This November, Meghalaya became the first state in India to celebrate the widely popular Japanese Cherry Blossom festival, displaying the passion and the pride that this part of India holds for its culture and natural beauty. This was in the recent past supported by yet another event, the Spanish festival, La Tomatina, for which Shillong, became the host in May, and introduced the much-revelled festivities, which are associated to this festival, to the Indian population. Amidst all this celebration, we bring for our readers a fresh issue of Markathon to keep them abreast of the latest market happenings.
demonetization of Indian currency by the Prime Minister, Mr Narendra Modi. We also congratulate Solanki Gunjan Devendrabhai & Abhishek Singh from IIFT, Kolkata for their entry Trump: The Marketing Genius which has been selected for this month’s Perspective section.
In the Vartalaap section, we had the privilege of interviewing Mr. Saurabh Doshi, Media Partnerships, Facebook India who takes us through the journey of Facebook, of how it was born, to how and why it has certain associations. How talent is intrinsic to the culture of the organization is very well evident from the fact that Mr This month’s cover story highlights the contro- Doshi is a CA and post completion of MBA in Fiversial yet widely used technique of Newsjack- nance, he worked as an Investment Banker. ing and how it impacts the customers. It also talks about how the sensitivity of a news leads And how can the magazine ever end without a to its careful scrutiny and how it can backfire, bit of fun! This month’s Fun Corner on logos will as a strong lesson for the marketers. We are also surely leave you puzzled. Lastly, we proudly welelated to share a few munches of our annual come new members to our club, and we hope to marketing extravaganza, Godsellers that con- reach newer heights together. cluded this month along with our monthly section They will buzz your feed with newer and newer marketing events and concepts every month. November, 2016, will be marked in the calendars Thank you for being a part of Markathon and we of many for two major historic events, one where hope you will continue to enjoy our magazine. USA got its new President, Donald Trump, and Happy reading!! to commemorate the same we have our section Jab they failed which focusses on how Hilary Cheers, suffered a Marketing failure and the other, the Team Markathon
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The Silent
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Marketer
E D I T O R
Of The Month
Daksh Bhagat AND HIS TEAM..!!
Raghav
Himanshu
Archita
Suman
Ravitej
Aditya
Arnav
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Andar Ki Baat Perspective
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Trump:
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Art of persuasion in communication
Cover Story NewsJacking Arnav Khanna
The Marketing Genius
Sagorika Mozumder | MICA,Ahmedabad
| IIM Shillong
Eye 2 Eye
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Can the discount sales by E-tailers result in long term customer reten-
Vartalaap
Mr Saurabh Doshi Head- Media Partnerships Interviewed By: Archita Singh & Himanshu Chugh |
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Anthony Abraham SIBM PUNE MARKATHON
Deeksha Agarwal GIM, Goa
IIM Shillong IIM Shillong
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Andar Ki Baat SpeciaLs
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Logoistic
Volkswagen Logo Arnav Khanna| IIM Shillong
AD-dicted
Catch & Miss advertisements of the month Suman Saurav & Ravitej Vadlamani | IIM Shillong
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Digi - Tally Let’s look at our social media marketing
Marketing Gyan
21 Jab They Failed
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Clinton for America Raghav Dhanuka | IIM Shillong
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Fun Corner
To get the brain tickling Aditya Kumar Gaur | IIM Shillong
Updates
from the Marketing World Suman Saurav | IIM Shillong IIM Shillong
november 2016
Trump:The Marketing Genius! By Solanki Gunjan Devendrabhai & Abhishek Singh Campus: IIFT Kolkata
What separates the winners from the losers is how a person reacts to each new twist of fate.-Donald Trump
T
he question that many of us are still pondering upon is how Donald Trump managed to trump all the pre-poll predictions and become the 43rd President of United States of America. We wonder, how the sane people of America (No sarcasm intended here) voted for a man who in his campaign made no qualms about admitting that he was there to build walls between communities; was termed as a homophobe and a misogynist by most and was made fun of by the previous President himself publicly. The reason in a single word can be attributed to “Marketing�. Trump marketed himself better than Hilary in more than one ways such as follows:
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perspective I. Like any successful product, he stressed on building his brand II. Trump’s election KSPs (key selling propositions) were tangible and had clarity. People knew what they could expect from their President. Similar to when they buy any product, they seek clear value propositions
dates generally use a combination of words and topics to address the right demographic segment. That leads to sounding too much segment specif-
III. His campaign motto, “Let’s make America Great again!” was clear and seeked co-creation from the voters IV. He connected with feminine audience with the help of wife Melania, daughter Ivanca and his campaign manager Kellyanne Conway. These ladies increased the target group of Trump V. Targeted the perfect customers for brand trump, i.e. the US Working class VI. Leveraged the power of Digital media with the help of his son-in-law Jared Kushner Let us now delve into details of each factor one by one.
