BOOKMARQ!! THE MARQUITY MAGAZINE
2013 EDITION VOLUME 1
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MARQUITY SPEAKETH
It has been long since we have planned to launch this edition of Bookmarq. Well, better late than never. So welcome to the first edition of Bookmarq of 2013. We wish to continue providing quality content to our readers. In this edition we have a lot of articles covering various aspects of contemporary marketing. We have entries from other colleges and these articles are worthy of noting. Apart from this we have some fun puzzles which includes a logo quiz and a crossword puzzle. We believe that with new technologies marketing is going to take huge leaps. Real time marketing is the topic under the radar of most companies. All this is streamlined through the social media platform and this is why we have included an article on “ROI on social media�. We wish all our readers good Health, Wealth and a whole lot of Wisdom! Regards - MARQUITY TEAM
SENSORY BRANDING The girl moves gently towards the boy on the sidewalk adjoining the busy street. It’s a sultry afternoon and the sweating boy cannot take his eyes off the girl as she approaches. As they pass each other, a fragrance engulfs the boy. He comes to a standstill, closes his eyes, and imbibes the aroma while the girl walks away smiling at the trance she put the boy into and the following words appear on the screen “Ponds Dreamflower Talc, Kushboo jo Dewana bana de!” Welcome to the world of Sensory Branding. Yes it’s time to move beyond features and benefit marketing. Sensory branding appeals to the customers by way of multiple senses and connects with them at an emotional level as against the case of mass marketing. When the product grabs the attention of the consumer through multiple senses, it creates memory banks in their minds and an involuntary association is built with the brand. Sensory branding can be implemented for a plethora of reasons which could include product distinction and maintaining uniformity in their product line or to attain a certain level of emotional bonding with potential buyers or to reposition or rebrand a product. A common adage ”out of sight, out of mind” stands true for marketing, but research has shown that memory associated with smell lingers in our brain for much longer, sometime for years. It is not surprising to note that a lot of established companies want their products to be associated with a certain fragrance which connects with the consumer to blend and engage two or more senses to create a lasting memory of their product and attain brand dominance. For instance, Singapore Airlines uses the same fragrance, Stefan Floridian Waters, as the perfume for the flight attendants as well as on all their service products like hot towels. The color and design of the uniforms of the flight attendants is so styled so as to match the interiors of the airplane. Because of their attention to such detail and adherence to their central theme, Singapore Airlines is considered to be the epitome of integrated sensory branding. British Airways too in accordance with its marketing campaign “Making Flying Special” has considered The phenomenon of Sensory Branding is said to have started in Northern Europe where supermarkets placed their bakeries at the far end of their stores. Yards of conduits carried the aroma of freshly baked bread to the entrance of the supermarket into the busy street. The masses were attracted to the smell and entered the store and walked towards the bakery through the aisle. On each side of the aisle they spotted goods they remembered they needed and made purchases. This increased the sales of not only the bakery but also the overall sales of the store. The use of the concept has been extended to some unexpected sectors like Banks. It was found that the scent of fresh coffee has a relaxing effect on people. Banks in UK started using the aroma of fresh coffee in their branches to make their customers feel at home. Victoria Secret has been using incense in their stores since long. All new cars from Rolls Royce emit a distinctive fragrance called “Old Rolls” from under the seats of their cars.
