Marketing Books Update

'Buyology' the new book based on Neurological studies by Martin lindstrom. Through the book Lindstrom shares the insights from the series of neuromarketing studies which he conducted. In the book he goes on to disprove many of the popular beliefs that one holds about things like the utility of product placements, and anti-smoking ads. Many of his ideas are also there in his video blog, on his website http://www.martinlindstrom.com/

Second on the list is Rohit Bhargava's 'Personality Not Included' where he talks about how companies are increasingly becoming faceless - without a personality. He elaborates the idea of how one could build an authentic personality for an organization, a combination of a theory and a how to are combined in the book. A very good read.

Next is David Scott's book 'The New Rules of Marketing & PR' a little dated book especially in the context of the issues covered in the book about various emerging forms of media, but still is quite relevant.

Guy Kawasaki's new book Reality Check is an compilation of many of blog posts, which is slowly becoming a trend- writing books out of the posts which one has written. The book is a collection of thoughts on various issues from presentation and public speaking tips to suggestions of how to make good sales pitch to VCs. The number of issues which the author has covered can be guessed by the number of chapters the 450 plus page book has - 95...

Two more books on social media and their influence on marketing, 'Always On' a book which elaborates the turmoil which traditional media is going through after the advent of Internet based consumer generated media. Paints a scary picture of the changes which are coming up.

Second is Groundswell which is also on similar lines which discusses the concept of how customers are taking over the conversation about your company and brand through blogs , wiki and youtube. The authors are also have a very strong presence in the blogsphere through there popular blog ground swell.Both these books are on the best books list of Strategy & Business.

Tata Tea and Jaago Re Initiative

I have been trying to document cases wherein marketing principles have been applied to non-typical contexts in India. One of the more recent cases which I had observed and documented was the promotion of the usage of condom . The campaign is is very well designed with website , games, mobile ring tones and a mass media campaign all revolving round the concept. link to my earlier post.

In today's post I would try to document two more similar on-going initiatives. The first is the Jaago Re campaign in which they are promoting voter registration across the country and targeting the younger generation of first time voters. The campaign revolves around their website http://www.jaagore.com/ which facilities the process of voter registration by enabling voter registration online for the first time in the country. The website claims to be a 'one-stop-solution to all your voting needs'. And they have managed to get 320,000 youngsters registered through the website.

This campaign is also unique as it is being promoted jointly by an NGO 'Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy, and a corporate 'Tata Tea". Tata tea is providing the funding needed to run the mass media campaign and leveraging the concept Jagoo Re to differentiate their tea brands. According to the company the campaign is a good fit to their attempt to umbrella brand all their tea brands. It seems like a win-win situation , with the brand leveraging a social cause for promoting its brand and the cause getting the funding it needs.

Link to the two TV being in the initiative 1st ad & 2nd ad

The second campaign which I have noticed in the Bell Bajao Campaign , which is a campaign which urges people to take a stand against domestic violence. This TV and radio campaign has a strong back up with the website, http://www.bellbajao.org/. The links to various TV ads used,

Testimonial Ad, link

More in the series, Ball ad, Milk ad

It is good see the wider application of marketing in areas of social and societal concern, hopefully this would just be the beginning .................

Market Update 05.02.09

Trying to update what has come in the press on Marketing in India, in the last two weeks

Starting with Economic Times, Brand Equity

Brand LIC and how it has grown in the competitive post-lib scenario, link

Brand Building in Recessionary times, link 

Bharat Nimran Campaign versus India Shinning, link

Salman Khurshid on the campaign , link and Arun Jaitley, link 

Well documented Crossword story, how it has become the largest book retailer in the country and transformed book retail, link

Piyush Pandey on the power of ideas, link 

Unilever is planning to feature it's corporate logo in British and Irish consumer ads, this is something which they have been doing in the Asian markets but not there, raises issues of the plus and minus of such an approach, link 

Business Standarad,  Strategist

Aditya Birla retail and plans for private labels, link 

One more new channel which proposes to be different from other, read the Real story, the new channel which would be up by March from Turner-Midtech, link

