I’m back and this time after a really looooong break from this blog. Phew five months into Mommydom already and it seems just like yesterday. Oh yes, in case you don’t know, then let me announce it here as well that I’m actually Mommy Kanupriya now . It’s my new phase of life that has been keeping me busy and away from many things including my love for blogging. But I ain’t complaining. Like most new moms say, this phase of life is indeed the most special one, something which I can’t put in words ever and all the changes or adjustments are actually worth it. With things settling down a bit, I’m now looking forward to revive this blog again. Though have been somewhat active on my personal blog but was not able to manage sufficient time at a stretch to concentrate and write any post suitable for Marketing Chit-Chat.
Thanks to those who dropped me an email asking about my whereabouts and reasons for this blog being inactive. I have lot to share and lot to learn from all of you, so look forward to posts and comments exchange once again in this space. For today just a “Quick Byte” – how many of you received this email from Indiaplaza today?
I did and for a moment I couldn’t believe it. “Bharat Bandh Special Offer” – are you serious? In the name of this Bandh, while some were busy burning buses and some ranting about it on social media, here came a gem of a communication from a brand like Indiaplaza from whom I didn’t expect something like this. I mean what was that – a #WTH, a #Facepalm or a #Fail? Well, looks like the email communication guys seriously misunderstood the holiday on account of bandh to be a festival special holiday , otherwise why on earth would you announce an offer especially for Bharat Bandh? You know as I always say a prompt “chance pe dance” marketing is smart but then you better know when and how to capitalize on the chance rightly. After seeing this I think even offers in name of potato/tomato days would have been ok but a bandh special promotion? What do you think?
While Airtel was busy in revealing a new brand identity by spending some obscene amount of money in introducing a new logo, the same time IDEA was busy capitalizing on the hottest talk of the telecom industry – MNP (Mobile Number Portability). In fact if I’m not wrong IDEA is the first one to start talking about it and must say that the communication hits the nail just at the right place. Have watched three commercials till now, one speaks of customer service accessibility, the other for network connectivity and third on vague billing system. Liked the communication as well as the execution; all three ads highlight the most commonly faced issues with telecom service providers in India and ends with call for action “get idea” in a very smart way. Messaging is so simple that it is clear to even people who are not aware of basic things like different component of their bills but can gather from this ad that there is some new feature where one can switch operators without changing the number. Most of IDEA ads used to focus around social messaging, this is the first time I’m observing them encashing on a new service offering. Or maybe if I look at it from a different POV, I will say that even this one has social awareness aspect as it’s the first messaging in India which informs & confirms the advent of MNP in India.
Finally MNP has arrived after some zillions of roadblocks and millions of postponement. Even though it has been launched only in few circles as of now but the nationwide launch of it by 20th Jan 2011 is surely going to further intensify the competition amongst different telecom service providers in India. More than the price, I think it’s going to be the service differentiation which will be deciding the track of churn vs. gain between different operators. To add to that, the process of switching does not seem to be too expensive or troublesome as of now. Here are some general FAQs related to MNP in India published by different authorities (via):
1. How can I proceed with MNP i.e., change my service provider without changing the number?
Send an SMS: PORT<space>Mobile Number (that is to be ported) to 1900. For ex. PORT 9812345678. Your existing operator will immediately provide you with a 8 digit alpha-numeric porting code that you need to submit to the operator you wish to opt to along with relevant documents. (The unique porting code will be valid only for 24 hours). After consulting with your existing operator, new operator will move your number in a maximum of 4 days.
2. What are the minimum and maximum time specified for porting number from one operator to another?
Porting time could be anything between 24 hours to 4 days.
3. What are the charges for Porting to another operator?
Service providers can charge a maximum of Rs. 19 for porting a number.
4. Who is eligible for availing mobile number portability?
Any customer having a mobile number older than 90 days can migrate to another operator with the same number. He / She will have to wait for another 90 days before being able to port their number again.
