Markathon November 2014

Vice President SalesUltratech Cement

Marketing Magazine of IIM Shillong Volume 6 | Issue 5

Novem

ber 2014

Vartalaap with Mr. R Suresh

MARKATHON

Evolutionof

MarketingMedia

From The EditorThis month’s perspectives cover the marketing strategies employed by two product classes – movies and perfume. The winning entry for this month is “New Trends in Movie Marketing” which explores the history of marketing ef-forts made by some of the iconic movies in Indian Cin-ema. The second article this month is the “Brand Audit of AXE” which looks at how the brand elements of the popular deodorant have been aligned to its core message of sex appeal.The specials this month include Brand Story which covers the journey of Tata Motors from the iconic Indica to the much talked about Nano. We also bring to you Radical Thoughts which explores some of the social campaigns on social media which grabbed nationa-wide and world-wide attention and the emergence of this medium in the social activism space. And of course we have Updates and Ad-dicted to give you your monthly dose of latest happenings and advertisements in the marketing world. Hearty congratulations to the winners and a big thank you to all the participants for their contribution. To our read-ers? We hope you enjoy reading this edition as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you! We look forward to your feedback (good or bad) and hope to better ourselves with every issue of the Markathon.

Cheers!

As autumn slowly gives way to winter, Markathon brings out its November edition dunked in marketing. The last few days of October saw some wonderful campaigns by popular brands on the occasion of Diwali. While Pepsico sent everybody into a bout of nostalgia with their “Ghar-wali Diwali”, Tanishq brought a lump to our throats with its beautiful campaign centred on gifting during Diwali. November saw the “Whatsapp Blue Double Tick” trend-ing on major social media sites. While some hailed it as an iconic move by the cross-platform mobile messaging app, many considered it as a breach of privacy and said that it bodes ill for numerous relationships and friendships. More on the technical front – Amazon released its new device “echo” which is like your intelligent and talking virtual assistant utilizing the power of the Amazon cloud though many touted it as iphone Siri’s tower-like rip-off. What’s your take on it? On the home front - the power of Brand Modi was exhibited once again as the entire World had its eyes on Sydney, where Prime Minister Modi vis-ited and interacted with the Indian population and the Australian government. Our cover story this month talks about the evolution of marketing mediums over the years. As the brands across the world have woken up to the power and reach of un-conventional mediums, does that mean the end of some of the conventional mediums like print and television? Dig in to find out! The Vartalaap this month is with Mr. R. Suresh, Vice President - Sales, Mumbai Region – Ultra Tech Cement Ltd. where he shares his experience in mar-keting across various industries and how an industry like cement which was considered to be a commodity till now tackles marketing and positioning.

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 november 2014

ContentsPerspectives

New Trends in Movie MarketingRohit Menon & Praveen M BIM, Trichy

AXE Brand AuditBharathi Khera | IIM Lucknow

Evolution of Marketing MediaAnsul Jindal & Kasturi Guha Thakurta | IIM Shillong

VartalaapMr. R SureshVice President SalesUltratech Cement

Eye 2 EyeDelivering customer experience in digital marketing – an avenue for creativity??Saket Hawelia | IIM Shillong & Deepanwita Nandi | TAPMI

Silent VoiceChetan Bhagat’s Half GirlfriendTrichy Duo | IIM Trichy

Specials

AddictedSwati Pamnani & Yash B. Bhambhwani | IIM Shillong

Brand StoryNishant Prakash | IIM Shillong

Radical ThoughtsVarsha Poddar | IIM Shillong

UpdatesAmit Sonwani | IIM Shillong

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IIM Shillong1MARKATHON

pected to reach $3.6 billion in 2018. This can be seen from the fact that most ‘super hit’ movies till a decade ago in the Hindi movie Industry (The largest in India) would have made maximum Rs. 50 crores, but now anything less than Rs. 100 crores is considered less and many movies have even touched the Rs, 300 crores mark. In this scenario and with the number of screens in the country expected to grow exponentially, film producers are not just pump-ing in money to produce a more world class film but they also need to market these movies in new and improved fashion. Data The global film and entertainment industry is expected to grow at a CAGR of 4.2% in the next five years and is expect-ed to reach $139 billion in 2017. According to FICCI-KPMG report, the Indian film Industry is expected to grow at 11.5% over the next 5 years reaching $3.1 billion by 2017. The gross box office was $1.5 billion in 2013. The industry produced 1178 movies annually on an average from 2005-10. India is the largest producer of films in the world pro-duced twice the number of films compared to Hollywood. India has around 13,000 theatres and 14 million Indians go to movie on a daily basis. The industry is expected to grow owing to the rising global audience for Bollywood mov-ies, increase in income levels and growth of multiplexes. According to KPMG, consumer discretionary spending is expected to rise from 39% to 70% by 2025. India has be-come an attractive destination for films as evident by the increase in international studios like Fox, Disney, Warner Bros in Bollywood. Indian enterprises like Sun Pictures, PVP cinemas, Adlabs, Zee apart from production and distribution are having tie ups with major international studios. With 100% FDI in film industry, the industry has enormous potential to grow and has been attracting for-eign investors. 4P’s of Movie Marketing The 4P’s of movie marketing are product, place, price and

BY rohit menon & praveen m bim, trichy

perspective november 2014

New trends in movie marketing

Since the beginning of Human civilization, man has been fascinated by images and emotions. Initially it was rock paintings, which evolved into words and books but books required a large amount of

effort from the side of the consumer to use their imagina-tion and make sense of what was presented to them. This started changing with the introduction of plays and the-atres. From Ancient Greece to India, From Mesopotamia to Ancient China all civilizations were greatly influenced by their visual media industry, sometimes even starting revo-lutions and bringing down governments. But this industry had one weak point, the ability to be mobile. This changed with the invention of the camera in 1826 by Nicéphore Niépce, an 18th century French inventor which eventually led to the invention of the motion picture camera. The first ‘motion picture’ was developed by British pho-tographer Eadweard Muybridge in 1878. This film which showed the Fast motion of a Horse called ‘Sallie’ led to many people experimenting in this field and eventually led to the first movie film ‘Rounday Garden Scene’ in 1888. Since then, Movie films have become a part and parcel of even the most remote area of the world. In India Dr. Da dasaheb Phalke directed the first full length Indian motion picture ‘Raja Harishchandra’ in 1913. In 2012, a total of 1603 movies were made in India in 22 different languages, making it the largest film industry in the World in terms of number of movies produced. Currently, the Indian film industry has a total size of approx. $2 billion and is ex

perspective

promotion. The product is from the producer/director in the form of intellectual property which is distributed in various forms. The script with an innovative screenplay is the core of marketing strategy. The movie is marketed based on the cast crew, genre, theme of the movie etc. The movie is marketed before the release through post-ers, audio CDs, teasers, photo shoots and trailers. The product must ultimately satisfy the audiences. The pricing for the customers is based on the price fixed by the multi-plexes and theatres. The prices are more of less standard-ized in multiplexes. The other pricing elements are pro-motion budget, revenue split ups, licences, title rentals, subscription services and dvd writes, However there are price contracts between the producers and distributors. The place is where the product is delivered which could be theatres, internet, in homes. With inventions in tech-nology place is not restricted to theatres. Movies can be viewed over the internet, pay per view DTH services, cell phones and hand held services and through CDs, DVDs. The promotional activities include advertisements in me-dia, print ads, screening the trailers in film festivals, film placements, internet sites, Facebook fan pages, spread-ing viral videos, cast appearance in chat shows, interviews & public places like malls, merchandising and through tie up with companies. The different media used are radio, internet, mobile phones, print media and movies use co-branding and in- film advertising.

