BRANDS AND THE INDIA PLEDGE

Volume XII | Issue 2 | July-August 2015

` 75

BRANDS AND THE

INDIA PLEDGE Can they stick to it?

Why Tata Capital urges you to ‘Do Right’ Pg. 08

What ails the luxury market?

Pg. 14

The Lure of Instagram

Pg. 34

Volume XII, Issue-2 July-August 2015

COVER STORY

20

Publisher & Editor-in-Chief Annurag Batra Editor & Director Amit Agnihotri Director Nawal Ahuja

EDITORIAL TEAM

Deputy Editor

Rashi Bisaria

DESIGN TEAM

Art Director

Shivaji Sengupta

Senior Graphic Designer

Joby Mathew

Photographers

Vilas Kalgutkar (Mumbai) Suresh Gola (Noida)

AD SALES

Rajat Thareja Prashant Kulkarni Sneha Walke

9810134435 9886138249 9845541143

Is it time for self reflection for Food and Beverage brands?

0FFICES

NEW DELHI: Shop No. 32, 33 south Ettn. Part-I, Om vihar, Uttam Nagar, New Delhi 110 059 NOIDA: B-20, I-Floor, Sector-57, Noida, Uttar Pradesh - 201301 Phone: (0120) 4007700 Mumbai: 301, Kakad Bhavan, 3rd Floor, 11th Street, Bandra (W), Mumbai - 400 050 Phone: (022) 2640 3303/09/14/16 Bengaluru: # 18, 3rd B Cross, Domlur II Stage, Bangalore 560071 CIRCULATION/DISTRIBUTION

Vinod Sharma (Delhi) - 9999447209 vinod@exchange4media.com Anandan Nair (Mumbai) - 9819445200 anair@exchange4media.com On News-stands ` 75 www.pitchonnet.com Printed and published by Annurag Batra on behalf of Adsert Web Solutions Pvt Ltd B-20, I-Floor, Sector-57, Noida, Uttar Pradesh - 201301 Printed at All Time Offset Printers, E-53, Sector-7 Noida, Uttar Pradesh - 201301 An exchange4media Publication

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FEATURES

08

Tata Capital urges Consumers to ‘Do Right’

14

need more trained manpower to sustain growth momentum

CONTENTS PRESENTS

Pitch Top 50 Brands back, illustrious jury chooses Top 50 for 2015

COLUMNS Manmeet Ahluwalia

26

Hamsini Shivakumar

Owner, Leapfrog Strategy Consulting

Anika Agarwal

Male Grooming Products

VP, Head Marketing, Max Bupa Health Insurance

come of Age, As the Market

Explodes in India

06

Marketing Head-Expedia India

30

Anubhav Nayyar

18 25

Country Head, Viber India

Anupam Vasudev

28

Chief Marketing Officer, Aircel

Why Brands are loving Instagram

12

Dr Sudhir Gupta

Director, Cygnus Medicare Pvt Ltd

Titir Pal

Director, Solutions, AbsolutData Analytics

38 42

Apurva Chamaria

34

Head, Global Brand & Digital Front Office at HCLTechnologies

Vikram Raichura

48

MD, VivaConnect

36

Is third party verification of digital ads needed in India?

Ankur Asha

Marketing professional and author of the book, ‘Heart, Mind and Wallet’

INTERVIEW

Raja Hussain, Founder and CEO, Airloyal

40

AVP, Marketing at FreeCharge

54

OTHERS

Tete-A-Tete ete-A-Tete with

Ashish Virmani |

50

Shashank ND

Founder & CEO, Practo

Mobile EngagementGoing beyond mere advertising

46

56

FEATURE : E-Commerce

44

INSIGHT

52

FEATURE : Mobile Marketing

57

NEWS OF THE MONTH

58

COLUMN : Annurag Batra

62

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COLUMN MANMEET AHLUWALIA

Marketing Head-Expedia India

Outdoor Marketing in the Digital Age

L

New technologies and devices are organically forcing creative developers and advertisers to re-think their strategies 6

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ast decade has brought about a huge change in the way consumers look at brands and products. Today, technology underpins the changing consumption patterns. If we were to really look for the consumers, they are always on the move. People are spending more and more time out of their homes while they are working, shopping or socializing and it’s becoming increasingly challenging for brands to engage with them.

Television commercials, alongside traditional mediums such as print and radio, once dominated the world of advertising. Today, they are only catching up with the busy audiences. While these consumers are always ‘on the go’, outdoor advertising offers the perfect solution to reach them and build a strong recall. OOH has some speci�ic advantages like promoting products and services in speci�ic geographic areas while the target audience is at public places, in transit, waiting or in marketable location. The creatives that can be changed at regular intervals, keeping the travellers’ interest.

Most importantly it builds a strong recall

due to repeat sightings. The �lexibility and leverage of this medium has kept the advertisers interested and invested.

However, OOH marketing is not the same as it used to be a decade back.

Marketers have embraced innovation in all parts of the business to keep pace with the consumers. New technologies and devices are organically forcing creative developers and advertisers to re-think

COLUMN

their strategies. As consumer consumption patterns begin to shift with the emergence of new technology and devices, so have the advertising and marketing for consumers, thus leading to use of new lighting and materials and leveraging digital technologies, leading to the birth of Digital OOH. Digital OOH (DOOH) is a very valuable format for advertisers who seek to engage with consumers in an interactive manner. DOOH networks typically feature independently addressable large formats like billboards, screens and kiosks, which may be placed at cafes, bars, restaurants, health clubs, colleges, gas stations, convenience stores, and other public spaces. Owing to

arises for all advertisersIs OOH still relevant? The answer as we see it would be a resounding ‘Yes’. The larger than life billboards that capture and hold consumer attention, not only have a high recall value, but also allow marketers a base for creative experimentation. The quirky copy, visual graphics, innovative fabrications, 3D modeling and the disruptive nature and approach of DOOH is helping brands break out of the clutter of regular advertising.

A key advantage with DOOH is the extremely low cost per thousand, especially in contrast to the media channel. This further allows experimentation given the affordability of the medium. It is the ideal channel for

only a part of the message to their target audience.

This creates the need for extremely powerful content or method of delivery to make an impact through DOOH. Hence marketers need to consider a mix of formats to target consumers. This could include, a display that changes by the time of the day or day of the week, to target customers in the right state of mind. They can leverage other media like radio and social to popularize and cross connect with DOOH platform. There is a need to focus on using the right formats at the right time to deliver the right messaging to the identi�ied consumer.

Different formats need to cross connect for a synergetic impact.

Although digital outdoor

technological advancements and an increasing ownership of smart devices, people can act instantly on advertising messages making Outdoor more relevant and meaningful now than it has ever been.

With DOOH trying to make its place in the industry, a very important question

visibility along arterial roads and major traf�ic junctions, allowing a mass reach and geographic �lexibility. These factors provide an edge to DOOH. However, brands get access for a limited duration and DOOH being a mute tool, they are able to communicate

advertising has been happening in India for some time, it is still at a very nascent stage.

Innovative implementations, disruptive ideas and creative deliveries that make consumers stop and take note of brands, will catapult DOOH advertising into next level of growth in India.

The larger than life billboards that capture and hold consumer attention, not only have a high recall value, but also allow marketers a base for creative experimentation

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Tata Capital urges Consumers to ‘Do Right’ Living up to its tagline, ‘We only do what’s right for you’, Tata Capital, in keeping with the spirit of doing right, launched a campaign in November, 2013. The campaign ‘Half Stories- The journey of Doing Right’, could amplify the thought on the digital medium and complete the unfinished stories of life . As Veetika Deoras, Head, Brand Marketing, Corporate Communication and Digital Vertical, Tata Capital says, it was the emotional and purposive connect that propelled the campaign forward.

In a freewheeling chat with Rashi Bisaria, Veetika reflects on the campaign, the need to connect with individuals and how the brand’s goals were achieved through this ambitious campaign.

Rashi Bisaria What was the thought behind starting a long term campaign like this?

Veetika Deoras Tata Capital’s brand promise - ‘we only do what’s right for you’ re�lects our strong resolve to do right by our customers, stakeholders and society at large. To help spread the ‘Do Right’ philosophy through action, we decided to launch the ‘Do Right’ initiative. Tata Capital caters to a wide range of audiences across retail and corporate, and hence our attempt has always been to reach out to customers as individuals �irst. For us, ‘Do Right’ is a higher purpose, and in this journey we want to partner and engage with our customers – whether B2C or B2B – as individuals.

RB What were the goals you set out to achieve for the brand through this campaign?

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Through this unique initiative, we endeavour to build an emotional and purposive connect with the brand by uniting the interests of our diverse target audience to a greater purpose. The initiative aims to nurture and spread the spirit of ‘Do Right’, by inspiring people and providing platforms for them to Do Right. In its current avatar – ‘journey of doing right’ – we identi�ied the 5 main challenges that India is facing through a �irst-of-its-kind Survey (the “Tata Capital India4India” Survey). The top �ive challenges that emerged as the most concerning for Indian public were Basic Healthcare, Illiteracy, Child Rights, Women Empowerment and Food Scarcity. We then undertook our journey, across different parts of India, to help identify and highlight these stories of courage and perseverance on our digital platforms, and brought together people who believe in doing right - to partici-

pate and help complete the stories.

RB What kind of a difference has Tata

Capital been able to make through this campaign?

This is our second season of Do Right. In our �irst season we had completed over 10 individual stories emanating from different parts of India and garnered a tremendous response and following on all our Social Media platforms. The second season is ongoing and thus far we have successfully highlighted four stories and managed to bring solar-powered light to an orphanage, created wicking-beds in the harsh deserts of Kutch to grow green leafy vegetables, empowered the women of a village in East India to become �inancially independent and brought back happiness to a ‘school on boat’ in Varanasi, with the unrelenting support of over 200 donors across the globe!

THE INITIATIVE AIMS TO NURTURE AND SPREAD THE SPIRIT OF ‘DO RIGHT’, BY INSPIRING PEOPLE AND PROVIDING PLATFORMS FOR THEM TO DO RIGHT Pitch | July-Aug 2015 www.pitchonnet.com

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The campaign has also garnered a lot of visibility for the brand Tata Capital, across online and print media, but a truly satisfying achievement has been the smiles on the faces of those directly impacted from these four stories.

RB How have people reacted to it?

The response from our followers and our network of Do Righters has been tremendous. We have received donations from various locations not only in India, but across the globe. One avid Do Righter even pledged to donate ten rupees for every re-tweet on the Do Right initiative. The love and faith shown towards the initiative by our network of Do Righters during the entire campaign has been heart-warming and encouraging.

RB How did you amplify the campaign on social media?

We use a ubiquitous mix of sponsored posts and tweets to signi�icantly amplify each story on our social media platforms. Since the initiative rests on the power of story-telling, each story is converted into a video to effectively communicate the challenge, and the same is seeped across You Tube and all the Tata Capital owned channels. Since the journey traverses through different parts of the country, it is laden with unique and picturesque photographs of India – we use Instagram to post frequent photo-oriented updates of the journey. Our promotional efforts are signi�icantly boosted through the use of blogs. Across each of these we have easily reached over 10m people with this initiative.

RB What was the reason for its enormous success?

I think the success of the ‘Do Right’ initiative lies in its universal appeal and simplicity. Powerful story-telling and real humane stories of everyday people and the deep causes behind them have attracted everybody’s attention. Also the fact that it is a digital

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CAMPAIGN NAME:

Half Stories-The journey of Doing Right

START DATE:

November 2013 The India4India Survey identified 5 key challenges facing India The campaign provides solutions for the biggest challenges India faces

POWERFUL STORY-TELLING AND REAL HUMANE STORIES OF EVERYDAY PEOPLE AND THE DEEP CAUSES BEHIND THEM HAVE ATTRACTED EVERYBODY’S ATTENTION

initiative has helped us reach audiences across all corners, and allowed us to engage with them on a continued basis. These ‘do righters have played their part by participating and spreading the word further, digitally.

RB Do you wish to revive the campaign sometime in the future?

The Do Right initiative is a strategic initiative for us. It is closely linked to the promise of the Tata Capital brand and hence yes, we are committed to building this initiative more and more each year.

RB What kind of investment did Tata Capital have to make for this campaign/initiative?

Our investment so far has been approximately Rs 1 crore.

COLUMN HAMSINI SHIVAKUMAR

Owner, Leapfrog Strategy Consulting

The Maggi Controversy as Political Theatre: What it Means for Companies and Brands

T Consumers have a lot of personal memories and nostalgia and emotional affinity to Maggi 12 Pitch | July-Aug 2015

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he recent ban on Maggi Noodles and the subsequent actions of the Regulator on the one hand and Nestle on the other can be understood via anaemio-narrativelysis in order to identify the implications for companies - in managing media led controversies in the public domain.

Let us start by examining the key actors in this drama. There are four key actors we can identify – the company, the regulatory authority, the individual consumer and consumers as a collective. Apart from these four actors, there are two more – the media and the celebrities who have endorsed the brand at some prior period.

What is this drama all about? It is all about consumer protection - ensuring that the food that people eat is safe. And here the meaning of safe is that it is not dangerous or poisonous.

Going by all the posts on social media, most consumers know that Maggi Noodles is by no means “healthy and nutritious” food, like fruits, milk or dal. But they have never imagined it to be dangerous or poisonous to their health.

They can easily verify this premise from their own experience. What is more, consumers have a lot of personal memories and nostalgia and emotional af�inity to Maggi.

It is inextricably linked in many consumers’ minds with their college days and youthful fun.

