 crore (US$ 16.68 million) in the campaign. In every indus-try we see, companies are spending tons of money in their marketing efforts. And this is bound to increase in the coming years as firms are becoming more at-tuned to the idea of brand building rather than just increasing sales. According to report on CMO Council India, the biggest beneficiary in the advertising space in India in 2014 will be digital advertising, which is expected to grow by 35 percent over the Rs 3,042 crore (US$ 507.41 million) spent in 2013. This trend is most likely to be replicated across the world. With the gamut of social media sites entering the fray, the number of channels to promote a product or a service has multiplied tenfold and CMOs across the world are realizing this and increasing their market-ing efforts and resources towards this year by year. However, this doesn’t mean that other media are losing their importance. The report also states that TV advertising in India will see a growth of 12.8 per-cent in 2014, with print witnessing 8 percent growth as compared to 4 percent in 2013. With more num-ber of products entering the market and information


cover story august 2014

Cover Story ByB. Ushashree,

Nishant Prakash & Swati Pamnani

IIM ShillongMoney Matters

MARKETINGBUDGET

availability becoming easier and cheaper, there is more pressure on the companies to differentiate and promote their products well. The emergence of e-retail as a big player has further increased the stakes and brought in innovations in marketing campaigns.

How to arrive at your Marketing Budget:A marketing budget is no longer a rubber-stamped activity but rather a much scrutinized component. It brings focus and direction in the team and the entire marketing campaign for the company. As firms grow, they start separate divisions within the marketing function – Research and Development, Advertise-ments, Promotions and Public Relations. Strategies are identified within these divisions and the seam-less integration of these strategies results in a mar-keting plan. Typically, marketing strategies are either tactical or strategic. A tactical plan doesn’t focus on strategic issues such as market segmentation. Rather it looks to identify the specific details of all known marketing programs, campaigns or initiatives such as media plans, plans to tackle 2000 leads, new website development plan. A strategic plan on the other hand is long term (3-4 years) and consider strategic initia-tives like market research, entering into new mar-kets, brand extensions etc. However any marketing plan cannot be realized without a feasible budget.Percentage of Sales Budgeting:This is one of the most popular methods used which involves budgeting based on a percentage of sales forecasted for the year. Since it involves some amount of speculation on the company’s part, it is more suit-able for companies or industries in repeat business. These industries take a fixed percentage of last year’s revenue as the marketing budget.Competitive Parity Budgeting:This form of budgeting normally looks at how much and how often the competition is spending on their marketing and advertising. This is usually employed

by companies in an over saturated market where they hope to spend just enough to be heard in the frayIndustry Specific Budgeting: Similar to budgeting based on competition, this style of budgeting looks at specific projections related to a particular industry. These averages can be obtained by hiring an association or organization that repre-sents your industry. The actual costs can be obtained by refining these averages based on the firm’s situ-ation and experience. This is a much more accurate way to project what it will cost to survive in an indus-try, and it’s much less generalized than other meth-ods. Since the industry average will include major players, the budget could be way out of reach for newbies.Affordable Funds Budgeting:This is said to be the most ineffective budgeting op-tions but unfortunately it is the most widely used techniques by firms especially the new and inexpe-rienced businesses. Quite literally, this form of bud-geting essentially takes the funds remaining after paying the company’s bills and allocates a portion of this revenue towards marketing efforts. The market-ing campaign is designed as per the funds available. However, it should be the other way round where funds should be allocated based on the required marketing activities. Some companies go the aggressive way and try to spend everything that they can afford. It gets a lot of attention by venture capitalists as well as general public since it is easy to understand and doesn’t in-volve too many complex calculationsZero Based Budgeting:This is an objective/task oriented budget which is being considered to be one of the most effective budgeting methods today. It involves looking at the objectives and tasks at hand and allocating funds to them. It is particularly effective because it not only helps the marketing team go according to a road-map, it allows the CMO to prioritize the marketing activities and allocate funds accordingly.With a number of options available for budgeting your marketing activities, at the end of the day a budget is a projection. Most of the time, the actual spending will be way off from the budget you pitched for. The real benefit of having a budget however, is that it gives you something to work from—a start-ing point. From there, you can make better decisions about the rest of your marketing.



Table: Digital Spend in various categories (2010-13)

All figures are in INR Crore (Source:IMRB)



So, you made a proposal for the budget – done and dusted! But is it really that simple?

How to convince your CFO:In today’s world of competition, a company faces a myriad of external constraints, but its biggest chal-lenges come from its inner conflicts. With different focus, priorities and styles of operations, a stressed partnership is observed between the analytical, numbers-oriented finance group and the “creative”, customer-oriented marketing guys. To remove this constraint on potential growth of a company, an alignment between the two departments is re-quired, wherein marketing needs to project itself as more than a monthly expense for finance. Marketing needs to move out of its departmental borders, and influence results which catch up the attention of the money holders.

A mutually beneficial relationship between Market-ing and Finance can come up if their priorities are aligned around the corporate objectives, and both are able to understand this in each other’s language. This can be done if Marketing can link its activities with what Finance wants to accomplish. They can jointly develop a measuring parameter which fo-cuses more on the long term value that marketing investments bring in for the company, rather than short term sales or campaign success. Brand reach or awareness may not pose a meaning to Finance, but Brand loyalty, leading to customer relationship build-ing may do. Finance department should be treated as an ada-mant customer by Marketing. Marketing needs to understand what drives their Finance counterparts.