Segmentation and Targeting The market could be segmented based on the gender, age, demography and class. The target audience should be identifiable and must be easily accessible to market the movie. In India, segmentation is mainly based on the reach that a movie may have and the kind of audience they are trying to reach out to. For example, a movie like Dabangg which will have a rural reach will be marketed differently from a movie like Finding Fanny which is tar-geted towards more sophisticated “multiplex” audiences.

E-Marketing

One of the areas that have been extensively used in recent times for marketing a movie has been the internet. A clas-sic example is Ra One which had done marketing for about 52 crores out of which 15 crores was spent on online. The movie had an official website with updates about the film and had tie up with youtube, Google G plus, Twitter and Facebook. It also had tie up with 25 companies including Force India, Nokia, Videocon and Nerolac. They adopted 360 degree marketing through merchandises, games and comics to attract kids. The production house had a tie up with Sony Computer Entertainment to launch a game on Ra One on PlayStation. It also collaborated with UTV India Games to create comics based on movie characters.


november 2014perspectiveGhajini marketed by creating websites www.remem-berghajini.com and www.findghajini.com. The first site involved people to upload their pictures where Aamir would add his personal notes and would get an informa-tion kit along with movie stills. The second website went viral where the users can play the role of ghajini and find others based on the clues provided. The strategy created a huge buzz as they engaged the audience to play the role of ghajini. Aamir was also active in his blogs writing about the movie and posting his experiences.

Latest Trends in Movie Marketing in India

Many film producers have already begun using more in-novative methods than just radio, TV, product collabora-tions or music launches to present their movies to the audiences. Some of the latest movies which have mar-keted themselves differently to audiences are:1. For her 2012 film Kahaani, Vidya Balan promoted the movie by attending all the events with a large baby bump as she was playing a pregnant lady in the movie.2. Before the release of his action thriller Bang Bang in 2014, Hrithik Roshan on lines of the ice bucket challenge gave many of his Bollywood colleagues ‘BangBang Dare’ in which they were made to do some stunts or some-thing else gutsy.3. For the promotion of 3 Idiots, Aamir Khan went miss-ing and left 7 clues for his fans to find him, as the movie was about a IIT prodigy.4. Vidya Balan once again proved how gutsy she was when she dressed up as a beggar and went to the studio where Hrithik Roshan was shooting an Ad to promote her movie Bobby Jasoos, a detective who is good with disguises.5. Rani Mukherjee who played a tough cop in Mardaani, spent Independence Day with Jawans in Baramulla, Kash-mir & also felicitated many actual brave heart women.6. Aamir Khan also promoted his movie Ghajini in 2008 by giving people similar haircut to his in leading malls throughout the country.7. Parineeti Chopra and Aditya Roy Kapur promoted their movie Daawat-e-ishq by travelling to various cities around the country and trying out the local delicacies.

Conclusion

As mentioned earlier, the reach, budget and scale of movies are increasing exponentially. A study had found that in India the screen to population ratio is 8:1,000,000, while in US its 115:1,000,000. With this number rapidly increasing, newer modes to market a movie have to be found and are being explored as we speak. Barriers of language and genre are eroding fast. Only those movie makers who can cope with this change by adjusting and adapting can survive.



BY BHARATHI KHERA IIM LUCKNOW

BRAND AUDIT

AXE is one of the most popular male grooming brands in the world by being a guy’s best first move. Cool, adventurous and never dull, AXE is designed to keep guys a step ahead in the dat-

ing game. AXE was first launched in France in 1983 by Unilever. But now, men in more than 90 countries from America to Asia use the brand.

This brand was launched in India in 1999 with the AXE De-odorants. It was the largest selling male deodorant in In-dia and has a variety of grooming products such as AXE Af-tershave lotions and AXE Body Wash. Unilever’s research and development teams work with a panel of ‘expert nos-es’ to create AXE products, and come up with fragrances that help men smell and feel their best. Every aroma is tested on the target audience – real women. Every year, a new AXE deodorant fragrance is launched, combining seductive scents with the latest technology from the irre-sistible chocolate-inspired Dark Temptation fragrance to the stimulating AXE Rise range.

AXE’s award-winning, attention-grabbing ads never fail to push boundaries.

CBBE Pyramid The Consumer Based Brand Equity Model is the differ-ential effect that brand knowledge has on customer re-sponse to the marketing of that brand.

Brand Salience

How often and how easily does a customer think of the brand under various purchase or consumption situations? AXE has achieved salience across many countries because of its ads. The easy to identify black colour of the bottle is most easy to recall. This helps identify the depth of aware-ness of the brand.

The unique understanding of young males and the dis-tinguishing fragrance brings in the usage situation of im-pressing a girl anytime anywhere. Looking at the breadth of awareness, AXE has launched a variety of other prod-ucts like body spray and shower gel. The ease of recogni-tion and recall, the strength and clarity of category mem-bership are evident in the brand AXE.



Brand Performance

How well the service or product meets customers’ func-tional needs? AXE is positioned not only as a deodorant but as a body spray. It is considered as the best alternative to perfumes or colognes. It was positioned as a solution to guys who find it difficult to get dates. This caught on through ad-vertisements and word of mouth which helped AXE establish its performance and brand name. According to the research paper by Ms. S. Arunpriya and Ms. M. Shanthini Devi an individual relates AXE with individu-ality and confidence. Though it did not practically help guys achieve dates, but its competitive pricing encour-aged young male users to keep trying. Brand Image Describes the extrinsic properties of the product or ser-vice, including the ways in which the brand attempts to meet customers’ psychological or social needs. This is related to the most intangible aspects of the brand. The consumers can form images directly from their own experiences or indirectly through the adver-tisements or other sources of information. The image positioned by HUL was that of the implied magic and playful chemistry. The masculine appeal especially for the young generation and the opposite sex attraction image have played wonders with the minds of consum-ers. The unique style of communication and advertising involving “Angels”, “The Chocolate Man”, “AXE Anarchy” or the latest investments such as the launch of the new “AXE Apollo”.

Brand Judgements

Focus on customers’ own personal opinions and evalua-tion. This brand is considered to be robust and spirited. Though the brand does not achieve what it claims to achieve it is considered to be young and modern. The excitement – the feel good factor is something all con-sumers can relate to. The advertisement portrays simple young men and not body building models which estab-lishes its credibility. However, the brand does not get girls as easily as the guy in the commercials does.

Brand Feelings

The customers’ emotional responses and reactions with respect to the brand. The brand is considerably realis-tic and moderately honest. Apart from this, it is some-what intelligent and reliable. It gives its users a feeling of confidence and a sense of individuality. Successful and charming outdoorsy brand without any associations with the social status of a person. It can appeal to any

Tom, Dick and Harry. The feeling which consumers get is that of an approval and respect among peers.

