Yellow Journalim

Yellow Journalism

Yellow journalism is a type of journalism that under estimate real news in favor of eye-catching headlines that sells more newspapers. It may feature exaggerations of news events, scandal mongering, sensationalism, or unprofessional practices by news media organization or journalists.

The term typically refers to sensationalism in news reporting that bears only a superficial resemblance to the profession of journalism.

Some examples of yellow journalism

• Sachin Tendulkar takes anti-Sourav stance

News posted by leading newspaper just because Ganguly is in the news, you have to state that Tendulkar takes anti-Ganguly stance.

• Worst examples of Yellow Journalism by the media

Since last couple of year some group of journalists has tried to defame Banglore by terming as “Bride Burning Capital. They keep on arguing that there are 250 “bride burnings” are happening in Bangalore every month. They refer to Victoria Hospital data.

This is where the yellow journalism comes into play. Where as the truth is that Indian homes are 2 times safer than American homes so far as women are concerned.

Yet the journalists show Indian family system is a poor light and want to convert India into America without realizing that crime against women in America is more than that in India in any category of crime.

Journalists are not Gods. It’s the responsibility of journalists to show real facts to people or else people will start losing their trust on media. Today, people use extremely derogatory language on English TV Media in blogs because of media bias.

Big Bazar New Ad

Please find new communication strategy adopted by India's biggest retailer, Big Bazar

Rooh Afza

Rooh Afza is a popular concentrated drink invented by Jatinder Heer and manufactured by the companies he founded, Heer and Sons Laboratories, India since 1906 and Hamdard Laboratories, Pakistan.

Rooh Afza is made from natural products .It is said to be a great alternative for chocolate milk. Sometimes people make it with ice cream, 7up, and Coke. Rooh Afza is traditionally made in preparation for breaking the fast during Ramazan the holy month of fasting for Muslims.

Rooh Afza is the product of Hamdard and due to its uniqueness, the product survived in the market for more than 100 years without any brand ambassador. It is the only drink that dominated the market without any brand face. Juhi Chawla is the first celebrity whom they have signed to endorse their product. Juhi is chosen for the ad because she symbolizes bubbly family person. In the ad she will be seen rejuvenating the family members with three flavors of Rooh Afza, Lassi, Nimbu Pani and Milk shake.

RoohAfza brand is worth Rs 1 billion in the concentrated drink market segment, which itself values up to Rs 5 billion. The company plans to reach a turnover of Rs 5 billion with a revenue growth of 67% in another two years.

Jaaogo Re drive against corruption

Mahatma Gandhi was of the view: Be the change you wish to see in the world. Tata Tea seems to have taken that up quite seriously. With the help of its advertising and marketing initiative, Jaago Re, this time, the brand takes up the issue of corruption.

In its third year, the Jaago Re campaign revolving around the issue of corruption has the tagline, 'Ab Se Khilana Bandh, Pilana Shuru'. In an official tete-â-tete with the media at a gathering, Sangeeta Talwar, executive director, marketing, Tata Tea discussed the fact that corruption has eaten into more than 50 per cent of India's population. Considering the gravity of the problem, Tata Tea chose to address it

The television commercial is a montage of real-life situations of bribes been given and taken. In the end, the youth give the message to stop doing so.

Jaago Re began as a movement in 2007, with the aim to make tea a youthful drink, after a research showed that apart from people of other age groups, the youth consumed the beverage heavily too. Tata Tea wished to resonate with the youth.

The intent was also to have a unified message for the four brands under the Tata Tea umbrella -- Tata Tea Premium, Tata Tea Agni, Tata Tea Gold and Tata Tea Life.

A campaign featuring the scenario of politics played as a curtain raiser to Jaago Re in 2007. In 2008, with the elections round the corner, Tata Tea made an attempt to get the youth out of their homes to vote. The company put a website in place to ease the voting process for the youth -- www.jaagore.com -- which helped people with easy, step-by-step processes.

The website, Talwar reveals, got 28 lakh registrations, and 6 lakh first-time voters. Out of the 28 lakh registrations, one-fourth converted into final voting.

With the corruption campaign, Tata Tea puts forth the message to start with oneself -- begin with yourself and stop giving and taking bribes. Apart from the television commercial, the brand plans to reach out to each and every citizen across the nation, with the help of media such as outdoor, mobile and online.

Online and mobile have a significant role to play, as people can take the pledge against corruption online, or through messaging a short code from their mobile. People can also register themselves at various mall activations. In-store activities and passing on the message within the trade would also be done in a similar manner.

Source:AFAQS

ZEE TV

Zee TV, the flagship channel of Zee Network was launched in October 1992. With a reach of more than 167 countries and access to more than 500 million viewers globally, Zee TV has created strong brand equity and is the largest media franchise serving the South Asian diaspora. In the past sixteen years of its existence, Zee TV has driven the growth of the satellite and cable industry in India.

Zee TV's programming delivers a variety of choices for all segments of the audience,

including primetime comedy and drama series, premiere Hindi movies, mini-series, children's programs, musical shows, and mythological series. Zee has always believed in bringing innovative programming to its viewers.

