Contents From the Editors’ Desk ………………………………………………………………………………………..2 Political Marketing: An analogy to Product Marketing………………………………………….3 Strategy: The Key Differentiator in Politics…………………………………………………………...5 Various Principles of Political Marketing …………………………………………………………….. 7 The Importance of Building a BRAND in Politics …………………………………………………..9 Political Marketing: The Creation of a MIRAGE …………………………………………………..11 Political Marketing ‘coming of E-age’ ………………………………………………………………….13
Mark-e-feed: BRANDING INNOVATIONS ……………………………………………………….…15 Mark-e-feed: Role of Sentiment Analysis in Social Media (A Customer Centric Strategy) …………………………………………………………………………………………………………....17 Mark-e-feed: Tsuna-media………………………………………………………………………………….19
Mark-e-feed: Retailer Advocacy-How FMCG companies are going beyond monetary gratification………………………………………………………………………………………………….21 Mark Roadies 6.0 ……………………………………………………………………………………………….23 Words on Wall ……………………………………………………………………………………………..…… 24 Our Industry Initiatives ……………………………………………………………………………………...25 Mark-toon ………………………………………………………………………………………………………….26
August-September 2013
MARKEZINE
Dear Readers,
With politics being more dominated by the charisma and personality of the leader rather than the ideology, the leader with the strongest personal appeal finally gets to run the show. The politician becomes a brand for the party. Political Marketing can turn the candidate’s obscurity into popularity. The leader’s endorsement matters more than the worth of the party’s candidate, whether in Lok Sabha or assembly elections in a way which is just similar to a celebrity endorsing a mere commodity like a soap or shampoo.
From The Editors’ Desk
With 2014 elections on its way, we can see hot political branding going on in the country through the use of Social Media Marketing, 3D avatar, print and the media. We believed that this topic has been thought provoking. It was an extreme pleasure to see the response received and we at Club MarkUp are grateful. We also hope that the first edition by the newly inducted team of Club MarkUp is well received.
Raunak Sancheti
Greetings from Club MarkUp, the marketing club of IMT Ghaziabad!! We are proud to present the XV edition of Markezine with the theme “Political Marketing and its impact on electoral system”.
Shyam Suresh Thanks and regards,
2nd year, Raunak Sancheti
PGDM (Marketing) Disclaimer: The political views and opinions published in this magazine herein are those of the authors and Club MarkUp bears no responsibility for the same.
Credits Co-editor: Akrish Sharma Design Team: Ashish Kapoor, Priteesh Raj Deshmukh, Harshit Sharma Content: Abhinav Grandhi, Asim Goyal, Priyanka Agarwal Write to us markup.imt@gmail.com
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August-September 2013
Political Marketing: An analogy to Product Marketing
One of the forerunners for prime ministerial candidate from an opposition party recently gave a speech on Independence Day from Bhuj. By launching a scathing attack on the current Prime Minister, he tried to establish himself as the undisputed candidate for the position. Just a few days ago, a leader in toothpaste brand initiated an attack on another market leader in the toothpaste segment. The similarity is there for all to see, the strategy simply being pull your competitor down by focusing on their shortcoming – a good old technique used in advertising. Today, marketing is an integral part of the election campaigning system. “Out of sight, out of mind” - true in real sense of the phrase, more so for politicians. Politicians, for years, have been relying on basic marketing techniques such as speeches, rallies and political posters to keep themselves in the eye of public. Political marketing is the application of marketing principles to political campaigns in order to win over voters. The analogy is to consider a politician as a service provider. He is elected to carry out certain tasks and has candidates from other political parties as
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Subramanian Raju PGDM, Welingkar Institute of Management Development and Research (WE School), Mumbai
competitors. He may adopt a similar approach which other service providers adopt to say why we are the best and why he must be chosen. A voter in political marketing is the consumer or the target of the marketing strategy. A politician has to understand his voter’s needs just like any good marketer understands his customer’s. And it’s not just the current needs, it’s an ability to predict and analyze what he may need in the future. Opinion polls are the market research that politicians conduct to see what their standing in the current scenario is and on what area can they improve upon.
