Hello readers! A lot has happened over the last month, from the rising geopolitical tensions around the world to the launch of a new range of smart phones. With winter setting in here at shillong, it’s been a month of festivities and we at markathon wish all our readers a very happy dusshera. While the festivities bring with them a sense of togetherness and brotherhood, they bring with them an overdose of marketing activities with various brands trying to sell their products using various discounts and other promotional activities. With the barrage of advertisements that the average consumer is subjected to, and the numerous e-commerce sales that are present during this time of the year, a very important question comes to us as marketers, does brand loyalty still play a part in the purchasing decisions of consumers or is it just a matter of who can give the maximum discounts. The cover story aims to answer the question, is brand loyalty is dead? Or has it just changed. The article goes to describe how brand loyalty has changed with the advent of the digital medium and increased information flow which has made the consumer more informed.
curation and trends to watch out for. We also congratulate Abhishek Agarwal, for his article on the behavior economics behind the launch of Iphones. In our vartalaap section for the month, we have Mr. Sunil K Sathyanarayan, business head, South Asia adhesives division, Henkel. He speaks about the trends in the industry to watch out for and we thank him for sharing his views with our readers. In our eye2eye section we debate if there has been a shift from brand centricity to product centricity. In the popular jab they failed section we discuss the case of pepsi peace and its debacle in the market and reasons behind the same. Markathon has added a new section this edition called digi-gyaan. It aims to cover the topics of digital marketing and we are sure it will enthrall our readers. We discuss the importance of artificial intelligence in this edition. The crowd favorites top 5 reads and updates are back as well for our readers to enjoy.
We would like to thank everyone for their entries for the perspective and eye2eye sections. It is our readers who enable us to push ourselves and only bring the best to you. We wish you a very happy Diwali and hope all our readers celebrate the festival of lights responsibly and with We congratulate Shadab Mahtab, winner of caution. So, turn over the pages and enjoy the perspective for his insightful article on content read. Happy Reading! Team Markathon
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Andar Ki Baat Perspective
01 05 Cover Story Is Brand Loyalty 07 Dead? Samarth Parikh | IIM Shillong
Content Curation:
Trends to watch out for in 2018 Shadan Mahtab | IIFT Delhi
The Behaviour Economics behind the new iPhone launches Abhishek Agarwaal | IIM Shillong
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Has their been a shift from Brand Centricity to Product Centricity from the perspective
Vartalaap
of Customers?:
13 Piyush Shah
Mr Sunil K Sathyanarayan Business Head, South Asia Adhesives Division
Shubham Kapoor Interviewed By:
LBSIM Delhi MARKATHON
IIM Udaipur
Henkel
Mansi Khandelwal & Yash Agrawal | IIM Shillong IIM Shillong
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Andar Ki Baat SpeciaLs
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AD-dicted
Catch & Miss advertisements of the month Anurag Pandey & Aishwarya Tiwari | IIM Shillong
Digi - Gyaan Importance of AI 21 in E-commerce Nitin Nathani | IIM Shillong Marketing Gyan
23 Jab They Failed Pepsi: Peace?
20 Apoorv Gupta | IIM Shillong 24 MARKATHON
Top 5 Reads
To get the brain tickling Aishwarya Tiwari | IIM Shillong
Updates
Fresh from the Marketing World Aishwarya Tiwari | IIM Shillong IIM Shillong
september 2017
perspective
Content curating trends to watch out for in 2018
By Shadan Mahtab IIFT Delhi
The rise of real time video, behind-the-scenes content and true brand journalism will give a paradigm shift to storytelling narrative from glossy to documentary style realism
I
ntroduction
Content curation is everywhere these days and has made a mark in every area of online marketing world. The presence has been felt on the New York Times front page plenty of times. Dozens of books written about content curation, most of them specifically discussing curation in the context of marketing. Since 2009, search hits for curation on Google has grown more than ten-fold. Curation has revolutionised the way we receive news content, the way we shop online and the
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way we share information with each other. As brands get involved in the curation game, its changing how the world market and are marketed to online.
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/
Before diving into some of the most exciting content curation trends in the upcoming time, let us look at some of the less applied content curation techniques which go a long way in adding relevance to the brand value of the product if utilised well:
B. Framing the curated content
A. ‘Underground’ content There is a massive array of content that users have never seen or heard of. Rather than of offering similar content that readers have been reading from the most obvious sources, it is important to provide them with something that is fresh and untouched. To be the go-to place to find the most relevant and best content, one’s got to be a trend finder or a trend analyst. Companies that use RSS (Really Simple Syndication) find unique content more often. RSS sends interested content marketers alerts when their own articles go live often before the firms promote the content themselves. Content that is most liked and accepted and the ones having the highest engagement are not found in the most popular sites. True value is derived from frequenting locations that are abstract and publish content strongly relevant to the audience 10% to 20% of the time. This kind of content sourced from abstract locations would resonate with audiences because it is fresh, new, and otherwise unseen by those in the marketers’ space. 20% of these locations will eventually drive nearly 80% of the results.
So, the real challenge is to dig deep.
How the first few words sound in any blog post, Twitter and Facebook post, or advertisement has the ability to make or break effective curation. Marketers very often make the mistake of auto-posting from RSS feeds or auto-scheduling content from their own feeds. This does not make their content as compelling as they ought to be. So, rather than just auto-tweeting the headline of an article in lesser time than it takes to read, one should add his own context to the article. The content can be presented better by highlighting it in a fresh way or adding a new element to make it more interesting and shareable. One can considerably increase visibility with a twist of words, or add value with his/her own commentary, or add a little sparkle to the content with design or development. Now, it is time to list down the content curation trends that would come in handy to the content marketers in 2018.