Companies want their brand recall value to be very high even when the symbol of the organization is not on hand. People relate the orange color to Vodafone even when the symbol is missing. Research estimates show that Nokia’s ringtone can be recognized by 74% of Europeans and 46% of US nationals and they relate the sound with the brand. Intel’s tune commands a 56% brand recall worldwide for which it has spent multimillion dollars. Microsoft’s tune enjoys 60% brand recall worldwide. The shape of a bottle of coke has come to identify with the brand itself. So a blindfolded Sensory branding is not the prerogative of the multinationals only nor is it a new phenomenon. It is not uncommon for gooseberry-product vendors in local trains in Calcutta to offer the passengers, a sample of the product. This simple action is a form of sensory marketing where all of the senses of the potential customers are leveraged and expectedly the conversion rates are very high. Sensory branding is not all rosy, as a major European floor cleaner company literally found out. This brand of floor cleaner had always been associated with a nasty smell. The CMO of the company decided that such a famous brand must not be recognized with such a pungent odor. Therefore the fragrance of fresh roses was introduces in the product. To the surprise of the management, the sales of the product plummeted by 41%. The crux of the issue was that the consumers had an olfactory connect of the nasty smell of the cleaner with its efficacy to eradicate germs. Although the active ingredients of the product were untouched, the inappropriateness of the placement of the smell struck the consumers and perceptions were created about its effectiveness or the lack of it. In the 1970s IBM introduced a silent typewriter which eliminated the noise that an ordinary typewriter makes. The machine failed in the market. Thereafter IBM launched an electronic typewriter and replaced the natural sound of the typewriter with electronic sounds which made the product acceptable in the market. Therefore today companies research heavily before introducing a sensory instrument that would be their identity in the market and which they could leverage as time passed. Kellogg invested in a sound lab in Netherlands where the sound quality of the crunching of the cereals, which is directly linked to its brand identity, was upgraded. Kellogg has patented the crunchiness of its cereals. Intel spent around $100 million in branding, of which the Intel Inside tune was an integral part and which today is one of the most recognizable sounds in the industry. The packaging aspect especially primary packaging, too heavily leverages the concepts of sensory branding. Woman’s products be it hair oil or body lotion are in the shape of a female’s body so that the product makes an instant connect with its target segment. Chocolates are wrapped in golden foils so as to give an impression of richness. Sugarfree, the sweetener brand came out with a packaging shaped like an hourglass so as to convey the effect the product would have on the figure/physique of the consumer. Sensory Branding is a major step in the evolution of marketing, starting from the need based upwards to features and benefit marketing towards sensory branding. Many brands are investing into research as to how they could cultivate this concept into their marketing strategy, and many more are flirting with the idea. So the next time you are at your friendly neighborhood store with your family, notice how their buying behavior is influenced by their feelings and how those feelings are influenced by the product’s appeal to the senses. Does that make sense?
Location Based Marketing is customizing marketing messages based on a customer's location. The increase in the number of smart phones and location-based apps is one reason for the increase in location based marketing. Some companies to have successfully used Location Based Marketing in the past few years are Subway in London and Zuma Fashions in New York. Location based marketing can be achieved in a few ways
1.) Location Based Services-By using mobile Apps like Foursquare, Gowalla, Scvngr 2.) Location Based Advertising uses GPS or Geofencing to find potential customers 3.) Near field communications and Bluetooth Marketing
An example where a company was able to successfully use Location based marketing is with O2media and Bulmers. O2media sent about 77,000 people messages when they were within 1.5 miles from a pub that sold Bulmers beer. About 25% bought a beer from the same pub, another 53% bought a Bulmers beer
WR AP
AD V
ERT IS
ING !!!
Wrap Advertising is completely or partially covering a vehicle with an advertisement. In the age of Twitter and Facebook, with traditional forms of advertising proving less effective than before,
advertising is taking on new forms and Wrap Advertising is just one of them. How effective is this form of advertising? As per a surveys conducted by Outdoor Advertising magazine, Wrap Advertising has over 90% recall rate. What makes wrap advertising so popular? There are many reasons. Colourfully wrapped vehicles are attention grabbing. They make a great first impression and since most vehicles are creatively wrapped, even the specific ads can be recalled easily. They are cheap, can be used on a large or small scale, can be used for local advertising and most importantly, they are nonintrusive. For people who are used to being pestered by telemarketers and tied of excessive advertisements on television, Wrap Advertising is a breath of fresh air. Wrap advertising is a mobile billboard that can be used to advertise anywhere. Whether in motion or
when parked, people are attracted to colourful vehicles. It reaches out to all strata of society. It offers a
great way to reach out to a generation where newspaper readership, television viewership and other mass advertising measures. Let us look at an example. Autowraps initially wrapped ten VW Bugs for Dreyer's Ice Cream. The cars were to drive around select routes in New York for two months. In the first month, each vehicle generated over 500,000 impressions. Autowraps also wrapped nine VW Bugs for a JetBlue Airways. The cars were driven in the busiest areas of New York for up to eight hours a day for a month. In some cases, they were in groups of three or four to increase visibility. The result was 6.75 million impressions. And all this for less than $4000 a car.