MARKETING

Is it cost cut or revenue rise or anything else, are they focusing on international expansion or want to drive in domestic sales? Finance is usually focused on things directly affecting the business as risk and returns, but it is usually unaware of the market con-ditions and volatility. Here marketing pops in, which needs to translate this into analytics for Finance. Also, Marketing can help Finance achieve its objec-tives like post-merger changes and expansion oppor-tunities by studying expected customer response for the same. Also, as usually observed, Marketers can avoid exaggerating the situation while projecting it to Finance folk, which when discovered, sooner or later, stresses the relationship. Marketing needs to be accountable for all its invest-ments, and report the same to the Finance with con-tinuous tracking of outcomes. Also, they must submit

their plan of upcoming activities, so it will be easy for Finance to allocate funds and avoid last minute pleas and rejections. Marketers should know how to put in their intangible parameters into tangible ones like delivering revenue and its time frame, to what extent pipelined customers have been brought on floor, how quickly sales is progressing, Net Promoter Scores etc. Marketers can be influential by providing valuable customer insights, which can in turn help other departments like Research & Development to bring in something innovative on the table and Sup-ply Chain managers to make their channels effective, and ultimately highlight their cross-functional contri-butions in front of Finance. Finance experts rarely pay attention to ground reali-ties that Marketing faces. Hence, it is marketers’ re-

FINANCE



Figure 1: B2B Lead Conversion Funnel

Source: The Lenskold Group/eMedia ROI study

sponsibility to educate Finance regarding the same, so that they are not expected to give same direct re-turns on their investments as is expected from a new machinery. Marketers need to convince that they deal with ambiguous buying behaviours and complex customer attitudes, which decide the failure or suc-cess of any marketing activity. In such a scenario, it is very difficult to graph the exact return. Also, now Marketing has gone digital with data collection, ana-lytics and storage, hence capital expenditure on IT Infrastructure has increased. These are measured differently. Hence, marketers need to update them-selves, and develop new ways to influence the mar-keting funding decisions. It is often more difficult to convince Financial Direc-tors to invest in a new marketing plan, especially which is extremely innovative. It is even difficult to convince that in marketing, anything which is not out of the league is more likely to get easily washed away. Finance people are mostly concerned about two types of impacts an investment can bring in. One, it may not generate sufficient financial returns, as in undertaking a campaign that may ask for more investments than the additional revenues it may generate. Second, it may pose a negative impact to company’s reputation in the market, as in bringing in an exceptionally innovative campaign hitting the right chords of one section of the society may badly hit the other. If marketers can work on convincing the Finance experts on these two fronts for all their mar-keting investments, they are likely to do what makes Finance tick. Marketers can also use competition to pitch in for their point. Now, to achieve growth and ensure customer retention and effectively distrib-ute the fixed cost of customer acquisition, compa-nies have to win mindshare of customers along with their wallet share. Products are easily imitable, but services are not. Hence, to maintain competitive ad-vantage, new approaches of better customer experi-ences have to be brought on the table. This is not possible if decent financial backing is missing.Also, marketers should invest little time and funds in pilot marketing treatments on a small scale. This can help them gather insights as to what might work and what might not and thereby continually reform it to ensure success, and thereby increase returns. This will also convince Finance experts that the invest-ment is tested and efforts have been put to ensure that it is financially successful. In all, if Marketing puts all its processes and insights to create long-term assets for the balance sheet of

the company, generating not only high cash flows but a high brand value, its activities will be perfectly aligned with that of Finance and a better relationship will groom between the two, where the “issue” of convincing one another for each other’s support will not even be an “issue”.But the big question remains: Even if you end up get-ting those Marketing dollars that you pitched for, how do you make sure that you can justify the same?How to measure Marketing Success:Perhaps the best way a Marketing Manager can elu-cidate how effective his/her recent marketing cam-paign has been is through quantitative measures; at the end of the day, the biggest question a CFO might have against any marketing activity is how much in-cremental revenue the company rakes in due to the said activity. Truth be told, this is something easier said than done!Historically, marketers have struggled to show the ex-act benefits of the campaign and the most common tool that they use to justify their spending is through the ROI (or more precisely, the return on Marketing Investment) route. However, one cannot ignore the fact that while the Investment figures can be accu-rate to the nth decimal places, it’s the returns that are ambiguous given that Marketing would be one of the many reasons why a spike in sales is observed over a period of time. One way a Marketing Manager or a CMO can explain the returns is by doing a simple Pre-Post analysis for a given campaign – meaning, how much incremen-



Figure 2: How Marketers currently measure the success of Marketing Programs

Less Cost

Less ACCurAte

InCreAsed CompLexIty

InCreAsed InsIght

tal sales was observed over a period of time (say a month) after the launch of a campaign vis-à-vis the sales over the previous month, just before the launch of a campaign. To counter the effect of “seasonality” one may compare this incremental sales with figures from the previous year over the same period and draw conclusions. This is one of the quick fixes that many companies would generally opt for. However, given the complexity of modern trade and marketing, there are multiple touch-points in action in either of the 4 periods mentioned above – no marketer can ac-tually claim that the customers’ buying decision was not affected by any marketing or advertising activity during the control period from the previous year. So, in effect, when it comes to accurate ROI estimations, the above might not be that good a measure.Fact remains that in order to effectively establish the returns, one has to go down to a much granular level – and hence, the concepts of Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) and Customer Equity Share take prominence. But in order to convince your CFO, you’ll probably need a more systematic approach than just harping on the above two metrics.

Take a B2B business for example: let’s say that through your prior experiences, you are able to quantify your individual customer’s worth. Since, B2B businesses may provide direct contacts with your customers, it is easier to track which stage of the Lead Conversion Funnel he/she lies in. So, after each marketing activ-ity targeting a customer in any given stage, you can quantify how much of an effect has the said market-ing activity had in terms of moving the said custom-er down the given funnel. From a revenue point of view, based on your past data, you would be able to quantify the expected future sales from the 2 most

important sets of customers from the funnel – those converted from “All” to “Engaged” and from “Oppor-tunity” to “Customer”. A good measure would be the ratio of CLV to the customer acquisition costHowever, the tricky part is, how do we replicate the above in the B2C context? Is it even possible? While the key B2B metrics that can help you track num-bers like Cycle time (for conversion), Conversion rate v/s a benchmark and size of prospect database, if it wasn’t for the structured movement of the customer through the funnel, it would have been difficult to arrive at revenue figures for any marketing activity. With the structured process in place, one can draw revenue estimations with the calculation of figures like:Flow: How many people entered each stage as against the standard benchmark figure? Are these numbers trending up or down?Conversion: Which type of leads have the best con-version rate? With pre-emptive CLV calculations, how does it affect my future sales?Velocity: How did the said marketing activity affect the cycle time with regards to conversion of pros-pects into actual customers?Do we have something similar for the B2C business-es? Sadly, the answer is NO. But to say that market-ers in the B2C space have adapted with the changing times would be the understatement of the year. Fol-lowing are some of the metrics and means by which marketers have tried to bypass the fundamental is-sue of customer contact that is all so prominent in case of a B2B entity: Attribution: One of the most common ways Marketers justify their spending is in terms of how many prospective customers they were able to reach via a marketing activity or a campaign. Of course, for this to work,