Trend 1: Influencer Marketing Influencer marketing has gone from strengths to strengths in the past few years. Influencers can help brands reach greater audience. What is needed is a trusted influencer who can lend credibility
Some lesser known places are: Hacker news: https://news.ycombinator.com/ Product hunt: https://www.producthunt.com/ search?q=content+marketing
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perspective to a product and make it easier for the marketer to build trust with his followers. An influencer will help you only if you lend something valuable to him. You have to offer him something of value to gain access to her audience. So, if a marketer builds his own influence first and brings that to the table, he can offer the influencer something very valuable; helping him tap into a new network, grow his influence and fuel his own brand. Just the way niche and trade sites are important for content because they tend to attract more engaged audiences, the same resonates with influencer marketing. More than 80% of users would rather follow a micro-influencer’s recommendation over mega-influencers that marketers hire to advocate their companies and brands. Marketers very often tend to write off micro-influencers and try to seek out the most influential people in their areas but that does not work always. As long as a marketer works with a variety of promoters and put emphasis on brand advocacy, micro influencers can be more valuable than one can think of. A major shift in the world of influencer marketing is the change from partnering with content creators to flat-out purchase of them.
alized relationship with the subscribers. A few common examples of email marketing are: a) Welcome emails when new subscribers join the service or create an account. b) Anniversary emails to mark the user’s time as a subscriber or customer. c) Engagement-driven emails depending upon what the subscriber had previously clicked on
Trend 3: Print is back Today, one can safely remark that print is nontraditional marketing whereas blogging, web articles and social media are all traditional marketing channels. Following are some cru-
Trend 2: Email Renaissance Out of all the ways to garner an audience, email marketing has emerged as one of the most critical ways. Brands today are increasingly using email newsletters. For example, The Washington Post now has more than 75 different e-newsletters and The New York Times has an employee team of 12 people dedicated to newsletters. Automated
cial reasons why print media is not dying and would probably never die: a) It is attention grabbing As print magazines are become fewer in number, people would pay more attention to print media and so 2018 is the right time to leverage the platform.
b) Lesser audience development costs Publishers usually need to spend huge amounts of money, energy and time to send out print magazines. They have to spend multiple dollars for auditing purposes including direct mail and follow-up calls. If a publisher’s cost per subscriber per year is $3, and their distribution is 100,000 strong, then the total cost would come up to $300,000. Whereas if marketers want to emails get about 152% higher clicks than broad- distribute a magazine to their customers, they cast emails. These emails create a more person- can just make use of the customer mailing list
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perspective saving a lot of costs. c) Print still develops excitement among people A journalist had once stated in Forbes that it is difficult to get people to agree to an interview if they come to know that it is an online story. But if it for a printed story they make sure they find time because printed word is still perceived as far more credible than anything that people read online. Online marketplace Airbnb and publishing partner Hearst have come together to launch a new magazine called “Airbnbmag” to be distributed to Airbnb homes and include content curated for people who provide and use the service. Houses like School of Doodle and VFiles have launched a print magazine. Marketers are always trying to cut through the digital clutter with print content. Print marketing as a tactic for content marketers and curators have been astonishingly steady in the past one year. Brands can now complement their online efforts with some niche print publications. A magazine is an excellent collision of attractive designs and provocative information. Trader audience is expecting this kind of content. As traders are always connected online, they look forward to disconnecting and discovering.
Trend 4: Stories vs. Articles
Storytelling is a far more engaging source of info than an ordinary article or listicle. Same old blogs fill up the daily queue and readers are bored
baby” among the most popular ones), a common situation of toddlers crying on flights and turned it into a delightful message, giving its customers flight credits whenever a baby cried during the course of the flight.
Trend 5: Real Time Content Facebook has released the technology platform of live stream, Instagram has released stories and Snapchat has become an exciting platform for all businesses. Hence, it is inevitable that marketers will jump into the mix
and use these creative outlets as long as they are new and attractive. Older platforms like webinars will get a makeover by recording them using Facebook live so that there is more enthusiasm among viewers to engage. Innovations like Snapchat stories, Instagram stories, video testimonials, geo-filters, live tweets and anything that one can do real time and is shareworthy is bound to grab attention and increase lead flow. In a nutshell, ungated and unedited content can be expected to sell like hot cakes in 2018.
Conclusion
of them. People are far more attentive towards work from marketers who have adopted storytelling as the principle essence of their work. For example, the company JetBlue (an American low-cost airline) have created videos of real life situations that they have experienced with their flyers. These included the Fly Babies video (a series of YouTube videos like “How to fly with a
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All in all, a much more differentiated content is expected to come up in 2018. This differentiated content tries to humanize brands with the aim of making them look more likeable. The rise of real time video, behind-the-scenes content and true brand journalism will give a paradigm shift to storytelling narrative from glossy to documentary style realism. In 2017 one saw innovations in searchable podcast, virtual reality, text message blog posts and interactive videos. In 2018 we are going to see more creativity and innovation along these lines
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perspective
The Behaviour Economics behind the new iPhone launches
By AbhIshek AGArwaal IIM Shillong
It’s that time of the year when tech enthusiasts around the world hold their breaths and wait anxiously for the next offering by the tech powerhouse Apple. Tech evangelists spend hours breaking down every possible news the rumour mills churn out and then once again break down every new feature once the phone is finally launched. Price is no barrier to the cult of fans that this brand has amassed but is it just the promise of the most revolutionary design and technology that has driven hordes of people line up for its products over the years? Or is a deeper phenomenon at play here!
and deliberate. While we often consider ourselves to be thinking with our system 2 mind, it is often the system 1 that runs the show. And brands like Apple have very deftly learnt to cater to our System 1 thinking, something that played out very well in the latest iPhone X launch! Perhaps the best example of how Apple has employed Behavioural Economics to its advantage is
Paul Kahneman in his book “Thinking Fast and Slow” has broken down our decision making process into two
parts, identified as System 1 and System 2, the former being reflexive and impulsive while the latter is logical
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through the concept of Heuristics, which essentially represents a process of substituting a difficult question with an easier one, leading to cognitive biases. This is one of the reasons why no matter what argument you put in front of an Apple fan, he is going to continue defending its products, because “Affect Heuristic” is in play here, in which people make judgment and decisions by consulting their emotions (System 1) rather than Logic
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perspective (System 2). The search for information and arguments is mostly constrained to information that is consistent with existing beliefs and not with the intention to examine them – Something that the overbearing persona of Steve Jobs has deeply ingrained in our minds.
“Choice Paradox” at play. Having too many choices has been associated with unhappiness decision fatigue, as well as choice deferral—avoiding making a decision altogether, such as not buying a product. Apple has realized this and perfected the art of identifying the perfect number of choices to be offered. Each time driving its legion of fans into a frenzy once a new model or product line is launched.
