K J SOMAIYA INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT STUDIES & RESEARCH VOL. V | ISSUE V | OCT ’14

MARKSMAN The

‘Exclusive

Interview with

Dr Rangaswamy’

>> pg 06

>> pg 12

>> pg 16

>> pg 20

Cristiano Ronaldo

PIONEER:

FAUX PAS:

Sula Wines

Bridging the gap in

Toilet-to-tap

Flipkart’s Big Debacle

BRAND MARKIVE:

SPECIAL STORY:

COVER STORY:

The

MARKSMAN wishes you

Dear Readers,

We hope you had a great Diwali! As we continue the festive spirit looking forward to

unraveling the new year, this month we decided to take a good look at an emerging and

unconventional marketing practice that has a strong counterintuitive appeal.

This issue's cover story revolves around long tail marketing -- at its core, the idea of

discovering niche markets. But put to application in today's unique context of

information super growth, there are various interesting insights waiting to be found out

here -- for instance, between someone who searches for "bikes" and someone who

searches for "Pulsar 180 DTSi price in Mumbai", it's evident as to which of them is

more likely to be the prospective buyer. And yet, these lessons are waiting to be

unpacked and applied fully, because much of the focus has been on keywords reflecting

the most popular and most sought after G&S, thereby ignoring the power of specificity.

The special story takes a deep look into the talk of the town: Flipkart's Big Billion Day

debacle, which will long be remembered in the history of marketing in India. The Brand

Markive of this issue takes a close look at Sula, a brand that has made Nashik India's

answer to the Napa Valley.

This time we have on exclusive record a most special authority in the field of

marketing and analytics for the Tête-à-Tête -- Dr. Arvind Rangaswamy, Professor of

Marketing, Penn State University. He co-founded the field of Marketing Engineering with

Gary Lilien and has played a key role in the emergence of analytics worldwide.

Also, we are glad to have got such a good response for our articles for this month, and

after evaluating we have featured Adwitiya Tiwari’s article who is from XLRI,

Jamshedpur. And for all those entries which haven’t been featured this month, we

thank you all for your response and encourage you to keep writing to us with the same

fervor.

Happy Reading!

Team Marksman

The Interface -- the Marketing Club of SIMSR

@marksmansimsr

EDITOR’S NOTE

OCTOBER 2014 01

02 THE MARKSMAN

TWEETS

IT’S ALL ABOUT

AD-ITUDE

BRAND MARKIVE

COVER STORY

LONG TAIL

MARKETING

SPECIAL STORY

Flipkart’s BIG Billion

Day Debacle

REWIND

10th SIMSR Global

Marketing Conference

MARKETING FAUX PAS

Hall-MARK CAMPAIGN

PIONEER

Tete – a - tete

BOOKWORM

BUZZ

20

18

16

12

08

06

05

03

22

25

14

32

# TWEETS

#SaveWedgwoodCollection

After being ruled to sell the towns

Wedgwood Museum’s assets in

England, The Sentinel launched a

twitter campaign in order to save

these important industrial archives.

To be a part of this campaign,

readers were asked to tweet and

post selfies with their favorite

Wedgwood pieces. These tweets

were to be followed by

#savewedgwood hashtags. The

campaign became an historic event

as it raised around £15.75 mn with

about 7500 individuals donating

quite enough to save these archives.

#ISPCA1 - Animal Selfies

Required

To celebrate the World Animal Week started

October 4th, the non - profit organization Irish

Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals

(ISPCA) launched a social media campaign called

– ‘Love your Pets’. This campaign could be

supported and followed on Twitter using

WorldAnimalWeek alongwith the hashtag

#ISPCA1. Followers were requested to share

the photos of their pets to support the

campaign. Consequently, they were encouraged

to donate towards the work of this not for

profit organization. Heartfelt stories of

rehoused pets and requests for giving shelter to

the abandoned ones were spread through this

campaign.

Save WE archives

Every dog has its day,

especially for ISPCA!

OCTOBER 2014 03

#bendgate

This tweet by Kitkat has even surpassed

the famous Dunk in the Dark tweet put

up by Oreo during the Superbowl

blackout. Nestle in an attempt to

capitalize on Apple iPhone 6’s – Bending

flaw, came up with a tweet – “we don’t

bend, we #break.” Within no time the

tweet went viral with as much as 1000

retweets in an hour. Over the next 48

hours, it was retweeted some 23000

times and had around 10,000 favourites.

However, it did not just stop there as

Nestle furthered the campaign with

another tweet the immediate next day

– “So what else bends or #breaks?” The

#bendgate tweet started by Kitkat, thus,

has got a huge response as compared to

Oreo’s Dunk in the Dark which had

around 15000 retweets and 6000

favourites.

TWEETS

#100DaysOfModiSarkar

To commemorate Modi Sarkar’s 100 days

of coming into power, Times Now

launched a special micro site –

www.100daysofmodisarkar.com. Taking

help of various social media platforms, this

site spoke of the much glorified 100 days

of Modi reign wherein it displayed tweets

using #100DaysOfModiSarkar. It thus,

displayed a series of emotions and tracked

what the citizens of India felt on the

completion of the 100 days of Modi Sarkar.

04 THE MARKSMAN

Have a break. Bend a kitkat.

Har Har Modi, Ghar Ghar Modi!

OCTOBER 2014 05

IT’S ALL ABOUT AD-ITUDE

The newest BMW Television commercial builds on the most common dilemma that every

man faces at one point or the other; when should he just start enjoying the drive called life.

