Haven't we heard this before: Why are there so many variants in a brand family? Is it logical? One way of understanding this is by likening brands to personalities.
Personalities can be versatile, but there are limits to how versatile they will be considered...
Just like in school we might have had one classmate who was very good in maths and in chess. And then there was this other classmate who was good in football and in running.
It's funny but true that even if the first classmate who was good in chess and maths ran well one day, it would soon be forgotten and in fact not even noticed. That is because images once formed, don't change very easily.
Now look at another example.
Mercedes makes great cars. So their logic for making the small car is - if we can make a large car so well, then surely we can make a small car too! But as you know, the customer doesn't really associate them with the small car and so they find it difficult to sell. It's also got to do with the DNA of the company. But on that, a little later...
Let's look at another example. When Cadbury launched the Dollops ice cream parlour, guess which flavour they sold the most. Yes, chocolate! And when they launched biscuits? Again, chocolate!
A funny one - would you buy potato chips from Intel??
Okay, now back to the point. When we say ICICIdirect.com, the world thinks of us as online - a format which is for self directed share trading. And online is the opposite of offline! Because online seekers are culturally middlemen averse. While offline seekers thrive on intermediaries, when we say "Securities", we accurately point to this category and at the same time, we do not carry the online image hangover.
There are some people who are suspicious of any intermediary - they think their driver steals petrol (no one has ever seen one do that though! I wonder where he sells it!); of dealers, and of brokers. They think middlemen stand in the way of direct and transparent access. They think middlemen distort the truth for personal gain. This is a typical salaried class mind at work. Such people love the online world.
And then there are people who are exactly the opposite. They infact thrive on other people for 'getting their work done. If something has to be done, they find someone to do it for them, for a fee.
The former seek self help formats and even trade online while the latter seek middlemen who will their respective needs uniquely.
Now what was that about the DNA?
Well there used to be a little gospel which went like this - twenty minutes into a board meeting in ITC on the subject of diversification, someone would puff at his cigarette and say "But you know in tobacco....."!
Saturday, July 4, 2009
"Traditional" and "Modern" brands
In the corridors of advertising agencies, some phraseology is more common than others. Of course, this too has changed with times. But advertising agencies and marketing departments suffer from the same malaise as everyone else. They follow what is trendy. They claim it is well thought out.
It’s the same with the human race. One human does something simply because another human being also does it or will do it. How else can one explain, the need to smoke a cigarette for example. Imagine the man who was the first to ever put a cigarette in his mouth! He must have rolled some tobacco in a paper and blown smoke in. And coughed after that. What for?
Decades later, we don’t even question the inane-ness in the very act of smoking. Our pre-occupation instead, is with it being ‘harmful’, not stupid! Now why is that? Not because the category makes sense, but because that brands inhabiting it have found acceptance, such that they are embedded deeply in our lives. So much so, that we think they define our personality. Such that they re-position even the way we once saw a category.
Yet marketing and advertising agency corridors are abuzz with the fashionable view that repositioning of anything is very difficult and long drawn! Actually like anything else, it is difficult only for those who don’t know. And easy for those who do.
Let’s come back to the cigarette example.
There once used to be a ‘feminine’ cigarette, yes ‘feminine’. It was targeting women. It even had a lipstick mark tipped on the filter! And what did this brand change to? Marlboro, that’s right Marlboro of the Marlboro man fame. And today it is difficult to visualize a more macho brand! Incidentally the handsome cowboy model died of lung cancer in real life.
Likewise there is another example that comes to mind in the context of advertising and marketing belief stereotypes. Under this trendy notion, all brands of the past and present are assumed to be ‘traditional’ and so their desired goal, their evolution is taken to be ‘modern’. And this is where the trouble starts. (Of course, it is true that there are some brands - MNCs often show the tendency - that court vernacular with an equally illogical passion, that it appears, and is contrived).
Now take a deeper look at the urban Indian consumer and the popular culture that surrounds him or her.
An Indian bahu smokes in office.
An IT professional consults an astrologer.
A fashion guru fasts on Tuesday.
The vacuum cleaner pleads and pleads and tries hard to replace the Indian Ayah, but the Indian Ayah rules unabated. The same doesn’t hold true for the washing machine, a proud possession of the housewife; her gadgety vengeance against the husband!)
And now modern chocolates are gift wrapped for Diwali while the traditional ladoo watches in horror.
The tabeez peeps out uncertainly from under a lycra ganjee.
And on Saturday night, at their western best, young men with drooping trousers and young women with lifted spirits open their armpits to the wind and dance all night to Bhangra Pop.
Yet brands continue to be fond choosing either tradition or modernity, even though the Indian consumer has clearly chosen both.
Let’s look at one more example. An example of how it impacts service philosophy, in this case in the world of airlines.
A young girl who wears salwar kameez on holidays, sculpts blood red western attire around herself while on duty; paints her eye brows and eyelids in a gleaming something; blushes her cheekbones high and looks like a mannequin carved under neon signs while proceeding to serve with tongs, aaloo paranthas in plastic-wrapped pickle, in an accent that is somewhere between American, Italian and Sri Lankan. Just roll the flight announcement on your tongue, in that familiar and distinctive accent that you last heard on flight: “Kursi ki pethhi baaaaand leejiye”.
Yet brands forever ponder about these two worlds of tradition and modernity, the euphemism for which is ‘Indian’ or ‘Western’.
Can there be watertight classifications of brands as modern or traditional? Or is it simply Indian? If it has to be authentic, it doesn’t have to fall into the ‘traditional’ archetype. It must speak the language of its particular and specific catchment. Why must service personnel of ‘big’ brands always speak in English to customers? Or speak Hindi in such an accent that it actually alienates a customer instead of getting him closer.
Why should the customer’s comfort not be the main criteria?
Now a professional working in a metro afterall has a ‘small town soul’. He almost invariably hails from somewhere else even if he is found of saying “basically I am from Delhi”. So we now live in metros, but have our origins elsewhere, from some small town or the other. So whenever the small town manifests itself in our metro paced lives, we respond to it with the same feeling as we do to an old favourite song.
Remember ladies and gentlemen, after the fourth drink, it is Kishore Kumar all the way!
Brands in India have to be rooted in the prevailing popular culture. And India as we know, is much more than a crucible of different cultures simmering in one cauldron. It is in fact the compression of various multi-cultural historical interventions and influences through its long existence as a civilization. That is what gives us our pluralism, which besides including all communities, also blurs the seemingly sharp boundaries between ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’.
So have a happy weekend. Shed the tie guys and let the winds of bhangra pop take over!
The Small Town Soul and timelessness of Brand ideas
Often there is quite a song and dance about the impact of differentiated brand communication. Even though it is more than clear that a lot of advertising suffers from sameness in its laboured desire to look different.
A close observation will reveal that the appearance of advertising is like the appearance of people really. All young men studying in colleges in the metro cities tend to go to beauty parlours, which for them are called by male names. The word ‘unisex’ had to be invented to rationalise this societal code and to place all men and women within the same rental of real estate. And out they come, (the men) with ‘different’ hairstyles called ‘hairdos’ (a new name had to be invented for this). But closer scrutiny reveals that each of them emerges from the same saloon and parlour looking much the same! But that’s not true of old timers who look different than the youngsters. But then they look like each other.
Advertising is no different. A bunch of ads look quite the same, though different from another bunch of ads, which among themselves look the same! And like changing hairstyles they change with time. Who says advertising is immune to fashion? But then, when set within the same period they look the same, in their demanding desire to look delightfully different.
If a creative director of an advertising agency has a set of beliefs set in a time context, loosely referred to as ‘fashion’, then so does the client. So when thoughts are vastly different, the client prevails. But when the beliefs are common, they agree on an advertising idea, which suffers from the similarity, since another client and his / her agency must have agreed on the same one. We tend to agree on the safe ones that ride today’s trend.
Now that sounds confusing. Simply because it is!
So let’s easen the load on our mind with the help of examples:
In today’s day and age, we find the television replete with a full bunch of ads purporting enlightened differentiation, while being set in the same setting of a hospital ward for example, with a father nearly screaming “It’s a girl!” I haven’t seen a father do that though. We may want him to but he doesn’t, at least not in the manner of Columbus discovering America.
Now that ubiquitous cute dog has become such an acceptable idea, that it is almost spawned of as a full creative route. Notice how you may well have a neighbour who tearfully adopts what was earlier called a ‘street dog’ or ‘pariah’ with much fanfare, and feed it on the road with no responsibility for it vaccination or any concern for its training. So the dog now feeds ads and ads feed dogs, while people develop new phraseology to exclaim every other day about every other dog - “Choooo Chweeet!” Not that there is a problem in being a dog lover, but it’s the recency of the fashion that is noteworthy.
Now it is a formula - when in doubt, put a dog in the film. If not, then show a child. To pep up matters further show a child with a dog. Still not happy, tell the agency to play some music and show some fading romanticism. The brief here is simple - “Give us something different”. The result is the same!
Print advertising suffers the same malady.
Why must all Swiss watch ads show only the watch or a celebrity and nothing else?
Why must all airline ads show a plane in flight, when the experience of the flight is actually inside and when the plane looks the same from outside?
And when set inside, why must they only show food? Especially since their food is almost always stale (another reason why we prefer the liquor!)
But then there are brands that try to root themselves in a thought that germinates from a need to seek timeless appeal - like the Absolut Vodka ads where the space is filled by only the bottle in a world of liquor where every other brand tries hard to show a celebration or premiumness.
Sure McDonalds shows children, but from the viewpoint of a child and not from the viewpoint of an adult or adult’s notion of cute children and / or childhood.
Take the Jaguar advertising which actually goes so far as to feed the product and vice versa. How else would one explain, how every boy lusts for a Jaguar as it passes by, and not for any other car. As for its advertising, it plays to the boy in every man.
Remember how when we go to a mall and watch someone whacking the ball into the cricket nets, a private smile ceases the moment and makes us inform whosoever is near us - ‘I used be quite good at this’ or some such thing. Whatever the man may be today, there is timeless appeal in his boyhood.
Lets look within ourselves now. And we will discover when we shed our metro make-up that suddenly we are not in a hurry. That we love to talk, the moment we reach home after a long day in a ‘metro’ office. Now let’s trace it back further. Why do we love to talk? Or better still who loves to talk? Well, the person who lives in a small town. Conversations without an agenda, not driven by the motivation to profit at the end of it are some elements of the small town conversation. Its the small things that one talks about. It has an element of banter; it is a version of aimlessness. It is accompanied by a smile. It is needlessly long. It evokes and delivers open laughter, that is not of the practiced kind. Nothing is rehearsed. It is real and authentic, not metallic, hurried or synthetic. Its like cotton, not terricot; wood, not glass; matte, not gloss; soap, not perfume.
Its not like a male beauty parlour called by another name. It is timeless, because it is set outside the influence of fashion. It resonates with our origins, not our projected selves, but our real selves. After all, wherever we may now be and wherever we may choose to head, we all hail from some small town or the other. So even through our mascara eyes, or through our Versace ‘shades’, when we see a sight that reminds us of home, we trust it because it come from home.
