Understanding Brand Strategy: Fastrack

What is the advertisers single aim? To grab attention!

In the endless battle to garner our attention brands dive deep into a variety of things. Some come up with commercials laced with tongue and cheek humour, some resolve to the communication of product benefits, others weave in a musical tune into the commercial to keep it catchy etc. But for fastrack there are no niceties here - shock tactics make one stop and stare. Mission accomplished.

This combination of frightening, gory and/or offensive advertising material is known as "shockvertising" and is often considered to have been pioneered by Benetton, the Italian clothing retailers which created the line United Colors of Benetton, and its advertisements in the late 1980s . Shockvertising is a portmanteau of shocking and advertising. Since then many brands have used it either as occasional bursts or adopted it completely.You can browse through the 10 most controversial advertisements in history here.

1.      A small recap:

Fastrack was launched as  sub-brand from Titan. But it has slowly evolved to become a major brand of its own. (2.6 million likes on the fastrack’s Facebook Page). Fastrack is essentially a youth brand with a target audience of 15-25 year-olds (SEC A,B). Fastrack was one of the first brands to use social media to engage with potential and existing consumers with two communities on Facebook and a Twitter account in September 2007. It has always tried to stay ahead of its times and enagage with its TG in the way they move and live.

 

Then it moved on to celebrity endorsements when it signed cricketer Virat Kolhi and actress Genelia D’souza. The campaign tried to drive home the message ‘Move on!’. Watch the TVC here.

2.      First signs of shock:

It was in 2010 that Fastrack created some buzz when it came up with the f******k 20% off campaign. Most major road intersections were adorned with the visuals and a TVC was created to support the billboard campaign. However the TVC was banned due to its provocative nature.

3.      The current campaign:

It was via Storyboard’s feed that threw in a photo of this topless girl brazenly posing and saying ‘Don’t Stare at my T_ _S’. I was shocked. It’s not the first time the brand has gone this way to censor the words to play double entendres. I visited the website and the landing page says is that fastrack merchandise is giving out a 25% discount. So it's not just something for the sake of branding but is very transaction oriented. But when the scroller moves you see the image of same topless lady with the caption ‘Grab some T_ _ S’ while the button to proceed in the continued risqué manner ‘Grab now’. 

Also if you pay close attention or have been following the brand, this was the brand’s foray into T-shirts. But with provocative lines such as these I believe the brief sent to the agency would have been – ‘to have one-liners which would prompt people to take off their t-shirts?’. This is also validated by the Economic Times. Team Fastrack believes the ads and the site walk a fine line; they are naughty and provocative without being sleazy. This it seems is the teaser. The teaser campaign played around with words, created intrigue and got people engaged. Fastrack being one of the better brands at digital marketing is closely monitoring the same too.

Fastrack merchandise starts from 595 INR( 12$) for watches and in the case of T_ _S its 650INR (13$). Is fastrack trying to capture a large part of the unorganized junk jewellery market?

4.      The Inspiration:

The brand draws its inspiration from Diesel. From closely following the communication and way the brand is extending its portfolio, it is probable that the brand wants to become the Diesel of India. Its uses the same risqué communication and bold imagery to shock the consumers. Like the ‘Be Stupid’ campaign which certainly got a lot of attention.

  

5.      The Take:

·       Judging advertisements on their potential to offend is like comparing the music of Beethoven and Anu Malik. What one person sees as provocative another hails as creative. A piece of stimulus in itself is difficult to be universally offensive unless it goes into taboo areas like child abuse.

·         Advertisements for products and services should all follow a single, simple strategy: to be consistent with the brand. We consumers hate being misled, when advertisements are full of untruth. If taboo subjects are used in advertising, but the rest of the product and service is not risqué, the brand is running into trouble.

As a side question I want to know why do the risqué advertisements targeted for the Indian audience always feature anglo-Indian models?

So, that’s the thought! I will see you right back here!

Of flights and marketing...

Bored and exhausted!

Recently I have been flying a lot and that’s what I felt! Bored and exhausted! The feeling gets amplified when I have to take the early morning flight. The sinfully punctual sound of the alarm bleats incessantly and I groan, not another early morning disaster. Before I realize, I was run towards the bathroom adorned with all the morning-routine paraphernalia and get ready to catch the much dreaded early morning flight. Anybody who lives in either Mumbai or Bangalore (folks in New Delhi have it better) knows that it’s a big ask to catch an early morning flight. The queues, the rush, the changing shifts at 5AM at the Mumbai airport all contribute to a terrible experience.

I have tried to do a lot of things - double espresso, picking up my favourite magazine, read a novel, watch a movie, listen to music and when all these failed I gave up and tried to sleep. Problem is I couldn’t!

Do most of us feel bored, frustrated or trapped when in a flight? Can anyone do something to engage us? Yeah sure there is a pre-loaded in-flight entertainment package which is sorry to say - pathetic. We are a huge captive audience waiting to… get anything but bored? Come surprise us! Is there nothing or no-one who has thought of ways to exploit this situation? Answer is people have thought about this. I here cite a couple of examples ranging from in-flight to check out and see if anything can be done to improve the experience?

1.      FlashMob in an Airplane:

I hate the safety instruction demo. It’s boring, mechanical and the voice sounds canned and robotic. Can it be spiced up? The world loves to watch flight attendants dance. Who are we kidding? The world loves to watch flight attendants do anything other than typical flight attendant stuff. This is what Cebu thought when it executed the safety demo in a novel format in 2010.