Brand Resonance

Describes the relationship customers have with the brand and the extent to which they feel ‘in sync’ with it.The most successful brands that achieve resonance include the brand being used as a verb. AXE has had extremely loyal customers with repeat purchase rates. However, in the recent past, in about 2011, AXE lost its market share to Fogg and to Engage in late 2013. This brand is preferred due to the excitement, the masculin-ity appeal, confidence and superiority associated with it. Since the product category of deodorants is highly vari-ety seeking and customers tend to change their brands often. AXE still enjoys a salient brand recall because of its established positioning.

Brand Positioning

AXE used the strongest brand positioning which was that of “sex appeal”. Al Ries and Jack Trout talk about Position-ing as a “communication tool to reach target audiences in a crowded market”. Companies should find unoccu-pied positions to be a leader. If unable to find any prime market positions, companies may then negatively repo-sition competitors. AXE found an area they could occu-py in consumers’ minds to increase their market share. Their raunchy advertisements show hundreds of beauti-ful women being unable to resist the scent of AXE prod-ucts. AXE not only has a strong socio-demographic point of parity that provides males with nice smelling body washes and sprays, but also shifts to an unoccupied area in the market that positions the strong sexual attraction of women when their male counterparts use AXE prod-ucts. AXE exploits its psychographic knowledge that its male consumer’s values and attitudes revolve around beautiful women. The point of difference is hence “at-tractiveness” of the product scents to narrow down a target audience.Axe is the pioneer in the area of market-ing deodorants as weapons of seduction.Although Axe has started this naughty marketing, many international brands like Old Spice, Yardley, Park Avenue and domestic brands such as Engage, Wild Stone, Set Wet, Nivea have now adopted thisstrategy and positioned themselves very similar to Axe. Due to this, there are not many PODs for Axe when compared to its competitors.

Frame of Reference Who the Customer is? The customers for AXE are the young males. These are mostly in high school, college or a little older than college who need help with dating women. However, AXE is being used by a wide age group


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november 2014

of males due to its powerful establish-ment of the opposite sex attraction image.

Who are the competitors? The major competitors of AXE are Fogg and Engage in the current market scenario. Fogg launched in 2011 overtook AXE as the number 1 brand because of its differentiating image of that of liquid and not gas. Engage deodorants launched in the recent past overtookAXE at the number 2 position by establishing the couple deodorant image. Engage has used sex ap-peal as well, however, where AXE was focused on only the young males, the couple image portrayed by Engage appealed to the crowd pushing AXE to number 3 from 1.

How similar is the brand to competitors? Fogg launched with a completely different image with no models used in the advertisements which was a breakthrough. AXE was widely criticized as objectifying women resulting in a few AXE commercials being banned. Fogg gained mar-ket share by differentiating itself completely and say-ing it had more liquid than gas in its deodorants. AXE and Engage both use sex appeal for their positioning.

How different the brand is to that of the competitors? A major breakthrough by AXE was the opposite sex attrac-tion image which was taboo in India. This positioning was later on copied by the other deodorants, however, well after it had created a visual hammer in the minds of the consumer. Though AXE failed to achieve what it prom-ised about the opposite sex attraction, the appeal was so strong that it did not stop people from trying it out.

Points of Parity of AXE

The unique fragrance and long lasting freshness is in sync with all other body sprays and deodorants. The cool black packaging of male deodorants that symbolize masculin-ity. Young and modern that gives you a feeling of excite-ment and freshness like most other deodorants. The ad-venturous and never dull has kind of been stereotypical in the Indian deodorant market.

Points of Differences of AXE

The sexual attractiveness of women was a first which was started by AXE. It gave customers a sense of social ac-ceptance, a feeling of confidence and also helped them identify their individuality in the society. The robust and spirited image with excitement and feel good factor. The implied magic and playful chemistry helped create a be-lief so strong that it exists till date.

Consumer Perspectivea. Personally Relevant: Did not use celebrities in the ad vertisements and did not have any particular social status

divisions. b. Distinctive and Superior: Opposite sex attraction- and gave its customers a feeling of social acceptance and su-periority.c. Believable and Credible: Though slightly unbelievable- the girls going gaga- the brand established credibility by portraying average young male in the advertisements.

Brand Mantra

To define a brand mantra, the best way is to make a men-tal map of the attributes that can be associated with the brand and follow the steps:.Mental Maps -> Core Brand Values -> Brand Mantra A mental map of the AXE brand attributes are:Distinguishing fragrance, Adventurous and never dull, Masculinity, Seductive, Robust and Spirited, Cool, black-Packaging, Confident and Individuality, Implied Magic and Playful Chemistry, Young and Modern, The Excite-ment – feel good factor, Acceptance and SuperiorityThe core brand values that can be associated are:Fragrance, Confidence, Masculinity, Seduction, Accep-tance and SuperiorityThe Brand Mantra:A brand mantra an articulation of the heart and soul of the brand and conveys the core brand promise. Brand mantras are typically 3-5 words that capture the essence of the brand and conveys the positioning of the brand. The brand mantra of Axe can be:“Fragrance, Confidence, Seduction”The 3 components of a brand mantra include:1. Brand Function: Fragrance2. Descriptive Modifier: Confidence3. Emotional Modifier: Seduction

perspective

The history of marketing can be traced back to the longest possible time- probably further than you thought. It will not be an exaggeration to say that it is as old as civilization itself. The probability of suc-cess of any business lies in the marketing strategy it adopts. Simply put, if you are not marketing your business, you are in for a loss. While this concept remained unchanged, the ways of marketing have changed several folds over the last few centuries.

1450-1700- Printed Advertisements AppearsThe concept of marketing started many moons back, as far back as 1450! The first printed advertising started with the invention of ‘moveable type’, which made mass printing possible for the first time.If an advertisement is printed on paper, be it news-papers, magazines, pamphlets, brochures, flyers, newsletters, or anything else that can be considered as a portable printed medium, then it is counted as a subsidiary of print advertising. It is difficult to determine exactly how old print ad-

vertising actually is. In 17th century England, differ-ent forms of advertisements appeared in newspapers and on other printed mediums. There are examples of printed pieces dating back to early Egyptian times. But the mass consensus is that the seed of printed advertisement, as we know it today, was sowed in 1836, when a French newspaper called La Presse charged money for advertisements and subsequent-ly lowered the price of the newspaper.As the civilization of the Middle Ages in Europe be-gan to expand, and since the general masses was un-able to read, they would use images associated with their trade such as a shoe, an iron scythe, a cloak, a diamond or a bag of flour, instead of signs that read “cobbler”, “blacksmith”, “tailor”, “jeweler” or “grocer”. Fruits and vegetables were sold in the city square in the carts and wagons and their proprietors used street callers (town criers) to announce their whereabouts for the convenience of the customers.In the 18th century weekly advertisements began to be featured in newspapers in England. These early print advertisements were mainly used to promote books, newspapers and research papers, which be-came increasingly affordable with advances in the printing press; and medicines, which were increas-ingly in demand as disease ravaged Europe.