An over-zealous regulator opens the

drama by �iring a warning shot – he claims that the consumer’s health is at risk of being poisoned by Maggi - due to the presence of the poisonous element lead as well other chemicals beyond the prescribed limit. Upon making this discovery, he prescribes the remedy beloved of all regulators in India when ‘public safety’ is perceived to be at risk – impose a ban on the offending product or service. By making these two moves, the regulator establishes his credentials as the protector of consumers, his seriousness of intent in ful�illing that role and his power to in�lict damage on the “multinational company”, the giant corporation that is poisoning Indian consumers and pro�iting from its misdeeds. The regulator is the Savior and Messiah of the people. The company is the greedy villain, poisoning the people.

The problem with this plotline in the drama is that regulatory bodies in India are not the natural saviors of consumers. Most government bodies are assumed by consumers to be inept or corrupt or both. When a regulator makes a public charge against a company based upon some tests etc, the immediate thought that jumps to consumers’ minds is the hindi phrase, “chakkar kya hai”… what’s the hidden conspiracy here? Do they want to extort money from the company? Or are they doing some minister’s bidding? Or have they been paid off by a competitor to

COLUMN create trouble? They rarely think, yes, I trust this regulator’s probity and competence. Hence, if they are making a public charge against the company about its products being unsafe for consumption, it must be a valid charge. And they are doing it to protect me from danger.

The other problem with this plotline in the drama is that consumers today are better informed and empowered than they were 30 years ago. So the narrative premise of the “victim” consumer being exploited by the “villainous” company also does not quite ring true. Never-theless, this opening move in the drama does stir up confusion and chaos in a previously well-ordered world. And many consumers who have never doubted the brand before would be actively seeking reassurance.

In this scenario of confusion, who should be the natural ally of the shaky individual consumer, the one who can reassure him/her of product safety and thus protect him/ her? Consumers don’t trust celebrities to play this role since they believe that celebrities endorse products and brands for the money. They also don’t think that Celebrities would play a true watch-dog role by interrogating the company hard and obtaining validation before they agree to endorse.

Media steps in naturally into the ‘watch-dog’, consumer protector role by conducting investigations, reporting facts and relevant information, bringing in some objectivity into the drama. Media also takes on the consumer protector role by attacking the ‘powerful’ and calling them to account. However, while consumers watch the “attacker” shows and read media reports,

they may not trust them entirely either and would prefer to consult with one another and make up their own mind.

The natural ally of individual consumers in such a scenario of confusion is actually other consumers, people like them, with whom they can compare notes and decide what to do, in order to protect themselves in the matter of food safety. If their friends and family decide Maggi

Cadbury and Nokia did just this when their ‘worm’ and ‘battery’ controversies broke out.

Companies in India need to be conscious that they are the natural custodians and protectors of consumer safety and sometimes, delivering to that role and responsibility might require them to go beyond compliance with legal requirements. If such a protector stance is pro-actively

is safe to eat and that they had better stock up to ride out the ban, then that is what they will do. If the consumer consensus is that Maggi is unsafe and better not to eat it (at least for some time, till the controversy is resolved or dies down), then that is what they will do.

So, what is the role for the attacked Company, the ostensible villain in this political theatre? The wrong moves for them are to try and clear their ‘name’ and ‘regain’ their reputation, prove their innocence or to try and decry the regulator who consumers don’t believe in much, anyway.

The right move is to pro-actively protect the consumer and provide them with the extra re-assurance that they seek.

taken, the drama will end quickly with one victor, the consumer and through that, the company and its brand.

As it turns out, this regulatory attack has enabled the FSSAI to petition the Central Government for the approval of a huge hike in its budget in order to staff it adequately and resource it with the latest equipment – which was the real motive, probably, for initiating this political drama around food.

Companies need to be prepared that attacks can come from anywhere for reasons of political theatre. In the social and other media dominated era that we live in now, political theatre around their products will need to be managed as much as production, sales and marketing.

Media takes on the consumer protector role by attacking the ‘powerful’ and calling them to account Pitch | July-Aug 2015 www.pitchonnet.com

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FEATURE: LUXURY

need more trained manpower to sustain growth momentum July-Aug Aug 2015 2015 14 Pitch | July

www.pitchonnet.com

By SNEHOJIT KHAN

T

he luxury goods market has been growing at a steady rate of 20 per cent over the last few years in the country. As expected, there is a growing need for more trained and evolved staff to cater to the demands of a growing clientele. Trained employees especially sales staff are absolutely essential for luxury brands looking to expand their footprint in the country. A top class, consistent customer experience can be the key differentiator for a brand in this sector.

‘Trained manpower’ would mean employees who have knowledge about the luxury market and are capable of handling operations and customers. . The employees have to know the buyers, the brands, the market, and the current needs in this sector.

The need for passion among employees The need is for employees to know the heritage of the brand, its unique edge in the market and to create differentiation while selling. The sales and service staff need to have passion, knowledge and ownership of the brand to make that crucial sale. Polished, re�ined behavior and a personal style would go a long way in persuading customers.

But trained manpower has been a constraint for the $14 billion luxury market. This is gradually changing with most luxury brands conducting training sessions for their staff. According to Nikhil Mehra, COO at Genesis Luxury which handles luxury brands such as Jimmy Choo and Emporio Armani in India, “Trained manpower is critical for any industry and luxury is no different.

We do need people who have an understanding of the luxury consumer and the luxury retail environment.

Currently, at Genesis we have a team of more than 1500 trained resources

We do need people who have an understanding of the luxury consumer and the luxury retail environment Nikhil Mehra

COO, Genesis Luxury

across various aspects of the business.”

“The situation of trained manpower today is far better than it was �ive years ago, when very few people had the expertise in luxury retail. Now with the proliferation of brands and access to the right training environments, there is better availability of resources to handle brand operations.” He added.

Expertise in market operations and handling the day- to- day working of the global luxury brands is quite

complicated. It can only be possible through well trained staff. This is why trained manpower is so important for major global luxury brands.

The state of the Indian luxury market As per a report by AT Kearney, the market size is estimated to touch $15 billion this year. Also projected is the fact that a quarter of the luxury market will be between India and China.

Besides, India is the second fastest growing economy after China. The ever rising UHNI category has a net worth of over $ 600 billion. The luxury market size would quadruple by 2025 and India would be the �ifth largest consumer market by then.

The current Luxury Market accounts for 10 per cent of total India Retail. The National Skill Development Corporation projects that the total retail human resource requirement by 2022 will be approximately 17.8 million. Bearing this

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FEATURE: LUXURY

In the last few years, cities such as Surat, Jaipur, Lucknow, Nagpur, Coimbatore and Kanpur have witnessed prominent growth in income distribution equation in mind, it can be estimated that by 2022, the total manpower required to handle Luxury brands and services in India will be around 1.76 million people. Does India have that trained manpower?

With the opening up of FDI in single brand retail in India, the requirement for trained staff might surge much before 2022. The Indian Luxury market is not fully equipped with skilled personnel who have dedicated knowledge in Luxury. This has resulted in a drill down effect, where opportunities are many but supply is less.

Brands resort to in-house training Keeping in mind the massive potential for growth in the Indian market, most global brands today are �ighting this crunch using in house training methods.

The companies run extensive training modules that range from induction training to advanced and refresher courses every few months at the retail level. This includes training in speci�ic retail skills and overall luxury understanding and communication.

Apart from this, key members of the teams are also sent overseas to brand headquarters for upgrading skill sets.

India’s luxury potential has attracted several luxury players such as Damiani and Royce over the last few years, and several others such as Godiva Chocolates and Faberge Jewellery,

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plan to enter the Indian market.

Additionally, brands such as Geox Group and Villeroy&Boch, which exited India previously, are now showing renewed interest in the country’s luxury market.

The Indian luxury consumer landscape is experiencing strong evolutionary undercurrents that are rede�ining the consumer pro�ile and how luxury players operate in the space.

So is it true that the global luxury brands prefer manpower from abroad than from India? According to Nikhil Mehra, this is not true, especially with regards to the luxury brands they are associated with currently.

“The brands have an open recruitment policy where we do not discriminate between Indian or International workforce. We only look for the right skills. There are well skilled people in the country today hence I do not think brands are looking outside to recruit as a rule.”

Although the growth is consistent and rapid, the luxury industry in India is at an in�lection stage similar to what China was 15 years ago. There is de�initely a lot of potential for growth in the years to come.

In reality, India is quite far from being one of the leaders in the luxury markets across the world. It undoubtedly requires more time to become one of the top luxury markets in the world. What could help India in becoming a leader in this space, is

skilled staff that knows the ins and outs of the industry.

Where are the luxury clients?

Luxury consumption in India is mainly concentrated in Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru, with the preference for luxury goods growing across the country’s top 10 cities. DLF Emporio in Delhi, Palladium in Mumbai and UB City in Bengaluru are some of the specialized luxury malls in India.

South India has also emerged as a primary driver of India’s luxury market.

In this region, the population tends to be highly receptive to new products and �lavors as compared to other regions of the country.

The situation is somewhat unique in North India, with the demand for premium and imported goods witnessing a boom in the metros as well as tier-1 and tier-2 cities as well. In the last few years, cities such as Surat, Jaipur, Lucknow, Nagpur, Coimbatore and Kanpur have witnessed prominent growth in income distribution. The number of high-income households in these cities is estimated to grow at around 20 per cent annually, as against 13.7 per cent in metropolitan cities.

Considering this, the strong growth momentum will continue in coming years with evolution of luxury brands and trained manpower will only add to this momentum.

COLUMN ANIKA AGARWAL

VP, Head Marketing, Max Bupa Health Insurance

How ‘App-dated’ are you?

T

oday, the question in every brand manager’s mind is not whether to have a mobile app or not, but about what purpose should the brand’s app serve.

It is a foregone conclusion that mobile apps are one of the channels which brands need to use in order to enhance the consumer’s experience with the brand. Brands are striving to get to the holy grail of dishing out personalized content or advice and to be able to resolve customer queries right on the consumer‘s mobile phones.

Every brand ought to have a mobile strategy Brands ought to be where the audience is spending time. More than half of the digital content is being consumed on mobile . Simply put, all media forms are �inally converging onto our smartphones. Technically, today’s

Brands are striving to get to the holy grail of dishing out personalized content and be able to resolve customer queries

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smartphones have the same computational power as the ‘super computers‘ of two decades ago. If you think about activities which require you to move away from your mobile phone, you’d have a very limited set. Your social networks are accessible on mobile. Email has been on mobile since the advent of the Blackberry. Search, maps, ticketing, shopping and even your favorite smoothie is now accessible through your mobile. Apps enable these. You name a need and there is a high chance that there is app trying to meet it!

Since all the action is happening on the mobile screen, brands ought to be there. And not just be there, serve a purpose and solve a pertinent need! And the choices of what would the purpose of your brand’s mobile app be is precisely the brand’s mobile stra tegy. Every brand needs to have one.

COLUMN What could an app help achieve?

How does then one decide on what the app should be doing for the brand. Apart from the constant recall to the brand, the apps can help with information and personalization of content, which enhances the user’s experience. Technology now enables one to mine the user behavior from the past and dish out content and information based on the personal preferences inferred from data.

Mobile applications also enable constant communication through push noti�ications. These reinforce recall and recognition and create a direct marketing channel between the brand and the user. Apps could be used to roll out loyalty programs, which helps to further strengthen the bond between the brand and the consumer.

All of these put together, achieve the most salient attribute of a brand – differentiation, or delivering something relevant which other brands cannot. From the list of possibilities brands need to choose what helps it differentiate the best and attributes which are of relevance to their target audience.

Mobile apps are revolutionizing healthcare delivery and experience The past few years have seen the mobile app space in the healthcare industry come of age. Social, mobile, analytics and cloud (or SMAC) are some of the enablers. The mHealth market is growing exponentially as a result and

is expected to be worth $8 billion by 2018. Brands and companies have come up with an entire spectrum of apps. Some of which allow one to access their medical records, others like Fitbit which help analyze your daily activity levels by combining with wearable. Then there are others which are enabling preventive healthcare by helping people set health and wellness goals. Such applications will enhance customer experience and importantly enhances health outcomes signi�icantly.

Case studies of success in improving health outcomes are emerging.

healthcare apps, which encourage people to lead a healthy life. For example, Max Bupa has pioneered an app which uses your sel�ie and a few lifestyle and health responses to simulate how you would age over time. A very simple way to encourage changing over to a healthier lifestyle by helping visualize the long term impact. Such apps can drive the right behavior towards health, and at the same time would be something which is fun to use! Features such as ‘healthie common sense’ in the app also serves personalized information on easy changes to lifestyle which can improve health.

How is the health insurance sector utilizing mHealth apps?

Apps related to the health insurance sector can help accomplish the following.

First, enhancing policy holder experience through access to approvals and navigating through the claims process.

Apps can also help educate the patients and alleviate the distrust stemming from mis-selling or a lack of understanding of the products. Second is preventive

The role of mobile apps in delivering better healthcare and focusing on prevention rather than cure, looks promising. Expect a plethora of apps focused on healthcare come up in the next couple of years. What would make the difference though is plain and simple: Is the app differentiated from the myriad wellness apps available, does it enhance customer experience and whether it improves health outcomes in the long term.

Mobile applications enable constant communication through push notifications.

These create a direct marketing channel

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COVER STORY

The question of ethics in advertising raises its head amid an environment of controversies surrounding FMCG brands

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COVER STORY

Is it time for self reflection for Food and Beverage brands?

By RASHI BISARIA

W

hile Nestle still grapples with the countrywide ban imposed on Maggi and the controversy that surrounds it, all FMCG brands find themselves a bit uneasy as they too come under the scanner of the national food regulator Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI). But the question that this recent episode has brought into the spotlight again, is a debate that has raged on for years. Are brands being responsible about advertising to children? The phenomenal popularity of Maggi, and the ‘2 minute’ sensation it created was also due to the fact that in the early years,

the brand’s messaging was directed at children and parents alike.

Children, being easily influenced, were perhaps the ones behind the overwhelming sale of the product as they influenced their parents, coaxing them to buy this two minute wonder for them.