you need to necessarily identify which customer seg-ment you are targeting. With the growing reach of social media and other digital platforms, it is easy to track which part of a campaign is actually work-ing well with the customers. However, unlike the B2B businesses, past data is of little to no use when it comes to quantifying how each of these customers would end up bringing incremental sales to the com-pany – a problem that your CFO is more than likely to bring up in the next board room meeting in case you follow this approach.Test and Control Groups: A possible solution to the attribution problem identi-fied above is to run campaigns on smaller customer groups – preferably a test and a control group. Given the smaller sizes of these groups and the focussed nature of the targeting campaigns custom-made for the test group, it becomes easier to track how much of an impact the said campaign has on the test group – even in monetary terms (read: ROI). And with the control group acting as a benchmark, you’ll have enough evidence in your kitty to show your CFO how important your contribution has been in getting those extra dollars for the company. However, the Test and Control Group philosophy has its own limi-tations; first of all, very rarely would you come across situations where your marketing campaigns focus on a very small target group to be identified as your Test group. Secondly, like with the case of the Pre-Post analysis mentioned a couple of paragraphs above, the issue remains that in the B2C context, there is always the case of your customers being affected by multiple touch points, be it advertisements, promo-tions etc. and in such a scenario, any assumptions that you make with regards to benchmarking against a Control Group or a Period cannot be 100% accu-rate. And finally, the approach is focused on specific tactics – it can’t report on effectiveness of all pro-grams at once.Market Mix Modelling (MMM): Where the Test-Control method fails, the MMM ap-proach conquers; Market Mix Modelling is based on the assumption that any sales activity is affected by multiple independent marketing touch points as well as a number of non-marketing factors (eg. Seasonali-ty). A common tool in the Analytics industry, the Mar-ket Mix Model uses statistical techniques like Regres-sion that encompasses almost all the factors involved in the purchase decision of customers (well, at least all factors for which there is data). However, despite its popularity in the Analytics circles, very few com-

august 2014panies actually end up using the method due to the complexity of the variables involved. To keep things simple, let’s take the following example (example on the lines of Marketo Inc.’s Definitive Guide to Market-ing Analytics - 2011 publication):Let’s assume that the company ABC Ltd. makes Rs. 150 Crores in the Financial Year 2014-15. The com-pany’s marketing expenses include Rs. 5 Crores, Rs. 10 Crores and Rs. 5 Crores spent on Digital Market-ing, TVCs and Print Ads respectively. ABC Ltd.’s Market Mix Model based upon its past data, yields an equation like:Sales = Rs. 100 Crores + 3*Digital Marketing + 3*TVCs + 1*Print AdsMeaning that every Rupee spent on a Marketing Ac-tivity yields Rs. 3, Rs. 3 and Re. 1 sales in case of Digi-tal Marketing, TVCs and Print Ads respectively; i.e. of the company’s Rs. 150 Crores in sales for the year 2014-15, Rs. 100 Crores were due to non-marketing activities, Rs. 15 Crores due to Digital Marketing, Rs. 30 Crores due to TVCs and Rs. 5 Crores due to Print Ads.While the equation looks simple, complexity arises in the selection of independent variables for the equa-tion which can be affected by many non-marketing factors related to the economy, competitive moves etc. Furthermore, in order to come up with an ac-curate Market Mix Model, you need a lot of historical data which, in most cases, is costly to collect.All the methods above have their own Pros and Cons, however, the decision to go with one or the other would be based upon the level of insights you are ready to bamboozle your CFO with as well as the costs involved. The bottom line is, times have changed and with the plethora of data available at the disposal of Market-ers, they are running out of excuses to quantify the Revenue Generating Potential of any Marketing Ac-tivity. Working for the betterment of the same orga-nization, in an ideal scenario, there shouldn’t be a situation where the Marketing team would “need to convince” the Finance folks. However, even in such ideal conditions, it’s always better to back your ef-fectiveness with evidence in a language which the Finance guys would understand best – numbers, yes, they are important!

vartalaap


vartalaap august 2014

VARTALAAPAn Interview with

Mr Sujan Roy

Sujan Roy is Head - Marketing Services & Product Planning, PCBU - In-ternational Business at Tata Motors. He has a broad experience in all aspects of brand building, product life-cycle management and com-munication. An automotive marketing executive with about 20 years of work experience, Sujan has also worked with Saud Bahwan Group, Daimler Chrysler, Mahindra & Mahindra Limited, Honda SIEL Cars In-dia, Volkswagen Group Sales in past. Since last four years at Tata Mo-tors, he has been involved in CRM, Product, Pricing, Training, Sales Systems, Volume Planning and MIS in international markets. In this exclusive interview with Markathon, he speaks to us about his experi-ences in the industry and gives us a peek into Tata Motors’s strategy.

“And I think, the failure has been more in the eyes, than the successes that we have had.”

Head of Marketing Services & Product

Planning, PCBU - Interna-tional Business, Regional

Head Europe

Tata Motors



hicles below 6 Lac rupees in price. And getting that customer in the environment where he is not sure of the future to part with his hard-earned money is extremely tough. What initiatives will finally make him part with the money is like special schemes by which he can recover the cost of his old vehicle, like, exchange schemes. You have extended warranties which can be offered, for example, the cost of ser-vicing is included with the cost of the vehicle. I have come across some very interesting schemes which are there in Brazil, for example, all employees pool in some amount of money per month (the total be-ing the cost of one car). After this, there is a raffle in which the winner gets to keep the car. What the manufacturer offers here is the price guaranty, so even if the prices go up, he will not change the price of the car for this company. Plus what the manufac-turer gains is that every month he is getting the price of one car and he has got 100 customers waiting for him. So such innovative ownership schemes have to be tried out which enable people to own cars easily.

Markathon: Just to extend that, Mr. Cyrus Mistry in his address on 1st of May, 2014, was asked by an employee how is Tata Motors going to overcome these tough times. He replied, sticking to our values and doing what we do best, is the solution to this. Can you please elaborate a bit more on that?

