JANUARY 2014
Markmantra MARKETING MAGAZINE OF IIFT
GOLDEN JUBILEE PUBLICATION — CELEBRATING THE 50th YEAR OF IIFT (1963-2013)
INSIDE THE EDITION fIIFTy Years of Glory commemorated by stamp release Crowd-Sourcing Working Behind the scenes: JWT Changing Logos Milestone Marketing Controversial Campaigns Ad Wars – a myopia or a necessity?
Team Markmantra
FOREWORD MarkMantra is the marketing magazine brought out by the students of IIFT. The year 2013 is special for all of us at IIFT and the team at MarkMantra is no exception to it, as IIFT celebrates its Golden Jubilee !!
AMAR BUDATI Editor-In-Chief
PALNIKA HEMNANI Managing Editor
PRACHI SINGH Co-Editor
The Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT) was set up on 2nd of May 1963 as in Institution with a focus on foreign trade related research and training. Since inception, the Institute has evolved and undergone major transformations and has, over the years, broadened the scope and dimensions of its academic activity that now encompasses the full spectrum of international business. Today, the Institute, in its 50th year of existence, is widely recognized for its knowledge and resource base, its rich heritage and strong alumni network both in India and abroad. This is the Golden Jubilee edition of MarkMantra which is being brought out to commemorate this momentous occasion. The junior-editorial team for the next year makes its presence felt with this issue and they have been closely associated in bringing out this issue of the magazine. We are always eager to hear in from our readers and incorporate their suggestions. You can reach out to us at:
https://www.facebook.com/ IIFT.MarkMantra iift.markmantra@gmail.com
NAVDEEP VERMA Online Co-ordinator
https://twitter.com/ MarkMantra_IIFT
JUNIOR EDITORIAL TEAM
SAURABH VYAS
ARJUNSINGH MEHTA
AVINASH SAPROO
SAMARTH VIKRAM SINGH
PRATEEK SRIVASTAVA
Article
Page No.
fIIFTy Years of Glory commemorated by stamp release
01
Crowd Sourcing
03
Changing Logos
07
Working Behind the scenes : JWT
10
What Not to do in social media marketing?
14
Milestone Marketing
17
What are the brands offering this Festive season? Has tabbed inbox in Gmail killed Email?
21 23
Controversial Campaigns
25
Advertorials – Treading on a thin line
29
The best of 2013
32
AD Wars – a Myopia or a necessity?
36
Sachin’s 200th test: a marketer’s fest??
38
MARKMANTRA
JANUARY 2014
fIIFTy Years of Glory commemorated by stamp release
A
fter the honourable President of India, Dr. Pranab Mukherjee kicked off the golden Jubilee year celebrations at the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade in New Delhi on the 2nd of May 2013 there have been various events which have marked IIFT’s golden jubilee celebrations. Adding yet another feather to its cap, IIFT has now become the only Bschool to have a postage stamp in its name. To commemorate and appreciate the contributions IIFT has made to the progress of the country over the last fifty years, the Prime Minister of India, Dr. Manmohan Singh, released a five rupee postage stamp on the 10th of Decem-
ber 2013 at the Prime Minister’s Residence. Speaking on the occasion Dr. Singh praised IIFT for the role it has played over the years and fulfilled all its responsibilities with “great distinction”. Recounting his own association with the institute Dr. Singh stated that while he was working at the Delhi School of Economics one his paper was published in the “Foreign Trade Review” a journal published by IIFT. He had earlier visited the institute in 1993 to inaugurate a summit as well. Further the Prime Minister stated that in the near future the institute will play an even greater role as India looks to trade more and more with the world. The Union Minister for Commerce & Industry,
Page 1
MARKMANTRA
JANUARY 2014
Fun Facts
included Bali WTO Ministerial, where the Department of Commerce professionals had been engaged in extremely tight negotiations for months, and appreciated IIFT for all the guidance and support provided by it. The Union Minister for Communications & Information Technology and Law & Justice, Shri Kapil Sibal spoke about how IIFT over the last fifty years had grown into a Centre of Excellence and carved an envious position for itself among the top ten business schools in the country. Representing IIFT were the Director of IIFT, Dr. Surajit Mitra, Centre Head of IIFT Kolkata Professor K. Rangarajan, faculty members and various members of the student bodies. Dr. Mitra thanked everyone for their presence and blessings. He spoke
about IIFT’s dream to emerge as a global knowledge centre in the years to come. This goes a long way in showing the kind of respect IIFT has garnered over the years. For each and every student it is a very humbling feeling to be a part of this esteemed institution. Over the last fifty years IIFT has proven its mettle time and again and will continue to do so in the years to come reaching greater heights with time.
Prateek Srivastava MBA(IB) 2013-15 Indian Institute of Foreign Trade
The Scinde Dawk, of 1852, the first postage stamp of India is a round red sealing wafer. The name derives from the words “Scinde”, the British spelling of the name of the province of Sindh, and “Dawk”, the anglicised spelling of the Hindustani word “Dak” or Post .
Page 2
MARKMANTRA
JANUARY 2014
time would include the Oxford dictionary, which solicited nominations from the general public for new words that would go on to become a part of the lexicon in that year’s edition. A good number of words that we use today have their origins in crowdsourcing campaigns run by the dictionary.
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA ) of United States Department of Defense is crowd sourcing the design and manufacturing of a new armored vehicle!!
Arcbazar is American crowdsourcing platform for Architectural design. It is headquartered in Cambridge, Masachussets.
W
ikipedia defines Crowdsourcing as the practice of obtaining needed services, ideas or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people, and especially from an online community, rather than from traditional employees or suppliers. For beginners, Wikipedia itself is a fine example of crowdsourcing !! The main aim of crowdsourcing is to obtain small useful amounts of the end which we want to fulfill. This can be in the form of an investment for a start-up or a slew of ideas for creating a new product. It aggregates the efforts put in by many volunteers, part-time workers for achieving the result. Each contributor takes the initiative to add a small unit to the greater outcome. The word "Crowdsourcing" was coined in the year 2006 officially and existed only informally prior to that. Early examples of crowdsourcing included gathering money by townsfolk to build a small bridge, road or to form a group that would essentially benefit the society at large. A more relevant example for today’s
Page 3
Other historical examples of this novel method include citizen science projects that asked the public to contribute their gene samples for the purpose of DNA testing that would then be used in genetic genealogy which is a combination of traditional genealogy with genetics. The purpose of the ensuing research was trying to develop a disease resistant gene by making use of the diversity of the gene pool it had collected. Crowdsourcing was also used in the past as a means of generating solutions from the public, the Panchatantra has stories where kings would announce that anyone who would solve the problem facing the kingdom would be rewarded handsomely. Similar initiatives were taken in the form of competitions by the French government, often rewarding the winners with Montyon Prizes. These were aimed specially for poor Frenchmen who had performed virtuous acts. Two such rewards include the Leblanc process, or the Alkali Prize, where a reward was provided for separating the salt from the alkali, and the other instance being the Fourneyron's Turbine awarded for the development
MARKMANTRA
JANUARY 2014
of the first hydraulic commercial turbine.
volved in the effort.
One of the biggest crowdsourcing campaigns in recent memory would be the search for a new rupee symbol by the Indian government in 2010. The design by D.Udayakumar was chosen as the final winner amongst thousands of entries, it was based on the Devanagari script using the letter ‘Ra’.
Crowdsourcing is of two types namely explicit and implicit. The former deals with the collaboration of users to share ideas, thoughts, designs and enables them to evaluate, distribute each other’s work while the latter type is further subdivided into categories standalone and piggyback. Standalone as suggested allows one to work in isolation from the others while piggybacking involves collecting the user’s data from a third-party website for further analysis and decision making.
As of today, the biggest platform for crowdsourcing and crowdsourcers is undoubtedly the internet with its wide reach and ability to connect people across geographies, it also provides people an opportunity to work What’s in crowdsourcwith the mask ing for a marketer? of anonymity Crowdsourcing allows if they so the marketer a window wish to. into the world’s young There is also population an overthe absence whelming of them who of physical have an online presence. involvement This is more so true for in an online developed economies crowdsourcwith the developing ing; all these economies fast catchfactors go in The new rupee symbol is an excellent ing up with them in favor of interms of internet penexample of crowd sourcing. 3331 enternet maketration and coning it the tries were received by Govt. of India. sumption. It is widely largest foD Udayakumar’s design was chosen as believed that youngrum for the final winner. sters across the world crowdsourcthink, act and feel in ing. An the same manner. This belief is strongly online platform is ideal for well-designed enforced by the fact that major lifestyle and projects as individuals are less bothered fashion brands have universal offerings about the scrutiny of their contributions across geographies with minor modificaowing to the high number of cotions, this holds true even for aerated bevcontributors which allows them to display erages and other consumables. their creative potential to the fullest. More attention can be given to the details of the project rather than spending time in communicating with other stakeholders in-
Some web-based crowdsourcing efforts can be broadly categorized into crowd-voting, wisdom of the crowd, crowd-funding, mi-
Page 4
MARKMANTRA
JANUARY 2014
cro-work, creative crowdsourcing and inducement prize contests. Crowdspring.com Crowdsourced its logo even before launching the website. And it paid a mere $ 200 for that!!
Starbucks
also
runs
crowdsourcing
a
site
calledMyStarbucksIdea.com, where customers have submitted almost 130,000 ideas on products, experience and community involvement.
A latest study by Social Impact observed that about 44% of the ‘Fortune 500’ firms have employed crowdsourcing for their needs.