Till 2008, the focus of Maggi was on children below 12 years of age.

But then it decided to position it as a healthy food for the entire family.

By doing so, Nestle joined the list of 15 brands that had taken the pledge to ensure responsible advertising to children. From this time onwards, advertisements of Maggi only featured teenagers steering away from young children.

THE INDIA PLEDGE In 2010, some key food and beverage giants in India took the India Pledge which reads, “We will change our food advertising to children”. Companies including Coca Cola, General Mills, Kellogg’s, Mondelez, Nestle, Mars, Pepsico, HUL decided to publish their speci�ic advertising commitments during the course of 2010 on an India Pledge website. The minimum criteria of their speci�ic commitments were: 1. No advertising of products to children under 12 years 2. No communication related to products in primary schools 3. Commissioning an independent compliance monitoring of the advertising commitment Pitch | July-Aug 2015 www.pitchonnet.com

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THE QUESTION OF ESPONSIBLE MARKETING After the Maggi ban, the focus has shifted to product claims made by brands and ethics in advertising.

Advertisers and brands need to pay attention to the socially harmful aspects of tall claims made by them in these commercials. Some glaring examples of tall claims are the promises by breakfast cereals about making the consumer sharper and stronger, fruit juices that boast of the goodness of real fruit and many more.

The signatories of the India Pledge have stated their commitment to promoting healthy lifestyles. With regard to marketing to children, Mars states in its pledge, “We will make our marketing communication to adults who make household purchasing decisions and young people, 12 and over, both in terms of ad content and media purchasing.”Mars also states, “We will not show children under 12 consuming our chocolate and confections products.” Coca Cola prides itself in being a leader in the area of Responsible Marketing and states in the pledge, “ The Coca-Cola company will not

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place any of our brands’ marketing in television, radio and print programming made speci�ically for children. This means we will not buy advertising in programs with an audience pro�ile higher than 35 per cent of children less than 12 years of age.”

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CHILDREN POSE A PARADOX FOR MARKETERS While the guidelines and principles stated by each of the signatories seem like a positive step in the direction of ethical advertising and self regulation, it does not ensure that children are completely protected by such advertising. Dr Atish Chattopadhyay, Dean at Mudra Institute of Communication Ahmedabad (MICA) says, “Today’s kids are already exposed to various media, especially internet which is accessed not just through PCs or laptops but also through handheld devices like mobile phones and tablets. So we don’t know whether these guidelines will really help.”

Not all brands are aware of the meaning of responsible advertising.

The fact that there is a discussion on the topic, is a welcome step forward Dr Atish Chattopadhyay

Mudra Institute of Communication Ahmedabad (MICA)

Children do present a paradox for marketers. On the one hand they are a key demographic for the kind of in�luence they exert on parents, on the other, they are impressionable young minds who should not be coerced into accepting incorrect claims.

In 2014, the food giants who had signed the Pledge extended restrictions on advertising to children to cover outdoor ads, radio, cinema, direct marketing, mobile and SMS marketing, interactive games and also product placements.

Pitch | July-Aug 2015 www.pitchonnet.com

23

COVER STORY

The �irms sent a commitment to the WHO to comply with these new norms by 2016.

Under this new commitment, McDonald’s may have to discontinue its Happy Meals deal which is targeted at children. Promotional tie-ups with children’s movies and products will also be curtailed.

As a result of such guidelines food and beverage brands are beginning to become more alert and transparent about the nutritional content in their products. Detailed consumer information is now absolutely necessary to keep critics and consumers satis�ied.

The Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) has been tightening its control over advertisers. The ASCI lauded the 7 companies when they took the pledge, asserting that it would only strengthen the stand of ASCI. But advertisements have continued to �lirt with controversy despite the guidelines. The Maggi Atta Noodles advertisement featuring Madhuri Dixit became the subject of close scrutiny when it claimed to contain nutrition of three rotis and vegetables. The ad also featured children, again a matter of concern according to the guidelines. An ad of Nada Maida, a brand from South India portrays that ‘maida’ can make young children active and energetic.

CONCERNS ABOUT HEALTH AND NUTRITION Organisations like the Centre For Science and Environment have raised concerns about junk food being linked to health and nutrition. Persuading mothers to purchase ‘atta noodles’ because they are healthier than �lour noodles, is as much a cause for concern as are ads that are directed at young children. The end result is consumption of food which can easily be classi�ied as junk because of its allegedly high sodium content, food additives and fat. That such products are backed by tall marketing claims points to how consumerism seems to

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As a result of such guidelines food and beverage brands are beginning to become more alert and transparent about the nutritional content in their products be taking over our lives and lifestyles.

COMPLAINTS AGAINST BRANDS The Advertising Standards Council of India received numerous complaints especially under the healthcare and personal categories. In June 2014, 46 of 124 complaints fell in this category and 84 of the total complaints were upheld by the Council.

This year, out of 144 complaints, 114 were upheld by the Council. Of these 60 advertisements belonged to the personal and healthcare categories.

8 advertisements were from the Food and Beverage category.

It is noteworthy that major brands like Coca Cola, and Kellogg’s also featured among the complaints upheld.

The complaints upheld in the Food and Beverage category gives us food for thought: PREVENTING MISLEADING ADS IS A CHALLENGE Apart from the voluntary self-imposed guidelines by brands through the India Pledge and those set by the ASCI, there are no procedures or mechanism to prevent misleading advertisements.

Activists are insisting that marketers should also be asked to run corrected ads as a follow up to objectionable ads.

But while adults can differentiate between the good and the bad,

it is children who bear the brunt of unethical advertising. Dr Atish Chattopadhyay of MICA offers a solution, “ Given that kids are today exposed through various channels of communication, what the brands can aim for is to provide an overview of what the product can do. The Idea will be to make the kids aware of not just the brand, but also the options to enable logical thinking and decision making. It will be good if the brands allow the kids to process information rather than use ‘bait’ or to in�luence through exaggerated claims.” This would mean a substantial tweaking of the marketing message keeping in mind the welfare of society at large.

“Not all brands are aware of the meaning of responsible advertising.

The fact that there is a discussion on the topic, is a welcome step forward.

Eventually, brands that are true to their promise and want to sustain themselves for a long period of time, need to move in this direction”, he adds, adding an ounce of optimism to the debate.

Truth seems to emerge as the most important aspect of successful marketing. As Raja Rajamannar of MasterCard puts it, “Authenticity and truth are absolutely mission critical for marketers.”

COLUMN ANUBHAV NAYYAR

Country Head, Viber India

Customer engagement is key

to building brand loyalty

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Social and digital technologies provide an unprecedented opportunity to gain insight into what customers are saying, doing and sharing

one are the days when the only way to communicate with customers was through telemarketing or through mass mediums such as Television. With the advent of social media tools like Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, the customer’s voice is louder than ever and brands have made it a point to respond to its fans in a more personalized manner and make it feel more human and engage them with something with which they can easily relate to and connect with.

Social and digital technologies provide an unprecedented opportunity to gain insight into what customers are saying, doing and sharing.

According to the �indings of a recent report

by SimplyMeasured, a social media analytics tool, the average top brands around the globe tweet at least 12 times a day. Brands that are establishing social listening strategies can gain a deeper understanding of their customers’ wants and needs and have the ability to measure the pulse of their overall brand health and customer satisfaction. According to a report by Bain & Company, 20-40 per cent of the revenue comes from customers who engage with the brand on social media on a regular basis.

Today, customer engagement is just not restricted to social media talking or responding to customers but brands are engaging with customers through crowdsourcing opportunities.

Customers are also looking forward to participate in several areas like company brainstorming, feedback etc. One such trend to engage with customers is Crowdsourcing. By way of Crowdsourcing, brands have targeted

to deepen their ties with customers. The use of crowdsourcing has increased several folds in the past decade with brands choosing it over Social Media or self-hosted websites. In the last ten years, over 85 per cent of the Best Global Brands of 2014 have utilized innovative crowdsourcing as a part of some pretence or another.

With presence of more than 90% of youth on digital platforms, it becomes an added responsibility for the brands to devise digital media platforms to engage with users. There are a couple of diverse approaches to source ideas from the crowd; setting up a dedicated microsite to run a contest, or involve consumers using a brand’s social media channels. Alternatively, initiatives can be run using a crowdsourcing platform offered by a specialist vendor.

Recent campaigns like Viber Sticky Fingers campaign, Crash the Pepsi IPL and Micromax Redesign the Logo campaign are a testimony of how customers have become an integral part of brand engagement strategies. With these campaigns brands have been able to crack user engagement code and provide a platform for creativity. Also such campaigns have provided avenues for growth for creative youth and have proved to be quite successful.

In the era of the empowered customer – one who has access to information 24/7 – it is more critical than ever to engage in ongoing conversations. Understanding what is important to customers, how they want to be serviced, and how brands �it into their lives can not only help brands and retailers make more strategic decisions, it can help foster a better connection between shopper and brand.

Pitch | July-Aug 2015 www.pitchonnet.com

25

EVENTS

PRESENTS

Pitch Top 50 Brands back, illustrious jury chooses Top 50

for 2015

By RAVI BANSAL

T

he jury headed by Sunil Alagh, Founder and Chairman, SKA Advisors and Former Managing Director & CEO, Britannia Industries Ltd met today to select the �inal shortlist of brands in 10 different categories. The objective is to shortlist Top 5 brands in 10 categories. The process aims to identify the best examples of innovation, consumer connect, communication impact,

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execution and results by brands.

Months before the jury met, a rigorous selection process was carried out together with Knowledge partners Traverse Research n Consulting to sift the best brands according to well de�ined criteria. But the �inal 50 were decided only after debate and discussion among the chosen jury members comprising Brand Consultants, Marketing experts and

Social Commentators.

The �inal list of PITCH Top 50 brands for the year 2015 will be unveiled on August 13 when the winning brands will be awarded.

Every year, Pitch, the Marketing magazine from the exchange4media group releases its own benchmark of excellence and honours the brands that make it to the top.

The jury also included Amitesh Rao, Director- Brand & Media, MTS India; Apurva Chamaria, Head – Global Brand & Digital Marketing, HCL Technologies Ltd; Dr. Atish Chattopadhyay, Dean, MICA; Avik Chattopadhyay, Co Founder, Brand Strategy Firm Expereal; Jyotsna Makkar, CMO, Microsoft India; Lloyd Mathias, Marketing Head, Printing & Personal Systems, Hewlett-Packard India; Nandini Dias, CEO, Lodestar UM; Sharif Rangnekar, Director & CEO, Integral PR; Sunder Hemrajani, Chairman, Greenway Appliances Private Ltd. & Former Managing

(L-R) Apurva Chamaria, HCL Technologies Ltd; Avik Chattopadhyay, Brand Strategy Firm Expereal; Nawal Ahuja, exchange4media; Lloyd Mathias, Hewlett-Packard India; Vikram Sakhuja, Media and Marketing Professional; Sharif Rangnekar, Integral PR; Nandini Dias, Lodestar UM; Sunil Alagh, SKA Advisors; Jyotsna Makkar, Microsoft India; Dr. Atish Chattopadhyay, MICA; Amitesh Rao, MTS India; Sunder Hemrajani, Greenway Appliances Pvt. Ltd.

Director, Times Innovative Media Ltd; and Vikram Sakhuja, Media and Marketing Professional.

Sunil Alagh, who presided over the jury meet, said, “The jury is quite varied in terms of their experience.

Therefore I have really enjoyed it because I learned a lot today. I have learned about companies and what they have achieved which I was unaware of. That is the amazing part.”

Alagh also appreciated the amount of research done before shortlisting the brands for various categories and added that it actually made the task of the jury easier.

Avik Chattopadhyay remarked that the judging process was very vigorous and well thought out and added that as jury members they were not just looking at the loudest and the biggest of the brands but those that had made an impact.

“We are looking at the ones which are relevant, which have potential, which have actually made

The final list of PITCH Top 50 brands for the year 2015 will be unveiled on August 13 when the winning brands will be awarded a difference to consumers. We are not just looking at brands which are premium and luxury; we are also looking at brands which have changed the lives of millions of people. We are also not looking at just corporations and commercial brands but we are also looking at people, government’s initiatives and public initiatives which actually ended up making an impact,” Avik Chattopadhyay added.

Atish Chattopadhyay appreciated the background work that was done and asserted that the categories were very interesting and contemporary in every sense.

“The deliberations were very insightful. Most importantly we have looked at digital as a category, social contribution as a category and also looked at disruptors as a category. I think these are interesting categories which are very relevant today,” he added.

A total of 100 brands were shortlisted among various categories such as Social Contributors, Impactful Debuts, Resurgents, Digital Strategists among others and the top 50 will be announced at the awards .

Last year’s Pitch Top 50 Brands list created quite a buzz starting from the jury meet itself which was chaired

by Social Commentator and MD, CEO of Futurebrands India, Santosh Desai.

Flipkart was declared brand of the year, some other chosen brands being Facebook, Ola Cabs, Google, Comedy Nights with Kapil, Satyamev Jayate, Tata Starbucks and others.

The list will be unveiled on August 13.

Pitch | July-Aug 2015 www.pitchonnet.com

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COLUMN ANUPAM VASUDEV

Chief Marketing Officer, Aircel

Social Media Marketing: The next step of Business Engagement

G

one are the days when putting up bill boards, running a TVC and some print advertisements suf�iced as the successful launch of a new product. Today, marketers need to cover as many touch points as possible to favorably guide a user’s purchase behavior towards the brand. Given the fact that India’s demographic curve is leaning heavily towards the younger generation, it has become imperative for brands to have a strong social media engagement strategy in place as this is where the Generation Y likes to spend most of their time. Consider this, according to industry reports, 75 per cent of India’s online audience is under 35 years with 25 per cent of the time spent on social networking!