That’s because, between origin and destination, while it is fashionable for advertising to choose the latter, but that need not be the case.
So anyone for haircut and champi over the weekend?
A close observation will reveal that the appearance of advertising is like the appearance of people really. All young men studying in colleges in the metro cities tend to go to beauty parlours, which for them are called by male names. The word ‘unisex’ had to be invented to rationalise this societal code and to place all men and women within the same rental of real estate. And out they come, (the men) with ‘different’ hairstyles called ‘hairdos’ (a new name had to be invented for this). But closer scrutiny reveals that each of them emerges from the same saloon and parlour looking much the same! But that’s not true of old timers who look different than the youngsters. But then they look like each other.
Advertising is no different. A bunch of ads look quite the same, though different from another bunch of ads, which among themselves look the same! And like changing hairstyles they change with time. Who says advertising is immune to fashion? But then, when set within the same period they look the same, in their demanding desire to look delightfully different.
If a creative director of an advertising agency has a set of beliefs set in a time context, loosely referred to as ‘fashion’, then so does the client. So when thoughts are vastly different, the client prevails. But when the beliefs are common, they agree on an advertising idea, which suffers from the similarity, since another client and his / her agency must have agreed on the same one. We tend to agree on the safe ones that ride today’s trend.
Now that sounds confusing. Simply because it is!
So let’s easen the load on our mind with the help of examples:
In today’s day and age, we find the television replete with a full bunch of ads purporting enlightened differentiation, while being set in the same setting of a hospital ward for example, with a father nearly screaming “It’s a girl!” I haven’t seen a father do that though. We may want him to but he doesn’t, at least not in the manner of Columbus discovering America.
Now that ubiquitous cute dog has become such an acceptable idea, that it is almost spawned of as a full creative route. Notice how you may well have a neighbour who tearfully adopts what was earlier called a ‘street dog’ or ‘pariah’ with much fanfare, and feed it on the road with no responsibility for it vaccination or any concern for its training. So the dog now feeds ads and ads feed dogs, while people develop new phraseology to exclaim every other day about every other dog - “Choooo Chweeet!” Not that there is a problem in being a dog lover, but it’s the recency of the fashion that is noteworthy.
Now it is a formula - when in doubt, put a dog in the film. If not, then show a child. To pep up matters further show a child with a dog. Still not happy, tell the agency to play some music and show some fading romanticism. The brief here is simple - “Give us something different”. The result is the same!
Print advertising suffers the same malady.
Why must all Swiss watch ads show only the watch or a celebrity and nothing else?
Why must all airline ads show a plane in flight, when the experience of the flight is actually inside and when the plane looks the same from outside?
And when set inside, why must they only show food? Especially since their food is almost always stale (another reason why we prefer the liquor!)
But then there are brands that try to root themselves in a thought that germinates from a need to seek timeless appeal - like the Absolut Vodka ads where the space is filled by only the bottle in a world of liquor where every other brand tries hard to show a celebration or premiumness.
Sure McDonalds shows children, but from the viewpoint of a child and not from the viewpoint of an adult or adult’s notion of cute children and / or childhood.
Take the Jaguar advertising which actually goes so far as to feed the product and vice versa. How else would one explain, how every boy lusts for a Jaguar as it passes by, and not for any other car. As for its advertising, it plays to the boy in every man.
Remember how when we go to a mall and watch someone whacking the ball into the cricket nets, a private smile ceases the moment and makes us inform whosoever is near us - ‘I used be quite good at this’ or some such thing. Whatever the man may be today, there is timeless appeal in his boyhood.
Lets look within ourselves now. And we will discover when we shed our metro make-up that suddenly we are not in a hurry. That we love to talk, the moment we reach home after a long day in a ‘metro’ office. Now let’s trace it back further. Why do we love to talk? Or better still who loves to talk? Well, the person who lives in a small town. Conversations without an agenda, not driven by the motivation to profit at the end of it are some elements of the small town conversation. Its the small things that one talks about. It has an element of banter; it is a version of aimlessness. It is accompanied by a smile. It is needlessly long. It evokes and delivers open laughter, that is not of the practiced kind. Nothing is rehearsed. It is real and authentic, not metallic, hurried or synthetic. Its like cotton, not terricot; wood, not glass; matte, not gloss; soap, not perfume.
Its not like a male beauty parlour called by another name. It is timeless, because it is set outside the influence of fashion. It resonates with our origins, not our projected selves, but our real selves. After all, wherever we may now be and wherever we may choose to head, we all hail from some small town or the other. So even through our mascara eyes, or through our Versace ‘shades’, when we see a sight that reminds us of home, we trust it because it come from home.
That’s because, between origin and destination, while it is fashionable for advertising to choose the latter, but that need not be the case.
So anyone for haircut and champi over the weekend?
REALITY, ASPIRATIONS and "SOCIETAL FASHION"
This has to be the mother of paradoxical marketing oversimplifications. Sounds weird? That's because it is.
But what exactly is this oversimplication that one is referring to, and calling paradoxical?
The first is that when we position brands, we tell ourselves that we must depict reality, not exaggeration. And the second is that when we talk to a target audience, we cater to its aspirations, not reality.
Now look at the bunch of paradoxes in the first example itself. Speaking in Hindi to a 'Hindi' audience comes from the desire to make the brand be in touch with reality. But now where does the ad appear? On an English TV channel! Now if to the audience, the choice of language does not lead to channel loyalty, then why should it matter to the advertiser. Look at it another way. Sure there is an audience that reads Hindi novels, Hindi newspapers. But what about its professional education? It's all in English. So clearly this audience 'understands' English, whether or not it likes the language. Now should it like the language, or should it like the ad? So why does the language of the ad matter? One could go on and on till the paradoxes themselves are tied in knots!
But now lets look at the bunch of paradoxes in the second example. In 1991, Limelight soap was launched to target rural areas. It depicted the rural reality and it bombed. Market research was hastily done to diagnose the problem. The reason it seems was that while rural reality was being depicted in the ad, the rural audience had urban aspirations! The soap was relaunched in rural areas once again, dressed up in urban tonality. And it was a hit.
Now brace yourself for here comes the mother of all paradoxes:
The first example says language and audience must be married in reality - so the language must be the spoken language. And the second says language must be aspirational and therefore consciously divorced from reality!
So how does one explain this. Firstly choice of language is immaterial and does not drive preference, in the minds of the target audience. Secondly, Reality and Aspirations as words themselves are oversimplications. There is no such thing as reality. And there is no such thing as aspiration. Because, sitting on top of these two issues are 'relevance' and 'likeability', with the latter being more important than the former. Now this simply means that it does not matter whether the language is 'real' or not or whether the serving is real or aspirational, as long as it is liked and is relevant.
And above all it needs to be 'refreshing'.
Hindi baselines under English brand names tell us two things. Thing One - that it is paradoxical. Thing Two - the consumer is also language neutral so it doesn't matter.
Celebrating the 'girl child' in advertising is also what one can classify as 'societal fashion'. Have all the 'boy child' in this nation been provided for that it is now the turn of girls. So why not just 'child' instead of 'girl child'. The overflowing love for animals is another 'societal fashion' in todays age given the fact that this may well be the age when the black buck shivers when sighting an 'aspirational' film star; or when the tiger ceases to exist.
Language too turns societally trendy with people 'sending an invite' and not an invitation, 'meeting UP with you' even if the meeting is on the ground floor and calling anything likeable 'awesome' or 'cool' even it is really hot soup.
And advertising is merely a mirror of societal fads, seeking to justify it all with seemingly rational explanations, which when examined closely, get tied up hopelessly in knots.
But why does it happen, you might ask. Well because we human beings are paradoxical in our very conception. Remember we are after all animals wearing clothes!
Now this weekend look out for another paradox. In your morning walk, watch that man walking his dog. He is in bermudas and the dog in a raincoat!
But this Know Your Brand was supposed to be on 'rituals' (as per the last know your brand), you might say. But on that, next time
But what exactly is this oversimplication that one is referring to, and calling paradoxical?
The first is that when we position brands, we tell ourselves that we must depict reality, not exaggeration. And the second is that when we talk to a target audience, we cater to its aspirations, not reality.
Now look at the bunch of paradoxes in the first example itself. Speaking in Hindi to a 'Hindi' audience comes from the desire to make the brand be in touch with reality. But now where does the ad appear? On an English TV channel! Now if to the audience, the choice of language does not lead to channel loyalty, then why should it matter to the advertiser. Look at it another way. Sure there is an audience that reads Hindi novels, Hindi newspapers. But what about its professional education? It's all in English. So clearly this audience 'understands' English, whether or not it likes the language. Now should it like the language, or should it like the ad? So why does the language of the ad matter? One could go on and on till the paradoxes themselves are tied in knots!
But now lets look at the bunch of paradoxes in the second example. In 1991, Limelight soap was launched to target rural areas. It depicted the rural reality and it bombed. Market research was hastily done to diagnose the problem. The reason it seems was that while rural reality was being depicted in the ad, the rural audience had urban aspirations! The soap was relaunched in rural areas once again, dressed up in urban tonality. And it was a hit.
Now brace yourself for here comes the mother of all paradoxes:
The first example says language and audience must be married in reality - so the language must be the spoken language. And the second says language must be aspirational and therefore consciously divorced from reality!
So how does one explain this. Firstly choice of language is immaterial and does not drive preference, in the minds of the target audience. Secondly, Reality and Aspirations as words themselves are oversimplications. There is no such thing as reality. And there is no such thing as aspiration. Because, sitting on top of these two issues are 'relevance' and 'likeability', with the latter being more important than the former. Now this simply means that it does not matter whether the language is 'real' or not or whether the serving is real or aspirational, as long as it is liked and is relevant.
And above all it needs to be 'refreshing'.
Hindi baselines under English brand names tell us two things. Thing One - that it is paradoxical. Thing Two - the consumer is also language neutral so it doesn't matter.
Celebrating the 'girl child' in advertising is also what one can classify as 'societal fashion'. Have all the 'boy child' in this nation been provided for that it is now the turn of girls. So why not just 'child' instead of 'girl child'. The overflowing love for animals is another 'societal fashion' in todays age given the fact that this may well be the age when the black buck shivers when sighting an 'aspirational' film star; or when the tiger ceases to exist.
Language too turns societally trendy with people 'sending an invite' and not an invitation, 'meeting UP with you' even if the meeting is on the ground floor and calling anything likeable 'awesome' or 'cool' even it is really hot soup.
And advertising is merely a mirror of societal fads, seeking to justify it all with seemingly rational explanations, which when examined closely, get tied up hopelessly in knots.
But why does it happen, you might ask. Well because we human beings are paradoxical in our very conception. Remember we are after all animals wearing clothes!
Now this weekend look out for another paradox. In your morning walk, watch that man walking his dog. He is in bermudas and the dog in a raincoat!