Apple is probably one of the few consumer goods companies which has deftly employed “Herd Behaviour” to drive sales of its products. The idea of herding has a long history in philosophy and crowd
The natural question that arises now is with the iPhone X launch, has Apple broken from away from this concept? Could launching three new models drive down sales for Apple! NO. That’s simply Apple showing the middle finger to all its sceptics – in behavioral economics terms of course. Apple knows it cannot fulfill too many orders for the iPhone X with its OLED screens and has therefore employed the “Compromise Effect” by pricing it exorbitantly high. When choosing something, the Compromise Effect
psychology. This effect is evident when people do what others are doing instead of using their own information or making independent decisions. The long lines in front of Apple Stores and your closest friend and colleagues flaunting their new iPhone pushes you to try it for yourself as well. Ever wondered why Apple comes out with only one or two products every year while its competitors
is the tendency to avoid an extreme choice. As the middle ground feels safer, decisions which exclude extremes are made far more readily. So the iPhone 8 seems like a much attractive choice, even though it’s barely an improvement over its earlier model. One thing this tells us is that Apple knows us much better than we think. By using such behaviour economics concepts, it has captured the irrationality in each consumer, opening the floodgates for other companies to turn towards our system 1, something that so far has only remained the turf of politicians! But more on that later.
churn out new models by the dozens! That’s the
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Cover Story
Is Brand Loyalty Dead? I
n the past times, shoppers would discover a brand that did what it guaranteed: maybe Tide detergent to clean grass stains, Bounty paper towels to wipe up spills, or Frosted MARKETING Flakes to begin the school day right. Without a specific brand BUDGET fizzling or a sensational value uniqueness from a marked contender, buyers would keep on purchasing similar brands week after week, month after month. In the busy life of basic need customers, a brand earned its place in the storeroom, pantry or icebox, and consumer packaged goods were bought. On the off chance that a bistro offering a $7 bowl of Frosted Flakes, or establishment of a catch to arrange tissue in each lavatory appears to be silly as well as frantic, consider the ramifications of even slight disintegration of dependability to multibillion-dollar CPG concerns like Procter and Gamble PG +0.21%, Unilever, General Mills GIS +1.27% and Kellogg
K +0.45%’s. Among the best 100 CPG brands, 90 experienced shared decline, as per a recent report by Catalina, a digital and consumer loyalty firm. Pause for a minute to give that douse access ...90% of the principal family products brands are losing a piece of the overall industry on reliably low-development classes. Be that as it may, declining piece of the pie among 90% of the best brands can’t be clarified away by a 20-year devel-
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opment in breakfast conduct. The disintegration of shopper dependability among the most regarded brands speaks to a changed theory of purchasing. The standard for mark exchanging is not anymore the disappointment of a brand to perform, but instead its failure to appear like an altogether new and fascinating alternative at every buy cycle.
than any time in recent memory, and more data to settle on those decisions, so it’s just normal to accept they’d begin picking more affordable, more advantageous items over items created by their favorite organizations. •The changing nature of work: The American scene of work is likewise moving; rather than working with one organization your whole life, will Brand loyalty: The inclinaprobably make different tion for clients to support profession switches. Selfone brand, reliably, over business has additionally its rivals for products and been rising consistently as ventures, when new acquirmore individuals endeaving openings uncover themor to abstain from working selves. Brand faithfulness for real enterprises. This and client maintenance go as brings down the signifian inseparable unit and are cance of dependability to beneficial objectives for ora populace, in any event ganizations to target. After all, attracting new cli- theoretically. ents with higher brand visibility is decent, how- •Corporate distrust: Finally, Americans trust orever, unless they stick around, you’re just going ganizations less now than ever before, and that to see a transient lift in income. Brand loyalty missing trust might keep them from putting too was common quite a few years prior, as shop- vigorously in any one major business. pers put their confidence in particular organizations to deal with their requirements in various Recent Research (Two Types of Brand Loyalty): classes—they reliably purchased vehicles from Be that as it may, recent research done by Facesimilar producers, and got perishables from book proposes that brand dedication is fit as a similar stores. In any case, is the idea of brand fiddle. The organization reviewed 14,700 grownloyalty kicking the bucket? Have shoppers lost ups in the United States, inspecting examples the want to stay faithful to singular brands? of conduct over various distinctive verticals. In all cases, 77 percent The Idea: There is of purchasers tend some proof to propose to come back to their that brand loyalty is most loved brands gying—for example, again and again. Be 90 percent of regular that as it may, those 77 family unit products percents appear to be brands are losing a part into two principle piece of the pie in cerclassifications: tain low-development •Brand loyalists make classifications. Also, up 37 percent of the sensibly, it bodes well populace. They make that brand loyalty repeat purchases and would be dying, for are genuinely “loyal” the accompanying reato their most loved sons: brands, which means they would not switch given an open door to •The information age: Thanks to the web, lower costs or more helpful access. shoppers approach organizations everywhere •Repeat purchases make up the rest of the 40 throughout the world. They have more options percent, and speak to individuals who make
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buys at similar brands, much of the time, yet simply because they give them an ideal ordeal. Given lower costs or more accommodation, they would have no issue exchanging brands.
and surely a significant number of those reasons don’t make a difference today, yet mark dependability may have just shifted to adjust to the circumstances.
Brand reliability isn’t dead, yet it has expanded. Brand supporters are driven by feelings, at any rate to some degree, while backpedaling to their most loved organizations, while the repeat purchasers are driven exclusively by work. The enthusiastic ties are more grounded and harder to break, however as long as you can interest the two classifications, you’ll have the capacity to hold a speculative 77 percent of your clients.
Why does brand loyalty matter? In the present consumer landscape, it doesn’t even truly bode well to mark faithful. We have a considerable measure of decisions and the greater part of those decisions are entirely great, so individuals all the more regularly pick comfort or cost inclinations over brand dedication. In any case, back in the beginning of America, having the best item was what sold items.
Do you surmise that this 77 percent has a place with for the most part more established ages, with the lion’s share of motivation driven, data age-conceived recent college grads ricocheting from brand to mark? The inverse is valid; twenty to thirty-year-olds appear to be more faithful to brands than some other age. This is much appreciated, to some degree, to their cooperation with brands via web-based networking media, and their high respect for organization esteems like a corporate social obligation.
