24-year-old Charu Aneja is one satisfied employee. Why? Well, she works at India’s first Diesel outlet located at the Palladium, Mumbai, where the the shift starts at 10 30 and the dress code is as casual as it could get; which is why she aptly calls it her ‘hangout-cum-workplace’. Charu, an National Institute of Fashion Technology graduate and former dance instructor at Shaimak Davar’s, is more than satisfied with her job. She says, “Diesel is a brand I loved as a consumer; I am now selling it. The best thing is, people here are fun to work with.”

And she isn’t alone. The store’s front-end arm comprises of equally young and vibrant people with diverse backgrounds but with a common purpose of having fun at work! Take the case of 29-year-old DJ Gokul Kadam, who works as the Diesel Store Patrol or 26-year-old model or yoga instructor Komal Kriplani or even Irish engineer Joseph Flynn. The Diesel outlet is undoubtedly, a melting pot! Such is the recruitment strategy adopted by some of the premium brands like Timberland, Hard Rock Café & Diesel to reach out to the target customers of India, which spells new territory.

These brands have left no stone unturned to succeed in the new endeavour. Be it social networking sites, informal gatherings like parties, discotheques, salons or even employee referrals, they are just all over the place. The reason behind this new way of targetting the market is to get the youth on board who are all for rock music, fashion, adventure sports and are part of the target group, to promote and sell their products.

Darshan Mehta, CEO, Reliance Brands, which brought Diesel and Timberland Stores to India, clearly points out the importance of such innovative marketing techniques, “These people can easily understand the needs and aspirations of young consumers, being of the same age group and share the same tastes. Besides, identifying preferences of customers correctly is important for any brand to succeed.”

If the expansion plans of these brands are anything to go by, Diesel is kicked about opening up three new outlets, whereas, two have already started business. Hard Rock Café(HRC) is managing five stores in the country, while, Timberland Stores is all set to start four stores with a front-end employee strength of 24 people.

The total number of employees working at HRC all over India is approximately 200 to 250, of which the majority is under 30. For instance, 27-year old Vasim Sheikh an operations supervisor at Hyderabad, who has been with HRC for a total of four years, is probably the oldest! . “I was searching for a job when an ad helped me locate the opportunity at HRC. A blend of music and work seemed too alluring,” he asserts.

Another music enthusiast, Kugglen D’souza, a fan of musician DBoy,was destined to be at HRC which can be made out from his tale of realisation. He narrates, “Whenever I came here, everything looked great — the music, people, their clothes, hairstyles… I loved the way they worked. So, I walked in one day asking for a job and they happily agreed.” He joined HRC this January after completing Class 12.

He further explains that his craze for hip-hop made things easier for him during the interview. It must be noted that, the employees at HRC are trained to equip them for such roles.

“We have two extreme retail talent pools in the country — one for mass retail and another for luxury brands. For brands like ours, neither of the two fits in. We need a cool, easy-going pool of individuals to whom buyers can communicate their requirements,” says Jay Singh, co-founder and executive director, HRC India.

One of the crowdpullers is the environment at these outlets, which tends to be easy-going and informal. “It’s difficult for me to work in a tightly regulated work place. At Diesel, I get that freedom,” says Gokul Kadam, who transforms into a disc jockey on weekends with Fashion Bar and Lounge, Ashoka Hotel in the Capital.

Despite the success of the strategy, roadblocks are unavoidable. Here, they come in the form of unavailibilty of candidates in India. So how do they manage it? “Any model, when tried for the first time, poses a huge challenge but once established, yields good results. We have already started getting cold calls from many who have visited the stores asking for a job,” says Mr Mehta.

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The best marketing insight can be from common sense and directly knowing the customer. In th fast- paced times of today, we need to reinvent our thinking on the following core issues.

IS TV THE RIGHT MEDIUM?

In today’s times, when TV has become the favourite pastime of most, it is most ironical to note that TRPs, short for Television Rating Points, have dwindled considerably despite the wide range of new age channels and programmes occupying the frame. This is clearly evident from the fact that previously, a handful of channels competed amongst each other for TRPs that ranged anywhere between 50-60 as against the new age war for the two and three TRPs of today.

And the medium of TV requires loads of investment, so what if it is for a 20 seconds commercial? All this makes one wonder if TV is really the right medium?