But this Know Your Brand was supposed to be on 'rituals' (as per the last know your brand), you might say. But on that, next time
"Modern" and "Classic" brands
A lingering question often is what is the difference between ‘modern’ brands and ‘classic’ brands. Well there are dimensions to these archetypes, but we will touch just one aspect this time.
Well, in a sense it is like the difference between air travel and train travel. At one level, both serve the same purpose of reaching a far away destination. Still they are different. In fact, very different.
When we travel by air, we actually formally dress up for the occasion. We reach the airport well before time and immediately on entering, the procedures rule and we have no control. Processes and systems effectively take us to the plane.We are part of a queue. Our baggage is whisked away. We know (almost!) that it is safe and it will reach. We are now on an assembly line of sorts with one person behind us and one in front. At the entrance the ID and ticket is checked. After this, it is one section or one counter after another in a defined fashion. Once inside the airplane, the seatbelt and lights take charge. Funnily we don't really talk to the person in the neighbouring seat.
This is a very western journey - very formal and precise. But then when we buy an airline ticket, this is what we sign up, because we like it. It is quick,efficient, systematic, fast, hassle free and also aspirational.The service is squeaky clean. It is silent and smiling. Few words are exchanged. Everything is automated. Even when we get into the plane, we barely talk to our neighbour on the adjoining seat. In effect, when we travel by air, we consume a western type of accessible luxury that efficiently gets us to our destination. It is transactional in flavour. Conversation is minimum.
Ditto with modern and transactional brands. From the time the customer touches them till the time he exists, everything is almost automated. It is a modern world with western efficiency. This is quick and efficient and to the point.
Contrast this with a comfortable air conditioned (AC) train travel. The same person traveling by train undergoes and in fact seeks a different experience.
Sometimes, speed is not so important. Or the journey we seek is not much less than the destination. There is no need for hurry and a train will do. Nobody bothers to dress up formally for a train journey. In fact, the kurta pajama seems just fine! What's more there are hardly any procedures here. One doesn't even enter a highly westernised environment. One does not dress up for the occasion. One talks a lot. There is no whispered service here. Conversations between strangers are common. It is clean but not squeaky clean. It is not silent. It is not just metal and glass. It is aesthetically Indian. It is talkative and free. Conversations are long. And loud. In a train, we are in small town India. It's a world we sometimes miss and sometimes seek. The western world is now nowhere in sight, in look, feel or behaviour. Nothing is automated. There is no conveyor belt or assembly line here. You can board a moving train and jump out of a moving one! This experience is very interactive. The journey occupies a large slice of the experience.
In these ‘classic’ brands, there are no transactions on offer. There is a pleasant journey to reaching the destination that the brand promises. It is high on conversation. It is high on relationships. Silence is out of place here. These brands have a 'small town soul'. They are almost avuncular. That’s why they are inviting.
Are you wondering why this email was long? Well, because no one talks to people who speak sparingly. People like talking to talkative people. People from small towns.
Well, in a sense it is like the difference between air travel and train travel. At one level, both serve the same purpose of reaching a far away destination. Still they are different. In fact, very different.
When we travel by air, we actually formally dress up for the occasion. We reach the airport well before time and immediately on entering, the procedures rule and we have no control. Processes and systems effectively take us to the plane.We are part of a queue. Our baggage is whisked away. We know (almost!) that it is safe and it will reach. We are now on an assembly line of sorts with one person behind us and one in front. At the entrance the ID and ticket is checked. After this, it is one section or one counter after another in a defined fashion. Once inside the airplane, the seatbelt and lights take charge. Funnily we don't really talk to the person in the neighbouring seat.
This is a very western journey - very formal and precise. But then when we buy an airline ticket, this is what we sign up, because we like it. It is quick,efficient, systematic, fast, hassle free and also aspirational.The service is squeaky clean. It is silent and smiling. Few words are exchanged. Everything is automated. Even when we get into the plane, we barely talk to our neighbour on the adjoining seat. In effect, when we travel by air, we consume a western type of accessible luxury that efficiently gets us to our destination. It is transactional in flavour. Conversation is minimum.
Ditto with modern and transactional brands. From the time the customer touches them till the time he exists, everything is almost automated. It is a modern world with western efficiency. This is quick and efficient and to the point.
Contrast this with a comfortable air conditioned (AC) train travel. The same person traveling by train undergoes and in fact seeks a different experience.
Sometimes, speed is not so important. Or the journey we seek is not much less than the destination. There is no need for hurry and a train will do. Nobody bothers to dress up formally for a train journey. In fact, the kurta pajama seems just fine! What's more there are hardly any procedures here. One doesn't even enter a highly westernised environment. One does not dress up for the occasion. One talks a lot. There is no whispered service here. Conversations between strangers are common. It is clean but not squeaky clean. It is not silent. It is not just metal and glass. It is aesthetically Indian. It is talkative and free. Conversations are long. And loud. In a train, we are in small town India. It's a world we sometimes miss and sometimes seek. The western world is now nowhere in sight, in look, feel or behaviour. Nothing is automated. There is no conveyor belt or assembly line here. You can board a moving train and jump out of a moving one! This experience is very interactive. The journey occupies a large slice of the experience.
In these ‘classic’ brands, there are no transactions on offer. There is a pleasant journey to reaching the destination that the brand promises. It is high on conversation. It is high on relationships. Silence is out of place here. These brands have a 'small town soul'. They are almost avuncular. That’s why they are inviting.
Are you wondering why this email was long? Well, because no one talks to people who speak sparingly. People like talking to talkative people. People from small towns.
"Look and Feel"
It's difficult to explain the feeling of going to a hill station in childhood. It was certainly more than just the weather. Just as, later it was difficult to explain the feeling of driving into Jaisalmer. It was more than that rational something.
Equally, even photographs flounder in their inability to describe the 'jannat' (which again begs more descriptors) Kashmir, or the monument Taj, or the soaring reality of the Khajuraho temples. In pictures, Kashmir looks ordinary, the Taj, overated, and Khajuraho, puny - the exact opposite of what they are.
Language too, struggles in vain in its laboured attempt to describe Persons, Places and Things. Grammar calls these three 'nouns' and adds a category called 'adjectives' in its strenuous attempt to describe them.
Now what did Nehru see in Coorg? Or why did Indira Gandhi travel two days into a Kashmiri autumn? Merely to see the chinar leaves changing colours? No, it can't be so simple.
Let's go deeper. Why does a disproportionate part of the holiday experience in a remote wilderness, constitute the phase involved in getting there?
Now if Kashmir was only about a few defined contributors to its heady experience, then all we need to do is put a mound of grassy mud into an air-conditioned room, surround with water, give it a false ceiling of the azure of a Kashmiri sky (technology can perfect this) with a few more condiments added to this synthetic recipe. And bingo, we should get Kashmir! But don't we know better.
Which brings us all the way back to the sprightly subject of ambiance. Now ambiance is what retail formats thrive on. And because they struggle to add ingredients a la a synthetically created Kashmir, they fail to achieve the purpose.
In a mall in Dubai, they ski down on artificial powder snow, delighted to dole up their desert dreams. But a nature lover winces with the experience. Few people return to ski there.
The moral of the story - the mere assemblage of hard material in a retail format, does not a brand make. The 'living' experience is vital. Brands have to live and moreover, the powerful ones are those that titillate one of the five senses.
A Seagram scotch ad story line, set in a cold and misty Scotland, brings forth the fragrance of great scotch. It's like hot pakoras in the pouring monsoons of Mahabaleshwar. Or notice how the car ads convert full grown men to boys, as they watch shiny eyed, bright red cars careening, spinning and whizzing past wet roads. Or see the forbidding, threatening glint in your wife's eye, as a De Beers diamond pops out in media. It is known to cause blindness in alert husbands. Coffee ads and frothy fragrance, now who hasn't been through it.
Some brands however, miss out on this very soft part, given their penchant for placing strategy in linear boxes of cause and effect. So when you see a Subhiksha, it appears to be apologising for its presence. But a Domino's confidently surveys the world with its bold masculine fascia. And a SubWay looks cool and green. Coke bottles look sprightly and bubbly. Big ice cream brands struggle to out do each other in showing dollops of ice cream, but Natural Ice Cream of good ol' Bombay shows the fruit instead, scoring a march. So one stops and enters the parlour. A few slurps into real fruit, and brand loyalty starts galloping.
If you thought it is only about soft products, then think of Dove and you virtually experience cream. With Liril, despite the angrezi, Nimbu Paani in summers achieves that fabled fresh feeling. Just add a Karen Lunel under a waterfall and you pepper the freshness with escapist abandon, a private seeking of all, regardless of demographic and psychographic typecasting. Will only SEC A and B want to escape the straight jacketed world! That's like saying that only men with white hair want to be younger!
And then to call all this sweepingly mere "Look and Feel" is like calling everything below Madhya Pradesh - Madraasi and everything above - Punjabi
Equally, even photographs flounder in their inability to describe the 'jannat' (which again begs more descriptors) Kashmir, or the monument Taj, or the soaring reality of the Khajuraho temples. In pictures, Kashmir looks ordinary, the Taj, overated, and Khajuraho, puny - the exact opposite of what they are.
Language too, struggles in vain in its laboured attempt to describe Persons, Places and Things. Grammar calls these three 'nouns' and adds a category called 'adjectives' in its strenuous attempt to describe them.
Now what did Nehru see in Coorg? Or why did Indira Gandhi travel two days into a Kashmiri autumn? Merely to see the chinar leaves changing colours? No, it can't be so simple.
Let's go deeper. Why does a disproportionate part of the holiday experience in a remote wilderness, constitute the phase involved in getting there?
Now if Kashmir was only about a few defined contributors to its heady experience, then all we need to do is put a mound of grassy mud into an air-conditioned room, surround with water, give it a false ceiling of the azure of a Kashmiri sky (technology can perfect this) with a few more condiments added to this synthetic recipe. And bingo, we should get Kashmir! But don't we know better.
Which brings us all the way back to the sprightly subject of ambiance. Now ambiance is what retail formats thrive on. And because they struggle to add ingredients a la a synthetically created Kashmir, they fail to achieve the purpose.
In a mall in Dubai, they ski down on artificial powder snow, delighted to dole up their desert dreams. But a nature lover winces with the experience. Few people return to ski there.
The moral of the story - the mere assemblage of hard material in a retail format, does not a brand make. The 'living' experience is vital. Brands have to live and moreover, the powerful ones are those that titillate one of the five senses.
A Seagram scotch ad story line, set in a cold and misty Scotland, brings forth the fragrance of great scotch. It's like hot pakoras in the pouring monsoons of Mahabaleshwar. Or notice how the car ads convert full grown men to boys, as they watch shiny eyed, bright red cars careening, spinning and whizzing past wet roads. Or see the forbidding, threatening glint in your wife's eye, as a De Beers diamond pops out in media. It is known to cause blindness in alert husbands. Coffee ads and frothy fragrance, now who hasn't been through it.