Page 5
Source: Internet
Marketers have been using these methods alone or in a combination to reach out to a wider audience and develop a collaborative relationship wherein a customer gives suggestions to the organizations which depending on their popularity and/or feasibility are implemented. Sometimes a certain portion of the revenues generated by the sale of the product are shared with the individual/group who conceptualized it. This creates a certain incentive for the customers to keep contributing for future campaigns and motivates others who hadn’t participated earlier to join in. There are a number of factors for businesses to look at crowdsourcing right from accomplishing complex tasks, finding solutions to problems and to gathering information. These also help in offloading peak demand, finding access to cheap labor and information, generating better outcomes, access a wider pool of talent than might be available in one organization and find solutions problems which are too difficult and will consume a lot of time and resources if solved internally. Sometimes there is difficulty in crowdsourcing complicated tasks whereas simple tasks are
crowd sourced economically and efficiently. A good example of this is Amazon’s Mechanical Turk wherein users participate and contribute to small tasks, each requiring very little time and effort. The users are in turn compensated with a small payment, to increase their chances of winning participants delay their submission and pick less trendy topics to work on. Web-based idea competitions often consist of generic ideas, cash prizes, and an Internet-based platform to facilitate easy idea generation and discussion. Take for instance IBM's 2006 "Innovation Jam", which had 140,000 international participants and ended up yielding around 46,000 ideas. Another example is the Netflix Prize in 2009. The problem statement asked the crowd to come up with a recommendation algorithm as more accurate than Netflix's own algorithm. The winners were promised a grand sum of $1,000,000 if they managed to come up with one. Criticisms Crowd-sourcing does have its own set of critics who disagree with certain aspects of this practice. First among them being the quality of the work/product that is sourced from the users, the main argument here being that as the inputs don’t come from experienced hands their chances of success is extremely low and one also runs a risk of facing failure. There is also a possibility of contributors with malevolent intentions contributing negative inputs which would lower the quality of
MARKMANTRA
the product being developed. Another problem that is present in crowdsourcing is the lack of interaction between the crowd and the client. As there is very little information with regards to the end product, the lack of interaction may lead to a dip in the quality of the final product. In addition to this, there are also concerns regarding the ethical standards in place for a crowdsourcing project in terms of wages and the number of hours put in. Crowdworkers are considered autonomous contractors rather than staff-members; they are not assured of a minimum wage. In practice, workers using the Amazon Mechanical Turk generally earn less than the minimum wage. Some researchers, who have considered using Mechanical Turk to get participants, for research studies, have argued that the wage conditions are unethical. Normally, no written contracts, nondisclosure agreements, or employee agreements are made with crowdsourced employees due to the apprehension of legal issues that might arise at a later stage. Crowdsourcing though is being projected as the way ahead for marketers for building higher levels of customer engagement and retaining customer loyalty in the digital age. Only the coming days would make it clear if crowdsourcing lives up to its potential or fizzles out like other phenomenon that
JANUARY 2014
promised a lot but failed to come up with the goods.
Amar Budati MBA (IB) 2012 - 14 Indian Institute of Foreign Trade
The world’s leading brewer, Anheuser-Busch (AB) has made sizable inroads in crowdsourcing. While its Budweiser is easily America’s best-selling beer, AB sought customer input to develop a brand more attuned to craftbeer tastes. Development of Black Crown, a golden amber lager, combined a competition between company-brew masters with consumer suggestions and tastings; this project had more than 25,000 consumercollaborators. In Brazil, where AB markets the leading brand, Skol, it has opened PopTent, a crowdsourced video-production company specializing in TVcommercials, utilizing a social network of 35,000 videographers from 120 nations.
Page 6
MARKMANTRA
JANUARY 2014
Changing Logos If a company has mastered Here is a quiz for the fans of Stethe art of changing logo, it ve Job – What was the first logo of Apple Inc. (Formerly Apple has to be Google. Google has Computer Inc.). For starters, gone one step further than “Apple with a bite taken off’ is not the correct answer. The first any other company. logo for Apple was “Sir Isaac It all started in 1998, when Newton sitting under the apple first time Google logo was tree” changed to honour the Burning Man festival. Since 2000,
Google has changed its logo frequently to mark various occasions. The changed logo is popularly known as a Doodle. Being the innovator Google Logo change in case of Apple Inc. was done to make the brand apis, Google launched the pear increasingly sophisticated world’s first interactive logo and elegant. The Apple Inc. logo bein 2010 on 30th anniversary of has come simPac - man where one could pler but is made more memorable in its simPac man doodle plicity. play L o g o Pac man with Google logo. change is typically In 2013 itself, Google has re- indicative leased 62 times!!! of a change in the organization. When an organization wants its customers, both current and prospective, to
Page 7
know that it wants to evolve and change from its current portfolio and scope. Logos can also be changed for various other reasons which vary from technical reasons to mergers. The Coca Cola logo has evolved over and over again from 1886 in Coke’s endeavour to be seen as more standardized and more relevant in the changing times. From the classical style of writing “Coca Cola”, to a more stylish and cursive style of writing their brand name, the organization also bought a change in the color from black to white to red. There was a particular instance in 1987 when Coca cola tried changing its formula in response to Pepsi gaining a larger share of mark e t t h a n Coca Cola. There was a huge hue a nd c r y about the same by the public, who boycotted the new Coke. The organization was then forced to go back
MARKMANTRA
to its original formula and also its original logo. The ClasThe star in the three corners sic Coke was bought back. on their logo represents the This, surprisMercedes-Benz dominance ingly, increased on land, sea and air. This the sales of logo has emerged from long Coca Cola. Coca Cola also series of mergers between has changed various companies logos in accordance with launches of new campaigns like “Things go better with Coke” and the “Open Happiness” campaign. The same was also done by Pepsi to make its logo more modern and streamline it. They also have changed the name in the logo from Pepsi Cola to just “Pepsi”. The colors, too, have become increasingly vibrant and attractive.
JANUARY 2014
Logo change is also done by retail store like Shoppers’ Stop with the tagline “Change is Good” and companies like Ceat with the tagline “Change is here”. Shell also made a change from a dull and complicated logo to a more simple and memorable one. Organization need to evolve continuously to be able to stay in the market and maintain their mar-
ket share with contributes to their top and bottom line. For this, change is essential. It also becomes vital that the organization appeal to the youth and
An example closer to home is that of Godrej. From the traditional image of Godrej of only almirahs and locks, the organization wanted a revamp. The logo change was done essentially to connect with the youth. The organization also wanted to emphasize on the fact that it has its hands in various other pies as well. The new logo
essentially has the same old signature of Godrej with just a dash of color added to the traditional red Godrej signature. According to Mr. Adi Godrej, “We standardized our logo with a wash of colors, which has helped the youth recollect the brand easily”.
are constantly on their top- of- mind recall. Change in logo to a more memorable one is an effective way of communication which of-course has to be backed up with delivery of what the logo promises. There also have been instances of Failure of revamping of the logo by an organization. In 2009, Tropicana introduced a new logo which was to showcase as “evolving the brand to a more current and modern state”. There was immediate outrage by the public on the logo. They identified
Page 8
MARKMANTRA
JANUARY 2014
Vaio symbol signifies merging of digital and analog technology. ‘VA’ is in the form of analog and ‘I O’ represents ‘1’ and ‘0’.
Tropicana by the familiar “straw in the orange” logo. Because of the change in the logo, sales tanked 20% and the organization was forced to return to its original logo two months later. On the same lines, GAP logo change decision was aborted to launch. The announcement of logo change bought on widespread outrage by customers on Facebook and Twitter. The organization withdrew the change without even launching the new logo. Logo of an organization is very crucial and any change in the same has a huge impact on the company’s brand image and on customers’ outlook. Logo is what a customer relates to and what he or she remembers. Changing the symbol of an
organization can either be very successful or can be an epic failure. It all depends on the customers, finally!!!
Meenakshi Deshpande MBA (IB) 2013 - 15 Indian Institute of Foreign Trade
Forehead Marketing This is a relatively unknown concept, it was created by an individual called Justin Kapust, through his organization Headvertise. Here people are encouraged to rent out their foreheads to be used as a medium for advertising products. There have been instances of people putting up their foreheads for consideration on e-bay and other ecommerce websites. Source : Internet
Page 9
MARKMANTRA
JANUARY 2014
Working Behind the
I
scenes: JWT
PL is becoming the Mecca for the adthe most admired companies. Led by Colvyn vertisers in India. Every edition of J Harris, CEO, South Asia, JWT is also one IPL offers something new. Pepsi this the fastest growing advertisement companies year came up with “Oh Yes Abhi” in India. JWT is credited with winning the campaign during the IPL which was directed f i r s t G r a n d P r i x a t towards social media. The campaign chalCannes Lions for India. Head quartered in lenged the viewers to make a 60 second video Mumbai, it has 6 more offices across Delhi, and upload it on the facebook page of the Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad. campaign with incentive JWT provides a total soluto win attractive prizes. tion to clients with camGodrej came up with paigns ranging from Main“Zindagi Muskuraye” stream advertising; Digital, campaign which saw Relationship Marketing and Amir Khan donning the loyalty solutions; Encomfemale avatar!! We saw pass for experiential marketSunrisers Hyderabad coming up with some ing; IPAN Hill & Knowlton for Public Relaof the most innovative logos in IPL. But tions and Public Affairs; Design @ JWT for there is one more thing that is common to all branding, Corporate Identity and Retail Dethese other than IPL. All these come from sign Solutions; Thompson Social for Social the same set of the creative people. All these Development Sector Communications, Rootare from JWT India – one of map for Rural Communica“JWT is a key company the most innovative advertising tions; and Design C for 3D of WPP advertising agencies in the present world. displays and exhibitions.
