Nokia feeling Nostalgic

Yesterday was the last day for the Nokia factory in Chennai and when I saw the article in et and the models shown in it ...

The significance of the factory in terms of the output is not known to many of us

Can toothbrushes be further Differentiated?

Whenever I have think of tooth brushes, the first image which come to my mind is that of the toothbrush salesman moving from one shop to the other walking with bundles of toothbrushes.....

And feel that all that can be differentiated in a toothbrush has been done, no further ways to make your toothbrush different from the other..

But then time and again I see examples which remind me that a marketer can find ways and means of differentiating and continue doing it

The zigzag bristles, additional tongue cleaner and so on....are the usual ones

The most interesting one which I found was the idea of putting an indicator in Oral-B. It made sense because it helped both the company as well as consumers who would be reminded that it time to change the brush and the company obviously in sales...

The last visit to a large retailer brought to my attention a new offering from Colgate which is also equally interesting , the SlimSoft Charcoal , the website enlists two advantages, first the micro slim-tip bristles help reach deeper between teeth & along the gum-line and second  the charcoal infused bristles remove plaque bacteria.

The other toothbrushes also had something to offer, but this one stood out....

If some much can be done on a simple toothbrush, then the scope and limits are which are set by a manager not a product....

Markets blooming during Diwali

If one wants to experience the festivities during Diwali one needs to move away from the Malls and shopping centers into the traditional markets. Went to two of the older markets in lucknow, sharing some photos from the visit. 

Candles being Sold by Kilos

People busy Buying

Diya's Being Sold

Brisk Sale of Pooja Items

Interesting full page ad

Saw an interesting print as so sharing

Season of full page Ads continue

A full page by mobile store talking about off line advantages

Will Online Retail Become Bigger than Modern Trade

After seeing the aftermath of the "The Big Billion Day" Sale an interesting thought is coming to my mind, will online retail overtake Modern Trade or Organized Retail in India? One of the reasons this question came to my mind looking at the reactions which came from the members of organized retail. They have all queued-up to complain against the 6the Oct sale and the fight in Mobile retail and online has been on for quite some time. Without getting into the rights and wrongs of the issue, I will move on to the moot question.. 

I will briefly summarize some of the key challenges which organized retail faces , prohibitively expensive real estate for setting-up retail stores. Internationally large format retailers would locate themselves outside the city where real estate is not that expensive and people would drive to buy from them. India we have challenges of people willing to travel long distance for shopping: one is the challenge of travelling along with the widespread smaller kirana trader…

Added to that the fact that no one has cracked the format which would suit India, so we still do not know which format will work. Lack of clarity on regulations, especially on the entry of multinational players. and most of the retailers are bleeding....

On the online front, there are challenges too, but somehow I have feeling they have the potential to challenge the Big Bazaars and Reliance Retail's. And perhaps the low priced "android one" phones might be the bridge that ecom players are looking for. And add to that the regulations are not very clear for ecom, though the government is making the wrong noises...

Though organized retail has been around for quite some time it not managed to breach the double figure mark in market share. Internationally the online players have become an additional channel, and co-exist with the large format retailers, but in India because both of them are emerging simultaneously the scene might turn out to very different in the next five years. 

I am confessing that I am going with the hype, the bubble….. but then that is the fun in being part of the hype and sticking your neck-out…

Season of full page ads 3

More full page advertisements, this time it is Big Bazaar, on flipkart sale.

Flipkart's Big Billion Day Sale - Sale with no Logic?

Typically every festival season marketers burn the mid-night oil to come up with block buster offers. For many years this responsibility was shouldered by LGs Samsung’s in the Durables Business and then the Mobile marketers, which lined up new products and offers during the festive season, but this year it is the ecom firms which are hogging the limelight or should I say the front pages of newspapers (albeit through full page ads)….

This post is specifically about the flash sales and the one-day sale model which flipkart has been using. They have had a series of flash sales for the Motorola and Xiaomi mobiles. Today morning they have tried a similar model with the one day sale model where they have ridiculously priced products up for sale like a Samsung Tab2 for 1,390, hand blender for 1 and so on

And this was backed up a fairly aggressive TV and print campaign and obviously numerous reminders on Facebook and where not...

But even at 8.02 AM in the morning what you can see is "Sold-Out" for these products, I think flipkart is playing with fire, what does it want to do with this kind of sale, create awareness? Then let them be warned, these limited stock deals create more heart-burn than any long term customer loyalty and if they think consumers cannot see through their tactics then they are again very wrong.

Do they want to clear old stocks,  or do they just want more people visiting their site??? Hopefully they are mature enough to think beyond the eyeballs model.

And even before the event I can see a lot of negative posts about them on social networking sites and even in the earlier flash sales , I could read more negative

comments than good experiences being shared.

I use to be a loyal flipkarter till some time back, but have shifted out to their nearest competitor, but even then I am worried about the direction which flipkart is going....

Season of Full Page Ads - 2

Today the full page ads were even more interesting, especially the response by snap deal on flipkart's special sale day..

 And Snapdeal responding..

Season of Full Page Ads - 1

For the last few days I have been seeing full page ads , these were the ones which were put up for the Swachh Bharat Campaign

Swachh Bharat - Onus of Success Lies with us..

Whenever we travel out most of us are struck by the cleanliness in cities likes Singapore, Seoul or a Hong Kong and come back home thinking - why are our cities dirty...

We try to console ourselves saying they are much smaller places and so easier to maintain perhaps, income levels are higher and so on....

This is where the Swachh Bharat  nitiative of Prime Minister Modi is significant, as it brings the issue of cleanliness back into focus, on the top agenda in your to-do-list. This is something which I sure do not remember happening in my life time, yes we have read about it in Gandhi Ji experiments with truth and so on,...but it is something which we read and ... Whenever I read something about Gandhi Ji the first thing which strikes me is the vision that the person had and clarity of thought ( things which he spoke about and wrote and so relevant today) ...I think in the recent years it was the “Munna Bhai” Movies which had the maximum impact on making the youngsters remember the principles of Gandhi Ji than anyone else,

Coming back to the campaign I sincerely hope we succeed at and we get our Swachh Bharat...and the onus lies with each of us, and a lot of MNCs are also eager to pitch in ....

Let us start with our offices, homes and then expand and hopefully change our habits of treating our homes sacred, but the road on which the dorr opens as the responsibility of the Munciplaity. The three cities which I spoke about in the starting also were as bad as many of our cities a few decades back, but then today …so we do have hope