We have integrated social media platforms into the brand’s overall marketing strategy with an aim to create a bond with our key target segment 28 Pitch | July-Aug 2015

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The Need for Consumer Engagement Nowadays, the youth do not appreciate one way communication from brands. They like to be heard, spoken to, involved and engaged with and that too on a regular basis. While brands have already taken on-ground activations to a whole new level to achieve this, ‘Digital’ has become a buzz word today and rightly so! The primary reason for this has been the drastic lifestyle changes that the youth has adopted in the recent times. Their need for ‘Connected Living’ seems to be driving their habits and attitudes. They like to be online at all times, be always connected to their friends and families, upload pictures, download videos and songs and share their views on

opinions on the things that matter the most to them. If brands are able to successfully work around these needs, they would tend to leave a lasting impression in the minds of the customers.

As a young telecom company with a focus on data and youth, Aircel has always believed that Digital is the way forward in establishing a deeper connect with its customers. We have integrated social media platforms into the brand’s overall marketing strategy with an aim to create a bond with our key target segment- youth.

Realizing the importance of reaching out to the youth through social media, Aircel is, in fact, concentrating on extensive online campaigns, where social media plays a pivotal role. Our exclusive social media campaigns such as ‘Dad I am in Ad,’ ‘The mouse that saved the tiger’ etc. have been extremely well received. Aircel also launched the ‘Recharge Store’ on Facebook last year which allows Aircel prepaid customers to recharge their number on the Facebook fan page itself.

The smartphone rage A major factor that has contributed most signi�icantly to brands seriously taking up social media as a platform for marketing and engaging with the youth especially is the rise in the number of smartphones.

As more and more companies join the smartphone manufacturing bandwagon, the customers reap in the maximum bene�its as smartphones are becoming more affordable

COLUMN by the day. Moreover, handset manufactures and telecom operators are also partnering for bundled offers which act as ‘icing on the cake’ for the end consumer. Aircel, for instance, launched industry’s �irst 3G music smartphone – Canvas Beat – offering uni�ied music experience with technology powered by Micromax.

Bundled with a bouquet of attractive offers and bene�its, the smartphone is being exclusively retailed by Aircel only for its customers. In addition, over the years Aircel has partnered with leading handset manufacturers in the country. Understanding the fact that handsets are critical to drive data uptake in the country, telcos like Aircel have matched the smartphone capabilities with innovating data plans and offers. Aircel, for example, partnered with Facebook to offer the platform access to its customers free of cost. Aircel had also partnered with Wikimedia Foundation to offer free access to Wikipedia to its customers.

Digital helps personalisation Another key trend that is emerging today is that the idiot box seems to be taking a beating when it comes to generation Y. As entertainment slowly becomes more customized and personal for each individual, the online generation has begun to turn their attention to all that is digital. This shift highlights the increasing demand for avenues of entertainment, interaction, and comradeship that are customized according to an individual’s personality.

Brands can leverage this opportunity to position themselves as the hang-out

point for the individuals by building relevant and active communities. ‘Openness’ being an inherent nature of social media, brands belonging to different genres are now able to create stronger bonds, and also get real time feedback on their products and on-going campaign/brand exercises, that are running on the digital medium as well as ‘above the line’.

Social Media and ROI Therefore, while it can be concluded that social media is an emerging medium that is being rapidly adopted by the demographic dividend of the country today, it also yields return on investment, critical for marketers. In what appears to be a higher calling in marketing, social media whilst showing the way towards the future of the brands, goes easy on the brand’s budget for marketing. One major reason for the on-going shift in budget allotments is the cost of advertising.

According to industry reports, starting at $1 a day, Facebook ads provide the lowest cost for every 1,000 impressions. Not only is the medium cost-effective, but also provides a measurable reach, due to which the average advertising expenditure has increased to 31% on social media. With the on-going shift in eye-balls, we believe that the growth on social media ad spends is only going to increase in the upcoming years, with almost 50% of the

mobile users being under 25 years of age.

In this context, telcos are one of the most active categories on social media today. For Aircel, it will be right to say that social media is our lens into the business and relationships that are created between brands and customers. We believe that it is important for Social media to be unlocked across the organization and not aligned to just one department or function.

The opportunity lies in realizing and acting on the latest trends or issues, and delivering a customized brand communication that helps create an emotional connect with the customers.

Digital allows the brand to be virtually available to the customer, for every purpose, at all times

Social media, whilst showing the way towards the future of the brands, goes easy on the brand’s budget for marketing

Pitch | July-Aug 2015 www.pitchonnet.com

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FEATURE : SECTOR ANALYSIS

Male Grooming Products come of Age, As the Market

Explodes Men get spoilt for choice as the male grooming industry feeds off the new- found vanity among men

By RAVI BANSAL

T

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ill just a few years ago, the beauty and personal care industry was dominated by products meant only for women. The industry catered to the needs and vanity of the fairer sex. Brand wars were rife in this segment as new products were launched and new players joined the game. Today, it’s time for the same brands to woo men and almost all have jumped onto the male grooming products bandwagon.

Philips has launched a wide range of men’s grooming electronic products which include Shavers, trimmers and body grooming kits designed especially for men. The body grooming solutions were launched in June, with actor Arjun Kapoor as the brand ambassador describing how he could relate with the products.

Earlier, the products for men were limited to deodorants and razors. It was a general notion that men did not

FEATURE : SECTOR ANALYSIS

in India need specialist products to spruce themselves up. Cut to the present day. Brands are trying hard to expand their base in the now booming male grooming industry and have launched a plethora of products for men. Almost every brand has created a different segment for men’s products.

Much of this can be attributed to the slew of TV commercials of products that have raised awareness about the need for men to groom themselves. Garnier came out with Garnier Men in May, 2009, when it launched a range of products including fairness creams, face scrubs and face washes. The company roped in John Abraham for the category. For a brief period, the brand made newbie Sushant Singh Rajput its brand ambassador, but now again John is endorsing the brand’s products.

Similarly, Nivea came out with Nivea Men and launched a complete bouquet of Male Grooming Products. Actor Arjun Rampal has been roped in as the brand ambassador for these customized products for men.

Pitch | July-Aug 2015 www.pitchonnet.com

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FEATURE : SECTOR ANALYSIS Emami, Ponds, Park Avenue and Gillette, have all come out with speci�ic products for men.

A shift in culture gives rise to the Rs. 5000 Crore Industry This booming parallel industry, according to Euromonitor, is expected to touch Rs. 5000 crore. According to Sunil Gadgil, Director – Marketing at NIVEA India, Indian consumers have moved from merely accepting the importance of grooming to actively adopting grooming products.

“Mobile cameras and social media on mobile have

dialed up the importance of being always groomed. Parlors, Digital content and E-commerce are enabling men to �ind out products that address masculine grooming needs,” asserted Gadgil.

A spokesperson from Emami concurred with this, saying, “There has been a pivotal shift in the male grooming space and male pampering culture since the last decade. Earlier, Men’s grooming basket would predominantly consist of shampoo, deodorant and shaving cream. But, we are witnessing a big diversi�ication in

Sunil Gadgil |

MOBILE CAMERAS AND SOCIAL MEDIA ON MOBILE HAVE DIALED UP THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING ALWAYS GROOMED

Director – Marketing at NIVEA India

Who was the trendsetter?

Reasons for the surge Exposure to different functions of grooming Positive brand equity of another product from same company The rise of e-commerce

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ho is to be credited for starting this trend in the �irst place? When did such products catch the male fancy?

Deodorants were the �irst personal care category to create a ‘Male’ franchise beyond the ‘Shaving’ category, recounts Gadgil. Face creams came �irst and now face washes are increasing the number of products in the male grooming basket Emami’s spokesperson, refusing to be named, claims, “Before 2005, men’s grooming was predominantly focused on the shaving space. Emami is a key player responsible for pioneering this growth in male grooming categories, when it �irst introduced its brand Fair & Handsome Cream.

It changed the outlook of Indian men towards grooming.”

FEATURE : SECTOR ANALYSIS the industry in helping brands change.”

Raja Chakraborty, Marketing Head of JK Helene Curtis Ltd, a part of Raymond Group and owner of the brand ‘Park Avenue’ points out that earlier it was all about personality driven communication, but today functionality is becoming as important.

Newer categories like skin care are emerging. Men are getting exposed to different functions of grooming that go beyond ‘seduction’.

“Even in apparel, brands are rediscovering themselves by exposing men to new roles in society. I guess brands across categories, be it personal care or apparel, are contributing,” said Chakraborty.

NEWER SUBCATEGORIES ARE HELPING THE INDUSTRY TO EXPAND INCREASING REVENUE STREAMS, HENCE MAKING THEM MORE SUSTAINABLE IN THE FUTURE Raja Chakraborty | Marketing Head of JK Helene Curtis Ltd

the Emami spokesperson. Positive brand equity of one product can help other products from the same company; however any negative response can also have a similar effect. Therefore, the need for companies to ensure that product

grooming category.

On- line product content and e-tailing is a perfect eco- system for the Indian male to adopt personal care categories, feels Gadgil.

Philips recently launched a social media campaign ‘The Unpain’ while

Though FMCG brands are still at an experimental stage in this new sphere, very soon etailers will play a critical role especially in the male grooming category Can New Categories help in expansion of industry?

The booming industry is also witnessing a constant change with skin care and hair care products equally driving sales for brands just like deodorants and shaving products.

To this, Chakraborty adds, “Of course, newer subcategories are helping the industry to expand increasing revenue streams, hence making them more sustainable in the future. Categories like Hair Care and Skin Care are segments where the consumer tends to be more loyal than categories like Deodorants; hence new categories will help brands become sustainable in future.”

Diversi�ication has its own advantages and disadvantages, feels

quality, communication and other initiatives around the range is in sync and complementary to each other.

E-Commerce gives the sector a shot in the arm With the recent rise of the e-commerce sector in India, brands have become more aggressive and are launching new products backed by strong media campaigns.

Though FMCG brands are still at an experimental stage in this new sphere, asserts Chakroborty, very soon etailers will play a critical role especially in the male grooming category. The younger audience or the millennials will lead the way in this, being early adopters of technology and also the core TG of the male

unveiling its new range of Body Grooming Products.

Anurita Chopra, Director Marketing, Personal Care, Philips Consumer Lifestyle said, “We found a lot of young men struggling with issues of personal care. We found that many were talking about their body as well and they were looking at scissors, razors and creams but they had a huge number of issues and a lot of embarrassing moments. We tested a lot of products in India for Indian skin, Indian hair and we found that actually what’s really bothering a man is the pain.”

It might have started with ‘What a Woman wants’ but for our brands today ‘What a Man wants’ holds equal importance.

Pitch | July-Aug 2015 www.pitchonnet.com

33

FEATURE : SOCIAL MEDIA

Why Why Brands Brands are are loving loving Instagram Instagram

By RASHI BISARIA

T

he latest brand to hop onto the Instagram bandwagon is Maybelline New York, the makeup brand known for its innovative digital campaigns. By launching the Instagram Colossal eye store, Maybelline has made an attempt to engage with its internet savvy customers who are always found online. The Eye store is a customised tool for consumers to try out new looks. With just a few taps, the user can follow the steps and get the desired look.

In January 2015, the photo-sharing social media site boasted 300 million active users and growing. Marketers are �locking to the medium for image sharing with users, with plans to increase their use of Instagram in their marketing mix this year. Instagram is a close third in the list of fastest

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growing social media platforms, behind Tumblr and Pinterest. Brands like AirBnB, Expedia, National Geographic and Starbucks have used visual storytelling in ways previously unimaginable. The top 5 brands on Instagram according to live Instagram statistics on June 15, are National Geographic, followed by Victoria’s Secret, Nike, H&M and Forever 21 in that order.

In India, the image sharing platform is taking some time to play catch up with the likes of Facebook but some brands have already woken up to its potential. These brands have a stronghold on their content strategy and wish to leverage their own visual appeal through innovative storytelling. One recent example is that of Paytm. The tech recharge and shopping company decided to tell its own story in a meaningful way through pictures. It used social in�luencers to speak to youngsters on its own Instagram channel. It tied up with in�luencers across 8 cities including Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore, Pune, Hyderabad and Chandigarh. The in�luencers portrayed their cities in their own unique ways.

The brand launched its own Instagram channel with this campaign over 13 days. As a result, Paytm generated positive sentiments about itself both on Instagram and Twitter, catapulting itself on the popularity charts.

Paytm is not the only home-grown brand to have so readily embraced Instagram. From showcasing the pre-event buzz to the never ending videos of the show, tech-savvy brand Wills Lifestyle, used Instagram most imaginatively and creatively, to celebrate fashion at the Fashion Week.

The various visual elements of the show have lent themselves easily to a platform like Instagram.

In February this year, National Geographic saw overwhelming participation on Instagram for its Nat Geo Moment Awards, in just 4 days.

The #GreatInstagramexchange set out to kindle friendships between strangers through photographs that gave a peep into their world. It was a massive open-to-all annual competition. Commenting on the innovative and sensitive nature of the campaign, Debarpita Banerjee, Vice President, Marketing and Communication, NGC Networks and Fox International Channels said, “All of us have an innate desire to capture our favorite moments and share our view of the world with others. Through this campaign, we hope to encourage creativity and bring out the talent of a million amateur and aspiring photographers in the country. The contest is not about technical �inesse

but about a moment which can be very simple and touching.” The participation was not limited to India and countries like Sri Lanka, Dubai, Malaysia also participated.

But what has got brands excited lately is the possibility of unlimited and targeted advertising on this photo-sharing site. Advertising was �irst introduced on Instagram last year.

In June 2015, Instagram gave a fresh boost to brands by opening its doors wide open to advertisers. It is giving access to brands to its large user base.

