Markathon September 2018

Hello Readers!

Welcome to the mini world of marketing that we, at IIM Shillong, cherish every month. The purpose of Markathon is two-fold; first to nurture the love for marketing students have, and second, to be the voice of many budding writers willing to share their views on stirring topics in the marketing arena. Through the pages of this month’s Markathon, one would find a vast assortment of interesting articles and updates on the marketing world.

We also take pleasure in bringing forth our interview excerpts with Mr Kapil Arora, President North, Ogilvy & Mather Pvt Ltd. via our Vartalaap section. The section aims at sharing experiences of illustrious personalities and our useful insights from our conversation with them.

Our digital marketing section ‘Digigyaan’ talks about Programmatic TV and the section ‘Logoistic’ unfolds the interesting evolution story of Shell’s Logo. ‘Jab They Failed’ yet again examThis month’s edition discusses the concept of ines a brand failure, talking about Horlicks for Click and Mortar and the Future of Retail Women in this edition. through its Cover Story, with some contemporary examples. The Perspective section sets open We owe our progress to the pioneers of this the realm of ideas and celebrates the different magazine and congratulate all the winners and entries on the topic ‘Loyalty Amongst Indian contributors for their immense interest and supConsumers’ by Mr Mrinal Ojha, NMIMS Mum- port. We also thank our readers for their conbai and ‘Marketing is a Tricky Business’ by Ms stant faith in us which serves as a motivational Isha Garg, IIM Rohtak. The Eye2Eye section force every time. which discusses points in favour and against We sincerely hope that you all enjoy reading the a particular stimulating topic every month, magazine as much as we enjoyed compiling it. proudly boasts of short articles beautifully writ- Love ten by Ms Anjali Gupta and Ms L Sowmyasree Team Markathon from IIM Shillong.

September 2018

Perspective

Loyalty among Indian Consumers – Are Companies Fighting a Losing Battle?

Mrinal Ojha nmims Mumbai

“German retailers, centuries ago, taught the world that, the customer is the king. For centuries now, marketers have spent all their time, money and resources in pleasing the multi-faceted king and how!”

The past few years have been an instant boom for the Indian ecommerce and retail industry. From the multiple rounds of funding, to the growth of differentiated start-ups to companies earning the fabled Unicorn tag – the overall tone has been of growth and achievement.

Now most of the fields are dominated by 2-3 major players, along with a handful of others trying to gain a slice of the market. To put things into perspective, the overall size of the e-tail industry reached $17.8 billion

MARKATHON

1

IIM Shillong

September 2018

Perspective A Google – A.T. Kearney study estimates that the industry can reach a healthy size of USD 55-60 billion by 2020, given the right conditions and game plan, and become a cursor for economic growth, and a sizeable contributor to the Indian GDP. This is a huge potential for the companies and that is why they are trying so hard to win over the Indian consumers and create a sustainable market. And in trying to gain that market share, they are burning money rapidly.

ming their losses, and side-by-side, increasing their valuations. They are competitively vying for the undivided attention of the consumers and trying to create a sense of brand loyalty among them, while also trying to edge past their rivals by one upping their strategies. At the end of the day, this has all proven very beneficial for the Indian consumers, who have been on the receiving end of constantly great offers and deals for them. All of this poses a bunch of interesting

Taking a look at some of the losses that the top players have posted in the last couple of years – •Myntra posted a standalone loss of ₹ 627 crores in the FY 2017 •PayTM reported a loss of ₹ 899.6 crores for the FY 2017 •Flipkart reported a loss of ₹ 8771 crores for the FY 017 •Amazon although doesn’t disclose its region-wise losses but it recorded a loss of $ 622 million, largely due to its India investments •Zomato reported a loss of ₹ 389 crores for the FY 2017 •Swiggy posted a loss of ₹ 205.2 crores for the FY 2017

questions in front of us – i. Should these companies keep on burning cash to make the customers loyal to them? ii. Can the Indian consumers reflect a sense of loyalty towards one particular brand so much so that they would be willing to forego their discounts? iii. How sustainable this strategy of burning cash for earning customer loyalty really is? iv. And finally, is the Indian market not large enough to accommodate 3-4 key players to keep the market competitive?

These are the figures of the industry behemoths.

For every Zomato and Swiggy that have seen an increase in their businesses, many food-tech start-ups like TinyOwl, Spoonjoy and Dazo also shut down.

For the unprecedented growth that PayTM has witnessed, many of its competitors such as PhonePe lost ₹ 43 for each rupee in revenue for FY 2017.

Cases such as these are numerous in number. But all these companies are still burning cash, aiming to carve out a larger pie out of the industry, while trim-

MARKATHON

Let us analyse these questions to have a better sense of understanding of the behaviour of the Indian consumers and its cumulative effect on this strategy.

Consider the following simple scenario – you are a long-time user of PayTM. You are ordering food from a website, and you notice that PhonePe is offering a better deal, how likely are you to stay on PayTM, just because you have been a long time user of PayTM? Consider another scenario – you are searching for a particular product, say a book on Amazon. You search the same book on Flipkart, and find that the same book is available for a relatively cheaper price. How likely are you to still order the book from Amazon, out of a sense of loyalty to Amazon? Consider a third

2

IIM Shillong

September 2018

Perspective

-taurant of your choice, would your loyalty to a partic- the right reasons. However, once the deal was finalular brand, say Swiggy or Zomato have a greater effect ized, there was a concern among the investors of Walmart, which was evident in the sharp fall of its than the price, quality or service? shares, back in US. While it has been the poster boy From all these examples above, the point that I am try- for the emergence of start-up culture in India, it has ing to bring forward is that Indian consumers, by na- had its fair share of woes. Speculations are already ture are price sensitive. One of the major departments adrift that it may have been overvalued. Also the where companies are investing in, and bearing the fact of the matter is, that it is still to achieve operatbrunt of the losses, is providing enticing discounts and ing profits, 11 years after its inception. While it has other lucrative financial benefits to the consumers in been increasing in terms of the revenue earned, the terms of cashbacks, free orders, discount coupons etc. operating losses coupled with the deep discounts that it has been offering to its consumers have been to stay ahead of the competitive curve.

Although I admit that the examples considered above were quite simplistic in nature, and there might some other factors that are involved in choosing one particular brand over the other, however prima-facie this is one of the most important considerations that consumers reckon to arrive at a particular conclusion.

