markathon december2014

From The Editorter the initial failure it faced. In Fun corner we would be checking how well you know your brands by posing to you the challenge of identifying the mascots of some of very famous brands. Apart from these we have our regu-lar monthlies Ad-dicted and Updates to keep you abreast with the latest happening inthe world of marketing. With so much in line waiting for you, flip through and let us know your comments and feedback by writing to [email protected]. We thank you for the constant support you all have given and hope to continue receiv-ing the same. Wishing you a very prosperous new year ahead.

Happy reading!!

Team Markathon

A few hours and we would be saying goodbye to the year 2014. One of the most eventful years of the recent past, it saw a change in Government at the center with a sin-gle party winning the majority and one major reason at-tributed for the same being the tremendous amount of marketing effort put in by BJP, a very good example of in-tegrated marketing communication in recent times. Glob-ally also there has been a lot turbulence around Russia, the oil prices hitting rock bottom, India showing a strong stance in front of the global community at the WTO. The later part of the year has brought hopes to the marketing fraternity that things are moving in the right direction and an upsurge in consumption is around the corner and with the Cricket World Cup-2015 approaching, we are going to see a lot of action on the turf of marketing.In this month’s cover story we are touching upon ‘The 3 B’s of Marketing’ which explores the consumer behavior from a new perspective and what should be done by the marketers to affect the 3B’s which are the Brain, Behavior and Buying. In the Vartalaap section we have for you an interaction with Mr. M S Nageshwar Rao, Chairman and MD of Real eT Matrix. One of the perspectives for this month brings to you an in depth coverage of a very pop-ular concept- ‘Influencer Marketing’, which is becoming the order of the day as each company wishes to achieve a strong word of mouth. In another article we would deal with the trending use of emotional appeal in advertise-ments which is ‘Sadvertising’. It covers how and why this method is being increasingly used by major brands to build an emotional bond with its customers. In the Specials segment this month we have Ishtihaar which is on how Kellogg’s reentered Indian market af-

Editors

Amit Sonwani | B Ushashree | Nishant Prakash |

Ramanathan K | Varsha Poddar | Yash B. Bhambhwani

Cheena Pasrija | Gautam Gopal | Mohammad Fahd |

Sumit Bedi | Vinay Jain

Creative Designers

Malini Aishwarya B | Swati Pamnani | Ansul Jindal |

Kasturi Guha Thakurta | Sagar Riaz

The Markathon Team

IIM ShillongMARKATHON

Markathon December 2014

ContentsPerspectives

A Trap We Love to Fall inSarthak Brahma| MNIT Jaipur

Emote to Promote- Appeal to Heart and not HeadRohitha Chowdary, Satya Sundar Samal | TAPMI

The 3 B’s of MarketingGautam Gopal and Vinay Jain | IIM Shillong

VartalaapMr. M S Nageshwar RaoChairman and MD, Real eT Matrix

Eye 2 EyeAmazon Echo- Resounding Success or Redundant Technology?Kajal Verma | IMT Ghaziabad & Balaji V S | SJMSOM IIT Bombay

Silent VoiceSwachh Bharat AbhiyanChinamayee Sahu | Xavier School of Management, Bhubaneshwar

Specials

AddictedAnsul Jindal & Sagar Riaz | IIM Shillong

Fun CornerKasturi Guha Thakurta | IIM Shillong

IshtihaarGautam Gopal | IIM Shillong

Jab They FailedVinay Jain | IIM Shillong

UpdatesCheena Pasrija | IIM Shillong

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Markathon december 2014

IIM Shillong1MARKATHON

The future will not be dominated by people who know the most about ‘The Quantum Theory’, nor those who can hit long sixes or take best penalty

shots, nor those who bag most Oscars and certainly not by those who make false promises for votes- NO. The future (& much of the present) belongs to people who hold major leverage on public stance, people who can sway the masses into believing what they ask them to believe- PEOPLE who hold INFLUENCE over other people’s opinions without letting them know about their ‘STAR-DOM’.Gone are the days when companies resorted to luring top journalists through five-star hotels and business class air travel in order to secure positive press coverage for their brands. Businesses now need to identify those people who are influencing their prospects and realign their mar-keting accordingly. For product marketing, if they can’t get to more people, they need to get to the right people. As Malcolm Gladwell puts it-“There are exceptional people out there who are capable of starting epidemics. All you have to do is find them”There is no litmus test to tell who these people are. They may be high profile CEOs and conference speakers, free-lancing journalists, financial analysts or blog writers, so-cial network page owners and even the girl/boy next door that are socially gifted enough to influence a community. In the context of business to business (B2B) marketing, integrators and consultants play this key role. Also, top in-fluencers in B2B come from hugely important Value-add-ed resellers (VRS) and Original equipment manufacturers (OEM).The success of any marketing approach depends today on the involvement of such people with this par-ticular and rare gift . A potent strategy as such is called Influencer marketing.Technically, the term has a boring definition with words like ‘commissioning’ and ‘succouring’ but essentially it means finding people who are experts at “planting ideas

BY SARTHAK BRAHMA MNIT, JAIPUR

perspective december 2014

A Trap We Love to Fall in

A two-way Analysis of Influencer Marketing

perspective

in people’s minds” and making them do so. These people are the real-world Leo DiCaprios capable of performing ‘Inception’ and are the best at doing it. So if people think that “the military technology to infiltrate the subcon-scious” used by him doesn’t exist then they need to look right in front of them at the screen they read this article on. From that pink background pamphlet showing a man telling you how he makes 10,537 ₹/day sitting at home to forums of consultants, government-backed regulators, financiers and user communities and as far as to the en-tire social web- everything is part of that machine. Byte by byte, line by line and post by post, people are falling into the trap of Influencers. . per-spective