In case you don’t realize that Tata Motors has been an iconoclast in the automotive industry. We were the first guys who actually made SUVs in the mar-ket, and later on the Safari, before everybody else

Markathon: You have completed your formal edu-cation with an MSc in Physics and that too in Micro-processor electronics. What led you to pursue your career in Marketing in automobile industry after that?

I neither wanted to do M.Sc Physics nor Microproces-sors electronics, I wasn’t smart enough to get into an engineering college. After B.Sc Physics, the toughest thing to do was to get into M.Sc Electronics. So, I de-cided to go for that. One was not very sorted out in one’s thoughts at that point of time. But, I was always crazy about speed and wanted to become a fighter pilot. I knew everything about bomb loads, take-off thrusts and what engines every fighter plane had. But sadly I got my glasses, then I had to bring my sight slower because Indian Air force does not take pilots who have glasses. So that’s how I got hooked to cars, and the idea was always to get into cars. M.Sc was to satisfy the parents.

Markathon: In the last fiscal year, passenger vehicle volume has seen a 39% decline in unit sales. How do you think the future will pan out for this segment (Annual Budget 2014 has incorporated duty conces-sions in automobile market) and what marketing in-novations would be required to boost the demand in this non-conducive automobile market.

The Indian customer is the toughest guy to get the money out of his pocket, esp. when the times are bad. And lets agree automobiles are discretionary spend in India. Bulk of the industry is entry level ve-

vartalaap



got on to the bandwagon. Similarly, we were the first guys who made the compact Sedan, Indigo CS was the first of its kind in the market and only now ev-erybody else has followed. If you look at the ‘Chota Hathi-The Ace’, that was also stupendous success. We did the Nano which nobody else in the world had tried. If you try new things, you are likely to fail. And I think, the failure has been more in the eyes, then the successes that we have had. So, we are a company…when pushed to the wall, we come up with very dras-tically new products, and that’s what we are doing. For a guy who loves the product as much as I do, it is a very exciting time to be in Tata Motors, because the number of new models which are being planned is amazing. So, you can expect a lot from Tata Motors, very cool cars, attractive designs. The answer lies in product, customer service and advertising, but most-ly product and that’s where we are going to enter.

Markathon: What sort of concept writing went be-hind the MyCity MyZest program? It is one of the very good examples of experiential marketing.

I wasn’t part of the concept writing for this, rather I was a by-stander. However, we were a very top-down company, the old people used to decide how it must be done. We have let many of our marketing campaigns evolve with younger people. Lot of young people joined the team, and it is a product of their enthusiasm.

Markathon: The European market has seen a rise in new car sales by 4.5 percent and many experts are saying that the worst may be over for this market.

We are a company, when pushed to the wall,

we come up with very drastically new products,

and that’s what we are doing

How did Tata Motors have to change its marketing strategy for this market and what further changes can be expected looking at the surge in demand?

We have been present in Europe for a very long time, what has happened in that period is that Europe has gone actually very protectionist. The German Ma-fia has increased the safety and emission standards progressively, none of the other European manu-facturers and customers wanted it. Right now it is impossible to make money in the European market. The guys who have lost maximum money per car is Toyota. So, rather than being present there when times are very bad, and that too with products which might not be volume sellers, we have decided to take a short sabbatical from the European market for few months and come back when we have a new range

“

“



of products very strongly and address it much better. We already have JLR and we are making good money out of it, so we are not worried that we will drop out of the European market.

Markathon: Adding on to that, is after-sales an im-portant aspect in the European Market? What ac-cording to you is the scale of impact from such strat-egies in this industry? After-sales offerings of European brands and Euro-pean market is actually not very strong. Indian cus-tomer demands far better after-sales than a Euro-pean customer does, which is why European brands are never able to offer stellar levels of after-sales service, because in their home market, they are not stellar providers anyway. After the warranty period is over, there are lot of independent service companies in European market. Service is a bigger challenge in India. Coming to the impact of such services, the first car is sold by the sales guy, all future cars are sold by the service guy.

Markathon: Tata Motors plans to launch 2 new models every year. How do you plan to ensure sustainable differentiation in the brands? Bolt is a newer version of Vista; similarly the upcoming “Kite” is said to be a premium version of Tata Indica and Indigo CS. How does Tata Motors plan to keep both versions successful in the market?

To some extent, there will be cannibalization. If you are cannibalizing your own product, it is perfectly

fine. For example, we do know that Amaze is can-nibalizing some customers from the City. Tomorrow when Mobilio will be launched, it will take away some customers from City. Similarly, in Hyundai, Ver-na is taking away some customers from Accent. But, it is at least staying within the same fold and is better than someone else coming and taking it. Having said that, the Bolt and the Kite are of clearly different siz-es, they are meant for different age groups, so prob-ably once you get your first job, you would prefer the Bolt whereas your younger brother who has just got the license and wants to live life king-size and your dad is willing to handle the cost, would go for a Kite. Since you guys have not seen Kite, you can get some doubts regarding its difference from Bolt. However, I have seen Kite and I can form a clear picture in mind about who would go for it.

Markathon: With your vast industry experience of 20 years, what would you like to advise aspiring marketers today?

Be top-dog, you have to run ahead of the pack. You can never say that now I have a team, they have work and I can take it easy. Every day, at every hour, every minute, you have to outwork the next guy

EuropeAfter-Sales Service ?

eye2eye eye2eye


eye2eye december 2013

Big Data is the next big thing in Marketing.Agree/Disagree?