1730’s -Magazines Used as a Marketing ToolOne of the earliest examples of magazine is Erbauli-che Monaths Unterredungen, a literary and philoso-phy magazine, which was first published in 1663 in Germany. The Gentleman’s Magazine which was first published in 1731 in London, is considered as the first general-interest magazine. Edward Cave, who


cover story november 2014

Cover Story ByAnsul Jindal

&Kasturi Guha

Thakurta

IIM ShillongThe Evolution of Marketing

MediaMARKETING

BUDGET

edited The Gentleman’s Magazine under the pen name “Sylvanus Urban”, was the first one to use the term “magazine,” which was derived from the Arabic makhazin (or, storehouses). One of the oldest con-sumer magazines still in print is The Scots Magazine, which was first published in 1739. But soon the con-cept of magazine as marketing tools lost its charm and it caused a huge set back as inn 2011, 152 maga-zines ceased operations and further in 2012, 82 mag-azines were stopped publishing.

1836 - Posters Emerged in the MarketSoon we had an addition in the marketing tools when posters came into picture. During those times, post-ers were created in the mid-19th century in France as advertisements for new products. In less than ten years, the use of posters spread from France to other parts of Europe. They were also used for promotional activities for theater shows, opera shows and ma-jor events in Paris and throughout France. But Jules Cheret, “The Father of the Poster,” was the first one to give importance to poster for its artistic aura. Like most print media, graphic arts experienced a boost by the invention of the printing press. This allowed for the mass production of all shapes and sizes of posters. The technique that was used to print post-ers on stones is called lithography. This is printing by placing ink on a series of metal or stone (“lithos”) carvings. The Art of Lithography was invented by Al-ois Senefelder in 1798 in Austria. By 1848 the pro-cess had been made so easy that it was possible to print 10,000 sheers per hour. The architect of post-ers by Lithography was Jules Cheret (1836-1933). He worked in Paris, where his very first poster was en-titled Orphee aux Enfants(1858). In 1889, Cheret was awarded the ‘Legion of Honour’ for creating a “new branch of art.”

1867- Earliest recorded Billboard RentalsHumans have been crafting wall art since the time we lived in caves. Exactly when wall art ceased to be

just a form of artistic display and began to be used for marketing a business is an interesting question. In ancient Egypt the government used images engraved into stones to post the laws and regulations of the land. This carving into stones may be considered as the oldest form of recorded outdoor advertising.The modern-day billboard advertising approach can trace its origin to lithography, which was an invention of the late 1790s. The prominence of this invention is that it made it possible to produce posters and mar-keting journals in large numbers. But there was one major limitation to the outdoor billboards that were being produced at the time, and that was the quality of the posters - the elements did not withstand for prolonged periods of time.The circus groups were one of the first businesses to have profited from this new form of mass marketing because of which outdoor advertising underwent a major innovation and it brought us the modern bill-board advertising as we know today. After the inven-tion of lithography, billboard copy could be produced on a very large scale which made it significantly more effective as a marketing tool than it was before.

1920- 1972- Emergence of new mediums like Radio, TV and TelephoneOver the next few years, marketing moved relatively slowly. In 1922 radio became the next big medium of marketing and radio advertising originated. In 1933, the fraction of U.S. homes with radio crossed the halfway mark. In less than 20 years, first recorded use of television advertising was marked. The tele-phone, in 1946, became the next latest and greatest marketing opportunity during that time.TV advertising dominated the market since then. The very first television ad appeared on 1st July, 1941 during a baseball game on one of the local New York channels. The 10-second ad was dedicated to Bulova watches which cost a mere four dollars but it went on to completely revolutionize the television! Due to the overwhelming response from the Bulova adver-tisement and its grand success, other companies be-gan to realize the importance of television as a me-dium for marketing. They saw the need to jump on board with their marketing as well. Businesses like Pan American World Airways, Gimbel’s Department Store and Firestone Tire soon began to advertise on television thereafter. By 1948, several promoters were using television spots to reach the large audi-ence that owned television sets. Television’s increas-





ing popularity for marketing generated the formation of the American Association of Advertising Agencies to regulate commercials. Television became so popu-lar during that era that even the movie studios feared that television would dominate all other media!From the early 50’s to the late 70’s, television ads and telemarketing grew, while radio ads started to decline in popularity. TV ad revenue surpassed mag-azine and radio sales. Radio ad revenue dropped 9% after the previous year’s dip of 2% while TV revenues grew from 5% of total ad spending in 1953 to 15% in 1954.

Effective marketing is getting harder with passing days. Steve Jobs had once stated that it is not enough to kill bad ideas but you have to kill good ones too. This is because strategy keeps on changing with the evolving market and customer needs. By the mid of 20th Century, the common marketing approaches had become clichéd. Banner ads gave the impression of essentially wallpaper with a dismal- 1% conversion rate. Telemarketing had become inces-santly irritating and magazines had begun to feel the monetary pinch of Outbound Marketing after facing tough competition from television. By the late 1970s there developed a growing need to reconstruct the marketing trends that were prevalent at that time.

1973-1994- The Emerge of the Digital AgeDuring this era, emerging technologies continued to revamp the marketing landscape enabling new forms of marketing gain strength and develop. New technology came faster than ever fathomed. Mobile phones became all the rage in the 1990’s, and televi-sion replaced newspapers as the nation’s largest ad medium. Soon it was the age of the World Wide Web and email. New technology and marketing words were being created such as Search Engine Optimiza-

tion, Spam, the Internet and Blogs. With the invention of mobile phone in 1973 (that’s correct, 1973!), the digital age officially emerged. April 3, 1973, Motorola Researcher Dr. Martin Coo-per makes the first hand-held mobile phone call. Next up was the personal computer from IBM in 1981. Three years later, in 1984, Apple launches its mega successful Macintosh with an epic Super Bowl commercial directed by Ridley Scott and the televi-sion ad was one of the most cinematic moments to be broadcasted in 1984. The ad reportedly costed a whopping $900,000 to make! Print advertising became even easier with the emer-gence of desktop publishing and the personal com-puter, leading to an explosion in print advertisement which led newspaper ads fetch a revenue $25 Billion in 1985! Mobile phones became all the rage in the late 1990’s and TV displaced newspapers as the larg-est medium to put up ads. Total revenues collected from advertisements on cable television grew from $2.4 billion to an estimated $8.3 billon. During 1990-1994, 2G cell phone network advancements resulted in a boom in the rise of cell phone usage, thereby paving way for future advancements like marketing through SMS messaging which arrived in 1992.With the arrival of the ad server, using internet to market opened new frontiers for advertisers and contributed to the “dot-com” boom of the 1990s. Entire organizations operated majorly on advertising revenue, offering everything from discount coupons to free Internet access. In April 1994, the famous Phoenix law firm Canter and Seigel advertised their services by posting a message on several thousand newsgroups. This is likely the first ever recorded large scale automated message, a commercial example of spam.