The Ad, with the background score of a racing car, opens with a new born baby who goes

through adulthood and old age in a matter of seconds. This simple yet beautifully executed

commercial signifies how we deny ourselves the joy and seldom enjoy the life. BMW urges

to take that step to make our metaphorical road more pleasurable, enjoyable and joyful by

getting our own BMW. The film ends by simply suggesting, “Why postpone joy?” On the flip

side BMW is also trying to eliminate the cognitive and cultural reservations, which people

still harbor about luxury cars. The simplest of ideas portrayed through the least amount of

words and with maximum impact is how this Commercial can be described.

TELEVISION AD

Client: BMW India

Agency: Ogilvy & Mather (Gurgaon)

BMW – Don’t Postpone Joy

A picture is worth a thousand words. Band- Aids new minimalistic take on waterproof

adhesive antiseptic tapes (adjoining) shows just that. A rudimentary idea portrayed in an

impactful manner.

PRINT AD

Band-Aid 100% Waterproof!

To enjoy this ad simply click on the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_HdndRWNK8

BRAND MARKive Sula: The Wine from the Warmer Regions

Apart from being well known as one of the

places where the Kumbh Mela is organised

every 12 years, Nashik has attained

popularity for being the wine capital of India

during the last decade. With more than 35

wineries established in the region, Nashik

has turned into the Napa Valley of India. The

forerunner that started the trend of these

mushrooming wineries in the region was

none other than Sula wines.

Sula winery has grown from a small

establishment to the market leader of the

Indian wine industry. With more than 25

brands of wines offered under its flagship,

including Sauvignon Blanc, Chenin Blanc,

Caberet Shiraz, Zinfandel, etc., it has

managed to capture the premium as well the

affordable wine market to a large extent.

Sula’s premium wines have won many

awards, accolades and wine tasting events,

which have helped it to establish its

presence globally.

Sula wines have been listed in many of

the top-notch restaurants around the

world. Who would have thought that

Indian wines could compete with those

of the French and California? But

somebody did, and that somebody was

none other than Rajeev Samant the

visionary behind Sula wines.

Rajeev Samant and the Californian

winemaker Kerry Damskey had ventured

into a partnership and started Nashik

Vintners Pvt. Ltd. (parent company of

Sula) in 1997. It took them over two

years to complete the licensing process,

and the first wine grapes were harvested

and crushed in 1999 and the first bottle

was sold a year after. In the year 2008-09

when the industry of the premium wines

had been hit hard by recession, Rajeev

Samant came up with the affordable

wines that now have a major stake in

their market share.

06 THE MARKSMAN

Sula has grown leaps and bounds within

the short span of time it has been established.

The Indian wine industry is still very new and

immature and has not reached its full potential.

The growth rate is expected to be high and a

major player in the category is bound to be

Sula: the wine from the warmer region.

Trivia:

Sula was named after Rajeev Samant’s

mother Sulabha.

Rajeev Samant is a Stanford graduate who

left his lucrative job in Oracle to pursue

winemaking.

It was the only winery to be given a

license in the 15 years in which it was

established.

In India, Sula was the only wine that

printed the region of origin.

The sun was used as a logo to indicate

that it was a wine from the warmer

region.

Desert wines (sweet wines) were

introduced to the Indian market by Sula.

Sula also produces Grapeseed Oil, which

is a healthy alternative to vegetable oil. It

also moisturizes the skin and is very good

for hair as well.

Vinoteca, a wine bar, has been opened by

Sula in Mumbai.

BRAND MARKive

2008 also saw the commencement of

the highly popular “Sulafest.” Originally a

one day event has now turned into a

two-day affair with more than 10,000

guests participating. It is held during the

first weekend of February, and is also

one of the main reasons of the

popularity of the brand. The festival is all

about wine tasting, food, music, concerts,

dance, etc. Other than the festival, Sula

is well-equipped with a wine tasting

room, a first of its kind in India, and a

resort that is open to all throughout the

year.

OCTOBER 2014 07

COVER STORY LONG TAIL MARKETING

While browsing through a swanky new

retail store, we often see the products that

are the most popular, the trendsetters, the

stars, the ones that guarantee that the store

is a winner, to be promoted in a very

prominent fashion. Examples of such

products could be Harry Potter and the

Deathly Hallows in ‘Crossword’ or a Pink

Floyd album in ‘PlanetM’. These products are

always vigorously promoted and often

become the key ingredient that leads to the

success of a store.

Meanwhile, there are some products that

aren’t so popular, but continue to sell, with

barely any attention being paid to their

special promotion. However, in some stores,

since the variety of inventory of these less

popular items is very large, they may make

up a significant chunk of the total sales. If we

were to plot the sales of these individual

products, we would see a long distribution

curve, with a dominant head (the star) and a

long tail (the less popular).

“Long tail marketing focuses on the less

popular products, developing a business

sales model based upon products in the

long tail." The term ‘Long Tail Marketing’

was first coined by Chris Anderson in an

article featuring in the October 2004 issue

of ‘Wired’ magazine, to describe the

business strategies of e-Tailers like

Amazon.com; how they sell high volumes of

their popular products, as well as their

niche or unique items. The first area where this strategy can be

used is traditional retail stores. The focus is

on bringing customer diversity into the

picture. Each of these long tails is made up of

more than one customer segment, which

means that higher the number of customer

segments, longer will be the tail and hence

higher the diversity. It allows businesses to

reach more niche customers whose

interests are not very mainstream. For brick

and mortar stores, the biggest challenge

when it comes to long tail marketing is

devising an intelligent strategy to manage

this inventory of less popular products, while

making sure that the sales of the popular

products does not take a serious hit. Since

we do not replace the popular items with

the less popular ones, but instead

supplement the inventory, cost of storing

inventory plays a pivotal role in this respect.

For smaller retailers, long tail marketing can

be the point of differentiation that they seek

from larger chain stores.