Life and culture gives us plenty of moments to celebrate, but often we let them pass without doing anything. If we could, however, it would be an unexpected delight. FinnAir offered a perfect example of that - as they filmed and posted a video on YouTube of their cabin staff performing a surprise Bollywood dance on a flight from Helskinki to India in celebration of India's Republic Day (26^th January).

South Asians and anyone with a passion for India have been sharing this on Facebook and talking about it all day today. It is going what you might call "micro-viral." In other words, it is going viral among the exact small target community that a marketing team should care most about - people highly likely to travel to Southeast Asia. The timing is perfect too, as one of the things that many South Asian families start to think about at the beginning of the year is planning their travel for the rest of the year. And flights to India get booked far in advance.

2.      Speech Bubbles:

We are held captive and are fixed on to our seats when in flight. Can there be a way in which people could use speech bubbles and communicate with each other with someone recording it throughout? For example airline A could buy some seats on airline B and comment on the drawbacks of B while highlighting the benefits of A. If executed in a good tongue-in-cheek manner it could pay off well and become an excellent example of guerrilla marketing. Most importantly with little investment.

3.      Seatback entertainment:

Gogo Vision is a new wi-fi enabled technology to enable people to download movies, TV series, trailers etc  all in the flight. Consumers get 24 hours after the plane has landed to watch rights-protected versions of any movies they rented, or 72 hours for TV shows. Sounds like a decent idea, but still in the beta phase.

4.      Conveyor Belt Advertising: 

When you’re at the airport waiting for your luggage to come out, I always linked it to a roulette game. You are clueless about your luggage and wait till it arrives. Problem is it takes eternity. So I thought can we make the conveyor belt interesting? Maybe design it in the shape of a roulette? Hand over tokens to people to collect their luggage from the appropriate number. Would it work?

A little bit of surfing also threw up and execution carried by a hotel to promote itself. Beau Rivage Resort Casino transformed an airport luggage belt to look like guests swimming in an easy-river swimming pool. 

A similar execution was carried out in a department store which led to garner eyeballs. The execution in this case could be better if the brands put up on the conveyor belt were the last minute addition items. These are items which need an aided recall to capture some space in the shopping basket.

As each of these examples share, there are ways that can make the air-travel experience better just if marketers pay more attention to the moments where there is an opportunity that could be taken advantage of.

So, that’s the thought! I will see you right back here!

Do you really 'like' it?

Among the usual things I do is keep a tab on how brands are working with their facebook pages. I recently saw interesting development. Pantene India outnumbered Pantene Indonesia in facebook likes yesterday. The absolute numbers need to be examined further. Pantene has a 20% market share in Indonesia (Number 2 shampoo), approx 10% in India (Source: Euromonitor). So Pantene India is growing (in likes) at a faster rate than Pantene Indonesia. Does that mean people are in fact liking the brand more? How much will it translate into sales? Difficult to answer but a very basic analysis could throw up some directions. A very simple metric would be to check for numbers such as number of likes/ litre of shampoo sold. Club this data with the demographic data, internet penetration, age group of people who are liking the pages. You will have a very basic profiling telling how many people are really liking, advocating and then buying your product. Many sites provide the easy way out for brands to generate more ‘’likes’. Fans may “like” the page, but what good is it really doing the company or its consumers?

Brands can work harder to tap their pages’ potential, inviting fans to post on the page, using brand-generated posts to ask them questions, and offering promotions that capitalize on the fan base’s affinity. The fan page becomes a focus group that can be mined for consumer insights, which can feed back to content creation and campaign tracking. It isn’t the “like” that matters; what matters is creating conversations to understand, educate and engage the consumer.

1.      Value:

I’m not talking about the value of a Like to brands here. Indeed, amassing Likes can be worthwhile for brands if they then focus on building a community.  Experian Hitwise calculated that a Like generates 20 visits to brand sites; Deals platform ChompOn reckons a Like is worth $8, a Twitter follow worth $2 and an individual tweet worth $2 in additional sales of deals on its services. To put things into perspective a click through google ads is only about 0.5$.

2.      What it should mean and what it actually means?

A Facebook Like is supposed to show a user’s approval of a brand, product or piece of content.  So if I see my friend has ‘liked’ a brand on facebook I should be able to assume that she rates and approves of that brand. But, if a recent study by the CMO Council is anything to go by, my friend was nearly twice as likely to have ‘liked’ the brand in question to enter a contest than to show her affinity to the brand.

Let’s take a London based restaurant Prezzo as a case in point. 117,000 facebook likes. If nine of my friends are among that number, I might take that to mean that Prezzo is worth a visit.  But what I might not realise is that Prezzo recently gave away an iPad 2 for every 5,000 new Likes they received.  They gave away eight iPads and ended up at over 107,000 Likes. No doubt this was a worthwhile exercise for Prezzo as a business, especially if they consistently engage the followers they have bought. But it can mislead users and cheapens what it means to "Like" something.

This is especially so since the introduction of Facebook’s Sponsored Stories.  Prezzo can pay to advertise each user’s Like to their friends, passing it off as an endorsement for the brand when many of those Likes were in fact endorsements of Apple. Sponsored stories will soon appear in your Facebook news feed, making it hard to distinguish between your friends' opinions and marketing strategies.

For many brands facebook brand pages are the best way to be in touch with the consumer as Adage reported in a 2010 article.

3.      Two cents:

A two-pronged approach of audience discovery and competitive analysis can help uncover what motivates and energizes your consumers.