1995-2002: The Bubble- New Technologies Contin-ue to EmergeDuring this period, companies began to experiment with newer marketing strategies by using the emerg-ing new technologies that had begun to pique the interest of wide audiences. Mobile phones gained popularity and the internet became a viable tool for commerce, opening the gates for an explosion in marketing. 1995 saw the launch of some of the first search engines: Yahoo and AltaVista, with ASK.com soon to follow in 1997. These services helped the us-ers find the information, products and services they desired. Number of people using the web searching


grew from 16 million in December 1995 to 70 million in December 1997. A new term, Search Engine Op-timization (SEO), was born to market a website and it was first used at a multimedia marketing group by John Audette. Companies would try to put their web-sites high in the SEO ranking placement to ensure higher accessibility to customers. Modern search engines started to appear in the mid-1990s, with Google making its debut in 1998. Pay Per Click came into play in 2000; until then, advertise-ments were charged at cost-per-thousand impres-sions or Cost per mille (CPM). Pay per click (PPC), also known as cost per click, is an online advertising mod-el used to direct traffic to websites, in which adver-tisers pay the website owner when the ad is clicked. Google and MSN popped up as the newest search engines. At the turn of the 21st century, a number of websites, including Google, revolutionized online advertising by emphasizing contextually relevant ads based on an individual’s browsing interests. This led to a plethora of similar efforts and an increasing trend of interactive advertising. How can we forget about blogging which started as a marketing tool in the late 1990’s. Brad Fitzpatrick started ‘LiveJournal’ in March 1999. Evan Williams and Meg Hourihan launched Blogger.com in August 1999 which was later purchased by Google in 2003. Both these blogging sites were effectively used as tools for marketing. This trend of blogging which be-gan with two sites in 1998 had 50 million blogs by mid-2006, many of which were dedicated to promo-tional activities.

The Age of Inbound Marketing- 21st CenturyTechnology kept on evolving and with it evolved the marketing media. The internet began to move quicker than ever. The internet began to enter a new age characterized by better information sharing and user friendly designs. With this emerged the trend

november 2014of not just providing the customers with information about the products to be sold but also creating value for customers. This new trend led to consumers en-gaging with brands in better ways. Instead of simply pushing advertising at consumers online, the ben-efits of customer delight and earning their business began to take hold. E-mail marketing became so invasive into people’s desktop that email users won big against spammers as the Can-Spam Act (Controlling the Assault of Non Solicited Pornography And Marketing Act) was signed into law by George W. Bush against sending unsolic-ited commercial emails. One of the effective tools started in 2005 was called Google Analytics, which generated a demand so high that they had to suspend new signups after one week. Google Analytics provided personalized search to deliver people with information similar to their previous search history. This served as a virtual mem-ory to remind the customers of a product they were once looking for and created a psychological impact which resulted in the customer buying those items that were displayed to them. MySpace and LinkedIn emerged in 2003, Facebook in 2004, Twitter in 2006 and the term Social Media began. With the arrival of E-Commerce, marketing media took a whole new turn. The digital media was began to be used not just as a tool for promotion but also to sell. In 2006, the E-Commerce site Amazon’s sales topped $10 billion which rose to nearly $25 billion in 2009. By 2012, Social Media and Blogs to-gether fetched Real Customers as well as Leads! Ac-cording to a survey, percentage of channel users who acquired customers through Twitter, Linkedin, Face-book and the Company Blog were 41%, 42%, 44% and 46% respectively.Marketing has come a long way in over 500 years. Though the motive remains same, marketing me-dia has kept on evolving with time. With technol-ogy growing at such a fast pace, these changes in the marketing media is interesting and exciting. As the marketing landscape continues to spread, it will grow all the more interactive and engaging with the focus shifting from one way push selling to a two-way communication between consumer and brand. With technology changing so rapidly, it’s difficult to fathom what the next marketing phenomenon would be. Companies that can ensure better value and en-gage customers in meaningful and innovative ways is bound to reap tremendous rewards in the coming years

vartalaap


vartalaap november 2014

VARTALAAPAn Interview with

Mr R Suresh

An alumni of XIMB and Andhra University, Mr R Suresh started his ca-reer in the year 1983 with Hindustan Unilever ltd and moved across var-ious companies like Blow Plast Ltd, Shriram Refrigeration ltd, Larsen & Toubro ltd and Grasim India ltd presently known as UltraTech Cement Ltd while gaining experience in different facets of sales and marketing in varied products like Animal feeds, Leo Mattel toys, Usha air condi-tioners and water coolers to Cement. His association with UltraTech Cement Ltd since 1991 has gained him in-depth domain expertise in cement sales and after occupying various posts and working in vari-ous segments of the market, he is presently the Vice President Sales.

“It’s becoming critical that at every facet of the orga-nization, at every touch-point where the customer in-teracts with the organization, he doesn’t go back with a negative impression. ”

Vice President

Sales

Ultratech Cement

vartalaap



to be so tight and so fast, it’s bound to integrate.

Markathon: Cement is a commodity, how does one differentiate?

I would like to answer it a little differently. I was there in Indus Water a couple of years ago. Can you guess the number of types of potatoes I saw over there? 33 kinds of potatoes. Now would you say potatoes are a commodity? Mexican potato, red potato, white po-tato, low starch potato, high starch potato and so on and so forth. Even when I was travelling from Guwa-hati to Shillong, I saw numerous hoardings of cement companies and everybody had their own taglines. So everybody tried to differentiate in what they were trying to offer. By and large, offer platform in case of cement has been strength and durability. But even with strength and durability, people are creating their own spaces. I think cement has long outgrown the commodity state and right now differentiation does play a vital role in purchase decision and as I men-tioned every company is trying to adopt some kind of differentiation. Some take strength while some take durability but at UltraTech we have taken the tagline of “It’s Engineer’s Choice” which covers both strength and durability. Now this is a functional product ulti-mately so when it says “engineer’s choice”, you have said it all. So that covers every aspect of this hot-shot product because ultimately who uses this product? Either a mason or an engineer. So the moment he endorses the product, you yourself have created a differentiation. You are no more a commodity.

Markathon: Tell us something about your switch from FMCG to the cement industry. How can we make one’s skills and expertise industry agnostic like you have made?

My basic selling area was sales. All thirty years I have been selling. You may move up the ladder horizon-tally or vertically but ultimately all of us are here to sell. You sell to each other, you sell to your families and you basically sell yourselves. The basic skill re-mains the same – it doesn’t change. The product may change, organizations may change but the tenets do remain the same and once you have got the basic te-nets in place, I don’t see much of a change between the computer industry or the cement industry or even animal husbandry.

Markathon: How do you think the gap between sales and marketing in the Indian industry has changed over time? Do you see it integrating over time?

Yeah it is integrating very fast and in the new econ-omy it has got to integrate even faster. The moment one gets into a planning mode and a marketing mode, the kind of cycles that one used to enjoy ear-lier (an elaborate planning period) do not exist now. It’s more of a plan as you go scenario. The speed to customer, your response to customer, your appre-ciation towards the customer got to be on the same page. So speed becomes essential and these are not vertical silos. They are actually to be combined and looked into and the loops between them would have



Markathon: Ultra Tech supplies RMC to other deal-ers and sells it under its own distribution as well. How is the clash of interest managed?

The relationship management when it comes to deal-ers, is extremely critical. Somewhere they must feel that the company and all its employees are working for their business. When they get this feeling, then the alignment happens. Coming to channel manage-ment – the only way you can look at channel man-agement is not what you do but rather how you do it. Thus profit needs to be given adequate importance but the manner in which you interact with them and give them these margins becomes equally or proba-bly more important. Thus you may give a higher prof-it but if you don’t do it with the kind of respect they expect, they will easily switch to a company which is giving them a lower margin but is more approach-able and gives them the respect they want. So when I say channel management, I am going back to the same thing. Whatever industry you are in, you are getting involved in feelings and relationships.

Markathon: Talking about the cement industry, what is the scope for women in this industry? It gen-erally comes across as a very male-biased industry.