december 2014perspective

Let us deal with an example- What do people do when they have to make a decision regarding availing/dis-posing of a commodity/service they don’t have much knowledge about? Obviously, they “google it” or look for advice from people who seem to know about it to choose the best brand/product/service provider. The million-billion dollar corporate giants obviously know this ‘STRATEGY’ of theirs. The key is what they do with this knowledge. If they do use Influencer marketing tac-tics, then the question is whether the masses actually get to make that decision themselves? Absolutely, Un-questionably & Undoubtedly –NO. The companies thus acquire a certain amount of hold on the decision making of the general masses. By doing so, they have come up with a far more prodigious and far more powerful strat-egy of “Casting a smart net and making waves”.Having said that Influencer marketing is a trap, the inten-tion is not to characterize it any negative way whatso-ever. There is no need to panic! It’s a ‘Nil Nocere’ trap. It’s not going to harm people. In fact it might be good for them. Of course nobody likes to be fooled but isn’t it jus-tified as far as people get what they want and can even brag about it. Looking at the other marketing and brand-ing tools they may have, people can’t be so harsh on

those brands. When brands align their marketing, public relations, sales and product around a common strategy through Influencer Marketing, it’s a win-win situation for everyone. In fact, it is something that people themselves have begged for (if not given birth to). Fed up of the soothing, humourless monotone of the mission state-ment, marketing brochure, and “your-call-is-important” interruptions, the frustration of people reverberates aptly by this declaration of ‘The cluetrain manifesto’ –“We are not seats or eyeballs or end users or consum-ers. We are human beings-and our reach exceeds your grasp.”

This symbolized people’s need, nay, the exigency of a game plan of marketing that was more ‘human’ to them and that made them believe that they were actually buying something instead of salespersons trying to sell it to them. Influencer marketing is thus the brainchild of a frustrated consumer, (oops! human being) who got infuriated by the bore some century old tactics of ‘Inter-ruption marketing’. Hence, it can well be concluded that Influencer marketing is a two-way symbiotic relation and hence is inevitable for everyone. As Nick Hayes realized this so early-“It was clear that influencer marketing, a specific take on word-of-mouth marketing, had reached that part of the wave where there was no turning back.” per-spective


december 2014 perspective

Recently, Influencer Marketing has produced wonders for MI6 (U.K), Netbase Solutions (U.S.A), Juniper Net-works (U.S.A), close home for Ford India and many others. The tremendous success of Whatsapp making it what it is today (or what it is ‘not’ courtesy of Face-book, Inc.) can be attributed to word-of-mouth market-ing in general and Influencer campaigns in particular. The range of Influencer Marketing is not limited to companies only. It can also be perceived as a decisive factor in bringing the present ruling party to power in India! The potency of the strategy is thus limitless and businesses still using obsolete and anachronistic mar-keting techniques need to ponder over this modern, in-vogue super design.To sum it all up, the best thing to say would be that the notion in question is hegemonic in the context of modern businesses and there is absolutely no limit to its applicability range. Be it a customer, a marketer or an influencer himself, all need to “BRACE THEMSELVES” because believe it or not INFLUENCE MARKETING is certainly going to influence if not decide the shape of the business world to come

To gauge the basic evolution of the idea about how word-of-mouth marketing can really boost sales, ‘The One Number You Need to Grow’ is a must read paper. Fred-erick Reichheld said in this paper that he figured it out after two years of extensive research which linked survey responses with actual customer behaviour—purchasing patterns and referrals—and ultimately company growth, that businesses only need to ask their customers one question: “How likely is it that you would recommend

our company to a friend or colleague?” From 2003 then, things have changed for better in the field of Influence Marketing.Apple Inc. was one of the very first to devise any specific programmes for influencers and it is seen where it stands today. Proctor & Gamble, Pepsi, Budweiser, Virgin Mobile and Yahoo-all started focusing on influencer campaigns to gain edge over their market counterparts.

perspective



BY Rohitha Chowdary. Satya Sundar Samal TAPMI

Emote to Promote – Appeal to Heart and not Head

Sadvertising

Gone are those days when a car was showcased just as a means of transportation, today it is portrayed as a me-dium to bridge the gap between you and your loved ones. Gone are those days when brands used to emphasize on the “USP” (Unique Selling Proposition) of the product, today it’s about “ESP” (Emotional Selling Proposition) as well.Gone are those days when “funny” ruled the advertising world, today it’s the era of Ad-induced tears riding the ride across the land, powered by engine of social sharing.Gone are those days when advertisements were focused towards just evincing the images of the product in the mind of the consumer but today, it’s about tugging at the heart strings of the consumer.Marketing automation provides insights about buying behaviour of customers and helps the marketing team to create customer specific campaigns.The art of buying and selling has transcended into a whole new level of emotional process with advertisements that don’t focus on product attributes only, but also on how it affects people lives. I was born as a marketer, but now sto-ryteller is my new identity and I humbly stand appalled, for I am not only talking to my audience, but also taking them into a whole new journey which shall get imbibed and etched into their memory forever. “Make it emotion-al”- is the new mantra and the recipe for success is saddle the strap of emotions onto a horse fed with a great story, then winning the race be it of mind or market share is just a matter of time. It’s this desire of the brands to becomea part of their consumer lives that has led to the concept

of “sadvertising”. Sadvertising deals with an advertising trend where strat-egies are implemented on people emotions with an ob-jective of striking the chord with the consumer segment. Remember the fortune oil old lady advertisement? This is a classic example of an impactful commercial emphasizing on the concept of “Ghar ka Khana”.The ad opens with an old lady struggling to climb up a long flight of stairs of a hospital where her grandson is admitted. The old lady insists that she be allowed to feed him only two spoons of dal as the hospital food is doing no good to him. The nurse refuses her outright, saying that outside food is not allowed for patients, to which the old lady replies, “It is home-cooked!” One day, on the oc-casion of her grandson’s birthday, she gets along two dab-bas, one of which she gives to the nurse and the other she keeps for her grandson. That day, in private, the nurse tastes the home-cooked lentils and things change from there on. The following day, she readily agrees when the old lady requests the nurse to feed him home-cooked dal. Unable to believe, the teary eyed grandma goes to feed her grandson with two spoons of dal. After sometime the grandson takes the dabba from her and gulps the entire dal! The film ends with the voiceover saying ‘Ghar ka Kha-na, ghar ka khana hota hain’. The brand through this ad commercial tries to position its product-“fortune oil” as a safer and healthy option, by beautifully wrapping it in the form of a touching story explaining the relationship between a grandmother and her grandson.