5. Will my number be dead during the porting process?
As per the details available, a number will remain dead for 2 hours approximately during the porting process. Fortunately, the 2 hours downtime will be between 10 PM and 5 AM IST.
6. Can I migrate my post-paid number to another operator with prepaid services or vice-versa?
Yes, that can be done once you clear off all pending dues with the current operator.
7. Will my prepaid balance carry-forward to new operator? Unfortunately not. All remaining balance on your mobile will get lapsed and will not be carried-forward to the new operator. Thus, it’s advisable to completely use the available talk-time before moving to another operator.
8. Can I port my number from one circle (state) to another?
Retaining same number while moving from one state to another is not possible unless MNP services are launched pan-India.
9. Can I port my CDMA number to GSM operator or vice versa?
Yes, with the introduction of MNP, moving from CDMA to GSM or vice-versa is possible too, but your existing mobile will be rendered useless if you opt to move from CDMA to GSM technology.
10. Can I port my landline number to a mobile service provider?
Porting a landline number to a mobile operator is possible in countries like US, though, for now Indian govt. has planned to launch MNP only for mobile phone users. India might witness landline number portability in the future.
From the face of it, MNP seems to be easy-to-switch process but the actual impact or hidden (if any) truths will only be known once it’s launched all across. But if it’s really what it communicates to be, then this will be like a super boon for consumers in India. What do you think about MNP, promise vs., reality & the impact of it on consumers & the industry?
BTW, in case you’ve not seen the IDEA MNP ads till now, do check it out:
Indian consumers are spending more and so it does not come as a surprise if Neilsen’s recent report states that India is leading the ad spend market in overall Asia. Indian consumers have now the pocket to spend and the willingness to upgrade; be it any class of the society there is this inner need and aspiration to move up to the next level of lifestyle amongst most Indians. They are aware of the global trends and are looking at mediums to garner more info about latest products & fads. Lots of Indian & global Brands do recognize this ambitious consumerism in India and are not hesitant now on spending their bucks at the right place. They know that as long as they are able to create that appeal, fulfill their needs and cater to their aspirations, they will get the results on their spends. Here are some interesting facts from the report which further highlights the increasing statistics of ad spend in India:
According to this survey, India saw a 28 % year-on-year growth and a 32 % growth in the second quarter of 2010 as compared to last year in ad spend on mainstream media (via). Overall, across the 12 markets in Asia Pacific the Q2 ad spends showed a 15 % lift over Q2 2009, and a 17 % lift in the first half of 2010 over the same period in 2009. Of significance, is the fact that after the first half of 2009 which saw a minimal 3 % lift over 2008, the first half of 2010 recorded an impressive 20 % increase over the ‘pre- global financial crisis’ period of 2008. India recorded a 33 % increase in the first half of 2010 over the same period in 2009.
Across the region, advertising spends are highest on television, but the largest proportion of India’s media spend was garnered by newspapers. Newspapers are also the highest ad spend growth drivers in India, growing at 32 % year on year; the highest percentage growth for newspaper ad spends across all 12 markets covered in the Nielsen survey. Overall, newspaper ad spends grew by 17 % year on year in the region.
Television followed newspapers in spend growth and grew at 24 % in India and 16 % regionally. Amongst mainstream media, magazines saw an 8 % Y-O-Y increase in ad spends in India and a 9 % growth across the 12 markets in the Asia-Pacific region.
So, my morning started today by updating my Facebook & Twitter pages about the new Volkswagen Vento audio ad and my day is actually ending up by writing a post on the same. The first experience was shocker or eerie enough as a consumer for me, resulting in immediate reaction on social media and the whole day analysis of the buzz on the ad is reflective enough to do a complete post
Needless to say the ad has managed to create enough hum-drum all across. Undoubtedly it was a media innovation and disruptive advertising at least for the Indian market. I don’t think I had ever come across anything like this earlier. In fact my reaction was exactly from a “WHAT” to “WOW” to “WTH”. When I suddenly heard my newspaper talking, for a second I was totally confused, rather shocked. I had to rummage through newspapers to realize what actually it was. And when I realized that it’s actually an ad presented in the form of an audio chip attached with TOI today, I was totally awed. Wow, what an idea! But then after some point when the voice went on repeating the same content in loop it became irritating. To add to that there was no option to switch it off; the only option left was to either fold the newspaper back or just throw that damn thing out. For those who missed (wait, did anyone actually miss to notice it) to see this ad, can check the video (by TejasNair) embedded at the bottom of the post.