Topic for the next issue: “SRK is bringing Happy New Year trailers to WhatsApp. Do you think this is a smart move? ” Your opinion (view/counterview) is invited. Word limit is 250-300. Last date of sending entries is

28th Aug 2014. Include your picture (JPEG format) with the entry. Winners will receive a prize money of Rs. 500 each!

ashwin shenoygim

With all the hype over big data wielding the power to unearth hid-den insights into consumer behav-ior, pattern prediction etc. marketers might start feeling like almighty gods already. But big data is not as easy as it looks. Complexity, high costs, sheer size of data, make it tough to understand and apply in everyday marketing tasks. Effective marketing is not about having a lot of data, but the right kind of data possessing the ability to provide practical insights. This is where small data comes in.Providing meaningful, organized content on-the-go to ‘fit’ the needs of everyday business users and define the ev-er-changing future, The need of the hour is the ability to transform unfiltered pile of information, into smaller use-ful set of metrics and KPIs that enable marketing execu-tives to channel their efforts and focus on campaigns that have the best ROI. A hands-on marketer with updated ac-cess to small data (tools, campaigns, profiles, reports) on their target segment, not only knows product demand, but also when and where to target the campaign in real-time. Thus Small data, is the ‘right data’.For most trivial consumer decisions, small data is ade-quate, and is available all around (social web) for market-ers to pick up and analyze buying behavior. The consumer forms the heart of marketing, and a clear focus on pro-viding them value solves a lot of technological decisions. Thinking small allows us to break down complex market-ing problems and focus on the most aspect- the buying path. Value in case of big data is created only at the end of complex data analysis, a lot of which is redundant for marketers targeting everyday campaigns or delivering personalized experiences. Thus the future belongs to a more decentralized and collaborative data model.Small is the new Big!

suyash chandraiim shillong

An Amazon customer calls up cus-tomer support regarding a problem with his kindle. The support ex-

ecutive addresses him by name, knows the model of his product and wastes no time in asking background ques-tions which are a nuisance to every consumer. This simple gesture, using customer data which the company gathers, manages to create customer delight. This is the power of Big Data which is set to take the marketing eco-system by storm.People are increasingly making purchases through credit cards. These purchases reveal customers’ buying prefer-ences, brand loyalties, favourite travel destinations and eating habits effectively mapping out their entire life. Us-ing this data banks can offer customized insurance and investment solutions, travel deals and brand specific of-fers. Citigroup, in Singapore, uses customer transactions to present them discount offers of their favourite restau-rants. In future leveraging this data will become crucial to big firms’ marketing strategy. E-commerce firms are leveraging huge amounts of trans-actional data to deliver uniquely tailored offers and tar-geted ads. Amazon Ceo Jeff Bezoz believes that Amazon should have as many stores as it has customers. Walmart realized the potential of big data early on. It ac-quired Kosmix, an analytics company, and converted it to ‘@WalmartLabs’ in 2011. They used the technology of Kosmix on Walmart.com. There was a 20% jump in shop-pers finally purchasing after having searched for a product because it became easier to find exactly what they were looking for.A NASSCOM-CRISIL study found that Big Data industry is expected to cross USD 25 billion by 2015. A major driver of this demand are organizations that want consumer in-sight for innovative marketing.While big data poses some challenges like storage, secu-rity and customer privacy yet it is the next big thing in marketing.

eye2eye august 2014


Congratulations!!! Vivek receives a cash prize of Rs 1000!

silent voice december 2013 silent voice august 2014

Theme: Team

Brazil

(FIFA World

Cup)Last month’s results

WINNERaayushi singh & deeptiman dasgupta | fore school of management

THEME FOR NEXT SILENT VOICE: Kaun Banega Crorepati (KBC)LAST DATE OF SENDING THE PRINT AD: 28th Aug, 2014

EMAIL ID: [email protected] Send your entry in JPEG format named as SilentVoice_<Your Name>_<Institute>only.

honorary mentionsaket kumar | Iim shillong

CATCHRMISS

AD-dicted december 2013


By yash bhambhwaniIIM Shillong

PRODUCT: Nestle Alpino

POSITIONING: To Love is to Share

CREATIVE AGENCY: JWT Advertising YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3WUDEPgjns

CONCEPT:

Chocolates are a category of products that every person associates with the feeling of happiness. In a country like India where it is tradition to share sweets on an auspicious occasion, Nestle has as-sociated its latest product with negative emotions. The advertisement portrays a husband who shared too much in the spur of the moment and was forced to sleep on the couch. The ad claims that it is a DUMMIES guide on what not to share with your wife, so not only is the company stating that the viewer of the ad has to be a dummy but also promotes the idea of hiding things from your bet-ter half. Looking at it from a marketer’s perspective, the company attempted to alter the association of choco-late with Indian sentiments of happiness. The ad seems to have completely failed to understand the environ-ment in which it is to be telecasted and continued on its path towards altering the perception about chocolates. VERDICT: Miss

Markathon’s take on the advertisement is that it is a Miss as it failed to identify the audience and their sentiments. On a light note it can be said that the advertisement is a dummies guide for brands to understand what not to do when you advertise in the Indian market.

By swati pamnaniIIM Shillong

PRODUCT: Fortune Oil

POSITIONING: Ghar ka khana, ghar ka khana hota hai CREATIVE AGENCY: Ogilvy & Mather YouTube Link:https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=4O5Q4Z87epo CONCEPT:

Touching the emotional chords, Fortune Oil has come up with a brilliantly conceptualized commercial. The film opens with an old lady climbing the hospital stairs with a tiffin. She enters a room where the nurse is getting her hospitalized grandson ready for a feed. Dadi sees him refusing to consume dal from nurse’s hands. She insists the nurse to let her feed him with two spoons of home-cooked dal, to which the nurse refuses. This plea and re-jection happens for a few days, when persistent dadi plays many tricks of persuasion which are all turned down by the nurse. On her grandson’s birthday, dadi brings two dabbas, one extra for the nurse. In private, nurse tastes the dal and is moved. The next day, she allows dadi to se-cretly feed the patient with two spoons of dal. The patient takes the dabba and drinks the entire dal and a VO says “Ghar ka khana, ghar ka khana hota hai.

VERDICT: Catch In spite of a slower pace and long length, the ad connects with the targeted segment with its lyrics, plot and char-acters. When a person is not in a comfortable situation, all he needs is home-cooked food, full of affection from his loved ones. The TVC has successfully used storytelling advertising to spread this message with a gush of feelings.