group (Grey Group,
JWT (previously J Walter Its portfolio of clients include Ogilvy & Mather Thomson) is a global advertis- Worldwide and Young some of the most admired ing and marketing agency hav- & Rubicam Brands be- brands in India including Airing more than 200 offices in ing the other three)” tel, Aditya Birla Financial Sermore than 90 countries. Ranked vices, Bharti Retail, Pepsico, 4th largest agency network in the world, JWT FritoLay, ITC, Godrej, Hindustan Unilever, is a key company of WPP advertising group GSK Consumer Healthcare, Hero Moto (Grey Group, Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide Corp, Ford, Nike, Nestle, Nokia, Levi's, Pizand Young & Rubicam Brands being the othza Hut, United Brewery, Kingfisher, Keler three). logg’s, Tisco and Exide among others JWT India is the India’s largest and one of
JWT has won several awards and recogni-
Page 10
MARKMANTRA
JANUARY 2014
tions over the years. At Asia Pacific Advertising and Marketing Congress organised by The Institute of Advertising, Singapore
tal business solutions Campaigns for Nike: JWT is advertising partner for Nike and has been involved in many ad campaigns for NIKE throughout the world. Some of the interesting campaigns for Nike are: Bid Your Sweat – Mexico
(IAS), JWT Mumbai won India’s only gold for its much-acclaimed Street to School campaign, for Maharashtra Jana Vikas Kendra's Balwadi Night School. Cannes 2008 saw JWT win the Grand Prix for its Lead India campaign which was much appreciated otherwise as well. Some of the distinguished awards which JWT has won worldwide include:
Most number of CANNES lions for China in 2013
Philippines second gold in 2013
An innovative campaign for Nike, this campaign offered a unique proposition to the people- they could buy from Nike store but not with money!!! Nike merchandise was put up for auction and bidding was based on no. of Kilometers run by the person i.e. the number of kilometers you run is your money with the distance covered measured using Nike Plus. The campaign was a great success. More than 25000 unique visitors participated in the bid. NIKE Bleed Blue Campaign In September 2010, Nike in association with JWT India launched the ‘Bleed Blue’
SOME CAMPAIGNS
Global W.K. Kellogg award for new product launch (South Africa)
2 grand Prix and 5 Golds at Spikes Festival of Creativity for Asia Pacific region in 2009
Gold and two silvers at W³ awards agency recognized for excellence in digi-
campaign expressing the support of the cricket mad nation for its beloved team. Nike firmly believed that if there was one
“The winner of first pair of shoes in the bid your sweat campaign went for 332 Km - an equivalent of running form London to Paris!”
Page 11
MARKMANTRA
JANUARY 2014
fixation that captured the spirit of an entire
describing the tenets of their game and how
nation drenched in a million emotions and
they 'Bleed Blue'. It also contained scenes
that united every Indian, it was cricket. Bleed
from real match play.
Blue can be interpreted by three sets of people: the first are aspiring cricket players from
Parallel Journey:
all walks of life and different parts of the
This was in continuation of Bleed Blue Cam-
country who are passionate about the game.
paign. ‘Parallel Journeys’ featuring a number of athletes, showcased their hard work and dedication these young players show right from an early age. It drew a parallel between the rigour and challenges what people at highest level feel to the challenges these young cricketers face in their lives. It was a multi-media initiative that brings to life the pursuit of greatness in the many parallel
The second lot comprises those who may
worlds of India’s cricket crazy bloodline that
not play cricket, but support the Indian team
Bleed Blue!
and cheer for their heroes. And, the third lot
Airtel 3G – Endless Goodbye
would be the 11 players themselves, whose
A campaign in which Airtel emphasizes on
passion for the game can be seen on the
the close relations and how hard it is to be
field, when they play for their country. As part of the campaign, Nike has so far launched four major advertisements. First was the ‘Bleed Blue Pledge’ which features cricket athletes such as Zaheer Khan, Virat Kohli, S Sreesanth, Sachin Tendulkar, M S Dhoni, Yuvraj Singh and Gautam Gambhir
separated from our loved ones, it shows a couple which seems sad initially because they are parting .But the very next instant they meet each other again. Airtel focuses on the video calls which have not picked up in India
Page 12
MARKMANTRA
JANUARY 2014
as had been anticipated. With this emo-
phere. Felix’s jump was delayed a number
tional campaign, Airtel surely has connect-
of times due to weather conditions. Kitkat
ed to the people, but how much this con-
as an unparalleled show of support and
nection converts into revenue for Airtel is
standing by its theme of taking a break
yet to be seen.
sent the four fingers to the edge of the
Olympics 2012 – Cheer for India
space! The iconic brand started its ascent from Cambridgeshire (UK) at 11:20am,
“Some brands are really out of this world. Advertising agencies like JWT can make them so. Ask Nestle!!!” JWT and sports go a long way. This series of campaign was not designed for any specific brand. Continuing their relation to the sports that goes way beyond Cricket, JWT started this campaign to commemorate the discipline, diligence and determination that these athletes show. The TVC showed a number of athletes from various fields ranging from archery to gymnastics in their preparation for Olympics 2012. As JWT puts it ‘the film was a tribute to the Indian athletes and aimed to capture the blood, sweat and tears that they put into their work. This campaign set the tone for the Olympics in India. Break from Gravity!!
rising to a height of 116490ft (35.5km / 22miles). The whole time, a camera was focussed on the Kitkat and the video was posted on its social networking pages. The activity not only got the global media coverage, the official team Red Bull Stratos also officially thanked the whole Kitkat team
One may wonder if there are any limits to what advertisers can do. Well gravity is certainly not one of those limits! JWT came up with a very innovative campaign just ahead of Felix Baumgartner’s daredevil jump from the edge of the atmos-
Page 13
Avinash Saproo MBA (IB) 2013 - 15 Indian Institute of Foreign Trade
MARKMANTRA
JANUARY 2014
What not to do in social media marketing?
S
Whatever you do, how much you try to keep your customers satisfied but there are always ocial media marketing is one of the have one or more who are disgruntled. It bemost talked about topics by brands comes very crucial to handle them as soon as and institutions. From budding entrepreneur to possible to avoid it from hurting your compamulti-billion well established brands are comny’s reputation. The first and foremost thing to ing forward to make their way in Social media keep in mind is not to get into fight with the marketing. Though the reasons and unhappy customer. Instead of getting targets for entering into social media into fight why not delete the comment for each brand are different, there are or totally ignore it? No, Never. some common mistakes in social meThough there are many companies dia marketing. who do so. According to Bluewolf, a global consulting company, 58% of The mistakes that could cost more the negative tweets are not even anthan the benefits of social media marswered by the offending company. One such keting are often ignored by brands. When a example is Fair Oak Farms where it posted an mistake is made offline, there are bleak chances image on Facebook and started to get comof hundreds or thousands of people knowing ments regarding the farm conditions. Instead it, but if a mistake is made online all the audiof giving explanation, they soon started deletence watching would know it and this may ing the comments and liking the damage brand’s repusupporting ones. This only invited tation. the quite followers to join in In order to get full against the company and soon got effect of social media, spread like fire. The solution is to one needs to know handle it with wit and diplomacy. about its advantages Best way to calm the customer and disadvantages. In without making discussion public this paper, we would is to apologize first and then take be throwing light on the conversation offline to email 5 most common mis- Controversial image posted by or call. This will instead help in positive takes which would Fair Oaks Farms way by increasing word-of-mouth for hamper from getting company. the most of social media. 2. Posting too much Five most important don’t for Social Media Another big problem that any organization Marketing should avoid on social media is posting multi1. Responding to negative comments ple times in just a short duration. There can be nothing worse than spamming your own cus-
Page 14
MARKMANTRA
tomers who are following you. On social media, people want to know what is happening all around the world and not only what is happening in your company. If you post too often, then, it can annoy your customer to stop following you. Taking example of Amanda Bynes’s twitter account, where pointless and useless tweets are being bombarded on the News Feed of her followers. It is suggested that organizations should post 1-2 posts per day on Facebook and 4-5 tweets per day on Twitter. Lab 42 survey showed that 73% of the respondents either unfollowed or unliked the pages on Facebook due to multiple posts in short duration , while 47% of the respondents don’t like brands because they fear cluttering of their newsfeed by the brand. The survey also revealed that almost everyone prefers less frequent posts on their news feed. 3. Failing to create a long term strategy Whenever you start any work or business, you need to have clear goals and objectives in mind else you might end up nowhere. Once you’re clear with goals and objectives, next is what should be the strategy to achieve those and stick to it for long term. Similarly, it goes for social media as well. It is important for any organization to understand the purpose of entering into social media which will guide their actions. They should know ‘Is it for increasing awareness?’ or ‘Is it for increasing revenue?’ or ‘To build relationship with the customers?’. Nowadays, you’ll find that every other company from its inception has social media presence
Page 15
JANUARY 2014
just because everyone else is doing so. But, after few months, they don’t even remember to update the page. Atleast 10-20 minutes per day should be set aside for updating the pages if you have a small business. In case of large business, prefer to have team of dedicated social media expert. Thus, engaging with consumers from time is time is important but too frequent posts should be avoided. 4. Too much automation Automation of social media content is one useful tool which can help you save lots of time. Sprout Social and Buffer two such tools which help in automation in Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. But, as you all know, ‘Too much of anything is bad’ and similarly, too much of automation is bad for the reputation of organization. A balance between manual and automated posts is necessary. The customers are not looking for some automated posts but they want to engage with your brand. Automation can also be annoying when feed is posted from one channel to another one while the content is not compatible. One such example is hashtag (#) in Twitter, which does not work properly in Facebook. Therefore, different content should be posted on different websites. Highly customized messages can also help you build better relationship with your customers. 5 Inconsistent Branding Maintaining consistency in social media is very important for branding. The worst that could
MARKMANTRA
happen due to these inconsistencies is that the audience will start doubting the authenticity of the communication by the organization. In this scenario we would like to quote two examples for better understanding. First is Brigade Hospi-
tality sector, which did it wrong and Oreo, which did it the right way. Brigade Hospitality has clubs, Hotels, Convention centers and services under it. It has individual pages for all these and a page for the complete sector in Facebook. The story goes well till this point but anyone opening a page of a club will not be able to connect it to the club’s website or Brigade
JANUARY 2014
Conclusions: The mistakes mentioned here are by no means meant to be exhaustive list of all the mistakes that could possibly hinder brands from getting the most of social media marketing. Not discussed for example is too many spelling errors while posting messages. Similarly, unanalyzed are impact of these mistakes on different cultures and classes of customers. However we hope that a reader would have gained the knowledge of possible mistakes that can happen and brands which did it well. The constant theme of this paper has been to give an idea about the possible mistakes and the examples from which a brand could learn from. Implementing these learning would help brands overcome the mistakes that could hinder getting most of social media marketing.