I. Brand Trump:
The former reality TV show star and realty tycoon Trump created an unapologetic, fearless, pan-focussed and engaging persona of enthusiasm and strength,. Word-of-mouth is one of the most powerful marketing tools. Trump used to give five speeches a day. Trump’s determination and stamina created an enthusiasm among people for brand Trump. In the world of social media where referral power rules, outspending on TVC was not sufficient for Hillary. It always remains a dilemma for a brand that when a customer has a bad experience whether it should apologise and make another attempt at servicing or just make the refund and move on. The problem is many a times, the unhappy complaining customers are not the type of customers that a brand seeks. It is not advisable for an SUV brand like Hummer to start apologising to environmentalists, because they are not the right kind of customer for their brand. Trump did apologise when the tape of him saying derogatory statement against women leaked. He did not apologise for everything or anything else and that brought him out as a strong personality. In the quest of targeting a fixed group, candi-
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ic and it results into losing authenticity. Trump’s speech was always unrehearsed and crude; he spoke his guts.
II. Clear KSP Message
Trump’s agendas were clear unlike Clinton’s, he wanted to bring jobs in America, eliminate problems due to illegal migrants, uplift the working class and subdue Chinese supremacy. While Clinton was equivocating with her agendas, Trump was confident of poaching jobs from emerging economies back to US. He played traditional politics of giving what the majority seeks. Although mainstream media criticized his stand against Mexico and Canada, the middle class was inspired by his goal.
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perspective When Trump said that he will build a wall between US and Mexico, it really resonated with the working class. When he was talking about deporting Muslim population, there was a huge chunk of population which subconsciously wanted it. They may not say it in the fear of being considered as a xenophobic, but they believed that it would be beneficial to them. Trump was very firm on his stand against China. He said that China is raping USA and he will impose heavy tariff against Chinese goods. These may sound very negative globally but for workers in Detroit or any other factory in USA, it’s a golden wish.
III. “Let’s make America great again”
Products like mystarbucks.com, “Threadless” T-shirts or Nestle’s “meri Maggi” are result of successful co-creation. Engaging the customer to co-create is the biggest victory of any marketer. It results into both emotional connect and loyalty towards the brand. Trump’s campaign of “Let’s make America great again”, imitated from the Ronald Reagan’s famous speech, called for co-creation, seeking support and effort of the Americans to help him make America great again. It brings a sense of nostalgia, of great Reagan era, when you ask someone to recreate past glory. It targeted the hearts of Americans who believed in its greatness. Clinton’s “Staying together” failed to ring the bells of Americans and the rest is history.
saying “grab them by the pussy”. In a way she made Trump’s campaign acceptable to women by giving it a feminine face. The women’s voting statistics was 40:60 for Trump, god knows what could have been the state if these ladies were not with Trump!
V. Targeting US Working class
One thing about the working class Americans who work in factories is that they detest smugness and they hate phonies. When they listened to Hillary’s dorky arrogance and smugness of being an elite, they hated her. Do not mistake working class with poor, they aren’t those who work at the McDonald’s or care about minimum wage. They have solid blue collar jobs and don’t have college degree. They care more about the trade balance and jobs at home. Trump promised to bring back jobs from Mexico, China, India and other emerging economies and they voted for Trump. The voter rejected Clinton’s idea of togetherness in favour of a solid job.
IV. Fair Sex
Trump did create problems for himself while talking about menstruation of TV host Kelly Megyn and when the controversial tape about his derogatory remarks on women was revealed. Yet he got his team of three very important ladies, his campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, his daughter Ivanca and wife Melania to swing the diaspora in his favour again. While Melenia and Ivanca were more about addressing people, it was the mastermind of Kellyanne, also known as “Trump Whisper” that changed the perception of a certain segment of women towards Trump. Conway has three decades of experience on advising Republicans on how to appeal to women. She runs her polling company, which advises firms on consumer trend and behaviour amongst women. In a nutshell her speciality is convincing women that socially conservative male can be good. She even convinced Trump to publicly apologise regarding the leak of tape in which Trump found
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perspective VI. Digital Media
sive and politically incorrect is now not a hindrance in politics. Richard Huntington, Chief Strategy Officer, Saatchi & Saatchi. It can be clearly seen that in marketing a lot depends on appealing to the emotions of the target group and not just being rationally and politically correct. Hillary Clinton spent a lot more on paid advertising than Trump and yet Trump somehow managed to grab the eyeballs of the media and the common people alike with his antics as well as blunt remarks and clear-cut promises in his campaigns. Trump tried to build a “coalition” of different types of voters. “Great marketers know that you need a lot of people buying a little of your product to achieve commercial success,” says Huntington. “All political success and ultimately most commercial success involves bringing together a broad church of people behind your point of view or your brand.” Trump may have been one of the most divisive of candidates yet nothing could stop him from capturing the chair of probably the most powerful person of the world. As it is rightly said, No publicity is bad publicity in today’s world of marketing!
