Blackberry Boys: Saying a lot without saying too much

If you've watched tv in the last few days, chances are that you have seen the 'blackberry boys' advertisement. Full credit to vodafone and their agency on this one. If you havent seen it yet, here goes http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPZH4OysGZI

The ad is well made technically and execution is simple yet powerful. For me this ad has a lot more than meets the eye, it re-defines the way in which business phones are currently positioned and marketed. Are the business phones really for the business users? Or is that why they are called 'smart phones'? Clearly today, the youth seem to have taken to the bb, and taken well.

About a year ago, i'd noticed that a whole lot of my friends moved to blackberry and these were the exact mix of people that the ad showed. From 40+ CEOs to 20 something coolios, from geeks and nerds to absolut party animals, men and women, boys and girls, everyone was switching and thankfully for blackberry, almost all of them continue to be the 'blackberry boys'.

I find the ad well made and some of what I can take from it is:

1. One clear message: 'Not just for the office guys'.
2. Absolutely real: Real people, real situations.
3. Breaks myths: Listen to the lyrics of the song
4. Evokes emotions: Music is used very well here, catchy tune.
5. Showcases benefits
6. Testimonial driven: Clearly demonstrates user acceptance

The one big negative for me here was the fact that someone actually had to point to me that the ad also said, "now on pre-paid"! If their objective was to announce the availability of blackberry on pre-paid, i completely missed that.

Do drop me a line and let me know what you think of it.

Essentials of writing and marketing a whitepaper

Essentials of writing and marketing a whitepaper

Writing / planning a whitepaper? Here are some pointers to get you started:

1. Objective definition: It is critical to decide your strategy at the onset – Do you want this to be a sales-driven effort and a build a base of qualified leads? Or is this initiative a marketing effort intended to establish your authority, expertise and presence? (Push or pull approach?)

2. Content is king: Cliché but true! Whatever the approach, it is the quality of content that differentiates your white paper from another. Figure out what makes for educative / interesting read to your target audience. If you are addressing CIOs, technology based content is a bad idea. (Psst psst…most CIOs don’t read white papers coz we make them too tech heavy and CIOs have full fledged IT teams to evaluate technology). Try taking the business route. In fact, try taking a story that CIOs can then take back to their management. Ensuring great content however, is only the start and not a panacea.

3. Lengthy vs crisp - There’s no definitive formula: While I love keeping things crisp and find it creating a greater impact, I have to admit I’ve seen lengthy white papers working equally well. Of course, we’re still going by the premise of the content being really good. So, this may vary from topic to topic and clearly on the information needs of the defined target audience. This also leads to the next point.

4. Project value: ‘Value’ needs to be projected in every part of the whitepaper, whether short or long. This post could have been titled ‘5 essentials of a good whitepaper’ or could have been called ‘101 essentials of a good whitepaper’ and based on the audience needs I am targeting, I would expect good results in both cases.

5. Minimalize vendor pitch: Increasingly you’ll notice that whitepapers are becoming more about an organization and their specific solution set rather than a particular technology and how enterprise audiences can benefit from them. Even in cases where the objective is to build the sales leads, try subtlety for a change.

6. Define your target audience: Knowing your reader is as important as having good content. Almost everything else revolves around who this is being written for!

7. Integrate it with other initiatives: Like when launching a product, integration of its promotion with other marketing initiatives helps leverage the buzz created and generate higher acceptance levels. While you’re at it, try blogs as a tool too.

8. Use examples / instances, opinions - make it real

9. Standardized boilerplate: Try using and sharing your whitepaper with a standardized boilerplate that people can share the paper and help you go viral with.

10. Next step for the reader?: Clear definition on what you expect the reader to do after having gone through the whole ordeal will help you either plan in advance on what’s coming next or right set expectations

11. It’s NOT all about the money, honey: Puhleeeeze remember, not every download is going to be a sales ready lead. The whitepaper is a step in the right direction, the rest of the race still has to be run, by choice!

12. Try a new Look and Feel: If it doesn’t work at the first go, try giving it a new feel. We’ve all seen old wine in new bottle work too.

13. Refurbish – Reposition: If one messaging approach hasn’t worked, try newer, interesting and non intrusive methods of promoting it, even if it means a change in content approach.

14. Piggyback: This is where you hire the gartners and idcs of the world to do this for you. A great way for you to leverage their equity to promote your digital assets.

There's a lot more where this came from. I'd like to hear from you on your experiences as well.