1.      Audience discovery is the use of social data to segment those who talk about your brand into their affinities. When you understand your audience, you can tailor the message and campaign to generate more fan attention. And if you understand what to do with your fan page, you can give it a new place in your owned media platforms. Rather than investing in media properties that become more expensive as they become successful, you’re now on your way to developing owned media that increases in value the more it’s used.

What do your consumers want from you – coupons, product updates, cutting-edge video, exclusive deals or contests? What are they interested in – sports, music, TV? Do they care about your brand affiliations or sponsorships? A “like” is a passive response to content, while a comment is engagement. Many of my friends use the like button to indicate that they have read the wall post. Especially on the occasion of your birthday, when your wall is adorned with wishes, he/she will like post to acknowledge the wish.

2.      Brands need to mine competitors’ fan pages for insights. Competitive analysis provides insight into what your fans and their friends find engaging on other brands’ sites. What do your fans like on the competitor sites? Are your competitors treating your fans in ways that provide an edge over your company?

Audience discovery and competitive analysis can help you be in sync with your Facebook fans. Knowing their interests can help you establish a road map to effective fan engagement. You can then repeat the analysis periodically to capture nuances and shifts in fan interests. Now that’s something you and your consumers will really love.

So, that’s the thought! I will see you right back here!

Understanding Brand Strategy: The Hindu

It’s indeed a pleasant surprise that a conservative print media brand like ‘The Hindu’ has come up with a brilliant repartee.

‘The Times of India’ (TOI) had launched a commercial sometime in Nov 2011 announcing the launch of its Chennai edition. The commercial had a tamil lullaby in the background and was meant to say that the ‘The Hindu’ was a boring newspaper. The closing shots pepped up the music and urged the readers to wake up to the TOI.

The perceptions:

Overall the TOI is perceived to be a peppy and jaazy newspaper (read glorified tabloid)  and The Hindu, a newspaper with content but with a slight ideological tilt. TOI tried to target this sentiment when launching its Chennai edition- the stronghold of The Hindu.

The reaction:

The Hindu replied to the TOI commercial by coming up with three advertisements (Duggu, Size Zero, Bachchan Baby) shot in a Q&A format. They got the TG, the shoot, the theme everything right! Bang-on!

Going by the facebook shares and the twitter mentions, The Hindu has definitely struck gold with the TG across the country. While TOI had a tailor made regional advertisement (tamil lullaby, tamil daily life scenes etc) in its commercial, The Hindu turned the tale completely and created three advertisements which could relate to anyone in India. The closing shot reads – ‘STAY AHEAD OF THE TIMES’. To add on the reply was sharp and curt. Young people (we) like sharp and curt. Epic pawnage! Shooting this advertisement The Hindu probably has taken a first step towards eroding the baggage it has in terms of being an old-age newspaper for intellectuals. In this commercial it has come across as sharp and done itself a world of good.

The advertisement probably draws inspiration from the DNA After Hours commercial which came about five months back. It demonstrates how the same concept can be executed better when paired with a brilliant takeaway.

Advertising Examples:

‘The Hindu-TOI’ case brings back many ghosts of the past. We saw the entire Horlicks-Complan case going to the Supreme Court in mid-2011. Read Business Standard Report.

In the recent past we saw HUL and P&G locked horns over the Mystery Shampoo teaser campaign in July. HUL literally took the wind out of P&G’s teaser campaign for its new-look Pantene shampoo by announcing that it was Dove that was the leader in the segment. ‘There is no mystery. Dove is the No.1 shampoo’ - screamed a billboard right next to P&G’s Mystery Shampoo hoarding in Mumbai.

While the latter was a tongue-in-cheek response to a rival’s teaser campaign, the question still remains: what drives advertisers to indulge in this form of advertising when regulation is stern on the issue?

Regulations in India:

The Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) on competitive advertising ‘Advertisements must be truthful. All descriptions, claims and comparisons which relate to matters of objectively ascertainable fact should be capable of substantiation. Advertisers and advertising agencies are required to produce such substantiation as and when called upon to do so by The Advertising Standards Council of India.’ (link to pdf)

This was why the Rin versus Tide commercial was brought done in March 2010. Business Standard report.

In the Rin ad, the claim is limited to a whiter wash- ‘Tide se kahin behatar safedi de Rin’ (Rin gives better whiteness than Tide), without getting into specific, feature-to-feature comparison. Almost all detergent ads promise a whiter wash – except that they used to refer to ‘ordinary detergents’ leaving the consumer to figure that they are talking about her brand. 

Two cents:

It’s easy to look at a competitor and poke holes in his product or services. It’s harder, but definitely more valuable, to plug the holes in one’s own offering and build real competitive advantages with which you can impress your customer. Still, there is no research that shows consumers like a name-caller any more than they like a brand that seeks to connect with them in a positive way. Of course, some brands want to build their images around controversy and ambush—in which case, it may still be strategically correct. Case in Point Pepsi. Nothing official about it and numerous other examples.

Numerous examples abound, here’s my pick of the lot in case of comparative advertisements. Although an old advertisement for Penn Tennis Balls it works because it’s smart.

So, that’s the thought! I will see you right back here!

New Launch : Axe Anarchy

Women: Ever wish that you, too, could be hunted down by men clamoring and reaching out to touch you thanks to your irresistible scent? You’re in luck. The Axe brand from Unilever, which made a name for itself with risque ads featuring women chasing men who doused themselves with its body spray, is rolling out a fragrance for women. The Anarchy line has his and her versions, and will hit store shelves accompanied by a slew of suggestive commercials. 