08 THE MARKSMAN

COVER STORY COVER STORY

“Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement. “

- Samuel Johnson.

The idea of owning something customized is

always much more appealing than something

off the shelf. This perception might increase

the footfalls in such small retail stores, which

may further convert into successful sales.

Stocking less number of items also helps to

increase curiosity and generate interest in

these products. The main drawback of

implementing this strategy is that suppliers

cannot offer large discounts since the

products are so varied.

The second area where this strategy has

been implemented extensively is that of e-

Tailing. Since online retail stores have an

unlimited virtual shelf space, competing for

limited shelf space is obviously not an issue.

Famous sites like Amazon and Netflix, stock

their inventory in centralized warehouses,

while displaying their collection online. Even

though web-page maintenance has its costs,

stocking and maintaining inventory in a

warehouse is much more expensive.

Moreover, digital products like iTunes and

Amazon’s Kindle books don’t even require

warehouse space, and are even more

pocket-friendly. An important aspect that

needs to be worked upon is the conversion

of this increased inventory into sales. For a

customer, finding and tracking the product

of his/her choice will be the factor that

decides whether the product will be

bought. A catalogue or search system that

lets customers browse through products is

of utmost importance. Links like ‘those who

viewed this product also viewed’ are helpful

in increasing the visibility of the ‘long tail’

items.

Another important area of implementation

is microfinance. Sanctioning of small loans

for customers who do not have an

established credit history, and are ignored

by the traditional banks but, who now form

a significant niche market in several

developing countries in Africa and Asia is an

example of the multitude of applications of

this strategy.

OCTOBER 2014 09

COVER STORY COVER STORY

A company that relies heavily on the long

tail for its revenue is Google. Chris

Anderson called Google the ‘Long Tail

Advertisers’. Google realizes that

advertising is not just for the stars but

also for the niche market. Google’s

AdSense and AdWords being

performance based tools, allows niche

marketers and niche content providers to

fully take advantage of this facility. For

example, if a business depends on people

finding its website on Google, a strategy

which can be used is of creating multiple

webpages, for the multitude of services

provided in the niche area of business.

The result will be a lot less competition

in comparison to regular keyword search

and an increase in the visibility of the

business as well. For Google, it is a win-

win situation. They make money from the

most popular ads of the ‘head’ straight

down to the tip of the ‘long tail’.

For any business though, the added

challenge is to understand and implement

the optimal number of keywords to

associate itself with. A study shows that

Google’s average number of keywords in

a search has now become three, which

shifts the focus from keywords to key

phrases. Understanding the long tail

online is a challenge for marketers. When

it comes to keywords and searching

online, an analogy can be picked up from

the famous quote: “Little drops of water

make the mighty ocean”.

This means that to fully utilize the long tail

online, there must be lots of key phrases

individually making up very little traffic by

themselves but collectively accounting for a

huge amount of traffic, which in turn means

a considerable level of visibility online.

For long tail products, the allure is its

uniqueness. Hence, businesses must target

category based key phrases instead of

brand based key phrases. For example,

competing with a bookstore will be much

more difficult when the popular books sold

there have similar key phrases as your new

business. Streamlining your key phrases in

order to assure the customer that the

niche product that they’re looking for is

what you specialize in will be instrumental

in your success. Therefore, adapting an

effective search engine optimization

technique is of utmost importance for new

businesses. This practice enables new

businesses to use limited funds in order to

attract new customers.

10 THE MARKSMAN

COVER STORY COVER STORY

Effective long tail marketing is a challenging

alternative in relation to traditional

marketing. It merges the ability of

businesses to display a more varied basket

of products, with the added task of

optimizing costs in order to make sure that

the sales of the popular products does not

take a hit. Like any other marketing strategy,

understanding the customer better

becomes the factor that makes or breaks

this strategy.

A challenge that the implementation of this

practice faces is the threat of converting

the long tail key words into the main or

‘head’ keywords. This may prove to be a

self-defeating activity in practice.

So the simplest advice to target the long tail

is to invest in a myriad of niche areas,

increase the web footprint, implement better

search engine optimization techniques,

optimize the costs incurred in implementing

this strategy, and most importantly,

remember that in the end, it all boils down

to how well one understood their

customers.

OCTOBER 2014 11

SPECIAL STORY

Flipkart’s BIG Billion Day Debacle

The sale started with words of promises and

grand offers like flash sales, deals of the hour,

every hour lucky draw and surprise discount

offers for around 70 item categories. The

company employed its 10,000 dedicated field

staff for timely delivery of orders. With the

Big Billion Day Sale, one of India’s largest e-

commerce website, Flipkart, was out to

eclipse all other festive multi-day sales over

just one single day with an expected sale of a

billion!

A shocking 1.5 billion customers came

running for the big day sale. The actual

demand exceeded the expected one, and the

company was not prepared to handle it. This

resulted in out of stock issues for many

popular products. There were price changes

of several products to non-discounted rates

for few hours and this was not the end of

the story. Because of simultaneous orders,

customers confronted abrupt cancellations

of their purchase orders. Adding to the woes

of the day was the website unavailability

error. The massive marketing campaign was

not supplemented technically to handle the

traffic. It was pretty evident by the end of

the day, that no preparations and calculations

were done to estimate server load.

On its Big sale day, company suffered a big

hit as cyber space was abuzz with angry

customer feedbacks and jokes about the

sale, mocking it as flopkart.com. The Big

Billion Day sale turned into a fiasco and

dented the trustworthy image of the

company. The whole user experience

turned out to be a disappointed one. An

apology mail from Flipkart founders, Sachin

and Binny Bansal, the next day was the

proof of the failure and their awareness

about the same. The main learning that

comes their way is that in e-commerce

specially, customer’s experience holds a

second place to customer’s trust, which

needs to be valued the most.