Barclays catches them young, online

Here's another brilliant example of online marketing and how marketers are using the web to connect with their target audiences. Demonstrating clearly that the opportunities of online marketing are only limited to how far we, as marketers can push the envelope, Barclays Bank in the UK has initiated an online GTA type game. Built around an interactive virtual city, this flash game aims to educate bank customers on learning nuances of money management.

Creating a bank account, current account vs savings account, Swiping your card, standing instructions on payments, staying safe of investment scams, basics of having a permanent address, respect in society, honesty and integrity in work and in life are only some of the things this game attempts to teach by rewarding the good.

Sounds clichéd but I think this works well for the clearly defined target audience, the early teens that Barclays is attempting to connect with. It even has a facebook angle to the game (I didn’t get around to using that so not commenting on that, yet. You cannot afford to go interactive without going social.)

Clean, simple and super effective game play is the icing on this cake. This reminds of what we had experienced with Times of India and the 'Newspaper In Education' they drove in schools. For me, this is a brilliant marketing inititative. Well done Barclays!

It would be realy interesting to know what drove them on this route. Feel free to check www.56sagestreet.co.uk and experience this for yourself.

Sapporo Biru

http://www.sapporobeer.ca/sapporo.php

Is sales a result of constant push or does it arise out of a need?

Is Product not a part of marketing?

Ideas? What ideas?

Some people believe that ideas arise even without thinking. I believe in ideas that arise when you put your mind to it. I know that organizations that promote a work culture that encourages ideation will do far better than the organizations that dont. Having driven a start-up for 6 years, I've seen this work.

It's kinda funny when you look at some of the most seasoned professionals and see how starved they are for ideas. I always wondered what limits them from being able to ideate as they owe their senior positions in the corporate hierarchy partly to ideas they once brought to the fore. Reflect on your company's clients and you'll see that half of them want to meet with you and interact hoping that either you would give them new ideas or through your interaction they'd be able to think of something new. If you are unable to break through, offer them an idea, repeat process untill sucessful.

Have you noticed how ideas pop with interaction. I enjoy interacting with a few people here coz everytime i do, ideas flow. Now, almost always those ideas are for things they are doing, so obviously they go forward to the management as their ideas, not mine. Do i mind that? Guess not. Does it help my cause? No sir!

We all know and have experienced managers feeding off their subordinates for ideas but what we do need to watch out for is when these ideas get flagged up to the senior management as their own. Can something be done so that ideas get credited where they should? Would you as a manager be open enough to putting forward your subordinates idea knowing he has more to gain from it than you?

I take pride in saying that in my six years driving a start-up, not one team member worked without contributing an idea that worked!

Value homes lack real value?

Value homes in Bangalore are purely a result of the slump that the realty market faced starting around Aug-Sept 2008. By December builders, large ones too, were so cash strapped that they were unable to pay salaries to employees, for months. The one thing they heard from the market in unison was that the prices are ridiculously high. The result, more than a year later, homes in the prices of 10-20lacs with a compromise of 20-30km extra travel, 50% on the space of your homes. Some builders had already launched affordable homes earlier and some even specialised throughout their existence on the mid-budget category but i'm not refering to those anyways.

Conceptually, low cost housing is a no-brainer. With India's demographics it just has to work. It has been something that a lot of us have been advocating from 2005. I remember the marathon meetings with sreekanth of ambience for the 'studio apartments' they were studying the market for. I couldn't have been more excited about what I thought would take India by storm.

Apparently most builders i spoke to didnt share the sentiment, they were too busy doing what was helping them rake in the moolah, today!

While the market has been asking for low-cost housing for long enough, I am shocked at how the builder community has been ignorant enough to assume that people only want property that costs lesser conveniently forgetting that these homes also have to be livable. This has a whole lot of other implications like basic infrastructure, amenities, facilities, transportation, proximity to their work places, et al,. and you know what? Buyers cannot gamble on the Government to wake up to this reality. I am clearly not putting in my money on a brochure, any more. I need to see reality, I am investing today in what i can touch and feel.

I am sure the projects in the form they are being offered today will find a market but what i am not sure about is if the builder community will be happy with such projects. Clearly over the last 10 years the construction community has got too used to living on the borderline of profiteering. These projects are being in the executed in numbers excess of 2500 homes a project.

