Samsung Mobile: The heart in your pocket

No matter where you are, you cannot be more than a phone call away from dear ones. That's the message Samsung Mobile conveys, in the latest series of commercials for its Guru series of handsets. The campaign features brand ambassador and actor, Aamir Khan.

With the baseline, 'Dil to jeb mein rakha hai', the campaign is yet another trip down emotional lane. However, it is a shift from the earlier Guru ads, which were much cheekier; and the attempt is clearly to appeal to an audience looking for an affordable phone.

The campaign, designed by Cheil Worldwide, features a main film that weaves the central plot and several other short films on the same story.

The main commercial shows Khan as Raghu, a grounded family boy and a fresh graduate. While at dinner with his family, he receives a call on his phone. He promptly switches on the loudspeaker, so that his family also gets to know, much to their delight, that he has landed himself a job in the city. The rest of the commercial shows Raghu breaking the news to his love interest and preparing to shift to the city. As he leaves, Raghu gifts a handset each to his beloved and his father, telling them that he would never be too far from their hearts.

The commercial has been directed by Anurag Kashyap. The production house is Red Ice Productions. Vedobroto Roy, creative director, Cheil Worldwide is the copywriter. The music score is by Amit Trivedi; while the lyrics for the song in the ad have been penned by Gulzar.

The brief to the agency was to build an emotional connect with the product and the consumers.

The brief was a bit tricky. Guru is the lowest end product of Samsung, but is also the most important product in the brand's portfolio. The market is flooded at this range; while the consumer too, at this level, tends to be a bit fickle -- wanting to buy the product, and at the same time, aspiring for higher-end handsets.

The emotional route is not exactly path-breaking, as the commercial brings to mind similar ads in the past. Cheil, too, acknowledges this fact. "The idea is old, but there must be something right about this kind of communication. However, the main thing is the plot and the way it is presented. The film gives us a tactical spot to further exploit the idea," Roy says.

More short films on Raghu staying in touch with his family have been shot and are on-air. The campaign, which Roy expects will run through the year, will feature more such short ads.

Speaking on the insight, Roy explains how one tends to call home a lot more in the initial days of migration. "Our target audience is mainly the ones who move to bigger cities for jobs. The ad gives our TG an assurance -- an assurance that the product will be there when you need it and your phone could be your best buddy," he says.

Views Dil Se

The campaign has been received well for its simplicity, and the connect the film establishes between the product and the consumer. While parallels with other commercials featuring similar thoughts are inevitable, experts agree that the platform is right for the phone variant.

Sandhya Srinivasan, managing partner and chief strategy officer, Law & Kenneth is of the view that the current campaign is more enjoyable than the previous Guru ads. She raises an important point of how the small-town audience would enjoy seeing the brand ambassador as one of them.

"Versus the street smart Guru of yore, this Samsung Guru ad hits a far more affable note. The small-town audience may have seen enough emotional sagas, but Aamir Khan as one of them is a refreshing one," she says.

"Most advertising that I can remember targeting the small-town consumer has often shown one-upmanship, smartness, or the winning streak. But a mobile phone, at a basic level, is the simplest way to stay connected with a loved one," she adds.

Vipin Dhyani, founder and creative director, Thoughtshop appreciates the identifiable nature of the film and the execution.

"It is a very valid plank for a variant like Guru. A guy leaving town for a job in a city and making everybody feel emotional is identifiable. The device to stay connected with a mobile is also relevant. I truly believe that the small-towners will identify with the setup, art direction, location and nuances used," he says.

Both cite examples of similar ads. Dhyani recalls the films by Nokia and Airtel to be very similar in nature. "The point is that while we will use the same set of emotions over and over again; but can we use it differently? The context can be refreshing for sure. Though we are targeting the middle class, they too look for something radically different, yet meaningful," says Dhyani.

Srinivasan, however, puts her money on the Samsung ad when compared to other commercials.

"Yes, Airtel used a similar execution style. But I think this one just attracts you with its simplicity," she says.

Heart of Brand Positioning : Unique Selling Proposition

Possibly the three most famous letters in advertising, the USP made great ads and made Prasoon Joshi and Piyush Pandey Indian God father of advertising industry. According to me, they foresee the planning and the meaning of ad in their own way, that the popularity of the USP does not reflect a wide-spread understanding of the term.