Zee TV has long been the number two channel and now it has been pushed a place behind by new channel “Colors”. Zee has come up with some new marketing strategies to counter this and also to reconsolidate its position in the market.

Zee has basically identified two genres of TV shows- reality shows and daily soaps. Daily soaps are mostly targeted at Indian women. A soap called “Kasamh Se” is being aired at the prime slot of 9 P.M. from Monday to Friday. Its being promoted as their prime soap. A reality show “Sa Re Ga Ma Pa” is being running for 13 years now has been the top TRP getter for Zee. Recently Zee started promoting it as “Bharat ka pratham mahayudh”, targeting youth and housewives alike.

Zee TV has used various media mix to promote its serials. A study by TAM shows that Zee spends more on newspapers to promote its serials than on radio and magazine.

Along with this, Zee also promotes its shows through its websites allowing viewers to

download wallpapers and ring tones of the popular shows. Hoardings along the road side are also a common promotion media for Zee. Zee also promotes its popular shows on prime time slots of rival channel.

For the promotion of its reality show “Sa Re Ga Ma Pa”, Zee TV had ventured into an alliance with Rediff. The joint initiative was called “Voice of Rediff on Sa re ga ma”. The initiative provided an opportunity for aspiring singers to showcase their talent on the show, by uploading their videos and audio files on iShare. One lucky winner was chosen from the top five short listed entries by the show’s judges. The lucky winner then performed in the final episode of the show. iShare provides all hosting and bandwidths for free. One can upload videos directly from the mobile handset by converting the various video formats into Flash video. It also provides the users with viral tools that include showing a commercial before or after a user’s video and sharing of revenue. It has taken into consideration all elements of protecting user contents and privacy rights.

DMCL, a Zee group company has tied up with mobile operator BSNL to offer video

Content on the mobile - a service branded iSee. Popular soaps, abridged to episodes of 3 minutes duration, are provided to viewers.

Zee TV has undergone a makeover recently. To mark its return with fresh programming, the channel has adopted a more vibrant look and a new tagline. ‘Jiyo Zee Bhar Ke’ gives way to the new tagline ‘Har Pal Banaye Ek Naya Rishta’.

The new packaging highlights the quintessential Zee TV woman, who is rooted in tradition, but is also the perfect example of a contemporary woman, inspiring confidence in her family. The channel has come out with a 30-second master promo, which captures the journey of the Zee woman in different roles in relation to her family, her children, her husband and God. This is the second time in three years zee has come up with a revamp strategy. The advent of Viacom 18’s Colors has pegged back Zee to third position in the prime slots. With the current rebranding exercise Zee is planning to target the Indian women. This emphasizes Zee’s strategy to market its prime time slot soaps. Current rebranding has been largely based on the formal research into viewing habits and preferences. The findings underlined a truth the channel already knew - “The general entertainment genre is still largely a woman's sphere.”

Zee TV is one of the oldest General Entertainment Channels (GECs).I t has off late lost a position. Zee TV is lagging behind Star Plus and Colors (of late), though the gap is not much. If Zee doesn’t come up with a new product mix and effective marketing strategy quickly, it stands to lose further market share and the gap may widen further.

Tropicana

Fruit juices are perceived as anytime beverages, with consumption being spread more or less evenly between the mid-mornings, afternoons and evenings. Moreover, Generation Now is as much inclined to sipping fruit juices as colas, with teenagers driving the maximum trials.

Among packaged fruit beverages, the `awareness to trial' ratio of PepsiCo's Tropicana juice brand has been rated the highest. Up to 17 per cent of the respondents were aware of Tropicana, while the brand's trial stood at 11 per cent. In addition, eight per cent of the respondents stocked the brand at their homes.

Another interesting finding is that the average Indian may have a legendary weakness for mango, but when it comes to preference of fruit-based juices; his choices are in tune with international trends. Therefore, it is orange juice that is the most preferred fruit juice flavour in India, followed by apple, sweet orange and mixed fruit.

The findings indicate that most packaged juice-drinking consumers’ travel abroad on Holidays. Other attributes of branded juice consumers include employment of domestic help, ownership of assets and credit cards, and health consciousness with 80 per cent respondents going to aerobic classes or working out at gymnasiums.

Understandably, therefore, awareness and trial levels of packaged juices are higher within the SEC A category, than among SEC B consumers, the majority of whom rated these as aspirational.

As a clear indication that consumers perceive fruit juices as a grocery purchase, 60 per cent of the respondents consume fruit juices at home. While 55 per cent of the respondents consumed 1-litre packs at home, 45 per cent consumed 200-ml packs.

The Rs 100-crore packaged fruit juice market is estimated to be growing at 25-30 percent annually, with Tropicana and Dabur Foods' Real holding about 40 per cent market share each.

Tropicana is a subsidiary of PepsiCo family, a leader in foods and beverages. Tropicana went Public in 1969. It was purchased by Beatrice in august 1978 for $490 million in cash and stock and then sold to The Seagram Company Ltd., the Canadian alcoholic beverage maker, for $1.2 billion in March 1988. Later, they sold it to PepsiCo in 1998.