AD-dicted august 2014


brand story august 2014

Brand Story Nishant Prakash | IIM Shillong

Historically, the brands this section has fo-

cussed on have been ones that have been around for more than just a few decades. However, when you have a com-pany which has managed to breakdown the stronghold of the likes of Apple and Samsung in one of their biggest markets and that too in just over 4 years of its existence, it’s time we step back and take a look at how exactly the company has managed to bring about the so-called “Big Bang Disruption” that it has been accredited with.By the time this article gets published, most of you would have already heard the name “Xiaomi”, thanks to the stu-pendous launch of its Mi3 handsets in India wherein it has witnessed stock-outs to pre-registration sales through Flipkart – Xiaomi’s exclusive e-commerce partner in India. What’s even more baffling is the fact that the hysteria is actually still building up – while the first sale went into stock-out mode in little over half an hour, the second event was even shorter, with some claiming that they didn’t even get the chance to hit the “Buy” button before the stock-out!Step a couple of years back - how many of you can actu-ally claim to have known about the brand back then? If it wasn’t for the media frenzy and the “stock-out” news headlining newspapers, how many of you would have ac-tually bothered to read an article about a Chinese hand-set manufacturer? Some might claim that it is because of the unbelievable product features at lower prices that the brand has carved out a name for itself – to this, let me ask you, how many of you have heard of OnePlus One, a Chinese handset that beats Xiaomi’s Mi3 (and even many of Apple and Samsung’s flagship products for that matter) on almost all technical and comparative scores? The more you dig deeper into the OnePlus Vs. Xiaomi sto-ry, the more you realize that the only difference between the ways both these brands operate is how they market their products. While OnePlus follows a more passive ap-proach, believing more in its products rather than trying to capture the customers’ mindshare through campaigns and activations, Xiaomi always has backed its products by creating a buzz around them. There are certain rumours that even the “Flash” sales on Flipkart might be nothing more than a marketing gimmick wherein the brand is trying to generate more hype by allegedly putting lesser number of handsets on sale – a point that gains further momentum by the brand’s reluctance in sharing the ac-tual numbers with the media. But regardless of whether this is true or not, the fact remains that even without Apple’s product legacy and Samsung’s seemingly infinite advertising budget, Xiaomi has still managed to create a brand identity unlike any other Chinese handset maker

till date. While Chinese handsets of yesteryears were all about cheaper counterfeits, here is a brand that makes its customers believe that lower price does not necessarily translate to cheaper (feeling) products.Despite their prior experience at Microsoft and Google, one can only imagine how difficult it would have been for the founders to build a brand name in the global market given the negative perception about Chinese products in general. A major portion (an estimated 20-40%) of the cost concern went out of the picture when the brand opt-ed for an e-commerce-only business model rather than the traditional marketing and distribution strategies. This has been backed by good word-of-mouth thanks to the customer delight generated as a result of quality products being offered at almost half the prices of similar products from premium brands – of course, the “sold-out” prompts also fuelled the curiosity.The brand keeps engaging with its existing customers (benefitting from additional sales) through a complete In-ternet ecosystem – a customized android OS (MIUI) with MI credits for purchases and a dedicated MI fans commu-nity to take care of the customers’ post-purchase experi-ence. The brand’s claim of long-term commitment to its customers is further strengthened by the fact that it has dedicated service centres in most of the global markets that it has launched its products in – even in India, the company has already set up 36 service centres along with 2 exclusive MI centres in the National Capital and Mum-bai. The after sales experience does not stop there – un-like the so-called biggies in the space, Xiaomi claims to have plans for unparalleled turn-around times for its ex-clusive centres (2 hours) and service centres (1 day).With so many things working in favour of Xiaomi, there are hardly any possible areas of improvement you can point your fingers at. Perhaps one thing that the senior management would slowly try to change is the brand per-ception of Xiaomi being the “Apple of China”; the brand has worked so hard in making sure that the customers’ perception of Chinese products being counterfeits does not affect it, and in that regards, the tag actually works against their hard work. Another possible area for them to look into would be to increase the number of Service centres in countries like India where more and more cus-tomers from Tier 2 cities are slowly getting accustomed to online purchases through portals like Flipkart. But re-gardless of these issues, the way the brand has gained prominence over the past few years is remarkable indeed; and by the looks of things, they are just getting started. Xiaomi, now the 5th largest handset maker in the world, is all set to take the handset market in developing countries by storm!


fun corner august 2014

Fun Corner Malini Aishwarya BatchuIIM Shillong

Guess the brands/agencies that have carried ouT these Controversial marketing campaigns

1 2

6

3 4

5

ANSWERS 1. Nike

2. Dunkin’ Donuts

3. Antonio Federici 4. NYC HRA

5. ISHR6. Delhi Police


ishtihaar august 2014

RAMANATHAN K | IIM Shillong

IN-FILM PROMOTIONS

As customers are evolving at a very rapid pace, we marketers should ensure that our branding activities

keeps maturing to meet the customer needs and our tar-gets efficiently. When the world has all became about dis-ruption, it has become more and more necessary nowa-days to explore other avenues other than traditional on the face advertising to brand our product/services. Wel-come to the world of In-film branding!

Indians love movies and more than 14 million Indians go to the movies on a daily basis of which 80 -85 % of them are in the age group of 15-35, which is the core TG for many companies. In- film product placements has grown from a secretly placed product in the background of a movie scene to now where Shah Rukh Khan hurls all the product features of Nokia Lumia in Chennai Express or be it Anuksha Sharma working for Discovery Channel in Jab Tak Hai Jaan. In fact they have gone beyond in film prod-uct placements and celebrity endorsements.

Brand names are being used in the song lyrics (Kareena Kapoor dancing for the Fevicol Song in Dabaang 2) which means that the reach is even larger. After the movie Mere Dad Ki Maruti was released, there was a 30% increase in the test drives and enquiries for Ertiga!

The key advantage of in-film promotions apart from the fact that it is subliminal is that it is there is impact till the film lasts. It is not like traditional advertisements which loses its charm after a particular point of time. It is now a growing trend and brand managers are now in touch with the production houses at the pre-production stage itself so that they can seamlessly weave their brand into the story. Movies are also marketed heavily these days and these tie ups with popular brands is becoming a win-win situation for both the parties. After all, which brand wouldn’t want to bury that ‘Skip Ad’ button? In-film promotions is becoming more organised and brands are trying to project the same brand identity. For instance, Ultra Tech cement has strong associations with hockey and cricket and that exactly translated in Chak De India where they sponsored the women hockey team players who is coached by the character played by Shah Rukh Khan. These actors wore the branded Ultra Tech gears. This execution shows the power of subtle, seam-less in-film promotions. It can be now expected that a lot of Indian movies that will be released would feature a wide variety of brands embedded in the movie title, lyrics of songs and creative product placements. As the time for the movie to hit the screens is very low, product releases can happen through movies. A 360 degree promotional campaign will take place in all the touch points of the movie like the music CDs, DTHs etc where the brand will get the visibility. We are already seeing glimpses of all of these. Though In-film promotions dates back to movies released in the early 1900s, the trend is now gradually picking up in India and is moving towards a more creative, seamless brand place-ments. Marketers, the future is here!