Well, no doubt the ad was damn interesting and managed to grab the attention of almost everybody. Twenty two lakh chips were specially sourced for the one time exercise and the ad was targeted at the readers in 5 cities – Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai & Pune. Total media spend estimated towards this 5 city campaign is close to INR 5 crores! Definitely a daring stand to spend this kind of money in just one day and that too only in 5 cities. But so what if it was only 5 cities, after all the consumers in these 5 cities have ensured to share their reaction with other consumers not only nationally but also globally.
Idea was great, so was the operational implementation but when it comes to execution of the idea, I do think that it was not properly thought through. Here is my feedback as far as the execution is concerned:
The content was really boring considering it was an audio ad. Come on, you can’t just have the written content run word by word in the form of an audio clipping. There was definitely scope for a better tone, better sound quality & better content.
Why O why there was no switch off button in that box? The loop presentation with repetitive content was the biggest reason for putting people off.
Don’t you think there was an opportunity to brand that box with Volkswagen Vento? When you have spent so much, maybe a little bit extra could have added more zing.
But this branding would have made sense if the device came with a switch on & off button and people would have liked to keep it. In its current state, many people decided to throw it off to shut it down! Bad call for action, no?
BTW was there any call for action in that clipping? Or Volkswagen Vento just wanted to create the stir amongst consumers by spending this amount of money? Whether this kind of spend is justified for such buzz is debatable. The ad definitely managed to be the talk of town everywhere, though it could have been executed better to serve other purposes of any campaign too. Overall good to observe this innovation coming from Indian market.
Aside: Wondering if this ad will give ideas to other money spenders to do something similar? OMG what will happen if say our politicians get inspired by all this and decide to take similar route? Will we have to hear their election speeches every morning along with our newspapers during political campaigns? Anyways they love to talk, don’t they??? Or say some Mr. Mahajan & Ms. Sawant decide to furthermore promote their swayamvars in their most happening voices through these talking newspapers? Eeeekkks!
Sometimes even the most important thing can be communicated in such a simple way and an interesting communication always adds to the beauty of any promotion campaign.
Visited the Café Coffee Day next to my office and the two cappuccinos served for me and my colleague looked like this
Need I write anything more? Nahi na…the messaging on coffees brought smile to my face and personally speaking, I liked it.
Myntra, a Bangalore based personalized merchandising company has done a tie-up with Café Coffee Day to promote its IPL special t-shirts and jerseys in CCD outlets. Instead of the whole outlet being painted with danglers or streamers, this was the communication to me as a customer and my immediate reaction was – “what’s this about, can you tell me more details”? As a customer it appealed to me at the first exposure itself and made me curious enough to ask for details. No heavy bombardment with the messaging yet the connect with a potential customer established at the first point itself
First of all apologies for putting up this post so late. Though I had stopped the poll after almost a week only but some important projects at work and traveling on weekends just kept me away from my blog for long. But nevertheless I had put an update on the results of my poll in my previous post. And as committed in my earlier post, here I reproduce the results of the poll done in my previous post. I had tried to keep the voting count unique by blocking the votes from same cookie as well as IP address (that’s the maximum which was possible as per polldaddy’s settings).
Now based on my last posts experience (esp. the comment furor ), I would again like to repeat that the opinions expressed in my post about the ad are solely mine as a consumer, personally speaking I didn’t like those ads. As a marketer too, I would repeat that I didn’t find any connect between the messaging and the product, also the communication route somehow didn’t seem to be in sync with the targeted TG. Maybe I’m right or maybe I’m not but then to each its own and I stand by my opinions against this ad as a regular consumer. Thanks to all those who commented on my previous post.