The juice business was sold to the beverage giant for $3.3 billion in cash. Rodkin was then the President and CEO of the company. Tropicana Products, Inc.: the leading producer of chilled orange juice and claims the top spot in the overall U.S. orange juice market, with a share of 33 percent. Tropicana distributes its products in 23 countries.

Initially Tropicana was launched with a bitter taste but gradually they changed it to sweet to attract the Indian consumers. In a way, it revamped their products to suit the Indian palate. To target the people who feel health as “The Most Important” factor to purchase a drink, Tropicana took on the health awareness and from now on “The Indian Medical Association (IMA)” will endorse PepsiCo’s Tropicana fruit juices-“partnership for health”! It Launch of 'Tropicana Twister’ to target the young generation. In addition to this, it introduced new flavors i.e. mango nectar, guava pulp and litchi juice- tickling the Indian taste buds. Advertisements were a perfect mix of modern and traditional trade via trial generations, TV, radio, outdoors and consumer-trade promotion.

Since, its market share is 30% - after Minute Maid and Real – there is an opportunity to increase this and make Tropicana a leader in this segment.

Advertising in Slowdown

Advertising is a communication tool used by companies to sell their products and services. Through advertisement companies try to persuade consumers to buy their products or services.

It was expected that during downturn advertising will be the first thing to be axed but figures show something else. Ad spends by top five FMCG companies have raised by 55% in the 2nd quarter of the year 2009-10. 70% of the total revenues generated by advertising sector come from top FMCG companies.

Instead of curbing their expenditure on advertisement, companies started launching their old existing brand in market. Henkel did this by relaunching its soap brand, Margo and also increased advertising and communication spending to 11 percent of the total sales.
The one of the main reason to increase expenditure on advertising is retain existing customers, who might switch to cheaper product.

Companies want to increase their market share by spending more on advertising and marketing. Relaunching and brand promotions lure customers to stick to brand and also attract new customers. During recession times customers become careful in spending. So each company wants to convince customers to prefer their brands. Research shows companies that slash advertising by 50 per cent take three to four years to recover their sales post-recession.

Marketers are wooing consumers with instant gratification, therefore they are using promotion such as discount sales, test drives of cars and get free assured gift(by Hyundai ), buy “a shampoo get a soap free” etc. In apparel retailing, discount plays magnetic role in enhancing footfalls. End of season sales lead to 30-45 per cent jump in sales. Especially in case of kid wear where parents prefer to shop during discount period as kids outgrow clothes fast.

Companies have understood that value retailing appeals to customers so they spend lot on advertisement to increase customer buying, in store promotions helps in impulse buying. Brands like Arvind has also received benefit of impulse buying in their store by introducing range of accessories, where by their average ticket size has increased by Rs 400.

Result too show that increased spending on advertising paid off. HUL’s net profit rose 19.6% from a year earlier and sales were up 21%. Marico’s revenues and net profit grew 28% and 15%, respectively. GCPL’s revenue jumped 26%, although profit was up just 1%. At Dabur, revenue and net profit grew 12.2% and 25%, respectively

Ritu Wears

Ritu wears is a well known Retail brand present in North India. In 1965 Ritu Wears entered the Indian fashion Industry with a 200sq.ft children’s wear store owned by the enterprising Mrs J.D Sahni. It started offering fashion and lifestyle to consumer since its inception.

Ritu Wear has emerged as one of the favorite brands. It success can be measured by its popularity amongst consumer. From single outlet of 200 sq.ft, now Ritu wears has 10 stores which are present in Delhi NCR Region and parts of Punjab. By opening new stores Ritu Wears is reaching close to customers who were far away from the store.

Ritu wears is a customer centric company. Every decision of the company revolves around customer insight. From opening of new stores to expanding their range for clothes. It’s a brand for passionate. Ritu Wears has always believed that without passion there cannot be fashion.

Be it is any festival, or any occasion, Ritu Wears is always there for its customers with collection for that offers. Ritu Wears specialty lies in being a fashion store for the entire family. Ritu Wears want when customer think of family, fun or fashion, they should think of them. The reason why RW is a complete family store is that not only cater exquisite fashion products to the tastes and preferences of every age group but also provide lots of shopping extravaganza and fun for the entire family

Ritu wears has achieved so much popularity amongst its customers due to the efforts being put by lot of people at its back end operation team. Director of company Mr Sahni and their entire family pays lot of personal attention to every feedback from customer and they themselves do product testing before it reaches to final customers. This helps in minimizing customer complaints. Distribution chain of Retail house follows proper coordination from head office and store level which ensures that product reaches customers on time.

Demand and supply gap is reducing to minimal by the constant efforts of the management team. The team follows the strategy of 3 B’s i.e Belief-----Behaviour --------Business.

For eg; if you believe that you want to give best service to your customer then it will be reflected in your behavior (actions) and which result into good business for the organization.

For this organization structure is framed in such a way that there is proper communication and coordination within all levels where best solution/variety can be given to customer.

Once customers are in store him / she finds something for everyone. Visual Merchandising of stores is taken care by management to provide pleasant atmosphere for shopping. Signages and Branding make accessibility easy for customer.