1.      The product:

The men's brand features 2-in-1 shampoo and conditioner for men, shower gel, deodorant, a bodyspray for him and for the first time, a matching one for her! Although AXE brands itself as men's products that smell so good they can turn a woman on, they've finally branched out by creating a product specifically for women. The bodyspray for her includes a fruity mix of apple and blackberry, along with notes of sandalwood, amber and vanilla.

Time reports Barret Roberts, the senior brand manager at Axe saying – “Of Axe’s 2.3 million “likes” on Facebook, about a quarter are by women. We’ve been hearing for some time that females have been asking for and looking for their very own scent of Axe.”

2.      The campaign:

The campaign, which includes print and online ads, is by the London office of Bartle Bogle Hegarty. The first of two commercials appeared on Axe’s Facebook page , and both are scheduled to begin running widely on television in the United States Jan. 29, and afterward in more than 60 other countries. A teaser commercial that did not specifically mention the women’s product began running online and in movie theaters on Jan. 1.

On 10^th Jan, Axe also introduced a branded serialized graphic novel on YouTube and Facebook in a partnership with the publisher Aspen Comics. New sequences will be uploaded every few days, with plot turns based partly on consumers’ suggestions and votes, and with some fans being depicted in the comic.

In my guess this is what lies next in store for advertising. It’s all about integration – where the lines between digital, advertising, ‘brand experience’ and content get blurred. It’s all about consumers adding their own content and shaping the brand story on their own. (with little or no moderation?)

The idea to integrate the entire campaign and garnish it with a 2.0 touch was masterclass. The concept fantastic. The execution brilliant!

3.      The take:

• Some analysts say that the new line for women has imparted equilibrium between the sexes. Really I don’t feel the women were thinking that way. Anyways it’s a bold move (pardon the pun) even with a limited edition for the women’s version of Axe.

• What works on a target demographic of 18 to 24-year-old boys may not prove effective on 20-something women. The TG is totally different. The blogosphere is already up against AXE for the way it’s been portraying women. One of the views here. It’s for time to tell how AXE can crack this.

• Axe is mostly a fragrance which has ingrained itself in the consumer minds as a chick-magnet. It would be hard to break that image and move into the unisex kind of positioning. The move is bold, the path delicate. The way the brand is handling it is to create commercials that showcase men and women falling for one another amidst total chaos along with the digital innovation now underway via its choose-your-own-ending, online graphic novel. Let’s see how it turns out.

So, that’s the thought! I will see you right back here!

Fiat India: Understanding Brand Strategy

In 2006, Fiat India announced a joint venture with Tata Motors under which the two companies merged their respective retail networks. It was perceived to be a masterstroke. And it worked – but only for Tata Motors, which got Fiat’s engines for its cars, and showed a decent increase in sales.

For Fiat, however, the JV did nothing. For example, while the industry recorded a stellar growth rate of almost 30 per cent in the fiscal year ended March, 2011, Fiat was the only company whose volumes actually fell 15 per cent to 21,112 units, giving rise to murmurs that the joint dealerships are pushing Tata products more than Fiat cars. With the Punto and Linea in its portfolio, Fiat’s market share was less than 1 per cent last fiscal. In contrast, even Volkswagen, which entered India only in 2007, commands a share of 2.04 per cent.

The Grande Punto (a compact hatchback), which Fiat wished to position as a lifestyle product, was supposed to sell 3,000-4,000 units every month, according to internal projections made by the company. However, the car, which starts at Rs 4.45 lakh (ex-showroom Mumbai) has a monthly run-rate of just 1,000 units. Compare this with Maruti’s Swift (Rs 4.43 lakh, ex-showroom Mumbai) which sells 12,000-13,000 units every month. ( Business Standard Report)

In the mid-size sedan market, Fiat is way behind everyone else. In fact, Honda and Toyota sell nearly as many Civics & Corollas each at almost twice the price than Fiat sells Lineas. So the massive disconnect with the customers was apparent. So this was somewhere in the middle of 2011. Fiat then pushed its brain hard enough to get its act together. Working on the sales and distribution was one, better customer connect the other.

We next heard from Fiat in September 2011.‘Fiat-Tata dealership to go separate ways.’ – the newspapers reported.

With the JV being somewhat figured, the next job up the sleeve was to gain customer attention. They roped in Saints and Warriors in Nov 2011 for an ad campaign which would be rolled out in first week of January 2012. The Fiat Ocean Campaign. Watch the TVC here.

The agency says - ‘We struck up on an insight that the passion of the Fiat brand to achieve against the odds was a trait that the TG identified with even in their own personal lives. In the new Fiat Linea and Punto 2012 ocean campaign, the depth of the ocean became a simile for the depth of passion needed to achieve something special. The challenges of building a car against the odds under the ocean was the creative backdrop for the core message.’

1.      The art-house:

If the message to be communicated was a car being assembled against all odds and the metaphorical extension to real-life achievers who would identify with the same and link to the brand, the commercial fails to deliver it. I get a feel that it’s really weird to have shot it in a Nat-Geo style. No doubt the agency would have had a tough time shooting the commercial and then lacing it up with the graphics. Kudos for that! But wait, pistons swimming like fish! C’mon give me a break.

2.      Features:

The upgraded four features to communicate were powerful ground clearance, automatic rain sensing wipers, brighter dual-tone interiors and automatic headlamps. Which literally go unnoticed unless you watch the commercial twice. To add, if the communication was the communication that Fiat’s models are now available in Oceanic Blue color. Seriously, now you are just being desperate to force fit.