The worst thing that can happen to a bad product is good marketing…but what about the case where the product is bad and the marketing is even worse? Hmmm…then I guess it becomes a case study on brands like IBIBO with title – “how not to market a product”. No, seriously wasn’t balti ad enough that IBIBO has come out with yet another innovative campaign “why play akele”? Not one, not two, rather they have a whole series of creatives for this campaign but what is interesting is to decide which one of these can be crowned as the worst of the lot? This or this or OMG this i.e., the aunty ad on radio, well my vote clearly goes to aunty ad on radio! Every time I listen to this one on 94.3, I can’t resist myself from changing the channel, even if it means listening to kannada songs for a while on mirchi. I detest this ad so very much!
On a serious note, I’m wondering what exactly could be the reason for IBIBO to go ahead with such a crappy campaign? Millions of money spent just like that, effort wasted without any thought on promoting a product which by nature should have been actually promoted through a viral route. A copied concept which due to lack of any innovativeness decided to take the paid marketing path only leading to further disasters enroute. Neither the messaging is right, nor is the execution. To add to that the overall tone of the creatives is so suggestive & absolutely repulsive for the relevant TG of the campaign. I’m wondering is it me or is it everyone who finds these creatives to be totally absurd and disgusting? I think it won’t be a bad idea to do a quick survey on general reaction towards this campaign & send the results to IBIBO marketing team…maybe it can save us from further tortures of “why play akele” kinda campaigns in future.
Public service initiative : May I please request all of you to take out few seconds and just give your opinion below? It would be interesting to observe the results, though I don’t have any doubts on the outcome.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in my post are personal & I request readers to express their own judgements & take their own call.
Update on 8th Mar’ 2010: This poll is closed now for voting as per the expiry timeline of the poll. I will be publishing the result of it in my next post, for now you can just see the % of results by clicking “view results”
Makemytrip does it again and this time I love it. In fact just saying “love it” once can’t justify my delighted reaction towards the campaign, I mean I seriously loved it esp. the official atyaachar anthem. It’s a riot and simply terrific! It’s one such viral campaign which you definitely feel like promoting on your own. I seriously went ROFL listening to the lyrics of the anthem and the tone in which it has been sung is brilliant.
Makemytrip has launched this online campaign www.offisialatyachaar.com to promote its weekend packages. It’s a movement against work stress, impossible deadlines and long work hours which Make My Trip has presented in a very interesting way. The home page reads: Impossible Deadlines? Graveyard shifts? An atyachaari Boss? Work has taken you for granted for way too long. It’s time to act. It’s time to break away! Join the protest. It has sections as – Offisial Atyachaari, Offisial Atyawear, Offisial Anthem, Offisial Downloads, Offisial Outburst and all of them are just fantastic. You need to navigate through the site on your own to experience the fun. The movement has already instituted its presence on Facebook, now I’m eagerly waiting for its appearance on twitter too. What I liked about this campaign:
It’s FUN and brings a big smile on your face.
It establishes an immediate connect with the TG.
It promotes the product in a very intelligent way; in fact there is very less of branding in this overall campaign but still it creates that impact both from brand as well sales perspective.
It’s interactive properties like atyachaari jokes, sicknames for bosses contest, ringtones, wallpapers and my personal favorite – smashing a real office as protest to atyachaar . I think these are really wild and innovative stuffs.
It’s a viral in true sense, you really feel like sending this link to your peers and colleagues.
From concept to execution, I think both EURO RSGC & digiVaasi have done a great job. I’m only wondering why haven’t they started promoting this campaign at least amongst its members? I don’t remember receiving any email or message unlike that Gajodhar campaign which frankly speaking I hadn’t liked much. By chance I went to Make My Trip website today to check some ticket price and glanced upon their banner ad. Hope they start promoting it soon to spread the buzz and till the time they are not, I think I as a fan of this campaign would like to do it through my blog & tweets , now that’s what I call a true viral, ain’t it?