Some brands however, miss out on this very soft part, given their penchant for placing strategy in linear boxes of cause and effect. So when you see a Subhiksha, it appears to be apologising for its presence. But a Domino's confidently surveys the world with its bold masculine fascia. And a SubWay looks cool and green. Coke bottles look sprightly and bubbly. Big ice cream brands struggle to out do each other in showing dollops of ice cream, but Natural Ice Cream of good ol' Bombay shows the fruit instead, scoring a march. So one stops and enters the parlour. A few slurps into real fruit, and brand loyalty starts galloping.
If you thought it is only about soft products, then think of Dove and you virtually experience cream. With Liril, despite the angrezi, Nimbu Paani in summers achieves that fabled fresh feeling. Just add a Karen Lunel under a waterfall and you pepper the freshness with escapist abandon, a private seeking of all, regardless of demographic and psychographic typecasting. Will only SEC A and B want to escape the straight jacketed world! That's like saying that only men with white hair want to be younger!
And then to call all this sweepingly mere "Look and Feel" is like calling everything below Madhya Pradesh - Madraasi and everything above - Punjabi
From "USP" to "Value Proposition"
Sometimes people continue to ask a question that was once fashionable: "what is the u.s.p" of the brand / product?"
But that's like wearing bell bottoms today!
Times have changed. Now there is product parity; there is technological parity and so there is no 'u' 's' 'p'. 'USP' is dead and gone - for good.
No single unique selling proposition can sell, for the simple reason that it is not unique anymore. But that is true as far the product goes. The product may be at par, but the brand may be unique. Confusing?
Consider this: while subway sells sandwiches, and could have chosen to sell simple sandwiches, they instead chose to sell health. Now one might argue that 'health' is therefore the u.s.p. But then it is not. Subway offers no one 'unique' thing or 'proposition'.
When you buy from Subway ("Eat Fresh!"), you buy (a) low calorie food, (b) fast food, (c) it is customised for you - so you participate in it's making, (d) it is very clean, (e) it has a different shape ( f ) and to signify that it has a new name i.e. 'sub', ( d ) and it is really expensive! (sometimes we consciously buy expensive stuff), ( e ) There is also a lot of 'greens'!
And of course you buy into some images, colours, tone and style...but on this later!
What subway has, is a "Value Proposition", which when written by a marketing manager, occupies a very large paragraph, unlike the the old fashioned proposition written in a single line. (even 'freshness of lime' is not a u.s.p. Remember, Cinthol Lime also has it.)
Now let's think of different elements of the McDonald's' Value Proposition - ( a ) Burgers and fries, ( b ) Really low priced, ( c ) Children love the 'place' (by the way, the food is secondary!), ( d ) Place for families, ( e ) Drive through (new concept and new name again!), ( f ) Like home (have you noticed how the floor is being cleaned while you are eating! just like home) - 'home away from home' was once their advertising theme, ( g ) Open kitchen, ( h ) Hygiene, ( i ) Steel kitchen (easy to maintain - also appears clean, ( j ) Happy meal, ( k ) Play pen, ( l ) Ronald McDonald seated outside, ( m ) Fast food, ( n ) Limited fare (consciously in order to keep costs down!).
It is funny how in these times of downturn, unbranded shops selling generic food products in the mall are shutting down. I have never seen a McDonald store shutting down in my life, even though their fastest selling product is Rs 20 burger. And no one calls it a dhaba!
Modern Brands have changed in their construct. Now they are multi layered, like an onion. Peel one layer and their is another one below. But yes, they have a core - but on that, later!
The Purchase Process
It’s nearly Friday and it’s time for storytelling again.
Remember Maggie? The sauce? Of course you do.
Not just because you consumed a little while ago, but because it occupies a disproportionate part of your life for the kind of product it is. If you consider, it is not even the main meal - it is an accompaniment. Yet it demands and gets attention.
Besides, it also evidences the fact that the length of the name of an entity has nothing to do with its recall. So what do we recall? Well, we recall Maggie sauce as “Maggie Hot and Sweet Tomato Chilli Sauce - It’s different”. That’s nine words, quite a mouthful.
And when uttered, a vivid set of images form in the brain. The genre of the image is that fun and indulgence. The type of thought it evokes is pleasant, as it uses humour. The tonality is Indian. And by that we mean that it is deliberately slapstick, wonderfully irreverent, comfortably silly. And so when you eat it, you consume more than cooked and pasted tomatoes.
As a matter of fact, come to think of it, it is only after Maggie entered our lives, that the bottle of Kissan Ketchup started appearing dull and drab! So have you noticed, how when you stare at it today, you wonder if the ‘sauce’ is fresh. And so in a store while shopping, you pick it up, roll it in your hands and place it back on the shelf. Then you pick up the fun bottle - Maggie and move on to the next item on your shopping radar. And you did so not because Kissan was not fresh, but only because Maggie is ‘fresher’. Not because it really is, but only because of it’s image, carved out of plain fiction, not rooted in any fact.
Amazing, isn’t it?
But the more seemingly innocuous entity is actually the Maggie bottle. It conceals a whole sub science of marketing strategy. In jargon we call it “The Purchase Process”.
To make it lighter on the mind, let’s imagine a time when Nestle was planning to enter the ketchup / sauce market.
They needed consumer insight to find a unique slot in the consumer’s mind. Remember, those were days when Kissan was literally equal to the category. So what did they do?
A small team (large teams give findings, not ‘insights’!) went over to the Kirana store and quietly observed the ‘purchase process’ of a man buying Kissan Ketchup.
And this is what they observed.
There were two SKUs on the shelf - one a ‘big’ bottle of sauce and other a ‘small’ bottle. Now while buying, the consumer merely identified what he wanted, as ‘big’ or ‘small’ bottle of ‘ketchup/sauce’. So he would say - “give me that big bottle of sauce’. He never bothered identifying the bottle by its quantity i.e. volume or weight. So he never said something like “give me 500 gms of ketchup”. This gave Nestle the cue they were looking for.
Now when ‘Maggie’ was launched, it was ‘different’ for more reasons than just its advertising.
First, it was ‘sauce’ not ketchup.
And it was more dilute.
Moreover it was flavoured ‘hot and sweet’.
It was indisputably brighter or so it seemed.
But most importantly, it was more expensive.
And still more importantly, the bottles of both ‘big’ and ‘small’ SKUs looked different in their shape than the Kissan bottle such that one could never compare the quantity! So the consumer couldn’t tell and in fact didn’t care that Maggie gave him less ‘sauce’!
As a matter of strategy, the implication is even more significant. Now every unit of Maggie sold is consequently more profitable. It has to be. Plus, the price too is higher. Higher price per unit, lesser quantity and still the value offered is perceptually much greater. Now this is what we call strategy. If you look at it, the offering has no rational component. But emotionally it’s a winner. And that’s what makes it a stupendous brand.
At the cost of repeating, it is the same for ICICIdirect.com. One long at what all we rationally give, is still only a partial look. The emotional pegs of online share trading form a vivid set of images in the brain. Those cause the pull or bonding to happen. Good relationships are after all, cemented emotionally only.
Think about it and also think how we can leverage it more.
But come to think of it, there’s more than just the purchase process behind the Maggie story. But on that, later;
(Now they have “Maggie Pichkoo”. Howzatt!)
Remember Maggie? The sauce? Of course you do.
Not just because you consumed a little while ago, but because it occupies a disproportionate part of your life for the kind of product it is. If you consider, it is not even the main meal - it is an accompaniment. Yet it demands and gets attention.
Besides, it also evidences the fact that the length of the name of an entity has nothing to do with its recall. So what do we recall? Well, we recall Maggie sauce as “Maggie Hot and Sweet Tomato Chilli Sauce - It’s different”. That’s nine words, quite a mouthful.
And when uttered, a vivid set of images form in the brain. The genre of the image is that fun and indulgence. The type of thought it evokes is pleasant, as it uses humour. The tonality is Indian. And by that we mean that it is deliberately slapstick, wonderfully irreverent, comfortably silly. And so when you eat it, you consume more than cooked and pasted tomatoes.
As a matter of fact, come to think of it, it is only after Maggie entered our lives, that the bottle of Kissan Ketchup started appearing dull and drab! So have you noticed, how when you stare at it today, you wonder if the ‘sauce’ is fresh. And so in a store while shopping, you pick it up, roll it in your hands and place it back on the shelf. Then you pick up the fun bottle - Maggie and move on to the next item on your shopping radar. And you did so not because Kissan was not fresh, but only because Maggie is ‘fresher’. Not because it really is, but only because of it’s image, carved out of plain fiction, not rooted in any fact.
Amazing, isn’t it?
But the more seemingly innocuous entity is actually the Maggie bottle. It conceals a whole sub science of marketing strategy. In jargon we call it “The Purchase Process”.
To make it lighter on the mind, let’s imagine a time when Nestle was planning to enter the ketchup / sauce market.
They needed consumer insight to find a unique slot in the consumer’s mind. Remember, those were days when Kissan was literally equal to the category. So what did they do?
A small team (large teams give findings, not ‘insights’!) went over to the Kirana store and quietly observed the ‘purchase process’ of a man buying Kissan Ketchup.
And this is what they observed.
There were two SKUs on the shelf - one a ‘big’ bottle of sauce and other a ‘small’ bottle. Now while buying, the consumer merely identified what he wanted, as ‘big’ or ‘small’ bottle of ‘ketchup/sauce’. So he would say - “give me that big bottle of sauce’. He never bothered identifying the bottle by its quantity i.e. volume or weight. So he never said something like “give me 500 gms of ketchup”. This gave Nestle the cue they were looking for.
Now when ‘Maggie’ was launched, it was ‘different’ for more reasons than just its advertising.
First, it was ‘sauce’ not ketchup.
And it was more dilute.
Moreover it was flavoured ‘hot and sweet’.
It was indisputably brighter or so it seemed.
But most importantly, it was more expensive.
And still more importantly, the bottles of both ‘big’ and ‘small’ SKUs looked different in their shape than the Kissan bottle such that one could never compare the quantity! So the consumer couldn’t tell and in fact didn’t care that Maggie gave him less ‘sauce’!
As a matter of strategy, the implication is even more significant. Now every unit of Maggie sold is consequently more profitable. It has to be. Plus, the price too is higher. Higher price per unit, lesser quantity and still the value offered is perceptually much greater. Now this is what we call strategy. If you look at it, the offering has no rational component. But emotionally it’s a winner. And that’s what makes it a stupendous brand.
At the cost of repeating, it is the same for ICICIdirect.com. One long at what all we rationally give, is still only a partial look. The emotional pegs of online share trading form a vivid set of images in the brain. Those cause the pull or bonding to happen. Good relationships are after all, cemented emotionally only.
Think about it and also think how we can leverage it more.
But come to think of it, there’s more than just the purchase process behind the Maggie story. But on that, later;
(Now they have “Maggie Pichkoo”. Howzatt!)