Almost all builders are getting into this if they haven't already, assume 20 large builders (Bangalore has at least 40) offer two such projects in a city throwing up over 1 lac homes. While i am sure the demand exists but the current offerings, in my opinion, do not fit the bill to help them enjoy complete sales. I would assume they wouldn't be able to sell in excess of 50% of a project.

Some projects lack even the most basic factor that would drive demand - commercial / corporate activity. Some people respond to this with "I want to use this for my living". Imagine investing in a project of 2500 homes, buying a flat of 700sft some 30kms from MG road with no corporate or commercial activity around. What happens if for some reason you decide not to live there? There would be at least 1250 more flats available for rent and 750 for purchase. Basic rules of demand and supply work here.

What would work very well in increasing sales is transparency along with a cost plus pricing approach with a clear mandate to make what any decent business can offer.

It is kinda odd to think that despite the magnitude there still isn't any Government intervention here. No entry barriers, no exit barriers, no price regulators.

Of corporate games and browny points

Social media: Strategy or Brand Dilution?

I remember in Oct 2008 when i joined here, one of my first suggestions for a consumer product that we have was to connect with consumer via social media and to my amazement, it was shot down, twice. I wondered then if I was just getting carried away by the hype and my boss could see through the thick smog that I failed to pierce through. Anyways, through the days I was entrusted other projects that needed my focus and somewhere in the process that social media connect was left behind.

While working on other projects, my interaction with the team at that product didnt slow down. The more I interacted with them, the more i was convinced. I even reached a point where each day I'd share ideas with the team on how they can use social media in reaching out to their consumers, either on an official connect or on a personal one.

When the topic was dead and gone, I even helped create a touch-point for the team on facebook and initiated connect. Though it was slow...very slow to take off and needed a serious push from my side, the team finally caught on. Today social media is the third largest source of traffic to the site of that brand.

Many old-school organizations i know perceived a social media connect (as it is known to be now)to be down-market and diluting their brand. Clearly, that opinion is changing and fast. It is interesting to note how organizations are awake and receptive to this now. One clear example is a client I am currently dealing with. Check this link www.polycom.com/company/news_room/media/index.html

Companies today have adopted this is an acceptable means to communicate with their target audiences. This would also mean they would have clear strategies on how to go about this. Imagine, the link you just saw is a B2B enterprise dealing mostly with large enterprises only. The profile of their target is as premium as can be in the technology industry. It appears now that we're prepared to be wherever our customers are, literally.

I even noticed someone designated as the "Head - Social Media" for a particular company. I noticed a few statistics that highlighted how social media is no longer a fad and is here to stay. For example, the fact that social media have overtaken porn as the No. 1 activity on the internet or 1 out of 8 couples who got married in the US met via social media or the fact that facebook added 100 million users in the last 9 months or that 80% of companies are now using linkedin as their primary source of database for recruitment. I can go on with this forever.

We have moved from the mindset of "why should i give page views to facebook from my audience?" to "how can i use facebook better to direct traffic to my site?"

My point is that if you haven't considered this, wake up before it's too late. It is not mandatory that this has to used, measusre the viability, explore options, think beyond the ordinary or as a brand adage goes "do the new".

Can you learn Digital Marketing in a classroom?

A couple of days ago, I signed up for a course on digital marketing being offered by IAMAI that starts tomorrow. Sometime this morning, Tanu asked me if I was excited about it and looking forward to it.

Somehow, without much effort i have always managed to right-set my expectations with almost everything i do. While i always hope for the best case scenario and am prepared for the worst, i find this little habit really helpful.

I sure am looking forward to the madness i hope this is. Can you imagine a discussion full of marketing specialists, each one of whom have their own idea about how things should be and why. I'm looking forward to getting my hands dirty with 'digital marketing', which i dont think my people have too idea about. I am hoping to have meaningful interactions where i can get to learn from the facilitators and peers' experiences.

Learning happens when you either burn your fingers yourself or learn from others experiences and I havent been able to do either in sometime and for the interaction craving person i am, this just seems perfect.

Hopefully this would give me clarity on where i stand and help me come out knowing more. What is also interesting to note is most of the facilitators are media folks and considering how much I enjoy teaching, wondering if this will open up anything.

Anyways, will wait till tomorrow night to find out how this goes!

Cadbury and its opportunity lost

While watching tv on a not so interesting sunday, yesterday, i happened to watch a small piece on cadbury and it's new launch Dairy Milk Silk on storyboard, cnbc.