USP in three parts:

* Each advertisement must make a proposition to the consumer. Not just words, not just product puffery, not just show-window advertising. Each advertisement must say to each reader: ‘Buy this product and you will get this specific benefit.

* The proposition must be one that the competition either cannot, or does not, offer. It must be unique -- either a uniqueness of the brand or a claim not otherwise made in that particular field of advertising.

* The proposition must be so strong that it can move the mass millions, i.e., pull over new customers to your product.

I would recommend thinking of the USP as something the consumer takes from the ad, rather than as something the copywriter puts into the ad.

Emotion vs. Logic in Sales, Marketing and Advertising

All people make buying decisions based on emotion; therefore your marketing must use emotion to sell what people want, not what you think they "need" or want them to need.

Yes, this is really, actually true. Engineers, accountants, executives, attorneys, housewives, and ministers – PhD's, delivery truck drivers and farmers – and butchers, bakers and candlestick makers – We all fundamentally make all of our decisions based one motion, not logic. Logic supports our emotions and is used to justify our decisions after we have made them. Logic plays a part, but emotion is the core ingredient.

Show me a product that people have little emotion for and I'll show you a product that's hard to sell or has very thin profit margins. Show me an ad or brochure that doesn't provoke any emotion, and I can guarantee you that it doesn't work.

Some people think emotion has no place in business-to-business marketing. Those people are absolutely 100% totally dead wrong. You can use them to write instruction manuals and employee handbooks, but keep them out of your sales and marketing department. This sort of thinking is exactly why most business-to-business marketing is so dull.

The Cardinal Sin in Marketing: Being Boring

The greatest sin in marketing is being boring.The world is a busy, cluttered place with advertisements and messages everywhere. If your message is boring, you don't stand a chance. If you can't think of anything exciting about your product, then get a different product. But don't be boring.

Please understand, there's a difference between emotion and hype.Your message doesn't need to sound like late night television in order to provoke emotion. You need to figure out what your customers love, and what they hate, what keeps them awake at night, what gives them ulcers and what catastrophic events they dread. You've got to know what aspects of their job they're emotional about and design your products, services, and marketing to address those felt needs.

All great leaders and managers, all great marketers, all great teachers and all great product designers learn how to harmonize with the emotions of the people they work with and turn them on and off at will. This of all things is the greatest and most profitable art form in marketing, and always will be.

Business -"Interview Nitin Paranjpe" (CEO,HUL)