Here enters the son-in-law, Jared Kushner, realestate scion and media mogul, one of the most trusted advisor of Trump. “Is that what it felt like when people first realized Hitler could actually take power?” tweeted Zynga cofounder Mark Pincus. Although Hillary had a clear plan for tech industry, she never embraced the power of digital media. Mainstream media and cable was always against Trump; one thing that Jared always told is that if New York Times and Cable mattered, he would be at 1% in the polls. Jared found that their support should be well organized on the web. Growing digitally would allow them to take their message directly to the people who mattered. Jared built an elite team of experts in digital operations including Brad Parscale and Stephen Bannon. They made a team of 100 people and launched an online mission named “Project Alamo” spending $70 million a month to make people lean towards Trump and converted them into fans. Total mention of Trump was 1.7 million times compared to Clinton’s 1.3 million. Trump’s campaigners had collected around 14 million e-mail addresses and 2.5 million credit card information which laid the foundation of a possible Trump TV. It is clear that being offen-
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perspective
Persuasion.. Indispensable for communication!
By Sagorika Mozumder MICA,Ahmedabad
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hen the ostentatiously blonde American trade mogul, blatantly said in an interview, held sometime in 2012, “That’s one of the nice things. I mean, part of the beauty of me is that I’m very rich. So if I need $600 million, I can
put $600 million myself. That’s a huge advantage. I must tell you, that’s a huge advantage over the other candidates.”, the world failed to fathom his probability of winning the elections. Little did he know that, four years later, in spite of his fusillade of outrageous logical fallacies, he would become the 45th president of the United States. MARKATHON
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So, what made him successful? Other than the fact that Forbes 2016 declares his net worth as 3.7 billion USD, if we try to deconstruct his messages and appeals, they appear a pile of hyperboles, untrustworthy and incoherent arguments, loud rhetoric and demeaning theatrics. But how did that help him? As I sat through my classes of consumer behavior in MICA, I understood that as a marketer, I had to credit Trump more than what I actually did. Trump aced in the delicate yet extremely significant act of ‘Persuasion’. While I was being taught the ‘Elaborative Likelihood Model’, I realized that Trump’s candidacy is an embodiment of peripheral route of persuasion. His persuasion did not make an average American think, but it certainly made them feel! According to Klucharev, who is a Faculty of Psychology, in National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia, “solutions to the overabundance of choices in the world—which advertisers do realize–are developed with surprising proficiency by bypassing logic and reason IIM Shillong
november 2016
perspective completely. This range of thinking is usually driven completely by the prefrontal cortex. Our brains will go to extensive measurements to evade the tireless task of rational analysis of the world around us and encourage us to make decisions using emotion.” This was precisely the fact that Trump leveraged, making others believe that he is right and others wrong. He never talked sense or logic, like a puppeteer he pulled the strings of his puppets through emotions where a ‘rationale’ couldn’t simply work.
For a high involvement category generally a central route of persuasion is preferred since they require a high elaboration, which implies that the contents of communication will be closely examined since the consumer might not want to suffer from cognitive dissonance after the transaction, purchase, etc. The high elaboration encompasses cognitive processes such as evaluation, recall, critical judgment, and inferential judgment. For this route of persuasion, the rationale behind the communication should be very strong,if it does not appeal the logic of the consumers it might not work with the masses. For instance, take the case of Gerber Graduates Puffs by Nestle, which is a major child’s’ food brand, needless to say, it is a very high involvement category since parents are very particular to know the nutritional value of the food given to their children. Unfortunately, Nestle was sued in 2015 for allegedly falsely advertising the nutritional ingredients on one of its child food brands.
The Elaborative Likelihood Model is still the most frequently used model of persuasion. It goes back to around 1986, when Richard E. Petty and John T. Cacioppo came up with this model of communication and persuasion. But till date this model stays relevant, of course it has evolved from those times to adapt to the changes of the digital world. The model talks about two routes of persuasion namely, central and peripheral routes of persuasion. According to the model, the route chosen for persuasion would depend on an independent variable called ‘Involvement’. The involvement could be in context of products, brands, politics etc.
On the other hand, the low involvement category could use the peripheral route for persuasion, since the elaboration here is low. For instance, this is where celebrity endorsements are used for product category like soaps, deodorants, etc. They could be hyperbolic ads, for instance in case of deMARKATHON
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perspective odorants, how using their brand turn them into chick magnets. In case of Trump, the proven fact that Americans have low involvement for the country politics made Trumps’ peripheral route was a very wise move. The way the model works can be summed up in the following way:
samples of Maggi Noodles (both previous stocks and newly manufactured stocks), so that your child can go back to his/her beloved snacks. This was the central route of persuasion. Right after the 2minutes noodles w e r e banned, the social media was taken by storm as Maggi fans having unconditional love for the brand from all over the world starting expressing how much they missed having it.
This mode of persuasion has been used in reviving many brands which were on the brink of death. One such example is Maggi. It was a quintessential comeback for a brand where in both the modes of persuasion were used in its advertisement. For instance, the worried mothers, who became skeptical of the brand after its reputation got tarnished because of presence of more-than-permissible lead/MSG content, were the brands first target after Maggi hit the shelves again. Hence it came up the campaign # LetYourMomKnow was aired.
Their love for Maggi defied every logic and for such people Maggi came up with #WeMissYouToo, which is an inclination towards the peripheral route of persuasion.