There is another important factor that is a slight offshoot of the overall service cycle and quality. It takes just one bad service or one poor experience, for someone to write about it on social media and decrease the overall brand equity of the brand. People tend to relate with those experiences and it follows a domino effect, and in no time, a chunk of equity that the brand has built over a period of time gets eroded, and it takes considerable amount of investment for the brand to rise up again.

burning a hole in its balance sheet. Hence, it is only logical to question that till what point of time, it can continue with the same strategy to win the turf war with Amazon. The same logic also applies to Amazon, although Amazon is looking to expand its offerings by providing the customers an eco-system of services, in form of Amazon Music, Prime Video, special deals and offers for Prime members so as to ensure that a customer doesn’t migrate to its competitors. But still, it has a long way to go to achieve the kind of loyalty that it is looking for.

Considering the case of online food ordering and delivering market which is expected to grow to at least $ 2.5 billion by the year 2020, the month of June saw Swiggy enter the unicorn league of startups. This has already heated up the food-tech war, with Zomato seeking an additional $ 400 million Moving on, let’s take the case of Flipkart. After the funding to match the competition posed by Swiggy.

Walmart-Flipkart deal, it has been in the news for all Apart from these 2 players, Uber and Ola are trying

MARKATHON

3

IIM Shillong

September 2018

Perspective which was started back in 2014. The growth of TinyOwl had come on the back of discounts and promotions, and once the funds dried up, they had no option but to increase their costs by cutting discounts, which eventually led to users leaving it for other better (better discounts and promotions) options. TinyOwl was eventually forced into a merger, with the new entity getting acquired by Zomato, sometime later.

This poses 2 interesting aspects, quite in line with what I have been trying to convey – •Indian consumers love discounts and promotions. If you are not one offering it to them, they won’t really mind moving on to some other player, when the need arises.

•How long can you keep on offering discounts by raising investments? How long can you continue to operate on losses?

These two aspects are the central theme of the problems being faced by almost all the players in e-tail industry. One factor that is clear is the growing size of industry. With rapid urbanisation and digitalisation, the consumption-led growth of the Indian economy is not going to stop. This is going to present all the existing players with immense opportunities to grow and possibly co-exist in the same space. The thought of co-existing seems a little too hypothetical right now, but with a sufficiently large market size, 3-4 players can co-exist in the market, without having to burn too large a hole in the market.

If we consider a scenario, in say food-tech industry, wherein the involved players cut down on the deep discounts and promotional offers in a systematic fashion, would the consumers stop ordering online food altogether just because of that? If a single player is doing that, then they will obviously jump the ship to another service provider, but if all the players are doing that, then the consumers will adjust accordingly. The behaviour of the consumers has substantially evolved over time, where ordering food online has become a part of their food consumption behaviour. If the companies start focusing on improving the overall bouquet of services and improving their operational efficiency instead of trying to outbid each other in price wars, is it that difficult to envisage that the condition would not be beneficial for all the players involved as well as the consumers? The above scenario drives the industry away from the price wars, and helps in improving the financial conditions of the involved players as well. Of course there is a possibility of a new player entering the market and trying to disrupt it again by means of predatory pricing. But then, if the existing players have already developed a robust offering in terms of products and services, then they can fend off the incumbent competition on that basis, since the new player will also need to invest substantially in terms of service and product quality to match the industry standards.

A form of service quality that currently most of

MARKATHON

4

IIM Shillong

September 2018

Perspective

Case in point – how users of Zomato Gold prefer to find frestaurants where they can exercise the Zomato Gold policy. (The recent debacle of Zomato Gold, however puts a great dent in the ecosystem of Loyalty Programs, but that is a totally different case altogether.)

the primary motive of all these campaigns is to generate loyalty among the Indian consumers and try to ensure that a customer finds it difficult to leave one company due to the any sort of involvement – be it financial, logical or emotional.

MARKATHON

5

The growth that the e-commerce and the foodtech industry has seen over the past years coupled with the healthy growth projections owing to rising dis-posable incomes, higher influx of population in the urban areas and expansion of services to cities outside metro and tier 1 category, presents ample opportunities for growth for all the players involved. Hence, there is a solid argument that can be made for the companies today to move themselves away from the price wars and focus on improving the overall product and service quality and invest in improving customer experience, to gain long-term loyalty from the customers.

IIM Shillong

September 2018

Perspective

Marketing is a tricky business!

“There are instances when fictions become facts, and there are other instances, in the same market, where facts can’t win arguments.” isha garg iim rohtakBeing a writer, I always get my article or any other piece of writing read by one or two of my friends, before official publishing, to know their viewpoint. Why? Because when we read or watch something, we choose to pick our own side of the story. It is astonishing how perspectives of a writer of an article and that of a reader can differ significantly. An author can never interpret how the readers will view his article. Same is the case in marketing!

It takes endless research and thought to put together an advertising or a marketing campaign. But what

most marketers miss at times is to analyse the viewpoint of their viewers, which may lead to disastrous results. Marketers have been latching social issues to promote their products from quite some time, but many a time, they end up giving the world another example of the so-called “backfire effect.” A number of

MARKATHON

6

well-established brands like Dove and Sony help us prove the same.

A much-known brand like Dove has initiated much debate among various communities at various occasions. It has displayed the uncertainty of authorreader relationship in most effective and expensive ways, be it while launching a new packaging to celebrate body diversity (which actually humiliated many people rather than honouring them) or launch of ad campaigns showing magical transformations from a dark skin to white skin (which led to boycott of Dove in many countries). A similar thing happened with Sony when it used black and white models as personified PSPs, showing a black PSP(model) being subjugated by a white PSP(model). The campaign went viral, no doubt, but it led to immense PR firestorms and negative feedbacks.

Where on one side, the above examples show how lack of secondary thinking led to disastrous results for companies, there are cases on another face of the coin where such steps led to incentives for investors. Such instances remind me of something known as “Cobra Effect.” An anecdote from British Colonial time in Delhi states that once, the British officials announced money rewards to anyone who brought them dead cobras, to eliminate the venomous population from the city. But can you guess what happened next? The cunning Indians started breeding cobras at their homes! And it did not stop there. When the government came to know about the shrewd plan, they withdrew the scheme, which in turn led all the cobra breeders to set those co-

IIM Shillong

September 2018

Perspective

“Backfire Effect.”

An article in Economic Times reminds me of a famous investor Jim Rogers, who stated that “you can either control the supply of a product or service, or its price, but never both of them”. The simplest of explanation being that a limited production below actual demand will directly lead to a black market and lucky allottees will sell their allotment letters several times at much higher prices than the set maximum price (as happened in case of Bajaj Auto scooters). A similar phenomenon is bound to occur due to a recent cap put by the government on price of stents used in a heart surgery. The announcement immediately led to withdrawal of stocks of stents from market, leading to an immediate shortage. Isn’t it like shaping a pathway for black markets with our own hands?

ing about second and third order effects of such decisions and campaigns. The Backfire effect is something that has been happening for years, and yet the marketers fail to foresee the long-term effects of their strategic campaigns correctly. Hasty decisions lead to more than just monetary losses. It can jeopardize brand credibility and lead to irreparable PR losses. All it takes to avoid this is, “relax, pause and reflect” and ask yourself all the possible questions which a viewer could generate in his mind after watching your advertising campaign. Ponder if someone out there can incentivize at your cost with your current strategy. As Mr. Arun Jaitley pointed out in an interview, “One of the key elements of a good system design, therefore, is to avoid creating incentives to game as much as possible.” An inquisitive mind would ask, “didn’t he think on the same lines before implementing demonetization and GST?” But anyway, that’s a debate for another time!

