Season of makeovers

Well, looks like it’s a season of makeovers going on currently. Oh, I mentioned makeover and you are already thinking of some new style statement for women? Hmmm, I’m, sure most of you must be, but nah I’m not speaking of some new hair coloring trend or new apparel style in vogue…I’m speaking of the latest trend in Indian Marketing Industry – the trend of Indian brand makeovers.

Two weeks ago, I saw the new logo and communication of Godrej, then last week it was Shoppers’ Stop and now it’s CEAT which has gone for a hip & happening colored logo.

Honestly speaking I was just shocked to see the 112 year old Godrej logo changed. Having worked in their brand management team earlier, I know how rigid Godrej rules were as far as changing corporate logo was concerned. They strictly wanted to adhere to only traditional color (earlier it was blue then it became red) and despite every new brand manager convincing about a funky logo, the top management never allowed to experiment with it. So, suddenly a bright colored nice looking new logo was a very pleasant sight for my eyes. Here is the official statement of Godrej which states that the re-branding exercise was undertaken as it felt the old brand was not as relevant to young India.(source: moneycontrol.com). As a consumer as well as marketing professional, my take on this – I liked this change J. Estimated money (mentioned in official releases) to be spent by the company in communicating this makeover: Rs. 100 crore!

Now speaking about Shoppers Stop logo change…I am absolutely confused as to why this logo change and what major difference will this new logo design bring to the company? I mean its same black & white color except that it’s rectangular in shape as compared to the earlier elliptical one. Well, from brand perspective I understand that it has been done keeping so called international designs in mind but well, but to a normal consumer I’m sure it must not be looking like any major change as such. And they are spending huge money in communicating this change by advertisements, hoarding etc. Here is the official statement available on agencyfaqs, for this makeover: “Change is essential. Our consumers are changing, their preferences are constantly evolving. They are getting younger. And so, we have to change along with them.” — B S Nagesh, Customer Care Associate & Managing Director, Shoppers’ Stop. “The simple but classic new logo without the old elliptic ring, which has an international look and a timeless appeal, carrying the new baseline ‘Start something new’ prods customers into taking a step ahead to upgrade themselves to the next level in life.(source: indiaretailbiz.com). Well, well doesn’t it look like somehow fitting in a justification for this change? As a consumer as well as marketing professional, my take on this – It looks almost similar to me as in no major change at all as compared to the previous one. Estimated money (mentioned in official releases) to be spent by the company in communicating this makeover: Rs. 20 crore ($5 million)!

And the latest one in race, CEAT logo change? Oh why did they do this? The logo was created in 1958 & this is the first time since then that the company has changed its logo. But do they really needed to change their earlier logo? Here is the official statement for this change: Paras K Chowdhary, chief executive officer, Ceat, says, “The new logo symbolises the strategic transformation at Ceat. It also reflects the fact that though Ceat has a long and proud heritage, the attributes that bring it to life for our customers are as fresh and new as ever. It represents the company’s vision of leading the industry in delivering best in class products, innovations and services to consumers.” (source: agencyfaqs.com). Well, even if they decided to change the logo thinking to bring in some freshness and strategic transformation, they can’t go this wrong in deciding the creative representation of it. I think the earlier logo was very expressive and clear about the message which CEAT wanted to communicate for its tyre brand – born tough. New one just looks like another “me too” logo. As a consumer as well as marketing professional, my take on this – The new logo is NOT good, new font and color are ok, but please bring back that rhino and “born tough” line. No info available on money to be spent on communicating this makeover but year lots of TV ads are airing on prime time television.

Big B n blogging – another marketing gimmick?

The news is everywhere across media, and almost every channel and website is speaking of this, Big B has taken to blogging now!!! Well, we were aware of Rahul Bose, Shekhar Kapur and Aamir Khan being pro bloggers but now Amitabh Bachchan too. This is really surprising but what’s more surprising is the blog site whicb Mr. Bachchan has selected. Umm, his selection surely doesn’t look natural. Doesn’t a thought come naturally to our minds as to why BigAdda? Now come on, don’t ask why not a wordpress or a blogspot or his own personal URL and why www.bigadda.com ? I think it’s pretty simple to guess. Arrey still didn’t get it…after all bigadda is a reliance entertainment company yaar!