INTERVIEW
How did you think about being a entrepreneur?How did the idea occur to you and how did the whole enterprise come about? While I was studying back in US we were thinking about starting soft drink beverages because that's the field of interest, there were 4 founders in this field and all the 4 worked with Coke in the past and so we were thinking that is the common field of interest and functional beverages as a market is growing tremendously. It’s the fastest growing beverage, its already a multi-billion dollar industry and in India that's not happening.So we started do some research. It was not growing in India while it was growing around the world. Functional beverages where growing at a very fast pace around the world for the past 30 odd years but in India nothing was happening. We went around searching why the case in India and we realized that there are not a lot of good products which were available in this country. We saw a huge opportunity here and wanted to enter this category. Either we wanted it to be a part of the functional beverages or the natural because that's one of the fastest growing segments in this category of beverages.
In the energy drink space what does Tzinga stand for?As in how is it positioned?
Tzinga is an everyday functional beverage, it’s an everyday drink. If you look at this category you will find a lot of people talking about the social connector space. Eg: You are in a classroom and you are feeling sleepy- these are the times when Tzinga as a beverage works that is how we have positioned it.
Is it particularly aimed at students? Engineering or B school students? Has that been a point of focus right from the onset? Ya that is correct. It has been focused on community were doctors are there and the counter culture is strong. We stopped believing in TV advertising, we start thinking beyond what the celebrity is drinking.
Does that mean you are averse to using celebrities and you would like Tzinga to be a rebel brand or the counter culture icon? Ya correct. We are very very averse to using celebrities. Using Tzinga is a decision you are making for yourself - not to impress your girlfriend/boyfriend.
We were just going through your facebook page and it said, make the night count.Is it primarily to indicate that its a night time drink and you need to be active at night and that’s why you consume Tzinga is that a message? No what we are talking about is things like we are working in an office and its quite boring at 4o'clock or we are going on a long drive or you are in between some boring lecture. For the age group we are talking about, the night plays an important role.
Can you tell me something more about your communication strategies? What are the channels you would like to use because I have tried very well to find a website but I have not been able to find one and being a young company I am sure TVC's are not really in your frame of mind right now so how do you manage to communicate to all your target groups? Ya thats why we should be able to find Tzinga.in. We have Facebook and online activities.
What is your distribution reach like? Currently how many states and cities just in numbers?
We are there in top 50 cities, approx 30,000 retail outlets right now. We are expecting this number to be somewhere around 50,000 by March of next year.
Has there been any challenge that you have faced while setting up your distribution network, be it acceptance committee trailers or getting the supply chain up and running or specific cooling requirements if the product has any? Had they been any challenges that you had to overcome? Yes all the time. India as a country is so vast - that's the most challenging task for anybody. The primary challenge is every state has different tax rule we have to go and apply for which takes a lot of time. Distribution is a big task for any FMCG company, every state has different set of rules and we have to go there and start operations I’ts like starting operations in a different country almost and building up a good sales team that has been 1 of the biggest tasks.
Sir there have been recent allegations on the fire energy drink in the US as you would have read. Any comments on the whole issue ?Is it being blown out of proportion?
Yes I think you know if you look at the industry it’s prone to controversies. In terms of sales it’s a 20 billion dollar industry, one of the fastest growing beverage categories. And so, in such a fast growing beverage category there are bound to be som controversies around it,which is the case in everything. I am not exactly sure of the facts.
Sir any comment on this specific packaging you have chosen for Tzinga because it’s very unique it’s not an aerated or aluminium can that we are used to seeing energy drinks in.So what’s the thought process behind that? I think why we chose this packaging particularly is because its one of the best energy drink formulas around and that's something we are extremely proud of. The 1st 1 and half years of the company lot of R&D was involved. There are drinks which are carbonated and drinks which are not. We are talking about a functional drink,not a drink to be had at a gathering or something that is not Coke. From that the things which are important are - it should be affordable and it should work! What do you define as your competition? Is it just the energy drinks available or at that price range any beverage that can be consumed by the Indian youth would be competition for you? There is no direct competition.
Have you faced any Government or regulatory hurdles in setting up the company particularly as it says that you operate in?
No. There is a lot of hue and cry in different parts of the country though.
Anything big that we can expect from Tzinga in the coming months in terms of distribution because in one of your interviews you have mentioned that you would like to expand to Sri Lanka and Africa sometime. I think we as a company have International ambitions. In which ever markets we had gone we have become either no.1 or no.2 .