In Ultra Tech, in most of the positions, women are prominently there. They may not be there in the front end but the back ends are generally governed with women and there is no gender bias per se in the industry. Barring the fact that most of these locales where constructions happen, accessibility is an is-

sue. Otherwise I don’t see any reason why a woman should not be a part of this industry.

Markathon: Tell us something about your focus on experiential marketing. How does one achieve this in an industry like cement where the experience is largely derived long-term?

When we say experience, it is also the delivery. It is also how you transact. It is also how you make the organization low-effort for the customer. The mo-ment you make it low-effort, it means that the cus-tomers find it easier to access you, at the same time they also find it convenient to talk to you. They have a relationship in place and based on that you can cre-ate a differentiation and that is entirely experiential. Even these companies which are coming into the e-commerce space are creating a new experience – they will have to deliver on time because one wrong experience will lead to a negative experience. So when you are dealing with an experiential economy, every part of your touch-point management will play a pivotal role. You can create differences in each of the touch-point that you are dealing with. So it’s a golden opportunity.

Markathon: Taking this forward, does Key Account Management at Ultra Tech play an important role in building this consistency in experience?

We were the first to start Key Account Management in the industry. It’s almost been 10 years. We’ve come a long way. Today we are the most preferred custom-ers for most of the engineering buyers in this space

When we say experience, it is also the delivery. It is also how you transact. It is also how you make the

organization low-effort for the customer.

eye2eye eye2eye



and we have the right to refuse at this moment of time. We enjoy that kind of a clout – not only do they keep coming back to us, they also pay us a premium for the services that we provide them. So it has come a long way and for the industry, this has become a benchmark. People who have come after us are still trying to grope around and come about giving that kind of an offering but we are fortunate that we are there. One of the advantages that we have had is that we are truly a Pan-India organization. Since most of these projects come from remote locations, Ultra Tech has an edge over the others. We take that extra mile to reach to them and that again becomes a key differentiation.

Markathon: What advice would you give to bud-ding marketers?

I am not belittling the other functions even for a mo-ment. But in the end, who brings money back to the organization? It is Sales and Marketing. So one of the most critical departments is Sales and Marketing and its bound to be as we get into a feeling-era where a lot of human interactions are going to take place and that’s where the marketers are going to play a crucial role. Taking this further, we have seen a lot of advertisements and campaigns – I mean we have one-to-many as well as one-to-one. Right now these are being questioned on various platforms especially Social Media. What kind of advertising can capture

these postings? It’s becoming more transparent, it’s becoming more unpredictable. It’s becoming critical that at every facet of the organization, at every touch-point where the customer interacts with the organi-zation, he doesn’t go back with a negative impres-sion. We need to build up positive experiences and we understand today that the summation of positive experiences is the brand. And when you are looking for a larger organization, this is stressed upon more. There the variables are not usually in your control. If you have a PAN India organization – you have a guy interacting with customers at Sikkim, Jodhpur, a vil-lage in Haryana and then one in Kanyakumari. And all of them will have to have the same kind of ap-preciation about the customer and the same kind of response to him which is very challenging to do.


eye2eye december 2013

Delivering customer experience in digital marketing – an avenue for creativity??

Topic for the next issue: “Amazon Echo - resounding success or redundant technology? ” Your opinion (view/counterview) is invited. Word limit is 250-300. Last date of sending entries is 3rd Dec 2014. Include your

picture (JPEG format) with the entry. Winners will receive a prize money of Rs. 500 each!

Deepanwita NandiTAPMI

Digital marketing has opened up avenues of creativity in delivering customer experience – “eCare”. Customers have developed more of an individualistic at-titude in the recent years and the desire for attention has grown like never before. With the advent of social me-dia, this desire can be fulfilled; the company offering the best “personalized” attention with consistency, wins the race. And digital marketing simply makes it all the more easy for both the parties. The customer speaks out and the company “hears” it. The only difference lies in which companies prefer to convert this “hearing” into not only just “listening” but also responding.And why shouldn’t companies not monetize on the op-portunities of digitized customer care? Reduced manpow-er and maintenance of call centers, increased customer satisfaction, cost effectiveness, accurate and precise tracking of customer demographics, needs and market trends, change in the type of influencers in a consumer’s purchase decision, increase in the amount of digital data consumed by an average consumer are just some of the top reasons why companies are opting for and above all, “need” eCare.The main reason why consumers like to be heard through digital channels is because of its reach; the impact that digital media can make is huge as compared to a plain complaint registered through phone. Hence, in order to keep up with their reputation, companies are bound to look after their customer who’s today more of a tech-sav-vy and “I-know-my-consumer-rights” person.Digital channels also open up the doors for innovation. Flipkart sending apology letters after their #bigbillionday fiasco or Cadbury thanking its 1 million Facebook Fans by a big chocolate Like icon, it’s all part of the eCare – deliv-ering the best customer experience had never been the same.

SAKET HAWELIAiim shillong

Digital media has undoubtedly opened new avenues for reaching out to the customers in a cost effec-

tive manner but the fact is that delivering the customer experience in a manner that converts buyers to brand apostles continues to elude the marketers.Digital Media is not “one size fits all” marketing strategy. It has a powerful amplifying effect being highly influenced by mob mobility. So, if some customers are happy about a particular product, it is likely that they get influenced by other customers writing ill about it, irrespective of wheth-er they are right or not. This automatically generates bad impression on the new customers and turns the experi-ence of the old customers into a bad one; the latter being subject to cognitive dissonance. This becomes even more relevant today as choice of products is not only a mat-ter of utility, but it also creates a social aura around the people in their respective social circles. As digital space is guilt-free, anonymous environment with no accountabil-ity, it is easier to create and induce bad experience among the customers. This means that despite the product being good, there is no assurance of the customer experience being good too.The age of instant communication has brought along with it customer expectations of speedy customer support on the digital front, in the same manner that they would get in a physical store. Research shows that 48% of the cus-tomers not getting an access to customer support within 5 minutes tend to abandon the purchase decision, annoyed by the poor “experience”. Thus, digital marketing pose a challenge for the marketers, constantly under pressure to deliver quick response. The inability to ensure a per-sonalised service to the customers coupled with a hostile environment on the digital media, where the competitors leave no stone unturned to ambush the efforts of the oth-er; ensure that delivering customer experience in digital marketing is impossible to say the least.

eye2eye november 2014


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

silent voice december 2013 silent voice november 2014

Chetan

Bhagat’s

Half

Girlfrie

ndLast month’s results

WINNERTrichy Duo | IIM Trichy

THEME FOR NEXT SILENT VOICE: Swacch BharatLAST DATE OF SENDING THE PRINT AD: 3rd Dec 2014

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

honorary mentionKodali Ramya | IIM Shillong

CATCHRMISS

AD-dicted december 2013


By Swati PamnaniIIM Shillong

PRODUCT: magicbricks.com

POSITIONING: Maximum options of choicest properties

CREATIVE AGENCY: BBDO India YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCxMObdpu6k

CONCEPT:

The film shows a family that has been hunting for a home, and seemed dissatisfied with the property they were currently checking out. They were pretty annoyed as they were not getting the desired property since a long time. A person appears out of the blue and tells them that they can get their choice of property through “Vulture’s Eyes”. A lady throws masks at each of them which get fitted on their faces. The family appeared stunned and then a man moves in with a laptop and shows how magicbricks.com can help them choose the right property with a few clicks.