It has also come up with tools like ‘ Shop Now’, ‘Sign Up’ and ‘Install Now’ buttons. It is planning to integrate with Facebook’s ad buying facility to enable advertisers to purchase ads. It will also be allowing better forms of targeting for advertisers. But experts believe that even though the integration will take place, advertisers will be safer treating Facebook and Instagram as separate entities and what may work for one may not work for the other.

So now brands can go beyond the carousel ads on Instagram and make use of other Facebook ad features and newly launched tools.

From being a favourite with teens and young adults to becoming a part of marketers’ social media strategy, Instagram has made the journey quite quickly. It �irst rolled out ads in 2013 and this year has opened itself up for all advertisers. With powerful tools for advertisers and a free-for-all advertising space, Instagram is fast Pitch | July-Aug 2015 www.pitchonnet.com

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FEATURE : DIGITAL

Is third party verification of digital ads needed in India?

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he digital marketing ecosystem is the fastest growing medium; in India and the world. Google and Facebook have emerged as the most important platforms for digital advertisers. They provide all the bene�its that one associates with digital advertising; reach, great targeting capability and precise metrics. However, it seems that the spectre of ad viewability is refusing to let go of them.

Ad Age, in a recent article, claimed that some brands like Kellogg are pulling out of deals with big publishers, including YouTube and Facebook over viewability issues.

These brands want to bring in neutral companies to check whether their ads are actually being seen; something the latter are not too keen on.

A digital professional, who did not wish to be named, said, the issue started once Google released its viewability study earlier this year.

In that study, it said that 56.1 per cent of online ads are not viewable, which means that even though they might appear on the page, they are not actually seen by the visitor.

Understandably, it created a storm among advertisers and media agencies as it turns the whole premise on which

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digital advertising has been built on its head.

For example, let us consider that a marketer spends Rs 200 for every 1,000 impressions his ad gets online (CPM model). Google’s study says these impressions need not necessarily be actual views, some digital professionals attribute this to banner blindness, when the viewer subconsciously ignores banner ads.

But the reasons are many. Yet another concern, according to the head of a digital agency, is that percentage of fraudulent clicks/views for digital ads could be as high as 40 per cent.

So, not only does it seem that advertisers are paying money for ads that are not being seen but a large number of these clicks and views might also be circumspect.

Is enough being done to ensure transparency?

The Media Rating Council and the Interactive Advertising Bureau have set out guidelines that state that at least 50 per cent of a video ad’s pixels must be seen on screen for at least two consecutive seconds or more for a video ad to be considered viewable and this is a standard that most publishers and ad agencies strive to achieve.

FEATURE : DIGITAL

But the absence of standard tools is exacerbating the issue and digital and media professionals agree that 100 per cent viewability on digital ads is impossible at present. In December 2014, Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) of�icials admitted in a press statement that different ad units, browsers and measurement methodologies are leading to different viewability numbers, which is creating complications.

To be fair, major publishers like Facebook and YouTube do provide assurances about the viewability of ads on their platforms. For example, YouTube says its viewability rate is as high as 91 per cent (for video views). But these companies are very protective about their data and systems. This is understandable as it is what they have built their fortunes on. The lack of transparency is hardly going to allay concerns that other brands like Kellogg might have.

Another reason for this reluctance on the part of publishers could be that third party tracking tends to give widely divergent numbers. For

example, the head of an Indian ad tech company told us that they have experienced as high as 20-80 per cent drop in numbers whenever a client has got an external agency to track performance of ads. “Facebook and Google are big enough to get away with it,” he opined.

Indian marketers maintain trust not affected This of course does not mean that publishers are not trustworthy.

Ashish Bhasin, Chairman & CEO South Asia of Dentsu Aegis Network, also agreed that viewability has become a serious consideration for Indian brands. “There are ways to track it (viewability) apart from the data that Facebook and Google provide. There is enough trust with the big publishers so we have not seen any signi�icant demand for third party veri�ications,” he said.

Charulata Ravi Kumar, CEO of Razor�ish India, feels that the ecosystem will �ind a solution once the market becomes more mature.

“For a very long time we (India) have

In India, the issue of third party verification of viewability figures has not created much of a stir. been just looking to the West, which is why the over reliance on the likes of Google and Facebook. Once there is enough competition in the terms of large digital publishers, they will be forced to soften their stance,” she said.

She pointed out to the large Chinese digital companies which have created huge ecosystems online like Tencent and Alibaba. “When Alibaba and other Chinese companies enter India with their model, it will be a game changer,” she added.

Kumar also agreed that getting accurate data on viewability is a challenge for digital ads but one way of overcoming this by going through ad servers. “We always advise our clients to use ad servers even though they are a bit more expensive,” she opined.

In India, the issue of third party veri�ication of viewability �igures has not really created much of a stir.

The CMO of a well known hospitality brand said, “We have always had good relations with them (Google and Facebook ) so the matter of getting third party audits has never come up.” This seems to be a common theme with Indian brands and digital agencies, with most either not wanting to jeopardize their relation with the biggies or trusting in the numbers being provided to them.

The Marketing Head of a BFSI institution also agreed that they have not considered third party audits for the likes of Google and Facebook. Even media planners we spoke to said there has never been a reason to second guess their numbers..

Pitch | July-Aug 2015 www.pitchonnet.com

37

COLUMN DR SUDHIR GUPTA

Director, Cygnus Medicare Pvt Ltd

How community empowerment led to building a healthcare brand

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The successful method of healthcare promotion is by providing honest and best quality services, which spread through positive word of mouth 38 Pitch | July-Aug 2015

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ealthcare has been a state subject since the British times and continues to be so even after independence.

But unfortunately, our government has failed to provide satisfactory health care services in the last seven decades. The private sector slowly moved in, took over and is now considered a dominant provider of medical care. In the last three decades corporatisation is slowly creeping into the system and presently all metropolitan and large capital cities of states are being provided healthcare services by corporate hospitals. Unfortunately, healthcare services are lagging behind in tier II and III cities and villages. The CYGNUS group of hospitals has identi�ied this need and opportunity and has made a sincere effort by taking up this responsibility upon them to bring in modern healthcare to this stratum of population.

The last 25 to 30 years of our extensive experience in the healthcare sector as practicing doctors and administrators has taught us that the most successful method of healthcare promotion is by providing honest and best quality medical services, which spreads very fast through positive word of mouth. However, in the present age of too much pressure of success

and busy schedules, some methods of communication have to be employed for awareness generation about unique and extraordinary facilities available in our hospitals. Healthcare is a community based service, therefore, the community in the city and surrounding villages has to be involved for generating awareness and developing channels of help and support in case of medical emergencies. So we often organise a lot of health camps and health melas in both towns and villages, thereby showcasing our facilities and allowing our senior doctors directly meet the patients.

There are a few innovative initiatives that we have launched. A privilege card called “Saksham Card” was started a few months back in all our facilities.

These cards are issued to those people who are socially active and conscious about serving their fellow beings and are perceived as leaders in their respective spheres and �ields. These card holders are invited to monthly awareness programs to the hospital or in the community and some important common diseases like hypertension, diabetes, heart disease, joint pains, stress etc. are discussed not only from the standpoint of causes, symptoms

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and treatment, but more importantly, the preventive aspects and myths around these diseases are addressed.

These community leaders who are saksham card holders are the actual torchbearers and are being empowered

by CYGNUS hospitals with knowledge to connect with the last person in the

The brand is adapting itself to the digital environment.

Digital appointment system, reports on e-mail or website, electronic medical records, not only help the patients but also act as a marketing strategy.

Some people may not be very convinced with this idea as they feel digital media may not be relevant for residents of

try to �ind the gaps in the services and then �ill in the gaps. The gaps must be �illed by the best quality services.

An honest effort of serving our society is only possible by providing trustworthy facilities with standardised quality care in the most comforting manner. This would in turn show positive

chain. A health revolution is needed in our society, which CYGNUS dreams of, but it can happen only with the sincere involvement of the community itself.

The biggest strength of our brand is the management comprising of doctors who understand the needs not only of the patients, their families and society but also of the doctors and other paramedical staff. The top management has a very strong belief in the model of healthcare being provided by the super specialists and specialists in tier II/III cities by CYGNUS. Our brand’s strength comes from our �irst hand experience of providing medical services and passion to provide best quality healthcare to the last person in the chain, at the most reasonable and affordable cost.

small towns . But they couldn’t be more wrong. I strongly feel that every brand should be present on digital platforms.

I believe that for an effective marketing strategy plan for a healthcare group, one has to �irst identify and understand the needs of the community it hopes to serve,

results when the community itself becomes a mouthpiece for our sincere efforts. The other possible areas which can also help in generating trust and brand loyalty are NABH accreditation, offering health insurance facilities with tie- ups with the government and private providers.

Our brand’s strength comes from our first hand experience of providing medical services and passion to provide best quality healthcare

Pitch | July-Aug 2015 www.pitchonnet.com

39

INTERVIEW

Mobile EngagementGoing beyond mere advertising

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With a surge in smart phone usage in the country, advertising and user engagement on the small screen is where marketers are headed. As the mobile ecosystem grows, new ways of advertising on mobile have surfaced. Productive engagement with customers and potential customers is what advertisers are eyeing. Airloyal, a Chennai based marketplace for mobile engagement is aiming at going beyond ‘just pushing information’ and building long term relationships with customers. Through its innovative apps it has opened new doors for not just brands but also for app developers. Rashi Bisaria spoke to Raja Hussain, Founder and CEO, Airloyal to know more about mobile engagement as a category.

INTERVIEW

IN A DEMANDDRIVEN MARKET, BRANDS ARE ALWAYS IN A RACE TO GET A LARGER SHARE OF THE PIE, FOR WHICH AGGRESSIVE MARKETING AND ADVERTISEMENT ARE ESSENTIAL

Rashi Bisaria: Have brands understood the importance of mobile engagement or are they still at the learning process?

Raja Hussain: They are aware and are starting to embrace mobile engagement.

All this while the focus was to do “something” on mobile and most of the time it was running banner ad campaigns.

When they see that this approach is not helping them meet their goals, they are keen to explore newer models like ours where we deliver actual mobile engagement and not some meaningless metrics like CPM, click throughs etc.

How does a Mobile Engagement Platform function?

We work with the brand to de�ine the “engagement event” they are interested in. For some, it is getting a target consumer to install their app, for others it is about doing a particular task within the app, post installation. We then launch a campaign on ladooo to get over 6M users to complete that engagement event. We charge the brand a CPE or Cost Per. Engagement. We don’t charge for impressions, or clicks but only for the desired engagement.

Tell us about what AirLoyal does In a demand-driven market, brands are always in a race to get a larger share of the pie, for which aggressive marketing and advertisement are essential for an everlasting impression. Taking a leap to go beyond just advertising is airloyal’s mantra. The company is thereby set to revolutionize the world of advertising with Mobile Engagement. Gone are the days where brands gained users through mere advertisement. The need of the hour are retention and indulgence which is equal to gaining loyal customers. Airloyal is a marketplace for mobile engagement that is aimed at going beyond ‘just pushing information’ on brands to customers and looking to build a whole new category around mobile engagement.

What have been your achievements since the launch in 2013?

• • • • • • •

Milestones reached: In 1st 7 months – 1M users In 2nd 7 months – 5M users Zero cost of user acquisition – 100% organic Pro�itable operations, generating cash 180 customers. Signing 5 new customers every week 25 million transactions delivered in 1st 12 months to customers 10 member team

Do you think Mobile Engagement providers’ time has come? Why? Yes, this is because brands have been experimenting with Mobile for a while and have discovered that pure banner campaigns don’t work on mobile. They have felt the pain and can relate to our value proposition immediately.

How does Airloyal provide engagement?

Airloyal has launched an app called ladooo. It is used by over 6M users in India to discover new apps, in-app offers and instant rewards. Based on the usage on the ladooo app, airloyal captures very detailed information about its users. These ladooo users check out the ladooo app daily to check out what are the new offers they can complete to get free rewards like data packs, free mobile

recharges, DTH recharges etc.

On the other side, Airloyal works with over 200 brands in India who want their speci�ic target customers to engage with their product, messaging, concept or ads.

Unlike conventional advertising, airloyal’s mobile engagement offering requires the brand to pay only if the target consumer completes the brand task (offer) through the ladooo app. For example, the brand may have an app targeted at women below 25 years in Bangalore. The brand’s objectives of working with ladooo is to acquire targeted users to download its app, register and discover the services on the app.

When the brand engages with airloyal, airloyal will create a speci�ic brand offer and target it the ladooo users who are women under 25 and live in Bangalore.

The brand has to pay only when the consumer completes the brand-task.

So the consumer who uses ladooo gets a relevant targeted task. When a consumer completes it, he/she gets an instant reward/gift.

At the same time the brand is able to identify and acquire a targeted customer through this market place for mobile engagement and pays only when their objectives are met.

What brands are associated with you/dependent on you for engagement strategies on mobile?

Customers from India: Customers like Flipkart, Amazon, Snapdeal, PayTm, Quikrr, Food Panda and 200 other customers work with us.

International customers We work with Ziptel Australia and several other game developers from US and China.

What are your future plans for Airloyal?

We have plans to expand aggressively this year. We have three growth targets.

We want to expand our services in 3 other markets, double our current user base and revenues before the end of this year.

We expect to grow to about 20 employees by the end of December 2015.

Pitch | July-Aug 2015 www.pitchonnet.com

41

COLUMN TITIR PAL

Director, Solutions, AbsolutData Analytics

DIGITAL ANALYTICS How can it help Digital Marketing and Beyond?

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he digital landscape is constantly evolving at an unprecedented pace.

Even though none of us can predict what next year or the year after will bring, we do know, that digital channels are here to stay, that mobile will continue to grow, and that changes will keep coming! In this evershifting and data-overloaded environment, the approach to marketing is no longer one-size-�its-all, but highly personalized. It’s about giving the individual consumer what they want, through the right medium at the right time.