Is there any piece of advice you would like to give to B school students who want to become entrepreneurs? I am a great fan of entrepreneurship. I think people should start taking more risk unlike the herd tendency/mentality that exists I know as I spent time in college.The whole thing was about “I want a Day 0 job I want a Day -1 job” and everybody is there to get those jobs!! You know, with that kind of tendency, it binds the growth you have in life, you move in a certain kind of batch for the 1st 10-15 years and then there are some people doing slightly better than the other people ,but ,if you are confident of yourself and you think you have the capability,entrepreneurship is good after b school.
How has your journey been so far? Has there been any significant learning for you in terms of pre-conceived notions that you had and your experience showed you that it's completely different? Yes I think I work with a great company (Coke). I got into a great company and had total admiration there which prepared me for what I am doing right now. On the personal front it’s been mind-blowing at the end of the day.
BRAND LOGO QUIZ
EVALUATING THE ROI FOR A SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING CAMPAIGN OF A BRAND Social media marketing has emerged as a unique method of promoting one’s business. It’s an excellent strategy to draw attention of the internet user to a company’s goods and services via various social media platforms such as-
It offers a wonderful opportunity for enhanced profits by reaching out to a huge number of potential clients for one’s business. Today, social media is not simply meant for connecting with people, chatting, sharing photos and making new friends. It has also turned out to be an important tool for businesses that want to create an online platform for them in order to further corroborate their influence on consumers by grabbing their attention 24x7. Social media is beginning to take a bigger space because it has the capacity to apply to anyone. One out of every six minutes spent online is spent on social networking. Advertisers see this opportunity to go straight to their target audience through social media. Traditional media involves a mass marketing approach, but with social media, brands have the ability to find a niche following and can keep those followers loyal in addition to gleaning new fans through appealing content-creation. However, the biggest conundrum remains how to evaluate ROI for social media?
Answer to this is that ROI can be used to compare the efficiency of marketing campaigns; for a marketing team within an organisation, it can be used to negotiate budgets with company’s management. A primary reason for using ROI is social media financial accountability. As social media initiatives become mainstream, executives hold them to the same accountability as other business initiatives, demanding financial returns and ROI on social media investments. We shall find the answer for the first question as we proceed through the article.
Main categories of metrics that may help in evaluating ROI arei. Social media revenue conversion- measures how many people convert into customers through different social media channels e.g. number of comments, links and Facebook shares. Challenge- Facebook Insights (which provides Facebook page metrics) cannot help the brand to discover what motivated someone to click on a particular link. Example- Moxie Interactive used Wildfire to build a Facebook tab for a Verizon Wireless sweepstakes promotion (number of sweepstakes entries was the main metric) and Google Analytics to calculate the number of tab visits. ii. Engagement- measures a brand’s ability to communicate successfully with their customers on the social network. Challenge- Global brands have multiple fan pages for different products and regions. This entails an integrated view of engagement across all fan pages and Facebook app campaigns, so as to understand growth in number of fans and how this growth compares with industry standards. Social Bakers- (social media analytics tools provider) offers an integrated Facebook leaderboard for all brand pages. The key engagement metric, called “page score,” consists of a combined index score of Facebook page fan growth, content quality and post quality for each fan page. iii. Social customer support metrics- measure the impact of customer support on brand health and the cost of staffing a social support program. Challenges: Today, people expect the brands to have customer service representatives available on social media too. It’s a challenge to figure out how much staff is needed to provide customer support and how to measure the success of such a program. Example: Best Buy started such a service on Twitter and measured customers’ feedback on the quality of support through a survey. Thus, using employee engagement as a key metric led to the highly-engaged employees becoming a great social support staff and strengthened the loyalty of the customers of Best Buy
Tools like Foursquare are geolocationcentred, allow users to “Checkin” at particular locations. The number of checkins, their frequency, and the characteristics of those who check in are all points to consider for evaluation.
Photos, Tweets and videos can be geotagged, which in case of Flickr, could mean revealing the location of where the photo was taken. Geotagging content enables evaluators to determine the time, date and location of where an event took place.
Websites such as Klout, PeerIndex, and Crowdbooster all collect data provided from Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, etc. (with permission of the account holder) to aggregate the overall strength of the holder’s network.