Marketing team of store is very strong, they come up with innovative ideas every time to attract customers to store. Sometimes with footwear Carnival, sometime it’s with Mother’s Day special offers etc.

Ritu Wears is amongst the few fashion houses in India that has successfully initiated and redefined not just sense of dressing with its brand new collections but also the shopping experience itself along with establishing new avenues. The products in its portfolio include apparels for men and women in segments including formalwear, casual wear, ethnic wear, party wear; kids wear, accessories, footwear and a wide range of national and international brands in lifestyle category

Brand Sense

Currently 83% of all commercial communication appeals only to one sense – our eyes. That leaves a paltry 17% to cater for the other four senses. This is extraordinary given that 75% of our day-to-day emotions are influenced by what we smell, and the fact that there’s a 65% chance of a mood change when exposed to a positive sound.

The effects of sensory branding are astounding. Yes, it’s possible to create a truly spectacular commercial, or an impressive advertising jingle, but they begin to become effective only when the two elements are combined. The effect is magnified many times over when you include any of the other senses. So the idea of sensory branding sounds good in theory? Well, practical steps need to be taken in order to move your brand from its two dimensional world into a five-dimensional place.

There are strategies to employ so that this transition will be successful. Events, moods, feelings, and even products in our lives are continuously imprinted on our five-track sensory recorder from the second we wake to the moment we sleep. This despite the fact that most mass communication—including advertising messages—that we’re exposed on a daily basis comes to us on two of the five available tracks. They’re visual and they have sound. We are so used to it, we never give it much thought. Herein lies the anomaly. As human beings, we’re at our most effective and receptive when operating on all five tracks, yet not many advertising campaigns, communication plans, or brand-building exercises utilize much more than sight and sound to put their message across.

Many people cite the new-car smell as being one of the most gratifying aspects of purchasing a new car. The smell is as much a statement of newness as the shiny body. In fact there is no such thing as a new-car smell. It’s an artificial construct, a successful marketing ploy that taps directly into fantasy. This smell can be found in aerosol canisters on the factory floor that contain that “new-car” aroma.

As for cornflakes, Kellogg’s considers the crunchiness of the grain as having everything to do with the success of the breakfast product. Emphasis is placed on the crunch we hear and feel in our mouths rather than the sound effects we hear on commercials. Kellogg’s has spent years experimenting with the synergy between crunch and taste. As part of this research they made contact with a Danish commercial music laboratory that specializes in the exact crunchy sensation of a breakfast cereal. Kellogg’s wanted to patent their own crunch, and trademark and own it in the same way they own their recipe and logo. So the laboratory created a highly distinctive crunch uniquely designed for Kellogg’s, with only one very important difference from traditional music in commercials. The particular sound and feel of the crunch was identifiably Kellogg’s, and anyone who happened to help himself to some cornflakes from a glass bowl at a breakfast buffet would be able to be recognize those anonymous cornflakes as Kellogg’s.

The day Kellogg’s introduced their unique crunch to the market, their brand moved up the ladder. They’d expanded the perception of their brand to incorporate four senses (including touch) rather than the more limited sight and taste. So by appealing to another of our five senses they broadened their brand platform.

In fact, as far back as 1973 Singapore Airlines broke through the barriers of traditional branding with their Singapore Girl, a move that would prove so successful that in 1994 the Singapore Girl

celebrated her twenty-first birthday and became the first brand figure to be displayed at the famous Madam Tussaud’s Museum in London. Previously airlines had based their promotions on cabin design, food, comfort, and pricing—ignoring the total sensory experience they could offer. Singapore Airlines made the shift when they introduced a campaign based exclusively on the emotional experience of air travel.

With a brand platform emphasizing smoothness and relaxation, their strategy was to move away from portraying themselves simply as an airline and instead to present themselves as an entertainment company. In the process, a new set of brand tools were invented and introduced. The staff uniforms were made from the finest silk in a fabric design based on the patterns in the cabin décor. The staff was styled right down to their makeup. Flight attendants were offered only two choices of color combination based on a palette designed to blend with Singapore Airlines’ brand color scheme.

The sensory branding of the Singapore Girl reached its zenith by the end of the 1990s, when Singapore Airlines introduced Stefan Floridian Waters. Not your average household name, to be sure, Stefan Floridian Waters is an aroma that has been specifically designed as part of the Singapore Airlines experience. Stefan Floridian Waters formed the scent in the flight attendants’ perfume, was blended into the hot towels served before takeoff, and generally permeated the entire fleet of Singapore Airlines planes. The patented aroma has since become a unique trademark of Singapore Airlines.

By the end of the 1990s Daimler Chrysler established an entirely new department within the company. This was not to design, build, or even market cars. Its job was solely to work on the sound of their car doors. That’s it. With a team of ten engineers allocated to the task, their only role was to analyze and then create the perfect sound of an opening and closing door.

Brand communication has reached a new frontier. In order to successfully conquer future horizons, brands will have to find ways to break the 2-D impasse and appeal to the three neglected senses. Superb picture quality won’t do it. Rather we should look to embrace all five senses in order to create a foundation for future brand strategies.