In that 3-4 min feature a few things clearly stood out for me. These were,
1. Cadbury has launched two new products / variants in the last two years just around the new year
2. They have intentionally maintained pricing almost the same for all products / variants, "line pricing", this according to them should help the consumer 'sample' all variants. Apparently, they tried this for the first time with the launch of Bournville in 2009 and it worked very well.

This interested me the most on that feature. It seems like a good idea to encourage trial of a particular product or variant when multiple variants exist. The challenge however will be to move the consumer from trial to actual choice based consumption.

3. They have invested some money in developing an infrastructure that supports the distribution of newer products / variants (transportation / temperature controlled units, etc,.)

4. Dairy Milk Silk is supposed to be a premium variant of Dairy Milk

Assuming chocolates today are bought either for personal consumption or for gifting, if I were a part of the marketing team at cadbury, i'd have liked to have the launch of silk / bournville in India around Diwali. I just thinking it would have generated far better results than the Jan launches for both end objectives (personal consumption and gifting). It is just that much more apt a timing to encourage purchase of newer and specially more premium variants coz frankly Cadbury has just been sitting on its rear end for too long in India and they have created opportunity for smaller players to come in and take a share of the larger pie.

Market today is shifting / has shifted to premium imports that are commonly available. With far more percieved value when it comes to the recipient of the these also tend to put the person giving the gift in better light.

In today's India even school kids recognize this brand of choclates shown to them despite the blurring of the image and what do have cadbury launching? A premium variant of its not so premium brand dairy milk, what sense does that make? If Cadbury has a line of products that are internationally available and not yet in India, its about time they brought them down.

The other opportunity that cadbury might have lost out on is customized gifting and that is precisely where you see a whole lot of smaller players operating and doing fairly well on a regional / limited geographical basis.

Does Cadbury consider these competition? Can a large setup like a Cadbury India offer something on their lines? Can they leverage the brand equity that has been built for them over the years or will that actually become a hurdle? Is customization even a business they wanna get into? Well, these questions that only the folks at Cadbury can answer.

Puma sales experience

I have this rather peculiar habit of shopping for apparel as when I find something nice enough, irrespective of whether or not I need it at that time. Thanks to this, it is very easy to find something in my wardrobe in mint condition and packed, at any given point in time. In the last 12 months, this has extended to shoes as well. This is specially odd considering i haven't spent on more than one formal and one casual piece of footwear, each of which last me at least 3 years in the last 10-12 years.

In the middle of 2009, I found this neat pair or shoes at the Puma store on CMH road, Bangalore. Without hesitation i picked it up and conveniently stacked up the box and decided to wear that at an opportune time in October almost 4 months later. To my shock, the shoe seemed to be too tight, i did get into it though. All dressed for the occasion, I decided to take a pit stop at the Puma store. Mind you, i didn't have the bill but did have the box as neat as possible. I was expecting to have to haggle, mentally prepared to beg, plead or even fight if it got down to it.

I was honest about my purchase over 4 months ago and also told the guy behind the counter i was headed to a function for which I was wearing the shoes for the first time. To my surprise, he looked at me, looked at the shoe and said, "Sir, let me check if the size is available" and in less than ten minutes I walked out of the showroom with the correct size of the same shoe. Post this i have bought two more pairs from there and as long i don't have a bad experience, i will continue to shop at Puma.

I've had experiences with brands like shoppers' stop that completely refused to exchange a provogue trouser that I'd bought and not used for 3 months. They weren't even ready to give me a credit note.

At a time when improving customer experiences and customer experiences being the moment of truth for service based businesses seem to be the buzz words, this was clear example of doing more than talking. This approach of "no questions asked" demonstrated clearly the intent of the organization and their MO in the attempt to catch up with the more established players in the market. Keep up the good work guys!

What in God's name is 'marketing'?

This question takes me back to college days when on the first day of my BBM course, Prof. Dikshit made us write this down. "Marketing is either identifying a business opportunity and fulfilling it or creating an opportunity and fulfilling it." I remember this clearly not coz he told us that this is important and made us write it down but for the fact that this was his second statement made to the class at large on Day 1 of our graduate college lives. The first one being, "Welcome to BBM, I am sorry to say that choosing BBM is the biggest mistake of your lives. The course has no focus on anything and doesnt help you specialize in anything, you were much better off choosing a B.Com." When a seasoned prof starts his class with that kind of an opening line, it's bound to get you thinking. That I did.