This was the central route of persuasion that the brand used. In which they tried to logically explain the rationale behind the brand’s come back and that the NABL (National Accreditation Board for Testing and Calibration Laboratories) accredited labs cleared 100% MARKATHON
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perspective One such brand which is in dire needs of a revamp is the Malaysian airlines, after two devastating accidents in a spa of six months, its image is terribly blemished. It has to accomplish the mammoth task of persuading the people that its safe for a ride again. The ELM model has evolved so subtly in the digital world that; you might not even realize how you as a consumer were persuaded. For instance, take the case of the numerous Ecommerce platforms like Amazon, Flipkart and the likes. For the customers who have a high involvement on such online platform sites, implying they are regular online shoppers, it becomes highly significant for a particular site to persuade the customer to shop on their site and NOT others. For such involved customers in this case the central route of persuasion would mean making product information easy for users to access by including multiple options for searching and sorting, offering detailed product descriptions, and providing in-depth product reviews written by fellow shoppers.
On the other hand, for people who are not familiar with the online shopping platforms a subtle peripheral route of persuasion would help in generating a lead and later converting it. In this case the use of visual hierarchy would be essential, which is akin to the concept of visual merchandising of the retail outlets. The cynosure of the page would be a nice large photo of the product, this could at once catch the attention of the viewer, persuading him/her to stay on the site further. The photos could be from various angles, hence giving a vivid imagery of the product. The numerous filtering options allow potential customers to choose from a broad range of categories that can serve as little interest in researching in-depth (e.g. a shortcut to selecting a product they have price, rating, age of product). MARKATHON
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cover story
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Cover Story By Arnav Khanna
NEWSJACKING Introduction “Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possiMARKETING ble exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws” BUDGET - Douglas Adams With the advent of internet and other digital channels news stories have found their way into anyone and everyone’s computer screens. The world is more connected now and it is due to this fact that news stories spread fast and die faster. But what do we as marketers have to do with it, news stories are like random lightning flashes which have a tremendous reach and result in mass acknowledgement. The words ‘reach’ and ‘acknowledgment’ do ring a bell, don’t they? Companies spend millions of dollars to get air time for attention of their target audience, out of which only a fraction actually end up buying their product. But now things are not the same, disruption is another name for innovation. Companies are breaking conventions and coming up with new and different strategies to gain competitive advantage. One such internet marketing techniques is Newsjacking, where companies and brands use famous news stories to draw attention to their own product.
What is Newsjacking? Newsjacking may be defined as the art of using news events or stories for marketing and advertising purposes, wherein the principles are to use news stories for gaining visibility, media coverage and other benefits. The term was coined by David Meerman Scott in 2011. Rather than being a core marketing strategy, it is more of a PR tool used by professionals to connect with their audiences. Newsjacking has been used by companies around the world where they have leveraged
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on news stories to push in their products. Famous brands such as Oreo and Amul have taken advantage of news in their agendas to advertise successfully. Let’s have a look at a few examples: Oreo - During the blackout of Superbowl 2013, Oreo came up with this tweet which got really popular.
Does it work? 1.Shared Limelight: Your content merges with the news, since your ad is relevant for those searching for news, it significantly pushes your brand up in the search results. This increases your audience, thereby bringing your brand at the centre of the most relevant discussions happening in the media
During the 2014 Soccer world cup, Luis Suarez bit an Italian player. This news became very 2.You’ll be open to new audience: you’ll be popular across different media channels. Difperceived as related to the news and therefore ferent brands came up with their ads to benefit can be contacted by those unaware of your from this controversy. brand. After your ad, there should be a link to your website or your blog so as to educate the potential consumer. Otherwise, your ad might be perceived as misleading 3.It relates your product to real life examples: When you promote yourself using a real event there are chances that your brand might have a deeper effect on the audience. Your brand will get acknowledged as something much more than what just comes in ads. This gives a real life perspective to your brand 4.Builds a brand’s character: When you convey an opinion through your brand regarding Amul has been unknowingly following news- a real life event, this gives a very strong idea jacking since a long time, by constantly releasing about your brand. It shows that you’re not just ads on relevant topics and using clever one lin- there for selling, you know what’s going on ers it has been able to draw the reference to its around and are connected with it as much as your audience is. butter.
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Before we delve deeper into Newsjacking, here are some basics of Inbound Marketing. Research on the topic: Thorough research on the topic is necessary to create a successful story. Inbound Marketing Original story behind the news has to be very clear so as to create a strong impact of the adverIt follows a pull strategy of marketing. Inbound tisement. Half knowledge about the news might marketing focusses on creating quality content result in ads giving a wrong message, which can that attracts the customers, it aligns its own in- create bead publicity. terests with that of customers so that the customer approaches the brand naturally. The com- Agility and timing: pany, instead of locating its customers, makes With the rapid pace of technology and events, itself visible on a wider platform. It is a non-tra- news stories have a very short lifetime. Comditional method and is known to be more effec- panies need to act at the right moment. Once a tive than outbound marketing. Communication news story has lost its popularity, Newsjacking is usually done via mediums where the custom- would be futile. Right time would be to publish er has given you permission. Some of the im- your ad right after the news breaks, and when portant tools to attract customers to your web- the journalists are looking for more information site is by SEO, Blogging, Webpages and Social to report on the news story. Publishing. News jacking is a form of inbound marketing strategy, where they are pulled towards your product through their searches for relevant news stories
Essentials for Newsjacking Companies follow certain procedures to Newsjack. These procedures are necessary to be carried out in order to have a successful newsjacked campaign. Monitor the Internet: It is extremely important for the companies to be up to date. They have to always be on a lookout for a news or a story that can be leveraged. Major news sources are always monitored. Another major source of news for the companies is Social media portals such as Twitter, the latest trends can be found on twitter. Further, as we saw most of the companies have also used twitter to push their newsjacked campaign. Optimise the content: The content has to be prepared around the news but we need to check the search volume for the keywords. These keywords will help us to get closer to the real news search results. The content for the news jacked story is prepared only with those keywords which have maximum probability of being found.