Chevy Commercial



Why Internet and not TVMeaningful marketing, which is being widely known as “sadvertising” lately, revolves around the concept of touching the lives of the people by relating through a story. Hence, the duration of these ad commercials is relatively higher when compared to that of the general TV ads. This is one of the main reasons, why these ad commer-cials are more prevalent on internet and not on TV, which mostly caters to telecasts ads of around 30 seconds duration. With the digital world mov-ing towards internet at a much faster pace than expected, this bane of being only relevant to in-ternet goes on to become a boon.

Is the picture too Rosy? The results are mixed. On the one side of the coin, we can hardly doubt a brand for wanting to devel-op deeper meaningful connections with people, than just traditional transactional relations—On the other side and keeping our fingers crossed, if it’s in the wrong hands, it can result in emotion-ally manipulative work that raises doubt on the genuineness of not only the product but also the brand. (For example: Dove “Beauty Patch”).Another major risk is leaving the consumers con-fused, if the positioning is not right. The context has to have some kind of connection to the thing that the advertiser makes. For example, Always didn’t champion anti-ageism or gay rights - it ad-

Ghar Ka Khana

Google Reuniondressed female empowerment among adolescent girls, a subject close to the hearts of its target audi-ence.‘Sadvertising’ turns into ‘Badvertising’: When the brand doesn’t have the right or necessity to talk about the sad message they want to desperately preach. In other words, when the connection is so insubstantial it becomes nothing more than insincere, as Consum-ers aren’t stupid.

Path AheadThis emerging trend has great unleashed potential, which could be utilized by brands wisely provided enough emphasis is laid on the core objective that is positioning the product. But the advertisers should re-spect the fine line between the need and desperation, not every product or brand needs sadvertising just to gain market share. No one likes brands that are saint, for all consumers know that the companies here are to make money and not to start charities

We all like to believe that we are smart buyers. We wouldn’t want to be included in the category of those Naïve buyers who fall for the marketing strategies of organizations. Yet have you ever wondered that why is it that we buy what we buy. You have a lot of reasons at the back of your mind vali-dating your decision of buying a particular product. Well it is disheartening to say this but most of the times you don’t even realize why you bought that pair of Levi’s jeans or the new IPhone 6 or those new pair of Nike Shoes. It is because of those parts of your brain which are influenced by a given set of stimulus which you get exposed to during an organi-zation’s marketing endeavors.

Here we introduce you to the 3 new B’s (of market-ing)1. Brain2. Behavior3. Buying

These three B’s are interconnected and should be analyzed together at all times. The brain responds to the marketing stimulus from various organizations which leads to a particular kind of behavior & finally to buying.Organizations across the countries use various mar-

keting strategies based on their best judgment made out of data and intuition. Now it is quite possible that an organization whose marketing strategy was very successful for one of its products may not be able to replicate the same kind of success because they weren’t really sure as to what was it that actually made the customers buy their products. A few orga-nizations may claim that they know this because of their market research initiatives but they are wrong, it is because the customers themselves don’t even know why they bought that product in the first place. Now, say an organization actually knew what was in their Ads or other promotional activities that made the customers buy the product, then this organiza-tion will do the same thing in its next product’s mar-keting too. Brain is what actually makes the decision of buying or not buying a product. To understand better we need to have a brief idea about the human Brain. When it comes to decision making our brain can be divided into three parts:they start separate divisions within the marketing fun

1. The new brain( the rational self)2. The middle brain( the emotional self)3. The reptilian brain( the instinctual self)

The rational self takes decisions based on some logic, the emotional self based on some emotions and the instinctual self based on what comes to your mind instantly when you look at something for the first time. Research proves that our instinctual self has a greater impact on our buying decision than the other two selves.


cover story december 2014

Cover Story ByGautam Gopal

& Vinay Jain

IIM Shillong“The 3 B’s of

Marketing”

Brain Behaviour

Buying

Now as a marketer I would definitely want to influ-ence more of the reptilian brain rather than the other two brains. But for that the marketer needs to have an understanding of the Reptilian brain to maximize the effect.

When you look at the first picture (on the right ) the first thing that comes to your mind is the innocent children killed by the Taliban in Pakistan where as in the second picture youneed to think, put in

some efforts and then get the answer. This

shows us that the reptilian brain doesn’t take time to come up with connections

like the new brain which is slow and needs a lot

of effort.

Had someone asked us what is the shape of the diagram for the first picture we would say spiral & if asked what is the color of A and B in the second picture, we would say grey & white respectively.

This shows us that it is easy for the reptilian brain to get fooled because in reality the first picture is a set of concentric circles and in the second picture both A and B are of the same color as shown below.

The beforesaid shown illusions prove that when there is conflict created in the reptilian brain then it becomes difficult for the brain to arrive at the right decision. As a marketer I would want to know what are the things that could stimulate the Reptilian brain so that I can do more of those and increase the impact of my marketing strategies. The Reptilian Brain is stimu-lated by the following Stimuli:

1.All about me:

If the advertisements refer to me directly it is more likely that I would be interested in buying the prod-ucts. This is because addressing me directly makes me feel better by activating a certain part of the brain as making me feel like I have been approached by someone in person to do something for him.

2. Show the differences:

Showing two different situations makes the brain want to reach that level of superiority.





MARKET-ING

3.The Real thing:

Reptilian Brain hardly recognizes only words and it needs tangible concepts to understand. Look at the first picture, this was an effort to stop people from driving after they are drunk.Here, by making the bor-der around the tree, the advertisers are showing that if you drink and drive this is what will happen to you and these kind of advertisements play on the fear of people.In the second picture by making one of the lines of the Zebra crossing whiter showed them the real impact (makes things as good as new) of Mr. Clean which sells household cleaning products.

4.The first and the last part: This part emphasizes on the fact that the reptilian brain mostly remembers only the beginning and the ending of any advertisement, and forgets pretty much everything else. This basically means that we focus more on these crucial parts and convey the most important information(like the differentiation) of the product in these two phases of the advertise-ments so that the things retained by the customers are the most important aspect of that product to maximize brand awareness and eventually the sales.

5.Visuals:

In the first picture a kid’s feet’s bones are being compared to an elephant’s emphasizing on the re-quirement of Calcium for a child. Where as in the second picture a clear sign of improvement has been shown because of the product making the cus-tomer want to achieve that kind of results.