Counterfeits in FMCG, link 

Television viewership data, link

Bajaj focuses back on Scooters, link

Business Line Catalyst

Below the line Ads in times of slow down, The use of Dabbawallahs to sell mutual funds, link 

Marketing catching up with Bollywood, link 

Benefits of slowdown, link

Story of the growth of Club Mahindra, link 

Satyam Crisis, link 

More consumer choice, more confusion, Indian Retail also going the same way, link 

Slowdown and marketing, link

Santoor Soaps - Overtakes Lux in South India

When one talks about 'Wipro', the first thing people think of is about their IT business. The fact is that IT is a relatively new business for Wipro and they have been into others businesses which are much older, like lighting and consumer care . In fact they started their business in the vegetable oil business. These older divisions have for a long time been under the shadow of their larger younger cousin software, but of late the consumer business is coming to age, last three years it is one the fastest growing FMCG companies in the country.

The flagship brand of the consumer care division is 'Santoor'. Since its launch in 1986 the brand has been doing quite well in the fiercely competitive soap business dominated by HUL. The industry estimates the brand to be worth more than Rs 500 crore. But the big news is that it has become No 2 brand in the south edging out Lux. (It is the largest selling brand of soap in Andhra). Nielsen data shows that it has 15.6% market share in south versus 12.4% of Lux. The fact that it has overtaken Lux is something which is commendable, looking at the history and support which a brand like Lux receives with Prinka chopra and Ashiwarya Rai being the brand ambassadors for Lux. Wipro plans to leverage the brand by extending the brand into new categories like creams, moisturizers, body sprays and washes, after the relaunch of the brand.

The company website describes the brand as "a truly unique soap that combines the goodness of natural ingredients - Sandal, Turmeric and natural Skin Softeners". The long standing positioning of the brand has been - a skin that is so healthy and beautiful, it lies about your actual age !. The product is available in three variants, Santoor (Sandal & Turmeric), Santoor White (Sandal & Almond milk) and Santoor Chandan. They have extended the brand into talc, face wash and fairness cream.

For me santoor is an addition to my list of sucessful Indian brands which have done well against competition from much larger multinational companies. And as a marketer it is obviously interesting to find out more about how the brand become number two overtaking Lux which obviously has spending more money on ad and promotions. A successful case of low cost marketing....

More on the success story, catalyst analysis, link

Rural Marketing in India - Beyond Tactics

Sharing the presentation from the talk which I had given to MBA participants of IIT Allahabad on Rural Marketing,

Rural Marketing In India Beyond Tactics

View more presentations from Rajesh Aithal. (tags: marketing india)

Subhiksha Retail - Indian Brand in trouble?

In my quest to document Indian brands I had made a list of those which i would like to write about and there were quite a few retail brands in that (one of the reasons could be that retail is not still open fully to foreign players). Kishore Biyani's - Pantaloons and Big Bazaar are on top of the list.  They have contributed to Indian retail by being pioneers and reshaping the retail landscape in the country by adapting to conditions in the country. But the post is not about BigBazzar, which would deserve a separate post but on Subhiksha, largest retailer in the country. But unfortunately the post was triggered by the news that the retail slow down is forcing them to close down half of their 1600 outlets. More about that later, first on what Subhiska offers to the Indian consumer.

Subhiskha evolved a model of retail which is unique to India or as Mr R Subramanian would like to put it the  'Indian Format of Retailing'. They did not try and ape the international retail model, of having larger stores  with air conditioning and other extra frills. Their typical shops are much smaller in size and in a prime localities in a city with no air conditioning and fancy shelves and designer lights.

The value proposition that Subhiskha offers to the typical India consumers is load and clear, first convenience - by locating them in key locations within the city they are actually more accessible than there larger cousins , so no need to drive and reach them. And the consumer can afford to buy in smaller quantities and more frequently. The second value to the customer was in terms of savings , most of the products sold in Subshikha would be sold on discount . As any one who would have bought at Subhiska would have observed the clear price advantage that they would get.