This happens due to the lack of efforts put in think-

MARKATHON

7

IIM Shillong

September 2018

Perspective

MARKATHON

8

IIM Shillong

September 2018

Cover Story

CLICK AND MORTAR STORES AND THE Cover Story FUTURE OF RETAIL There is a lot of buzz around how the future is going to be. Technologies are changing our lives and currently we are in a phase of transition. Many companies now want to ride the digital wave. Everyone in the ecosystem is going crazy about going online and connecting to the world. But is the future limited to just MARKETING going digital and having online presence? Will the traditional businesses which cannot afford to or are less BUDGET competent to go digital will soon perish?

Before we come to an answer, let’s have a look at some of the facts. India’s physical retail market in 2016 was estimated to be $680 billion and expected to cross $1 trillion mark by 2020 with a growth rate of around 20% per annum as per a study by MRRSIndia.com and ASSOCHAM. On the other hand, India’s online retailing business is estimated to grow to $200 billion by 2026 from $15 billion in 2016, according to a report by Morgan Stanley. This is more than 1200% growth in 10 years! The report also estimates that online retail will account for 12% of India’s overall retail market, up from the current figure of 2%.

MARKATHON

9

IIM Shillong

MARKATHON

10

IIM Shillong

Cover Story

September 2018

What I strongly believe is that taking the business online is an aid and not the ultimate end. Digital and online are just channels and not a full-fledged strategy in itself. Retail has been part of our lives since ages and will be there. But traditional businesses have to update themselves but the prediction of some experts regarding 100% retail businesses online is a path to the wrong forest. Just because there is a hype of digital technologies, it does not mean that future is just about this. Such linear thinking can be dangerous. In my opinion, the biggest revolution technologies have brought in selling directly to the consumer is that it has given them more convenience. The brick and mortar businesses thus should focus on creating experiences for customers and offer them better value.

what the basic learning is that Omni-channel distribution is the need of the hour. Although selling through multiple-channels is not something new. Products were, and are still, sold through catalogues or magazines even when there are multiple stores. But online or e-commerce channel has the potential to provide and collect large amount of data about the customers and also has a very wide reach.

Offline stores are important also because they are the most efficient for customer acquisition and brand building purposes. This is why Myntra, a well-known brand in fashion e-commerce, has opened up stores of its in-house private label brands like Roadster. It opened the exclusive Roadster store in 2017 in Bengaluru. This is a 4000 sq. ft. store aimed to improve customer engagement. Mr. Ananth Narayan, CEO of What I currently observe is that it’s not just about Myntra-Jabong, said that the online sales of Roadonline. Online giants like Amazon are increasingly ster had indeed increased after the launch of the ofinvesting in offline stores and retail behemoths like fline stores and majority of the increased sales came Walmart foraying into online businesses. So the con- from the pin codes of the neighbouring areas of the cept of ‘Click and Mortar’ is gaining momentum. ‘Click store. This year, it also launched Roadster Go store and Mortar’, as evident from the name, is a business on the concepts of Retail 2.0. This means the store having both online as well as offline presence. Not will leverage the technologies to enhance customer necessary this will be experience by the best model, but reducing the it can be one of the time on billing best. In this article counters, kiosks we will see in detail to provide inforhow will Click and mation like size, Mortar stores shape colours, fabric, the Future of Retail. price etc. and how does the The first question product looks on that comes to my a model. Using mind is that why is the RFID (Radio there a need for a Frequency Idenphysical store for a tification) techcompany like Amanology, the cuszon? The truth is that tomer just has to pure play e-comselect the prodmerce cannot survive. Taking the example of Amazon ucts and payment can be made through the app. So itself, just have a look at the graph of net shipping just choose and go and the product can be delivered costs of Amazon till 2013. at home. You can always buy from the store directly.

The graph clearly exposes the paint-point, shipping “We are not opening stores because we want them and last-mile delivery. Free shipping has increased to be big sales centres. It is a great way to do brandcosts and reduced margins for Amazon. So opening ing for us and to provide the touch-and-feel experiup stores make sense for Amazon because they will ence to consumers. In future, stores can also help us act as flexible warehouses and also a centre for sales. deliver products faster to (online) consumers”, said And this is true for every e-commerce company. So Mr. Ananth Narayan. Myntra now aims to launch 100

MARKATHON

11

IIM Shillong

Cover Story

September 2018

more offline stores in next 2 years for both its private labels including Roadster, HRX, DressBerry etc. and Myntra brand store to sell brands like Esprit and Mango.

in online and e-commerce brands of the world. The two most important acquisitions for Walmart are that of Jet.com for $3.3 billion and Flipkart for $16 billion.

These acquisitions are majorly to take on Amazon, which is also going aggressive in its offline bet. The acquisition of Jet.com makes sense as this will open up a new segment, urban millennial, for Walmart to serve. The acquisition of Flipkart is not doubt a costly

Myntra again is not alone. Lenskart, CaratLane and Pepperfry have followed the suit. All of them understood that customers search about the product online and visits the offline stores for “touch and feel� of the item. Finally, he/she makes the purchase on- one and whether it was a good decision can only be line at his/her convenience. Also opening up stores known in future. But this too makes sense for now gives these e-commerce brands a chance to pene- as the biggest market for Walmart, United States, is saturation with only 2% growth in offline sales. Due to regulations and also to take down Amazon on a different turf, Flipkart seemed the best possible option.

There are several smaller partnerships by Walmart like that with JD.com in China and Rakuten in Japan.

These are local e-commerce businesses who have the same enemy. Walmart recently acquired Cornershop, an online grocery seller in Mexico and Chile to develop its Omni-channel presence in Latin America.

trate into tier 2 and tier 3 cities and build their brand.

A more indigenous example is that of Shoppers Stop.

