On the Brandwagon

“Can you imagine a world without brands?” enquires the recent ad for Zeiss. The commercial shows a puzzled man jogging by a billboard with a nameless shampoo bottle. Next, a waiter displays a blank labelled wine bottle with exaggerated flourish to a miserable couple at a dinner table. These faintly eerie scenes can’t help but make you wonder…what would the world be without brands? Confusion, chaos.

Branding has been described as carving the company name or slogan into the minds of potential customers. Today branding is such a powerful force that hardly anything goes unbranded. Commodities that were earlier considered too basic to be differentiated in the minds of consumers are now successfully branded. Some people mocked when a cement company featured Perizaad Zorabian in its advertisements. The campaign, however, proved to be very successful. Today no one bats an eyelid at heavy advertising for cement, ceramic tiles, wheatflour or salt.

TCS today is launching its $10million global branding campaign to differentiate its services from the usual, cheap cost efficient image that Indian IT companies suffer from. Their tagline would be ‘Experience Certainty’ and through this campaign they hope to compete with IBM and Accenture in bagging challenging assignments.

What do brands mean for the consumer? You may hear complaints during casual shopping conversation about the number of brands flooding the market and the confusion it creates. But I think consumers are secretly pleased. They love being offered so many choices and feel powerful with the choices they make. Companies are bending over backwards in an effort to satisfy them and instill trust.

Many consumers form an identity based on the choices of brands they make, and this shapes their lifestyle. As lives become more rushed, brands simplify decisions and reduce risks. Satisfied customers choose the products again. This loyalty results in predictability of demand for the firms. This loyalty also translates into a willingness to pay a higher price. A brand is thus an invaluable asset for a firm.

Companies that can reap the benefits however, are the ones that have well planned and executed brand strategy and brand management programs. But at the end of the day, the truly successful ones are those that deliver on their brand promise. After all, as David Ogilvy put it “The consumer’s no idiot...she’s your wife!”

Posted By : Neha Deshmukh

The Seven Ages of the Woman Shoppper

This is about an article which had appeared in The Times of India written by Damodar Mall & Deepa Soman - Senior Marketing Professionals. I liked the article quite a lot because it tries to classify and understand a species which no one has ever understood!!! I am quite sure the writers have given there opinions after years of research and experience in the field which is quite reflected through their work. But then woman being a species who are known to change at the drop of a hat the topic is open to discussions and deliberations. (Woman readers please forgive me for taking this liberty!!!)

The writers have divided women into 7 categories depending on her role, status in the family, education, exposure and economic independence.
Invisible Women: She is oblivious to the whole concept of shopping. She is the one who typically just accepts what her husband or guardian gets home. She hardly ever steps out of her home and relies on her husband for all her needs. She is unaware of the mechanics of shopping etc.
List Woman: She just keeps a list of what provisions in the household needs replenishment but the budgeting, comparative trade-offs and brand choice is a male prerogative.
Budget Woman: She believes in thrift, buying in wholesale, bargaining and buying only what she needs. Anxiety and overstepping her budget is her prime concerns
Value Woman: She likes to save from her monthly budget and then gives into personal indulgences from what is 'her rightful income'.
Independent Woman: She is the one who takes tuitions at her place and earns a small amount for her personal needs. She doesn't bother her husband in the daily shopping and uses the cash where she feels is proper.
Ally Woman: She works in the office like the husband and earn a good salary like him. They both shop together at the new age retail format. Smart display and good promotions lure them to try new exotic variety of goods etc. She is on an equal footing as her husband and enjoys the companionship in the shopping.
Next Generation Woman: She handles the whole of the shopping. She is the prime decision maker when it comes what should form the part of the diet of the family, clothes, cosmetics etc. Whether the family has to go into a change in diet, change to healthier branded oil, sugar substitutes to cut down on the sugar intake, or cholesterol free low fat food stuff etc.