Only thing which went against them that was that one could not be  get all brands that they wanted in their outlets; essentially the choice was limited. It could have been driven by strategy of stocking a few brands on which they were able to get a good offer from the manufactures or supply chain bottlenecks. So there would be many consumers who would come and buy a few products from them and go on to buy the others from another retailer.

The Subhiska story has been highlighted in the media as a success, link  . Story of R Subramanian of Subhiskha is one which inspires many of us, a first generation entrepreneur who went on to build the largest retail chain in India. More can be read about him in the book 'Stay hungry and Foolish' which documents the stories of 25 entrepreneurs from IIMA. 

Coming back to the current crisis which they are supposedly going through, could be the  result of a multitude of factors; the overall slow down in retail sales, the rapid expansion that they have done in the last year or so, which would be leading to operational issues. My opinion is that Subhishka is not new to difficult times and in the past gone through them successfully and come out stronger , hopefully this around also the story would be same, though the current issues seem more challenging....

Thumps Up the No 1 Cola Brand in India

Whenever I ask the question which is the No 1 cola brand in the country, many people assume it is either Pepsi or Coca Cola, but it is Thums Up. Though it was sold off by the Chauhan brothers to Coca Cola in 1993 , I would still classify it as an Indian brand which has been around since 1977. Initially when the Chauhan's sold it off for $60 million, many analysts thought that it was a good deal because many believed that the brand would anyway disappear in a short time, but the story was not supposed to be so simple.

Coca Cola bought the brand and with it the access to the its bottling and distribution network, which they saw as a effective way of countering Pepsi which has a few years of head start in the country. Initially Coca Cola wanted wanted to kill the brand slowly , as they were sure that most of the consumers would shift over to to Coca Cola , so they decided to stop all promo support of the brand and waited for it to die, but it took them some years to realise that the brand was not going to die and was infact doing well in spite of almost zero support from the company. It was then that they realised that they would have to actually manage two brands in the country. 

Then the company moved to the second level of trying to use it as a flanker brand against Pepsi. They started using Thums Up to attack Pepsi openly by challenging them on a blind taste challenge and so on. Obviously they have slowly realised that they are under utilising the brand as just a flanker and there was more value which could be extracted out of the brand and thus today brand Thums Up accounts for the largest share of its promotional budget and gets the attention it deserves as a separate brand. 

The case of Thums Up highlights the myopic view with which many multinational companies operate in the country, they assume that brands which have a a very strong following in their home grounds would have similar following in India, which is not necessarily true. Though Coke has learnt through their experiences and are adapting and changing their branding strategies according to the needs of the local market. 

In fact even with the lemon based drink Limca there is a similar story in India. The brand has its own set of loyal customers in the marketplace, and they still prefer it over many other lemons based offerings in the market.  I have heard that coca cola has to struggle with its bottlers to free up lines for other brands in summers when they want to use it for Limca.

More on Private lables in India

I had written earlier about the phenomenon of private labels in India, Link. But it was some time back and after that I have done some work in that area so thought will share it my readers.

Currently the way many of the organized retailers are conceptualising their private label strategy is very different from the way it is seen in countries where organized retail is very strong. If one sees the plans of Future Group, which owns Pantaloons and Big Bazaar retail stores, they are planning to an investment of Rs 200 crore into the private label business and target reaching a turnover of Rs 10,000 crore by 2012.

Among the organized retailer's the Future's group is the one which seems of a well thought out strategy, with the presence of private labels in most categories, with tasty treat and Fresh 'n' Pure in the groceries, Care Mate for home care, and Kroyo and Sensei in Consumer Durables.

The growth which Futures is planning would be achieved not only through the sales through its own retail stores but also by selling it to retailers outside its own network. which in essence goes against the traditional definition of private labels. One of the possible reasons why they are looking at this idea is that they know that getting economies of scale only through their selling in their own retailers stores might not be easy and the reality that mom-n-pop stores are going to be part of the retail reality of Indian market for a long time to come.