The thing that is making such personalization possible is the tremendous amount of data that the consumers generate as they do their daily activities on digital or mobile platforms. This digital footprint, if analyzed well, can tell marketers which consumers prefer what, how they shop and use their products, what kind of digital platforms they use and what conversations they participate it. This data can not only help marketers create highly targeted digital and social media marketing campaigns but also this can be used as a rich data source

of consumer and brand insight. Digital analytics can help because customers are consulting more sources than ever before making a purchase decision.Analytics can help capture this information and capitalize on it to help marketers better understand customers and their increasingly complex consideration process. Web analytics, social media monitoring, search activity, and online surveys all provide valuable information.

Given below are a few examples for insights that can be generated from such data.

I. Understanding Path to Purchase Digital data and analytics can identify where the customer is in their “buying journey” (research, compare, recommend, purchase). Then based on the understanding of what the buyer is trying to accomplishand some more analytics we can recommend what kind of content (descriptions of features, comparison to other brands, discounted buy-it-now offers) should be pushed in order to maximize the probability of the

COLUMN consumer moving to the next stage of the buying journey.

II. Online Brand & Competitor Perception Analyzing digital data, particularly the conversation consumers are having about your category, your brands and your competition, can help decipher brand perception.

Digital Analytics has lot to offer as an alternate data source for this. When compared to survey, given that the conversations on social media are mostly unprompted,

in social media and then suggest creation of marketing content that have a high potential to go viral. Machine learning algorithms can look into social conversations and automatically identify the topics being discussed using techniques like contextual discovery, semantic pro�iling, natural language processing, regionalism variation detection, sentiment analysis, etc. Then looking at past trends of conversations going viral, it can suggest what topics the content should

driving new business for their company. Directly available measuresfocus on the number of people who go from the unaware to aware to interested and engaged. But analytics, speci�ically Multichannel attribution, can help quantify the impact of these digital marketing campaigns on brand perception and sales; and in-turn estimate the ROI of the same.

One of the main challenges for digital analytics in the next two years will be to track and integrate data from multiple

One of the main challenges for digital analytics in the next two years will be to track and integrate data from multiple online and offline sources this is considered to be a far more realistic representation of what consumers really think about your brand.

III. Content Creation Like when one enters a party, they �irst listen into the ongoing conversation before choosing to talk on some topic, social media analytics help marketers identify topics trending

address, which social and traditional marketing platforms should be used for their dissemination, who are the key in�luencers that need to be targeted, etc.

IV. Measuring ROI of Digital Marketing Campaigns Digital Analytics analyze metrics of a campaign to get to heart of what matters to a marketer—

online and of�line sources.

The second challenge would be �inding the specialized skills required for storing, analyzing and visualizing this big data (for example, natural language processing). Despite these challenges, as many more areas of our daily lives go digital, digital analytics will continue to grow exponentially and enrich marketing interventions around us.

Pitch | July-Aug 2015 www.pitchonnet.com

43

FEATURE : E-COMMERCE

How ECOMMERCE is nudging out PHYSICAL RETAIL

By SNEHOJIT KHAN

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he ecommerce revolution has changed the way India is buying, and mobility has added an edge to it, driving new trends. E-commerce as a retail channel has seen phenomenal growth over the last couple of years.

How are Indian shoppers reacting to this change and how are marketers using it to their advantage. This became the topic of an interesting session on the occasion of the BW Marketing Whitebook launch in the national capital region. The ecommerce revolution is driven by factors such as substantial rise in internet penetration, increasing speed of broadband connections, and an increasing use of smartphones.

According to Aloke Bajpai, founder of iXigo, a travel search engine and aggregator of travel websites, it was the travel industry that introduced

ecommerce to the country. Booking a railway ticket was the most painful experience one had to go through some years back. One of the main things that helped travel to be the starting point was the absence of logistics, considering it was a service which could be delivered in the electronic format.

So the company did not have to solve any logistical problems, making the whole process simpler. Along with this, it enabled the company to introduce innovation in the supply side with more tech enabled forms of travel such as airlines.

What is becoming interesting is the impact mobile is having on the traveller in today’s world. This is shaping his needs in a way that he is always expecting personalized hands on experience. The difference between ecommerce and travel depends on

how much instant grati�ication one seeks from it, because the end result of travel is to land in your destination with minimum transportation cost but with growing ecommerce you expect the products to be delivered at your doorstep. It is interesting to notice how this will in�luence the expectation of the traveller and the travel industry. It is already happening with cabs where you are expecting cabs to come to your doorstep within �ifteen minutes or else you can just switch the app on your mobile phone and book another cab within seconds. Instant customization has become the need of the hour.

The most important factor affecting ecommerce and retail space is the convenience of customers.

Convenience has reached such a point that customers want everything delivered instantly, in their homes.

(L-R)Ashutosh Agrawal, Director, BW ACCELERATE, Aloke Bajpai, Founder, iXigo Saurabh Srivastava, CMO, Mobikwik Navneet Rai, Co-Founder, Tolexo Sahil Jain, Co-Founder, DineOut

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The whole mobile revolution has undoubtedly affected ecommerce and the Indian retail space proportionally.

Every company has to look for innovations especially in technologies that are customer centric and the whole buying and selling process does not end there. The companies have to follow up with customer bene�its and services even after the product is sold so that the customer base increases.

This in turn completes the whole circle of the buying and selling process.

Food industry has also been massively in�luenced by ecommerce in the past one year. According to Sahil Jain, Co- Founder of DineOut (a restaurant table booking service and application), with the on -demand platforms where people were ordering products to be delivered to their doorsteps, there was an explosion in the food tech industry too. Convenience is commanding everything today. When DineOut started in 2011, 80% of the business was coming through their website whereas currently, 80% of the business is coming through their application.

More people are booking on the go, right before they reach the restaurant.

This trend and behavior pattern is affecting travel, ecommerce, food and so there is a change in all these sectors.

When the company started back in 2011, the main task was to convince people to reserve tables using DineOut. Starting from there, with 500 diners a month the startup has reached 35000 diners a month today. This growth has exploded post 2014 when the mobile revolution began.

DineOut is looking to start the mobile wallet facility also which would help the customers pay online along with discounts and offers without waiting for the waiter to come with the bill. They are looking for more restaurants to come on board so that the whole process becomes more evolved and the customer experience is vastly improved within a couple of years.

Another interesting change in the Indian buying behavior has been the

increase in business for the ecommerce companies from smaller cities. It is no longer just the people living in Tier-1 cities who are more involved in buying through ecommerce platforms.

Traf�ic from Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities has increased considerably in the last couple of years.

The other convenience for consumers in smaller cities where penetration of debit and credit cards is still low, is e- wallet facility, which is gaining traction. Bipin Preet Singh, CEO & Founder of Mobikwik said, “SMEs and consumers operate through ewallets, which are fast growing in cities like Surat, Ahmedabad and Lucknow.

Incidentally, 10% of the users are above the age of 50 years.” Aloke Bajpai, founder, iXigo, agreed that the main challenge was in getting the SMEs and vendors online in tier 2 and 3 cities.

India has about one million online traders, who sell their products through e-commerce portals. The online retail industry was worth around 32 billion rupees in 2012, and is expected to witness 45-48 percent CAGR in the next few years thus crossing the 100 billion

rupees mark in very quick succession.

Nitish Kapoor, Regional Director, Reckitt Benckiser South Asia stated that he believed ecommerce was in a phase of incredible growth. According to him,“There are many players at this stage who are chasing several ideas. Eventually, stronger business models will emerge and there would be a shakeout but ecommerce is not a bubble.”

Considering the impact of e-commerce, the requirement for brickand-mortar organized retail is projected to increase from 70.3 million sq.ft. in 2014 to 92.1 million sq.ft. in 2019, resulting in a moderate annual growth rate of 5.6% in modern retail space. As such, the top seven cities of India will require an incremental modern retail space of 4.3 million sq.ft. per annum during 2015-19.

Currently, The national capital region (NCR) has the highest penetration of brick-and-mortar organized retail, at 23 per cent, followed by 21per cent in Bengaluru. Mumbai has only a 12 per cent penetration of physical, modern retail.

Pitch | July-Aug 2015 www.pitchonnet.com

45

COLUMN APURVA CHAMARIA

Head, Global Brand & Digital Front OfďŹ ce at HCLTechnologies

apurva.chamaria@gmail.com @a1purva

The Top 3 of Google Search and what can get your site there

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ore than 1.2 Trillion searches are performed on Google every year& its popularity is due to the fact that the results are credible, accurate and up-to speed. Organic search is the corner-stone of Google’s success and its engineers continuously improvise the search algorithm to provide users a better & more relevant experience each time they use Google. Amit Singhal, SVP Search and Google Fellow, Google Inc., has gone on record to say that its algorithm evaluate a website across more than 200 ranking factors and more than 500 changes have been made to the algorithm in the past year.

Most of these are incremental changes with major algorithm updates being released approximately every 6 months.

For marketers like us, it is critical to understand the underlying belief which fuels the innovation engine at Google. Google is continuously on the search for websites that provide an authoritative, well researched andstructured solution with a good user experience to users. Further layers and complexities are applicable to the ranking mechanism, depending on the business you are into. For a news portal or a website covering

live sports events, real time information is a key differentiator, for e-commerce sites – complete & more importantly non-partisan information regarding the product & the overall category are considered critical.

The thumb rule is that you evaluate what would make your business stand out in the real world and recreate the experience digitally for users. While there are many factors which impact your search results, some of the key factors to consider while optimizing a web-site for Google search are featured below in the Google SEO Hierarchy of Strategies.

Content& Content Marketing

Content is a critical ranking factor in

hy arc Hie r SE O

and how long it will take a �lower to re�ill. This update allowed Google to build in conversational search. With this, Google could answer queries such as “What’s the closest place to buy the iPhone 5s to my home”and if you searched for “who is the president of USA” and followed up the query with “how old is he”, Google would remember you are referring to Barack Obama and return results related to him. Google Search could now learn and improve as you conversed with it and further enhancements have been built into the Voice Search on Android enabled phones. For your website to rank for these conversational searches, it becomes important to understand how your user searches and map their thought process and integrate within the content copy. Search evolved from being keyword centric to more conversation and user context focused.

Google’s recent and highly secretive algorithm ‘Phantom2’ update has heralded a change in how businesses should be creating content and, just as importantly, when they should present it to users. Phantom2 was so named by SEO pundits due to the cloak and dagger way it was implemented, with Google rolling out the update before even admitting its existence. Articles that purely serve as keyword rich pieces of text will no longer be as potent as content on which the user spends time reading and clicks through to the next piece.

Google also looks for original content which

Go og le

Google’s algorithm. It’s weightage in the search algorithm has signi�icantly increased in the last 3 years.

Two major changes to how Google evaluates websites over the last 3 years have focused on content.

The �irst change innocuously named, The Panda update, named after a Google engineer who led the project, prioritized those websites that provided original, unique information which users would trust. Seems simple, but almost 25 % of major websites were affected by this update, with action on some being so severe that they never recovered. Before the update millions of websites had sprung up which had content directly scraped from a leading portal or had content that was of very low value (aka thin content). Google’s locus standi was very simple – if a web-site didn’t provide any unique information which is a value-add to users then they don’t deserve to be ranked.

The Panda update is a critical part of the algorithm and is continuously being improved upon to. At last count, more than 50 of�icial upgrades to the initial update have been rolled out.

The second one, The Hummingbird updateannounced on September 27, 2013 (Google’s 15th birthday for the trivia lovers)changed Google’s core method of evaluating a website. Google wasn’t very forthcoming on the rationale behind the name but they could have called the update Hummingbird because Hummingbirds are very smart and they can remember every �lower they have been to,

of Str ate gie s

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carries high weightage and content that provides unique insights is valued. A very important aspect in terms of rankings is the freshness of the content on your website.

The magnitude of edits and changes made is also a very important consideration.

Simply changing the order of paragraphs, deletion or addition won’t help. Adding or removing few sections/ pages on a website is a more signi�icant update thanrephrasing a few lines.

Having a regularly updated blog section on your web-site via an audited UGC (user generated content) strategy helps in regularly keeping content updated and fresh while if you have senior executives from your company guest blogging on other credible sites it helps gets valuable credible backlinks.

What is also to be noted is that Google gives more weightage to in-bound links from reliable websites rather than in-bound links from blogs created around the links.

Please Note: The next part of the column to be published in the next issue Pitch | July-Aug 2015 www.pitchonnet.com

47

COLUMN VIKRAM RAICHURA MD, VivaConnect

In mobile marketing & advertising, ‘Offline’ is the ‘Online’ at present

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ello! I sent you a WhatsApp but it’s not delivered yet” “Oh! I have kept the mobile data off, just a few MBs left” This is the harsh truth of Indian mobile growth.

The smartphones in India are ‘Situational Smartphones.’ Consider a situation, you have an iPhone and live in a town in UP with no access to 3G and inconsistent 2G. A text email shows ‘sending…’ for two minutes. Now tell me, “Is it really a smartphone in this situation?”

The reality of Indian mobile industry is that smartphones are still only ‘Situational Smartphones.’

Oh! Are you thinking about the mighty metro cities?

Even in metropolitan cities, it is abundantly

The reality of Indian mobile industry is that smartphones are still only ‘Situational Smartphones 48 Pitch | July-Aug 2015

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common to hear phrases such as: “We don’t get 3G signals inside the building!” “Why don’t you change your service provider?” “All service providers provide inconsistent service.” “Every room has a different level of signal strength of different service providers.” Sometimes you get signals but speed is abysmal. Then you call customer care and complaint about all these problems. But does this solve your problem? In most cases the answer is negative.

What makes a smartphone really a ‘Smart’ Phone?

The answer is Internet accessibility. More descriptively, I would say ‘fast & reliable’ Internet. Most of us would agree that a smartphone without a good Internet connection is a cordless phone with a camera and music player—and maybe sometimes a remote control too.