Courtesy: Lindstrom_Brand: Brand Sense

Dominos: New positioning

Here is a brief description of how Dominos’ evolved as a brand over the period of time. Dominos’ call itself to be in Food Services sector but not as a pizza player. The very definition of Marketing is that it is discipline of optimally allocating company’s resources for fulfilling consumers’ needs so as to ensure a balance of consumers’ subjective profits and the company’s long term financial profits.

Over a period of time, customers’ perception about Dominos changed and hence the subjective profits also varied. To sustain the long term profits in the market Dominos’ had to work hard in redefining its positioning in the minds of the customers.

For any business the first thing to do right is to choose a right segmenting variable. Segmenting variable could be anything like demographic parameter like age, region, sex etc. Or attitude behaviour like lifestyle, culture, belief, habits etc. Most of the people would be surprised to see that age, disposable income and family size are not the segmenting variable of Dominos. Infact the segmenting variable of Dominos’ is OCCASION. They have segmented the market on the basis of occasion so that people want a meal replacement for change in mood, party, spending time with family and kids, spending time with old friends, formal meeting with colleagues, clients and so on and so forth.

So dominos business is providing a high quality tasty food in meal replacement sector. When Dominos entered into Indian market, they tried to establish in a pizza category. First of their communications and tag line was based on the attitude that whenever and wherever you are hungry just call dominos. “HUNGRY KYA?” in one of the initial advertisements Mallika sherawat was the model. So some of the advertisements did fairly well and they established points of parity with other players.

Soon they realized that for home delivery model, time is the parameter which most of the customers value so they created a points of difference by new value proposition that is “30 Minutes or free”. Paresh Rawal featured ad in monsoon of Mumbai was a real hit and got many national and international awards. So after some time, when dominos’ business was not growing as fast as they expected they did lot of in depth and focus interviews where they found that it is not fast service which is the value driven parameter for customers, it is Taste which people want to pay for along with value for money. So once again as per the customers’ expectations Dominos’ introduced pan size pizza worth rupees thirty five and it all along changed the perception of people that Domino’s is a value for money.

So now responding to the customers’ reactions of valuing taste as the foremost reason to order pizza at home or office. They spent huge amount of money in R&D, hired new chefs on Dominos’ payroll and introduced various new variants in the Indian market like Cheese crust, Chinese pizza, other regional flavours etc. Some of them were instant hit and some could not do well. But one thing was very clear that constant innovation in product would only make your company better.

So now company has established three core values namely “30 Minute, free delivery”, “taste” and “Value for money”, with once again new positioning. “KHUSIYON KI HOME DELIVERY” is a new tag line and by virtue of this proposition, they could incorporate any of the core value in a same tagline. This is a beauty of any successful brand “CONSISTENCY”. The brand which is consistent over a period of time across product line is there for long time. Recently Dominos’ have introduced new series of commercials featuring sawant. Dominos is a smart company and they kept on this advertisement for quite a long time because of the recession in the market so they are banking upon the value proposition.

Hope to see brand dominos there for long time in the market with new brand proposition.

Videos of Dominos can be watched at the following link

http://www.dominos.co.in/advertising.jsp

Thanks to Dominos senior management for above piece of information.

Horlicks

Horlicks is a health drink brand existing in India since decades. Horlicks holds 50% market share of milk beverage market of India that is around 2300 crore (source: The Nielsen Company). GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare is a proud owner of such a strong brand. The brand has created such a great entry barrier that other big players like Nestle and Dabur have got a hit.. Nestlé has stopped making Milo and new entrant Dabur India has decided to stay clear of Horlicks and pitch its Chyawan Junior against GSK Consumer Healthcare’s other beverage brand, Boost.

One of the important reasons of Horlicks domination since years is because of constant innovation not intems of product only but also marketing. GSK Consumer Healthcare has decided to use the brand to get into new categories. In the last few months, it has launched biscuits for children, a nutrition drink for women, an energy bar and chilled milk.

The crazy thing is that Nestle and Dabur fell into the trap of Horlicks. It is GSK who dictates terms, all these new categories always existed in the market and GSK identified the market gap and filled it with its new product line. GSK is fully utilizing the strong brand equity of Horlicks to promote its new products and now Horlicks is India’s 6^th trusted brand.

When marketers see saturation in the market, they have either two choices one expand the market second increase the usage of its existing products. As of now Horlicks is banking on the first strategy and that is very obvious Young kids would like to continue with Horlicks when they grow older.. As increasing the usage is very difficult. Again, five years ago, GSK Consumer Healthcare had reached out to pregnant and lactating mothers with Mother’s Horlicks; last year it came up with Women’s Horlicks catering for women across age groups.
There’s Horlicks Lite for the elderly who often have a sugar problem and for the youth there is Horlicks Nutribar

With Horlicks Nutribar, positioned on the twin planks of health and convenience, GSK Consumer Healthcare has leveraged the brand to venture into an entirely new product category — energy cereal bars. A strong brand, opens up doors to new variants and even new categories.