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Differentiated angle: There should be a particular angle to the news story that should be kept in mind. This angle helps the companies to strike the right chord with its customers. Their attention is captured when they are able to connect the brand with the news’ angle. E.g during the Suarez’s bite controversy, Snickers gave the angle of hunger
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to his action, this was not why he actually bit the player, but giving this angle actually would help brand to sell the nougat bar.
Lenskart had to issue an apology for their own advertising
Market your newsjacked story: After creating a successful ad based on a news, companies need to make sure that the ad reaches their audience. It needs to be publicised at an equal level as the actual news. Again, social media which brought the actual news can be used to spread out our newsjacked story
Are we ready for it? Newsjacking as a strategy is a High risk high return deal. While Newsjacking brings many benefits along with it, it has a few downsides too MARKETING Time Sensitive: BUDGET Time plays a huge role when we talk about the timing of jacking a news, if you jack too early, you end up going unrecognised. On the other hand if you jack too late you don’t get the required attention. Ola Chennai Floods: During the floods, this started as a random joke that how would people book a cab under such a condition in order to commute. Ola used this as an opportunity and introduced Ola boat service to cater to people stuck in their houses. Getting Wrong audience: When you as a company end up giving your opinion on a news, you are bound to be attacked by haters. This leads to unsolicited audience and wastes your efforts It can backfire: When not done with appropriate forethought, Newsjacking can lead to very large scale damage to the brand. One such example is Lenskart which tried to use the Nepal Eathquake news to push its products. This was met with a lot of backlash on twitter as well on social media due to huge loss to people in Nepal. Finally,
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India as a country has been growing rapidly, thereby giving way to newer disruptions in the way we do business. However, experimenting with marketing strategies should always be done keeping in mind their effectiveness. Using social media channels to push newsjacked ads cannot be very effective in Indian context as the overall reach is not very high. However, by making use of more conventional mediums such as print media to give ads based on newsjacking can be very successful. This has been proven by Amul which has been newsjacking to give ingenious advertisements leading to large scale consumer entertainment. This has helped the brand develop such a strong position in Indian market And very recently due to the sudden news of Demonetisation, many companies tried to capitalise on this to promote their brands, one such example is that of Paytm, online wallet services.
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VARTALAAP An Interview with Mr. Saurabh Doshi Saurabh Doshi joined facebook in 2014. A CA and MBA by profession,he has 15+ years of experience in the industry. Currently, he is involved in ramping partnerships teams in India with the core focus on connecting people to content and creators that best inform and entertain them on Facebook, Instagram and FB Messenger. He also supports Facebook partners in the adoption of new products.
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Head-Media Partnerships IIM Shillong
vartalaap
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“It was a win win situation for Facebook as “
the service that they were providing really clicked with the masses
Markathon: Sir, for marketing a product social media plays a major role, in view of the same how difficult was it for Facebook to make people aware about the social media? In the early days, for any new platform it is very difficult to make people aware about the same. In case of Facebook,people could really relate because it was the first platform of its kind where people could really connect with their friends and family. So the major focus was on users and providing that connectivity and value. So once the user base is created everything else follows, the brands follow and the businesses follow. Hence, it was a win win situation for Facebook as the service that they were providing really clicked with the masses.
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Markathon: Facebook has a lot of tie ups with key figures and key organizations. Has Facebook been able to integrate into the rural areas? What initiatives has Facebook taken to reach the rural segment? Facebook has a lot of focus on key figures and organizations because users who come to the platform want to interact with such figures and consume that content. On the rural side the challenges are very different. There are issues of connectivity in such areas hence facebook on its part tries to do a lot by providing a similar experience to its users on 2G. Facebook Lite is one application that is very light and can be accessed on 2G as well. This is one major initiative but Facebook is constantly innovating to
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provide more and more such facili- I am happy with the work that I do ties to the users in the urban as well and there are numerous examples in as rural areas. the industry where people completely changed their career paths but are still Markathon: You are a CA by profes- doing very well. It is all about finding sion. How was the journey from CA what is right for you and then believto Media Partnerships? How flexible ing in yourself to achieve it. should one be in the corporate scenario to take advantage of the opportuni- Markathon: Facebook video chat has a ties available. lot of competition from WhatsApp and Hangout. What potential do you see for Being from a Gujarati family, num- the Facebook feature? bers and business run in our blood so it comes very naturally. After completing my CA I went on to pursue my MBA in Finance and joined Investment Banking post that. However, the impact was not that much while through media one can impact the lives of people a great deal. I also had some exposure in Media and was fascinated by it, So I gradually shifted my career towards Media and have been in the field for quite sometime now. When people chose their careers they do not have much exposure and knowledge regarding other fields. If one does not feel the passion to go to work every day it is definitely time There will always be competition but to find your calling. I am a finance the good thing is that one can learn person working in a very high tech a lot from competition. Facebook was not the first to introduce the video calling feature but the important Students want to go to the outside thing is that when Facebook introduced this feature it received world and gain practical great response from its users. knowledge but tend to forget the Facebook provides its users with a whole social experience and the importance of theory. users have the connectivity and when any feature is introduced inside that social experience it is company doing creativity and content, which in itself is very rare, but easy for the product to find its foot and MARKATHON
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get acknowledged among its users.