According to the report ‘India@Digital.

Bharat’ published by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and Internet and Mobile Marketing Association of India (IAMAI), 2015, the projected penetration of the Internet is just 19 per cent in India compared to 50 per cent in China and 61 per cent in Brazil. With 81 per cent f people without access to Internet in India and the remaining 19 per cent with limited access—in terms of low bandwidth and speeds, online platforms may have a �lourishing future,

COLUMN

however it is not the optimum mode of marketing at present.

Mobile marketing & advertising campaigns built for feature phones (considered of�line) are still relevant in India Feature phone marketing & advertising work for smartphones but vice versa is not true. All the phones (including smartphones) have two basic ‘Of�line’ features— ‘Voice Calling & SMS’. These days I hear people say “Please SMS or Call if it’s urgent, I often ignore WhatsApp or other mobile messengers”. According to Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), the number of mobile subscribers by the end of 2014 reached 970.97 million and 70 per cent of these are feature phone owners.

Therefore, in mobile marketing & advertising, ‘Of�line’ is the ‘Online’ at present.

Realizing the potential and reach of feature phone marketing & advertising, Twitter acquired India-based ‘Missed Call’ startup ZipDial.

In 2014, Facebook launched a Missed Call Ad Unit business speci�ically for the feature phone heavy Indian market.

To scale-up its reach across mobile devices, Facebook partnered with VivaConnect for its missed call platform.When a person sees an ad on Facebook, they can make a ‘Missed Call’ by clicking the ad from their mobile device. The person then receives a return call for further engagement. It can be valuable content, such as music, cricket scores or celebrity messages, alongside a brand message from the advertiser.

These steps are focused to bridge the gap between ‘Online’ and ‘Of�line’. ‘Facebook Missed Call Ad Unit’ empowers the

marketers & advertisers to grab attention online and drive engagement of�line. Similarly, Twitter allows of�line users to follow the people by making a Missed Call to a speci�ic number.

I recall an article, describing the popularity of Missed Call campaigns – “Google ‘any brand name + Missed Call’ and you’ll �ind at least two recent mobileled Missed Call campaigns”.

Though I didn’t try it, but I believe that it will work for most of the brands.

Voice calls glitter in Media Dark Bharat People living in urban areas disconnect a promotional voice call as soon as they recognize it. Do you? Does everyone?

No, not everyone! In Media Dark areas people value these calls. A farmer or a laborer hardly receives more than 4-5 calls a day and listening to a recorded voice is a source of entertainment rather than a disturbance. I still remember, last holi a security guard eagerly explained to me – “Kal Modi ji hame phone kiye aur Holi ki badhai di (yesterday Mr Narendra Modi called me and wished me on Holi).” That call made Holi memorable for him and many others.

In 2014 general elections, Bharatiya Janata Party utilized VivaConnect’s product LiveTalk to successfully reach Media Dark regions of most of the states in India including U.P., Bihar, Odisha, and Jharkhand via these voice calls. LiveTalk is a Live audio telecasting platform through simple phone call, to reach all those who couldn’t attend the rally due to any reason.

This of�line connect is becoming a hot topic not

only among political parties but all around in commercial endeavors. Campaigns based on these basic features are driving engagement for many industries including FMCG, FMCD, insurance, auto, etc. For example, the cricket world cup is on and Direct to Home (DTH) companies are providing easy options to their customers wherein they can subscribe to ‘sports pack’ by just making a Missed Call to a speci�ic number from their registered mobile number.

Mobile Radios – Let’s interact Phone call based Mobile Radio is the new mantra for marketers and advertisers to reach and understand the consumer so well that companies can offer the consumer the right product at the right point of time. How? Mr. Consumer makes a missed call and receives a call back with 15-20 minutes of free entertainment. Along with the entertainment, the consumer is also given a chance to express himself by giving inputs via Mobile Keypad. This helps in consumer pro�iling as you know the person better with every mobile keypad input. HUL’s Kan Khajura Tesan is the prime example of this concept.

When it comes to marketing, the amalgamation of basic foundation and creative approach can do wonders.

Online advertising is the future , but with internet accessibility always in question, the ‘Of�line’ medium offers endless options and opportunities to the marketers and advertisers, till the time everyone is ‘truly online’.

Phone call based Mobile Radio is the new mantra for marketers and advertisers to reach and understand the consumer

Pitch | July-Aug 2015 www.pitchonnet.com

49

COLUMN ANKUR ASHA

Marketing professional and author of the book, ‘Heart, Mind and Wallet’.

This Unmag(gi)nanimous Life Stage of Consumerism

P

ublic attention, my mother once told me, is like nature’s call – at the right time and right place, it is nothing less than heavenly; you get either of them wrong… well, only few things could be as nasty.

Nestlé’s recent rendezvous with public attention has practically demonstrated what my mother could only theorize.

And while different people have different takes in favour or against Maggi – the funniest being its comparison to Tobacco – what this case points at is the life stage of consumerism in India. We, marketers, usually associate life stage/cycle with brands and how each brand has to go from development to decline unless resuscitated by marketing interventions such as brand extensions/positioning,

If there is one example that comes close to the Maggi turmoil, it would be the Dairy Milk worms controversy 50 Pitch | July-Aug 2015

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among others. But what we have here, coquettishly looking at us, is nothing but the growth stage of the ‘consumerism life cycle’.

A brand is considered to be in the development stage, when it is conceived, developed, branded and tested before its introduction in the market. If we were to draw an analogy, the period from framing of the Consumer Protection Act in 1986 to the period when the economic/social reforms backed by proliferation of satellite channels set the ground for consumers’ �lirtation with ‘brands’ in 1991, could be seen as the development phase.While the Act attempted to hand-hold the consumer out of the long-ingrained spell of tolerance for defective products/services, the

expansion of media landscape led the consumer to a stage where the brands actually commenced in his/her eyes.

This commencement, in marketing parlance, is known as the introduction phase.

Here, with the great in�lux of brands and their earpiercing promotion started the consumer-brand love-hate relationship – a grievance here; a benediction there.

And every other year there would be one big story that would have people coming out in hordes protesting against the brands and their apathetic attitude towards the consumers.So, like brands in this phase, consumerism, too, was on a roll – ably supported by the burgeoning media – with consumers making their annoyances known to the world, causing awareness (awareness is one big facet of the introduction phase) of how they were not alright accepting brands trying, to �it square pegs into round holes.

While all this was happening, the growth phase was nowhere in sight. This, in hindsight, could be attributed to the absence of a catalytic agent capable of invoking the tipping point.

A brand in India that escaped this catalyst by the skin of its teeth is Cadbury. To my generation, if there is one example that comes close to the Maggi turmoil, it would be the Dairy Milk worms controversy.

Luckily for Cadbury, Facebook was born in 2004; at a time when the chocolate giant was almost at the end of its successful remedial campaign to pull itself out of the quagmire that it got stuck into one month before Diwali of 2003. Had it

been a couple of years later, the recovery would have been exponentially painful for the �lak would have got its fangs much deeper into Cadbury’s skin.

In the growth phase, a brand starts seeing exponential growth in sales and other brand parameters. So, for consumerism, the arrival of a powerful social tool like Facebook was the harbinger of the growth phase.

With Facebook around for over a decade and the birth of a million other social tools capable of being the catalytic agents and more, how do we know that consumerism in India has not slipped into the maturity phase from the growth phase? Well, the answer lies in our relationship with the brands and the controversies woven around them.

If we were to compare our grievances with the ones that get highlighted in the developed world, you would see ours are extremely functional in nature.

Almost 80 per cent of them are around the health risks; the remaining 20 per cent split between functional risks and �leecing (companies selling nonstandard sizes without explicit announcements).

Developed world, on the other hand, gets cross with the brands on reasons differentiated signi�icantly on the human behaviour spectrum – emotional at one end and functional at the other. In fact, because of strict laws, grimaces in countries experiencing maturity phase of consumerism, are caused more by emotional reasons than functional reasons.

Coca-Cola experienced one such emotional attack in 1985 when it launched a sweeter

version called the New Coke.

None in India, even today, can imagine, people frantically calling a company’s call centre and discussing the change of taste as if they were discussing a calamity.

Maturity phase of the brand life stage highlights the need for differentiation of the brand offering towards a speci�ic segment. In India, for now, the differentiation, as far as consumerism is concerned, is quite distant.

In 2009, PepsiCo America’s Beverage decided to change the look of the carton for one of its �lagship brands: Tropicana Pure Premium. Within two months, the company had to revert to the old design as people started complaining through mails, letters and calls.

Now, Maggi in India might have been the centre of the nasty avatar of public attention and possibly the �irst brand in public memory to be mocked at with memes, jokes, poems and satires, yet it would be some years before we would see it (or some other brand) getting mocked at for changing the colour of its packaging.

With that we would announce the arrival of maturity phase of consumerism in India. In a nutshell, interesting times awaits us.

Maturity phase of the brand life stage, highlights the need for differentiation of the brand offering, towards a specific segment Pitch | July-Aug 2015 www.pitchonnet.com

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INSIGHT Online Shopping Habits CashKaro, India’s Cashback and Coupons site has shed light on shopping behavior among men and women. It has produced surprising revelations through a comparative study on online shopping trends.

Some of these are: APPs Only or Websites? Women don’t care while men still prefer it old school Seeing the boost in the number of smartphone users, most e-commerce players want to upgrade to an APP ONLY platform.

However, �indings reveal that women like to treat themselves to retail therapies of any form. Our survey indicated that 51 per cent women don’t believe that this move affects their shopping habits. Men on the other hand seem to enjoy their shopping experience the old fashioned way with 56 per cent disagreeing with the move.

Women prefer ‘Cash on Delivery’, men are comfortable with plastic cash De�ining the age-old conventional wisdom that men want the most comfortable and quickest shopping experience possible, survey results show that men prefer to make online transactions with 43 per cent preferring debit cards. For women, Cash on delivery is the most popular mode with 41 per

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cent. Mobile Wallets like Paytm are also gaining popularity with close to 20 per cent of users using it as the mode of online payment.

Categories they are wary of shopping online Ecommerce has made our lives much simpler by providing us smart

solutions and convenient options for all our needs. But there are still some categories of products which consumers will not trust online portals with. Men are most skeptical of buying real estate online with 40 per cent tipping it as their most wary category.

While 60 per cent women still don’t trust online portals for purchasing expensive jewelry. Other categories include Medicines and Automobiles.

Women shop more, women shop big It is de�initely women that have the bigger pockets. The average ticket size for women is between Rs 5000/- & Rs 10,000/-, while the average ticket size for men stands between Rs. 2000/- & Rs 5000/- .Even though men make more online transactions than women, women have a higher average order value on online shopping.

Shopping is therapeutic Shopping is surely like a stress buster for women. The survey indicates that 45 per cent women shop primarily for themselves while on the other hand, 42 per cent men end up shopping for their beloved.

Best time to shop Survey shows 35 per cent women do their online shopping during the afternoon time (12.00 – 5.00pm), while 38 per cent men prefer the evening (Post 5.00pm) Top categories of purchase Granting to survey results, it has been proved that both men and women today take pride in keeping themselves apprised about technology. 35 per cent men and 34 per cent women indulge in buying mobiles & other electronic gadgets online while fashion & lifestyle comes a close second for women and movie/travel tickets for men. Online recharge (Mobile or Bills) is popular with both the genders.

Pitch | July-Aug 2015 www.pitchonnet.com

53

COLUMN SHASHANK ND Founder & CEO, Practo

Building a patient first brand for India I

t’s time. Time for technology to completely disrupt healthcare. For technology to simplify healthcare access and delivery. For the industry to pivot and center itself around the most important person in the ecosystem – the patient.

Amazingly, despite all the technological advancements our age has seen, technology has really not done much to simplify the healthcare experience for the patient. Pretty much every person

Despite the technological advancements our age has seen, technology has not done much to simplify healthcare experience 54 Pitch | July-Aug 2015

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you speak to has a story about just how laborious the entire process is – many don’t even take themselves to the doctor because the entire process is just exhausting.

At Practo our core brand value of ‘patient �irst’ stems from this core insight that healthcare must be centered around the patient. We want to enable every consumer to not only make better healthcare decisions but in fact to make the decision process and the ‘action’ he/she can take thereafter so easy that it changes consumer behavior from ‘ignoring’ or ‘procrastinating’ healthcare to actively embracing and perhaps even celebrating it.

Like all strong brands, it begins with the product. Healthcare, by its very nature, is about trust.

So every aspect of our product is created from the ground up to ensure that consumers can trust us to help them.

For example, we

COLUMN

As we scale globally, the possibilities of how we could help consumers grow tremendously decided to not rely on third party data and actually have a very large team that goes street by street, city by city to bring doctors onto our platform. Secondly, our ‘patient �irst’ philosophy guided us to make doctor listing completely free of charge so that consumers had the widest available choice.

This is why we want to list every single doctor in the world – for free (we already list over 140,000). We also don’t charge patients to book appointments or doctors to receive appointments.

Secondly, we’ve built a robust feedback system – only patients who have booked a doctor appointment through Practo can provide feedback on the doctor they visited.

This ensures that other patients when they read the feedback – can trust it and it aids them in making a better decision of which healthcare practitioner to visit.

Of course, we’re just getting started. As we scale globally, the possibilities of how we could help consumers grow tremendously. Imagine if one could �ind the right doctor from millions of doctors listed across various countries, and could securely share your health information with the doctor with a single click, wouldn’t it make it extremely easy (and for the �irst time practical) to get consultation with that doctor – no matter

the actual distance between the patient and the doctor?

This is when people in every corner of India (and around the world) will be able to access the quality healthcare they deserve and need. It will also make the healthcare industry a global integrated entity working towards improving patient care and we hope, �inally center itself around the patient.