In 2003, the brand was revamped: It was made tastier and launched in two new flavours — vanilla and honey. The company had earlier launched a chocolate version to try and win over consumers in the North and West who typically prefer chocolate-flavoured drinks. Not just higher tonnage, the company does succeed in extracting a price from consumers. In January this year, for instance, prices were upped by about 5 per cent. But it has been seen that parents in India can spend to maximum limit on two things Child’s nutrition and education. Horlicks cover the first part.

Horlicks has used media mix to its full capacity to reach out to every customer be it TV, radio, Print, Point of sales etc. Now it seems the next big task and if it succeeds, Horlicks would become the biggest brand in India is to sell Horlicks in rural India and make every villager drink Horlicks Milk.

Update: Cadbury

Cadbury has come with new TV commercial targeting the office goers. The Cadbury has maintained its tagline “KUCH MEETHA HO JAYE”. This advertisement is perfect example of occasion-based marketing. Customers can very well relate with this advertisement and since Cadbury chocolates are considered as Sweets so it gives them the reason to celebrate their salary day.

This ad clearly targets a middle class man who eagerly waits for his salary to come and spends next 10 days spending his salary with him family and friends. So Cadbury has just positioned itself in between that joyous moment of every person.

The background song was taken from the actual song AAJ PEHLI TAAREKH HAI from Kishore Kumar’s movie PEHLI TAREEKH. Team at Ogilvy has conceptualized this commercial while Ehsaan and Loy have composed the music.

The ad can be viewed at the following address

http://www.afaqs.com/perl/advertising/creative_showcase/index.html?id=13163&media=TV#

Marketing to kids

Kids are termed as 'the pestering power' - the ability to escalate the sales of a particular product in word of advertising gurus. "Pester power" refers to children's ability to nag their parents into purchasing items they may not otherwise buy. Marketing to children is all about creating pester power, because advertisers know what a powerful force it can be.

No ambiguity regarding this as we found them in advertisement of all gadgets too. Time has gone when they used to be seen in endorsing chocolates, butter, ice-cream etc.

Today children at a very young age are aware of various products and brands. And they have a greater say in the household these days. In other words, they have greater influence on their parents in deciding which item should be bought.

Sumit Seth, creative consultant with Sahara, said children are part of the most easily influenced category. Thus, advertisements featuring children first convince the child sitting in front of the TV screen, who in turn convinces her parents to buy a particular product.

From simple product like soap to buying any electronic gadgets, its children who decide which product to buy. And With higher disposable incomes and greater splurging power, young parents don't mind submitting to their children's demands.

Another reason why advertisements are dominated by kids ,is because of their innocence .when we see a advertisement with a cute little child saying something we tend to listen that, an ad, thus, plays up the emotional factor in the audience and wins over them.'

'Also, the fact that more and more kids' products are now entering the market has led to children being used in the ads. The age group of the kids in the ad, however, changes with the type of the product

To effectively market to children, advertisers need to know what makes kids tick. With the help of well-paid researchers and psychologists, advertisers now have access to in-depth knowledge about children's developmental, emotional and social needs at different ages.

Corporations realize the power of the school environment for promoting their name and products. Marketers are eagerly exploiting this medium in a number of ways, including:
Sponsored educational materials: for example, a Kraft "healthy eating" kit to teach about Canada's Food Guide (using Kraft products); or forestry company Canfor's primary lesson plans that make its business focus seem like environmental management rather than logging.
Supplying schools with technology in exchange for high company visibility.
Exclusive deals with fast food or soft drink companies to offer their products in a school or district.

Advertising posted in classrooms, school buses, on computers, etc. in exchange for funds.
Contests and incentive programs: for example, the Pizza Hut reading incentives program in which children receive certificates for free pizza if they achieve a monthly reading goal; or Campbell's Labels for Education project, in which Campbell provides educational resources for schools in exchange for soup labels collected by students.
Sponsoring school events

Companies are spending over $17 billion dollars annually marketing to kids, but are they doing it correctly? In order to attract kids you first have to understand how kids think. Kids think with urgency and when they have something in mind, they want it right then and there. They are not willing to wait to be rewarded; hence immediate gratification is of the essence. This is especially true when it comes to kids meal toys and promotions

Point of Purchase

Point of purchase can be understood as a place where sales are made, that place can be a mall, market or city. But we try to understand POP from retailer’s point of view it is an area surrounding the counter where customers pay.

Marketers have recognized the importance of identifying the value-added produce section as a destination point within the grocery store to stimulate consumer interest, impact purchase behavior and result in increase sales .

For marketers it POP is important because consumers tend to make purchasing decisions on very high-margin products or services at these strategic locations. Points of purchase may be real, as in the case of a "brick and mortar" store, or virtual, as in the case of an electronic retailer that sells goods and services over the internet.

There are various types of point-of-purchase displays, including window displays, counter displays; floor stands display bins, banners of any kind, and all types of open and closed display cases. Generally, these displays are created and prepared by the manufacturer for distribution to wholesalers or retailers who sell the manufacturer's merchandise. Often, a manufacturer will discount the cost of merchandise or in some other way compensate the retailer for using a point-of-purchase display.