Aneesha K IIM Ahmedabad
Munish Verma IIM Ahmedabad brand. This made Brigade Hospitality lose a lot of opportunity and a gap in its brand recall. Oreo is a very good example for consistency in online marketing. They have consistency in the colors, logo, identity in their website, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and twitter. A strong consistent branding reinforces organization’s identity and drives trust and positive sentiment which play a critical role in the customer decision making process.
Did you know A post gets 75% of its possible engagement in the first 5 hours. So to garner maximum mileage from your page, a post should be made regularly.
Page 16
MARKMANTRA
JANUARY 2014
Milestone Marketing E
very business crosses several milestones during its journey towards success: Anniversary, significant sales, Facebook likes, founder’s birthday, retirement or a new location opening. These events provide opportunities to the companies for self promotion and reinforcing the customer’s trust that the company is doing well. The company designs a marketing plan which aims at achieving business objectives while simultaneously including the customers in the celebrations of achieving these objectives
Amidst these celebrations business quietly launch new products or services, improve their credibility and reconnect with loyal customers. Companies can easily reposition themselves, boost sales or generate awareness regarding their social initiatives. Let us have a look at some successful instances of milestone marketing
The Nike 1 million Celebration: Thanking fans on Instagram Recently Nike reached out in celebration when its first hashtag (#NIKE) reached the one million followers mark. It posted in excess of 6 million photos with hashtag #NIKE on Instagram during a 24 hour long community celebration on its @Nike account. During the course of the celebration ten photographs from Instagram were shared with the fans with each photograph paying a tribute to the fan responsible for clicking and sharing the picture. The company labeled these as inspirations making the company “push further” into the segment and attached a motivational quote with each picture. Nike ended the 24 hour initiative by posting the original photo from the first fan to have used #Nike on Instagram. The success of the cam-
Page 17
paign can be gauged from the fact that in the short time period the campaign secured approximately 600,000 “hearts” and in excess of 4,900 comments.
Microsoft marks $1 billion milestone for employee giving program as it kicks off 30th campaign Microsoft announced that its US employees had raised charitable funds over $1 billion during the 30 years of the company’s charity giving program. The initiative was started in 1983 and has brought in donations for approximately 31,000 not for profit and community welfare groups
MARKMANTRA
Tribute to Sachin Tendulkar: Coca-Cola to roll out 6.5 million 'Sachin' cans as part of 100th century celebrations The world's largest beverage brand paid a grand tribute to Sachin Tendulkar, the key endorser for the brand when Sachin became the first cricketer to score 100 international centuries. The brand launched a mass media campaign and rolled out around 6.5 million Coca-Cola cans with pictures of the master blaster with facts about his ten best centuries highlighted on them. The campaign stirred emotions in cricket crazy India and caused sales to soar. Milestone anniversary marketing Anniversary celebrations are usually spaced out over the whole year over a series of events. These activities, celebrations combined with the heightened media focus further the brand building process. The company engages in activities such as thanking clients as well as appreciating employees for their contributions to the company. Media campaigns are launched at the national or local level which showcases the progress of the company through the years, how it has made a positive impact in the lives of its customers and celebrating the people behind its success. Twitter 's celebrates its 7th Anniversary through a new video Twitter turned seven on March 21st earlier this year and the micro blog celebrated by releasing a seven minute video. The video is full of animations and recaptures all the special moments of twitter in its 7 years existence. The video is themed like a timeline and starts with the story of the first tweet, to the American celebrity Oprah's twitter account launch. Its impact on events such as the Arab Spring is also show-
JANUARY 2014
cased, where Twitter acted as the medium of communication for the protestors. The "4 more years" one line tweet by Obama which became one the most re-tweeted tweets of all time has also been showcased in the video. Through the promotion of this video twitter connected with its users and reminded them how it has grown to become an integral part of everybody’s life.
25 Million Facebook Licks and a Global Celebration for Oreo’s 100th birthday To mark the 100th anniversary of Oreo, a new print campaign was launched by Kraft Foods and new page oreo.com/birthday was created on the website. While the print displayed an Oreo Pac-man, a video message from the company ran on the website. It came up with the concept of “celebrate the kid inside” and allowed the fans to share their special cookie moments, play games with an Oreo theme and send personalized birthday messages. This campaign presented the brand in a new avatar and aimed at reassuring the custom-
Page 18
MARKMANTRA
JANUARY 2014
1st year anniversary According to historical figures only 44% of new ventures manage to cross the five year mark. Thus businesses have an extremely valid reason to celebrate every year of their successful existence. Even a 1st anniversary milestone marketing strategy can be run to increase the credibility of a business simultaneously ensuring that its customers that the company is doing well. Young start-ups have budget constraints and cannot launch a big milestone marketing campaigns. But they can definitely be creative and come up with ways to make the customers connected by directly involving them. This can lead to a huge positive impact on the position of the company in the market place. The first year anniversary in short provides a relationship building opportunity to the organization. Let us look at one such instance
launch year followed by an online ad campaign using the tagline 'The Future is just a click away’. Milestone marketing for different industries
Retail Retail companies enjoy the luxury of large spaces and regular customer visits. Outdoor as well as
Wired first year celebrations ad campaign Wired magazine launched a mobile campaign in which a text, called the ‘safe text’ disappeared to reveal the anniversary issue’s cover. The text was compatible with all kinds of mobile phones after registration the users were permitted to send ten free "safe texts" daily. The digital outdoor campaign in London made use of giant transvision screens as well as LCD six-sheets while were placed at sixteen national mainline stations. The online campaign distributed the Wired samples of the May issue via the Condé Nast sites. A selection of the highlights from Wired during the
Page 19
indoor banners on various themes, in-store events for customers and various promotional tools like discount coupons or offers. Pantaloons – 15th Anniversary Celebrations On its 15th anniversary the Future group’s lifestyle brand Pantaloons offered huge discounts. On a purchase of Rs 3000/- the company offered gift vouchers worth Rs 500 to the custom-
MARKMANTRA
JANUARY 2014
ers. Games, quizzes, sketching contests, magic shows and clowns combined made the 15th anniversary a big celebration for the customers as well as Pantaloons.
For restaurants Appeal to the taste buds and people can’t refuse. Restaurants that have successfully completed a year can come with special discounts on foods and meals to further develop their brand and manifest itself as a trusted provider. Preparations of special dishes, reducing prices of desserts to their original price albeit for a short period are some strategies which help reconnect with old customers as well as attract new ones. Give a discount to customers who come in dressed in vintage clothes. Restaurants also come up with themes or fancy dress competitions to really connect with the customers.
Eat your way around India for curry house's first anniversary
Prateek Srivastava
A special menu of dishes from different parts of India marked the one year celebration of Aroma restaurant. The vindaloo from Goa, rogan josh from Kashmir, a masala dish from Punjab and the list goes on.
MBA(IB) 2013-15 Indian Institute of Foreign Trade
Thus as we can see Milestone marketing presents an opportunity as well as a reason for business to turn business achievements whether big or small into strategic marketing opportunities while connecting with the customers.
Tagline Quiz 1.
Which automobile company has the tagline : “The ultimate driving machine” ?
2.
Which company uses the brand tagline “Zoom Zoom Zoom” ?
3.
Tagline “Like nothing else” is associated with which company?
4.
Which brand uses the tagline “American by birth. Rebel by choice.”
5.
“Born to perform” is associated with which company?
6.
“Engineered to move the human spirit.” is associated with which company? Answers on page no. 35
Page 20
MARKMANTRA
JANUARY 2014
Milestone marketing for different industries
Retail
What are brands offering this Festive Season
D
iwali, Durga Puja, New Year are some of the festivals which announce themselves way in advance. It is not just the kids in the neighborhood who are shooting around with cracker pistols, ladies asking for more cash balance to shop or the malls which all have Santa Clauses for attracting kids, its more distinct as even the houses and streets have started to look all decorated. Though there is an unusual and unmistakable feel in the air as the world around us gets lined up with festive goodies but it is when the companies are competing to outsmart each other not just with new launches but also with bagful of schemes and offers you surely come to know that the festive season is just round the corner. Festivals are important for everyone. Kids get respite from the rigors of academics, the female community, irrespective of any age group, find another reason to shop, the earning or employed individuals look forward for their salary plus bonuses well before the end of the month. The marketers are looking forward to cash into this opportunity. After the lackluster beginning of the financial year which saw a slowdown in the economy, high inflation and hike in fuel prices which lowered consumer sentiments and the recent issue of rupee being in news continuously for all reasons which India Inc. would not have liked, the festive season is the time for businesses to prosper. It has started from the beginning of September when
the consumers began to purchase products. The trend started with Onam in September followed by Navratri, Durga Puja and Dussehra in the first half of October and continued till middle of the month. The stage was set for Diwali -the mega one which fell in the month of November and was followed by Christmas and the New Year Blast. Most companies believe that even if the inflation is high, festive season is the time when a consumer spends. Festivals like Dusshera and Diwali give marketers a golden chance to increase their sales to new heights and thereby increase profits. Therefore a large number of companies are gearing up by chalking out new strategies. Companies have been smart enough to go in for the kill because they were buoyed by the figures they received for themselves during the festival of Onam. Despite all the negativity in the markets, sales in Kerela proved to be healthy for consumer electronics, durables, and even automobiles, which continued during Navaratri. The corporates hope that the momentum will be carried forward to the northern parts this Diwali. Even though the central bank played spoilsport by banning "zero percent" interest schemes, which resulted in 20% of the festive sale last year, companies have been able to achieve growth as high as 50% in some consumer segments. The consumers will surely miss the presence of gold (purchasing gold in Diwali is considered auspicious) as the government has banned import of gold
“Life is a festival only to the wise.� Page 21
MARKMANTRA
coins. Even banks are incapable of providing the bullion metal to the traders resulting in the decrease in the gold related transactions. In spite of the gold vacuum as the festive season reaches its peak the consumers are definitely going to get spoilt for the choice as companies and service providers flood the market with discounts and freebies. Companies have dished out assured gifts, cash backs and special packages in the form of free installations, free insurance etc to get the sales going.