Amazon invested in Shopper Stop in 2017 to scale up both its offline as well as online businesses. This is a peculiar case where one is going offline and the

There are some brands which are doing the exact opposite. They have their expertise in offline retailing but are increasingly adding online channels. As only staying online is not a feasible plan now, having just the physical presence would mean not grabbing the opportunity that digital and online world brings to a business. Walmart, the biggest retailer on earth with other going online. Lifestyle International and Spen$485.7 billion revenue in 2015 and close to 11,500 cer’s Retail too are venturing to Omni-channels using stores worldwide, has made strategic investments e-commerce. Many other brands too have developed

MARKATHON

12

IIM Shillong

Cover Story

September 2018

MARKETING Online players going offline is understandable, but why the opposite? Why is there a rush to be in the middle of online and offline? The answer is simple: To have best of both worlds. It is a fact that when you get a customer to touch digital before he/she enters the shop, the chances of conversion of sale are higher than before. This is primarily due to the digital content of the company, the need is already created and the customer is now highly involved in the buying process. Even the information search about the product and evaluation of alternatives is done online. So before entering the store, the customer has already completed more than half of the steps involved in buying decision process. After that the customer makes the purchase decision, which is not one decision but several decisions. Hence here is where the offline store comes into play.

It is very important to have a good content online.

Offline sales are often influenced by relevant digital content. And this is again very important for products that do not have digital attributes, meaning which cannot be sold as easily on an e-commerce site as items like mobiles, cloths, shoes etc. For such products or services, content plays a very important role. Content here can be in the form of User Reviews as in the case of cars. Customers now increasingly rely on online user review before they buy a product. A positive review will create a fa-

MARKATHON

13

vourable effect on the sales and a negative review will help the company understand its short-comings in the offering. Another type of content that can be created are Video Tutorials. Such content saves the buying time of the customer in stores as they well before what is the use and how to use. It might be possible that because of quality content, impulse buying may die. The consumer will be more informed and smarter too. So just wooing him/her with just an attractive package or catchy slogans will not work in the retail market of the future.

Talking about the Future Group, one of the largest retailers in India and also the one to popularize supermarkets in India through the Big Bazar chain, was in dilemma about going online a few years ago.

Mr. Kishore Biyani said in an interview in 2017 that Future Group would not invest in e-commerce for at least 2 years. The reason was simple, the â‚š300 crore investment by Future Group in online ventures had sunk. Also he mentioned that all the ecommerce players were running in huge losses. But in one his latest interviews, he clearly mentioned the importance of staying both online and offline.

Phygital (a mix of digital and physical) is the new future of retail� he said. Mr. Biyani also said that he believed that the future lies in building effective ecosystems through alliances and partnerships to offer what a consumer wants in addition to the core commerce, on the lines of Alibaba and Tencent.

IIM Shillong

Cover Story

September 2018

MARKET-

A new battle can be seen in the grocery segment.

Brands are aggressively entering this segment by introducing the online medium of purchase and home delivery. Amazon acquired Whole Foods for this purpose as soon as it realised that this is the next big segment left to be tapped. Big Basket and Groffers both are pumping in money from various investors. Online food ordering and delivery is again a very lucrative market. Here too Zomato and Swiggy are disrupting the segment. Even Uber and Ola are extending their operations to food deliveries.

We can see that this is a good example of Omnichannel existence for local restaurants and vendors.

They can sell through app as well as their physical outlets. Such a business model which involves both online and offline channels is more sustainable and I think it holds much larger scope and that is the reason major players are having a close eye on this segment.

online model of retail is still evolving. Some people are increasingly gaining trust while shopping online and some others are still reluctant to do so.

Right the focus of major players is to increase the customer base and valuation. This is why they are relying on deep discounts and attractive offers but in the long run this is not a sustainable strategy to follow. One positive thing in favour of online shopping is that for many shoppers, the point of initiation of a buying process is on the internet. So the future for retail ahead is a mixture of both offline and online, the former is platform for customer experience and the later for convenience. No matter what the company is, whatever their financial muscle or the turnover, they have to follow the very basic concept of marketing that is listening to the consumers. They have to adopt to the preferences of the consumer and change their business models.

The old saying is very much true even today – “The Customer is the King�.

After looking at so many examples I feel that the

MARKATHON

14

IIM Shillong

Vartalaap

September 2018

VARTALAAP An Interview with Mr Kapil Arora

by Yash Agrawal, Nitin Nathani & Shobhit Chandak

Mr. Kapil Arora is the Brand builder, Successful business unit leader and a Integration specialist. He has been awarded WPP Global Partnership in Practice award for integration thrice.

He has worked over 19 years in brands like Enterprise Nexus, Bennett Coleman & Co. and Ogilvy & Mather. In Ogilvy & Mather he has successfully managed TVS Scooty’s First Love, Titan’s what’s your style?, Hutch’s Rangashankara and Vodafone’s Happy to Help, Zoozoo and Blackberry Boys.

During his journey, He has worked on some of the best Indian and Global brands - Raymond, TVS, Unilever teas, the BCCL group, Titan, Hutch, Vodafone, KFC, Pizza Hut, Pernod Ricard, Perfetti, Dabur, Sprite and BMW - and have had a key role to play in each of these brand journeys.

Along the way, he has been recognised by Campaign Asia as the Account Management person of the year in 2009.

He served as visiting faculty at institutes like IIM Calcutta, IIM Lucknow, IIM Ranchi, ITM and NDIM, besides serving on the academic board of the Jagran Lake Institute of Media Studies, Bhopal and has also mentored to the FMCG Start-up incubator run by Wadhwani Foundation and was a key member of the WPP Data Alliance board.

Ogilvy & Mather

MARKATHON

15

PresidentNorth

IIM Shillong

Vartalaap

September 2018

“ If you can do something with

your eyes closed, it’s about time to get out.

“

Markathon: Tell us about your journey.

How you reached where you are today?

What is your motivation to keep working every-day?

Long journey but interesting, I have worked now for about 19 odd years. I got out of MICA in 1999 and straight away went to advertising because that was the love for me, in fact, I went into MICA simply because I wanted to get into that space. I was reasonably clear, early on in life that advertising is where I wanted to go and luckily for me enterprise Nexus in Mumbai was a good start. I got to learn from some very big story heads, Rajiv Agrawal used to head the agency, and I started off working on brands like Nilkamal plastics and Raymond. So that worked out for some time in Mumbai, and then I wanted to move back home, home for me is Bengaluru. So I went there, and I got the opportunity to work Ogilvy on TVS Scooty brand and Unilever teas. So one of my first most interesting campaigns in the auto world was ‘first love’ which was positioning Scooty as the first love for teenagers it did very well during its period. Post that I took a small break out of advertising, my only break out of advertising into a consulting role at the Times group, Delhi where I worked with the vice chairman office as part of a corporate team. 25 of us from diverse background and our role was basically to step into the functional team, set a problem right. If there was a new opportunity in place, set up the business and get out. So it was a very project-oriented 3-4 month, but I think it was invaluable for me. It gave me an opportunity to step out of advertising to give me a perspective of the

MARKATHON

whole marketing world and the business world beyond just communication which I was initially just involved with. It did open my eyes. I got a different perspective of working with a very senior gentleman and with someone very early in life. So that was I think invaluable. So when I came back, I came back to Ogilvy in Bengaluru because when I left Ogilvy it was leaving advertising it wasn’t leaving Ogilvy because Ogilvy for me is in a sense home and ever since I have been in Ogilvy, 2003 to 2007 I was in Ogilvy Bengaluru; 2007 I moved to Mumbai to take on the Vodafone leadership role and 2013 I moved to Delhi to take on the office work.