graduate joining Facebook expect?
Markathon: Every product has its product life cycle where it gets introduced, grows, matures and then declines. How has the experience been for Facebook? How has it been able to cope up with its lows?
So Facebook is about being open and having empathy. Facebook has an open culture and everyone is allowed to voice their opinions. You can discuss your ideas with your boss and the top management welcomes your suggestions. There is no preferential treatment and even the top managers sit at the same table where the other employees do. I came from a traditional company with separate cabins but when I joined Facebook, it was a very different experience and took some time to get accustomed to but in the end it proves really beneficial for the company and its employees as everyone feels at par.
The key is to keep innovating, to come in every day and work hard on the product. Facebook started off as a small page where some university
Markathon: Any tips for the young MBA graduates who will be soon joining the industry? students connected and now it has come a long way. The major feature with Facebook is the NewsFeed which is the main feed on Facebook, earlier people just had pages and destinations that they could go to but now it has the NewsFeed which other social networking sites such as Twitter have also adopted. Constant innovation keeps us going and we really focus on user experience minute by minute. Markathon: How is the structure inside Facebook? What should a young
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Students today really feel that theoretical knowledge is not as important as the practical one. Students want to take up internships and projects and learn the practical nitty gritties but for one to be successful, it is extremely important to have the theoretical concepts clear first and then build on that. You all are young now and have the time to learn about the outside world, but what is important now is to utilize the time you have here on campus and make the most of it so that it contributes to your success in the long run.
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Can the discount sales by E-tailers result in long term customer retention? Antony Abraham SIBM Pune
Deeksha Agarwal GIM
In the new world of market, the big discounts will provide only a way to penetrate and attain attention in the market for a new entrant. The long term retention really matters depending upon many other factors. E-tailors like Flipkart came with Big Billion day which provided 70-90% discount and forced its competitors to provide discounts for a certain number of days. Earlier, only during festive seasons, such huge discounts were provided. However, now customers expect much lower prices for the products from the e-tailers. Hence, the e-tailers are forced to provide discounts to meet the customer demands and to compete in the market in a healthy manner. These huge discounts are compensated by the investments that they get from different sources. However, the investors need profits in the long run and need to reduce the discounts. The best way to increase profit is by reselling the products to current customers rather than finding and selling it to a new customer. In order to do that, retention of customers is attained through many ways and the primary factor should not be such discounts. The effective way that Amazon uses is by providing recommendations to the customers depending upon their purchase behaviour or pattern. Other ways are by providing loyalty programs, sending newsletter emails, surprise or delight the customer, best delivery and return service and the most effective of these is by implementing the correct combination of the 7 P’s. Thus, it shows that the big discounts solely cannot result in long term customer relation.
Discounts are known to be one of the best strategies to attract the attention of customers and increase the market share. Online stores have learnt this strategy from brick & mortar stores and have taken it to the next level. A huge number of e-tailers like Amazon, Flipkart, Jabong, etc. usually keep a certain percentage of their products on discount. They occasionally hold mega sales events like Filpkart’s - Big Billion Day Sale and Amazon’s – Great Indian Festival due to which price has become the biggest factor that drives customers towards shopping online. Most of the e-tailers are start-ups and offer deep discounts, often pricing their products much lower than their cost. As entry-level players, they not only want to capture the market but also need to build the brand name, customer loyalty and relationship with sellers. This brings about an initial loss but as these stores are backed by venture capitalists and private equity investors they are able to sustain with a relatively higher level of security in the market. Once they are established they can create a more efficient market due to lower overhead costs by continuing to provide goods at discounted prices. Also, economies of scale gives online stores an edge over their offline counterparts and brings about a significant difference in their product prices and quality by providing a competitive environment. So long as another bubble does not hit these Ecommerce giants, they seem to be doing well to keep customers glued to their online portals for a long time now.
Topic for the next issue: Will mobile wallets revolutionalize customer purchasing pattern or is it just a passing wave?” Your opinion (view/counterview) is invited. Word limit is 250-300. Last date of sending entries is 15th December 2016. Include your picture (JPEG format) with the entry. Winners will receive a prize money of Rs. 500 each!