Same things are going on the internet, Flipkart launched a special dhamaka week in order to remain the first choice for buyers this festive season. Many companies have added new products in their product line for tapping into the occasion. These companies are from all from all types of industries for instance Sony has introduced its Blu-ray player, Nokia with Lumia 800, Samsung has put forth new Galaxy J and Yotaphone with a smartphone with screens both on the front and back. Honda decided to come with fourth gen City and Kaw a s a k i launched Ninja 1000 and Z1000 to name a few. The launch of new product has seen various silver screen damsels as well as
JANUARY 2014
actors appearing on the small screen to promote their brands. Not only Indian brands but foreign ones also have understood the significance of Indian festivals. Just when brands were betting big on Katrina, Shahrukh, Priyanka, Deepika and others, Micromax surprised everyone. This Diwali, Micromax played its trump card by getting Hugh Jackman on board as its brand ambassador
The story of festivals will be incomplete without the lasting taste of Ghee and a bit of kesar. New Year is a time when your hand automatically reaches out to pick dry fruit laden sweets. Even if sweets and dry fruits are not popular all throughout the year but they have maintained their significance for festivals. It is estimated that sales for dry fruits and sweets are high during the festive season but are maximum in Diwali. And so Haldiram, Bhikaji and all have already put out additional stalls in front of their existing outlets to cater to a larger anticipated audience. So in case if your mouth is watery after looking at the sweets order a mithai ka dibba quickly. Let the fireworks begin. Happy New Year
Arjunsingh Mehta MBA(IB) 2013-15 Indian Institute of Foreign Trade Page 22
MARKMANTRA
JANUARY 2014
HAS TABBED INBOX IN GMAIL KILLED E-MAIL?
M
ay 29, 2013 was a historical day. On this day, Google rolled out a newly designed Gmail inbox that included five separate tabs to group the incoming emails. Post the announcement on Google’s official Gmail blog, users started seeing their emails sorted into three tabs – Primary, Social and Promotions – with Updates and Forums, as two additional tabs, available ACCORDING TO GOOGLE THE NEW INBOX ORGANIZES EMAILS IN A WAY THAT LETS USERS, “…SEE WHAT’S NEW AT A GLANCE AND DECIDE WHICH EMAILS YOU WANT TO READ
from the Configure inbox settings. This new design has changed the way people read their emails. According to Gmail’s product manager in his blog post, the tabs are here to help the users manage their inboxes more efficiently “using simple, easy organization”. Undeniably, users generally had to spend hours creating the rules to filter the messages like Gmail did in its new avatar. And, we cannot start to even count the number of hours people spent while wading through the puddle of mails from every possible source imaginable and trying to find the mails important to them. THE TABS Google is improving its existing (and impressive) categorization and predictive capabilities. By employing the tab Page 23
functionality, instead of delivering all emails to your inbox, there are now 5 categories for the user mails. These can be thought of as mini-inboxes: Primary: The emails you actually read. Based on the user’s email behavior, these messages have been prioritized by Google. Senders of these messages are usually individuals rather than organizations or brands. Social: These are the notifications from any social networking website. Even though people may still be friending you on Facebook – you won’t see the notifications lest this tab is opened. Promotions: This tab will store the messages regarding discounts, events,
and any other marketing messages. This is the tab which is supposedly under siege by the new changes initiated by Gmail. Updates: This tab is supposed to house recurring notifications such as autopayments, receipts etc. Users may want to immediately move notifications regarding online payments and bank statements to primary if they are being captured by this tab. Forums: This tab is supposed to contain the latest updates such as new activity or any other newsletter from a forum, if the user is member of one.
MARKMANTRA
TABS: THE FUTURE FOR EMAIL MARKETERS? Some marketers are apprehensive about the new move by Google as they believe that this change may hurt email engagement as it automatically segregates the commercial messages under the Promotions tab instead of the Primary tab, which is the default tab to be opened when Gmail is opened. “Promotions” is also such a nasty word, that marketers are anxious these emails will never be opened by the addressees that has opted-in to see their promotions in the first place. It’s a valid unease, for some. However, it is still too soon to charge Gmail with a crime which may be a blessing in disguise. The new feature means that the marketing messages will not be lost in the sea of unrelated mail. And they may even get more reads when the users are in the ‘shopping’ mode
JANUARY 2014
The study drilled down to the Gmail user level and formed three buckets centered on user engagement level with marketing emails across thousands of prevalent brands. The uppermost group, the cluster most engaged with their inbox, read nearly 59% of
their email promotions in the past, and the reason to cheer is that they were now reading 2% more emails after the new tabbed interface came into being. Even though this group represents mere 11% of all users, it is likely to be more valuable to marketers since this group is composed of people who find
HAVE THE TABS ACTUALLY CAUSED A DROP IN THE OPEN RATES? MailChimp has done a testing of the open rates post the change and have compared it to the Original Inbox settings. To compensate for the novelty factor, the testing was done a week after announcing the change. The outcomes pointed to a certain drop in open rates that remained persistent for three successive weeks. Prior to this open rates to Gmail had been consistently above 13% for 15 weeks. The important point is that the open rates never dipped prior to the introduction of tabs, which strengthens the argument that indeed, the new Gmail’s inbox tabs are affecting the open rates on emails sent from ESPs (e-mail Service Provider). According to litmus.com, there has been a decrease of 7.75% in Gmail opens since the introduction of tabs. IMPACT BY ENGAGEMENT LEVEL According to a study by Recent Path, it has come to light that the tabbed inbox may turn out to be both a blessing and a curse.
promotional emails to be relevant and in general emerge as the repeat purchasers. The low-engagement group, which represents less than 1% of the total Google Mail user base, viewed better deliverability with nearly 8% jump in the inbox placement rates. Notwithstanding the enhanced mail placement, the quantity of emails read by this cluster plunged 81% from 2.2% to 0.4%. This may not matter much to the marketers as this group read very few emails to begin with, and in all probability seldom acted on an email marketing campaign. This group was not the target group in the first place. The possibly bad news are the results collected from the medium engagement group. Prior to the tabbed inbox, this group read 10.6% of emails in their mailPage 24
MARKMANTRA
JANUARY 2014
boxes at an average. However, post the rollout, they were found to be reading only 9.8% — which amounted to less than a percent drop, but a variance of 7%. It is this group that email marketers spend most of their efforts and time trying to re-engage, convert and preserve. Even though this group doesn’t consist of the prized customers for the marketers, they still characterize the mainstream population, and the collective significance of this cluster is likely to be high.
mus.com and the results have a different story to tell. The results showed that:
INDUSTRY STATISTICS A scrutiny of the impact of the tabbed interface of Gmail on various industries showed that industries benefitted from the change while some were negatively impacted. For instance, airlines and credit card companies witnessed vast upsurges in the volume of emails read, the most likely reason being the ease with which the users can now find these messages. Conversely, social networking and dating sites saw additional deteriorations in the mails read. Traditionally, these businesses have been dependent on email notifications to escalate user engagement in terms of login and consequently reduce the number of users switching over to other websites. However, the preliminary results show that the tabbed inbox may exterminate the notification email system followed by these sites. These businesses, consequently, may need to find alternatives to reach their users such as mobile app notifications, rather than relying on email marketing. NO NEED TO WORRY, STILL The stats may seem to indicate that the tabs are impacting opens but as an email marketer one needs to study where the messages are opened by the Gmail users. Apple Mail, Outlook or mobile devices are being used by many users – environments that don’t support the tabbed interface.
66% of Gmail opens occur on mobile devices, with only 19% opened in a web browser. The remaining 15% of Gmail opens occur on desktop email clients.
The most preferred email client for Gmail users is the iPhone’s built-in mail program, with 34% of all Gmail opens.
Android is at number two position with 20% of opens, followed by the Gmail webmail interface at 19%.
Surprisingly,
only 19% of Gmail opens actually transpire in Gmail, which is the one most affected by the tabbed interface. These discoveries clearly point to the fact email mar-
keting may still live to see another day. Did the tabbed interface kill email marketing? Still too early to say. Nonetheless, Google has given its users an innovative way to sort through emails and concentrate on the ones that are vital. Email still remains a powerful marketing channel and core activity of inbound marketing..
In fact, the tabbed Gmail inbox is at present only available in the Gmail webmail client and the Gmail application for the mobile platforms like Android and iOS.