Have you ever wondered that why is it that people remember a video of an incident much better than a description of the same incident given by someone else? As optic nerves which help you see are directly connected to the Reptilian Brain they are 50 times faster than the auditory nerves which help you hear and hence the brain retains more of visuals rather than the audio. The first picture is a proposal by a Yoga center trying to show them the benefits like in-creased flexibility by using a straw as a medium. The second picture is an advertisement for a plastic sur-gery hospital from Canada where they are trying to show you the kind of precision with which they work that it is almost impossible to find out the new nose after the surgery.

6.Emotional:

The above picture is trying to spread the message that we shouldn’t talk while driving. Here, they have put forward this point by showing a guy talking to his wife/girlfriend and blood comes out of the phone indicating an accident.

The picture above is an advertisement for smokers asking them to quit smoking. This has been done by showing them the after effects of smoking by show-ing a damaged mouth with decayed teeth and many other mouth diseases. Both the ads are trying to play with your emotions. While the first one is using love as an emotion to con-vey the message the second one is using fear as the emotion. The reason being that the Reptilian brain is more affected by emotions and hence takes decision based on that.

Summary:

In today’s market the competition is intense and or-ganizations across the world are doing anything and everything in their power to come up with a unique and effective marketing strategy. In these times, just coming up with innovative marketing strategies built on intuition won’t help. Only those organizations which formulate a strategy in alliance with Science have a real chance of coming up with good results as they use the knowledge of how the brain works in changing the behavior which would eventually lead to buying. So it is time for all the organizations to start making their marketing campaigns based on the stimuli influencing Reptilian Brain

vartalaap


vartalaap december 2014

VARTALAAPAn Interview with

Mr M S Nageshwar Rao

M S Nageshwar Rao who graduated from UVCE Ban-galore and also an alumnus of IIM Bangalore has over 22 years of experience in sales and marketing functions of engineering plastics, construction ma-terials and in the real estate sector. After working for 10 years he started his own firm which specialized in real estate consultancy, interior design and execu-tion. Currently, he teaches at premier institutions like IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Indore and IIM Udaipur

Chairman and

Managing DirectorReal eT Matrix



implement things while that’s what is happening in the other sectors. The way it is different is that real estate is the biggest investment any individual would make in his/her lifetime. The problem with custom-ers and those who are in the business of selling real estate is the lack of understanding of the business and the sector - neither the seller knows what he is selling nor the customer knows what he is buying. The whole industry has been thriving on information asymmetry and that is one of the key elements. As far as the marketing strategies that the companies have been using is more of selling than marketing, re-stricted to highlighting the plot that you have rather than trying and finding out what the need is and ful-filling those needs. And a large number of companies and people involved in the industry have been look-ing at it this way. The other thing is that it has been an intermediary driven activity, it has always been through the agents (supposedly knowledgeable) and a lot of incentives coming their way for a long time. But if you transpose yourself to the current situation it isn’t really the same. You got to use different chan-nels that are available so there is no one particular channel. There is a heavy and overbearing reliance on advertising, print advertisement especially - giv-ing ads on the first page announcing that you have arrived hoping that the customers will flock to you. That has largely been the idea of the real estate de-velopers. Also it can been observed that real estate companies have been the highest spenders of news-paper advertising at around 3000 crores a couple of years ago. Now it is not a pain anymore, every set of customers or the volume of customers remain the

Markathon: From a degree in civil engineering in Bangalore, what prompted you to take up an MBA from IIM Bangalore? How has your journey in the marketing world been till now?

After I completed my engineering I somehow felt that I have a flair for marketing and I wanted to do something different, out of the normally treaded path, so marketing is one thing that I felt I would be comfortable with. Going to the marketing job - mar-keting construction equipment was kind of related to my field and that gave me whatever I was looking for and that was the reason for transformation. One other reason could be that probably I wasn’t good technically so it was a much easier way out and that’s how I got into marketing. It’s been a great journey as a matter of fact. The key element was that my de-meanor and personality was suitable for the role and made me comfortable interacting with people. That was the key, I guess in hindsight, which pushed me into the field and helped me stay there for that long. That’s about it.

Markathon: How is the marketing scope different in the real estate industry? How do we decide on the most appropriate channel for marketing in this in-dustry?

Marketing in real estate has largely been about - people trying to push things on the customers and the fact that there has always been a latent demand. People somehow found that the customers and didn’t really look at marketing as a field of study to

vartalaap



same but the number of people chasing them has increased drastically. The biggest problem in real es-tate marketing is the nonexistence of the adherence to the promises that you are making. Promises are made left, right and center. They aren’t confident of delivering and hence end up underperforming. This has been one of the biggest banes in the industry. So how do you get over such flaw? Another point that I want to raise here is that this is a sector which is largely not affected by the competitors, everybody in the industry can carve out a place for himself and be profitable. What you do within your boundaries will determine your success. And if you can have a control over your operations and even if you are rea-sonable comfortable in delivering or believe that you want to do that then I think you are good to go. What is not happening is that the people aren’t keeping their promises which can really change the industry. Markathon: As the founder of Real eT Matrix Pvt Ltd, how do you sell consultancy services to a large chunk of crowd-funders who are small time inves-tors buying shares in commercial properties with-out investing in consulting?

As we have witnessed that there has been a tremen-dous increase in the e-commerce platforms retailing real estate. What has been happening is that more and more companies are coming in and are just act-ing as providers of glorified homes. It is not the real time information which is shared with the custom-ers. However there has been a huge change that is coming in by some of the new entrants for example: Tata Housing has come out with an innovative idea

More and more companies are coming in

and are just acting as providers of glorified homes

of selling the real estate in an IPO way. One of the key things of real estate is that the process of price discovery hasn’t even been conceived. So they aren’t really aware if what they are uploading is the right price, that is one grey area that is there and Tata Housing did that by selling one of the properties by the IPO way which was oversubscribed 5 to 6 times and they were able to get a price brand between 9000 and 11000 with advances coming in and in a day or two they collected around 400 crores for one project which was a very significant thing. This ex-ample has been replicated by other companies like Lodha also by a construction company in Chennai. But still the gap of providing real time information ex-ists and that’s what Real-eT Matrix tries to fill but we felt that the industry wasn’t ready for the transpar-ency the system would bring in. They survived on in-

“

“



formation asymmetry and you expect that by giving little information the customers are going to come and then you will sit with them and convince them into the sales rather than help them with the issue for which they are actually there. In the commercial space there are large spaces and entire floors are oc-cupied by large companies typically IT, BSFI etc. large chunk of companies which are in the startup mode because of the technology enablement, they will be able to service a wider customer base with a smaller employee base. These companies can only put office areas for sale upfront through agent networks or a multinational company acting as an intermediary. If more information about these available spaces are put up I think you have a better chance of offloading your plots as and when you need. You would be able to build on a price band that you have at the end of the day. That was a key element and it is possible if you can enable your systems to and if you are will-ing, I think that there is a way forward for large num-ber of self-employed people to get into the space to have money with the Real estate assets. Coming to the commercial space - the transparency is naturally going to grow and huge number of customers are there who want their transactions to be clean. This information flow probably is the way forward for commercial properties sellers to take advantage of the ecosystem which is currently there.