Especially in case of value formats like Big Bazaar and Vishal mega mart. Gondolas and Bins are placed near cash counter so as to increase impulse purchase ,in these display bins projects range from grocery , toys, apparels , general merchandise like utensils , door mats etc are been placed. While waiting in queue people tend to purchase such stuffs.

Marketing in Telecom

This May lot of action was seen in almost all big telecom companies in India. None of them wants to leave any prospective to be remained untapped. Ten years back, there was a term which was very popular and that was Cola Wars. One of the important strategies that Cola companies used to adopt was price wars. If one company slashes its prices, the second follow the suit. Same is being seen in the telecom space. Recently Vodafone has introduced a national STD pack of 75 paise/minute call on the purchase of 49 rupees card. Then Airtel introduced the same scheme but with 47 rupees card. One thing is sure that with all these promotion schemes, these companies would not get extra customer. Even if they get, it is very difficult to differentiate.

Second big marketing initiative in the last month was taken by Tata Indicom. Tata has introduced TV commercials stating that leave the normal technology and switch to Digital Technology where voice quality would be better. All these CDMA companies have tried their best to differentiate themselves  but could not make a mark in the minds of the customers. So positioning themselves as the digital network company, Tata indicom wants to have mind share of customers. But It is believed that most of the customers are not able to differentiate that Digital Network is same to CDMA.

Thirdly, the advertisement expense incurred by Idea. In NCR region, it has been found that Idea has purchased lot of billboard space, hoardings, Sunpacks etc. All these advertisements donot show any product, scheme or new offering. It is just Idea with a Yellow Background and ADITYA BIRLA GROUP written below. So they are just spending to increase the visibility of Idea as a brand and secondly to promote Idea as a company under the Aditya Birla Group, which may be termed as Empire Branding.

Recently one chain mail is going in lot of IT companies where in The Title of mail shows that it is an official Virgin Mobile Ad. It is very difficult to check the autneticity of the ad, but ad says that “We are more experienced than what our name Says”. It is really a nice ad or communication to show that we are not novice in the market.

All these big daddies are spending a lot in communicating and earning a large chunk of this sector. In India, there are more than 300 million mobile subscribers and it is to reach 500 million by 2012. So there is no recession in this sector and no company wants to go out of the sight of the customer.

 

Motorola

Motorola mobile handsets were among the first one to enter into the Indian market but they could not keep the pace with the growth of the industry. It was found that customers had very little belief in the brand even lower than the late entrants like Sony Ericsson, LG, Samsung etc. The other problem which Motorola was facing the lack of support from local retail outlets and opinion leaders. This was the short story of Motorola in 2005.

So in 2005, it started with the objective of gaining better foothold in the Indian market which presently has more than 350 million mobile subscribers. It tied up with its national distributor, Bharti Teletech to increase its retail touch points from 3000 to 32000. That was a significant move.

Then in 2006, It entered into distribution network with ITC e-choupal. The collaboration was termed as Bharat Moto with the objective of turning the opinion leaders into MOTO customers.

Then Motorola tied up with almost every big subscriber like Airtel, Vodafone, Idea, BSNL to offer low end handsets with every new connection.

Then the major boost happened to Moto brand by the TV commercials, The major strategy of Moto was bit different from others. Along with communicating the salient features of handsets, Moto made sure that it creates a oomh factor among the customers. It started a viral in the market that keeping a Moto mobile is status and every range of mobile can be flashed.

In 2007, Moto signed Abhishek Bachhan to endorse its Rokr E6 product which was a great success. In one of the surveys, Moto found that its customers are mainly the first time buyers of the age bracket of 16-35, so it targeted its communication to youth. It positioned itself as cool and new techy brand.

Moto was one of the few companies to start Digital marketing in India. It advertised heavily on portals like yahoo, rediff etc. Even its website motostar.in had more than 0.1 million registered users. So moto very well used Social Media Marketing(SMM).

All this marketing initiatives helped Motorola to offer sub brands like Flip Moto, Foto Moto, Moto Yuva. The parent brand assures the customers of the quality and the sub brands offered the company to expand its portfolio and target the larger audience.

So it seems that Moto has got a right fit into the fastest emerging market in India by targeting the youth. 

Marketing 3.0

10 years ago, the marketing was all about selling the product. It was a product centric era. The marketer’s job was all about selling the products without knowing the needs of the customers. That is known as Marketing 1.0. Henry Ford’s most famous quote is an example of Marketing 1.0 “Any customer can have a car painted as long as in black”.

Now the scenario is different, the customer is more aware, intelligent and companies focus on customers’ need. All companies try to fill the gap in the market. It is the customer who determines the value of the product, brand, and then the company. This era is known as Marketing 2.0. Now every company is talking about customer centralism. So again it is very difficult to differentiate between the companies and their products.

So a new era of Marketing 3.0 is emerging where in customers are treated as Human beings. So instead of customer centric now marketers are turning their companies towards human centric.  This is a period where customer is more active, involved, anxious and creative. The customer wants to fulfil more than his basic needs and wants. He is happier to have his desires fulfilled. What is being done by Apple by introducing ipod or iphone.