B.Com (H), Ist Year,
Nearly 5 million opens were investigated by Lit-
Delhi University
Page 25
Pratistha Gargi College
MARKMANTRA
JANUARY 2014
Controversial Campaigns
T
he advertisements and promotions are aimed to create awareness and affection for the product or brand. But sometimes these ad campaigns create controversies and they are intentionally aimed to do so. There are some advertisements that deliberately startle and offend its audience by hurting social norms and general public interests. Whenever marketing campaigns create controversy portraying the sexual, racial, gender biased, or critics with their opinions, they are created to buzz the market for the same. This form of advertising is more often disturbing, may entail bold and provocative political messages. This type of campaigns use scary, bold or fear element tactics in order to make a high impact on the local public at large. It also adds to the viral marketing of advertising clutter in order to create a ‘buzz’ or get an attention in the market. Based on a review of the literature, the definition of for controversial advertisement can be constructed that these executions are provocative images, words or situations that utilize or refer to taboo subjects (e.g. violence, sex/erotica, death, indecent/vulgar body parts or functions and political/ racial issues) or that violate societal norms or values. In case of controversial campaigns, product may or may not be controversial. A controversial advertisement tends to have higher degree of customer involvement and cognitive response from them. Some of the ethical issues such as how advocate the advertisement is? What is the target audience and how it
will affect minors? What is the effect of ad on the community? The controversial ads attract positive attention & increased awareness can generate more sales. At the same brand will positioned as different and memorable. But sometimes these ads will lead to brand dilution and hence the controversial ads need to be designed carefully. The work for Benetton was created in 1980s by Toscano. Two innocent young girls- one white one black seems to be an imbalance. The girl on the left has the hair and cheeks of a cherub, of an angel. The advertisement was for uniting together but it fails and fell in to racist shortcomings, controversies of separating colors. Another ad there is a message of unity again but you can see in the image that the women on either end of the child have their hands clasped together and the image portrays the family. Here is selfexplanatory advertisement which created controversies. The utmost result of the ad would depend on various factors. These may include but not limited to society, gender, target audience demographics, age of the readers, brand image in the consumers, the severity of topic portrayed etc. But research by Bruce A. Huhmanna and Beth MottStenerson has concluded that the controversial headline led to greater elaborative processing than the non-controversial when only headline the head line is changed in controversial and normal advertisement. The study could not find any difference in result due to gender difference about the intended advertisement. Also, some social activist, organizations come up with advertisement to educate
Page 26
MARKMANTRA
and create public awareness about the issues pertaining to human rights, health safety, environmental safety, and some of the major issues in the economy against the product, brand, company or even government. Rather, majority of the advertisement war can be seen among the political parties during elections PETA (People for Ethical Treatment of Animals) focuses its attention on major areas in which the animals suffer the most. PETA has been in the news about their controversial tv and print advertisement to protect the animals. Some people do not appreciate the way PETA portrays the message to be vegetarian through. But this create controversies as it pushes the boundary and get attention of all the people. But the concept which PETA has adopted is commendable. Because this is the best way to create awareness and getting a job done in the marketing and advertising front. Take the case of BP’s spill in gulf of Mexico area which hosts around 8,332 species, including more than 1,200 fish, 200 birds, 1,400 mollusks, 1,500 crustaceans, 4 sea turtles and 29 marine mammals. By June 2010, 143 spill-exposure cases had been reported to the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals; 108 of those involved workers in the clean-up efforts, while 35 were reported by residents.(Deepwater Horizon oil spill,2013).In late May, Greenpeace activists in London scaled BP's company headquarters in St. James's Square and unfurled mock BP logo banners imprinted with oil stains reading "British polluters". According
Page 27
JANUARY 2014
to the Associated Press, as of 29 June the protests caused sales declines at some stations between 10% to 40%, but BP owns few of the 11,000 U.S. stations selling its fuel under the BP, Amoco and ARCO banners. Most are owned locally, under contract to buy BP fuel. (Reactions to the Deepwater
Horizon oil spill, 2013) This all leads to brand alteration and dilution of the BP Brand. In the result of which BP has to restart it brand building exercise in the market to regain the customer trust and position themselves as valuable brand among the consumers. And they need to undergo exercise of redesigning the logo. This has also led to another campaign by Green Peace against the Shell’s plan to drill into the Arctic which may raise a serious global warming question. Some major brands do compete with each other by comparative advertising and positioning own self better than the other brands. This also lead to controversies among the brands but successful in branding the product. There could not be any best example than the luxurious car brand Audi and BMW. In 2006, when Audi was awarded as African Car of the Year 2006, all print media
MARKMANTRA
JANUARY 2014
was publishing a full advertisement by Audi. In answer to that BMW has given the ad congratulating Audi. (See the Image) and it says it all. Now the question remains how effective these advertisements are to deliver the message they are intended to. Noncontroversial advertisement executions have intended meanings that are likely to be straightforward and easy to grasp or, at least, common in advertising for that product category or in the everyday experience of the target market. Controversial advertisement executions should be more effective in communicating brand information to target markets with a strong ongoing interest in a product category. The execution of the controversial advertisement needs to be tackle carefully to get the intended result otherwise it may also affect the affect the overall brand image and may dilute the same. Company through strategic execution should make maximum benefit out of this campaign with fewer negative effect generated out of these advertisements. References [1] Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill. (2013, 10 26). Retrieved 10 27, 2013, from http:// en.wikipedia.or: http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill [2]
Reacions_to_the_Deepwater Horizon_oil_spill. (2013, 10 05). Retrieved 10 27, 2013, from http://en.wikipedia.org: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Reacions_to_the_Deepwater_Horizon_oil _spill [3] Journal of Marketing Communications
Vol. 14, No. 4, September 2008, 293–313 [4] Controversial advertisement executions and involvement on elaborative processing and comprehension Bruce A. Huhmanna* and Beth MottStenerson
Rohan Bhardwaj MBA 2012 –14 PDPU
FUN TIMES 100% of lottery winners do gain weight 160 cars can drive side by side on the Monumental Axis in Brazil, the world's widest road. 40% of McDonald's profits come from the sales of Happy Meals. 1 in 8 Americans has worked at a McDonalds restaurant. 60% of all people using the Internet, use it for pornography A crocodile can't move its tongue and cannot chew. Its digestive juices are so strong that it can digest a steel nail Tea is said to have been discovered in 2737 BC by a Chinese emperor when some tea leaves accidentally blew into a pot of boiling water. The tea bag was introduced in 1908 by Thomas Sullivan of New York
Page 28
MARKMANTRA
JANUARY 2014
Advertorials – Treading on a Thin Line
R
ecently in a video release by Google, Matt Cutts, Head of the Webspam Team at Google issued a warning for advertorials and paid contents with insufficient disclosure. Infact, in a series of events in Feb 2013, Google penalized variety of sites, for using advertorials, by downgrading their PageRank.
pers moving to television infomercials and advertorial based talk shows in 80s to radio stations in 90s, and more recently in digital marketing. Today advertorials can be found for all industries, be it fashion, automobiles, food, education, FMCG, - just name it. Advertorials are not only cost effective as the cost for the ad space is the same as a conventional ad, but they
From the short, crisp ads to the long, detailed advertorials, Marketing certainly provides one a variety of ways to capture their target segment. Advertorials are informative advertisements written in form of a opinion or suggestion. It allows the marketer to showcase a variety of benfits to the consumers rather than just basing your advertisements on one or two. Advertorials have been present ever since 1960s in some form or the other; Starting with print media advertorials namely magazines and newspa-
also have a lot more attention getting power. In fact, according to legendary copywriter, Joe Vitale, advertorials are up to 500 times more likely to be read than a straight ad. Not only does it look like it's from the editor, considered an objective source of information, it has what
What’s an advertorial? An advertorial is an advertisement designed to simulate editorial content, while at the same time offering valid information to your prospective clients the reader wants, information on a subject they're interested in. People give more credibility to an editorial content endorsed by someone else rather than the paid advertisement by the company. Advertorials may work especially well for new product launches, and when your product requires an explanation. But today, consumers are becoming more aware and can
Page 29
MARKMANTRA
JANUARY 2014
easily distinguish as advertorials and advertisements are blurring this difference. There are advert o r ia l s t od a y , which clearly seem as a paid advertisement. So, how do companies benefit from these advertorials?
er’s today aren’t loyal like old times; they switch brands in the blink of an eye or maybe even before that. So are these advertorials making a great impact on the top of the mind recall?
The advertorials do carry a beautifully scripted description of the features of the firm’s offering, or it may carry the reviews of famous celebrities or maybe the top reviews of common customers. Marketers use variety of techniques to enforce the benefits of their offerings, but are these advertorials effective.
One of the greatest examples of this is the Sony’s $10 million online advertorial campaign “Feature By Sony” in 2002. Sony claimed that it will publish articles on first-person informational accounts, written by real consumers about the technology. Sounds relatively harmless, right? But it wasn’t so; it consisted of articles written by freelancers who presented themselves as average citizens writing about how they used technology. The articles were commissioned and paid for by Sony. They often didn't even mention Sony except in sidebars, which made them especially hard to distinguish from normal site content. But what really drew criticism was that the labelling to distinguish the articles as advertising was often in very small type, and sometimes the word "advertising" was not even used.
There are a plethora of advertorials advising you to buy a particular brand of moisturizer in the same magazine, which one is a choice that is left to the customer. The challenge today for marketers has become to make the advertorial more attractive and effective than that of the other brands’ but for how long is a question that remains. Custom-
Another problem that these advertorials face is the ethical hazard attached to it. Although if a company is exhibiting all true features and information and clearly stating it as an ad, then one can’t call it unethical but to what extent do companies follow all of these.