Markathon: Sir, essentially which customer seg-ments are you catering to at Real eT Matrix?

Real eT Matrix was the company conceived to cater

to the property developers, enable them to have the all-encompassing marketing solution, an end to end marketing solution. At a conceptual level the idea was pushing information to the marked person which ended up creating a huge disconnect in the organization who would wanted to hold on to the information and create power centers. When we tried to implement the system we found that the im-plementation cycles were long and the sales cycles were long too. Moreover, most of the activities that real estate marketing and sales guys do doesn’t in-volve decision making - the finance guys do that and a lot of decisions are made scrapping features etc. which could have been easily offloaded. So there are definite barriers to transparency and this is the way forward but I still have not seen, the kind of solu-tions which we can come out with but the market is moving pretty fast in that direction, so it won’t be that long till transparency really comes in. There are other policy initiatives which have been taken, which is going to force transparency on real estate compa-nies, for e.g.- the real estate development regulation and bill. Most companies are always looking out for a stick to wield before they actually take the decision, if it had been voluntary it would bring out a huge dif-ference.Going back to earlier question, what as marketers you could do, in real estate, more than 50% issues are with delivery delay, the problem is none of these companies are willing to inform the customer about the delay, so if only you could tell the customers up-front what really the status is that could really hap-pen. As the best channel to propagate real estate is word of mouth, thus it is the trust which you are able to develop over the times which will bring you more customers.

Markathon-Moving forward to customer relation-ship Management. What sort of practices can com-panies adopt today to ensure that sales and cus-tomer service team use in-house CRM tools rather than enforcing it, which was a popular practice in the days of old?

In the days of old, customer relationship manage-ment was ideal. Today it is mistaken to be the solu-tion which could be brought in into the system. So until company makes this distinction that it is the process which company needs to adopt and not the solution which is going to aid the process, you will see these differences cropping up. The biggest prob-


vartalaap december 2014lem with CRM system today is that the touch point should necessarily be a complain about the satisfac-tion of the product, as long as your touch point is the issue or the problem the customer is facing, your solution is not working. If only companies can work around this information and be proactive to solve this situation, otherwise we are going to see prob-lems. There are companies which have got all the IT infrastructure to have a great system but when it comes to delivery, or addressing customer problems they are not there. Companies need to talk to the customer and intervene at the right moments before letting that unsatisfied feeling in the customers lin-ger on.One company I see moving in this direction is Ma-hindra automobile - there is someone high-up inter-vening or trying to find out or showing regret and apologizing , this will give the customer a feeling of belongingness and this will give distinction between the CRM as an idea or philosophy or a CRM as a tool. So when you start using CRM as a tool and start en-suring that the customer is taken care of, you are moving forward in the right direction as far as the CRM implementation part is concerned.One of the key things which What I have noticed – the companies are trying to keep their ears open to understand in real time what the customer is actually going through. Many companies are getting into that listening war. These efforts need to be institutional-ized, these interventions should not be more out of individual contributions or due to personal involve-ment of certain people who are tuned to that kind of behavior. You need to turn this individual behav-ior into an institutional structure or behavior which could be seen in quick service restaurants, chai wal-las etc, who keeping track of the customer with sim-ple interactions and try to repeat the best practice. More over some processes are high on sound, low on delivery –if this could be reversed, this is the way to move forward.

Markathon - How can companies proactively track their CRM practices and determine if they are not yielding the result?

It’s not about collecting information that is impor-tant, what you with this information is important. Can you bring periodicity in entrancing that informa-tion which is collected and can you have somebody with real intention to use it to solve issues in your organization.

Try and put a system in place, identify the right kind of people who have this demeanor to seek through muck and make a difference. That is one way forward for a company at a very simplistic level.

Markathon- What, according to you, does the in-creased focus on marketing automation mean for customers on phones today?

Automation in a way is a deterrent, this is taking away the personal touch. Be it your answering machines, and the system is the not geared up to answer at the shortest possible time, it’s a queue system and in the queue there is a lot of repetition, there is a constant messaging that gets repeated. For e.g.- the new offer you want the customer to hear about, although your intention will be to inform the customer but it will play again and again 10 times. The customer has no option but to disconnect and move to another line. It can be a really irritating scenario. So automation is fine till an extent, it’s where do you drop the line and do you ensure that the automation completely replaces the human interaction, which would be ex-pected. So company needs to look at automation, as it does have an implication on cost but the most ef-fective way to do so would be in a way that it does not offend the customer.

Markathon-What will be once piece of advice which you would like to give to the budding marketers to-day?

If I have to stick to one piece of advice that I will like to give them that would be that Marketers need to look at customers as an extension of themselves. It’s not me and them, us and them, it’s I am, I am that, which could make a huge difference. Though the cus-tomer profiles might be very different than that of the marketer’s but if once a thinking builds up that way, than that makes a huge difference on how com-pany’s sees their customers. Customers are always seen as something very external to stake holders, so once that happens it will change how you respond and service them


eye2eye december 2014

AMAZON ECHO–resounding success or redundant technology?

Topic for the next issue: “Is SpiceJet’s ‘Shrink to Grow’ a wise decision or a failed attempt at survival?” Your opinion (view/counterview) is invited. Word limit is 250-300. Last date of sending entries is 10th Jan 2015.