Along the way a lot of interesting campaigns and challenges, Hutch Rangashankara was a low budget campaign that we did in 20032004 which brought a loads of accolades upon us, The repositioning of Titan to make it a style accessory from what was earlier just a gifting brand with Aamir Khan’s entire series of ‘What’s your style’ campaign.

Post that largest over brand changeover in the country which was Hutch to Vodafone in 2007 that I handled and led in Mumbai and then Vodafone was an iconic journey all the way from happy to help to Irfan commercials, to blackberry boys which was a campaign in 2010 and then the Zoo-Zoos, so fabulous work for me and more importantly than just interesting work, effective work. So the big story from 2007 to 2013 is being the number of effectiveness awards we won. Until 2013 I was a part of one brand spread across six offices, in 2013 I took a different charge to take an office role which means 35 brands - Advertising, Digital, PR, Activation and the entire gamut of activities.

Luckily for me Ogilvy has always backed me

16

IIM Shillong

Vartalaap time. At 35 I was probably the youngest officer made in the Delhi office. It’s been a rocking journey, and we have grown the office almost by 80% in the last six years. We did Businesses like BMW, royal stag, 100 pipers, Sprite, Kinley water, Fanta, Philip, Yum, KFC, and Pizza Hut. Hell, a lot of work, it’s fun, it keeps you on your toes, I think there are different things that keep me motivated, at first of course to one level the organisation has been great to me, every time I thought I was saturated they threw a new challenge at me. If you can do something with your eyes closed, it’s about time to get out. Perhaps you got to be a little scared, and the complacent is death, especially today, today when the things are changing so quickly. Today what you can live with of knowledge of 4-5 years maybe it could last you for two years so you can be expert but got to be a student as well.

Markathon: Sir, about advertisement starting from the Dairy milk 1993 “Real taste of life” ad which gave you inspiration in the first place how has ad world evolved?

People in our country don’t view advertisements as something that comes in the way of running. Actually, people are reasonably positive and inclined towards advertisements, and they look forward to what is next because for them advertising is an entertainment medium because advertisements were more liberal in the programming. Also, one thing which has gone for Indian advertising industry is that we have done storytelling in advertisements. A lot of

You can be expert but got to be a student as well. these advertisements are the types of storytelling, and the format of storytelling has changed over the years. I think all the way from Chal Meri Luna to Fevicol and Cadbury, all of these advertisements have emphasised on storytelling. Storytelling wasn’t

MARKATHON

September August 2018 restricted to one language but the language of the target audience. Every storytelling inspiration comes from people. The people around you may be a guy who rents dental clinic on the roadside who treats you for 100 rupees, these the everyday experience are which fuels advertisement. The craft that we have is that we take those experiences, take problems and find very interesting connections so again everyday experience is input so if you don’t have enough experience you don’t have enough connections. Today storytelling relevance and notions remain the same, but the format of storytelling has changed mainly because of two reasons A. From the point of view of medium, the source now how people consumed media is extremely different. So now when you watch any stuff at your mobile, laptops versus when you look the same media on your television or when you are playing PS4. These are very different format of storytelling. And one format doesn’t work everywhere, so depending on the format one has, one should be able to tell your story in 5 seconds, 20 seconds, 2 minutes and this had become much more challenging. I think the trap which most of the people fall in is telling the same story in all the formats and that fails miserably.

When you emphasised your story, you emphasise on your first way of format. If you tell a person who has made a feature film “ki ab tum na iska 3-minute version banao” and we will play that 3 min version on Netflix, he might never be able to do it and that is why the best filmmakers turn out to be the worst ad makers. However, if we look at each media, how the consumer consumes that then we will realise the role of media on that communication can be slightly different, and then you start from the role, how you formulate your message differently and that consumer journey based storytelling is a big difference what we have today.

B. The other aspect today in this world is we have a lot of information, a lot of data which we didn’t have earlier, data which was almost real time. There is so much data but we have to sift through data to see what is relevant People will throw a lot of number at you but you have to decide what is impor

17

IIM Shillong

Vartalaap

September 2018

tant to you and then interpret that informs of insights in communication. In the past insights was derived from observation and information and communication with consumers was physically but today we have the data, the method is slightly different, but the requirement is the same.

Markathon: You said that we are in a generation where advertisement is an interruption. Attention timespan is decreasing, and large number of advertisements are there. How to create uniqueness?

Uniqueness comes from consumer choice.

The attention time span are definitely slightly lower than what it used to be but if we catch interest of people, they are willing to watch a 3 minute things and even 3 hours thing but you have to catch the right interest and press the right button. The marketing world today is dominated by e-commerce, the spend specifically and most of the Ecommerce is more interested in here and now, is interested in selling more, data valuation and that’s about it. There are very few Ecommerce people are looking at the long-term brand building.

What happens with now and here selling is that if the mind is set to tell the consumer this is what I have, buy it But if we are willing to become the part of consumer life in long-term then we want to tell that I want to understand you, understand the benefit of what I give you and that’s the role products plays in your life. Today marketer don’t have the time and patience because they are bothered about here and now which may

work for some people but how many success stories do you see which last for a long-term leaving the ones which were really financially strong. Look at it 5-10 years back, which were the coolest brands, you will find some cola or QSR brands but today none of them are the coolest brand, rather the coolest brands are all technology brands, no hardware brands, so all the FMCG in the worlds are thinking about the reason for their existence but I think I think it’s a phase. You can get consumer interest and attention and that is one thing, you can get consumers attention by removing your clothes and dancing on the street that’s the easy part and a shortcut but retaining that interest to be in conversational dialogue with you and making you play a role in their life is difficult and for this you will have to understand their needs better than anybody else that’s the key to building brand connect with the consumers.

Markathon: Tell us about your two favourite Indian ad campaign and the reason for the same?

I won’t go outside Ogilvy. For me personally, the Hutch Rangashankara campaign was really very important simply because of its timing in my career, and it gave me the impetus to go forward. Hutch Rangashankara was really brave because everyone at that time was doing TV based advertising for activation. At the Abby’s the highest honour ‘the first ever ad without TV commercial’ was a big thing for me. The entire cost was around 7000 rupees at a time when everyone is spending so much. It was a great idea.