Have been caught up in other things to update this blog, though have got many insights to share but due to paucity of time, I’ll stick to a short one; will be back with another post soon
Now coming down to this post, 2-3 days back while surfing for some content related to swine in Google, I glanced upon this:
This sponsored ad of Dettol was definitely not there two days back. Surprising to see Dettol using a digital route & that too by banking on swine flu!
Another case of Chance Pe Dance marketing but nevertheless a good initiative! Not only Dettol, there were few others also in the same search screen who were utilizing this buzz word for promotions, like alibaba or ebay doing SEM for swine flu prevention kits. Before this I had not observed Dettol going SEM way in India. The ad title read H1N1 Flu (Swine Flu) & baseline read “Dettol kills 99.9% bacteria & Flu Viruses. Learn more now!” The ad led to Dettol website where there was a section on H1N1 virus & germ protection. Considering the rise in search for swine flu related key words this was definitely an interesting strategy to grab some eyeballs and promote products indirectly. Main route was educative one but the very facts that one need to wash hands frequently or sanitize his environment with a good disinfectant establishes a strong connect with the product proposition and leads to promotion in an implicit way. A smart campaign by Dettol in the right way at the right time and through the right medium, Swine Flu and related keywords are definitely the hot search words these days. Would be interesting to see any coverage for the aftereffect of this campaign both in terms of website hits or actual sales.
Was surfing the website of Air-India today to book a ticket & suddenly I saw our very own Maharaja in different avtaars there, like Maharaja with a laptop on home page & Maharaja with Indian flag near log in box. Though the size of Maharaja was definitely reduced but nonetheless noticeable enough! In fact I think as a kid my understanding of the word “brand” or “mascot” was only limited to either AI’s Maharaja or AP’s Gattu and its that solid imprint on my childhood memory that even slightest trace of Maharaja ji or cute Gattu catches my attention till date.
Air India had adopted this Maharaja mascot in 1946 symbolizing an Indian Maharaja kind of person welcoming passengers from all across the world on board, if I’m not wrong this Maharaja is one of the longest lived & most recalled mascots till date. But then today this mascot made me really thinking esp. because of all the reasons for which Air India has been in news of late. Now with Rs. 5000 crore loss last fiscal year due to operating costs, day on day ongoing loss of approx Rs. 15 crore & plans to cut down on quite many travel sectors, does Air India stand anything to do with royalty in these days? Well, I know the mascot was not chosen for exact representation of royalty only but then to a common man the image as well as the word Maharaja has always meant to communicate the same. With Air India being in news for only huge losses and other sorry state of affairs I personally think this Maharaja is a mismatch with the overall perception of the company. A Bankrupt Maharaja instead of Maharaja is what it makes me feel about it now . Rationally speaking, I think it’s time for AI to re-look at its mascot, it has outgrown its own perception today and I can see some sort of disconnect here. Though I’m sure there must be nostalgic / emotional reasons for the company to still continue with the same.
Would like to know your views on this. Does this Maharaja suit AI’s current image? Do you think AI should bid farewell to this Maharaja now?
. It’s my new phase of life that has been keeping me busy and away from many things including my love for blogging. But I ain’t complaining. Like most new moms say, this phase of life is indeed the most special one, something which I can’t put in words ever and all the changes or adjustments are actually worth it. With things settling down a bit, I’m now looking forward to revive this blog again. Though have been somewhat active on my personal blog but was not able to manage sufficient time at a stretch to concentrate and write any post suitable for Marketing Chit-Chat.
, otherwise why on earth would you announce an offer especially for Bharat Bandh? You know as I always say a prompt “chance pe dance” marketing is smart but then you better know when and how to capitalize on the chance rightly. After seeing this I think even offers in name of potato/tomato days would have been ok but a bandh special promotion? What do you think?