Include your picture (JPEG format) with the entry. Winners will receive a prize money of Rs. 500 each!

balaji v sSJMSOM IIT Bombay

Amazon, the largest e-tail company in the world has not stopped amaz-ing customers with its innovation. It is out again with a technology wonder, Amazon echo - “The Answer Genie”. It is too early to say if the launch has been a resounding success or not, but its promising that it could be the future of every home. Amazon echo is a marvel product of IoT (Internet of Things) and this can transform life and business massively. Nearly everything is encapsulated inside this black cylinder and the features includes doing number of activities like – adding to do lists, questions & answers ,set alarm, play music etc. But what sets this device apart from smartphones is its abil-ity to recognize voice from anywhere in the room and de-signed for use by anyone.Amazon, which works on a business model largely mo-tivated by the consumer’s needs, finds this product as an innovation to the business of selling everything. The company with its massive cloud backend and army of data scientists, has taken a huge leap forward in know-ing the customer needs more closely and pricing it right. For example, if a person asks Echo to play similar kind of music/genre many times, Amazon can suggest new music releases, CDs to shop etc. through its Amazon music. The ability of echo to decipher the person behind the com-mands helps to know the profile of user individually and aid “people based marketing”. Doesn’t this sound amaz-ing?! Imagine what wonders Amazon can do its business knowing exactly what the customer is looking for. This can create a near to utopian situation for the marketers. Voice recognition being better interface and future of IoT at home, Amazon Echo is definitely marching towards a resounding success

Kajal VermaiMT Ghaziabad

“Is it for me? It is for everyone”. This is how amazon introduced its new voice command device ‘Echo’ in the

first commercial. A built in voice recognition system with seven microphones and based on beam forming technol-ogy, it captures your voice even while playing music. The downward firing speakers fill the room with an alluring sound. It provides services like news updates, alarms, mu-sic and answers other informational questions apart from introducing the concept of no click purchasing.Do these features sound familiar? The answer is Yes. Siri, Google Now and Cortana, all work on the same principles. These are all available on a software platform while ‘Echo’ lies as an electronic furniture in the living room. However, the three software maintain portability, connection to social media, provide location based services and hold a greater chance of voice reception. While similar tabletop devices like Ubi provide privacy over the interaction between the user and the device apart from personalized features like ‘repeat after me’, Echo does not entertain its user with such facilities. With a limited list of music sources that the device has access to, the purchase options also do not hold any valid au-thentication technology.It may be a good start since this reduces the hassles of pur-chasing, and priced at $99 for Amazon prime users($199 for others), it targets to empower the consumers. How-ever there should have been more to it than just all this. Introduction of batteries, connection to social networking sites, home automation system, voice print technology, compatibity to both iOS and android and access to the personal data could be some of the features that could turn it into a market qualifier.In front of beta products like Cubic, ‘Echo’ has an un-adorned future

eye2eye


Congratulations!!! Vivek receives a cash prize of Rs 1000!

silent voice december 2014 silent voice

Theme: Swachh

Bharat

Abhiyan

Last month’s resultsWINNERChinmayee Sahu | Xavier Institute of management, Bhubaneshwar

THEME FOR NEXT SILENT VOICE: Great Online Shopping Festival (GOSF)LAST DATE OF SENDING THE PRINT AD: 10th Jan, 2015

EMAIL ID: [email protected] Send your entry in JPEG format named as SilentVoice_<Your Name>_<Institute>only.

Honorary MentionRahul Kumar, Varnika Shrotriya | SIBM, PUNE

CATCHRMISS

AD-dicted december 2014


By Ansul JindalIIM Shillong

PRODUCT: Ponds Face Wash

POSITIONING: Face Ka Charger

CREATIVE AGENCY: Ogilvy & Mather YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IQmr7k2rMA

CONCEPT:

The advertisement shows a star who is on his way to perform on a show. It is concep-tualised on the fact that, just as the body is exhausted af-ter a long day at work, the face too becomes de-energised and dull. It requires a charger just as a phone requires one to charge itself. He relates the battery of his phone to his face saying even his face requires a charger, for which he uses. And then comes the new Pond’s Men Energy Charge face-wash and Gel Moisturizer which contains coffee bean extracts and cooling menthol which instantly recharge and brighten one’s face and is suitable for all skin types VERDICT: Miss

The agency came up with an innovative, but a dull con-cept. The concept of bringing coffee bean has not been justified much. The whole setup and idea of the show looks unreal. The advertisement doesn’t come out well to portray the real status of the star. The segmentation was not appropriately done as the commercial dealt with the artificial idea. The concept of showing the product at the end of the performance also couldn’t connect the customer. The commercial could have been much better as the concept of introducing the coffee beans were re-ally innovative. Thus, this campaign makes a good fit for ‘Miss’

By sagar RiazIIM Shillong

PRODUCT: Britannia Maska Rusk

POSITIONING: Healthy Mein Lao Masti CREATIVE AGENCY: Grey India

YouTube Link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWQoSkwh6oM CONCEPT:

Emphasizing on the values of relationship, Britannia’s ad-vertisements have always traditionally revolved around the intricacies of relationships in the Indian Society. This time, though Britannia has come up with a tried and test-ed idea for its product ‘Maska Rusk’, the approach is fresh and new. The ad begins with a typical tea time scene be-tween Saas and Bahu enacted by Konkona Sen and Neena Gupta respectively and it shows both of them jeering at each other, which is common in every Indian household. Grey India with its latest Britannia Ad Campaign for the product ‘Maska Rusk’ has leveraged upon the sweet-sour relationship of Indian Saas-Bahu. It has again brought the emotional quotient to its advantage to position its prod-uct as a combination of both health and taste. The cam-paign mirrors the evolution in the relationship from being a predictable, reverential and hierarchical one to a more equal, mutually respecting and fun filled one.

VERDICT: Catch The advertisement has been successful in creating a bond with the customers at an emotional level. The product of the company is well positioned in the minds of its target group of audience. These advertisements are always suc-cessful in generating interest among the target audience. Though they score less on the innovation scale, they man-age to have an impact on the viewers

IIM Shillong IIM Shillong18MARKATHON

fun corner december 2014

Fun Corner Kasturi Guha ThakurtaIIM Shillong

Can you name the Famous Mascots?