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n 2015, when the world got to know that a company like Volkswagen had rigged their cars to pass the emission tests, it had to face a lot of heat, resulting in the CEO’s resignation and a massive retraction of order. Volkswagen might be grabbing the eye balls now for the wrong reasons, but it has been there to build its credibility for a long time. Over the years the ownership was passed on to different countries and the company saw may changes in their logos. Let’s have a look In 1937, the company was started, by the Nazi’s German Labour Front as a part of Hitler’s vision to create a “People’s car”. A car that could be owned by common people through their savings. The design was largely influenced by Ferdinand Porsche. The logo represents a gear, the wings are given to resemble the Nazi Swastika. During the war, the factories produced military vehicle for German forces and the logo was changed slightly,but still relevant. During the war, the factory was heavily bombed after that it was handed over to the British, headed by British Army Officer Major Ivan Hirst manufacturing was resumed and the production was majorly for military vehicles for the British armyVolkswagen was transferred back
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to Germany. Its cars exported to United States. During this phase the company went into major expansion. With different brands acquired in its portfolio, such as Seat, Skoda till 1991. This logo was the coloured version of the 1945 logo. The V was brought closer to the W and the outer ring became thinner. In 2012, Volkwagen introduced the logo, with the silver lettering appearing to have a shine, as well as the reflection from the 2000 logo reinstated. The current logo was unveiled on Sept. 4 2012 with the world premiere of the 2013 Volkswagen Golf Mk7 in Berlin.
AD-dicted AD-dicted
december november 2013 2016 By Ravitej Vadlamani IIM Shillong
PRODUCT: Hero Moto Corp
CATCH
POSITIONING: Hero Salutes the real Heroes of India. #HeroSalutes
CREATIVE AGENCY: L&K Saatchi & Saatchi YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=3u0McB2-NGM
By Suman Saurav IIM SHILLONG
PRODUCT: Pan Bahar
POSITIONING: Placing Pan Bahar as Class and emphasizing that class never goes out of style
R
Created By: DDB Mudra
YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=3NYBzCoGaFY CONCEPT: The commercial for Pan Bahar, the pan masala brand of mouth freshener from DJ Group, has all the trappings of a Bonds film. Pierce Brosnan in lead role, a fast car, beautiful women, incredulous stunts and a weapon of mass destruction—a can of pan masala. It surely meant to highlight the style that bond films have..
MISS
CONCEPT: A man in army uniform runs to catch a bus, which is just leaving the stop. A motorcycle rider passing him notices this, and gets ahead of the moving bus and asks the driver to stop. The soldier thanks the rider before he gets on, and is surprised to be greeted by the rider on a Hero bike with a salute. Nodding his acknowledgement, he gets into the bus, only to be saluted by everyone in the bus. In other instances, VERDICT: Miss members of the Navy and the Airforce get the same respectful greeting from the public. The film ends The advertisement of Pan Bahar was supposed to appeal to the people of urban class mainly, but it with the message: ‘Hero salutes the real heroes’. failed on many fronts. First of all the surprise of seeing actor Pierce Brosnan appear for a pan masala VERDICT: Catch brand and Presumably neither the company, nor With a combination of great positioning, timing and their ad agency realised that Brosnan’s first wife and content, the advertisement managed not only to cap- daughter had both died of cancer, and that he himture the mood of the nation, but also establish Hero self actively works for cancer-related causes. This is a Moto Corp as a brand which stands for the real In- classic double-edged killing machine. On one side, dian who salutes the armed forces of the country. In the sheer audacity of getting in Pierce Brosnan is inthe aftermath of the deadly Uri attack and the need- credible. Brilliant coup this one. On the other hand, less politics played around the event, it served as a what a disappointment! While the Bond genes are timely reminder to the nation to respect the armed almost lost under his beard, you almost expect Bond calibre action. But the execution is a downer. forces and is a great example of social Sadly the advertisement doesn’t go anywhere near marketing. that.
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Jab They Failed Clinton for America
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olitical campaigns have increasingly become an important sphere for understanding consumer(voter) insights. We shall try to analyze the marketing perspective of the Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign and what went wrong in the entire communication and its significance in the era of social media, during one of the most publicized battles for the White House. 1.Why Political Campaigns should target a broader segment #NotMyAbuela: A post on Clinton’s campaign website that tried to target Hispanic voters by employing half a dozen Spanish words, speaking of 7 ways in which Hillary was similar to their grandmother (Abuela) enraged millions of Hispanics. Twitter was flooded with the posts that talked of the hardships endured by the Hispanic grandmothers which Clinton would never understand. Trying to target different segments with different slogans, she ended up having as many as 84 slogans, which left her with no core message. Whereas Trump’s “Lets Make America Great Again” was ambitious and about the nation and the voter himself, Clinton’s “I’m with her” was more about the candidate.
shows innocent kids watching TV featuring Trump in his nasty, sexist remarks. 8-year-olds hardly watch news (in the absence of their parents) and even if they do, they know that politics is a dirty business. Stressing on his characteristic qualities of upfront bluntness and rudeness, which has long been evident, is futile. In contrast, Trump’s campaign had been more direct and simple. The one titled “Two Americas” compared his vision of America with that of Clintons. Whereas Clinton’s America is replete with huddled refugees walking to a grim tune playing in the background, Trump’s America features happy and content families. It stresses on the threats possessed by the illegal immigrants in Clintonland vs a safe and secure environment in Trumpheaven. The key to the campaign was its conventional simple message portrayed in an easy to decipher detail-free manner.