Page 30
MARKMANTRA
JANUARY 2014
Another recent example that drew huge attention is of Atlantic magazine’s recent article on Church of Scientology in January 2013. The article was entitled “David Miscavige Leads Scientology to Milestone Year." Now it looked like any other page on the magazine's widely read website, except for the "Sponsor Content" box at the top. Miscavige is the extremely controversial leader of the church. The article touted the expansion of the church, saying that Miscavige "has led a renaissance for the religion itself, while driving worldwide programs to serve communities through Church-sponsored social and humanitarian initiatives."[1] They did nothing wrong, they had clearly mentioned it under Sponsor content, but it led to such a huge hue and cry and affected Atlantic’s reputation. Such ethically questionable ads or ads with controversial contents can have a negative impact on the brands of the advertiser. When users dislike an ad, they tend to extend that dislike to the advertiser. As web usability expert Jakob Nielsen puts it in an article on his web site: “Unethical ads will get you more fixations, but ethical business practices will attract more loyal customers in the long run.” Thus, Advertorials not only pose a risk to the content provider but also the publisher. Here, Atlantic’s quick response in taking out the post within 12 hours and issuing a message did some damage control but it still remains blotched for some time. Marketers need to be really cautious while designing an advertorial and ensuring that it blends well, after all this is the soft selling from of advertisements. References [1]
The Atlantic Withdraws Scientology Advertorial After Uproar – HuffingPost : Palnika Hemnani MBA(IB) 2012-14
Indian Institute of Foreign Trade
Page 31
MIND TWISTERs
DOWN 1. Inability to assess the value gained from engaging in an activity using any tangible evidence 2. Ad’s effectiveness based on consumer responses 3. Difference between revenue and cost before accounting for certain other costs 4. Marketing activity required when it is necessary to manage elements of the firm's external environment as well as the marketing variables 7. Name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller's product distinct from those of other sellers ACROSS 1. Key quality of services as distinct from goods 5. Extent to which a brand is recognized by potential customers 6. Revival of a product through cosmetic means 8. Where a person buys products from the same manufacturer repeatedly rather than from other suppliers 9. Brand or specific product coming first in customers' minds when thinking of a particular industry 10. Measure of how products and services supplied by a company meet or surpass customer expectation
MARKMANTRA
JANUARY 2014
THE BEST OF
I
n marketing, change is the name of the game. It’s a dog eat dog world and the ones who cannot innovate or differentiate themselves simply fade away. The best way to capture the attention of your target group is to either come up with something so creative that it blows everyone away or the easier method is to just use plain old shock and awe. The year gone by witnessed some trends and campaigns which broke new ground. 2013 was characterised by the rise and rise of digital, especially social media, marketing. Everybody wants a piece of the digital pie and one would have to have their head very deep into the sand to ignore the kind of reach and engagement that it offers. The lines between traditional and digital marketing blurred as almost every campaign was activated through both channels. Moreover, the increasing efficiency of algorithms employed for geo-targeting and location-based services has contributed in a major way to increase the ROI of digital media campaigns. Another trend of the year was the increased use of short video content on the micro-video app Vine for marketing. Taco Bell, with its funny content, and GE, with quirky Vines hash tagged as #6secondscience, have put Vine to great use. In September 2013, Vine jumped from social media to television as Dunkin’ Donuts aired the first-ever TV
ad made completely from Vine. Airbnb showcased the first short film made completely of Vines at the Sundance film festival. Samsung, Target and Oreo are also early adaptors of the app as they have realised that it provides them the same number of impressions as a TV ad and at a much lower cost. Vine was released in January 2013 and there’s a long way to go before its full potential is realised. Mobile marketing was viewed with skepticism as many questioned its viability. However, multiple studies have found that the CTR (Click through rate) for mobile banner ads is considerably higher than that of PC/desktop ads. Mobile marketing provides greater location-aware services and is more in sync with social media apps. That, coupled with customized ads according to a person’s purchase history and increasing browsing speeds, makes mobile devices the future of marketing. Now comes the part where we do the ceremonial annual round-up and mention a few of the best campaigns in various media. We will cover print, outdoor, TV ads and digital campaigns. Now, most of these campaigns take a multi-pronged approach, hence the part which gained maximum traction will be focused upon. Moreover, it would be unfair to call these the best campaigns in their respective sections. There is just too much innovation and creativity out there to document in any one place, so please feel free to disagree. Print Media With the advent of much more advanced forms of communication, one might be tempt-
Page 32
MARKMANTRA
forms of communication, one might be tempted to write off print media but the Game of Thrones newspaper ad was an (forgive me the pun) epic win. HBO struck gold with this simple yet highly catchy dragon shadow ad. They even covered their building in L.A with the same and IMDB.com was also cowering under the fear of the dragon for a while. This season of Game of Thrones averaged 14.2 million viewers per episode, just short of HBO’s most watched series The Sopranos which garnered 14.4 million viewers per episode at its peak.
JANUARY 2014
MotoMaker which offers case and color customizations making for over 2000 possible combinations.
Outdoor Media How does one promote a bug spray in the most effective manner? By setting up a huge fly -trap, of course! Orphea, an Italian insecticide spray, had a billboard covered with transparent adhesive on a specific region. The outcome was that almost 230,000 bugs got trapped by this billboard. It gained more attention by the publicity it gained than from motorists whizzing by.
Merging the digital with print is the Moto X ad in Wired magazine. Digitas, the agency behind this smart ad, released these copies in New York and Chicago. The LED-powered ad allowed users to see how the phone would look in 11 different colours. It aptly emphasizes that the phone is very customizable. It publicized
Page 33
British Airways’ Look Up campaign went viral and grabbed the attention of the internet for a while. The billboard incorporated surveillance technology which enabled a video of a small child pointing towards a British Airways flight exactly when it flew past. The digital billboard underlined the frequency of the flights and how many cities they go to.
MARKMANTRA
Digital Campaigns
JANUARY 2014
Mahindra Automotive’s ‘Live Young, Live Free’ campaign, like a few others, was released on YouTube before television. The rationale being that the complete version could be showcased as a short film before the edited ad is show on TV. The ad which celebrated free spirit and highlighted the all-terrain capability of Mahindra’s utility vehicles went viral and amassed 4 million views in a month’s time. The backdrop of Kerala and Leh- Ladakh and the music used were critical in creating the right effect.
through all channels. The insight behind the campaign was that every child is a genius and that curiosity should not be stifled. Parle G created a TVC which had a relevant message and the lyrics penned by Gulzar struck the right chord. They released a microsite, thefuturegenius.com, where parents could upload their child’s talent. It could be a video/audio clip, document or presentation. They also roped in Ruskin Bond for the campaign and had many other supporting activities happening along with it. Their #becurious hash-tag trended all over the world.
Idea’s Honey Bunny campaign ringed in the
There are very few people close to someone
New Year by lodging itself in the minds of the people. It was the complete package, with prerelease buzz on Facebook and Twitter, multiple versions released online and it became all the more popular when the ads were complemented by UGC (User Generate Content) from around the world and the My Honey Bunny Step Facebook app which Idea Cellular released so that users could record their own version of this song. It aptly communicated how Idea’s signal stayed strong everywhere. The infectious jingle went viral along with the ad continuing the legacy of coming up with popular ads. Television Commercials Right after the Honey Bunny craze Parle G unleashed the future genius campaign with an ad which was outstanding and rather than going viral, it aimed at creating a movement. To be frank, this campaign was executed brilliantly
with an internet connection who do not know what Google is or are not using something associated with Google. Yet, Google felt the need to aggressively woo the Indian consumer and Google did that in classic Bollywood style by coming up with the Google Reunion ad which was a real tearjerker. The ad showcased how Google could undo 65 years of separation through its search. The ad has managed to get more than 11 million views, 1.6 million of which were before the TVC had been released. The rationale behind the campaign was to make Google search stay relevant in a time when mobile browsing is showing the potential to make search less indispensable than it was before. Apart from the reunion campaign, the Google India YouTube channel has a video series called ‘15-second search tip’ to display the various ways in which Google search can
Page 34
MARKMANTRA
be used. The future is owned by those who are willing to go ahead and do something crazy or by those who do the conventional but in a way never done before. Marketing is a process of invention and re-invention and all the examples above re-affirm that belief. The year ahead has much to offer and we are bound to be pleasantly surprised with the way in which creativity and technology will re-shape the marketing landscape trended all over the world. There are very few people close to someone
JANUARY 2014
India YouTube channel has a video series called ‘15-second search tip’ to display the various ways in which Google search can be used. The future is owned by those who are willing to go ahead and do something crazy or by those who do the conventional but in a way never done before. Marketing is a process of invention and re-invention and all the examples above re-affirm that belief. The year ahead has much to offer and we are bound to be pleasantly surprised with the way in which creativity and technology will re-shape the marketing landscape.
Google felt the need to aggressively woo the Indian consumer and Google did that in classic Bollywood style by coming up with the Google Reunion ad which was a real tearjerker. with an internet connection who do not know what Google is or are not using something associated with Google. Yet, Google felt the need to aggressively woo the Indian consumer and Google did that in classic Bollywood style by coming up with the Google Reunion ad which was a real tearjerker. The ad showcased how Google could undo 65 years of separation through its search. The ad has managed to get more than 11 million views, 1.6 million of which were before the TVC had been released. The rationale behind the campaign was to make Google search stay relevant in a time when mobile browsing is showing the potential to make search less indispensable than it was before. Apart from the reunion campaign, the Google
Page 35
Sahil Vibhuti Jain MBA(IB), 2013-15 Indian Institute of Foreign Trade Answers to the quiz 1. BMW 2. Mazda 3. Hummer 4. Harley Davidson 5. Jaguar 6. Diamler - Mercedez benz
MARKMANTRA
JANUARY 2014
– a myopia or a necessity?