3.      The positioning line - ‘Got Heart!’:

The agency says - ‘With the idea that those who truly have a deep passion to create something unique and meaningful are personalities who have got heart to take on come-what-may and succeed, the positioning line for Fiat crystallised into the phrase ‘Got Heart!’ This sat well not just with the target audience’s persona, but also the product, as Fiat cars have at their heart some of the most advanced engines in the world.’ Doesn’t bode well at all. It is trying to mix three things at once –

·         Communication of technology/ features,

·         Creating an emotional (should I say passionate? Eh?) connect with the TG

·         and of course keeping in mind the Ocean metaphor ( to win the Cannes)

The agency has taken the ocean metaphor too seriously and has tried to extend it to everything in the commercial. Also the constant harping about the TG! Which TG are they targeting? Is it a first car? An upgrade? The first jobbers, people in their 30s who are kind of well off? Not clear.

4.      Production Value and Voice Over:

The production value is great. But the only distinct thing about the commercial is the baritone VO. Even that goes for a toss with the abysmal copy. The words lack coherence and the tone cadence. Whose idea was it to get that baritone to say 'then hey'? Who says 'then hey'?

On a lighter note if the communication was for Fiat Linea and Punto, I expected the closing shot to have these two models.  But I see a third model as well in the dark. Are those the failed Fiat brands of the past?

So, that’s the thought! I will see you right back here!

Change in Coke can causes confusion

What role does packaging play in creating a perception of a brand? Is it just a part of the entire experience? Is packaging so entrenched in the brand experience that a change in the same can question the perceptions about the product? Even letting people believe that the product has changed?

The recent consumer backlash against the Coke goes some distance in illustrating the same. Coke wanted a ‘disruptive’ campaign to generate excitement about the brand in the festive holiday season reports Wall Street Journal. The Coca-Cola Co launched 1.4 billion special edition white cans onto the market as part of its Arctic Home campaign to raise funds for, and awareness of, attempts to protect the endangered species. It was the first time in 125 years that the regular product had been switched from its trademark red cans.

The cans featured the company's iconic logo in red, set against an all-white background and featuring a picture of three polar bears plodding through the snow, in what the company described as a "bold, attention-grabbing" move to publicize conservation efforts by the World Wildlife Fund. 

The cans hit store shelves Nov. 1 and were supposed to remain on shelves through February. Now, Coca-Cola is pulling back on the limited-edition white cans due to customer confusion and complaints, with the first batch now in stores the only batch (good news for collectors, at least).

What went wrong?

It was through the social web that Coke heard growing rumblings that all was not well. Thousands of people amassed to vent their grumblings via any route they found the best. Twitter, facebook, telephone calls, direct mailings to the company. Their posts basically highlighted the three basic concerns:

 

1. Consumers confused the packaging with Diet Coke’s similar silver cans. This led to many diabetics/ dieters consuming the polar bear can Coke

2. Others swear that the drink tastes different when in a white can.

In fact, there is plenty of research that shows how the power of packaging influences taste perception. Brian Wansink carried out an experiment where restaurant diners were served a free glass of wine before a meal. All diners got the same wine, but half were told it was from California, and the other half were told that it was from North Dakota. The diners who thought the wine was from California enjoyed the wine more -- clearly influenced by their expectations. But it didn’t end there. They also rated the food higher, ate more of it and said they were more likely to return than the diners who thought they had been given wine from North Dakota. What the diners were told about the origin of the wine had a profound impact on their experience of the whole meal. Probably what’s going on here is that our brains are trying to compensate for the fact that most of us don’t have a very refined palate, and can’t tell good from bad without additional clues. Does that explain wine tasting as well?

3. Coke's most ardent fans find the change in color blasphemous.

The silver (pardon the pun) lining in this latest campaign is that Coca-Cola has created classic products with passionate customers well-versed in the brand’s identity. They have knowingly or unknowingly hard-wired the brand with the consumers. Regular Coke is red, Diet Coke is silver.

This change wasn't anything near the New Coke debacle back in 1985, yet it evoked the same sort of strong feelings among the brand's fans. This shows that packaging (especially in case of an extremely popular brand like Coke) is a strong anchor in a brand experience. What do you think?

So, that’s the thought! I will see you right back here!

Is Pepsi Ok?

Somebody goes to a restaurant, orders a Coke, and the waiter answers: "Sorry, we don't have Coke, is Pepsi OK?”

I’ve heard this exchange many times and I have never seen anybody throw a fit.  More often than not, the answer is a simple: “Sure, that’s OK”.

Coke is one of the strongest brands in the world, the number one brand in brand value. However, that doesn't stop people from readily accepting a substitute. If the number one brand in the world is so readily substitutable then isn’t it a blow in the face of the branding exercise in itself?

The road from brand awareness to brand insistence is a long one: just because somebody knows your brand doesn't mean they're going to buy it. Making your brand known is just the start. Getting people to become upset when they can’t have it is the hard part.  How upset?  The more the better... Think about your sister or cousin teenager or girlfriend and what her reaction would be after finding out that you just bought her the wrong brand of jeans! Tantrums all over the place until you get them replaced. They would fret over the color, the shape and even the fit of the jeans! However when a consumer so aware just readily accepts a substitute what does it tell us about him?

Sure lets say that brands such as soft-drinks are brands with low disposition value and low involvement. Is it justified that millions of dollars being hemorrhaged to create a brand awareness for Coke/ Pepsi when it is so easily substitutable?