Many individuals were creating things that were disappointing, and buyer worries about quality turned into a kind of true brand reliability. This was when brands like General Electric, Winchester, RCA, and Goodyear went ahead of the scene. After the mechanical insurgency truly had an opportunity to grab hold and everybody were fundamentally producing things that were higher in quality, however still to differing degrees, mark devotion was regularly won through publicizing and advertising. Tide is an ideal case of this.
If you ask individuals this inquiry, you are probably going to get plenty of warmed reactions. Don’t worry about it that individuals, for the most part, pick a cell phone manufacturer and stay with it for a considerable length of time out of the requirement for consistent changes. Be that as it may, the vast majority will let you know unequivocally that brand loyalty is dead. They may not be wrong - mark steadfastness as your folks and grandparents were utilized to it may be dead. Verifiably, there were some particular explanations behind brand devotion,
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Delegate and Gamble were the first to find the ideal formula for clothing cleanser, however knowing the contenders could get tightly to the item and make a sensible copy of it, P&G invested energy and cash on promoting to separate Tide. As per the American Chemical Society: “the organization would lead shipping tests that included assembling a portion of the item, shipping it to choose markets, experimenting with promoting methodologies in those business sectors, surveying shoppers about the item, and afterward refining the cleanser given the consequences of testing.”
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A lot of exertion was put into bundling, promoting, and publicizing, which prompted Tide turning into a momentous accomplishment with purchasers once it completely took off. Loyalty programs saved and then maybe finally killed brand loyalty Path back in the 1980s, a portion of the first shopper faithfulness programs rose as carrier focuses. There was even a man in the 1990s who hacked the brand faithfulness circle by purchasing 12,000 pudding glasses, which earned him 1.2 million career miles. Be that as it may, today there are such a significant number of client steadfastness projects and cards that it now indicates a normal of 29 enrollments for every family. Individuals are getting worn out on brand loyalty: •77% of individuals withdraw their brand loyalty speedier than they did three years prior. MARKETING •71% of individuals don’t trust these projects BUDGET even work •61% of individuals have switched brands since last year •23% will have a negative response to the mere recommendation of another brand loyalty program Brand loyalty is changing. There are still a few brands that have a loyal following, however, the
Money related reasons, individual suggestions, and the wow factor are a portion of the reasons that Millennials will at present switch brands. However a standout amongst the most percepti-
ble reasons needs to do with open picture issues. We’ve all observed calls for blacklists of specific items as a result of business rehearses and in certainty this records for 32% of the reasons why Millennials will switch brands. Cell phones, garments, and wellbeing and excellence brands are the three best classifications for Millennials’ image faithfulness, and every single other item will need to work considerably harder to hold clients returning. Is brand loyalty truly dead? Brand loyalty as our grandparents experienced it is unquestionably dead. Particular publicizing alone is not any sufficiently more to catch and hold a shopper base, and getting existing clients to stick around is harder than it has ever been. Be that as it may, on the off chance that you have a quality item, great client benefit, and the will to do whatever it takes, you can catch the up and coming age of faithful clients.
reasons might be very unexpected today in comparison to what they were for our grandparents’ age. Google, Amazon, and Apple are the three best organizations at this moment for brand loyalty. Everything else is entirely well debatable: •78% of Millennials say that brands need to work harder to secure their unwaveringness. •64% of Millennials say they still love a particular brand. •63% of Millennials utilize a large number of similar brands they grew up with.
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At this point, numerous advertisers will have perused Kathleen Kusek’s Forbes article “The Death of Brand Loyalty: Cultural Shifts Mean It’s Gone Forever.” Regardless of whether you’re slanted to concur with her sentiment or not, the article put the focus on shopper dedication in the advanced age. Kusek fights that the estimation of unwaveringness itself doesn’t exist for the purchaser since society showed us that “new” is superior to “known.” We oppose this idea. Society didn’t instruct purchasers that new is bet-
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ter. It instructed purchasers to be liberal. We see for the brands they work with. How? Influenccases of brand dependability consistently from ers begin by sharing incredible substance about their lives. Items by their most loved brands are our influencers and their gathering of people. a piece of their lives. Influencers keep a brand Brand faithfulness isn’t dead. However, brands best of mind when adherents are expending conrequire working harder to keep the depend- tent. Influencers are regularly in charge of makability they’ve earned. This article features five ing new brand advocates through the substances they distribute reasons why for marking in brands ought a crusade. not to quit attempting to ac4. Time is Valuquire the trust able: Brand and faithfulLoyalty Saves ness of their Time purchasers. Numerous customers don’t 1. Brands Ofhave sufficient fer a Rewardenergy to reing Experience: main in a preItem cost ascisely dissectsumes a critical ing rack at the part in acquirleast expensive ing conduct cost labels. however it isn’t the main factor. Shoppers remunerate quality. Brand acknowledgment has an essential impact If a brand conveys a positive involvement with in an effective buyer encounter. It likewise astheir item, buyers put their trust in the item con- sumes a vital part in sifting the boundless choices accessible for online purchases. On the off veying a similar affair for their next buy. chance that a shopper has a decent involvement with a brand they’ll be inclined toward what the 2. Purchasers Are Loyal to Brands Who Listen Get individual. 97% of purchasers said they are brand brings to the table before mulling over a to some degree liable to wind up noticeably more switch. faithful to an organization that actualizes their criticism (Appetitive). Client benefit assumes an 5. Nostalgia: References to items that customessential part in holding business for brands. By ers connect with youth or pre-adulthood have a reacting rapidly via web-based networking me- method for proceeding with their fame through dia and managing an issue effectively a brand adulthood. Brands with long histories can rely can win the devotion of a client. (The inverse is upon mark dependability insofar as the item itself hasn’t advanced to a long way from its genuine when the experience is poor.) unique image. Then again bringing back an old 3.Customers Still Advocate for their Favourite most loved brand can likewise observe a resurBrands: The fact of the matter is built up brands gence of brand loyalty from in the past steadfast are not going to lose their road cred unless some- shoppers. thing truly terrible happens to crush their notoriety. Many brands with awesome items have a As we have seen that brand loyalty isn’t dead, faithful base of supporters. There are incalcu- but the definition of brand loyalty has changed lable cases yet here’s a rundown Forbes made over the years. With consumers becoming smartof the most profitable brands: Apple, Google, er by the day and information online becoming Microsoft, Coca-Cola and Facebook. A consider- more and more accessible, people have begun able lot of our influencers are likewise advocates believing in a different form of brand loyalty.