B
randing itself is a very old practice . It started as a necessity: farmers had to brand their cattle to differentiate it from those of others; goldsmiths were required to brand their goodsand even prisoners were branded as a form of punishment and identification. Research suggests that these practices go back as far as 4000 years! (And being still alive and kicking makes branding one of the oldest practices in the world.) But till the 17th century, the production and consumption patterns were completely different from what they are today. Most of the goods were produced only for local consumption. Hence, even though branding existed, it was devoid of any ill will, competition or disruptive motives. Things changed dramatically at the turn of the 18th century. As Alvin Toffler has aptly put it, a “divorce” led the change - a “divorce” between the producer and the consumer! People no longer produced for themselves, but for the masses, and the production shifted from the households to the factories. The number of producers and factories increased exponentially over time giving rise to “competition” – a phenomenon unseen before! We are familiar with words like “industrialization” and “mass production” and we also know they brought about complex and disruptive changes in the society. But among all the complicated ways in which industrialization changed our society, it brought about a very simple change in the world of branding – it added an extra purpose for people to
brand their products: showcasing their “superiority” over other brands and local products. It was at this moment that the seeds of brand wars were sown. Now whether brand wars were and are a necessity or not is hard to say but if we look back at the history and origins of competition and wars among brands, one thing is for sure that is was inevitable and so it remains even today. Brand wars: their pros and cons The rise of television provided new avenues for marketers to advertize their products. The popularity of the television spread like wild fire and the innocent, awe-struck and an ever increasing television viewer-base was the ideal target for marketers. Sky was the limit, and the lines between ethical and unethical, acceptable and unacceptable soon started blurring. Comparative advertisement was the first deviation. Most often, it is comparative advertising - “We're better than our competitors” - which is the precursor to ad wars. One company directly compares its brand to another’s and then it is up to the other company to react! If it chooses to ignore, well and good, else things can spiral into an outright war! Direct comparison ads were not common for most part of the 20th century but over the last few decades, direct comparison has become common and blatant. Increased competition has caused companies to leave no stone unturned to take it head-on, even if it takes directly naming its competitors. FMCG companies
Page 36
MARKMANTRA
JANUARY 2014
like HUL, P&G and RB have become the masters of war! Earlier this year, HUL took on Colgate with a direct comparison advertisement. It came up with a commercial for Pepsodent Germicheck showing two kids brushing their teeth of which one was using Colgate and the other Pepsodent with both the packs clearly visible in the commercial. The ad ultimately ends with an expert declaring that Pepsodent protects germs 130 percent better than Colgate. If not mentioning their rivals directly, some companies resort to using cheeky taglines in their ads in an attempt to mock their rivals. Thus, the idea behind is to inform the customers better and urge them to think before they make any impulsive decision, which might be a result of the flashy and apparently attractive campaign by Airtel. Such direct comparisons involve huge risks. Firstly, if it results in an ad war there is a high chance of the matter going to court. This results in the loss of both money and image for both the companies. We all remember the famous Pepsi-Coke ad war that went on for ages (wait a minute! It is still on ??). Pepsi has been openly mocking coke’s advertisements for years. One of the most striking of them was a 2000 ad in which Pepsi mocked Hritik Roshan, just a movie old and the then brand ambassador for Coke, by portraying a Hritik look-alike with braces on his teeth being ignored by a pretty girl who, instead, goes on to kiss Shahrukh Khan – Pepsi’s brand ambassador. Secondly, such an advertising results in automatic and free branding opportunity for the competitor. By directly comparing its Galaxy S3 with Apple iPhone 5, Samsung did more harm than good for themselves. Such a strategy confirms that the market leader is THE one to Page 37
buy and creates a positive brand image in the minds of prospective buyers. As the results showed later, iPhone 5 sold out its pre-order demand of over 2 million units in just 24 hours! Times- they are ‘a changing! With the decline of the traditional media the entire dynamics of brand wars is witnessing an unprecedented change. The customers are now equipped with an entirely new weapon – the internet! It is no longer easy for companies to hoodwink the customers by spending huge on advertisement campaigns. Firstly, the customer, now, spends more time on social media than the television and, secondly, he is now much more informed and aware than ever before. Hence, the battle has shifted to the internet and the social media and it now involves the customers as well. Companies, these days, try to involve in brand wars that are humorous, gentle, positive and refreshing – a win-win situation for both the competing brands. A recent print ad on Halloween’s by Pepsi is a fine example of their strategies and change with the times. It is no longer easy for companies to hoodwink the customers or to make them get carried away by spending huge on advertisement campaigns. The battle has shifted to the internet and the social media and it now involves the customers as well. Companies, these days, try to involve in brand wars that are humorous, gentle, positive and refreshing – a win-win situation for both the competing brands. Samarth Vikram Singh MBA (IB) 2013-15 Indian Institute of Foreign Trade
MARKMANTRA
JANUARY 2014
Sachin’s 200th test: a marketer’s fest ??
I
t was coming for a long time now, but still the blow was a hard one to take. We were preparing for it for quite some time but still, when Sachin Tendulkar finally decided to hang his boots, the entire country came to a standstill, at least for some time. But as they say, the show must go on and like any other big event; marketers soon jumped to the news of Tendulkar’s retirement and started planning entire campaigns around the 5’6” man from Mumbai. Such was the craze surrounding his ultimate match that the website KyaZoonga.com, responsible for distributing tickets of the game, was unable to respond to the massive online requests and subsequently crashed owing to a traffic amounting 19 million hits for a paltry 6000 tickets available for the public. Chaos erupted at the Mumbai Cricket Association office at the Wankhede Stadium where over 5000 fans gathered to purchase tickets. Fans, who had come from all across Maharashtra and a few neighboring states, created a commotion upon being told that tickets would only be sold online. Finally, the D-day arrived and while his mother watched from
the stands at Wankhede, many more remained glued to their television sets (where Star Sports 1, Star Sports 2, Star Sports 3 and Star Sports HD 1 showed the match together) to watch the ‘Little Master’ in action for the last time. The match was the highest rated Test match on television in India in the past eight years and garnered 1,739 TVT (Television Viewership in Thousands). The channel’s website www.starsports.com streamed the match and garnered 3.5 million unique visitors during the course of the two match series. Even if earnings from these sources was not enough, Star Sports charged somewhere around Rs 2 lakh to Rs 3.5 lakhs for a 10-second slot from the advertisers. In contrast, ad rates for a usual Test match at home get the network around Rs 40,000 to Rs 60,000 for a similar duration slot. Even on ground, Star Sports initiated a multitude of interesting activities to make the series memorable for fans. The broadcaster
Page 38
MARKMANTRA
caster used a special FanCam which generated a 360-degree extremely high-resolution photo of the stadium, making it possible for every fan present on any of the Test match days to zoom into his picture and keep this memory with him for future. Starsports.com ha d spe c ia lly launched a couple of campaigns; ‘Sachin Memory Project’ and 'Cheer for Sachin’. While the former campaign presented a unique timeline to commemorate Sachin’s 24year long career by using videos and stories, the latter invited fans to make a call and record their cheer for the man of the moment. STAR India then donated the proceeds from the incoming call revenues to a non-governmental organization for sports development among youngsters. The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) was not to be left behind and as the governing body of the sport in India decided to generate some goodwill by starting a campaign on microblogging site Twitter, where fans were asked to tweet using #thankyousachin and were handed out signed picture of Tendulkar if their tweet got retweeted by the BCCI handle. Various other companies; irrespective of whether they have Sachin as their brand ambassador or not, tried various antics to milk the event. E-commerce websites such as eBay, Flipkart and PosterGully etc. came up with
Page 39
JANUARY 2014
Sachin memorabilia for sale. eBay launched limited edition silver coins while many others offered autographed bats, books, coffee mugs, cell phone covers and posters to huge success. Even Google Plus India released a heartwarming video titled “Thank You Sachin” that garnered 6 million views in three days. Although Sachin’s brand value has visibly depreciated over the years owing to his age and lack of form, almost everyone tried to market their product in the wake of this occasion. Pune-based real estate developer Amit Enterprises, which had signed up with Sachin in 2010, launched Sachin branded 200apartment projects in Mumbai, Pune and Nashik. Each apartment promises to reflect the cricketer’s taste when it comes to housing. Aviva Life executed a digital media campaign #WhatsYourBigPlan during the course of the test series. In addition to this, Aviva also rolled out a campaign in August to encourage children to dream big. As a part of the campaign, the winners got a chance to play cricket with Tendulkar. Television maker Toshiba created a special ‘Cricket Mode TV’ by taking inputs from the cricketer and launched it in September. The ‘cricket mode’ provides richer colours, sharper details and crisper images thereby enhancing the green of the cricket field and the cracks on the cricket pitch. Sportswear maker Adidas also had to rush in
MARKMANTRA
with their #SRTForever campaign. The company was initially preparing keeping the South Africa series as a platform for Sachin’s retirement. The campaign asked fans to fill a crossword that contained questions related to the batsman’s career and offered the winner a chance to meet the “God” in person. Coca-Cola, who roped in Sachin as their brand ambassador in 2011 after the player’s contract expired with Pepsi in 2008 leveraged the event to amplify its CSR activities and projects. Musafir.com hired 200 TABcabs that offered free rides to fans from different junctions of the city to Wankhede Stadium free of cost during the five days of the match. Radio channel Red FM came up with a campaign ‘RED FM pe Sachin – 200 not out’ where it provided listeners around the globe with an opportunity to celebrate the cricketer's feats. The station aired 200 hours, of non-stop Sachin programming starting Nov. 10 and ending after 8.5 days. This special initiative took place in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Jaipur, Kanpur, Indore, Pune, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Lucknow, Cochin, Baroda and Nagpur, simultaneously.
JANUARY 2014
around the stadium holding a tricolor in his hand and delivered an emotional speech that brought tears to many eyeballs that had closely followed his career over the years. TIME magazine also carried the summary of the legend’s last outing. However, how brands continue to leverage on his status and reputation post retirement remains an interesting question. His credibility will remain strong for many years to come and we can hope to see Sachin in advertisements of categories such as banks, insurance, government schemes and health schemes. Tendulkar can also take cue from celebrities like David Beckham and Michael Jordan who came up with their own line of sports goods. For now as marketers ponder Sachin’s positioning in front of the audience, the maestro is happy to lie back and spend more time with his wife and children. Ambuj Gupta MBA(IB) 2013-15 Indian Institute of Foreign Trade
Shubham Agarwal MBA(IB) 2013-15 Indian Institute of Foreign Trade
Amidst all glitz, Sachin played his final innings and made a respectable score of 74 as India went on to beat the visitors by an inning and 126 runs. The God took his final lap of honor
Page 40
FUN TIMES at IIFT