As a society, we’ve trained ourselves to find importance in brands, even creating identity around the brands we purchase, wear and consume. Not convinced? Examine these two sets of brands:

Arrow, Mercedes, Blackberry, Pepsi

Coke, i-phone, BMW, Tommy Hilfiger

From an identity standpoint, you may have imagined two dramatically different people. Perhaps one is book smart, and the other is street smart. Regardless of the outcome, you created an image in your mind of the person who purchases, wears and consumes these brands. What part did Pepsi and Coke play in the formation of these brand images? Very little I suppose?

Does that throw any insight on brand image? The more extrinsic a brand is the more it goes into driving a brand image. So when people readily know what brand I am wearing/ consuming/ using I tend to have more loyalty towards sticking and making a statement of my own. We can throw in a counter argument that placing Pepsi and Coke in the stream of brands with high-disposition value is not fair. So let’s isolate them. Do they say anything unique about themselves? (Not in India atleast!)

Now that we have come to the point of high and low disposition lets examine another different category – cigarettes. It’s priced cheaper than Coke/ Pepsi but still there is a high consumer loyalty. This is because the cigarette I smoke makes a statement about me. Chances that my friend knows which brand of cigarette I smoke is more than her knowing which brand of shampoo I use.

Hence a brand which has more extrinsic appeal and character tends to be favoured more and gets a higher loyalty from the consumers.Now thats one hypothesis. Whatsay?

So, that’s the thought! I will see you right back here!

Facebook Timeline! Why did they do it?

Facebook recently rolled out its much awaited feature. The Timeline! The new concept found takers from both sides of the fence. Some appreciating the new initiative look and interface and the fact that your entire life story could be scrolled down at will. Others dismissed it as one of facebook’s new changes which they did not ‘like’.

What could be the probable reason behind changing the interface? Was it just to get a new interface so that people don’t get bored of facebook? Or was it just to sex it up? 

An interesting study done by eye-tracking startup EyeTrackShop examined how users view Facebook Timeline and other revisions to social networking sites. The study compared the old Facebook profile page with the new Timeline.

 Here are some interesting observations from the resulting data:

1. Facebook Timeline cover photos get noticed first. However, study participants still spent a longer time looking at the Facebook Timeline profile photo than the cover photo.  
2. Facebook ads get noticed more in Facebook Timeline. While 43% of participants noticed Facebook “sponsored stories” in the old profile format, 63% noticed the ads in the Timeline format. Participants spent the same amount of time on average looking at the ads in each profile.
3. Personal information such as employer and location gets more attention in the new Facebook Timeline. Viewers spent an average 2.2 seconds looking at this section in the new format, which includes images, but only 1.6 seconds looking at this section in the old format.

So does it mean, Facebook which has 89% of its revenue stream coming from advertisements trying to gather more eyeballs for its advertisements?

Although the feature has been rolled out for personal profiles, brands will still have to wait a bit longer. What will it mean for brands when the timeline is rolled out for them?

1. Room for Creativity: To date, Pages have been a bit of a blunt instrument, with relatively few creative opportunities to market. It remains to be seen if Timeline will improve that situation, but brands will need to more carefully curate their Timeline just like regular users. Here’s McCann who is probably the first one to jump into the bandwagon for Israel’s anti-drug campaign. McCann has utilized the timeline to create a split screen advertisement. Brilliant Stuff!
2. Rich Data: Timeline's value for businesses is the historical perspective it lends to the interaction between business/brand and Facebook community. Previously, the date a brand was created and the date a brand got started on Facebook were completely separate. If rolled out (and I am assuming similar to personal profiles) brands should be able to pool in all their advertisements/ commercials from the day they were launched to the present. How great would it be to browse through all the Coke commercials from right from the retro ones to the current ones. A rich data source indeed!
3. Get up and Run Facebook: Competition is catching up and pretty fast at that! Twitter recently revamped its site, providing brands with pages resembling Facebook’s. And Google, after giving brands Facebook-like pages on Google+ as well early last month, is experimenting with ways to incorporate social signals from Google+ into its search results and advertising.

As of its just been about a month since the launch of the Timline. Lets wait and watch how it pans out.

So, that’s the thought! I will see you right back here!

.brand gTLDs on the way?

The fight for internet real estate has officially started. The big news is that ICANN is  starting to accept applications for .yournamehere gTLDs. gTLDs or a generic top-level domain (gTLD) refers to the suffix at the end of an IP address the .com,.net, .edu, .org and other standard extensions. The ICANN is expecting about 2000 applications for the same a majority of them are brands which fear cybersquatting. 

As per Network World  ‘2012 is poised to go down in Internet history as one of the most significant 12-month periods from both a technical and policy perspective since the late 1990s.’ This means that you can have gTLDs encompassing everything from .apple to .mumbai.

What implications does it have for brands? Will it lead into a gold rush for the .brand or .category gTLDs?

1. Switching Costs: 

Switching costs are very high. At $185,000 per application(as opposed to 10$ for a .com website), estimated start-up costs of $500,000 and annual running costs of about $100,000, a .yournamehere domain will be out of reach of the smallest companies and organizations. Also the .com gTLDs have become so ingrained in the consumer minds that it might take some time for the consumers to switch to the new ones. Also the number of .com names dwarfs every other domain: It's more than five times greater than those registered in the second most popular extension, which is Germany's .de.

2. Artificial Scarcity: 

Major brands are expected to bet largely on .category gTLDs and create artificical scarcity by driving up proces. This would in effect draw small businesses or firms out of the competition for online real estate space.

3.Cybersquatters : 

Namely, the worry is about an online infestation of cybersquatters and brand name hijackers who will cause chaos with companies and sow confusion with consumers.