VERDICT: Miss

The agency came up with an innovative, but a dull con-cept. The adeptness of “Vulture’s eyes” and its associa-tion could have been used better. The commercial tried to bring in humour and entertainment with the choice of characters, but the genre was not very clear and remained underutilized. The segmentation was good where the commercial shows the involvement of the entire family, but positioning and implementation could have been bet-ter. Lacking in visual magnetism, the advertisement did not offer the uniqueness and interest for which a viewer can stay on the screen till its end. Thus, this campaign makes a good fit for ‘Miss’.

By Yash BhambhwaniIIM Shillong

PRODUCT: Airtel - One Touch Intenet

POSITIONING: Ghar ka khana, ghar ka khana hota hai CREATIVE AGENCY: Taproot India YouTube Link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XseTNOFEE2A CONCEPT:

Emotion seems to be the flavour of the season. It has been time tested that nothing connects to the audience more than emotions. The latest proposition from Airtel is the one touch internet. You must have come across this ad while you were watching your favourite TV shows. Let me refresh your memory. It speaks of the bond between the parent and the child and how the role reverses as they grow older. In India the fact that a parent holds the childs finger and teaches him the greatest lessons in life is a val-ued gesture. Airtel has successfully managed to capital-ise on this emotion and has covered it really well in this one minute commercial. What melts the viewer’s heart is when the child grows up and teaches their parent how to access the internet by just a touch of the finger. Whats special you ask, the fact that the child holds the parents finger and teaches them to do this. Airtel has been tested time and again and has managed to keep people involved in their ads as compared to its competitors who have stuck to a single theme. These advertisements give it a edge over them as they begin to become monotonous.

VERDICT: Catch According to Markathon, this commercial is a sure CATCH. We sincerely hope that Airtel continues to make ads like this and become one of the leaders in the field of advertising. Every ad of theirs is one to look forward to.

AD-dicted november 2014


brand story november 2014

Brand Story Nishant Prakash | IIM Shillong

There is a rather unexplained aura associated with the Tata brand name – one that every Indian relates to but

can never actually point a finger at and say what it really is. The two key associations one builds up with the brand name are those of legacy and trust; a bit clichéd, right? But come to think of it, the one anomaly to Tata’s stu-pendous and consistent rise in stature over the years has been Tata Motors, and especially their passenger vehicle segment.Breaking the stronghold of the Middle Class Indian’s fa-vourite car brand (a.k.a. Maruti) was something that a lot of competitors had tried their hands at but failed misera-bly. In fact, before Indica, there were hardly any instances of a rival brand product being put in the same league in terms of sales volumes as Maruti’s then iconic offerings – the 800 (and even the 1000/Alto) – simply put, it was unthinkable that any car manufacturer could actually do that. But then, Tata Motors did exactly that; riding on the Tata brand name and with a product that was superior in more ways than one, Indica’s growing sales made sure that the compact car market in India was now a 2 horse race. By the early 2000s, thanks to Tata Motors’ growing Market Share, one thing was clear – the Middle Class In-dian consumer was now open to the idea of buying a non-Maruti car for his family.Tata Motors was the first to offer an alternative to the con-sumers but it certainly wasn’t the last. With the advent of the likes of Hyundai, Mahindra, GM and Ford, the Indian car buyer now had a plethora of options to choose from. However, one would think that given their dominant pres-ence, both Maruti and Tata Motors would continue to be market leaders at least in the short run – both had that “trust” factor deeply instilled in the minds of the custom-ers. While this turned out to be true for Maruti, we now know that Tata’s case was a lot different. From being one of the top 2 car manufacturers in India to relinquishing market share base points, mostly to foreign players (most of whom were yet to be established names back then), Tata Motors’ journey to the top of the Indian passenger vehicle segment was indeed a short-lived one. What one might wonder about is how, with almost similar cases, Maruti’s and Tata Motors’ fates were so different – as per current data, Maruti is still leading the market with a market share of around 42% while Tata Motors languishes at 4th (behind Hyundai and Mahindra) with less than 8% share.From a Branding perspective, both the brands were harp-ing on the “trust” factor that most Middle Class Indian Consumers relate so well with. “Trust”, in case of Maruti, was through its nationwide service network and an asso-ciation which was inherent and an integral part its core product offerings. On the other hand, for Tata Motors, “Trust” came naturally from its strong association with the Tata brand name. The key issue to note here is the degree of association (for the same positioning) that the

consumer felt with cognitive elements as opposed to a more emotive one.At the heart of this problem, some might say, is the com-pany’s long standing stance which says that “If your prod-uct is good, it will sell” – yes, that is true, but only to a certain extent; what’s even more relevant in today’s times is that you keep changing with the changing consumer de-mands. Maruti, despite being the dominant player, kept coming up with newer product lines – many on newer platforms. However, changes in case of Tata Motors were mostly incremental – subtle changes to improve on user experiences. Tata Motors had 2 strong products under its portfolio – Sumo and Indica – and in many ways, their over dependence on these two is what might have caused their downfall as far as the bigger picture is concerned.Another offshoot of the “If your product is good, it will sell” problem is that you tend to ignore essential support activities like Marketing. Marketing, unlike what many believe, is a lot more than just ads and commercials; it’s about realising what your customers actually want and then making sure that you are the first ones knocking on their doors telling them that you have exactly what they are looking for. A classic example for this is Hyun-dai’s rise in India at the expense of Tata Motors. Over the last decade, Hyundai has come up with almost twice as many new product offerings as compared to most of its competitors, but behind every new product, you have a strong Marketing team that makes sure that each product launch has a buzz around it. Of course, on this front, a lot has changed within the Tata Motors group off late – the latest example being the array of Marketing events and activities planned around the launch of Zest; our personal favourite from Tata Motors’ rather short list of marketing campaigns is the Key in the Newspaper ad for Zest they came up with a couple of months ago. At the face of it, one might mistake it for yet another Test Drive promotion, however, the idea behind it and the execution was what made it stand out. First, if you have a superior product, what better way to make people take note of that than to ask them to drive and experience it first hand – hence the idea. Secondly, the attractive call out and the prizes on offer gave the customers that extra nudge to “go for it” – hence our approval of the execution.One can only hope that marketing enthusiasts like us see more examples of such carefully crafted campaigns from a brand that is as close to our hearts as Tata Motors. Hope they’ve finally realized that a good product becomes bet-ter in the eyes of the customer with proper Marketing


Varsha Poddar | IIM Shillong

#IceBucketChallenge. The Breast Cancer Awareness Month. The Kiss of Love. #NoShaveNovember. Social media has taken activism and awareness campaigns to a level that was quite unknown before. While one’s first reaction would be to scoff at these campaigns and those who blindly get onto these bandwagons without actually knowing or contributing to the cause, these campaigns deserve closer scrutiny, especially from the perspective of Marketing.Campaigns such as the Pink Ribbon campaign / Breast Cancer Awareness Month have been around for a long time, the year 1991, to be exact, when the Susan G. Komen Foundation handed out pink ribbons to participants in its New York City race for breast cancer survivors. Since then the pink ribbon, quite simply a pink pin-ribbon version of the red ribbon for AIDS, became a motif for breast cancer awareness. At its peak the pink ribbon campaign has con-tributed quite effectively to the cause it was designed for. However, overuse of the campaign by marketers brought about the neologism “pinkwashing” which refers to the

subversion of the pink ribbon campaign by marketers to boost sales without contributing in a commensurate manner to the cause that was encroached upon. A docu-mentary film, called Pink Ribbon, Inc, was released by the National Film board of Canada, it was based on the book Pink Ribbons, Inc: Breast Cancer and the Politics of Philan-thropy by Samantha King, associate professor of kinesiol-ogy and health studies at Queen’s University. The tagline reads “Capitalizing on Hope” which, the book and movie allege, marketers have been rampantly doing.