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VARTALAAP An Interview with Mr. Sunil Kumar Sathyanarayanan In a career spanning well over 25 years, Mr. Sunil Kumar has had rich industrial B2B experience in both Sales and Marketing functions in organisations such as BP and Carborundum Universal Ltd. He was appointed as the head for industrial adhesives business in India in January 2016.
Henkel
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Business Head, South Asia, Adhesives Division
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One thing that marketers need to keep in perspective is how quickly they can sense the change and adopt to it.
Markathon: Henkel being a leader in sustainability and focusing a lot on sustainability with strategy “Achieving more with less.” What do you think how green marketing is evolving and how It has been playing a key role in your marketing strategy? Linking Sustainability agenda and Green Marketing strategy, one can see this already playing a critical role and with time would gain even more significance. It brings in a clear sense of social responsibility as an organization to commit to people and to the planet. To give a quick share, at Henkel we focus on Energy, Water & Waste reductions as one of the key focus areas across all our plants and offices. To build on, let us take water as a resource: At the current rate of population growth and water consumption, by the time we reach 2050, we would need hypothetically close to 4-5 times the current Earth water resources. So, unless as responsible corporations or organizations we gear up and start working towards sustainable development, we are going to lose out in the long run and to our future generations. Its hence important we feel to commit and have sustainable initiatives with time bound milestones, measure.
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vartalaap
rics washed with cold water and get the same results as that of hot wash as it’s a common practice to use warm water in cold regions like Europe, North America, to have better cleaning results. This brings awareness, change to consumers as what difference cold wash can make in bringing down the wash temperature leading to reduction energy consmption. Markathon: How it is playing a key role in the marketing strategy? How is Henkel playing a role in that? As a part of our CSR activity, we have taken upon us things like ”Lighting Lives”, and through it, we are promoting solar energy actively. We have chosen the villages in and around the nine plants that we have in India, and installed solar panels and today these villages come back and say that they are happy, excited with the “Lighting Lives” initiative.. So that’s commitment for sure and it also helps us to be better known as an Organisation and what we stand for as a Brand /its Values. Markathon: Industry 4.0 is out there, and digitization is transforming production as well as logistics. It is also having a major impact on customers’ buying decisions. What do you think what changes digital marketing is bringing? Are other forms of marketing going to become irrelevant shortly?
From a marketing dimension, we believe our objective is to create awareness in the industry and to be the Change Leader with our end consumers. One common use example to share, in our laundry care products’ packaging, we It is true that digital marketing is the provide instructions on how to have fab- trending thing and everybody is embrac-
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ing it. In this information age, the most important change is that the reducing steps in the typical B2B buying cycle. Earlier the customers used to wait for a sales person to take them through the offering and that’s how the whole sales process used to commence. Now, the customer has moved on the curve to know about what he wants and has also done his preliminary research. The difference now is that it is important for us to go to customer with that realization and add value to the customer beyond his prelim research.
and many a times cost effective / sustainable too. Markathon: Through years of experience, you have led growth through distinguished customer offers by applying the offer development process which requires a lot of brainstorming and outlining. How easy is it to implement offer development process and how do you think it helps in improving the presence and authority of any business in the market?
The offer development process is powerful and is very structured. It may apNow, with digital marketing, we can pear to be challenging / higher gestation connect through various social media period, but it is important to invest the platforms like time, effort so that LinkedIn, Blogs one can create an Whilst there are challenges in the ofamongst other unique, differentichannels and fer development process, but when ated offer into the work closely market. We decided we engage the stakeholders early to follow the stagewith different communities gate model and on , work collaborative and manage and share constarted-off right tents at regular through strong project management, from understanding interval. This the voice-of-customwe can manage the difficulty ,reduce will bring in the er and then validatdesired visibil- the complexity and create strong dif- ed it with available ity, sharing and market informaferentiated market offers successfully. traffic, on what tion. We then built is in offer, since strong proof points, it is making a reasons to believe big leap difference to connect with larg- to be very sure and finally came up with er audience unlike before, with a click the value proposition. of a button. One of the critical things, which will reSecondly, it will be naive to say that duce complexity in this process is activethe other traditional forms of market- ly engaging all the stakeholders right ing would become irrelevant, as they I from the beginning. It actually gets comfeel it will need to reposition themselves plex when we find that stakeholders are differently. Let’s take again a common in different points of the curve in the deexample of sales brochures, tradition- velopment process. So, whilst there are ally we design and print them in bulk as challenges in the offer development propart for marcomm tools. Through digi- cess, but when we engage the stakeholdtal marketing, it just takes a little bit of ers early on , work collaborative and manchange in form and shape and becomes age through strong project management, an interactive executable brochure in a we can manage the difficulty ,reduce the soft form that can be shared with cus- complexity and create strong differentitomers / websites, still very impactful ated market offers successfully.
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vartalaap
september 2017
transactional service was something Markathon: Today many tech titans and which a he/she was doing earlier, which start-ups like Dropbox, Airbnb, Twitter, was also considered as a one of the valGroupon, etc. have been increasingly us- ue-additions Now the transactional part of activities may ing Minimum Viable be taken care Product approach. When we have more money to completely or As per a recent anspend, we link it up with our aspirapartially by alyst conference, digital influHenkel is also fotions and affordability, if we can go ence, strong cusing on expanding the MVP apfor a premium product or service. processes, but that said the proach to increase Premium has its own returns. Sales person is its agility in the even more relmarket. How does it help time-to-market and how do you evant as will be able to spend more time, think it helps in eliminating the busi- add strong value add through technical differentiation / solution selling areas ness uncertainties? to the customers and maintain the relaThe world and economies are getting tionships. more and more volatile and into multiple uncertainties, but at the same time Markathon: Recent years have seen the we must see this as an opportunity to coexistence of two contradictory conbe agile and pick these pieces early on sumption trends in the Indian consumer and adopt in to our offerings to the mar- market, i.e. value seeking and premiumket. As a Global corporation, this is im- ization. Consumers are seeking value portant area we see as an opportunity and buying more affordable products to bridge the time between ideation and leading to an increase in promotional large scale commercialization and si- intensity and at the same time consummultaneously test, improve our speed-to- ers are willing to buy premium goods at a higher price in few spaces. What market. do you think about it? Markathon: How vital is customer relageneral, tion management in At the end of the day what matters is In B2B, especially in In- “the human element”. As you know, the surge in “Spendable dia, a country driven by personal attach- the expectations from every customer Income” in Inhas been ment and emotions? will be different and it’s here to stay. dia attributed to In B2B segments, it is going to be the rate of I have always been in growth and the B2B industry and even more relevant. this is infound that at the end creasing the of the day what matp urchasing ters is “the human element”. As you know, the expectations power to all of us. When we have more from every customer will be different money to spend, we link it up with our and it’s here to stay. In B2B segments, aspirations and affordability, if we can it is going to be even more relevant. So, go for a premium product or service. what happens to the traditional sales Premium has its own returns. Doesn’t person. One example, let’s take like the mean value based offering will vanish.