Evaluating Social Media ROI “Touchpoint Optimization Strategy” is a 5-step process that tracks the conversion from a touchpoint to an “action point”. It suggests that the marketing strategy of every company is to touch their customers, engage them, and move them to a targeted action
Step 1: Listening Involves sales and consumer insights i.e. surveys, awareness tracking, contact centers, media tests, customer satisfaction studies, and brand tracking. Step 2: Conversing Conduct online new products surveys, invite customers to live conversations on Facebook, twitter, etc. These conversations can help in to evaluating brand loyalty. Step 3: Converting The company needs to focus marketing efforts to convert the user to specific calls to action: downloading information, answering a survey, requesting a quote, or buying a product. Step 4: Analyzing Analyzing which touchpoints are contributing value to the company i.e. what all parameters are achieving the desired target. Step 5: Evaluating Finally, evaluate relative value of each action in terms of developing brand loyalty, thought leadership, reducing operating costs, optimizing marketing budgets, and increasing profits.
Estimation of social media return, a 3 step processDefine the social media goal. Based on the goal, define social media return- first forecast the value of sales without a social media campaign. During the campaign, compare actual sales with forecasted sales and assuming that the actual sales are higher than the forecasted sales, use the difference as the value of the social media return.Define the social media goal. Based on the goal, define social media return- first forecast the value of sales without a social media campaign. During the campaign, compare actual sales with forecasted sales and assuming that the actual sales are higher than the forecasted sales, use the difference as the value of the social media return.
•
Finally, define how hard dollars will be tied to the social media return- calculate social media ROI using the standard ROI formulaSocial media ROI = (return – investment) / investment %.
Calculating the ROI of a Social media campaign (Source- ROI of Social Media: Myths, Truths and How To Measure ) Sea World wanted to launch its new Journey to Atlantis roller coaster with the help of online buzz from influential people in the roller coaster community. The strategy was to treat the roller coaster bloggers as VIPs. Based on the demography of the interest groups (attitude, thinking, motivation, etc.), online content was generated. During the course of the construction of the roller coaster, the team documented the construction from start to finish with 11 videos and a 45-photo portfolio and posted them on YouTube and Flickr. The bloggers could easily view this content, and if so motivated, could use it in their own posts. They were also used on Sea World’s Coaster site, complete with multiple social media sharing options. The American Coaster Enthusiasts Group was invited to attend the media launch, and be among the first to get to ride the new coaster. The riders left positive comments on the YouTube videos. As a result, the campaign received 50 links from unique websites, 30 of which were from roller coaster enthusiast sites. Two things are needed to calculate ROI: the benefit of the campaign and the costs of the campaign: ROI = Benefits - Costs x 100 = Percentage Return on the Investment Costs Benefits The Sea World team conducted a survey to understand the effect of the online content. They asked two questions: 1) Did you come today to ride the Journey to Atlantis? 2) Where did you hear about the Journey to Atlantis? Using a formula that applies a value to each visitor to the park (per person), they were able to determine that the group that said they heard about the ride from the Internet resulted in more than $2.6 million in revenue. Costs The estimate of the costs falls typically into three categories: people, process and technology: People: Number of people who worked on the campaign x amount of time they spent x their hourly rate Process: Costs for creativity and marketing materials Technology: Costs of the marketing system used for the campaign and the cameras
The total costs for the campaign, for people, process and technology was $44,000. ROI = 2, 600,000 – 44,000
= 58.09 ROI
44,000
Risqué Marketing INTRODUCTION With the business world becoming more competitive by the day, marketers are, no doubt, under constant pressure to come up with newer and more innovative ways to differentiate their product. With the field of marketing ever-evolving, the ways in which companies can, today, market their products are innumerable. The advent and popularity of the internet, in addition to the fact that a marketer’s reach to his/her audiences has increased manifold, has widened horizons immensely for those who wish to dabble with relatively undiscovered spheres of the subject. After social media marketing, viral marketing, guerrilla marketing and the likes, the latest trend in this domain is Risqué marketing. Risqué, which according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary literally means ‘verging on indecency’, is the newest face of marketing, wherein, marketers have begun using sexual content to communicate with their end users. Needless to say, it has quickly gained publicity – both good and bad, for there are as many supporters of it, as there are non-supporters. And although one of the most memorable and controversial ads in fashion history is the 1980’s Calvin Klein Jeans campaign, starring actress Brooke Shields, who asked ‘’Youwanna know what comes between me and my Calvins? Nothing’’ (https://marketingchickpov.wordpress.com), it has only been very recently that this sort of marketing has started being openly used by companies to promote their products.