1 2

6

3 4

5

ANSWERS 1. Asian Paints Gattu

2. Poppin’ Fresh Pillbury Doughboy

3. Frosted Flakes’ Tony the Tiger

4. Sunfeast

5. Froot Loops’ Bill6. MRF Muscle Man


ishtihaar december 2014

Guatam Gopal IIM Shillong

INDIAN MARKET TO THE GLOBAL PRODUCT

Is Indian market similar to any other market of the world? Can all marketing strategies which have succeeded in

other part of the world be successful in the Indian market too?It is actually different from the rest of the world market, all marketing strategies which have been successful in other part of the world may not necessarily be success-ful in Indian market as well. A very strong reason for the same is the psychology of Indian customers is quite differ-ent from the rest of the worlds. It is very necessary for a company to do a proper market research (afresh) before launching their product in the Indian market. Various fac-tors on which the Indian market varies from the global market are cultural sentiments, language, lifestyle and packaging. The two markets vary vastly under the men-tioned parameters.India comprises of one- sixth of the world’s population and hence provide a huge market to various products, it also attracts the companies who have proven to be suc-cessful in the rest of the world. Kellogg’s introduction in the Indian market is the best ex-ample of the DOs and DONTs of a global brands in the Indian market. Kellogg’s which has proven itself as a

successful and a leading cereal maker and “convenience food”, Find its popular existence in more than 160 coun-tries throughout the world with whooping business of more than $9 billion. With its advent in the Indian market in 1994, Kellogg’s focused more on its existing strategies and have launched its existing product without knowing the specific wants of the Indian consumers.As the food habit of Indians were quite different from rest of the world, Also the food habit changed in a matter of kilometres , lifestyle and spending power also was not similar at various areas of the country. Various breakfast existing in the various part of the country i.e. Parathas in northern India , idli and dosas in southern India and pakaodas, pohas in western India. So it was a tough task for Kellogg’s to change the prevailing food habit into ce-reals which was not something which Indians can associ-ate their breakfast with. In their advertisement they have portrayed the existing Indian breakfast to be unhealthy and also Kellogg’s was required to be prepared with cold milk whereas Indians mind set was to have hot milk for the breakfast , having corn flakes with hot milk would spoil the crispness of corn flakes and hence the taste of the breakfast.

REVISED STRATEGIES

Initially in order to make the taste familiar to many peo-ple they launched the product in a special packet worth INR 10 which helped everyone to try it once changing the taste of breakfast foe many people in India. As Indian had a special propensity to the Hollywood characters so Kellogg’s launched a limited edition in association with Spiderman 2. Kellogg’s came up with different variants as chocolate, strawberries, sugar coated corn flakes etc. In order to make the breakfast tastier. They also used terms like calcium Shakti , iron Shakti to add health to the break-fast which was always missing in the Indian breakfast.Hence by taking into account various aspects of the Indian customers has helped global brands to make a successful inroads into the Indian market as the lifestyle, usage habit , spending criteria is very different from the rest of the world which is required to be taken into account properly before launching a product in the Indian market

Ishtihaar

PremierR.J Reynolds Smokeless Cigarette


jab they failed december 2014

Jab They Failed

Vinay JainIIM Shillong

Smoking is injurious to health. Everybody knows this, yet there are people who smoke. It is also proven that Passive smoking is equally harmful. During the 1980s the society started accepting the fact that people who didn’t smoke were also exposed to health risks because of the smoke emitted by the smokers’ cigarettes who were smoking nearby. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company saw this as an opportunity to come up with a smokeless cigarette which would not only have very low tar in it but would also emit very little or negligible smoke as compared to the regular cigarettes. It does sound like a revolutionary idea that could change the tobacco industry forever, right? R.J. Reynolds was very confident that their new product would be a big hit since it solved the both the problems of tar and the smoke causing inconvenience to non-smokers. But unfortunately this was a huge failure. The company had spent around $325 million on the creation of its first smokeless cigarette called ‘Premier’. R.J Reynolds was banking on the belief that smokers do worry about their health and will hence switch over to Premier because of its low tar and smoke, which was true but there were some other issues that lead to the failure of ‘Premier’. Firstly the taste of Premier wasn’t like a nor-mal cigarette and some people felt that it tasted like burn-ing plastic and the chief executive of R.J. Reynolds himself complained that “it tasted like shit”. Moreover, taking a drag of premier took a lot of energy and required Vacu-um powered lungs, even lighting up the cigarette took a lot of time & special instructions had to be given to light it and even if you could manage to light it successfully with a matchbox then the Sulphur in the cigarette created a re-action and some users felt like vomiting. Some users even reported that they didn’t like the smell of the cigarette, it was lacking flavor and holding it was difficult as it was too hot because of the burning charcoal-like carbon in the end. As if the problems weren’t enough already there were rumors that people were using smokeless cigarettes as delivery devices for cocaine. Another controversy sur-rounding the launch of Premier was the issue with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). People wanted the FDA to test premier because it made claims that it was a cleaner cigarette and this might have led smokers into believing that it is safe to smoke these instead of quitting altogether. Also another issue was of youngsters getting fascinated with these sophisticated cigarettes and getting addicted to nicotine.

The main reason though for the failure of premier was simple: A) Smokers didn’t really feel like they were smok-ing since there was no smoke or negligible amounts of smoke and B) Non Smokers didn’t smoke in the first place and they were indifferent towards healthier cigarettes. Af-ter 4 months of introduction and poor sales, Premier was withdrawn. Since there was still an issue of passive smok-ing the company decided to re-launch an upgraded ver-sion of the smokeless cigarettes in 1996 under the name ‘Eclipse’ by spending an additional $125 million. There were conflicting research claims made by medical experts and independent medical analysts, the medical experts made positive claims stating that these cigarettes were less harmful whereas the independent medical analysts brought to light even more dangerous issue of presence of glass fibers in the cigarette filters which were inhaled or ingested when smokers took even a single puff from the cigarette. After taking into consideration so many facts we might attribute different reasons for the failure of the Smokeless cigarettes but there was primarily only one reason why this product couldn’t survive - the con-sumers had no desire whatsoever for such a product. R.J Reynolds was a huge company and hence could survive this failure, your company may not.Hence, the learning from this failure is that sometimes even if the product is good it may fail without the consumer’s desire to use it and especially in products like cigarettes which is not a universally consumed product like a biscuit or any other eatable.


updates december 2014 updates

Brand Launch

Micromax Yureka is here Micromax Yureka was launched this month and surprisingly the phone was priced below what most would have expected. At Rs. 8999/- the phone probably was per-ceived to have one of the highest “Value For Money” quotient! The phone is firmly targeted at mid-range users and competes with likes of Redmi Note 4G and second generation Moto G. Micromax has an exclusive agreement with Cyanogen for dis-tribution of Cyanogen OS-powered phones in India and other South Asian coun-tries. This meant that OnePlus, which recently announced in entry in India with the launch of OnePlus One (Review | Pictures) (another Cyanogen OS powered smartphone) had to halt sales.