“Strike the iron when it is hot!”

12 THE MARKSMAN

SPECIAL STORY

The result of this debacle turned in the

favour of Flipkart’s rivals, as many

disappointed customers ran to Amazon,

Snapdeal & Big Bazaar for their purchases.

These companies were waiting for the

disappointed customers with open arms and

of course with better sales and effective

service. They churned out lot of money and

promotion by associating their own promos

with Flipkart’s campaign. Amazon and

Snapdeal answered Flipkart in an interesting

way through loud posters and promotions

undermining its event, which closely

reminded everyone of the infamous cola

wars. All the three e-commerce giants forked

out more than 100 crores in total for their

respective sales.

Snapdeal quoted a cheeky tagline: “For

others, it’s a big day. For us, today is no

different.” Amazon pulled out its own sale

“Mission to Mars weekend” concurrently

and came out as the winner of the Big

Billion debacle of Flipkart. This gives one

ultimate message in the market ‘Never

underestimate the power of your

competitors.’ The way in which Flipkart’s

failure and rickety execution was reaped by

its competitors is a subtle but alarming

lesson that’s being floated everywhere now.

The final question after the analysis comes

as—‘Will Flipkart be able to regain its

position as a trustworthy website?’ It is sad

to note that a company who had an

acclaimed position in the market, one that

had almost redefined all rules of retailing in

the country, had to see a day like this.

According to market experts, very soon

this incident will become a small chapter of

forgone historical events—accounting to

the nationwide acclaimed and grounded

popularity of Flipakart over the decade.

Soon Flipkart shall restore its lost

credibility among its customers. What one

shall remember is how smartly and quickly

competitors can take advantage of any

situation against the company. Henceforth,

to survive in this era of bottleneck

competition, the key to success is still

derived in those two simple words—

‘Preparation’ and ‘Execution.’

OCTOBER 2014 13

10th SIMSR Global Marketing

Conference

Marketing Analytics for Developing

Effective Marketing Strategies

Today, Marketing has evolved from a creative

process into a highly data driven process.

Organizations use analytics to determine the

outcomes of their product campaigns and to

plan investments and consumer targeting.

SIMSR conducted a workshop on this evolving

subject, “Marketing Analytics for Developing

Effective Marketing Strategies” as a part of its

10th SIMSR Global Marketing Conference.

The workshop conducted on 18th and 19th

Sept, was facilitated by Prof Dr .Arvind

Rangaswamy. He is currently the Anchel

Professor of Marketing at ‘The Smeal

College at Penn State’. He graduated

from IIT Chennai, completed his MBA from

IIM Calcutta and further pursued PhD in

Marketing at Northwestern University. He is

the co-founder of Decision Pro Inc. and has

consulted for various companies like Du Pont,

IBM Global Services and AT&T Wireless. The

workshop had a 2 day intensive agenda and

was attended by various corporate delegates

and professors from reputed Universities.

REWIND

14 THE MARKSMAN

The session started with the point that

‘Seat-of-the-pants’ decision making (a

process which considers only few

parameters) is not enough anymore and

now marketing analytics is increasingly

important for all types of businesses.

It generates results and insights for

action. It quantifies the judgement based

on the results that will improve the

quality of marketing decisions. The

speaker stressed on the fact that STP

(Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning)

can be done effectively based on the

data.

In the second half of the session on day

1, several case studies were discussed.

One of them was marketing a specific

brand of Beer. The data analytics

suggested the preferred brand that has

to be targeted at different geographies.

Prof Arvind illustrated the same using

the software developed by Decision Pro

Inc.

It was a classic display of how the

software can interpret statistical data

and provide one with guidelines. People

also got the look and feel of the

software that modified its output when

the factor variables were changed. He

also spoke about Digital Marketing

which is the need of the hour.

Day 2 started with the subject Conjoint

Analysis that is used in Market research.

It was again illustrated with the

software and engaged people to

provide value for different features of

the product. The software’s final result

provided vital information for

marketing the same. Throughout the

session the primary focus was about

enhancing efficacy through improved

use of analytics and marketing decision

making.

The day ended with a sumptuous lunch

followed by a jamming session.

Participants slowly got into the groove

and it turned out to be a memorable

event. The participants were also

felicitated with certificates by Prof.

Arvind Rangaswamy himself.

Team Interface which managed the

whole event once again proved that...

“We repeatedly achieve what we are….

THE BEST”.

OCTOBER 2014 15

REWIND

MARKETING FAUX PAS

This section is usually about marketing

failures or errors that cost dearly. Although

most well-known examples are errors of

commission (advertising goof-ups, say), there

are also errors of omission which are not

easy on any stakeholder’s pockets. All

because of (the lack of) marketing.

Water scarcity is a real problem. As Rose

George points out in her The Big Necessity:

The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and

Why it Matters (2008), this is a problem not

only in the so-called developing countries

but also in many parts of the West.

Orange County in drought-ridden California

is facing a peculiar problem. The technology

to generate recycled waste water has long

existed, and it has been used pervasively for

non-potable needs like agriculture and

landscaping. But when it comes to drinking it,

indirect potable reuse (IPR) is nothing but

disgusting for most Californians. Surveys

show that an overwhelming majority let the

“yuck” factor get in the way.

They know the ocean is a source of potable

water. But desalinated water costs anywhere

from 150–400% of what it would cost to

obtain recycled water.

Sceptics of recycled water call it toilet-to-

tap, thereby suggesting that one is being

asked to drink, in effect, water from the

toilet. It is this kind of imagery that is

largely playing mischief in the minds of

most consumers. Paul Slovic, psychology

professor at University of Oregon, says

“image and assumption are very

important motivators of behaviour.