CELEBRITY

In an era of ‘15 minutes of fame’, it is no wonder that celebrities do not live long. It is agreed that the use of a celebrity is a sort of insurance against a bad job of advertising to a certain extent, but it should also not be ignored that the amount of competition is fierce with every brand roping in celebrities to make it big. This may even result in celebrities switching brand endorsements which may be simply due to sundry reasons like a better package offered by a fellow competitor. With almost every brand slogging it out in the race for celebrity endorsers, every brand ultimately, turns out to be almost the same with a known name attached to it. And yes, whoever remembers which brand is endorsed by which celebrity, anyways?

PROMOTIONS

Nowadays, Marketing Managers have increasingly restricted themselves to being Promotion Managers. Previously, the strategy used to be ‘Buy two and get one free’ or even ‘Buy one. Get one’, which has now changed to ‘Buy one and get two free’. In today’s scenario, it becomes almost difficult to figure out if the demand has increased for the product or the free gift on offer! No points for guessing what that does to the brand equity!

USP

Philip Kotler is one of the foremost marketing gurus of all times. This has been agreed upon by the Marketing Managers of today and so, every product has a Unique Selling Proposition or the very popular USP. So, USP is then translated into technical terms and we get to hear things like Bio Fresh, Peptide, PSPO, which makes little sense to the customer. Kotler has also mentioned somewhere, “A confused customer is the worst customer”

REALITY COMMERCIAL

A few years ago, a new wave of reality TV shows hit the TV industry and inundated the Television scene. It continues to do so till today. And advertisements need to follow suit.

Today, most commercials are either comical or unbelievable or even such wherein the customer is put down. There is a very small list of advertisements that actually help in giving a lift the brand’s image. Realistic commercials are the need of the hour.

OVEREXPOSURE

IPL is a perfect example of overexposure. During the entire season, it must have come to our minds atleast once if not more, the endless number of brands shouting out loud from every possible corner. Be it the caps, shirts, sleeves, scoreboard, pants, balloons and the list goes on.

Now, the question, here, is “Isn’t this causing more of customer dismay than customer endorsement?”

PRIVATE LABEL

Volumes is what every manufacturer looks out for, even if that translates into increased competition. This explains why any manufacturer agrees to give out his product under other private labels, which means sharing shelf space with the other brands. So, have we done away with concepts like brand power, brand equity and brand disccrimination already?

GRASSROOT MARKETING

The fact that needs to be realised by the Marketing Managers of today is that ‘Grass root Common Sense Marketing’ is what will save the scene. It is high time they realise that we need marketing which follows the dictum of common sense rooted to the ground, rather than just following foreign case studies blindly, textbook thinking, desktop management.

Grass root Common Sense Marketing advocates brand royalty through services directed to customers, entrepreneurship in marketing, use of Indian examples and case studies in marketing and, most importantly, ‘consumer insight’.

This is the secret behind many Indian brands which have made it to the big league!

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It seems companies have come of age and have taken cue from a recent estimate that says that women account for over a fourth of the overall internet users in India. A case in point is of ad network Ozone Media Solutions which is vying to promote women-centric brands with potential users online.

Though, in other cases, the target audience is not restricted to the fairer sex alone. The catch is to tap the potential niche customers on the Net by getting out there and using a range of of specialised tools such as dedicated advertising channels.

These fast-moving consumer brands have learnt that turning to the Internet would be of immense help keeping in mind the popular usage. The list includes big names like Himalaya Drug and Hamdard Laboratories, jewellery maker Tribhovandas Bhimji Zaveri (TBZ) and global consumer products major 3M Corp which use dedicated channels advertising networks like women’s advertisement channel to bring in the added traffic.

For instance, jewellery retail giant, Tribhovandas Bhimji Zaveri puts aside more than a tenth of the total advertising budget for promotion through the internet and is expecting it to inflate by 20% by the next year. Kiran Dixit, Head-Advertising & Marketing at Tribhovandas Bhimji Zaveri (TBZ) further explains the importance of this new trend on the block. As put by him, “The rupee investment gets stretched to the maximum with a women-centric channel.”

The task of ad networks like Ozone Media Solutions is to provide service to advertisers by putting together a bunch of focused and niche sites that revolve around subjects such as health, fashion and home products. For an example, Ozone places ads for women-centric consumer brands on sites such as Indus-Ladies, IndiaParenting, SanjeevKapoor.com, Evesindia.com and About.com. The company’s devoted women’s ad channel, Eva, has a following of 25 lakh women per month. Himalaya, on the other hand, advertises its e-commerce site and personal care products.