So Marketing 3.0 is all about targeting the hearts of people rather than targeting the minds. This is what is Airtel is trying to do since a long time. Airtel is encouraging people to connect with each other. This is also known as ‘experiential marketing’ or ‘emotional marketing’.

So Marketing 3.0 is a value driven marketing. The companies that are able to make a difference in the lives of the customers are there to sustain long term in the market.

 Courtesy: Book “Marketing 3.0 Values-Driven Marketing”

NewU Stores

Hardly listened about the new retail format, infact not new, its been more than a year that Dabur India has rolled out health and beauty stores under the brand name NewU with a tagline “Beauty Health and Welness” about U.

This retail format is in direct competition with Reliance Wellness stores, The Body Shop. Initially when it launched its first retail outlet in early 2008, Dabur had plans of expanding it to 160 stores in next 10 years. The first store was spread over 4,500 sqft and had 13,000 SKUs. As compared to that the latest one at Vasant Square Mall in New Delhi has smaller size 1200 sqft with the number of SKUs around 6000.

NewU concept is designed by the British brand agency Pikefell. This venture is really an opening up of a new page in the history of Indian retail sector. It offers a wide range of assortments from both national and international brands in categories like cosmetics, fragrances, skin and personal care, baby and family care, fashion accessories, herbal and ayurvedic pharmaceuticals.

As of now Dabur has 8 operational NewU stores in cities like Banglore, Hyderabad, Delhi, Ludhiana, Jalandhar and is planning to set up 10-12 more stores in a year.

These stores are targeted at the upper middle class and upper class segment of the society. With the increasing wealth and awareness about the personal care, these stores are bound to succeed in times to come. Though the recent halt is the result of global recession.

Dabur India Ltd's beauty, health & wellness retail arm - NewU - has been voted as the Most Admired New Retail Launch of the year at the fifth edition of Images Retail Awards (IRA) during India Retail Forum 2008 at The Grand Hyatt, Mumbai.

The store also hosts beauty experts to offer advice to its customers.  With this kind of structure, it becomes easier for global brands to enter into the Indian markets. 

Informational Vs Transformational Advertisements

There are two kinds of products. One is High Involvement product where in customer spends great time in evaluating the specific product from its competitors’.

Product like Cars, Schools, Mobile Handset etc are the examples of High Involvement products.

On the other hand, Low involvement products are those products where in the customer purchases on the whims. Products like candies, chocolates, toothpaste etc fall into the category of low involvement product.

Therefore, there are two kinds of advertisements to target these different kinds of products.

Informational Advertisements in which companies try to give as much information as possible in the ad so as customer gets a choice to evaluate various parameters as compared to that of competitors. High involvement ads change the consumers’ brand attitude through information.

In the case of low-involvement ads, companies try to transform the consumer’s brand attitude through transformational ads. Here in these ads, more emphasis is on creativity and repeat purchase is what companies look for. As creative ads may get customer to the product but then repeat purchase is what makes the brand successful.

According to Schiffman and Kanuk, ads can create affect and this leads to attitude building for the ad and subsequently for the brand, this is true in the case of low involvement products.  In the case of high involvement products, ads first create cognition, then develop attitude towards the ad and subsequently towards the brand.

Now a days, even the products like mobile services which to certain extent is high involvement product in India. But Still services like Call, SMS, Other VAS etc. It is difficult to differentiate two brands like Airtel and Vodafone. So companies use transformational advertisements where companies try to target directly to the mind of the people with its creative ads.

Psychological Pricing

Psychological Pricing is a marketing exercise where in prices are set to a level that is perceived attractive by customers. It is a marketing practice to show that there are certain purchases, which are done on the emotional grounds.

Now a days , almost all companies do psychological pricing such as BATA floaters @299, Mumbai-Delhi King Fisher flight @4099 INR etc. This pricing strategy targets the psyche of the customers, where in they look for the prices lower than the market price or customers in the end feel that they got the best available deal in the market.

There is a scientific reason behind this pricing. When customer looks the price as 100, he perceives is as higher compared to 99.95 because human minds rounds it off to 99 and thus goes for buying it. Another customer survey showed that customer feels happy when she received back some change after paying for the product.

There are few types of Psychologocal pricing, such as Comparison Pricing or reference pricing where in seller provides the reference of actual pricing and then discounted pricing. This technique is followed mostly in mega marts like Big-Bazar.

Prestige Pricing in which marketers charge high prices to show that the products belong to high quality and have cult status like AXE deo.

Odd-Even Pricing where in prices are rounded off to 49 or 99, the theory says that customers feel that it is well marketed product while in case of 100 rupees, customer will feel that marketers have well calculate his profit.

Percentage Discount pricing where in different levels of percentages are shown on the racks to show that company has reduced pricing. This technique is followed by companies like Cantabil, Koutons which increase the price and then sell at 50% + 49% discount, customer feels that he is getting 99% discount wherein he is getting discount closer to 75%.

So there are lot of ways to target the psyche of the customers and in this competitive scenario, marketers use such methods to increase their sales.