The second one which I would talk about is BlackBerry boys. Because there is bravery

You can get consumer interest and attention and that is one thing, you can get consumers attention by removing your clothes and dancing on the street but retaining that interest to be in conversational dialogue with you and making you play a role in their life

MARKATHON

18

IIM Shillong

Vartalaap September 2018 around Blackberry Boys as well.

Blackberry at its time was about corporate image and provided no place for consumer behaviour. As Vodafone’s plan was mostly the postpaid plan, there is an opportunity with youngsters with no post-paid plans. So we went back to Blackberry, and they readily agreed with Vodafone. The ad mentioned the word BlackBerry 42 times, but the ad was for Vodafone.

Blackberry for Vodafone was a means to an end because when BlackBerry gets sold more data will be consumed and when this happens there will be more money for Vodafone. So for Vodafone, it’s like a bouquet of flowers, and you constantly have to think which other flowers when added to bouquet will increase the value and Blackberry was the one for Vodafone. And the work was fabulous.

So for Vodafone, it’s like a bouquet of flowers, and you constantly have to think which other flowers when added to bouquet will increase the value and Blackberry was the one for Vodafone.

It’s not a new phenomenon across the world, across the years you have always targeted the younger audience all the time, they want to be the lead the brand would like to see them Because there is one who is your communication audience and others are c o n s u m p tion audience.

You would like to make the communication audience who someone aspires to be which mostly are young people. So I don’t think that’s a new a phenomena that are happening any more, but what I feel is missed opportunity with the heavy influx of medium and data, it’s an opportunity to market to multiple segments. In fact increasingly local brand go microsegmenting focus on niche has probably seen more success than those trying to go complete market because there is a certain amount of cost. Earlier you had 100 rupees to spend on me and 15 available mediums as a marketer now you have 1500 mediums, and your 100 rupees has only gone up to 120 rupees, and this has made communicating difficult as you need to find the right communication network for the right target audience.

Focus on niche has probably seen more success than those trying to go complete market

Markathon: 5 Brands across almost all categories have been trying to woo the millennials. Because of this increased emphasis, there seems to be an obsession with everything social, young and digital. What is your opinion on the increasing importance given to millennials? Is this segment overrated?

MARKATHON

19

IIM Shillong

eye2eye

September 2018

Conversational Commerce: Artificial Intelligence vs Human Touch L Sowmyasree IIM Shillong

Anjali Gupta iim Shillong

Conversational commerce – the word has recently been making the rounds in the field of marketing to drive sales and understand consumers better.

However, this is not something new; ever since humans first began exchanging commodities, conversations have played a vital role in the success of trade.

While companies have known that human-to-human on-site conversations are valuable, it was not easy to personalise them on a large scale. Especially with the onset of e-commerce and growth in online purchases, it is essential, now more than ever was, to be able to connect with customers on a personal level. Thus, was born the chat-bot as an interface between online customers and business stakeholders. Necessary is indeed the mother of invention, and the need for continuous interaction between buyers and sellers has led to the progressive and disruptive advancement of conversational capabilities of brands through natural language processing and artificial intelligence. Today, chatbots are the next big thing in conversational commerce – they are highly personalizable and can respond in real time. However, not all chatbots are customised, they usually follow a sequence of rules written by a human programmer. But what makes them of particular importance to conversational commerce is AI. Artificial intelligence can make chat bots read past customer-centred data to know a customer better, thus giving him/her a much more personalised experience.

Artificial intelligence is changing the way brands interact with customers. Be it a recommendation system, feedback mechanism or a query answering machine, AI-powered chatbots can help reach a wider audience, while making the experience highly customised.

Although AI may not be able to replace in-person one-to-one interactions entirely, it can definitely aid companies and brands enhance their customers’ user experience, consequently helping them expand faster. Conversational commerce is thus increasingly becoming synonymous to artificial intelligence.

One of the most critical competencies of human beings is their curiosity. Curiosity to understand and learn new things. Organisations nowadays hire employees on the basis of their urge to learn rather than on what these employees already know.

This trend has become more prominent after the coming of Artificial Intelligence; now the question arises, can AI ever be as curious as humans? Can AI ever replace humans at all?

No doubt AI has revolutionized the way things have been working around for years and is helping the processes to fasten up, also AI has the capability to learn the direct task that a human can perform and can continuously improve itself to do that task efficiently with time, but the AI is constrained in what it can learn and to expand its horizon of learning new things it will need human interventions in some way or the other.

Secondly there are fields where “Human Touch” rather than a machine expertise is given an utmost importance, these are the fields that require creative thinking and out of the box solutions for the problems, which is certainly something a machine, who even though have a huge potential to learn from the large amount of data available to it , will fail to achieve success in.

Other limitations of AI is in the field of talent recruiting, AI definitely can conduct face-to-face interviews and judge the people on the basis of the parameters given, but the extent of questions and grading parameters are limited and depends on the data of people that a company have provided to AI, based on the experience, which is again very limited.

AI will have the edge over humans, but the capacity to stay curious and creative only lies with humans.

Thus AI can best be put to use when both Humans and AI work in sync and comes out with innovative solutions to everyday problems. d British soap maker Lever Brothers. From that

v e r s u s

Topic for the next issue: “The ROI Debate: Social Media Vs Traditional Advertising” Your opinion (view/counterview) is invited. Word limit is 250-300. Last date of sending entries is 28th October 2018. Include your picture (JPEG format) with the entry. Winners will receive a prize money of Rs. 500 each!

MARKATHON

20

IIM Shillong

Logoistic Logoistic

September August 2018 2018

Shell oil company is based in United States and wholly owned subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell and is one of the largest oil companies in the world. Shell products include fuels, oil, exploration, production and refining of petroleum product.

Its logo has gone through many changes and the tweaks has made it even significant.

Early 1900s – Although known for its uniqueness in design of logo, the first logo was a very poor design of mussel shell. Although there is nothing much significance in the mussel shell, the angle of the photo taken and poor design worsened its look.

1909 – The first redesigning took place in 1909 where the mussel shell was replaced with scallop shell. The logo was slightly better than the previous design but the black colour in the background was still something not soothing to the eyes. This logo lasted for slightly more than 20 years.

1930 – In this phase of redesigning, the logo was much more symmetrical and looked impressive as the black colour from background was removed.

1948 – This was the first-time colours were introduced but the design again went backward as the clear demarcation un the previous logo were again removed and the logo was made taller and the red and yellow colour were added to it. The choice resembles with the emotions from the early settlers from Spain in California.