'SURPRISE RESULTS"
Fresh from the general elections, it should be easy to understand what the topic this time means. Actually, haven’t we got used to the media expressing utter surprise when election results are announced. This is how the story pans out: In the run up to elections, their biases are in full flow; they take sides and exhibit allegiance to particular party or persons; they then do their ‘exposes’ and blow up incidents, to make sensational news. Now when the voting starts, they surround themselves with a section of the population of the country, each member of which, clearly appears to never stood in a queue on a hot Indian summer day in his / her life (so it seems highly unlikely they voted at all!), commenting on the possible outcomes, eulogizing heroes and condemning villains-the contesting candidates of the election in question. Now add to that a ‘psephologist’ (the latest ‘ologist’ to be added to the media motley), and you have a pot boiler in the media studio. Now go one step further-connect to a quixotically angry socialite talking in Oxford English about some ‘public indignation’; add a couple of film stars venturing daringly into the elections; pepper it with a few retired journalists and bureaucrats and you have enough dramatics personae to put Shakespeare to shame. Now thank god for commercial breaks, but no thanks!. For now you see a high-tax-paying film star display the electoral ink on his finger and with this ultimate act, our throbbing democracy, stakes claim to a long life expectancy.
And then finally when the results are declared, the media expresses utter surprise, cleverly pretending that the voter too is surprised, forgetting that while they were talking, the voter was voting! So the voter who voted is surprised that they are surprised. But what is most surprising is that this paradox escapes their attention in every subsequent election as well!
Now this is exactly what happens in the marketing world as well. That we wish to sell a product, is not a good enough reason for the consumer to buy! Now the consumer’s choice can surprise a manufacturer as much as the press was surprised recently. And the subsequent analysis too can be as bad as well.
That is why product concepts more often than not, produce surprising results. So brands either succeed or fail, but stoutly refuse to follow the 45 degree slope in the excel sheet of the business plan.
The reasons are also the same. The simple truth is that it is not enough to know about the voice of the customer, but it is important to know it first hand. The other truth is that the right question must be asked at the time of research or testing for the answer to be meaningful. And for this to happen, two ingredients are crucial - one, an objective mind that is free of agenda and bias; and two an understanding of not the elements being received in communication, but the composite appeal of the un-segregated story that is seen or heard by the recipient of the message. Now what does this mean?
Because when people vote, they vote out of sentiment, not out of the arithmetic. When people choose, they choose what they prefer. And their preferences are driven by need and hope. These needs are intangible more times than not. My sense is that people are hoping that Kali Yug ends and whichever party (read people in leadership) can help doing so, is who they prefer. They did not for sure, sit and do factor analysis deploying statistical tools to figure out which party has ‘performed’ better than the other. Just as voters vote with little knowledge, so do consumers.
Star Bucks was a ‘surprise result’ and it was a change. So was McDonalds. But it was not a surprise result to Starbucks themselves, or to their consumers who bought the coffee. It was a surprise to the others. At the heart of the conception of Starbucks, was a simple thought of getting the Italian coffee drinking experience to America.
At the heart of the many retail stores lies some simple thought or the other, of altering behaviour of the human race, sometimes inadvertently. Communist conversations in coffee homes; dating at Café Coffee Day (“A lot can happen over a cup of coffee”. Surely!). Who says Barista in a mall is about coffee and snacks. It is actually a break when shopping in a large mall gets tiring. It is a fuelling station for tired shoppers. But the role the brand purports to play is not achieved in a day. Remember, Starbucks took over two years. Two years of sensing the customer first hand. But as they say - ‘well begun is half done”
But we must always have a deep sensing of our customers and their needs, a rich understanding of our catchment. Do you know, all Starbucks baristas are on first name terms with their customers?
So have a good time watching TV over the weekend! Now when the press gets surprised, please be surprised, but at them!
Marketing Principles and Market Greed
How can any marketing be complete without at least one legend from the Coke - Pepsi saga being thrown in.
More than just that, this story is about board room follies, that can at times be no larger or smaller, than any other folly.
It's also about how a huge brand can come on its knees in literally an instant, when it violates some very established marketing principles.
And it's also about how market dynamics can cause perceptual change such that a highly respected company can find itself completely helpless and at the mercy of a hostile environment that it no longer understands.
So this is the story of a hero and a villain - one of the most sensational marketers in marketing history - Sergio Zyman.
All market research said - go launch the New Coke and it will be liked. The reality was - far from being liked; it was actually hated. Yes, hated.
Over the years, till 1983, Coca Cola market share had fallen from 60% to 24%, mainly because of Pepsi. So when Roberto Goizueto took over as CEO in 1980, he said that there would be no sacred cows and even the formulation of Coke can change, if required. The 'new coke' was formulated and it tested positive in market research and focus groups.
On the eve of the launch, Pepsi started working at creating skepticism in the minds of the press and public. One salient decision that Coke took, proved to be its nemesis. It withdrew the old Coke from the market.
Even in the test marketing phase, the results were supposedly positive. That the resistance to the new product would come from southerners who saw it (in the context of the civil war!) as succoming to the 'Yankees', was lost on Coke, since they failed to get to this deeper insight. Their research did not capture it, for it was blind. It was research without an insight in sight.
The new Coke was launched and all hell broke loose. Angry letters flooded Coke offices everywhere; the media went berserk; and after some 4,00,000 telephone calls that called them names, they actually roped in a psychiatrist to listen to these calls on a special toll free number - that must be among the most (in)famous toll free numbers: "1800-GET-COKE!"
The psychiatrist analysed the problem:
a. More than the birth of the "New Coke", people (consumers) saw it as the death of old one!
b. And till death actually happens (market research phase), one doesn't know what one misses!
c. The death of the Old Coke was seen by people (consumers) like the death of a family member!
The backlash on the new Coke now started gaining rapidly. Now protests broke out. The company thought and hoped they would ease. But they only gained in magnitude.
77 days later, the new Coke was withdrawn and the old one re-introduced.
And now the pendulum swung the other way. Although, it was not a planned strategy, but now the consumers had missed the Old Coke so much, that it rapidly gained market share reaching the No. 1 position once again!
But Zyman left Coca Cola and legend has it, that the company once again became conservative and started losing market share. So 7 years later, they got Zyman back!
The saga continued....but for now, here's the moral of the story:
1. Tampering with the core product can make it lose its meaning in an unimaginable way. Because Coke is more than the name of a certain aerated drink. It was (and is a symbol of a certain kind of America, a certain age, a certain philosophy, and therefore a certain brand)
Many brands symobolise and represent a full age. The reactions to a change in their existence can therefore be far more extreme than one can envision. These brands are like institutions that almost become the centre of gravity of a certain socio-economic philosophy. And socio-economic philosophies may be second to only religion in terms of deep beliefs binding a full eco system.
2. Market Research cannot drive itself - it needs a driver. The insight comes first, the research later. For example, research alone is incapable of telling us who this new class of middlemen averse people are and so that's why they trade online. Deep insight comes from observation of behaviour and research comes from statistical sample sizing. Hence the former precedes the latter.
3. There are age old marketing principles, but they are violated sometimes. That's because market greed and human desperation, is older!
Have a great weekend!
More than just that, this story is about board room follies, that can at times be no larger or smaller, than any other folly.
It's also about how a huge brand can come on its knees in literally an instant, when it violates some very established marketing principles.
And it's also about how market dynamics can cause perceptual change such that a highly respected company can find itself completely helpless and at the mercy of a hostile environment that it no longer understands.
So this is the story of a hero and a villain - one of the most sensational marketers in marketing history - Sergio Zyman.
All market research said - go launch the New Coke and it will be liked. The reality was - far from being liked; it was actually hated. Yes, hated.
Over the years, till 1983, Coca Cola market share had fallen from 60% to 24%, mainly because of Pepsi. So when Roberto Goizueto took over as CEO in 1980, he said that there would be no sacred cows and even the formulation of Coke can change, if required. The 'new coke' was formulated and it tested positive in market research and focus groups.
On the eve of the launch, Pepsi started working at creating skepticism in the minds of the press and public. One salient decision that Coke took, proved to be its nemesis. It withdrew the old Coke from the market.
Even in the test marketing phase, the results were supposedly positive. That the resistance to the new product would come from southerners who saw it (in the context of the civil war!) as succoming to the 'Yankees', was lost on Coke, since they failed to get to this deeper insight. Their research did not capture it, for it was blind. It was research without an insight in sight.
The new Coke was launched and all hell broke loose. Angry letters flooded Coke offices everywhere; the media went berserk; and after some 4,00,000 telephone calls that called them names, they actually roped in a psychiatrist to listen to these calls on a special toll free number - that must be among the most (in)famous toll free numbers: "1800-GET-COKE!"
The psychiatrist analysed the problem:
a. More than the birth of the "New Coke", people (consumers) saw it as the death of old one!
b. And till death actually happens (market research phase), one doesn't know what one misses!
c. The death of the Old Coke was seen by people (consumers) like the death of a family member!
The backlash on the new Coke now started gaining rapidly. Now protests broke out. The company thought and hoped they would ease. But they only gained in magnitude.
77 days later, the new Coke was withdrawn and the old one re-introduced.
And now the pendulum swung the other way. Although, it was not a planned strategy, but now the consumers had missed the Old Coke so much, that it rapidly gained market share reaching the No. 1 position once again!
But Zyman left Coca Cola and legend has it, that the company once again became conservative and started losing market share. So 7 years later, they got Zyman back!
The saga continued....but for now, here's the moral of the story:
1. Tampering with the core product can make it lose its meaning in an unimaginable way. Because Coke is more than the name of a certain aerated drink. It was (and is a symbol of a certain kind of America, a certain age, a certain philosophy, and therefore a certain brand)
Many brands symobolise and represent a full age. The reactions to a change in their existence can therefore be far more extreme than one can envision. These brands are like institutions that almost become the centre of gravity of a certain socio-economic philosophy. And socio-economic philosophies may be second to only religion in terms of deep beliefs binding a full eco system.
2. Market Research cannot drive itself - it needs a driver. The insight comes first, the research later. For example, research alone is incapable of telling us who this new class of middlemen averse people are and so that's why they trade online. Deep insight comes from observation of behaviour and research comes from statistical sample sizing. Hence the former precedes the latter.
3. There are age old marketing principles, but they are violated sometimes. That's because market greed and human desperation, is older!
Have a great weekend!
"Inside-out" and "Outside-in"
"Inside-out" and "Outside-in" is perhaps the biggest difference of perspective when conceiving brands.
They say positioning is not about what the sender of the message transmits, but is about what the receiver of the message receives. And more than that, what unique slot it occupies in the receivers mind.
Imagine a man sitting on a sofa looking out of a window, staring at a beautiful alpine scenery. What does he see inside-out? The scenery. But if look into the window, what do you see? The man on the sofa.
But organisations struggle with this simple perspective difference. And this can cause quite a serious problem.