[They] overpower the logical analysis of

things […] People have this idea that

some manufacturer in the sky generates

new, pure water coming down from the

stream as opposed to the fact that we are

reusing the same molecules over and

over.” Slovic says education about the

benefits of such projects will help people

get over perceived risks.

Now obviously, there is immense

demand for water, on the part of both

individuals and industries. There also

exists a technology that is more efficient

and more cost-effective than the current

one—which means there is a way to

reduce the gap between supply and

demand, if not completely abolish it. Then

what in the good wide world is the

problem, you ask? It is also not environment friendly—it uses

more energy, kills tiny marine organisms and

gives off brine by-products. Moreover,

several experts agree that the recycled

water is often less dangerous than the

desalinated one.

Advertising prides itself as the agent of

communication (rather than, say,

manipulation).

Bridging the Gap in Toilet-to-Tap

16 THE MARKSMAN

OCTOBER 2014 17

Not what it seems to be at first flush.

No such thing as purely pure water.

The need for this communication arises in

part because consumers do not always

know where/how to find what they want

(some may say that they may often not

even know what it is they want).

Although Californians have largely taken

the issue in their hands—they managed to

shut down a $55 million plant in the making

in Los Angeles—and confused each other,

and the same exact technology was

introduced and applied with success in a

tiny island city-state across the other pond,

all thanks to astute marketing. In Singapore,

the Public Utilities Board has turned

purified sewage into a popular branded

bottled product called NEWhether (as

Einstein said in 1931) imagination is more

important than knowledge, it is, by all

accounts, far more persuasive than

knowledge.

Water. Ads showed the President cheerily

sipping the water, for instance. This water

has been seamlessly running through

Singaporean faucets ever since and has

solved many of the country's pressing

problems.

MARKETING FAUX PAS

Hall-MARK CAMPAIGN

18 THE MARKSMAN

Today’s day and age, wherein a film’s shelf

life has reduced considerably from good

old silver jubilee weeks to meagre highest

grossing opening weekends, call for

dynamic and innovative measures to grab

the audience’s equally diminishing

attention span. The latest festive release,

Bang Bang did just that by coming up with

a viral marketing campaign to gain

visibility.

First of all, it kept away from the tried &

tested formula of promotions via celebrity

appearances on reality & prime time

television shows. Going a step further and

taking cue from the online rage

#ALSIceBucketChallenge, the film’s main

protagonist Hrithik Roshan utilized his

twitter to give out dares like ‘No Honking

or Smoking for 3 days straight’ for all his

followers in order to generate buzz for

his movie in an unconventional way. It

gradually moved on to his contemporaries

and leading Bollywood celebrities.

#BangBangDare instantly started trending

on the social media and garnering the most

number of views was the dare given to

Ranveer Singh, wherein the Bandra boy was

asked to get out of his car and pose on the

middle of any main street of Mumbai for his

fans. Being the adrenaline junkie he is, the

zany actor took to Bandra’s busy lane

decked up as superhero Krrish and danced

to ‘Main Aisa Kyun Hu’, both of which were

essayed by Hrithik himself.

This was followed by ‘Mantal Bwoy’ Farhan

Akhtar riding his bicycle sporting a

skydiving suit. Another dare was

accomplished by the reigning king Shah

Rukh Khan by disclosing his rock hard 8

pack abs workout, consequently promoting

the superstar’s upcoming film Happy New

Year as well.

#BangBangDare

OCTOBER 2014 19

Priyanka ‘Mary Kom’ Chopra punched right

back in the true spirit of ‘why should boys

have all the fun’ by doing handstand push-

ups. Damsels Nargis Fakhri and Shraddha

Kapoor followed suit by singing a freestyle

rap and a haunting rendition of Nancy

Sinatra’s ‘Bang Bang’ + ‘Aao Na’ from

Haider respectively.

What came as a surprise was Shahid

Kapoor’s willingness to do a dare

and join the rampant promotions

while his own film Haider was

releasing alongside the biggie Bang

Bang. To this Hrithik politely replied

that each of the actors had to watch

each other’s film first day itself. Not

quite a dare the last one but the

efforts surely paid off since the film

grossed a billion rupees over the

opening weekend itself. This again

goes on to prove that marketing isn’t

confined to any limits. There, There

Dare, Dare.

HALL-MARK CAMPAIGN

PIONEER

20 THE MARKSMAN

Viva Ronaldo, Viva Ronaldo!

Running down the wing hearing united

sing viva Ronaldo!

We all remember this chant sung by

the Manchester United Football Club fans.

Possibly quite many red devils’ fans who are

reading this article would be cherishing

those moments as well, taking them back to

the Theatre of Dreams. In this edition of the

Pioneer, let’s talk about the larger than life

character, an obsession with the fans,

Cristiano Ronaldo, popularly known as CR7.

Is Ronaldo or Lionel Messi, the

greatest player? It’s a debatable topic.

Both of them have amazing skills, pace

and grace and most importantly, it

gives us sheer pleasure to watch their

game. But when it comes to

Marketability, no other footballer in

this world matches with CR7. He is

not just a living football legend instead

he is a Brand whose earnings were

$73 million after tax in the year 2013.

A major chunk of it came from his

endorsements and Forbes ranked him

first in their world’s highest paid

players list. Ronaldo’s rise from a poor

suburb on Madeira, in Portugal to the

cover star of Vogue has happened not

by chance but through clever

Marketing.

CRISTIANO RONALDO CR7

PIONEER

OCTOBER 2014 21

For any Brand to become

successful it should have a unique selling

point and it has to be launched in the

market at the opportune time.