By Cheena pasrijaIIM Shillong

Brand Watch

Second-Hand Certified

Mercedes Benz took the step it had been meaning to do for a time now. Mo-tivated by a 39 per cent rise in used car sales till the September quarter at 1,700 units, the automobile giant sensed a huge opportunity in this space, Mercedes-Benz India this December launched a separate brand to cash in on the pre-owned car market. The country’s largest luxury carmaker is planning to sell pre- owned cars under the brand, Mercedes-Benz Certified

Top 100 includes Tata Steel

Tata steel has been chosen as one of the 100 most valuable brands for the year 2014 by World Consulting & Research Corporation (WCRC), Asia’s No 1 Brand Rat-ing & Ranking company. Tata Steel was chosen as one of the most valuable brands as the Company has always been the benchmark in introducing innovative prod-ucts and services in the steel industry, creating value for its customers. The imple-mentation of novel ideas has also made the Company a pioneer in steel marketing

Google Online Shopping Festival

In the wake of GOSF or Google Online Shopping Festival, Google India’s an-nual e-event, the company has launched a film to celebrate the men who actually bring us our goodies at our doorstep - the uniformed deliverymen of Indian e-commerce. Google launched a video on YouTube to launch a cam-paign which presents the side of the delivery men of the e-commerce in In-dia. The video received amazing reviews and more than 3 million views on YouTube. The team is giving personalized helmets to these delivery agents.



Media

India to rise as a brand India has been able to move up a spot to No.8 in a ranking of the world’s most valuable nation brands due to the PM effect. A ranking was released by UK-based brand consulting firm Brand Finance to evaluate each coun-try as a brand. America topped the chart with valuation of $19.3 trillion, while China came in at No.2 with a valuation of $6.4 trillion. India had a val-uation of $1.62 trillion, according to the consulting firm. Brand Strength Index (BSI) score—determined by reference to performance across four “pillars”; goods and services, tourism, talent and investment—with gross do-mestic product (GDP) data was used to evaluate the national brand value.

Honda to be most searched brand in 2014 Honda is most searched brand for the year 2014. According to Google zeitgeist, Hon-da Mobilio turned out to be the most searched car for this year. Although the Japa-nese automobile manufacturers were not surprised as both the cars have been per-forming exceptionally well in the Indian automobile market since the upgraded City was launched earlier during January and Mobilio, the MPV was launched mid-year. There was a surprise entry for the number two position in the list of most searched cars in the market as this place was taken by Chevrolet Spark. There is no clear expla-nation for this choice and obviously this result has been able to surprise everyone.

Now Instagram Is Dominating Twitter Instagram revealed earlier this month it had overtaken Twitter in terms of us-ers: 300 million to Twitter’s 284 million. Now there’s more evidence under-lining Instagram’ s dominant status versus Twitter. Data provided to Business Insider from social media analytics company Social bakers shows Instagram is not only gaining traction in sheer numbers of users, but posts from the biggest brands on the photo app are receiving almost 50 times more en-gagement (at the highest level) too. More users and more engagement? It’s easy to guess which medium advertisers will prefer. For Instagram that includes brands like Victoria’s Secret, Adidas, Starbucks and Urban Outfit-ters. On Twitter, it’s brands like PlayStation, Taco Bell, Nike and Paddy Power.

Social Media leveraged reach to Government New government have made it a point to use social media for reach-ing out to the man on the street with its policies and achievements.The Modi government has encouraged all ministries to reach out to the common man towards this end. The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) has topped when it comes to reach, strategy and social presence as compared to other ministries. The ministry, out of all the ministries has the maximum presence on digital platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and YouTube.



Flipkart styled weddings

Flipkart has come up with a new campaign to target the upcoming wedding season. Flipkart’s Latest TV campaigns ‘Luggage’ and ‘Red Dress’ leverage the ongoing wedding season to promote its fashion category and mobile app. Executed by Lowe Lintas, the first ad fea-tures a young woman losing her luggage on a flight. The second one showcases a young girl who wants a ‘red’ dress to wear for her sister’s wedding. In both the cases Flipkart, which claims to have a wide range of fashion catalogue, emerges as their savior

Articles Are invited“Best Article”: Sarthak Brahma | MNIT, Jaipur

He receives a cash prize of Rs.1000 & a letter of appreciation

We are inviting articles from all the B-schools of India. The articles can be absolutely any-thing related to the world of marketing but it should be an original work that is not pub-lished elsewhere. The articles can be specific to the regular sections of Markathon which

includes: •Perspective: Articles related to development of latest trends in marketing arena.•Productolysis: Analysis of a product from the point of view of marketing.•Strategic Analysis: A complete analysis of marketing strategy of any company or an event.Apart from above, out of the box views related to marketing are also welcome. The best en-try will receive a letter of appreciation and a cash prize of Rs 1000/-. The format of the file

should be MS Word doc/docx.

The last date of receiving all entries is 10th January, 2015. Please send your entries marked as <ARTICLE NAME>_<SENDERS’ NAME(S)>_<INSTITUTE> to [email protected].

consumers to take action against misleading content. The campaign was initiated across various social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube. Engaging with the consumers and making them aware of what advertise-ments lead to misleading content and consumer’s right to complain against any such advertisements

Swachh Ads Abhiyan Observing the National Consumers Day on 24 December, Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) has launched the initiative ‘Swachh Ads Abhiyan’. With the purpose of combating misleading advertisements, the Department of Consumers Affairs proposed ASCI to come up with an initiative to create awareness amongst

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