It generally works with ad networks playing the mediator between the brands and the publisher sites. But, brands do negotiate terms with the sites with a better viewership record on their own, whereas, they find it reasonable to contact ad networks to meet the remaining demands of the advertising strategy.

Sites operating on a small scale play an equally important role in influencing women’s views. It may not be possible for them to have sales representatives to reach agencies which makes it rather sensible to opt for ad networks which are associated with specialised channels which consolidate unsold ad space even across the long tail.

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This 2 minutes presentation take you through how to use mobile as marketing tool. It tells you why one should use mobile for marketing and also discusses future of mobile marketing.

Just go through this presentation:

I hope you liked the presentation. Feel free to leave comments if you liked this presentation or if you have any doubt about any of the terms used. I shall be happy to help you.

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Consider all P’s of Marketing Product, Price, Place & Promotion. Which do you think is most important? I think pricing is the most important and all other P’s revolve around it. Today consumers give more importance to pricing. Pricing is a direct result of competition. This low cost or low price idea is to target consumers at the bottom of pyramid.

“Most dramatic consumer changes in the recent past has occurred not because of new tech or a service idea, but as a result of pricing innovations” says, Mr. Harish Bhat COO, Titan Industries. Pricing innovation has helped companies to bring new product or re-establish their brand. Innovation in Pricing has many times led to great business success. Consider Low cost carriers. South West Airlines first started it and other competitors then followed it. The idea is just to provide no-frills, charge even for a bottle of water and offer low cost. Consumers liked this idea and many shifted from other modes to air travel.

Low cost housing in India is another example. After introduction of TATA Nano (low cost family car) their next target is to provide low cost housing in costliest suburbs of Mumbai. TATA Housing Development Co. (unlisted company of TATA group) will invest up to 1 billion rupees in a 1,200-unit township at Boisar, in the outskirts of Mumbai, and will sell apartments at prices ranging between 390,000 rupees and 670,000 rupees. The company will hold a lottery to allot flats and will sell application forms at 200 rupees each.

Reliance Life Insurance is planning to come out with Unit Linked Insurance Plan with premium as little as Rs. 50/month. It is mainly targeted to people in rural market and the urban population who mainly live on daily wages. Not only this company also guarantees returns to them initially. Consider the Cola-wars they lately boiled down to pricing after much of advertising war. Buy any cola for Rs. 5/- from retailer. This not only gave opportunity to consumers to buy at low cost but also helped brands to attract new customer. Anyone would spent 5 Rs. to try cola.

Most famous and hot pricing war is seen in our mobile industry today. Earlier the demand for mobile telephony was too low. Once the free incoming was introduced this changed the way the people communicated, a subscriber growth zoomed. A sudden shift from land lines to cell phones. This pricing innovation perhaps single-handedly liberated the telecom sector in India from its initial sluggishness. It gave consumers complete control of their telephony expenses.

In the same industry, introduction of “per second” pricing has changed the face of industry. Telecom companies added millions of subscriber in a months time. A new numbering plan was required because India’s mobile subscriber base has grown at a faster pace than expected. In 2003, DoT had come out with a 30-year numbering plan, but five years down the line there’s a need for review. This time, DoT wants to ensure that the solution is for a much longer term. Mobile telephony has been witnessing tremendous growth. All this is a direct result of Pricing Innovations.

Thus Power of Pricing Innovation led us to 11 Digits…. Just add 9 to your existing number come January 2010…

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These are the Top 50 Most Valuable Brands. From the article in Economic Times on 20th November, 2009.

Top 50 Most Valuable Brands

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This is really amazing advertisement. I found it while surfing on youtube today morning. The ad depicts how prompt is the service of ING Vysya Bank. In this ad postman tries to find the person who is in immediate need of his cheque book. The post man reaches the person at the very time he uses his last cheque. The advertisement not only shows the prompt service of bank but also is little funny having good impact on customers mind. As it is easy to remember funny stuff, hence the brand is registered in consumers mind.

Advertisement creates positive image of the company and is also mix of traditional post services with modern banking services. Despite of slow postal services in the country the company looks that the customer gets prompt service.

Really Good! How will you advertise your product in funny way??? Think over it….

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