Positioning, one of the thumb rules of

Marketing, is a vital factor. CR7’s amazing

dribbling skills, ability to control the ball

with agility and predicting certain plays

are his USPs which helped him to join the

Manchester United Club in 2003. After

proving his mettle in the club, he moved

to Real Madrid Football Club in 2009 for

a whopping amount of $80 million. Since

both these clubs with a great history and

fan base are famous in the world, his

popularity grew further. This is a perfect

example of positioning in the market. Had

he joined a lower rung club, he wouldn’t

be that successful as he is now. CR7 has

won numerous trophies for both the

clubs, the latest being Champions League

Title for Real Madrid in 2013.

CR7’s segmentation and targeting

is Universal. He caters to all audience.

Girls swoon for his good looks, Boys

idolize him for his play, and Men shout his

name in awe. He excels in Promotion as

well; one of the 4Ps of Marketing. He is

not only very prominent in the traditional

forms of marketing space like billboards

and TVs but also in the new age of digital

marketing. He has the highest number of

Twitter Followers, 26.6 mn and most

facebook likes, 83.3 mn.

Ronaldo endorses various brands like NIKE,

ARMANI and has also signed other

sponsorships from SAMSUNG, TAGHeuer,

HERBALIFE and many more. There are several

mobile gaming apps based around the matches

played by him as well.

It is a well known fact that a sportsman career

is short lived and one should make the best

use of it at his prime stage. This relates to our

product life cycle concept. To make optimum

use of his Growth stage, CR7 has recently

opened a museum, ‘Museu CR7’ and launched

Premium Inner Wear Brand, ‘CR7‘ which are

good sources of revenue. It is a classic

example of money rotation.

It is only a matter of time before we see CR7

launching his own fashion label along similar

lines of David Beckham and tennis legend

Bjorn Borg.

“Cristiano Ronaldo being at his pinnacle

of success has become the most

bankable footballer ever and this makes

him a Pioneer.”

Tete-a-tete Interview with Dr. Arvind Rangaswamy, Professor of Marketing, Penn State

University

at K J Somaiya Institute of Management Studies & Research, Mumbai

on the 19th of September 2014

Interviewer : Thank you very much for taking time out. You’re a leading authority in the

field of analytics and it’s a great pleasure to have you here! My first question is the most

obvious. You’re an IIT+IIM alumnus. What made you take up academia when you could

have easily become a Fortune 500 CEO by now?

Dr. Arvind : That’s a very personal kind of decision that people have to come to. There

are two different kinds of jobs. But even in academia, you have to be an entrepreneur in

order to be successful. I could think of an idea that goes into a paper five years from

now—it is in some way a CEO type of a job, in that the CEO has to place the company

in a favourable way for what happens five years from now. So I don’t see, at least at a

conceptual level, what a CEO does and what an academic professor does to be very

different. Of course the CEO has a lot more managerial and executional responsibility. As

for my own choice, I worked for about a year before going into academia. The only

reason I did that is because I met Philip Kotler [while I was at IIM Calcutta]. My

interaction with him indicated that this is an area that I could pursue. But even then in

the first year of my PhD I wasn’t sure this is what I wanted to do—it all seemed very

abstract and theoretical, whereas all my training at IIT and IIM was more concrete.

22 THE MARKSMAN

But I met another colleague and a professor who’s on the thesis committee, named

Andris Zoltners, he had a very applied orientation towards research and that made me

feel more comfortable, feel that maybe there are topics that I can work on that had

wider implications. He then went on to start a very successful company—one of the

leading consulting companies in marketing, called ZS Associates—so I felt that academia

and practice are not all that removed from each other—if you make your academic

research sort of relevant to business, which is what I do. And the other good thing about

academia is that you are pretty much left to yourself to do what you want. If you are

passionate about something and you can responsibly manage your own time, it’s a good

profession. It doesn’t pay like a CEO job, but on the other hand it gives you a lot more

time. So I didn’t make a conscious decision, I evolved into it.

I : What are the three greatest challenges that the field is facing currently—sort of the

Holy Grail of marketing?

A : One of the biggest problem, as I see it, is that marketing online and marketing offline

are sort of coming together. People haven’t figured out how to make this transition and

linkage seamless. So the future CMOs and marketing managers have to figure out a way

to make a seamless link between the online world and the offline world, because

consumers today are transitioning between these media during their purchase processes.

I think this is a big challenge and presents a lot of opportunities.

The second would be the need for constant innovation. Marketers have not really

thought deeply about business model innovations. They’re talking maybe about marketing

innovations, specific programs, but to look at business model itself as changing—the

innovation today is not only in technology but also in how to put it all together in a way

that creates a fundamentally good value proposition. I don’t see too many marketing

people thinking like that but I think it’ll become more and more important for them to

be focussed more on business model innovation.

The third thing is that today all the markets are global. If you put anything online it’s a

globally accessible market. And we haven’t come to terms with all the issues related to

globalisation. There’s a lot of friction across borders—physical limitations, language

barriers—yet the needs of people are evolving in a similar way. The way people use

mobile phones all over the world. I think for the next generation CMOs it’s going to be

important to answer—“how to be a globally oriented manager?” I also think that another

problem is that marketing organisations are designed for investors markets, and so

marketing itself has to undergo a transformation. Today’s managers are going to be caught

up in these processes.

OCTOBER 2014 23

Tete-a-tete

Tete-a-tete

I : If you were put in the shoes of a first-year MBA student today, how would you see the

world and what would you be eager to do?