From learning to play the keyboard with senior colleagues to benefitting from the parent firm’s scale and capability, leveraging is a key word in the HUL CEO's lexicon.
Nitin Paranjpe’s family used to call him a “modern-day Aurangzeb” given the distance he kept from the finer things in life. Two summers back his brother finally agreed to drop the nickname only if he could develop an ear for music, write Shyamal Majumdar and Ruchita Saxena.
Music was something for which Paranjpe had neither the time nor inclination; but determined to live up to the challenge thrown by his brother, he started taking keyboard lessons. He can now play about a 100 Hindi film music tunes and has formed an informal team of Lever-ites who play the keyboard along with him. It helped that Hindustan Unilever Limited’s (HUL) new management committee (eight top HUL managers) are in their early 40s. His family has dropped the nickname.
The 45-year-old MD & CEO of HUL says this has given him a vital lesson in life: you need not be immensely talented to succeed in a project as long as you are determined to succeed and are willing to put in that extra effort.
We are in the terrace room at HUL’s imposing headquarters at Backbay Reclamation in Mumbai. Paranjpe asks for warm water as he is suffering from a throat infection and wants us to hear him loud and clear. The youngest ever occupant of the corner office at HUL is, by his own admission, a CEO with a difference. His CV doesn’t boast an IIT or IIM badge; he is not extra fond of management books; has remained a one-company man for 21 years; returns home by 7 pm almost every day; listens to Vedanta philosophy on Sunday mornings and enjoys teaching his children over the weekends.
As an MBA student at Jamnalal Bajaj Institute, Mumbai, he used to dream of getting into Hindustan Lever (as it was then called), India’s largest FMCG company. When he finally got the “high of his life” after Hindustan Lever gave him a job, he says he would have been delighted if he could have risen to head of sales or marketing in the company.
“Any job beyond that would be a bonus. My motto has been simple: be focused on your current job and do that well,” he says. His career graph shows the management at Lever has been quite generous in doling out ‘bonuses’.
He finally realised he is a ‘lister’ — HUL jargon for those on the superfast career track — when his boss once asked him to spell out his career ambitions. Paranjpe, then a brand manager, replied he wanted to become a regional manager. He forgot about the conversation, but his boss didn’t as two weeks later he got a double promotion and was made the south India regional head. It turned out be a tough assignment as it coincided with the company’s products being boycotted in Kerala. For the first time in his life, Paranjpe realised that he was capable of managing more than he had imagined. “Every manager must have one or two tough assignments. When you have to achieve more than what available resources permit, you grow professionally as well as mentally”, Paranjpe says.
The food is an elaborate Indian fare — roti, rice, paneer, mutton korma and grilled prawns with lots of vegetables — and tastes good. Paranjpe avoids the prawns but gives us an appreciative look as we choose not to follow him. He is health conscious and plays a game of squash often. This, of course, is becoming infrequent now that his 14-year-old son is playing better than him.
As the occupant of the corner office, what’s his new strategy going to be? Paranjpe says HUL, like some its competitors, has a great strategy in place. What will make the difference is the power of execution. The company is leveraging the capabilities and scale of its parent company and focusing on the value of execution. Cost reduction through technology is another priority.
Though HUL will continue to straddle the whole pyramid as far as price points are concerned, the company also recognises the changing market dynamics of the growing number of affluent households in India for whom price is not that big an issue. There are around eight million such households in the country, and the number is expected to double in the next three years. It’s an opportunity no company can afford to ignore. As Paranjpe puts it, “It’s amazing how people are willing to pay extra for little beauty jars”.
The other piece of good news for both Paranjpe and HUL is that inflation hasn’t compressed consumer demand and net sales growth in the June quarter was the highest in the past 10 years — and growth has averaged 19 per cent in the past three quarters. Rising cost pressures are still a problem, but Paranjpe says HUL will never focus on margins at the cost of top line.
Food is one area that has been a laggard due to intense competition, but Paranjpe says the segment is reaching a tipping point. “The platform has been built for the future, things will change. Please don’t forget packaged food sales are still just 5 per cent the value of fresh foods.” So expect launches, brand extensions and innovations steadily hitting shop shelves. It helps that Unilever has a huge food portfolio that is waiting to be unleashed in India.
He graduated from the stairs to the elevator in his career when he was made the head of the laundry category during the detergents’ price war between Procter & Gamble and HUL in 2002. For the first time in his career, he suffered from self-doubt as he was unable to meet the numbers target. The top line just refused to budge as consumers shied away from HUL products, often preferring cheaper alternatives.
But the management obviously felt otherwise as he went on to become the executive director (home & personal care) soon after. The reason was obvious: the platform he built during those days helped HUL regain its glory in subsequent years.
Though HUL has changed its management strategy swiftly with changing times, Paranjpe is clear that the one practice which has and will remain constant is sending managers to rural areas early in their career. “Selling soaps to a shopkeeper in a remote village gives you invaluable lessons. You start listening to the market; you empathise with problems that a salesman faces — these are lessons no B-school can ever teach you,” he says.
Lunch is long over, but Paranjpe does not want to leave in a hurry. He says executing the new gameplan of HUL means a lot of hard work. And that often means starting work at 5 am so that he doesn’t have to compromise on the time he wants to spend with his family. He thinks his wife, who is now on a sabbatical from her job at Wipro, is better than him in multi-tasking.
The person he treats as his idol is his father, a retired IAS officer. “I didn’t have to go too far to learn the power of integrity,” Paranjpe says. His fondness for teaching his children — even his neighbours’ children at times — comes from his mother, who even at the age of 70 runs a school for under-privileged children which has over 1,000 students.
When he finally leaves HUL, Paranjpe wants management trainees feel the same excitement he did 21 years ago. “The wow factor of working for HUL must remain,” he says. His bosses would be pleased with that answer.