It would be wrong to say that the invisible woman has gone invisible in todays scenario. All these different kinds of woman do exist in different walks of life in different parts our country. The challenge of the marketeer is to cater to a very diverse kind of shoppers among the woman shoppers itself.
I hope this article was an interesting read for all of you. I know after reading this article you may feel like you know women better, but then like some of our professors say understanding women is an ongoing process, the more you understand the more questions it throws up.

Rocky Paul

(If you want to read the complete article, you can see it on the epaper version of The Times of India. The link to the article is http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Daily/Skins/EVAL/navigator.asp and please navigate to the 31st March 2007, Saturday page 21 bottom centre)

The Power of Loyalty

The Function of every business is to get and keep customers. Consequently it is also the function of every employee of every business of to do the same .Knowing how to keep existing customers happy is key to a company’s continued success. Studies have also proven that it is much more expensive to attract a new customer to a business than to keep an existing one.

To build a customer loyalty here are six universal points….

1. Create a demanding customer: - Creating one means that if your customers were to go to your competition they would not just expect but demand the same level of service that they get from you. Anything less from the competition reinforces that the customer made the right choice to do business with you.
2. Find out if you are doing a good job:- Your customers are not likely to tell you if there are any problems. Numerous studies have shown that complaining customers do not complain TARP(technical Assistance Research Program ) survey found out that an avg business only hears from 4% of unhappy customers. The other 96% don’t complain at least not to the places they did business. The ultimate goal should be to try & find any problems before the customer complains.
3. Make the customers believe they have taken a good decision:-Educate & reinforce that they have made a good choice. If the company does something different from the competition they should inform the customers about it.
4. Guarantee products & services :- Personally stand behind everything you do. Customers do not do business with a company they do business with people who represent the company. If a customer has a problem and you are the person that received it ;it is the responsibility of the person to see it through. Do not just push it off to someone else. You may not take the finale decision but you are there at the end when it is made.
5. Appreciate the people :- Recognise that there may be others in the buying process that should be made to be feel appreciated. Do not forget to show appreciation for these people as well.
6. Thank your customers :- Do not forget to say thanks … It can be face to face over the phone or via written thank you notes…Customers like to feel appreciated.

These will help you retain customer loyalty and creating moments of magic.

Source : Business World - Ted Lewitt, Marketing professor - Harvard Business School.

Namrata Bahirsheth

PGDBM

Welingkar Institute Of Management Development and Research.

A word as useless as 'planning' in marketing!!

People say that marketing is about closely planning your every move, studying the market and then launching the product.

Marketing is defined as, knowing what a customer wants and giving it to them, how true is this, i mean how true, not much... see for example coke, did it come to India with a special India flavour or did it come here and then produce a regional flavour?? There are 'n' number of examples to support this. Marketing is more of a game of intuition, and less of set theories and planned moves. If a particular marketing move made by a company was successful in a particular market, why wouldn’t all the companies follow the same moves and benefit from the same strategy?? Why does one thing that works for 'a' company completely fails when it come to another company?? There are no answers to these questions. It is as good as explaining the universe to the cows grazing on the fields.

One can do a hundred market researches and a thousand products testing, take census instead of sampling... but can’t guarantee that the strategy employed and derived after such a heavy fact finding affair will certainly be successful in the market. Markets can’t be predicted! No one can! You never know, the small spot on the top of the 'I' of your brand name could play a spoiler for the product.

Marketing is all about intuition in the end!

Rejoy

Once upon a marketing......

Marketing is fun, its happening, its the ‘in’ thing! you cant beat it with any thing! even finance needs marketing, after all they need the money to count. HR needs marketing and so does operations. i mean what is the world without marketing. Know your ‘consumers’ and give them what they want, we very nearly play god! everything that is anything to anybody needs marketing to be where it is or to reach where it needs to be.
Its like a puzzle that never ends, once cracked, you move on to level two. never does monotony enter here, sorry we are too busy, please come later! or there are other departments next door! ha haaaaa
I love Marketing and i know every marketing student who is a true blue marketing student will agree to this!
Rejoy