1971 – This new logo had clean cut design which had wider yellow strips taking a crown shape and the yellow colour was bordered. This red outline in the logo makes it so impressive that the company still follows the same design pattern since 1971.

1995 – The company started its retail business in 1995, where it strategized to use the lower brightness and friendly shades of yellow and red such that the present and potential customers are not offended by the logo colors

MARKATHON

21

IIM Shillong

By Riya sarkar IIM Shillong

CAMPONY: PepperFry POSITIONING: Don’t wait for Diwali Sale december 2013 September 2018 YouTube Link: : https://youtu.be/j2SphaMixrM

AD-dicted AD-dicted

COMPANY: Levi’s POSITIONING: #IShapeMyWorld

By riya sarkar IIM Shillong

By Riya sarkar IIM Shillong

COMPANY: PepperFry POSITIONING: Don’t wait for Diwali Sale YouTube Link: : https://youtu.be/j2SphaMixrM

YouTube Link: Aditi Singh: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=0CxMqL9C1lE Hard Kaur: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=mbl0O2fTkMo Jwala Gutta: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-JVZwdy3HQ The Singh Sister: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=fubEA7OZkWU

CATCH

Concept: In its fourth edition of the sucConcept: cessful capaign #IShapeMyWorld, Levi’s celebrThe ad shows a revamped edition of a typical -ates women and their determination to inspire urban Indian household where the mother is change. conscious of the sorry state of furniture in the Arjuna awardee Jwala Gutta’s story is about following household but decides to wait one’s path, staying focused and not accepting pre-contill Diwali Sale to get new furceived notions of the world about gender or popular acniture. But then the helper of ceptable behavior. the house reminds her that Braving the pressures of the otherwise male-dominated industry, Hard Kaur’s story of staying true to her nameand tomorrow her kid has a play date. The mother of this other kid is an infamous gossip girl and if she sees the broken furniture in the house then their reputation in the society will go for a toss. The mother, now very concerned, quickly surfs the net to go to PepperFry.com to search for new furniture. She is happily surprised to find out that there is already a sale going on and now she can happily shop without feeling the pangs of regret for not waiting till Diwali.

R

MISS

boldly paving her journey is an inspiration to several artists in the country today.

Bollywood singer, Aditi Singh’s story is all about moving forward and overcoming all challenges in her way.

Fueled by their passion for Basketball, the Singh sisters channelized all the negativity being poured on to them to become the forerunners of women’s basketball in India.

Verdict: Catch Meeta Bharvani, Director Marketing, Levi’s India says, “The #IShapeMyWorld campaign is driven by the insight that in a world that still tries to restrain women from achieving their potential by fueling insecurities about themselves.

Markathon thinks that the stories are beautifully portrayed and stays true to the spirit of authenticity, originality, and purposefulness inherent to the brand.

MARKATHON

Verdict: Miss Unfortunately, the ad is full of unnecessary pompousness and stereotypes. The mother is depicted as a shallow persona and the concept failed to garner interest from people of today’s generation who are trying to break away from stereotypes. Markathon believes that jumping on the bandwagon and relying on a cliched concept is a very outdated way of trying to attract people to your product.

Diwali is one of the biggest occasions where companies stand to make the most revenues and PepperFry should have strategized better to take advantage of the season.

22

IIM Shillong

Jab They Failed

Kratgya Gupta IIM Shillong

September 2018

JAB THEY FAILED Failure of Women Horlicks in India

Horlicks entered India during the British colonial rule.

When at the end of World War I Indian soldiers of British army brought it back as a dietary supplement, which was later adopted by Punjab, Bengal, and Madras.

Since then Horlicks has always remained one of the most favored malted milk hot drink. With a current market share of around 65% by volume. This massive growth was a result of a revamping strategy which Horlicks followed in the year 2003, where it launched products like Junior Horlicks, Horlicks light and women Horlicks.

While all performed decent in the rapidly growing Indian market, there were products that failed like the women Horlicks. The product was positioned as a high protein, low fat malted milk hot drink that improves women health. For the marketing, the company focused on the traditional print and TV media, while also using testimonials from medical professionals. This was coupled with a strong message “Because your body needs it too” The product failed despite the existence of a well-planned promotional strategy, strong brand name, and seamless supply chain. The reason of failure can be attributed to a lot of reasons among which the most prominent was the behavioral mindset of the Indian women. Indian mothers are the ones that always care for the family. They always place the needs of their children, husband, and family over their own needs. Hence when women went shopping, they chose to buy products that catered to the needs of children, family but not them. That’s how sacrificing Indian mothers are. May be if the women Horlicks was positioned and marketed in a way that told about the importance of women health for a family the product could have attracted more customers.Apart from this, there can be many reasons why Women Horlicks didn’t make

MARKATHON

a mark on the customers who tried it. This can be majorly attributed to the packaging, distribution, and taste.

The packaging of the product during the initial phase was disproportionately large.

Hence when women purchased it, they felt cheated, this developed a negative perception among the women about the product. However the company did bring about a lot of changes in the coming years, but the harm was already done.

The second major reason was the availability of the product, as mentioned earlier, company was badly hurt with the positioning and the marketing strategy the company followed, this resulted in low demand, and eventually the retail stores got more reluctant in keeping such a product, and the ones that kept the product at their stores placed the product at the bottom shelves, hence generating sales much less when compared to other malted milk hot drinks like Complan and Bournvita. Last but not the least, the taste of the women Horlicks was very close to the taste of the normal Horlicks and women saw no incentive to buy a more expensive product just because of the difference in packaging. All this together hampered the product in way that it wasn’t able to recover even in the years to come.

The entire failure could be well attributed to one core problem, wrong positioning and marketing of the product. This case sets an apt example for all the marketers out there, about the importance of understanding what drives the target customers to buy a product? And how can the marketer position the product in way that helps establish a right connect between the customer and the product they wish to sell?

23

IIM Shillong

September 2018

Digigyan

Programmatic TV Riya Sarkar IIM Shillong Today, professionals buying media for advertising through television channels spend their time and energy in manual processes like proposal requests, order placement for ad insertions and the subsequent confirmations. This exercise is often carried out employing inefficient tools like emails, faxes and spreadsheets. This traditional process of TV ad buying is limited to providing only a vague path to the target audience.

Smartphones have taken the entire marketing ecosystem by storm, with their wide reach across a large market footprint and exceptional capabilities of instant reach, enhancing opportunities for dynamism of the marketing communication. This has led a lot of interest being generated around digital advertising, through mediums like websites, social media and online ads, specifically among small businesses to reach out to their target customers. As these businesses mature, they feel the need to grow into newer markets through the wider reach that TV medium has, without Programmatic Television is the automated process compromising on the convenience offered by digital of buying and delivering advertisements against the advertising. Programmatic TV buying will make this video content on television. It incorporates a datadriven approach that traverses multiple platforms across the web, including mobile devices, smart TVs, or even the linear TV ads that are served across set-top boxes. Media buyers are now equipped with a tool that offers the convenience of consuming lesser time, making the whole process less arduous, resulting in an increase in overall efficiency.