Looks like BigAdda’s cores & crores of money on advertising with hoardings (yes they actually took huge hoardings across cities for promotion of an online social networking site, LOL) & on TV (ROLF, yep there were long television commercials too reminding of friends and networking ) etc have not worked at all and now they have decided to take one final shot at one of their products viz., blogs. With Big B endorsing their blog and each posts of Mr. Bachchan having comment counter close to 400+, I’m sure atleast one of BigAdda’s categories will surely get noticed now. And the kind of effort which bigadda team is taking for this, there is no second thought that this looks like a planned promotion strategy of BigAdda. Here is an excerpt from Big B’s blog which can make things clearer further:

“The bigadda.com team came over. I educated myself more on blogging and its ‘finer qualities’. As per the advice of some of the fans and ‘co bloggers’ we got into the process of setting up a team to assist me in working my blog more efficiently”.

A team to assist on working on his blog more efficiently!!!!!! Whoa blogging is becoming really serious man! Quite a strong promo hook by BigAdda team, lets see what mileage they get out of it in future.

Now speaking of Big B’s blog http://bigb.bigadda.com, honestly speaking I liked the content of this blog and the way Mr. Bachchan has written it till now. Though I’m not a die-hard fan of Mr. Bachchan & not sure if he is himself writing the posts or somebody on his behalf is doing it but if he is himself writing it then I must say good effort! The way he has highlighted the contribution of Anil Dharker for his book Icons or the way he has pulled Headlines Today for telecasting Abhi-Ash for 15 mins and still criticizing them or they way he has responded to some of the comments on his posts is quite noticeable & praiseworthy. I just love the poems of Mr. Harivansh Rai Bachchan and the beautiful usage of those poems in Big B’s posts is another highlight of his blog.

Though the idea of Big B blogging on www.bigadda.com looks very artificial and definitely some sort of marketing gimmick but the content of the blog looks natural. So, hope Big B continues expressing his thoughts like this on his blog and BigAdda gets atleast one product right amongst all its failed ventures J.

Yahoomail or Gmail?

I’ve been using the new Yahoo mail for quite sometime now and initially I used to think that it’s because of some initial glitches that the performance is so slow and bad. But it’s been months since I’m using the same and I don’t see any improvement in their performance. Somehow the moment you open that in-mail chat window my laptop goes for a toss. It becomes so damn slow. Though I think it has got nothing to do with my laptop as the same machine is being used for so many things including the in-mail chat service of gmail and there it works absolutely wonderful.

 

My first email id happens to be a yahoo id and when I had opened up my first email id more than a decade back, I used to be thrilled with Yahoo messenger and other services of Yahoo as compared to Rediff / Indiatimes mail and chat services. I used to love those cute li’ll smileys so much and everything about Yahoo used to be so cool…I would say, I was quite a hard-core Yahoo loyal user but slowly their product started getting deteriorating. Then came gmail and for most of the practical purposes, gmail proved to be a better option than Yahoo. Many people like me very soon migrated to Gmail for most of their regular email interactions.

 

Well, I know market share wise, Yahoo still dominates the email market but I think service of Yahoo is getting more and more hopeless day by day. They have got one of the worst spam guards…on any normal day my spam counts are anytime thrice or four times than my normal email count in my yahoo inbox! I don’t know what spam guard gmail has adopted but it works wonderfully atleast for me. Also host of other benefits like security, size of the mail box, archiving options, convenience of smooth in-mail chat facility etc are just few of out of the whole gamut of benefits which gmail offers to a consumer. So for me as a consumer despite Yahoo mail launching new features everyday, its Gmail which rocks and serves my purpose anyday better than Yahoo.

Ad zara hat ke

Few years back when I was a student, I remember the first mobile phone which I used to have…I guess I used to pay Rs. 4/- per minute for an incoming call to the service provider Essar and approx Rs. 8/- per min for an outgoing call! Mobile phones were absolute luxury that time and were used only in case of utmost urgencies. Slowly mobile phones started getting accepted in India but when Reliance entered the telecom market with its phenomenally low price offerings, the whole of telecom industry dynamics changed & mobile phones became a revolution in India. Then came Tata Indicom’s price challenge and very soon almost all service providers joined the bandwagon and were fighting the same price war. Mobile phones became the commodity of basic necessity instead of absolute luxury for majority of Indians.