4.Time: 

The registrations for the process have just started and will go on for three months. Post which experts predict that it will take another one or two years for the gTLDs to go live. Also a bunch of middlemen/ consultants have stepped into the equation to advise companies on this new development to reap some cash. Which I guess will further delay the process.

5. Intuitive Browsing Experience, Really?: 

Many people bearing the torch of gTLDs say that it will lead to more intuitive browsing. Wouldn’t it be great to have a .jobs domain name for a career website, .travel for a travel industry? Well the news is that all those gTLDs already exist. How often have you come across these sites? Chances are that you would have come across only the .edu for educational institutions. Apart from that hardly any? Right? New gTLDs wont matter until people’s behaviour to use them changes.

6. Multiple Options/ Overwhelming task? : 

If you’re a company like P&G, where consumers have a primary relationship with your product brands, would a gTLD like .pg or .pandg help? Or would consumers be more inclined to use the product brand to find what they want, such as .tide? In this case, the need to register multiple gTLDs could become overwhelming. Also people use the different names to denote the same thing. The new gTLDs will have trouble arriving at a consensus( especially in case of .category gTLDs)  when people calling a shopping store - .shop or a .store or a .bazaar.

7. Fancy names: 

Is the entire rush to occupy domain names such as drink.pepsi, always.cocacola, wear.armani etc. Does it really communicate any benefit apart from just sounding cool? Brands need to see whether this entire exercise really makes any sense ( given the costs attached with it)

8.Social Media: 

And of course, it’s important to remember the relevance of social media. Many customers will likely just look a brand up on Facebook, bypassing the larger online world altogether. When you add up the easy access to bookmarks, the near ubiquity of social media, not to mention bookmarking, and search fields that require you to just type in the first few letters of what you’re after, the entire value of a domain comes into question. Coming to search results we come to the almighty Google. gTLDs wont matter unless Google decides to list it in search results. So which TLDs get approved matter less than which ones Google chooses to index as part of their regular search results.

So, that’s the thought! I will see you right back here!

Real Life Catalogs

In the past few years flipkart.com has evolved to become the e-commerce darling of India. Until a few years ago when online-shopping hadn’t yet boomed in India (its still pretty much in the nascent stage now) brick and mortar retailers prevailed.  However since the rise of the flipkart many an entrepreneurs have jumped into the e-commerce bandwagon. Major among them being yebhi.com, infibeam.com etc

While shopping for books at Crosswords, Landmark, I have often overheard phrases ‘Check out the latest books here and then let’s go back and place an order on flipkart.’. And much to the dread of the brick and mortar retailers this number is on the rise.

Though there isn’t any specific term to describe this phenomenon, let’s call it ‘Real Life Catalog’ for the purpose of the post. It describes the fears of many real life retailers who are afraid of becoming a place where consumers just go to touch and feel products that they will eventually buy from flipkart or any another discounted online store.

Right now the most viewed and popular blog post on Forbes.com is titled "Why Best Buy Is Going Out Of Business, Gradually."  The article has so far received over 2.3 million page views. The article was shared by over 12,000 Facebook users and more than 15,000 Twitter users. It was such a heavy blow to the Best Buy brand image that Best Buy issued ‘PR Talking points’ to each employee in reply to the article.

In it, author Larry Downes argues that Best Buy is managing to deliver on none of the things like knowledgeable staff or better showrooms which could make them a destination worth visiting. Instead, he argues, it is a retailer of last resort or a place where you just go to see products that you will eventually buy elsewhere.

So is the brick and mortar retail store too old-fashioned? Is it on the decline? The reasons for this are not far to seek.

1. Inertia: There is an inherent inertia to get out of the house and go and shop for a book. Its far more convenient to sit and have the goods delivered to your doorstep. Cash on delivery option has prompted the some traction too.
2. Discount: The product is available at a discounted rate because the online store has much lower overheads because of not having a physical store.
3. News/ Reviews: Say I am shopping for a book, I immediately get to know from the shopping portal what bestsellers are this week/month, reviews about the book, etc all on the same platform where I shop.
4. Staff: Most people would agree that the staff at the stores is inadequately trained. This leads to poor customer experience.

So how can retailers survive this pressure and avoid becoming nothing more than a real life catalogs fueling the sales of their online rivals? They must focus on the areas where they have a distinct advantage over the online stores. This led me think about instances when I went and purchased a product which I could have bought online. Probably these could be some thought starters.

1. Expert Advice: I needed an expert advice on the product. Say if a person who is not so well versed with technology wants to upgrade to a product. Such a person would prefer a demo of the product and see and learn how it operates. Also cracking an agreement to visit and talk to salesperson in any of any issues in the future.
2. Bargain: Indians love to bargain, while making a purchase of a phone, my friend bargained and got it from one of the Mobile Stores at a much cheaper price and with a few accessories thrown in the deal. Thus in effect the deal was cheaper than that offered on any of the shopping portals.
3. Physical Feel: A recent study conducted revealed the power of touch, in this case of research pertaining to snail mail. A message left a more long-lasting impression when delivered in a letter than online. The brain scans showed that on touching the paper, emotional center of the brain was activated thus forming a stronger bond. In short the touch translates into a sense of possession. In other words, we simply feel more committed to possess and thus buy an item when we’ve first touched it. This sense of ownership is simply not part of the equation in the online shopping experience. In an extension of the same research the The person behind the same research also undertook another study in which he instructed the salesmen in the shop to adopt two different approaches towards the consumers. The first was a fairly hands-off approach. Whenever a customer would inquire about a book, the volunteer would take them over to the shelf and point to it. Out of 20 such requests, six customers proceeded with the purchase. The second option also involved going over to the shelf but, this time, removing the book and then subtly holding onto it for just an extra moment before placing it in the customer’s hands. Of the 20 people who were handed the book, 13 ended up buying it. Just physically passing the book showed a big difference in sales. It’s a question how much significance this research holds in India as the buying patterns, consumer behaviour is different. But nevertheless, its an observation to be noted.
4. Pressed for time: There is another set of consumers who is pressed for time. I want that phone immediately. Right now! Remember nagging girlfriends/sisters; who wouldn’t wait or seem to understand ‘would be delivered in 4-5 business days’  and you have to take them to the store.