Programmatic TV drives a higher return-on-investment on the media expenditure by precisely targeting specific consumer segments, leveraging data to go beyond the traditional components of audience targeting like age, gender, reach and frequency.

Data sets from primary, secondary and third-party sources enable advertisers to personalize content which is relevant for the users, delivering better results than targeting based on gross rating points transition of scaling up seamless by offering many of (GRPs). the same features offered by digital advertising, that Programmatic buying helps the marketer closely result in making the processes simpler and cost-effiwatch the metrics that capture the performance cient, while eliminating the time-consuming and chaparameters that are relevant to the specific cam- otic processes involved in traditional TV ad buying. paign being run. It eliminates the need to sift Startups trying to bring in this disruption in the TV methrough scores of channels for choices of programs dia buying space have been mushrooming lately, wishby providing a dedicated dashboard for each of the ing to exploit the potential that it has to offer. Videolproduct or the service that the marketer wishes to ogy is one such global platform that was founded in promote. It provides them the tools to track the 2007 and has received a total funding of about $120 performance of the campaign and its impact on the million, which is reflective of the prospects in this serdesired target audience through automated buying vice that has drummed up a lot of buzz among venture and scheduling, enabling them to reach out to both capitalists. Some firms have grown into giants, like existing and potential consumers.

TubeMogul, which serves more than 70 countries with a presence in 16 global locations.

MARKATHON

24

IIM Shillong

Digigyan

September 2018

It was also the only company offering programmatic digital brand advertising to be publicly traded, before being acquired

by Adobe Systems Incorporated in 2016, in an all cash deal worth $540 million. SureWaves MediaTech is a Bengaluru based firm that launched a revolutionary new platform called Skynet. Describing it, the founder and managing director of SureWaves MediaTech, Mr. Rajendra Kumar Khare said, “SureWaves has been at the forefront of many technology-driven in the media industry. With Skynet, we are taking this to a whole new level, with a first-of-its-kind Programmatic Television Advertising Marketplace in the world.

Skynet is built around the principles of simplicity, transparency and accountability. We believe Skynet will usher in a new era for broadcasters who will be able to monetize TV ad inventories more than ever and for agencies and brands, who will be able to use the medium of television to a potential never seen before.�

Programmatic TV changes the complete landscape of the media buying industry by making the processes open and transparent. It creates a marketplace where the buyers and sellers can interact with each other, which acts as a levelplaying field that provides equal opportunity for all, democratizing the process, which results in delivering benefits to all stakeholders.

MARKATHON

25

IIM Shillong

By vishal gupta | IIM Shillong Nestle India forays into the dips segment The increasing eating-out culture and aspiring India’s growing appetite for global cuisines are leading to the trend of cooking unconventional and international dishes at home. As part of its product diversification, Nestlé India today announced its foray into gourmet dip and spread segment with the launch of MAGGI Dip & Spread. The low fat yogurt based dip and spread from Nestlé has been conceptualized basis in-depth consumer research. The new range will be available in two flavours Cheese Garlic and Jalapeno Salsa. Each of these unique flavours has been specially created for the Indian palate.

Foodpanda’s launches its biggest food experience campaign With the aim to increase order volume by 10X, Foodpanda announced the launch of its biggest food campaign till date called The Crave Party for its users across its top priority markets. The campaign launched with the industry-first offering of Desserts at just Rs. 9 followed by snacks starting at Rs. 19 and Biryani starting at Rs 79.

Through the popular categories Foodpanda intends to provide their customers with the best food experiences on the platform while establishment long term relationships with their partner restaurants by introducing such compelling propositions.

MARKATHON

26

IIM Shillong

The Jawa Returns: Resurrection of an icon

Jawa represents a chance for the motorcycle category to break out of what I’d like to call faux-thenticty.

Riding a bike is a great, exhilarating experience; seeing bike advertising significantly less so. For too long, bikes of a certain sort — you know who you are — have tapped into a tiresome set of shopworn clichés cadged from what I assume is the Harley Davidson playbook.

Like fakes everywhere, they devalue the original and now even the pioneers are part of the same wallpaper: leather jackets, the lone rider or the socially responsible Hells Angel. With his dismissal of the trite clichés of the genre, Mahindra seems headed in the right direction.

AB InBev rolls out German malt beer-Beck’s Ice Anheuser-Busch InBev (AB InBev) is betting big on Beck’s Ice, to make a dent in the growing affordable premium segment of the beer market in India. Beck’s Ice will be priced about 12-20% higher than entry-level brands, with the aim of capitalising the pricing gap between those and the premium segment Budweiser operates in. AB InBev tweaked both the liquid and the packaging of Beck’s, which is the name of the parent brand globally, before bringing the brew to the country.Beck’s Ice has been pilot-launched in some parts of Maharashtra and will be available in Karnataka and Puducherry next month.

MARKATHON

27

IIM Shillong

1) The new age consumer rules There is a behavioral change that has occurred, and this has huge ramifications for businesses and more specifically marketers. Here is a peek into everything that is redefining the way consumers evaluate brands.

Link: Link: https://goo.gl/2f3C7P

2) The increasing spends on Digital Marketing In contrast to placing online ads through intermediaries, digital marketing, or “martech”, has the appeal of enabling brands to target consumers directly via social media, search-engine optimisation or voice-activated assistants, such as Amazon’s Alexa Link: https://goo.gl/HYxcHc

3) How marketers can ensure their voice is heard by the rest of the C-suite Marketers often complain they are not taken seriously by the rest of their business, seen as doing the fluffy, creative stuff rather than leading on strategic thinking, so what can CMOs do to ensure the rest of the C-suite listens Link: https://goo.gl/MD7tvM

4) Gaining importance of movie trailers in commercial success Not too long ago, trailers used to be a mishmash of song-and- dance sequences made only for cinemas. But now For moviemakers, opening-day collections can set the tone of the film’s collections. Generating interest through trailers is an integral part of this strategy.

Link: https://goo.gl/oiGu1d

5) Marketing lessons Kangaroo Kids can teach you Lina Ashar the founder of Kangaroo Kids Education Ltd (KKEL), sits down with the brand’s CEO Seshasai K.V.S to share her journey on pioneering a new era in education and more Link: https://goo.gl/QTQjWP

September 2018

https://www.facebook.com/markathon.iims/

https://in.linkedin.com/in/markathon www.issuu.com/markathon

MARKATHON

30

IIM Shillong