Imagine The Ministry of Defence naming itself "The Ministry of Vanquishing the Enemy!"
Sometimes organisations create a department to cater to a business objective or business line and the department name gets transmitted to the customer as well! This can happen, but it must be changed when it happens.
Sometimes these changes become difficult, because the consumer gets used to a vocabulary. A bank 'branch' is whose branch? The bank's. That's an inside-out name. But the consumer is used to it, so it can still be used.
When you look outside-in, this is how it stacks up:
The consumer is seeking a shop or sorts. Now a shop is a one off small entity belonging to a local businessman. The consumer is therefore seeking the comfort of a big brand. That leads to the need of a superstore – a latent need till it was conceived. Because a consumer is also seeking something of the past but adapted to the present - something modern, with a ambiance that is inviting. If you really think, a mall is nothing but a modern mela. The guriye ka bal is the corn cup. The chaat stalls are the food court. Serious shopping is replaced with a browsers paradise. But this is a whole subject, so on this later!
They say positioning is not about what the sender of the message transmits, but is about what the receiver of the message receives. And more than that, what unique slot it occupies in the receivers mind.
Imagine a man sitting on a sofa looking out of a window, staring at a beautiful alpine scenery. What does he see inside-out? The scenery. But if look into the window, what do you see? The man on the sofa.
But organisations struggle with this simple perspective difference. And this can cause quite a serious problem.
Imagine The Ministry of Defence naming itself "The Ministry of Vanquishing the Enemy!"
Sometimes organisations create a department to cater to a business objective or business line and the department name gets transmitted to the customer as well! This can happen, but it must be changed when it happens.
Sometimes these changes become difficult, because the consumer gets used to a vocabulary. A bank 'branch' is whose branch? The bank's. That's an inside-out name. But the consumer is used to it, so it can still be used.
When you look outside-in, this is how it stacks up:
The consumer is seeking a shop or sorts. Now a shop is a one off small entity belonging to a local businessman. The consumer is therefore seeking the comfort of a big brand. That leads to the need of a superstore – a latent need till it was conceived. Because a consumer is also seeking something of the past but adapted to the present - something modern, with a ambiance that is inviting. If you really think, a mall is nothing but a modern mela. The guriye ka bal is the corn cup. The chaat stalls are the food court. Serious shopping is replaced with a browsers paradise. But this is a whole subject, so on this later!
Brand Ambiance & consumer behaviour
Ambience changes behaviour. Yes it's true.
Ambience is so powerful and defining, that even without a gate, it can allow or disallow certain types of people from accessing it.
A mall is accessible to all but you never find all types of people there. Even though a mall is nothing but a modern mela. Just think about it. The food court offers the mela type of eats. The playpen is the mela form of entertainment. So is the Ferris wheel. The knick knacks are the same as those in the haat. So what sells and what doesn't sell in a mall is actually a function of the mood of the people there. And this mood is a function of the mall ambience and not the product!
Surprised? Then consider this.
Century Textiles, the shop with reams of cloth that a tailor must subsequently stitch, fails to sell in a mall, even though it sells loads to the same customer in the open market. That's because the mall is meant to be a mela and no more than that. Fine dining restaurants are known to have closed down in a mall. But the corn cup sells (incidentally pays the highest rental and is still profitable); the guriye ke baal sells.
All because of the ambience.
One simple truth about peoples’ behaviour is evident from their walk. They just don't walk purposefully in the mall - they amble, they loiter.
But the one place they shop (though mindlessly) is the hypermarket or the superstore. They get into this colourful world of unlimited merchandise, ambling with their shopping carts, browsing and filling the cart. They come with no fixed shopping list in mind. Maybe they enter to buy just one dozen eggs and a loaf of bread, but leave with a cart full of stuff - items they bought by looking at a bar code! And then they claim they went there for a 'sale'.
So they buy much more than they wanted to. They buy stuff they hadn’t planned.
They come in to try the experience. They return because (they rationalize) there is a sale. Then they return again and again because by now they have become shopaholics! What has caused it?
The experience and the ambience. Not the products. Because the same products are available elsewhere.
Now consider this: when the same person goes to a Kirana store to buy eggs and bread, he returns only with eggs and bread. And precisely of the same quality as the ones available in the mall. Moreover, the kirana shop is more conveniently located. And parking is also not a problem.
A kirana store doesn’t even let you in. Moreover it is purely transactional. Thus it is limited in its ability to appeal.
Now, can ambience be of different types and does it make a difference? On that, later!
Ambience is so powerful and defining, that even without a gate, it can allow or disallow certain types of people from accessing it.
A mall is accessible to all but you never find all types of people there. Even though a mall is nothing but a modern mela. Just think about it. The food court offers the mela type of eats. The playpen is the mela form of entertainment. So is the Ferris wheel. The knick knacks are the same as those in the haat. So what sells and what doesn't sell in a mall is actually a function of the mood of the people there. And this mood is a function of the mall ambience and not the product!
Surprised? Then consider this.
Century Textiles, the shop with reams of cloth that a tailor must subsequently stitch, fails to sell in a mall, even though it sells loads to the same customer in the open market. That's because the mall is meant to be a mela and no more than that. Fine dining restaurants are known to have closed down in a mall. But the corn cup sells (incidentally pays the highest rental and is still profitable); the guriye ke baal sells.
All because of the ambience.
One simple truth about peoples’ behaviour is evident from their walk. They just don't walk purposefully in the mall - they amble, they loiter.
But the one place they shop (though mindlessly) is the hypermarket or the superstore. They get into this colourful world of unlimited merchandise, ambling with their shopping carts, browsing and filling the cart. They come with no fixed shopping list in mind. Maybe they enter to buy just one dozen eggs and a loaf of bread, but leave with a cart full of stuff - items they bought by looking at a bar code! And then they claim they went there for a 'sale'.
So they buy much more than they wanted to. They buy stuff they hadn’t planned.
They come in to try the experience. They return because (they rationalize) there is a sale. Then they return again and again because by now they have become shopaholics! What has caused it?
The experience and the ambience. Not the products. Because the same products are available elsewhere.
Now consider this: when the same person goes to a Kirana store to buy eggs and bread, he returns only with eggs and bread. And precisely of the same quality as the ones available in the mall. Moreover, the kirana shop is more conveniently located. And parking is also not a problem.
A kirana store doesn’t even let you in. Moreover it is purely transactional. Thus it is limited in its ability to appeal.
Now, can ambience be of different types and does it make a difference? On that, later!
The vexed issue of Pricing
"If we want to sell more, we must be cheaper in price"
Now this must rank among the topmost marketing myths!
It suffers from the typical inside-out syndrome. Strangely people are almost mathematical because they buy a ratio - a formula with a numerator and a denominator. The numerator is 'Perceived Value" and the denominator is "Cost".
Why 'cost'? Why not 'price'? Well because, to the consumer it is a cost and to us it is a 'price'.
And why "perceived' value? Why not simply, 'value'? Well because people only buy perceptions, not reality.
If Dove is a good soap because it is creamy (has cream?), then why not take a bath with cream! why buy dove in the first place!
If Liril has the fragrance of lime (has lime?) and lime is fresh, then why not take a bath with lime! So why buy Liril in the first place!
Well when people bought Liril, they bought the feeling of fresh and escapist abandon, that came into being with the girl under the waterfall. (they may not realise it or confess so)
And when people bought Dove, they bought the creamy and natural skin of the model who testified to using it. They didn't buy fair skin; they bought 'creamy skin. (by the way, the model is plump!)
But people 'think' that they buy for incredibly rational reasons.
And when people bought Nirma powder, Surf was forced to counter it by increasing the 'perceived' value, this time through a form of rational appeal. Is there evidence to prove that Lalitaji is rational? Wrong question - for Lalitaji is in fact a myth, not reality. The better question is: kya surf ki kharidaari mein wakayi samajdhari hai? But no one really knows the answer to this one. And yet they buy.
Consider this: it is a reality in the marketing world that the market leader is ALWAYS more expensive.
It is also human nature to claim to be rational while simply desiring something. Have you ever heard someone say in a meeting "I don't have a strong opinion on this"? It proves that we will never confess that we bought something without much rationale. But that's how we actually buy.
Now just reflect on this: It's funny how men who are forever intoxicated by cars and discuss them in such great detail, forget entirely about the engine, the power weight ratio and the torque. It's strange how after very carefully buying a car (because it offers driving pleasure), they gift it to their chauffeur to drive!
And most of all, it is almost universal that men negotiate the hell out of a car dealer while their spouses patiently watch the display of negotiation skills and two months later (the men) do not remember the exact on-road price of the car!
Ask yourself, do you remember the exact on road price of your car? By the way, the car is perhaps the most expensive consumer durable at home! When you buy a car, you buy the brand. The product comes free.
Think about this: Starbucks coffee is priced (sorry...'costs') many times the price of Nescafe even though you have to spend on petrol to get to their outlet! What is the main differentiation? No, it is not the product, no matter what they say. The main differentiation is in the Method- of- Sale. The former is consumed at home; the latter out of home. The latter gets a far greater opportunity to provide a brand experience. Hence it is high on experience and therefore on perceived value and therefore on price.
Now consider this: In a superstore, we buy packets and bottles of stuff even though the price is unreadable, submerged as it is, in the barcode. Yet, we claim to go there because they are running a good deal.
Or the same liquor in a five star hotel and we pay more. But this is a full subject on 'Brand Ambiance'. On this, later!
Now this must rank among the topmost marketing myths!
It suffers from the typical inside-out syndrome. Strangely people are almost mathematical because they buy a ratio - a formula with a numerator and a denominator. The numerator is 'Perceived Value" and the denominator is "Cost".
Why 'cost'? Why not 'price'? Well because, to the consumer it is a cost and to us it is a 'price'.
And why "perceived' value? Why not simply, 'value'? Well because people only buy perceptions, not reality.
If Dove is a good soap because it is creamy (has cream?), then why not take a bath with cream! why buy dove in the first place!
If Liril has the fragrance of lime (has lime?) and lime is fresh, then why not take a bath with lime! So why buy Liril in the first place!
Well when people bought Liril, they bought the feeling of fresh and escapist abandon, that came into being with the girl under the waterfall. (they may not realise it or confess so)
And when people bought Dove, they bought the creamy and natural skin of the model who testified to using it. They didn't buy fair skin; they bought 'creamy skin. (by the way, the model is plump!)
But people 'think' that they buy for incredibly rational reasons.
And when people bought Nirma powder, Surf was forced to counter it by increasing the 'perceived' value, this time through a form of rational appeal. Is there evidence to prove that Lalitaji is rational? Wrong question - for Lalitaji is in fact a myth, not reality. The better question is: kya surf ki kharidaari mein wakayi samajdhari hai? But no one really knows the answer to this one. And yet they buy.
Consider this: it is a reality in the marketing world that the market leader is ALWAYS more expensive.