Now since last 1 year telecom service providers have gone super aggressive in their selling. A consumer is now literally tired of everyday a new price plan communication, bombardment of ads offering free lifetime incoming, free mobile handsets with every new connection, almost nil kind of price plan promotions etc etc. I remember chatting with a friend just few months back wherein I had said, looks like a day will come in next 2 to 3 years when instead of charging us telecom service providers will actually pay us for talking on phone. Well, the day has come & whoa it has come pretty soon than expected with Sir Richard Branson deciding to capture the exponentially booming Indian mobile market as well. Yeah, we all know the new telecom service provider in India now…Virgin mobile which thinks “Zara hat Ke”.

Instead of debiting money from your balance, this company is actually crediting money for every minute you talk on phone. Though the money credited is not something great but still I would say it’s different and Hat ke J…The best part is the commercial which is being aired across mediums…no more communication with 999 plan and free lifetime incoming calls…rather quite unique and creative advertisements so to say. Of all the different advertisements on air these days, I particularly liked this one the best:

Here’s hoping that this hat ke telecom giant really lives upto its name and gives some “hak ke” good experience and customer service to Indian Consumer as well.

Vernacular web content in India

Another vernacular content in India. Yahoo has launched its maps in local Indian languages and walking directions, for the first time in India. Yahoo! India Maps is now available in nine local languages. Apart from English, users can also experience it in Hindi, Tamil, Gujarati, Marathi, Bengali, Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam and Punjabi.

Of late, vernacular content in India has become a rising trend. After the biggies like Google, Yahoo, AOL etc. adding content in local languages, even channels like Animal Planet and search engines like Guruji are adding local language content now. As per Juxt report, although various players are trying to pull traffic by coming up with local language sites – including Yahoo!, Google News, Blogger and Webduniya – it is Google that has captured the throne when it comes to vernacular content. Out of the three million local language content users, 12 per cent prefer Google for searching local language content and 8 per cent local language users log on to Yahoo! for local language content. South Indians constitute 52 per cent of the entire vernacular user base. Some 19 per cent of the three million vernacular content users prefer Tamil and 19 per cent prefer Hindi. Malayalam is preferred by 15 per cent of the users.

But when it comes to vernacular content, I do have my doubts over there. What I’ve observed is that by vernacular content, most of the sites in India mean translating English content in local languages. Does translation itself classify the content credible enough for local language TG? I mean do you think that the target audience for Hindi or Tamil content will be similar to their English translated content? Have we ever pondered on the fact that despite lots of local language portals coming up in India, why haven’t we still got the desired traffic for those portals? Of course internet penetration and computer literacy are two important reasons but one very strong reason I guess is the missing local or regional flavor from these content. While translation of national / international content is good but if the publishers won’t give that regional tadka to the content, they will never be able to get those traffic and hit counts on vernacular portals!

Bollywood on Social Media

After Subhash Ghai’s Black & White promo on Facebook, now Yash Raj Films as well as Devagan productions have taken the route of promo through social media for their upcoming films Tashan and U, Me Aur Hum respectively. Both these upcoming films are having their official communities on Facebook, Orkut and Youtube. Their official communities have promo clippings, songs as well as downloadable pictures of these movies. While Facebook group of Tashan is having more than 400 members, Orkut group is having more than 19,000 members. Orkut group is quite interactive with people discussing their thoughts and casting votes in the polls. Even U, Me Aur Hum group is very active Orkut group with approx 6000 members and very interesting poll questions.

Hmmm, looks like it has become a major trend in bollywood as well to ride the wave of online social communities. Almost every bollywood movie getting released these days is resorting to sites like Orkut, Facebook, Youtube etc. Well, why not? After all, more than anywhere else, that’s THE place where you can catch the young India these days. According to a recent study done by AC Neilson across males and females between the ages 13-35 years across the country, users spend an average of nine hours per week on the Internet, only for personal purposes, and of these nine hours, approximately 25–75% is spent on a social networking site (Source: Express Computer, March issue).

Of late, bollywood has become quite innovative in promoting the films in varied ways. Gone are the days of film promos where the names of actors like Raj Kapoor or Nargis or director like Satayajit Ray itself used to the biggest marketing hook for any film. Now in this age of commercialization and media bombardment, film marketers are trying it all- from traditional media like hoardings and television promos to digital media like exclusive websites to new age television phenomenon like reality shows and now to the latest IN thing, interactivity through social networking sites. With zero media spend and a sure shot way to capture the minds of Indian youth, of course interactive promo on social communities like these has to be the next BIG thing for marketers.