2.Simplicity is the key to successful political ads The Democrats’ campaign on Trump’s “Immigration Ink Blot”, which depicted a Rorschach association of Trump along with animation and typography was too arty and psychoanalytical. Apart from those weird sound bites and art, the message itself is hardly persuasive. It accuses Trump of building a deportation force and a great wall. Well, there are millions who believe in the idea of Trump, who is an embodiment of the harsh-and-rough pop culture of America and the American ego; and so in effect this lofty campaign with an ubiquitously patronizing tone polishes all those followers of Trump who believe in his idea of deportation, as crazy, citing disdain for all of them. This was one of the biggest drawbacks of her campaign, as Trump never scorned her followers as a “basket of deplorables” for believing in her idea of America. Moreover, another Clinton campaign titled “Role Models”
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3.Product and Place: The 2Ps that Clinton forgot Negative marketing is essential but it comes at a cost when you cross the line. Obama’s campaign was one of the best marketing campaigns, not because it derailed the opponent, but because it stood on its own, the product was Obama himself and not the competitor. Whereas, for Clinton, the focus was too much on the competitor. Trade agreements were minefields for her and her
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stance on NAFTA and TPP were always complicated and evolved throughout the tenure of her office as a Senator and during the campaign which led to a diminishing support from the blue collars. Contrast it with Trump’s artless and non-pretentious position on ripping NAFTA and TPP. What made matters worse was that even Sanders opposed these trade deals in the primaries. Place is another P that matters in marketing, and Clinton faced many upsets in her territories. She took democratic strongholds very lightly and even skipped campaigning in many of those and lost both the primaries and general election in Michigan. 4. Underestimating coin toss for a black swan Clinton got the demographics and psychographics of the voters completely wrong. First, a lower number of African-American and Latinos turned up for the voting compared with 2012. Of these, despite derogatory and racist remarks against black communities by Trump, only 88% African-Americans voted for Clinton compared to 93% for Obama. She also failed among women electorate compared to Obama. Many young voters had sided with Sanders in primaries, and therefore didn’t turn up for voting. Had she thought about the long run, she would have refrained from harsh remarks against Sanders, and instead focused on her own charter and development policies. Also the psychographics of the voter could not be predicted accurately. Trump supporters when interviewed were less likely to vouch for him, because of the (possibly) negative impression that it might bring about and so, what was a coin toss in reality, seemed more like a black swan event.
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By Suman Saurav| IIM Shillong
Google launches Pixel in India It came as a delight when Google announced that India will be one of the few countries where its Pixel smartphone duo will be launched. Google’s Pixel and Pixel XL went up for pre-orders in India via major retailers like Flipkart, Chroma, Reliance Digital, and others. With Apple’s I-phone 7 launch in India, Google is eyeing to dominate the Indian smartphone market.
Google launches YouTube Kids app in India Google launched YouTube Kids in India, a special app of the video portal with family-friendly content. Google said it has partnered with several YouTube creators in India for exclusive content for YouTube Kids app. The app is available on both iOS and Android. This app will be competing with several apps that are already present on Google play which produces children friendly content. The company has roped in top content creators from India to create videos for the new YouTube Kids platform..
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The Best of Global digital marketing conference to be held in Banglore and Best Marketing International and Valiant Business Media in association with Gazelle Business Media is having “The Best of Global Digital Marketing Conference� tour in India. It will include full day conference which will cover all areas of internet marketing, including email marketing, social media marketing, search and online display advertising. The speakers will include Hando Sinisalu, CEO at Best Marketing International (Estonia), Anupam Dixit, Head of Global brands at Twitter India.
Bose Launches Newest Systems Audio equipment specialist Bose decided to launch its Professional audio system, the Bose ShowMatch and DeltaQ in India. The idea and execution of event was brought on board to deliver the exclusive B2B launch event targeted at over 200 sound designers, music professionals, club owners and concert organizers. The audio systems are placed in premium segment and has high sound quality. Bose professional loudspeakers feature the most versatile DeltaQ design,.
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Our Social Media Pages have been buzzing all month. Check out some of our posts here!
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Articles are invited “Best Article”: Solanki Gunjan Devendrabhai & Abhishek Singh | IIFT Kolkata
They receive a cash prize of Rs.1000 & a letter of appreciation We are inviting articles from all the B-schools of India. The articles can be absolutely anything related to the world of marketing but it should be an original work that is not published elsewhere. The articles can be specific to the regular sections of Markathon which includes: •Perspective: Articles related to development of latest trends in marketing arena. •Productolysis: Analysis of a product from the point of view of marketing. •Strategic Analysis: A complete analysis of marketing strategy of any company or an event. Apart from above, out of the box views related to marketing are also welcome. The best entry will receive a letter of appreciation and a cash prize of Rs 1000/-. The format of the file should be MS Word doc/docx. The last date of receiving all entries is 15th December, 2016. Please send your entries marked as <ARTICLE NAME>_<SENDERS’ NAME(S)>_<INSTITUTE> to markathon.iims@gmail.com.
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