Ishtihaar

DESTINY PERFUMEI don’t want to smell like my Bike!


jab they failed august 2014

Jab They Failed

b ushashree | IIM Shillong

This month, we are back with brand extensions that went kaput. For brands which offer brand value

more than anything else, brand extensions should be approached with caution. Harley Davidson is one such example. Harley Davidson bikes are good but not better than Japanese bikes. They even have an occasional issue of oil leakage. But what clicks for the brand is the air of mystique and macho-ness that the brand has built around it. Harley Davidson customers are more than loyal to the brand – they love it! They associate it with connotations such as freedom, strength and camaraderie. Sonny Barg-er, the author of the popular book ‘Hell’s Angel’ says that “Harley Davidson riders don’t care about speed but the feeling of power that comes with it. The Japanese bikes, while they have the power, they don’t quite have the feel-ing of power.” Founded in 1905, the Harley-Davidson Motor Company was considered the face of the growth of the American “motorcycle culture” during the 950’s and 60’s. The mys-tique surrounding the brand helped the brand through the mid-1960s when the brand faced tough times due to the rise of Japanese imports. While the brand made nu-merous quality improvements to become at par with the Japanese counterparts, the major component of its brand equity was its emotional attachments. The company un-derstood this well and designed its marketing strategy accordingly. They realized the importance of maintaining exclusivity in the brand and maintained a lower stock to increase the value of the bike in the customer’s eyes. Fur-ther, in 1983, the brand came up with Harley Davidson Owners Group (HOG). This further cemented the brand’s position in the customer’s mind and through this the com-pany promoted a lifestyle associated with the brand and developed stronger customer relationships. For years, Harley Davidson had concentrated on building an iconic brand. However by the 1990’s, they fell into the trap of ‘milking the brands’ by entering into numerous line extensions. Harley Davidson introduced a range of acces-sories to match its bikes. A chain of retail shops sold H-D branded merchandise like T-shirts, jackets, caps, gloves, helmets key chains, socks, ornaments etc. While these accessories made sense to customers and were received well, when the brand decided to enter into perfumes and aftershave, the customers were extremely unhappy. Har-ley Davidson’s Destiny Perfume for women particularly was promoted as “a combination of essences from the

world’s most exquisite white flowers”. Considering that the name Harley Davidson conjures up the noxious smell of petrol, it wasn’t a success. Customers wanted strong bikes and accessories that complimented the brand, but wine coolers just didn’t click with the ruggedness of bikes. It took a huge amount of criticism from the consumers for the company to realize that Perfumes and wine coolers were eroding the essence of the H-D brand. After strong criticism from the loyal customers, the company pulled of many inappropriate products. The brand managers had learnt a cruel branding lesson – “More products did not mean more revenue and overextending the brand meant a short-term focus”. Harley Davidson not only lost a lot of money with this brand extension. It had angered and hurt its core customers – the ultimate adventure enthusiasts and H-D loyalists.Could this extension have worked in present times? We really don’t think so. Harley Davidson would do better to enter into initiatives like HOG, Harley Davidson Café’s, H-D Trips. The company needs to examine its existing brand extensions and remember that diluting the market with more and more merchandise will in turn dilute the brand. The company should approach any brand extension with caution and ensure that it doesn’t erode its brand values (mystery, freedom, masculinit masculinity and rugged-ness)


Varsha Poddar | IIM Shillong

Recently, a marketing professor mentioned in one of our classes that the unwritten rule of Marketing states that if we can’t find a solution, we must try to find a workaround. Workarounds are most necessary when marketers are faced with hurdles. Social media advertising is gaining ground with lightning speed. Everyone wants to be adver-tising on digital media. Paid ads on facebook, twitter, Google and YouTube – marketers want them all. However, with the opportunity of being present on global, social media, also comes the hurdles of the game.

YouTube pre-roll ads, for example. With their “Skip Ad” feature, they prove to be veritable nightmares for market-ers who do nothing better than take their TVCs and dump them onto the video-viewing site. According to a study by research firm MetrixLab, 94 percent of the pre-roll ads get skipped. The study also stated that viewers of these ads do not remember the message it was trying to give out and even if they do watch to the end of the ad and like it, they are less likely to share it. GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare tried to find a workaround to overcome this bane. They loaded their regular TVC onto YouTube but with a 5 second addition that relayed the essence of their ad – Their Instant Choco-late Horlicks dissolves in milk ‘even before you Skip Ad’.

It is effective – both in communicating its message and grabbing the attention of the viewer.Another workaround would be to make your content so compelling that viewers do not want to skip it at all. Nail, an ad agency in Providence, R.I did just that when it creat

ed an ad to create awareness about kindness to animals in collaboration with the ASPCA. It made an unskippable ad where the viewer is put in a moral dilemma of choosing between wanting to skip ad and electrocuting the puppy. Not sure how that would work? See the image below and watch the video. That man daring you to skip ad and the Labrador waiting in adorable anticipation for something sinister to happen would ensure that you squirm even as you reach out for the button only to realise the ad is un-skippable. And in doing so, with your “click”, you generate revenue for the ASPCA. And with a look at those ingenious workarounds, this is a wrap. Do let us know if you come across any other digital media workarounds!

Radical Thoughts

aug 2014 august 2014 radical thoughts

THE WONDERS OF WORKAROUNDS


updates december 2013 updates august 2014

Brand Launch

Honda Mobilio MPV Honda’s much-awaited entrant into the MPV segment, Mobilio is out in the markt. Based on an extended Brio platform, Honda plans to make the Mobilio an even match of space, comfort, utility and styling. It will be powered by the same 1.5-li-tre petrol or diesel units from the City sedan. Transmission duties will be handled by a five-speed manual gearbox and the petrol will likely get a CVT option later. Mobilio will take on the likes of Maruti’s Ertiga and segment leader Toyota Innova. Alongside the launch, the company has also rolled out an ad campaign featuring comedian Kapil Sharma to increase the buzz for Mobilio.