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vartalaap
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I see people moving with this shift as (a) -arketer one should be able to relate to naturally and (b) linked to affordability what customers are talking about their which was a challenge earlier. Hence, sustainability agenda. And needs to crethey might be seeking value and at the ate their marketing programs around same time trying premium options and that and bring forward the same proas I see, this is going to actively to As a marketer one should be able to re- the customincrease in future. late to what customers are talking about ers. So that, ultimately Markathon: In such their sustainability agenda. And needs to you are sellchanging times where create their marketing programs around ing value and nothing is constant sustainabilthat and bring forward the same proneither a business ity which are actively to the customers. model nor a marketrelevant to ing strategy, what them too. would you advise to all future marketers what key things Markathon: What do you think which they should keep in mind while work- are the current global marketing strateing? gies, prevalent globally, Indian marketers can adopt? One thing that marketers need to keep in perspective is how quickly they can Taking the time to know, understand sense the change and adopt to it.. If this the Global frameworks is important. is missed out, we will not be able to de- Again to quote one example understandmosntrate value to the customer that he ing Global Legislations and building seeks. We work very much towards val- your Marketing strategy with that perue seeking approach and premium ap- spective is important. This could be in proach and at the same time understand Products, Services and others,but demthe change that customer looks forward onstrates Global responsibility and statto. Let’s again go back to sustainability ure. The legislation is the “law of the which is a good example where we start- land�, that people can sometimes miss ed since it is a major change and focus out and struggle later while building across corporations worldwide. As a m- their strategies.
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eye2eye
september 2017
Has there been a shift from brand centricity to product centricity from the perspective of customers? shubham kapoor IIM udaipuR
piyush shah lbsim delhi There is a shift from brand centricity to product centricity which is primarily because of the increased competition across varied sectors. While one could say that brand conveys a certain quality assurance, it does not necessarily assume loyalty from the customers. With increased competition, consumers now have more to choose from, and with the increase in information that is available to these consumers, coupled with the fact that consumers now are more educated than in the past, they are in a position to make better decisions. Specially taking an example of the smartphone category – before the kickstart of The Big Billion Days of 2017 on Flipkart, they did a survey for the first time to see what the customers wanted. More than 200,000 people responded and the majority of the people focused on specifications rather than on brands. They demand for specifications because it’s the performance of the phone which gives them satisfaction, not the fact that it is a product of a highly successful brand. If Apple has a cult following, it’s not because of its supreme marketing tactics or brand image, it’s because they have the product to validate their marketing. A firm which relies on the assumption that customers are just brand centric, would soon be out of the competition if it lets its product offerings go unchecked. Nokia Phones would be a fine example. There has been a shift in the type of customers, and with it, consumer behavior. While people from the earlier generations were loyalists, people now are shifting towards being apostles or mercenaries, and as such, product centricity is taking the pole position.
Carbonated beverage consumers have found difficult to identify the difference between Pepsi and Coke in the blind tests conducted throughout the world. Still, CocaCola is a much bigger brand (5th in the Forbes’ list of most valuable brands, 2017) than Pepsi (ranked at 30th position) and hence is the significant difference in their revenues with Coca-Cola at $23bn and Pepsi at $9.5bn. Saint-Gobain India, even by selling a commodity (glass), is a market leader in different categories of glass products, with sales of INR 5785 crores, because of the extensive advertising campaigns over the years. If an analysis is done on the Bollywood movies released in India since 2012, the average domestic revenue of the top 10 grossing movies is 346.86 crores with an average IMDb (Internet Movie Database) rating: 6.6. Nine of these movies have one of the branded Khans of Bollywood. At the same time, the top 10 best-rated Bollywood movies on IMDb, average IMDb rating: 8.22, have average domestic revenue of 113.56 crores. This, again, signifies the importance of brand over product for the audience. Interestingly, Dangal is leading both the lists with revenue of 495.25 crores and 8.5 IMDb rating. Hence, it can be inferred that a good product from a good brand is a sure success. But business is all about trade-offs. It is not possible for a company to be always superior in both. A brand will always win over a product considering hygiene is maintained in the other as this is what customers demand today. Consumers are even willing to pay a premium for their preferred brand. It is not just the quality of the phone that has led iPhone to earn 91% of the total smartphones’ profits worldwide in 2016. ilever was founded in 1930 by the merger of Dutch Margarine producer Margarine Unie and British soap maker Lever Brothers. From that moment on Unilever has gone on to become one of the largest producers and marketers of fast moving consumer goods. It is present in 190 coun-
Topic for the next issue: “In the Digital Age should the luxury brands sell their products online?” Your opinion (view/counterview) is invited. Word limit is 250-300. Last date of sending entries is 22th October 2017. Include your picture (JPEG format) with the entry. Winners will receive a prize money of Rs. 500 each!
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AD-dicted AD-dicted
PRODUCT: Gatorade
december september 2013 2017 By Anurag pandey IIM Shillong PRODUCT: Vogue Eyewear
By Aishwarya Tiwari IIM Shillong
POSITIONING: #SweatForGold
POSITIONING: Don’t show your beauty, Show your vogue
CREATIVE AGECY: J Walter Thompson
CREATIVE AGENCY: Brandmovers India
CATCH
YouTube Link: https://goo.gl/kQu5Mp
R
YouTube Link: https://goo.gl/5UFJ4W CONCEPT: This advertisement has been attracting its fair share of attention on all social media platforms. With a catchy song in the background and Shraddha Kapoor in a rock star avatar in the front, it’s not hard to understand why. The video starts with a typical corporate office scene, where an employee breaks the ice and unites everyone in a fun time with her crazy acts. Next, the advertisement shows women in different avatars – a rock star, a mother and one with good knowledge of cars.