So if scoreline reads in favour of online retailers, do the brick and mortar retailers just give up?

The online retailers have certainly prompted the offline ones to establish and rethink their online strategies. Most of the offline retailers didn’t have an online shopping portal before the dawn of the flipkarts of the world! They do have an online presence now, but will they able to match the core online stores who have low overheads?

So if this is where the situation stands as of now how will things work out in the future? Will the future be somewhere where the online and physical worlds merege into each other? I believe the way forward is to understand how consumers behave and cater to their needs. An example which comes to my mind is something which was done by Homeplus (Tesco) in Korea last year. Watch Case Study here. It means there’s a way out. It’s waiting to be found.

So, that’s the thought! I will see you right back here!

Nokia India: Understanding Brand Strategy

It’s a small world these days. Information is ubiquitous and available instantaneously. To adapt to these changing times many firms worldwide are moving towards  International Marketing Campaigns.  It means that the television and print ads will look similar from country to country; consumer engagement activities, digital ads on web sites and in social media, will be more customized for local markets.

The recent high profile launch of Nokia Lumia is a peculiar case in point. The Nokia Lumia was launched with much fanfare globally on 28^th November 2011. Watch the Launch video here. Closely on the heels of the global launch, the Lumia was rolled out in India on the 10^th of December 2011. Since then Nokia has extensively focused on its brand tagline – ‘The amazing Everyday!’

It aimed to ‘amaze’ its consumers in their everyday activities by adding special moments.For this it went on a marketing overdrive and incorporated nearly every possible element of marketing you can think of. TV, Digital, print, retail activation, flash mobs etc.

I like the new commercial for Nokia Lumia. It is peppy, vibrant and captures the essence of what the brand wants to communicate aptly. However there are two specific concerns about the same. The Indian commercial is a truncated rehash of the Global TVC with 3 incidents (Cricket, Sadhu Babas and an auto-rickshaw in BKC) sprinkled in the commercial to ‘customize’ it for India.

Did Nokia mean to communicate that people all over the world are enjoying amazing everyday with the Lumia and so are the Indians? If that was the premise with which they started then the commercial seems to augur well. However I believe a complete rework on the ad visuals could have served the purpose better. The smart thing about the Lumia commercial was that it executed its advertisement in a montage format which means it could use a lot of visuals and demonstrate what the brand would like to say ‘amazing’ moments from everyday life.

 To add on to the Television campaign ,the marketing blitzkrieg ‘The Amazing Everyday’ included impromptu dance performance by a foreign troupe in Mumbai; a luxury helicopter ride for consumers in Bangalore, Hyderabad and Chennai; exclusive premiere for pre-bookers with tennis star Sania Mirza at Ambience Mall in Gurgaon late on Thursday; a mega musical event in Delhi on Friday, and toll exemption for more than 15,000 cars at DND Freeway connecting Delhi and Noida on Friday, among several others including aggressive advertisement across different media platforms, to connect with the young consumers across metro cities.

It is but obvious that Nokia is betting hugely on Lumia to pump up its faltering market share. The marketing activities appear a tad too desperate. Like the recent branding of Jet Airways flight? Seriously?? How many people would notice the branding on the flight and link it to the Lumia brand during a bleary-eyed early morning flight? It’s okay to provide and engage the consumers in various novel activities but is it linking back to the brand?                                         (Image Source - ET)

After all these gargantuan efforts Nokia surely doesn’t want to see articles like this (No Game Changer – Economic Times) or any internal goof-ups like this one (Software Glitch in Nokia Lumia).

I believe the problem which Nokia faces is its loss of focus. It failed to innovate with the technology curve and understand the changing consumer needs.

One of the reasons Nokia has fallen so fast is that it has a simple branding problem: Nokia isn’t a distinctive brand. It is a brand with high awareness, but it isn’t unique. While in the past it trounced the likes of Sony Ericcsson and Motorola. Nokia suddenly found itself in need of a different game to take on different competitors. As Samsung and Apple drop the prices of their devices and expands services, its share of the smartphone market is growing at Nokia's expense. Meanwhile, Research in Motion has the business segments stitched up with its BlackBerry devices.

Nokia wanted to be all things to all people, all over the world, all the time. For many years, Nokia seemed to successfully do carry out the same: serve all segments in a market. Nokia sold very high-end, technologically advanced phones and simple, inexpensive phones, all under the Nokia brand. The branding structure was very simple: the Nokia brand with a product number. Is that why they distinctly named the new Smartphone ‘Lumia’?

 

Will Nokia be the famed second entrant where it dethrones the current biggies of the game? Will it able to pull of what facebook did to Orkut, or Google did to Yahoo!? Lets see time will tell. As of now. Lets wait and watch the unveiling of the Nokia Lumia 900! Too soon isnt it?

 

So, that’s the thought! I will see you right back here!