It is also human nature to claim to be rational while simply desiring something. Have you ever heard someone say in a meeting "I don't have a strong opinion on this"? It proves that we will never confess that we bought something without much rationale. But that's how we actually buy.
Now just reflect on this: It's funny how men who are forever intoxicated by cars and discuss them in such great detail, forget entirely about the engine, the power weight ratio and the torque. It's strange how after very carefully buying a car (because it offers driving pleasure), they gift it to their chauffeur to drive!
And most of all, it is almost universal that men negotiate the hell out of a car dealer while their spouses patiently watch the display of negotiation skills and two months later (the men) do not remember the exact on-road price of the car!
Ask yourself, do you remember the exact on road price of your car? By the way, the car is perhaps the most expensive consumer durable at home! When you buy a car, you buy the brand. The product comes free.
Think about this: Starbucks coffee is priced (sorry...'costs') many times the price of Nescafe even though you have to spend on petrol to get to their outlet! What is the main differentiation? No, it is not the product, no matter what they say. The main differentiation is in the Method- of- Sale. The former is consumed at home; the latter out of home. The latter gets a far greater opportunity to provide a brand experience. Hence it is high on experience and therefore on perceived value and therefore on price.
Now consider this: In a superstore, we buy packets and bottles of stuff even though the price is unreadable, submerged as it is, in the barcode. Yet, we claim to go there because they are running a good deal.
Or the same liquor in a five star hotel and we pay more. But this is a full subject on 'Brand Ambiance'. On this, later!
"What's in a name....
….that which you call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet”.
Now that’s the trouble with proverbial generalizations.
Mohavra No. 62 is often cancelled by mohavra No. 45. Now ‘two heads are better than one’ is countered by ‘too many cooks spoil the broth’.
But on the subject of brand names, life goes deeper than proverbs.
Let’s reflect on names that inhabit our lives - names given to children upon birth; names of retail brands, even names of food items or dishes.
And on a hungry rainfilled morning, one is tempted to start in the reverse order!
‘Ah food!’ when we say and stretch languidly, images flash first, followed closely by their names. A ‘butter chicken’ sounds like a chicken with gravy. ‘Fish Fry’ leaves little doubt on what it’s about. Once ‘bhindi’ is understood and ‘sabzi’ has been accepted to mean ‘vegetable’ (which must have itself been coined one day!), ‘bhindi ki sabzi’ is easy to fathom.
But where did ‘khichdi’ come from? Or ‘sub’? In fact what is so ‘french’ about ‘french fries’? All mysteries if you really consider, but does that make them less understood. Why did McDonald's not bother writing the word ‘burger’ in its name? Why did subway create a whole new type of sandwich or hotdog, likening it to a ‘sub-marine’, when it doesn’t have to be eaten under water! Why did ‘Papa Johns’ spring up all over America as a chain of Pizza outlets, with the word ‘pizza’ subsumed in the tonality of the name.
Now this is where the answer lies. Sometimes names lower the cost of marketing and multiply the effectiveness by focusing on the tone and not the rationale.
Imagine how it would be if every child who took birth was called ‘Child’ and maybe given a number say ‘1’ or ‘2’ and so on, with records maintained by the government. Actually, rationally speaking it would even help obviate the need for a census, or voter id cards!
But then names have a way of rolling on the tongue, seemingly meaningless but loaded with meaning, suggesting origin, striking a chord with those in the same cultural ecosystem, finding a flavour.
There are afterall two key qualifiers of consumer insight. One that it appears easy and obvious in hindsight, but was difficult to arrive in foresight, given its edgy and disruptive nature! And two, its abhorrence and rejection of proximate analysis (superficial logic) and adoption and seeking of the ultimate analysis (getting under the skin, almost like a root cause analysis, but behavioural and societal in nature)
Now there are many ‘Ritus’, ‘Amits’ and ‘Sanjays’, but they tend to be names of children who were born in India in a certain period of time. And that time is up. Today, ‘Sanjay’ has been replaced by ‘Ishaan’ and a surprising number of ‘trendy’ infants have been christianed such but will grow up to realize that when the class teacher calls out names, she might mention the rare name of ‘Ishaan’ some 8 times out of 50.
Coming back to food, what does ‘khichdi’ mean? My grandparents asked me to have it when I was unwell. The argument that ‘rice and dal’ were eaten otherwise too, fell on deaf ears! Call it ‘khichdi’ and it turns therapeutic! Call it ‘rice and dal’, and it is suddenly meant for healthily burping individuals. But then popular culture changes all. Afterall the khichdi, despite grandmother’s limited imagination, was quite tasty. Which is why, now upon growing up, when it confidently sits bang in the centre of an appetizing gujarati thaali, it acquires a whole new meaning.
A decade ago, Eicher launched the ‘Eicher City Map’ and while the company was discussing the ‘naming’, a conservative marketing viewpoint arose saying let’s not call it ‘map’ because maps are the large unwieldy fold-outs and this is in book form like the London A to Z, which goes to the extent of even giving house numbers. Vikram Lal the chairman then, had a simple counterpoint. He said that once the ‘Eicher City Map’ is launched, the meaning of ‘map’ would change! He was right. There are now two types of maps in India and Eicher is one of them. Like the khichdi!
The son of ‘Awdesh Kumar Singh’ now drops the ‘kumar’ and modernizes the ‘Awdesh’ to ‘Sameer’ and the resulting ‘Sameer Singh’, returns stylishly to his roots with cricketing support by naming his son ‘Yuvraj Singh’, who sheds his moustache and dons grey blue contact lenses. Remember light eyes earlier suffered rejection as ‘kanji aankhen’.
Consider this: McDonald's, a complicated name resonates with children.
The moral of the story - interesting names work best. Now that’s easily understood in hindsight, isn’t it?
Have a great weekend. Eat khicdi but drop a dollop of butter in it and tell the dietician that butter comes from milk. And ‘milk’ means ‘health’.
Now that’s the trouble with proverbial generalizations.
Mohavra No. 62 is often cancelled by mohavra No. 45. Now ‘two heads are better than one’ is countered by ‘too many cooks spoil the broth’.
But on the subject of brand names, life goes deeper than proverbs.
Let’s reflect on names that inhabit our lives - names given to children upon birth; names of retail brands, even names of food items or dishes.
And on a hungry rainfilled morning, one is tempted to start in the reverse order!
‘Ah food!’ when we say and stretch languidly, images flash first, followed closely by their names. A ‘butter chicken’ sounds like a chicken with gravy. ‘Fish Fry’ leaves little doubt on what it’s about. Once ‘bhindi’ is understood and ‘sabzi’ has been accepted to mean ‘vegetable’ (which must have itself been coined one day!), ‘bhindi ki sabzi’ is easy to fathom.
But where did ‘khichdi’ come from? Or ‘sub’? In fact what is so ‘french’ about ‘french fries’? All mysteries if you really consider, but does that make them less understood. Why did McDonald's not bother writing the word ‘burger’ in its name? Why did subway create a whole new type of sandwich or hotdog, likening it to a ‘sub-marine’, when it doesn’t have to be eaten under water! Why did ‘Papa Johns’ spring up all over America as a chain of Pizza outlets, with the word ‘pizza’ subsumed in the tonality of the name.
Now this is where the answer lies. Sometimes names lower the cost of marketing and multiply the effectiveness by focusing on the tone and not the rationale.
Imagine how it would be if every child who took birth was called ‘Child’ and maybe given a number say ‘1’ or ‘2’ and so on, with records maintained by the government. Actually, rationally speaking it would even help obviate the need for a census, or voter id cards!
But then names have a way of rolling on the tongue, seemingly meaningless but loaded with meaning, suggesting origin, striking a chord with those in the same cultural ecosystem, finding a flavour.
There are afterall two key qualifiers of consumer insight. One that it appears easy and obvious in hindsight, but was difficult to arrive in foresight, given its edgy and disruptive nature! And two, its abhorrence and rejection of proximate analysis (superficial logic) and adoption and seeking of the ultimate analysis (getting under the skin, almost like a root cause analysis, but behavioural and societal in nature)
Now there are many ‘Ritus’, ‘Amits’ and ‘Sanjays’, but they tend to be names of children who were born in India in a certain period of time. And that time is up. Today, ‘Sanjay’ has been replaced by ‘Ishaan’ and a surprising number of ‘trendy’ infants have been christianed such but will grow up to realize that when the class teacher calls out names, she might mention the rare name of ‘Ishaan’ some 8 times out of 50.
Coming back to food, what does ‘khichdi’ mean? My grandparents asked me to have it when I was unwell. The argument that ‘rice and dal’ were eaten otherwise too, fell on deaf ears! Call it ‘khichdi’ and it turns therapeutic! Call it ‘rice and dal’, and it is suddenly meant for healthily burping individuals. But then popular culture changes all. Afterall the khichdi, despite grandmother’s limited imagination, was quite tasty. Which is why, now upon growing up, when it confidently sits bang in the centre of an appetizing gujarati thaali, it acquires a whole new meaning.
A decade ago, Eicher launched the ‘Eicher City Map’ and while the company was discussing the ‘naming’, a conservative marketing viewpoint arose saying let’s not call it ‘map’ because maps are the large unwieldy fold-outs and this is in book form like the London A to Z, which goes to the extent of even giving house numbers. Vikram Lal the chairman then, had a simple counterpoint. He said that once the ‘Eicher City Map’ is launched, the meaning of ‘map’ would change! He was right. There are now two types of maps in India and Eicher is one of them. Like the khichdi!
The son of ‘Awdesh Kumar Singh’ now drops the ‘kumar’ and modernizes the ‘Awdesh’ to ‘Sameer’ and the resulting ‘Sameer Singh’, returns stylishly to his roots with cricketing support by naming his son ‘Yuvraj Singh’, who sheds his moustache and dons grey blue contact lenses. Remember light eyes earlier suffered rejection as ‘kanji aankhen’.
Consider this: McDonald's, a complicated name resonates with children.
The moral of the story - interesting names work best. Now that’s easily understood in hindsight, isn’t it?
Have a great weekend. Eat khicdi but drop a dollop of butter in it and tell the dietician that butter comes from milk. And ‘milk’ means ‘health’.
The Story of two hunters
There is the typical marketing conundrum of pull and push that we sometimes wonder about.
To understand it, let's take the help of a story. It's called the story of two hunters....
There is the first hunter who is on his way to hunt a deer. The forest is pitch dark. He has a quiver full of 100 arrows. Now what does he do?
Given that he has an urgent target to achieve? Well he stands and shoots the first arrow. He then shoots the next. He goes on shooting his 100 arrows and gets one deer. Now he goes to his boss. And what will the boss say?
The few possibilities are:
"Well done! Target achieved!"
"Now, get me two deer!"
So what does he do this time. He takes 200 arrows and gets two deer from the dark forest. Now that is statistical perfection!
But now there is the 2nd hunter. He also goes with 100 arrows. But he thinks differently. He sizes up the situation.
Situation No. 1: the forest is dark. Situation 2: the deer is somewhere else and can't be seen.