CONCEPT: Every September we see great advertisements celebrating our Teachers. From the Titan ad to the Visa ad, we have seen some great ads. This year too we have Gatorade ad which celebrates our teachers and finds a place in some of the best Teacher’s Day ads. The ad starts with a very unusual yet a very common line “I hate my teacher”. The ad starts with PV Sindhu groaning in pain and stating she hates her teacher, Mr Pullela Gopichand. Then she tells us that she hates him because he shouts at him and is the reason for her pain and scars. Then she adds on that he never gives up on her and believes in her more than she believes in herself. The ad ends with VERDICT: Miss Sindhu thanking her coach. Markathon believes that this advertisement is just anVERDICT: Catch other one stereotyping the “millennials”, especially the 21st century women. According to this advertisement, Markathon believes that this ad is great because it takes a apparently today freedom for women means climbing on risk and comes out successful. It is risky to talk about why rails in a public transport (imagine a man doing the same a person hates a teacher in an ad which celebrates Teach- and ask yourself - will anyone see that as freedom?), sucers. Towards the end the ad brings out a important mes- cess essentially means being able to amaze a man by your sage that when our teachers push us they help us achieve skills and motorcycle (because a vehicle choice is what great things. Gatorade positions itself as a sports drink for defines you now) and creating a ruckus at a professional people who want to achieve great things. In the end, the scenario. This advertisement highlights the often-repeatad says Gatorade celebrates those who teach us to sweat ed themes in advertisements targeting millennials – be more. The ad connects with the people who remember yourself, be crazy and dance in the middle of anywhere. their teachers who made them work hard and were the There are some highs in this advertisement – the portrayreason for their pain but they were also the reason for al of a woman being herself but these are overshowed by their success. PV Sindhu is a great choice for the ad and the exaggerations used in the entire advertisement in all that is why we believe that this ad is a Catch. other frames.
MISS
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jab they failed
september 2017
Jab They Failed PEPSI: Peace?
Apoorv gupta IIM Shillong
We expect big brands to almost always succeed in their PR campaigns but time and again they prove us wrong. This time it was Pepsi with their advertisement featuring Kendall Jenner. In the ad, Jenner was seen posing as a blonde at a photo shoot beside a peace protest. Inspired by the
Pepsi bottle in the way of tanks at the historic Tiananmen Square.
protest, she ditches her blonde wig to join the protestors. In time, she gets to the front and hands a can of Pepsi to a police officer-in-charge of controlling the crowd. As the police officer sips from the can, the crows is seen cheering. On YouTube, Pepsi described the ad as “A short film about the moments when we decide to let go, choose to act, follow our passion and nothing holds us back.”
also put Kendall Jenner in a tight spot. It is clear that the ad lacked adequate thought and market research. In fact, Pepsi is not the first firm to make an attempt to capitalize on the energy of social movements and political protest.
Not only did Pepsi hurt its own brand image by portraying itself as a brand insensitive towards social issues but
The scene was intended as a reference to the photograph of Ieshia Evans, a black woman who stood tall in the face of armored riot police during the ‘Black Lives Matter’ protests in 2016 but received widespread criticism for co-opting the imagery of a serious movement to sell soda. While Pepsi was quick to apologize for ‘missing the mark’, the damage was done. Twitter users quickly pointed out that the ad appropriated imagery from the movement without outlining the real life issues to tackle, making the entire effort look cynical. Bernice King, the daughter of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr posted a photo of her father with the tagline “If only Daddy would have known about the power of #Pepsi.” Other users trolled the campaign by placing a
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A similar campaign was organized and widely mocked by the ride-hailing company Lyft in March 2016. It was a bold move by Pepsi to take a stand and make the most of existing conditions but maybe portraying the protests as something that can be solved by a simple soda was not the right way to do so.
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digital marketing
Importance of Artificial Intelligence in E-commerce business By Nitin nathani IIM Shillong Every day, we see advances in human-like artificial intelligence, and search marketers are seeing big changes in the search landscape because of it. According to Bloomberg, Google’s decision to deploy AI into search shows that companies are starting to entrust their most valuable businesses to systems controlled in part by machine intelligence. Facebook Inc. uses AI techniques to filter the newsfeed that comprises the personalized homepage of the social network and Microsoft Corp. is using artificial intelligence to increase the capabilities of its Bing search engine. In fact, Google’s AI initiative, the RankBrain, helps Google deal with about 15 percent of daily queries. Artificial intelligence and machine learning have now become essential tools for many large e-commerce brands to operate. It can be considered as the major part of the next marketing revolution. According to Myntra’s CTO, Ajit Narayanan, “the best thing about a sale is that it generates a large amount of data. You hear a lot about the sales amount, and the revenue, but the consumer data has so much real value, to build a better experience for our users.” Using AI, Myntra is able to predict how people will shop on the website, which allows it to build models of traffic and plan its servers accordingly.
This same technology can be used to generate recommendations for similar products, to ensure that they are actually similar. 80% of marketing executives predict artificial intelligence will revolutionize marketing by 2020. However, only 10% are currently using it. Are you within the 10 percent who want to continue to keep the customers satisfied while driving increased revenue and higher profit margins? If not, we hope that reading this article would give you some insights to initiate the process. Some of the major advantages of using AI in the E-commerce are Not only that: I have completely jam-packed this piece with many juicy links to multiple, groundbreaking AI tools you simply don’t want to miss.
Effective Prediction Due to the predictive nature of AI, one can judge the needs and demands of the customer and can finely tailor the products accordingly. In marketing campaigns as well, this could be much useful as through machine learning, it can help in answering some of the questions such as what customers will buy next, what customers don’t want to see, how they want your website to be displayed, when they will be more likely to buy, etc. Moreover, getting faster results in analyzing the data and more accurate data are some of the major benefits, if we compare AI with human resources.