Brand Management...!!!

Branding is the foundation of marketing and is inseparable from business strategy. It is therefore more than putting a label on a fancy product. Nowadays a corporation, law firm, country, university, museum, hospital, celebrity and even we in our career can be considered as a brand. As such a brand is a combination of attributes, communicated through a name or a symbol that influences a thought-process in the mind of an audience andcreates value.

As branding is deeply anchored in psycho-sociology, it takes into account both tangible and intangible attributes.For example functional and emotional benefits. Therefore those attributes compose the beliefs that the brand's audience recalls when they think about the brand in its context.

The value of a brand resides for the audience in the promise that the product or service will deliver. Clearly a brand can recall memories of a bad experience. The value for the audience then would be to avoid purchasing that brand.

From the perspective of the brand's owner, the value of the brand often lies in the security of higher future earnings but may also be assessed in terms of votes for a politician, career for an executive, foreign direct investments (FDI) for a country, etc.

In conclusion, branding is the blend of art and science that manages associations between a brand and memories in the mind of the brand's audience. It involves focusing resources on selected tangible and intangible attributes to differentiate the brand in an attractive, meaningful and compelling way for the targeted audience.

Brand management then becomes the organizational framework that systematically manages those customer-centric processes. It aims at gathering intelligence, allocating resources, and consistently delivering the brand promise over time at each contact-point with the customer.

For example Coca-Cola has become a cliché of brand management. Before branding or even management emerged as disciplines, the Atlanta-based company was already spending over US$ 11,000 on a mass advertising campaign as early as 1892. Its trademark was officially filed in the US that year and has consistently been displayed with the same script to this day. Over time it also associated its brand with a bright red color, the hour-glass shaped bottle (1915) and the ribbon logo (1970). Together these aspects contribute to differentiating Coke from rivals such as Pepsi-Cola, which has applied a competitive pressure since 1898.

POSITIONING : DAIRY MILK & COCA COLA

The latest series of ads of Cadbury show the context of pay day and eating of Cadbury Dairy Milk. A visit to their web page gives us some idea of the thought behind the campaign.Directly from the website - Sanjay Purohit, Executive Director - Marketing, Cadbury India Ltd said, “This new campaign takes the concept of celebrations to yet another level. With Pappu and Miss Palampur campaign, CDM created a space for itself during the big, community celebration moments. This commercial keeps the core promise of happiness while introducing another 'moment of joy' in one’s life. The new commercial highlights the celebratory occasion of payday, which is an important event in the life of every middle-class Indian.” For more visit Cadbury India.

The second ad or rather series of Ads which I found interesting is the Aamir Khan series of "Thanda Mathlab Coca Cola". Most of us would remember the series, both because of Aamir Khan and the good story lines behind the series.The basic idea I felt behind both the campaigns is to go out and occupy a distinct space in the consumer's mind , and as has been said before if you are able to occupy a distinct space in the consumer's mind then it become very difficult for a competitor to dislodge you, the essence of positioning.

And it might be easier done if one is able to capture a word in the consumer's mind which already exists , in the case of cadburys that word is "Meetha" a generic to represent all and any kind of sweet. Similary in the case of Coca-Cola the attempt to build an association with the word "Thanda" which means in common parlance any drink which is served cold , be it the ubiquitous lemon based Nimbu pani or a soft drink. The only problem with this approach is it is long term and one has to stick to the same message.

Perfect Penetration : BRITANNIA

The introduction of a low-priced product into the product portfolio of a company can have many implications. Many a times it can change a company in many fundamental ways. Though even company introducing premium priced products , cannot afford to ignore many retailers while deciding upon the distribution network as for a company these may be a small retail top-up shops but in reality sales matter and these top-up shops generate more sales then organised firms.

One company which has gone through this sort of a paradigsm shift is Britannia industries. A premium biscuit and cookie manufacturer in the confectionary segment till the launch of TIGER biscuits. Tiger biscuit was launched in 1997 and brought a shift in the overall distribution and marketing focus of the company because tiger was pitched against PARLE-G Glucose biscuits , the Rs 40 per kg mass biscuits, a brand which gave the identity to biscuits and initiated its branding.