A : A lot of the same concerns would come to me—if I want to be in marketing, I have to

now do more things than just marketing—marketing has become an activity for the

entire organisation. It now depends on how the entire organisation interfaces with

consumers. So I should forget about a functional view of marketing and think about how

marketing as a concept can be deployed and how I can be a more effective marketer at

an organisational level rather than functional level. The second thing is technology—I’d be

immersing myself in it. I went to the Digital Marketing Exposition in Cologne last week

before I came here, out of 30,000 delegates, I’d say less than 10% there were marketing

people. Most of the people running all the digital campaigns are the ones who are

designing your website; they’re also the people creating the marketplaces of tomorrow.

So marketers have to be worried if they’re not techno savvy. On the other hand, there’s a

strong role still for branding and brand management. So you can be somebody interested

more in either the branding component and building values or towards the

technologically enabled marketing space—everything in between is a fuzzy thing—I don’t

know how many great options lie in the middle.

I : What do you think is the precise role of quantitative techniques in marketing? How

would you emphasise or de-emphasise it?

A : In all of marketing or any business discipline, [things] are taking place increasingly in a

very information-rich environment. Any quantification is simply a consequence of that

environment—when something can be measured, you’ll measure it, because it can be

used to make decisions. But the problem is you could be measuring the easy things and

not the real issues. You know you can measure page ranks and how many visitors came,

but what I really want to measure is how is my website affecting my brand, or am I

creating more loyalty; this is where the modelling and analytics come in. So what’s

happening today is at least some quantification is going on, and the need for that is

obvious. People at Google and Amazon have raised the stakes. But what you have to be

careful about is not to get sidetracked by what is easy to measure and think hard about

what the underlying factors and structures. That’s why a deep sense of quantification and

modelling is needed. I don’t think most marketing students are going to do that; it

requires a skill base that many marketing students don’t have. And maybe marketing

people are coming into the softer side. But I think there’ll be a growing component of

marketing that’ll be quantified—whether by marketing people, statisticians or computer

scientists—whoever it is, eventually it’s going to get quantified and model based.

24 THE MARKSMAN

BOOK WORM

Wondering what is this buzz all about?

Can’t get enough of hearing about this new

trend in town? Did you pick one thing over

another just because your friend

recommended so? Or are you amazed at

how a “sleeper” turned into a box-office

hit overnight? If you wish to weave a

similar magic for your own company, then

keep your eyes peeled! This edition is

packed with a plethora of fresh and

interesting instances on the mechanics of

buzz, which might as well strike you by a

unique word-of-mouth campaign idea to

catapult your product on the path of

success!

A lot has changed since Rosen wrote the

first edition. We are living today in a virtual

world where the consumer is loaded with

choices and information. Tools like search

engines, social media and discussion

forums, each have their own opportunity

to spread word-of-mouth marketing like

wild forest fire.

The Anatomy of Buzz Revisited

By Emanuel Rosen

In this revised edition-drawn from

interviews of more than 150 marketing

leaders and researchers, backed by their

success stories of building buzz for major

brands, be it B&J’s free cone day campaign

or his personal experience with EndNote.

One realizes that creating the right buzz

for a product ignites the consumers’

excitement and gets him talking about it. In

this wild-goose chase, that’s what can make

for the winning sprint and in the end all

the difference!

OCTOBER 2014 25

From the top of Red Fort, Narendra

Modi roared “Let’s resolve to steer the

country to one destination. We have it in

us to move in that direction.” Such was

his confidence; he said “the world is

looking at Asia. I don’t have to waste

time to invite. I need to give address.”

And 42 days later, he launched the

MAKE IN INDIA campaign and made

the country proud.

Social Media: The Facebook page

crossed one million likes in one month.

The twitter handle was soon up with

over 30K followers. Vox, BBC, Guardian

and Washington Times, every corner of

the world was soon buzzing with the

rise of the Indian industrial revolution.

Here is an insider’s perspective towards

the model Modi is following. As

someone who has lived in this country

for more than two decades, I find the

following challenges to it:

Stringent laws! High tax rates! Lack of

trained man power! Tough land

acquisition rules!

Make in India: Global Implications

FEATURED ARTICLES

And India wants to foster innovation,

attract foreign capital and protect and

develop intellectual property. How do

they do that?

Modi defined how he is going to make

the business in India easy. He spoke of

a dedicated portal for business queries,

ease of policies and labour laws, an

invest India facilitation cell as a

reference point for guiding foreign

investors and assistance from their

entry till departure and faster security

clearances for all projects.

#oneDirection #incredibleIndia

#MakeInIndia

It seems that the sleeping tiger has

finally woken up and has roared at the

dragon. Holding the industry investors

meet the same day as China was sure a

bold step. From oil and gas to

infrastructure, from IT to tourism, from

renewable energy to electronic

systems: this initiative has the ability to

become India’s greatest story ever told.

Adwitiya Tiwari

- XLRI, Jamshedpur

26 THE MARKSMAN

FEATURED ARTICLES

An MBA student always speaks of

frameworks to define any situation. I

won’t be an exception here. Here is my

view of the larger implications of this

move.

a) Foreign investments have always found

the labour laws pegging their businesses.

ILO ratifications, labour unions on the

prowl, but labour amendments like

increasing the number of workers from

20 to 40 in case of a non-power

manufacturing process and 10 to 20 in

case of power, companies will find their

work lot easier. The overtime hours have

increased from 50/quarter to 100/quarter

and relaxation time during the working

hours for women. Talk about flexibility!

b) In the bigger macro-economic picture:

the Indian market has become bigger. The

PM calls FDI as “first develop India,” and

with 100% FDI in single-brand retail,

telecom, 49% in defence sector will surely

create some power balance in the

economic blocs of ASEAN. While

Philippines is offering tax incentives to

investors in telecom and is seeing 24%

rise in FDI, and China’s FDI falling to 2.9%

over the past two years, it will be

interesting to see the counter measures

launched by our Asian neighbours.