Flipkart’s AI can look at an image, and identify its properties. It can tell things like the color, cut, and so on. If you search for a red t-shirt, it might have given a wrong result because the description had some word like ‘red-hot’ in it, but with AI the search isn’t just dependent on keywords. According to Claudiu Murariu, founder of Inner
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digital marketing Trends, “The first among your competitors that will use machine learning in their data strategies will have a significant advantage: higher ROI because machine learning tells them the shortest route with the least resources to reach their goals.” He also described that instead of being reactive by identifying the areas where things went wrong and trying to fix them, one can become proactive by predicting through data, which campaign would maximize the chances of reaching that goal. Rocket Fuel, Nara Logics, Layer 6 and Tableau are some of the tools which one can use for such algorithms.
telligent search function makes a way for customer experience and delight. For example, amazon uses it well in the form of corrected spelling and give recommendations. It is quite accurate because over time, machine-learning algorithms develop the ability to interpret searches based on intent rather than spellings alone. This process continually evolves and adapts to the responses of users. It can also understand speech, analyze images, provide auto-complete suggestions, etc. Inbenta, Visii, Nextopia and Loop54 are some of the tools which one can try to give a customized experience in searching.
Personalization
Dynamic Pricing
For years, e-commerce brands have been sending email marketing campaigns with the customers’ names inserted at the beginning and it has been considered as one of the major digital marketing resources. But, this type of email marketing has some negative aspects. According to a report by DealerRefresh, 74% of online shoppers get frustrated when the content is not relevant to their interests, 77% of customers choose, recommend or spend more for brands that offer a personalized experience, 89% of the businesses report improved results from personalization. It can help to send targeted emails that apply to the individual’s current activities, serve tailored video content, give product recommendations and alter prices at optimal times based on current website users. Some of the tools which one can use are Dynamic Yield, Automat and Pure Clarity. Since users behave differently on mobile and desktop, it’s important to differentiate your website experience accordingly. Research shows that the most successful e-commerce stores use micro-moments; prompting users to navigate to certain pages, educating themselves on specific topics, convincing them to submit some information, and subsequently convert them into customers by offering an incentive.
Pricing is one of the key elements and major drivers of the e-commerce industry. For many customers, nothing matters more than it. Here, the major problem is that manual price tweaking can become a near-impossible task. The environment is constantly changing — delivery rates, currency conversions, logistics, rival prices, and
Super Searching According to data, around 30% of the e-commerce shoppers use the search tab on the website. Around 88% of the consumers search about the product online before purchasing it. An in-
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the overall economy are just a small sample of numbers or circumstances. Artificial Intelligence tweaks pricing in real time, based on multiple sets of data including market conditions, customer behavior and demand, your internal operations, resource capacity, and stock levels. Liquidprice, Perfect Price, Optimus Price and Indix are some of the tools through which one is given the option to use this function. The gap between “traditional” online stores and mega e-commerce brands is widening every second. AI covers such a broad scope of improvements in so many more areas of online business; including SEO, Internet of Things, personalization and optimization, fraud detection and prevention, etc.
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1)
Ad frauds a headache for marketers
Ad fraud is a major problem marketer face in digital marketing which affects brand safety and viewability. How can marketers stave off the White Walker-like invasion of ad fraud, brand safety and viewability in digital marketing? Link: - https://goo.gl/veCGWd
2)
Conversation Management: An Underutilized Tool
Conversation Management is the necessary evolution of traditional community management work; and it is being underutilized by a majority of brands. They underestimate the importance of further engaging in purposeful conversations with their customers because they fail to envision the impact and scalability of these actions. Link:- https://goo.gl/kgGoHj
3)
The Millenial Mindset
We need to better understand the intricacies and nuances of the millennial mindset... This includes debunking some major millennial myths – not everyone is a hyper-connected, optimistic, extroverted entrepreneur with a vlog. And thank God for that.” Link :- https://goo.gl/xQr5Uj
4)
Story of My CV
Visa’s head of global marketing platforms Kim Kadlec worked her way up at agencies before switching to media companies to merge brands with content, but now has her sights firmly set on mastering technology and data Link :- https://goo.gl/atdC3k
5)
Rain Rain Go Away!
As rains lashed the city of Mumbai on Tuesday, brands across product groups reached out to consumers, online and offline. Is the new way of marketing, or just genuine concern? Link :-https://goo.gl/exne1C
By Aishwarya Tiwari | IIM Shillong
Flipkart vs Amazon While Flipkart held its fiveday mega event Big Billion Day Sale between September 20-24, 2017; Amazon held the ‘Amazon Great Indian Sale’ for four days, from September 21-24, 2017. But it was Flipkart that nailed the top spot again. As per a recent RedSeer Consulting report, the ecommerce sector saw highest ever sale performance over the five festive days from September 20-24, 2017. Flipkart seems to have utilised its acquisitions well leading to improved digital payments, logistics, and tech.
Future Group in talks with Hypercity Future Group is in talks to acquire grocery retailer HyperCity, a deal would give Future boss Kishore Biyani sway over a network of about 20 hypermarkets, mainly in western India. If the transaction does take place, this will be Biyani’s fifth acquisition in as many years, as Future Group consolidates its position by region, especially in grocery retail. According to Euromonitor data, Big Bazaar, Future Group’s hypermarket format, is already India’s market leader, with a 22.4 per cent share of the organised store-based retail market in 2016.’
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iPhone 8 launch in India
Akash Ambani, the Ambani scion who is on the board of of Reliance Jio Infocomm (Jio) will roll out the Iphone 8 and 8 Plus on 30th September in the telco’s headquarters in Navi Mumbai . Chairman of Reliance Industries Mukesh Ambani and CEO of AppleTim Cook will addres the congergation via video messages. In a first, the partnership is being done for both online and offline by roping in ecommerce major Amazon.Reliance Digital and Amazon will officially sell the iPhones.
Amazon’s New Investments Amazon.com Inc.’s investment in retailer Shoppers Stop Ltd. will help the Indian company boost revenue and add 25 per cent more stores, while the US firm expands its reach into smaller towns in the world’s second-most populated nation. The deal will be Amazon’s first investment in a publicly traded retailer in India. Shoppers Stop will issue 5 per cent of post-issue share capital to the Amazon unit. This would help Shopper’s Stop accelerate their revenues from online avenues, with the apparel major aiming to double it in a year.
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digi-tally
september 2017
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Articles are invited
“Best Article”: Shadan Mahtab | IIFT Delhi He receives 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 22th October, 2017. Please send your entries marked as <ARTICLE NAME>_<SENDERS’ NAME(S)>_<INSTITUTE> to markathon.iims@gmail.com.
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