In the pre-tiger era there use to a gap between supply and demand for britannia biscuits, and the company had a laid-back approach towards distribution and in tier-II cities in the country a situation of non-avalibility of Britannia biscuits was always common . The launch of tiger biscuits brought the revolution in the company's supply chain management, the company was forced to think,that even their product had the potential still market share was questionable against Parle their was a need to act and distribute like a mass marketier and they ended up developing specific models for distributing Tiger biscuits in rural markets across the coutry....
with the introduction of the Rs1 Sachets of Tiger biscuits meant that the company had to even place the product in Tea shops and other smaller top-up shops where it would be cosumed with tea....
Today Tiger brand is a Rs 650 Crore plus brand in the market and the comapny itself has trasformed into a distribution powerhouse placing the PARLE into the tough situation...over the time...!!!

" Mahatma Gandhi & Customer Relation "

A New Marketing Approach...!! "Aircel & Virgin "

We are entering the absolutely new phase of marketing in India, for the first time we are witnessing a situation of categories entering into a stage where penetration would reach near 100% or even exceed it. Till now we have been working on marketing strategies to increase penetration , getting the first time users to try out offerings versus a situation where you have to either increase the usage of the product or a service in a well established market. This is where, we will see the true meaning of the statement "Customer is the King".Taking the example of what is happening in the mobile phone market, in most of the metro markets the penetration levels are reaching 80% and in some markets like Chennai the figure has exceeded 100%. So what does it mean for new operators like Aircel , and virgin mobile when it enters a market where the category penetration is so high. There would be two ways of gaining market share , first and more difficult option would be to try and attract users from established players or second way is to encourage users to go for another mobile.To push consumers to switch their operators would involve a different set of marketing strategies versus the ones which are used to increase the penetration in a particular category. I suppose, this is what we can see from the approach that both virgin and aircel are using , by focusing on value added services and non-typical offerings like paying for incoming calls. But this is just the beginning and we will see the manifestation of this change in the coming few years.......

Tough Battle : "TOYOTO V/S MAHINDRA"

Innova which created the luxury MUV (multi-utility-vehicle) segment in 2005 has reinvented itself . This January , Toyota launched a refurbished version of Innova. The new Innova has a new front bumper and have a sporty look . The interiors have also been spruced up.
Since its launch in 2005, the brand had a dream run. According to domain-b website, Toyota has sold over 1,60,000 units since its launch. The brand have a market share of over 36 percent in the segment.


The brand virtually ruled the premium segment without much competition. The brand also had the exemplary Toyota quality which created a benchmark for future competition.The relaunch of Innova is a pre-emptive strategy by Toyota because of the recent launch of Mahindra Xylo.

Toyota knew that Xylo can be a dangerous competitor. The simple fact that Mahindra shook the SUV market with Scorpio makes it a worthy comeptitor for Toyota.So as a market leader, Innova had to respond to competition. I am impressed with the speed in which Innova reacted to Xylo launch. According to reports, the MUV segment witnessed a degrowth in 2008. Mahindra is expected to bring consumer interest back to the segment. The pricing and the quality of Xylo is reported to be good enough to give Innova a tough year ahead.The degrowth of MUV segment is due to the lazy marketing by Innova. Innova also became laid back last year in terms of promotions and product improvements. The brand shot into limelight through some classy adverting featuring Aamir Khan. Later Aamir was dropped and Innova went into silence. There was just one campaign for Innova in 2008.Although the MUV segment have few intra-segment competition, they compete with other segments. Hence the high profile launches of premium cars in other segments will have its effect on Innova.In my personal opinion , consumers in India evaluate products across segments while making a decision. So a consumer may look at Scorpio and Skoda together and then make a choice. Hence when all other brands are making noise, Innova lost many customers because of its laid-back promotions.Xylo has really warmed up this brand and Innova has responded early to the competition. The brand does not have much issues on the product side but there is an issue in the promotional side.

The brand really needs a heavy dose of promotions to retain its glory.I am sure that Innova may be missing Aamir Khan......!!!!!