RISQUE MARKETING CAMPAIGNS AROUND THE WORLD Be it the Spirit Airlines’ fleet of trucks with posters of bikini clad dancers holding placards that say ‘take me home for $9’ and ‘I’ll go both ways for $18’ in Las Vegas; or more explicit campaigns such as Playboy billboards with a woman’s bosom in a white body hugging top, that turns translucent whenever it rains, with the tagline ‘Guys, pray for rain’, marketing truly has taken a step towards the bold. Another example of this kind of marketing is the series ofspecial mouse pads that were placed in cyber cafes all over Hong Kong to increase awareness regarding breast cancer. The graphic showed a woman’s breasts with the tagline ‘examine regularly’. In yet another instance, on the 5th birthday of the Paparazzi magazine in Argentina, the company introduced sun protectors for cars with couples in explicit positions. Then there was the men’s magazine - Chѐ – that introduced merchandize: specifically pillows and duvets with designs that showed women in lingerie sleeping on one side of the bed. Their tagline said ‘Let us keep dreaming for a better world’. Chѐ did a cross-media campaign wherein, in addition to the set of pillows and
and duvet cover, the cash counters at various departmental stores had posters of a pair of very skimpily clad legs that definitely caught peoples’ eye. RISQUE MARKETING IN INDIA There isn’t a doubt that risqué marketing poses a lot of challenges pertaining to culture and society. While it has, to some extent, provided an enhanced brand recall due to the nature of the content it portrays, it has also led to an increased involvement from the official authorities due to the very same reason.And this is especially true in India. Although, when compared with the campaigns abroad that have leveraged from risqué, those in India can barely be called ‘sexually arousing’, brands such as Wild Stone, Addiction and Axe deodorants have continuously faced the heat for their marketing communication here. Indian regulators have ordered television channels not to broadcast ‘overtly sexual’ deodorant commercials that use female models in risqué storylines since it has violated advertising codes. According to the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting ‘’the ads brim with messages aimed at tickling the libidinous male instincts and portrayal of women as lustily hankering after men’’. Advertisements under the scanner include one in which a woman finds a man's deodorant so attractive that she starts unbuttoning her blouse, and another in which a woman is drawn to her sweet-smelling brother-in-law (The Independent, May 28th, 2011). Another such campaign was the VIP Frenchie X underwear that showed a young couple, where the guy tries to come close to the sexy girl at a campfire after a trekking expedition and during playful games in the bedroom, the girl pushes him away,not allowing him to come close. She later sees the guy walking out of the bathroom in his Frenchie X underwear and gets turned on and loses control. (http://www.indiantvads.com/banned-tv-ads/vip-frenchieunderwear-advert.html) Other brands to have dabbled with risqué in the recent past are Fastrack watches (the series of ads starring ViratKohli and Genelia D’Souza), Bisleri mineral water (when it underwent transition from ‘Pure and Safe’ to ‘Play safe’), and Tuff Shoes (the ad took everyone by surprise by showing supermodel MilindSoman and MadhuSapre wearing nothing but Tuff shoes and a python around their necks. Back in 1995 this made huge waves in the media as well as the legal system, with the legal proceedings lasting for around 14 years, until the court declared the accused not guilty). The Amul Macho ‘Yehtohbada toing hai’ series of ads and, not to forget, the 1993 MR instant coffee ad that appeared in Mid-Day and featured model and actress MalaikaArora with her then boyfriend Arbaaz Khan cosying up to each other,
were perceived to be too suggestive and obscene. The latter’s tagline ‘Real pleasure
can’t come in an instant’ was found quite misleading and after a series of legal proceedings, these advertisements were banned . ( http : / / www . instablogs . com / controversial - ads - indian television.html)
Clearly, there has been a history of these kinds of advertisements being released by various brands and being banned by Indian regulators thereafter. Despite this, companies are willing to take the risk and release campaigns that are leaning towards ‘risqué’. One rationale behind this repeated ‘sensuous’ and ‘suggestive’ form of marketing could be the age old mantra that ‘publicity is publicity – be it good or bad’. And since the reason behind any sort of marketing is to create a brand recall in the consumer’s mind, and occupy what we now know as ‘mind space’, publicity of this kind possibly contributes to a longer period of retention in the minds of today’s audiences than does any other kind. The reason why these ads have contributed to a sudden surge in revenues and profits for all these companies can probably be seen in the context of another old saying that ‘The more man is denied something, the more he wants it.’ Going by this principle, the fact that these ad campaigns were surrounded by controversy and most finally ended up being banned, attached a certain novelty value to them. In other words, the fact that they were deemed ‘inappropriate’ for the masses led more and more people to notice and remember them. These controversies created a huge amount of curiosity around these ads and products, thus, leading to soaring sales and meaty profit scenarios. In most cases, a single campaign created such a brand image in the market, that it wasn’t just a case of out-of-sight-out-of-mind for consumers; instead, it led to a heightened brand recall, actually benefitting the parent organizations for a longer period of time.