By Amit SonwaniIIM Shillong

Brand Watch

Godrej Launches Protekt Range of Personal Care Products

Godrej Consumer Products Ltd’s has launched the Protekt range of products comprising of a hand sanitiser, three handwashes and a skin spray mosquito repellent. Known to be effective, the Protekt hand sanitiser is alcohol-free that kills 99.9 per cent germs and creates a germ protection shield which lasts for eight hours. The handwashes are 98 per cent naturally derived for-mulas packed in recyclable bottles. The Protekt mosquito repellent is a wa-ter-based, non-sticky skin-spray called Buzz Off. It has upto 200 sprays and its 50 ml size, which makes it convenient to carry around while travelling.

Amazon to open five new fulfillment centers in India

Amazon Seller Services India announced its plans to open five more fulfill-ment centers (FCs) in Delhi, Chennai, Jaipur, Ahmedabad and Tauru (outskirts of Gurgaon). These FCs are warehouses from which Amazon ships products to buyers across India. With the additional storage capacity and its two exist-ing FCs outskirts of Mumbai and Bangalore, Amazon has almost doubled its total storage capacity to over half million square feet, offering fulfillment ser-vices to retailers and small and medium businesses (SMBs) across the country.

Flipkart site shuts down as Xiaomi Mi 3 touches 100,000 registrations in India

Xiaomi’s Mi 3 smartphone went out of stock on e-commerce retailer Flipkart, after just 39 minutes of going on sale on 29th July 2014. The Chinese smartphone has made a debut in Indian market with an exclusive sales tie-up with Flipkart for Mi 3. Flipkart claimed to have received 100,000 registrations for the phone between July 15 and 21, when they provided a ‘one week registration window’.



Media

Philips partners Amazon to tap the burgeoning e-commerce market Consumer electronics major Philips announced its collaboration with e-commerce giant Amazon to launch imaginative LED lightings for kids in association with Dis-ney. In a bid to tap the rapidly expanding online retailing market, Philips Lighting, a subsidiary of the Dutch consumer electronics giant Royal Philips, has partnered “exclusively” with Amazon to sell its latest product range, the Imaginative Lighting.

ITC plans to sell coffee, tea, chocolates aiming to be No. 1 in FMCG Kolkata-based conglomerate ITC Ltd plans to enter categories such as fruit juice, tea, coffee, chocolates and dairy products as part of its plans to be-come India’s largest fast-moving consumer goods company by 2030, ITC chairman YC Deveshwar said. While all these new categories will have a high gestation cost, this is the best time to absorb these costs, the company told its shareholders at the company’s 103 annual general meeting in Kolkata.

Philips India Signs Arjun Kapoor to Promote Male Grooming Range Philips India has roped in actor, Arjun Kapoor, as the brand ambassador for its male grooming products. He will be endorsing trimmers, shavers and stylers and also take recently initiated style revolution of Philips India to the next level and play a pivotal role in the brand and product communi-cation across media platforms. “Men’s grooming products are a key focus area of growth for Philips Consumer Lifestyle division in the country. Per-sonal Care, specifically the male grooming portfolio, has been the fastest growing category for the brand in India. Arjun (Kapoor) personifies every-thing that Philips Male Grooming stands for youth, style and confidence.

Amul Sponsors the Indian Contingent to 2014 Commonwealth Games and Asian Games India’s largest food products marketing organization Amul today announced its sponsorship of the Indian contingents to the Glasgow 2014 Common-wealth Games and Asian Games, Incheon, South Korea by signing a MoU with the Indian Olympic Association. Explaining the rationale of this associa-tion, Amul officials said that milk is nature’s original energy drink and plays a pivotal role in building the physical and mental strength of the athletes.

Ad Watch

Honda spreading its wings in its new campaign There are brand logos. And there are grand logos. The latter kind is conjured up mid-air by professional skydivers and shot using aerial cameras. In its latest ad film called ‘Pankh’, that’s part of a 360 degree corporate campaign titled



Pepsi takes us ‘Back to school’ Ahead of the friendship day, Pepsi has rolled out the ‘Back to School’ campaign depicting the story of almost every student’s life. The ad film is completely different from the campaigns made by Pepsi which focused on youth, is now shifting towards a target group much younger. The ad takes everyone a glimpse of their own life and clicks instantly. A good attempt by Pepsi to counter the association of Coca-Cola with ‘Happiness’.

Youtube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJVtU1zXOO4

ArtICLes Are InvIted“Best Article”: Aabir Chatterjee | SIBM, PUNE

He receives a cash prize of Rs.1000 & a letter of appreciation

We are inviting articles from all the B-schools of India. The articles can be absolutely any-thing related to the world of marketing but it should be an original work that is not pub-lished elsewhere. The articles can be specific to the regular sections of Markathon which

includes: •Perspective: Articles related to development of latest trends in marketing arena.•Productolysis: Analysis of a product from the point of view of marketing.•Strategic Analysis: A complete analysis of marketing strategy of any company or an event.Apart from above, out of the box views related to marketing are also welcome. The best en-try will receive a letter of appreciation and a cash prize of Rs 1000/-. The format of the file

should be MS Word doc/docx.

The last date of receiving all entries is 28th Aug, 2014. Please send your entries marked as <ARTICLE NAME>_<SENDERS’ NAME(S)>_<INSTITUTE> to [email protected].

‘Honda is Honda’, Honda Motorcycle & Scooter India (HMSI) highlights its winged logo in a larger than life manner. In the ad, we see dozens of skydivers jump from planes to create the HMSI logo in the sky as In-dia - including brand endorser Akshay Kumar - watches, amazed. The lyr-ics of the soundtrack go ‘Dekho dekhe ye zamaana, panchi uda jaaye re...’ . Youtube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dr0zF3Lr1w4

Airtel : Smart network for Smart - phones

Airtel, which rode high on the successful campaigns like ‘Express Yourself’ and ‘Har ek friend zaroori hota hai’, has rolled out its latest campaign. Executed by Taproot India, the ad strongly shows the cultural shift happening in India where women are reaching to new heights. The ad shows how beautifully today wom-an can balances responsibilities and family life. For the brand, the campaign is a ‘thematic film’ with a contemporary take on the role that smartphones are play-ing in bringing millions of data-savvy Indians closer to one another. Youtube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9BlI9nhqTE

august 2014 6th anniversary edition

Documents