On the brighter side, or a slightly less tarnished one, the Movember campaign has been lauded for its effectiveness and ingenuity. Men’s health, both physical and mental, is an important issue that is often neglected because men are supposed to be strong, and brush their feelings and emotions under the carpet. We must speak about testicu-lar cancer or what a PSA (prostate-specific antigen) score is as freely and with equal importance and gravity with which we discuss women’s breast exams and their men-tal well-being. However, no pink ribbons or frilly t-shirts for men to show their solidarity. Recognising the very fact that men are different from women, the Movember cam-paign, which comes alive every November, asks Mo Bros to sport their facial hair with pride to “Change the face of men’s health”, and quite literally so. Since its inception in 2003, the campaign has raised more than $559 million for the cause of men’s health.And what with the youth in Kerela taking to the streets to create an uprising of sorts against moral policing and spreading the movement across the country; or with ce-lebrities and everyone on social media alike giving us the chance to watch them shiver under the waves of ice-cold water, marketers are creating campaigns that often take on a life of their own and more often than not, demand to be taken with a pinch of salt

Radical Thoughts

aug 2014 november 2014 radical thoughts

CHARITY BEGINS ON SOCIAL MEDIA


updates december 2013 updates november 2014

Brand Launch

Burger King enters India by opening 12 stores Burger King, the US based hamburger chain will be opening 12 stores in the next 60-90 days in a market which it expects to be one of the largest markets in the fu-ture. The company has tied up with Everstone Group to develop presence in India and the first store was opened in Delhi. The company’s prime competition is with McDonalds who, at present, are miles ahead in terms of reach and brand aware-ness.

By Amit SonwaniIIM Shillong

Brand Watch

Micromax founder Rahul Sharma all set to launch a new phone brand

The second largest smartphone company in India with an 18% mar-ket share Micromax’s founder Sharma has registered another company by the name Yu Teleservices which would operate on a similar model as Micromax i.e. buying from China and selling in India. The difference is that Rahul Sharma owns 99.9% stake in the newly incorporated com-pany which would cater to the youth segment primarily and also has plans to venture into equipment trading, manufacturing and services.

Myntra’s new office, with a difference

In what we can assume to be one of the most impressive example of In-ternal Marketing of late, Myntra has moved to its new office which is reflects fashion. The 85,000 feet space in Electronics city, Banga-lore is divided into themes like supermodels and fashion magazines, sports etc. The owner Mukesh Bansal feels that the office reflects the spirit of Myntra and will give inspiration to the people working there.

Future Group makes Big Bazaar business-friendly for Indian entre-preneurs, launches Open House to boost ‘Make-in-India’

In what perhaps can be seen as an active follow-up to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Make in India’ vision, Future Group has rolled out a first-ever nation-wide entrepreneurial support initiative with Big Bazaar Open House events in Mumbai and NCR. Designed with the objective of easing access of new entre-preneurs and products in Food and FMCG categories into Big Bazaar stores, the first of the events was held on September 26 at FRHO, Vikroli in Mum-bai, followed by one for North India on November 7th and 8th in Gurgaon.



Snapdeal plans for the new markets on its map: The hinterlands

Snapdeal, with the aim to reach 5-10 crore registered customers from 3 crore at present in the next 3 years, will launch around 5,000 e-commerce kiosks across 65 cities and 70,000 rural areas by the end of next year with the help of FINO PayTech, an Indian financial inclusion solutions company. These e-commerce centers will be manned by village-level entrepreneurs, have personal computers and tablets, and also serve as collection and delivery points of packages since most people living in these areas usually have no permanent addresses. The pi-lot runs by the company showed encouraging results as the ticket size for a rural customer came out to be Rs. 1400 in comparison to Rs. 2000 for an Urban one.

Hindustan Unilever’s KKT Campaign wins another award Hindustan Unilever’s award-winning mobile campaign Kan Khajura Tesan (KKT) has won yet another award - the Grand Prix at the ‘2014 Warc Prize for Asian Strategy’. Marketing intelligence service Warc awarded team KKT a $5,000 prize at an event held in Singapore last week. The same entry has also scooped up a prize worth $1,250, the Asia First Special Award, one that recognises insight and strategy. KKT is HUL’s radio station for media dark areas. The campaign was conceptualised by creative agency Lowe Lintas and media agency PHD..

OOH campaigns: Discover Audi Q3 ‘Dynamic Quattro

I Kinetic India has executed an OOH campaign for Audi India’s newly launched SUV variant, Q3 Dynamic. Titled ‘Dynamic Quattro’ the ongoing campaign was launched on October 10. The agency used large format media to create an impact by means of billboards, unipoles and gantries. The media strategy was to create a large visual of what one can do with Audi’s Quattro all-wheel drive technology. Instead of the standard print and TV medium, the company leveraged outdoors to inform consumers about the new launch during Diwali.

Ad WatchCocaCola: Chhoti badi khushi

This is the second ad of CocaCola with Deepika and Farhan Akhtar asking masses to celebrate small things in life with a CocaCola. Its again an attempt by the agency to get the attention of rural masses as the characters are shown to be rural folks. The ad agency could have done better as the last ad featuring the same duo was brilliant . Youtube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsTQuxoAflc

Media



Make in India The Government of India’s initiative of ‘Swachh Bharat’ is now being propagated through ATL medium of TV ads. The ad depicts the bad habit of Indians dumping their garbage at the nearest place they want to. The ad has a very cynical tone and compels the audience to think upon their actions and try to keep the country cleaner. The ad ends with a speech of Mr. Narendra Modi urging Indians to keep heir houses and local

Youtube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1s58gJZzT8

Articles Are invited

“Best Article”: Rohit Menon & Praveen M | BIM , Trichy 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 3rd Dec, 2014. Please send your entries marked as <ARTICLE NAME>_<SENDERS’ NAME(S)>_<INSTITUTE> to [email protected].

Airtel: It’s our turn

The new ad of Airtel after the much appreciated as well as criticized ‘Boss’ film is based on the theme ’Its our turn’. The advertisement shows how parents make us familiar with the world and teach us to live on or own. The ad tries to tell that we must reconnect our parents to the world through the one touch easy access to the internet. Youtube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-D-TaLt1Vo


updates december 2013 Marketing Club 2014 - 2016 november 2014

INTRODUCING THE NEWLY INDUCTED MEMBERS OF

MARKETING CLUB, IIM SHILLONG

Gautam Gopal

MOHAMMED FAHD

ANSUL JINDALSAGAR RIAZ

KASTURI GUHA THAKURTA

CHEENA PASRIJAVINAY JAIN

SUMIT BEDI

© Markathon, IIM Shillong

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Markathon November 2014