WILL IT WORK IN INDIA? As mentioned earlier, risqué marketing poses numerous social and cultural challenges to marketers. Indian marketers are no different. Advertising and media related laws in India are still relatively quite rigid, and with good reason. Although there has been a huge amount of westernization since the beginning of the 20th century, and a lot of people have, no doubt, become more open to such subjects, there are still many more who have not. In addition, it is widely known that in India, which is still predominantly a masculine society, such subjects as sex and sexual content are considered taboo by many. There is a huge majority of Indians that is even today not very comfortable watching this sort of content with family, and this factor plays a crucial role when it comes to societal aspects that affect marketing. It is one of the roots of Indian traditions that revolve around decency and respect for elders. Keeping these beliefs and sentiments in mind, Indian marketers should consider the fact that it is, in a certain sense, their moral duty to not over-expose young, impressionable minds to sexual and suggestive imagery when it is something Indian parents strive to protect their children from, for as long as they can. Also, marketers need to ensure that they fully research marketing trends before putting them into practice so that there is a proper fit between the target audience of the company and the communication tools and elements used to generate customer interest, and in turn, loyalty. In light of these cultural values, along with the unbending legalities this practice involves, the future of Risqué Marketing being practiced openly looks, for the time being, quite bleak.
Having said that, it is a widely known fact that a company’s end objective is profitability. And in a world of excessive competition and a rat-race in terms of capturing ‘mind share’ (top of the mind brand recall) as well as ‘heart share’ (emotional positive associations towards a brand), companies who wish to still go ahead with this form of promoting and advertising products, need to decide the extent to which they are willing to go, in terms of profit-making at the cost of the legal battles and court cases that this journey entails. For, although this has brought success to those who have practiced it, it comes at a huge price, which leads to a certain amount of division of focus from the core product/service a company is providing to long winded, time consuming and extremely costly legalities
Go-Green Marketing - Does it really motivate the consumer? Authored By: Guneet Singh ArnejaAyushGulati Great Lakes Institute of Management PGPM 2013
First let me start with what “Green Marketing” means in the world of marketing. According to the American Marketing Association, green marketing is the marketing of products that are presumed to be environmentally safe. Thus green marketing incorporates a broad range of activities, including product modification, changes to the production process, packaging changes, as well as modifying advertising. Due to the amorphous nature of the green marketing, there is a rampant confusion regarding the original concept.Unfortunately, companies are using the simple concept of green marketing to their advantage. Rather than creating green campaigns, marketers are substantiating their belief of company’s level of “greenness” with marketing campaigns. One of the biggest challenges in today’s business world is to change consumer’s perceptions or beliefs. Simply establishing facts and introducing new initiative won’t change consumer’s mind towards green marketing. Keys to implement behavioral change: 1) Personal: Consumers are motivated to accept behavioral change in case they have personal benefits involved. The answer to the question “what is in it for me, its effect on me and around me?” can sometimes bring change.
1) Best Practices: Changes happen when they are easy to understand and implement. 2) Choice: Empowering consumer with choices motivates them to change their preference or behavior. 3) Real: Though many companies showcase their green marketing campaigns, hardly any have adopted sustainability in their strategies. Attempts to make sustainable and organizational changes rather than near-term profit and sales goals are only possible with the realistic effort and support of each and every employee. Green marketing myopia: Improved environmental quality and customer satisfaction are the two major objectives of Green marketing. Overemphasizing any one of the factors over the other causes Green marketing myopia. The companies often focus on managing products and product features instead of understanding consumer needs and desires. Research indicates that many green products have failed just because of marketers only focus on products rather than consumer’s preferences.
Do customers care? With every industry just trying to market itself as a green, there always comes a question “To what extent do customers care?” It has been shown that the firms which are into green marketing or which promote ‘green’ run the risk of underperforming as compared to their competitors. For example, firms with ISO 1 4001 accreditation experience negative market value association .