Our inaugural campaign ‘Life Mein’ - focuses on this ‘patient �irst’ approach by showcasing convenience and brings a refreshing perspective with a touch of humor while highlighting every day situation where people have that moment of realization that they need a doctor. Our intent is to talk about healthcare in a manner that does not intimidate the consumer and makes it approachable, perhaps even like-able.

We’re seeing amazing uptake from consumers.

Our 360 degree campaign across TV, radio, digital and social media has brought us millions of new consumers and we’re seeing growth across usage and adoption statistics ranging from 50 per cent to 5x depending on the metric. Our apps have become the #1 apps in health and �itness categories in both android and iOS app stores – way ahead of even the native health apps on these platforms.

We believe we’ve hit the right emotional chord with the consumer and our product has solved a key problem they were experiencing – which is driving such strong adoption �igures for us. We will ofcourse continue to invest in our brand and create more campaigns that help drive awareness amongst more and more consumers around the world so they too can make better healthcare decisions for themselves and their loved ones.

Our inaugural campaign - ‘Life Mein’ - focuses on the ‘patient first’ approach by showcasing convenience Pitch | July-Aug 2015 www.pitchonnet.com

55

Tete-A-Tete with Ashish Virmani |

Q&A

AVP, Marketing at FreeCharge

When you are not spearheading marketing campaigns, you are...

Chomping on seafood at one of the many amazing restaurants in Bangalore or playing Tennis.

The best way to know your consumer is by...

Trying to figure out why they are saying what they are saying to unearth motivations.

If you were not a marketer, you would be ...

Definitely something to do with sports The brand you like the best other than your brand...

Fastrack for being unfailingly consistent in communicating its ethos and also delivering a product line in sync with that.

The marketer you admire the most...

Steve Jobs has got to be the most amazing marketer ever. He showed the world what offering the most delightful UX in a product could do.

He didn‛t worry about researching with thousands of customers to find out what they wanted. He knew he himself had very lofty standards for a great product and if Apple products

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met them, they would probably surpass the expectations of millions of others which is what happened.

When a strategy fails, what do you do? In today‛s chaotic world, If I know a strategy has failed for sure, I am absolutely delighted because that brings with it immense learnings on what can be done better next time.

If you were a brand, what would your tagline be?

Just do it The motto you live by Don‛t just play to win...Play to be better Something about you that nobody knows..

I am reading about 4-5 books at any point of time. All different genres !r You owe your success to...

Being ambitious and never settling.

FEATURE : MOBILE MARKETING

M-COMMERCE to drive 30% of our business in 5 years

By ANKUR SINGH

T

he 11th edition of the Businessworld Marketing Whitebook was unveiled in Gurgaon. A spirited keynote session “Gearing up for the consumer-�irst world” between Annurag Batra, Chairman and Editor-in-Chief, Businessworld, and Nitish Kapoor, Regional Director, Reckitt Benckiser South Asia, covered a wide range of topics—from consumer outlook in India to its effects on businesses.

When asked which ones were his favorite brands from the Reckitt Benckiser portfolio, Kapoor stated that the biggest product, Dettol, is his favorite. “However, there are quite a few emerging favorites like Durex, Itch Guard, Ring Guard and Crack that break the monotony,” he stated.

Batra went on to link the conversation with the theme of the Marketing Whitebook, and asked if FMCG products would �ind popularity in the e-commerce space in the next three to �ive years. To this Kapoor said, “Right now, the percentage of ecommerce sales in only half a per cent of FMCG products sold online in India. The predictions for India could be anywhere between 3-5 per cent.

China moved from this level to 15 per cent in less than 7 years. For us, we can see up to 30 per cent of our business coming from m-commerce, not e-commerce.”

About the price points of these

(L-R) Nitish Kapoor, Regional Director, Reckitt Benckiser South Asia in conversation with Annurag Batra, Chairman & Editor-in-Chief, BW Businessworld

products to be sold online, Kapoor stated that it is not so much the individual product price, but the basket of products. This could range anything between Rs. 100-500. More importantly, we launched a product that was priced at Rs. 3000, and 90 per cent of our sales, multiples of Rs. 10 crore, are coming from online.

“While we talk about digital consumers, spends on digital are very low, do you see these spends increasing in the near future?” asked Batra. To this Kapoor said, “I don’t think spends on digital are that less. It primarily depends on the product categories, reach, cost and effectiveness. For example, 100 per cent of our spends for Durex are on

digital. This is because we believe we have a very narrow audience to focus on, and we can achieve high effectiveness by the digital route.”

When asked if he sees digital becoming the primary medium for advertising in India, Kapoor said, “No, I don’t see it as becoming primary any time soon, but, of course, a very signi�icant medium in the coming years.”

Talking of tackling controversy in the digital era, Kapoor stated that brands must be part of the conversation. “If you are not part of the negative conversation happening about your brand, it will trigger another spiral of negative sentiment among consumers.”

Pitch | July-Aug 2015 www.pitchonnet.com

57

NEWS of the

month

‘Pungency’ is the theme behind Dhara’s new campaign

D

hara, the cooking oil brand of India, unveiled its new campaign for its Kachi Ghani Mustard Oil variant.

The campaign plays on jhanjh (meaning pungency), and makes the word colloquial.

The TVC correlates ‘jhanjh’ to attitude. A series of 3 different scripts, showcase an upcoming singer, a party worker and a footballer aiming to make it big in their respective �ields being guided by their Gurus. The gurus tell them that while they have the talent, they do not have the X factor or ‘jhanjh’ to make it big.

Minions hijack McDonald’s outlets in India

T

he Minion fever hit McDonald’s, as the global food service retailer brought the small, joyful, yellow goggled creatures to win over customers and give them a chance to add to their Minion merchandise collection. Specially designed merchandise such as funky Minion wrist bands and head gear will accompany the minion toys.

Minion madness has taken over the happy meal and menu this July with McDonald’s offering food items inspired by the Minions to complement the launch of the new movie ‘Minions’ in India.

58 Pitch | July-Aug 2015

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Dr. Reddy’s dons a new brand identity

D

r. Reddy’s Laboratories announced the launch of its new visual identity and brand that will guide its actions across the globe: “Good Health Can’t Wait”.The company has also chosen a new logo and a new corporate colour – Purple, which is associated with creativity and wisdom.

The re-branding will be executed

in two stages. In the �irst phase, the corporate brand has transitioned to the new identity. Phase two will see the new identity transitioning on to the company’s product packaging.

Foodpanda says

“Don’t Call, Just Install”

F

oodpanda, the online food ordering platform, has launched its latest ad series produced by HOUSEFULL MOVIES and directed by Sharat Katariya of ‘Dum Laga Ke Haisha’ fame.

The TVC re�lects the ease of ordering food using one’s phone along with the visuals which rightly capture the tagline “Don’t Call, Just Install”. The ads showcase how frustrating the food ordering process can get on the phone.

The six week long campaign began this month and will include radio ads, mall activations and corporate activation programs.

NEWS of the

Zen Mobile launches Sonic 1 exclusively on eBay India eBay India launched Sonic 1, a new smartphone from Zen Mobile on its platform.

Priced at Rs 5999 the Sonic 1 will be available exclusively on ebay.in for a limited period.

Sonic 1 offers 2GB RAM and 16GB ROM with upto 32 GB expandable memory and 1850 mAh battery for longer use. Handcrafted for the Gen Y crowd, Customers can purchase the Sonic 1 on EMI through ICICI, Citibank and HDFC, credit cards and also redeem their PAYBACK points on the online marketplace. All purchases are covered under the eBay Guarantee which ensures refund or replacement in case a consumer is unhappy with the purchase.

Vodafone 3G: Too fast for customers?

V

odafone India, one of India’s leading telecommunications service providers, undertook a major Speed Test driveunder their ‘Speed is Good’ campaign’, reaching out to over 5200 Telecom Retailers across the city.

Vodafone conducted a focused Retailer connect programme, meeting Retailers and taking them through a Live Demo of Vodafone’s Faster 3G network. All Retailers who participated in the Vodafone speed test have been given life sized Vodafone branded certi�icates attesting the data speed.

Along with this, Vodafone has currently 39795 retail touch points in Delhi & NCR .

Huawei strengthens retail presence with value-for-money smartphones

H

uawei, the global smartphone major, announced its expansion in the Indian retail market with the launch of a new smartphone series.

Bullish to expand its presence in the Indian smartphone market, the brand is all set to replicate the global strategy in India.

Following its dual brand global strategy, the company will now also be offering a wide range of its Huawei branded smartphones via the retail route alongside the recently launched smartphones under the brand Honor. Honor, the leading global ebrand, would continue to sell through online marketplaces while Huawei, known for its technology prowess and association with premium and high tech smartphones would be

month

Micromax banks on Hugh Jackman Magic for Canvas Silver 5 Micromax Informatics Ltd., the mobile phone brand, unveiled its new TVC starring actor, Hugh Jackman of Wolverine fame for Canvas Silver 5. Jackman was last seen in the company’s campaign for the Canvas Turbo.

available through a robust and strong retail distribution network. Newly launched Huawei Y336, Y541, Y625 and G620S will be available under its G & Y series.

The television commercial has been shot like an action-packed thriller. Hugh Jackman plays the role of a tough character trying to escape a high security prison with a Canvas Silver 5. The story demonstrates how he uses the slimness of the phone in the most innovative ways and manages to escape.

Pitch | July-Aug 2015 www.pitchonnet.com

59

NEWS of the

month

Carry Your Cool, with Lenovo’s Yoga Laptops

T

he technology enthusiasts, more commonly known as the tech geeks, are the new cool. These ‘geeks’ represent a whole new generation where technology is a lifestyle choice.

It is a choice that re�lects the style and attitude of the person, as an extension of his personality, his likes, and his way of life.

Sleepwell personalises the mattress experience for consumers

S

leepwell, India’s leading mattress brand of the Sheela Group, has ushered in its latest range of mattresses under the name ‘My Mattress’.

‘My Mattress’ is a unique concept that has been launched for the �irst time in the Indian mattress market, aimed at enabling a customer to conveniently choose his preferred sleeping surface.

It meets 2 primary objectives: It meets individual surface preferences and all surfaces are available at the same price point. The My Mattress series is a fusion of technology and buying convenience.

VLCC redefines skincare by launching Facial First in India

Be it education, career development, entertainment or even socialising, technology is the preferred platform. Owning a laptop is not a choice but a need for them. But just functionality is not enough, it has to be an expression of their style as well.

Lenovo launched the next generation of Yoga laptops. With a screen that offers a 360 degree swivel that goes from laptop to tablet mode in one smooth movement, HD screen, Dolby sound and intel core i7 processor, these laptops offer an ideal combination of innovative design and powerhouse performance. Lenovo released its new TVC which shows how a girl teaches a lesson to some men through martial art, without letting go of her Yoga laptop.

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S

leepwell, India’s leading mattress brand of the Sheela Group, has ushered in its latest range of mattresses under the name ‘My Mattress’.

‘My Mattress’ is a unique concept that has been launched for the �irst time in the Indian mattress market, aimed at enabling a customer to

conveniently choose his preferred sleeping surface.

It meets 2 primary objectives: It meets individual surface preferences and all surfaces are available at the same price point. The My Mattress series is a fusion of technology and buying convenience.

Volume XII |

Issue 2 | July-Augu st 2015

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61

COLUMN

The challenges of rebuilding a brand Annurag Batra

Chairman & Editor-in-Chief, Pitch Magazine abatra@exchange4media.com @anuragbatrayo www.facebook.com/anuragbatrayo

I

t is important to build a strong brand, more than ever before.

In times when customers have a plethora of choices, a strong brand with a strong purpose and identity can overshadow the others. A strong brand also has better chances of resurgence should it get embroiled in controversy, like many brands so often do. It could be a small oversight, a tiny lapse which leads to long-lasting effects. Rebuilding a brand and getting it back on track can be a tedious exercise fraught with challenges.

The most recent example of a brand caught in a scandal in India is that of the well-loved Maggi, Nestle’s Indian noodle brand. It may take a long time for Nestle to get Maggi back on the shelves, but longer still to rebuild the con�idence consumers had in the brand. Not surprisingly, the Swiss foods company has suffered losses in its second quarter too after the national ban on Maggi. Sales had dropped 20 per cent due to the scandal and Nestle stands on shaky ground with respect to its other products too.

All this is because the food regulator in the country found high levels of lead in some Maggi samples. As a step towards turning around the fortunes of the brand, Etienne Benet, the MD of the company stepped down and

All is not lost for Nestle. It can take a leaf out of the books of various brands that were revived after controversy struck. There are some amazing ‘comeback’ stories that could show the way 62 Pitch | July-Aug 2015

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Nestle veteran Suresh Narayanan has taken over. But the fact remains that the brand’s equity has taken a huge hit and it will take some amount of expertise, smart thinking, and quick execution to rebuild Nestle and bring Maggi back into the lives of a generation that has grown up on the product.

This will be the �irst time an Indian MD will be heading the company in India in the last 17 years. It will be interesting to watch how he rebuilds the brand and reassures the customers whose con�idence in the company has taken a beating.

But all is not lost for Nestle. It can take a leaf out of the books of various brands that were revived after controversy struck. There are some amazing ‘comeback’ stories that could show the way. In the food and beverage category, Pepsi, KFC, Cadbury have all staged a winning comeback after getting hit by unfortunate episodes.

Apparel brand Gap is poised to return to lost glory. Old Spice found its lost footing by shifting its target market.

McDonald’s has shown great resilience even after getting negative publicity repeatedly and has successfully rede�ined its consumer purpose. It is hard to believe but Apple too went through a phase in which it was overshadowed

by Microsoft in the 90s but has been revived and how. The latest example is that of Malaysia Airlines which has rebuilt its con�idence after two tragic incidents.

All is not lost for Nestle. It just has to play it right.

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