In my opinion, marketing is the most misunderstood functions ever. For the layman, it has something to do with advertising. For the mis-informed it is what we call Marcom. For a large part of my relatives it is Sales. For most sales professionals it is their next career move. I've even heard (unintentional evaesdropping) random grocery shoppers requesting tele-callers saying, "please call me later I am marketing right now!" *sigh* Amongst all this mish-mash we marketeers face, is there room for what it means to us?

Most of us remember some definitions else we always have google to the rescue. I googled this one from The Chartered Institute of Marketing that defines marketing as "the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably." A different concept is of "Value-based marketing" which states that the role of marketing is to contribute to increasing "Shareholder value". In this context, marketing is defined as "the management process that seeks to maximize returns to shareholders by developing relationships with valued customers and creating a competitive advantage."

Marketing has a multitude of components like Customer Orientation, Marketing Planning, New Product Development, Sales, Marketing Communications, Brand, Market Research, Consumer Behaviour, MIS, Maketing Mix, Product Life Cycles, Customer Relationship Management and a whole lot more.

Lets cut to the chase, if marketing is all of the above and more, how close is it to the concept / defn of business? Pretty close. Where does the line fade out? Ooh, toughie. If that is how close marketing is to business and all of us either build businesses or work with organizations that are business units then should the marketing folks not be driving your "business"? Does that make all marketing folks specialists at every business function? Do the marketing folks need to know every function? Well, the answers to these questions are tough and if not anything else, they should at least make us think about one thing, is 'marketing' in its true sense limited to the marketing folks only or are we, irrespective of our silos, contributors to it?

Despite all this, organizations often fail to clearly define what they expect from their marketing teams. Worse, they fail to define marketing for themselves.


I'd like to end this post with a quote from an authority on the topic.

“Marketing is not only much broader than selling, it is not a specialized activity at all It encompasses the entire business. It is the whole business seen from the point of view of the final result, that is, from the customer's point of view. Concern and responsibility for marketing must therefore permeate all areas of the enterprise”. - Drucker

Is bollywood re-inventing its marketing mix?

Innovation in promotions have taken an all new road in bollywood and a damn good one at that. Classic example on that front has to be of Aamir Khan, bollywood's new found marketeer par excellence. Apart from being a phenomenal actor, he's a producer, director and most importantly, he's a pro-active thinker. From the foreign actors in lagaan / rdb (he's been an advocate of bollywood having a potent market outside India) to the hair-do promotion at the premiere of Ghajjini or moving it to the extremely innovative and 'viral' catch-me-if-you-can promo across the country for 3 idiots, he is one bloke who deserves the respect he's earned, not just for his acting talent.

While there are enough and more people who do not believe in Zero Budget Marketing, I think a combination of no money / paid promotions works wonders. It works best when you have people like Aamir driving them. Look at the media buzz the 3 Idiots campaign has created. I dont remember a single day in the last month or more where I havent faced some update about 3 Idiots, be it a newspaper article, tv news piece, facebook messages from friends about how good the movie is, twitter updates, rss feeds and now the latest controversy with Chetan Bhagat. The amount of media coverage the movie has got for the right and wrong reasons is worth millions. Try doing a google search for "Aamir Khan 3 Idiots" and see the number of results it throws up and yes, its all free publicity.

We all say 'any publicity is good publicity' and this time i see the limits being pushed with 3 Idiots and Chetan Bhagat but i think the line of logic has to be drawn somewhere so not to irk people. Thank God for a short memory. :)

This is testimony to how dynamic the demands of the market change. Great star cast and good music are no longer enough to bring in the crowds. The movie business is like any other 'business' with products that need a concentrated effort to be marketed. Right from the concept / theme / story line - getting a mainline author like Chetan Bhagat to write a script / Social cause as in Taare Zameen Par / Social message as in RDB (4Ps - Product component); Countries the movies now reach and launch simultaneously -40 countries for 3 Idiots (4Ps - Place component); All the buzz created by the movie and the controversies around it. Not to forget the cross promotions, like the clothing tie-up with a brand and calling it the Ghajini line and the fashion shows to luanch these or the 3 Idiots collection with Pantaloons (4Ps - Promotion component); The tickets now are being priced higher - it seems based on the excitement generated by the promos, also interesting to note 'skimming' strategies by multiplexes with a premium for the first day and higher prices for the first couple of weeks.

Moral of the story: If something as standardized as bollywood movies are reinventing themselves and how they do business, should we wait to lose customers before we realize that is no standardized success formula'?