D isclosure of policies related to
environmental concerns some way or the other impact profitability. The question that arises here is why consumers don’t consider green products as important? The answer to this question consists of three parts:
a) Cost of green products: A study says that 74% of the consumers consider green products as expensive. Also more than half of the consumers claim that “economic safety is more important than environmental safety”. b) Functionality perception: 61% consumers say that green products don’t work well. Also a study shows that 42% of consumers think that green products don’t work as well as the conventional products. c) Green product quality: 55% consumers believe that products are just claimed to be environment friendly, when actually they are not. But the fact is that the green products are a lot safer and high in quality now as compared to 5 years ago. On the other hand, a study shows that the number of consumers of green products has increased three times over the recent years; while the number of consumers who are averse to buying green products has decreased to half. Consumers are willing to buy green products. They are ready to spend on environment friendly clothes, toys, personal care products etc. Consumers who are willing to spend on green products are generally young, better educated and upscale than the non-green consumers. Even very young people (around 8 years old) are found to be highly environment friendly. The age groups of 8-24 years are considered to be the most ‘green-friendly’ people. But one more study shows that age doesn’t matter in considering the green attitude of consumers. A company named Seventh Generation which deals with green marketing is able to generate $100 million annually by targeting college students by using blogs as an advertising medium. Considering more demographic variations, the people of Asian or Hispanic origin are more readily accepting of the use of green products than African Americans. Also more educated people are more likely to buy green products than their illiterate counterparts. People tend to depict environment care and intent to buy only when there is an immediate and substantial benefit included. For example, retail giant ‘Walmart’ had great success with its green marketing campaign “The Walmart Mom”, which was targeted towards consumers. People are ready to buy green products but they are not ready to compromise their lifestyles. Unless the product is of good quality and is reasonably priced, the consumer is not ready to pay for it. One of the Boston Consulting Group reports’ shows that a consumer will not pay for the product if the only consideration is that it is green or environment friendly; but rather, expects some extra attributes attached to it such as better functionality, better aesthetic value or better economy. Also, the brand matters when people make buying decisions of green products because that is the only credible point in buying intent. Only 9% people buy product on the basis of its environment friendliness. So people face a trade-off between economic sustainability and environmental concern.
The perfect shade of Green The next question that arises is whether consumers are ready to purchase green products despite a drop in quality? And if so,how do we fight against the misconception that green products are not as good as regular products in terms of quality and performance? One study says make products more expensive. Consumers have a tendency to go for luxury ‘green’ products even at the cost of lesser quality. Elevated prices make green products more attractive. Status motives can create the desire for expensive green products as opposed to non-green products; but the effect is reversed if prices are lowered. People find it very desirable to flaunt the fact that they are ready to spend and can afford expensive ‘green’ products; thus showing their altruistic nature. It has become a trend that people want to publicly acknowledge the fact that they are pro-social and pro-environment. A study shows that people who buy Toyota Prius, a hybrid car, look at the vehicle’s feature and status consideration first; while the environment concern factor is ranked last. One more study shows that people are more willing to pay for green products when they are in public rather than when they are shopping online. They often claim to be environment friendly but in actuality they are not quite as proactive. A study by ‘Environics Research’ shows that only 7% people are turning off lights or appliances when not needed, just 6% are curbing water usage but 83% people claim to be inclined towards environmental considerations. People thus want to highlight the fact that they are ‘green’ oriented and are open to spending on green products. Now the role of marketers thus, is to lure consumers towards ‘green’ products by capitalizing on this aspect. They have to project green products as luxury goods and project the sales of these products as a win-win situation for both the consumers as well as the company.
Strategies of success: 1) Know your consumer: Awareness of consumer and the knowledge of the issues that the product addresses is the foremost requirement of any product to be successful 2) Understand and Empower consumer: In a broad sense, consumers need should be the prime focus rather than primarily concentrating only on products. A consumer should feel in cohesion with the product. Empowering a consumer via the products they purchase is the requirement of the day. 3)Educate your customer: Educate the consumer regarding the relation that the product attributes with the value provided to the consumer. The consumer must also know why “Go Green” matters in today’s world. Conclusion: 1) Green product development along the lines of harnessing market potential will lead to a mainstream green campaign. 2) Green marketing is more than just creating a product with specialized product features. It is about perceiving the society as a whole. The interaction among consumers and producers will determine the right green product for the right type of consumer. 3) In today’s scenario, marketers have the responsibility to educate customers about the benefits of buying green products instead of non-green ones. Green marketing assumes more relevance especially in developing and growing countries like India.
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