But one thing which I felt has been left out in the overall scheme of ideas is trying to understand the psyche of the Indian consumer and his response towards private labels. How is he perceiving them? why does he buy them and what are his expectations from a private label, because ultimate success of the private labels would depend on how willing are they to try and use these brands. One recent new paper article highlighted the fact that consumers were going back to mom-n-pop stores because they are not happy with offers or deals on private labels, and they are able to get similar offers on the manufacturer's brands from their regular corner grocery store, this is a worrying trend which should be watched out for. For more of the consumer response to organized retail check out the article link.

In my next posting I will share a few of my own observations on private labels at two of the prominent retailers in the country.

Nimbu Pani by Coca Cola and Pepsi - Unorganized to branded !!!

A week back we had the news that coke has drawn out plans to introduce Nimbu Panni(lemonade) in the coming summer. Now if Coke is planning on some thing can Pepsi be too far behind, so a couple of days back the news that Pepsi is also planning a similar offering in the market is out.

At a generic level the competition of soft drinks companies is not from each other but from the large untapped unorganized players like the local juice guy who serves fresh juice, or the lemonade made in homes or the road-side vendor. The aim is to convert these consumer who are presently being served by the unorganized market into branded consumers. This was what being attempted till now in the juice market but this attempt to tap the Nimbu Pani market is something new.

One of the main advantages of Nimbu panni served at the roadside vendor, is 'freshness' because the vendor would cut the lemon in front of the customers and then prepare the drink. Second plus would be the price at which the drink is being served. But there are many doubts which would be there in the consumer's mind, in terms of the quality of water or ice being used apart from the general hygiene and cleanliness. Though these would be taken care off  if the same is prepared at home.

The  new packaged nimbu pani from the stable of Coca Cola and Pepsi would have to handle the twin challenge of freshness and price, the one front in which it would score high would be the hygiene. But freshness would be a difficult issue because as soon as some thing is  offered in a packaged form the concept of freshness goes out of the window in spite of all assurances from the company that they will ensure freshness. On the second dimension of pricing, both coke and Pepsi plan to price is quite low, but how low will they be able to sell the drink, looking at the distribution and other marketing costs involved....

If one were to look at earlier examples of trying to introduce packaged drinks like tender coconut the experiences have not been something to write home about in spite of the use of appropriate technology. The reasons attributed to the failure include the fact that for a consumer drinking a fresh coconut water from a vendor is not just a product , but a total experience, when he selects the tender coconut, and it is open in front of him and then he drinks it , versus imagine the opening the cap of a plastic bottle or a a tetra pack....

Will it 'Nimbu Panni' be a success in India ?.....

Segments in Indian Market - Communication Perspective

Found a very interesting video of the changing realities in marketing and branding,

But when one sees  Indian market, we can bifurcate consumers into three segments (three to limit complexity)

Segment 1. is the segment which the video is talking about, people who have gone full hog and embraced new technologies and are 100% at ease with Internet , spend a disproportionate amount of time on it. Consumers in this segment would typically be either the upwardly mobile Sec A1 consumer or the techno geek sort of person, though demographically also this segment would be different as they would be much younger than the other segments.

Segment 2. would be one which is still stuck in the old paradigm of marketing , still spending a lot of time on the TV and slow on adopting new technology. These would be consumers in semi-urban and non-metro markets in the country. The choice for them though increasing is not as extensive as the segment 1 consumers. 

Segment 3. are the rural consumer, who by sheer numbers form a very large market, and are actually stuck at a level below even the consumers in segment 2, with many of them in media dark regions, and low literacy levels . They need to accessed through pre-mass media communication strategies, be in through the use of long infomercials run on vans, or the the use of demonstration and wall paintings in appropriate places.

Maybe we can try conceptualised these segments as a funnel, with the base being the rural consumers who need to be approached with no-frills basic communication, the center being those consumers who are still stuck in the mass communication days and the tip being the upwardly mobile consumer who has totally adapted to the new technology and cannot live with it. 

So for a marketer this increases the complexity of his job of reaching out to consumers, depending on the segment his approach has to to vary ......