So he now reasons that he needs to get the deer with some bait or go to a place, maybe a watering hole that the deer frequents. For that he must understand, the thinking of the deer. And so he figures this out and gets the deer close by and shoots the arrow. He misses. He misses again and again. But with the 4th arrow, he gets the deer.
The 2nd hunter has created pull. He has managed to appeal to his target. He has got the deer to seek him instead of the other way round.
This is exactly what Starbucks did to Nestle, till then the Gods of coffee. Nescafe was consumed in-home from packets bought at the store. Starbucks is consumed out of home, freshly made and brewed. Nestle relies largely on push and in order to drive preference, creates some pull through it's advertising that 'claims' it is the world's favourite coffee.
But Starbucks has a different weapon, which only retail brands have (if they know how to use it). The weapon is Brand Experience (goes far beyond brand claim) through the retail ambience, which changes human behaviour and has the power to create a very strong pull. The bait is the Starbucks store ambience. The coffee is sold as a consequence!
And it is priced many times the price of Nescafe!
But does the consumer behave differently in a different ambience, you might be wondering. So on this, next time!
To understand it, let's take the help of a story. It's called the story of two hunters....
There is the first hunter who is on his way to hunt a deer. The forest is pitch dark. He has a quiver full of 100 arrows. Now what does he do?
Given that he has an urgent target to achieve? Well he stands and shoots the first arrow. He then shoots the next. He goes on shooting his 100 arrows and gets one deer. Now he goes to his boss. And what will the boss say?
The few possibilities are:
"Well done! Target achieved!"
"Now, get me two deer!"
So what does he do this time. He takes 200 arrows and gets two deer from the dark forest. Now that is statistical perfection!
But now there is the 2nd hunter. He also goes with 100 arrows. But he thinks differently. He sizes up the situation.
Situation No. 1: the forest is dark. Situation 2: the deer is somewhere else and can't be seen.
So he now reasons that he needs to get the deer with some bait or go to a place, maybe a watering hole that the deer frequents. For that he must understand, the thinking of the deer. And so he figures this out and gets the deer close by and shoots the arrow. He misses. He misses again and again. But with the 4th arrow, he gets the deer.
The 2nd hunter has created pull. He has managed to appeal to his target. He has got the deer to seek him instead of the other way round.
This is exactly what Starbucks did to Nestle, till then the Gods of coffee. Nescafe was consumed in-home from packets bought at the store. Starbucks is consumed out of home, freshly made and brewed. Nestle relies largely on push and in order to drive preference, creates some pull through it's advertising that 'claims' it is the world's favourite coffee.
But Starbucks has a different weapon, which only retail brands have (if they know how to use it). The weapon is Brand Experience (goes far beyond brand claim) through the retail ambience, which changes human behaviour and has the power to create a very strong pull. The bait is the Starbucks store ambience. The coffee is sold as a consequence!
And it is priced many times the price of Nescafe!
But does the consumer behave differently in a different ambience, you might be wondering. So on this, next time!
The 'Death Zone' of branding
Can anything that has a brand name become a brand? Now that's an interesting question, but the thought this question consequently evokes is - Is there a limit to branding? Even though a marketer would be loath to admit it?
Take a mountaineering analogy. On the classic South Face route of Mount Everest, by which it was first climbed in 1953, expeditions establish many camps as they move higher- Base Camp, Camp 1, Camp 2, Camp 3. They then arrive at Camp 4, a small wedge in mountain called South Col. It is 8500 metres high. At this altitude, life changes drastically. Suddenly. The human body starts wasting, feeding on itself. Some 15 kgs of weight is lost; three layers of skin has peeled; there is a continuos hacking cough. The mountaineer is reduced to a pair of lungs flapping in the winds. The winds are screaming at over 140 miles an hour. The temperature less than - minus 30. The wind chill - another minus 20. Zero sleep. Zero appetite. And the waiting is indefinite.
South Col is called "The Death Zone". Climbers don't stay here beyond a few hours. As for sherpas, they don't stay here at all. They say it is haunted. The Yeti legend is active here. And if the summit window (when winds die down) does not open, one descends - either to try again, or to abandon the climb.
The human being is simply not designed for this altitude. (The summit to death ratio of Mount Everest continues to remain 1:4 since 1953, despite all advances in equipment and training. Incidentally the worst year was as recent as 1996)
Some commodities and categories fall in the Death Zone of Branding - for a variety of reasons. They are not inherently designed to become brands. They just try. The odd exception of course could be there (1919 was when man attempted Everest first but it was scaled in 1953)
One category characteristic which makes branding a verticle climb in rarefied altitude, is when the product category itself suffers from very low consumer involvement.
Some examples:
1. Ship Carborised matches from WIMCO struggled to fight the matches that came from middle / tiny sector viz Shivakasi products. They had three fundamental business problems. One, their cost structures were 'organised' and their competition enjoyed an excise free life; two - the consumer didn't really care about matches in general - it was a very low involvement product category; three - because they were an 'organised' organisation, they thought that Ship was a brand. The trouble was that it was not. Remember, the consumer decides this!
2. For years, Gillette struggled to fight the house of Malhotra double edged blades with their twin-blade product. But it was a losing battle for long. Gillette felt that shaving blades were very important in the consumer's life. The consumer didn't really share the sentiment! So they talked product! They showed in their ads, how the second blade shaves off the full hair, which the first one could not. And now they have three blades! And even five (Clearly, the first ad was wrong!). So the consumer now wonders, when will they have ten blades! True, they have some market, but because they have no competitor in the same category. Actually they are 'category', not 'brand'. (Don't forward this mail to Gillette!)
3. Xerox once released a huge ad campaign saying that "Xerox is a multiple dollar corporation and is not available for 30 paise". There were a few problems with this. One, the consumer didn't understand why they felt the need to say so! Two, it didn't solve their problem of having become so equal to the category, that when the consumer purchased any other brand also, he called it Xerox. The brand had become so generic, that it was no longer helping to drive preference in sales.
So what is the moral of the story? 1. You have to understand South Col - The Death Zone before you can cross it 2. You need a DIFFERENT strategy to cross it. It is another game alltogether. 3. A lot of self-talk pretends to be positioning, but is actually counterproductive.
Consider this: (a) for two decades television marketers advertised on TV claiming 'better picture clarity'. So here you were, watching a Toshiba TV ad on your Sony TV, which showed you how a Toshiba TV had better picture clarity (than a Sony), as you can see 'clearly' on your Sony TV! Now how funny is that.
(b) there were some Airtel hoardings, which showed the network strength symbol which we have on our phones saying "AirTel - the full strength network". And here you were at a crossing where this hoarding was showing the signal as full. So it forced you to look into your phone, where you found the signal to be half! (Please forward this mail to Airtel, if you are an Airtel customer)
4. And you have to be really very solid to scale the death zone of branding - else it's worth remembering, that there always was another lesser mountain to climb anyway. If you can define a category, choose the right one. Unless you are a suicidal daredevil.
But even in adventure sports, it is said, safety first, adventure later. Ever saw a dead body climb a mountain? Now that's true for marketing too.
Take a mountaineering analogy. On the classic South Face route of Mount Everest, by which it was first climbed in 1953, expeditions establish many camps as they move higher- Base Camp, Camp 1, Camp 2, Camp 3. They then arrive at Camp 4, a small wedge in mountain called South Col. It is 8500 metres high. At this altitude, life changes drastically. Suddenly. The human body starts wasting, feeding on itself. Some 15 kgs of weight is lost; three layers of skin has peeled; there is a continuos hacking cough. The mountaineer is reduced to a pair of lungs flapping in the winds. The winds are screaming at over 140 miles an hour. The temperature less than - minus 30. The wind chill - another minus 20. Zero sleep. Zero appetite. And the waiting is indefinite.
South Col is called "The Death Zone". Climbers don't stay here beyond a few hours. As for sherpas, they don't stay here at all. They say it is haunted. The Yeti legend is active here. And if the summit window (when winds die down) does not open, one descends - either to try again, or to abandon the climb.
The human being is simply not designed for this altitude. (The summit to death ratio of Mount Everest continues to remain 1:4 since 1953, despite all advances in equipment and training. Incidentally the worst year was as recent as 1996)
Some commodities and categories fall in the Death Zone of Branding - for a variety of reasons. They are not inherently designed to become brands. They just try. The odd exception of course could be there (1919 was when man attempted Everest first but it was scaled in 1953)
One category characteristic which makes branding a verticle climb in rarefied altitude, is when the product category itself suffers from very low consumer involvement.
Some examples:
1. Ship Carborised matches from WIMCO struggled to fight the matches that came from middle / tiny sector viz Shivakasi products. They had three fundamental business problems. One, their cost structures were 'organised' and their competition enjoyed an excise free life; two - the consumer didn't really care about matches in general - it was a very low involvement product category; three - because they were an 'organised' organisation, they thought that Ship was a brand. The trouble was that it was not. Remember, the consumer decides this!
2. For years, Gillette struggled to fight the house of Malhotra double edged blades with their twin-blade product. But it was a losing battle for long. Gillette felt that shaving blades were very important in the consumer's life. The consumer didn't really share the sentiment! So they talked product! They showed in their ads, how the second blade shaves off the full hair, which the first one could not. And now they have three blades! And even five (Clearly, the first ad was wrong!). So the consumer now wonders, when will they have ten blades! True, they have some market, but because they have no competitor in the same category. Actually they are 'category', not 'brand'. (Don't forward this mail to Gillette!)
3. Xerox once released a huge ad campaign saying that "Xerox is a multiple dollar corporation and is not available for 30 paise". There were a few problems with this. One, the consumer didn't understand why they felt the need to say so! Two, it didn't solve their problem of having become so equal to the category, that when the consumer purchased any other brand also, he called it Xerox. The brand had become so generic, that it was no longer helping to drive preference in sales.
So what is the moral of the story? 1. You have to understand South Col - The Death Zone before you can cross it 2. You need a DIFFERENT strategy to cross it. It is another game alltogether. 3. A lot of self-talk pretends to be positioning, but is actually counterproductive.
Consider this: (a) for two decades television marketers advertised on TV claiming 'better picture clarity'. So here you were, watching a Toshiba TV ad on your Sony TV, which showed you how a Toshiba TV had better picture clarity (than a Sony), as you can see 'clearly' on your Sony TV! Now how funny is that.
(b) there were some Airtel hoardings, which showed the network strength symbol which we have on our phones saying "AirTel - the full strength network". And here you were at a crossing where this hoarding was showing the signal as full. So it forced you to look into your phone, where you found the signal to be half! (Please forward this mail to Airtel, if you are an Airtel customer)
4. And you have to be really very solid to scale the death zone of branding - else it's worth remembering, that there always was another lesser mountain to climb anyway. If you can define a category, choose the right one. Unless you are a suicidal daredevil.
But even in adventure sports, it is said, safety first, adventure later. Ever saw a dead body climb a mountain? Now that's true for marketing too.
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