#oneDirection #incredibleIndia

#MakeInIndia

c) Rise in economy only means clashes in

power equations. The power bloc struggle

becomes tighter between India and China.

Border clashes, Brahmaputra water issues

and India’s improving relation with

Washington will only make the North

Eastern Frontier of the home country a

territory of caution. With MIA, the

November 2014 Summit of World

Economic Forum [WEF] and CII is bound

to define new stakeholder opportunities

for the new government. After all, NDA

has been propagandising about Public

Private Partnership in its manifesto.

d) They promised improvement in

standards of living for all. A per capita of

74,920 Rs and 111th Rank on World

Happiness Index are not happy figures.

Jobs for 10 million people, and 100 smart

cities promised by Arun Jaitley—well,

nobody said the path of MIA is easy.

e) President Mukherjee’s recent visit to

Finland was more than diplomatic. India

plans to engage with the Nordic nation

and learn its knowledge-based economy

and clean technology. One of the five

Centres of Innovation by Finland,

FinCode run in India. Finish companies’

like Nokia–Siemens, Kone elevators,

Wartsila are planning to set office here

means innovation and technology growth.

OCTOBER 2014 27

3rd Largest TV market, 5th in World food

processing industry, 4th largest

automotive market—this can’t just get

any better. The following tweet from

MIA’s twitter handle aptly concludes this

amazing scenario.

“India's transformation into a

global manufacturing powerhouse

has begun. Stay up to speed. Follow

the Lion!”

#oneDirection #incredibleIndia

#MakeInIndia

f) India’s soft power is set to unleash. Walt

Disney, Bloomberg have been investing here

and co-production agreements have been

signed with Italy, Germany, Brazil, UK, France,

New Zealand, Poland, Spain and Canada to

carry on the Indian movies and shows. 30

world heritage sites, 25 bio-geographic

zones, eco and religious tourism and 6.97

million visitors, the world is noticing India’s

culture and diversity. Investment in these

sectors by Cox and Kings, Thomas Cook,

etc., is going to make it one of the most

popular tourist destinations.

FEATURED ARTICLES

28 THE MARKSMAN

SquAreheaD

OCTOBER 2014 29

BUZZ

CLUES

PUZZLE ACROSS

1. What is the name of the character

played by Hussain Dalal in the recent

Nescafe Stammering Stand-up comedian

act?

2. The Chairman & Managing Director of

The Country Club,India is Mr. Yeragudi

______. (6,5)

4. Concentrating all marketing efforts on

a small but specific and well defined

segment of the population is generally

termed as _____ marketing

7. Complete the link with a brand's name.

Grasim Industries,Louis Phillip,Pantaloons

Fashion & Retail,___________.(5,7)

9. The India-born billionaire related to

Blackberry and its funds.(4,5)

DOWN

3. “High Performance. Delivered.”

5. Which watch company does Shah Rukh

Khan endorse?(3,5)

6. The name (fondly) given to the online

giant,Flipkart, after its Bumper sale,Big

billion day, was being criticised all over

the place.

8. Which is the official beverage and

snack partner of ICC?

Answers:

Across:

1.Rishi 2.Rajeev Reddy 4.Niche 7.Peter England 9.Prem Watsa

Down:

3.Accenture 5.Tag Heuer 6.Flopkart 8.Pepsico

30 THE MARKSMAN

Call for ARTICLES

CALL FOR ARTICLES NOVEMBER 2014

Articles can be sent on any one of the following topics*:

*Please ensure that there is no plagiarism and all references are

clearly mentioned.

The best adjudged article will be given a Winner’s Certificate.

Deadline for the submission of article will be : 20th November, 2014

1. One article can have only one author.

2. Your article should be approximately 800-850

words and MUST be replete with relevant

pictures that can be used to enhance the

article.

3. Font Type: Gill Sans MT

4. Font Size: 14.

5. Send your article in .doc/.docx format to

marksman.simsr@somaiya.edu

6. Subtitle line: Your name_Institute

Name_Course Year

7. Kindly name your file as : Your name_Topic

OCTOBER 2014 31

1. ISL: Opening new avenues for sports

marketers

2. Snapchat: Revolutionizing the way events

are marketed

3. The War off the maps: E-commerce battle

To subscribe to "The Marksman",

Follow the link:-

http://interfacesimsr.weebly.com/

the-marksman.html

OR drop in a mail/contact us at :

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he-marksman.html

THE TEAM TWEETS by Minoli Sheth

It’s all about AD-itude by Dhruv Maheshwari

Brand MARKive by

Palak Thakkar

COVER STORY by Sukanya Remesh

SPECIAL STORY by Vasundhara Tewari

REWIND by

Dilip Anatharaman

FAUX PAS by Akshay Peshave

HALLMARK CAMPAIGN by Sankalp Thakur

PIONEER by

Dilip Anatharaman

Tete-a-Tete by

Akshay Peshave

BOOKWORM by Kavya Dubey

SquAreheaD by Vasundhara Tewari

BUZZ by Abhijit Sharma

PROOF READ by Minoli Sheth

Abhijit Sharma

DESIGNING by Kavya Dubey

Rahul Vangani

Sukanya Remesh

PROMOTIONS by

Dilip Anatharaman

Sankalp Thakur

The MARKSMAN is the

newsletter of INTERFACE, the

Marketing Club at K.J. Somaiya

Institute of Management Studies

and Research, Mumbai.

Images used in THE

MARKSMAN are subject to

copyright. THE MARKSMAN

does not take any responsibility

of any kind of plagiarism in the

articles received from students

of other colleges.

The TEAM

32 THE MARKSMAN