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The campaign is the time when promises are made and response in the market place checked. Market segmentation for identifying your target audience is also an integral part of all political campaigns. Some politicians target people of a particular religion while some of a particular economic background. This segmentation often goes a long way in deciding the candidate’s success. Brand management comes into picture when the politician positions himself in a particular manner and then tries to maintain his brand image. A politician has to come up with a unique marketing strategy by aggregating all these. He may use two ways to advertise. One is through the channel of political workers just like a marketer goes from wholesaler to retailer to customer, a politician can do the same through a channel of MLAs, party workers and so on right until the voter. The second way is the use of mass media like television, electronic media, newsprints and also information technology mediums like SMS, emails and so on. The impact of political marketing on election results is huge. For instance, the numerous marketing campaigns undertook under the leadership
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of Obama through market research (opinion polls) to advertising on the print media ensured that “Together…We can!” went from an idea to an execution. Back home “Jai ho” song that was the sound of the Congress party’s campaign in 2009 along with what Congress had achieved in the five years from 2004-2009 was an example of how perfectly a marketing campaign can help a political party achieve its objectives. The India Shining might be considered an example of a failure, where many experts felt it alienated since there were regions of the country which were not actually ‘shining’ and could have well cost NDA some vital votes. Some might well argue that winning or losing in election depends on the party’s caliber alone and not the marketing. But even with the right potential, candidates might fall short merely because of poor political marketing. The unique selling point(U.S.P.) for any politician can be showcased beautifully through political marketing. The underlying message is: The strength of image branding, opinion polls (market research) and advertising in politics is so immense that a potential candidate can be made to look and sound politically appealing even to the most intelligent citizen when correctly ‘marketed’.
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August-September 2013
Strategy: The Key Differentiator in Politics ”Market your audience, but surprise them to” -President Barack Obama Political marketing, a term coined by Mr. Kelley (1956), is designed to influence consumers about political issues. Although political marketing and general marketing share the same form of techniques, the former is used to promote ethics and/ or appeals emotionally in order to motivate people to vote for that idea. Since any political marketing campaign aims to create the maximum impact in the shortest possible duration its entire focus is at harnessing primary emotions like – happiness, surprise, sadness, anger, disgust and fear, in addition to the most potent one, hate. Speaking of the political marketing, we have the Indian elections coming in 2014 for which the preparations have already begun. In each election crores of rupees are spent on a single marketing campaign. There is a new trend adopted by the politicians, which is to use the web and social media to influence the youth. In doing so, coalition parties like the NDA and the UPA are way ahead in the race to gather the votes of the youth. The above parties have employed hundreds of people to work in their marketing campaigns. While Congress is trying very hard to fix its broken image after some of the biggest money spinning scams, its Aam Admi campaign has Rahul Gandhi leading
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Sachin Rao PGDM, Welingkar Institute of Management Development and Research (WE School), Mumbai from the front and is portrayed as a youth leader showcasing the development done by Congress in the recent years. BJP launched a similar campaign, VIBRANT India, with Mr. Narendra Modi as its Prime Ministerial candidate, who stands for a develop and technologically oriented economy as an attempt to allay down its communal image. Both parties are currently advertising through various media and methods in order to present their ideology to their potential voters. Starting from the time when first elections happened in India, till today the concept of political marketing has taken new meanings. Physical marketing accompanied with TV, social media, and mobile are used to add value and create a differentiating factor for their parties. Though the Indian political scenario has not been completely able to exploit the mobile technology to create its influence, but it has made sure to unleash the full potential of the web. On one hand, BJP has launched a website india272.com that would “crowd source” suggestions by the electorate.
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It has also launched a website where its members can upload “charge sheets” on the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance and on the other hand, Congress has launched a website fekuexpress.com that supposedly seeks to expose BJP misdeeds. To battle the opposition till the end, political parties have also hired media companies like Dentsu India, Crayons communication, JWT etc. to design better effective strategies and marketing campaigns. The reason for such a huge emphasis on the new age media as a part of their marketing plan is to create an impact on the currently unconquered market i.e. the age groups of 18-24 and 25-34 years. Research by Iris Knowledge Foundation, Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), KPMG and TAM has given enough justification about the importance of new age media that influences the age group of 18-34 years spread across urban and semi-urban areas.
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Thus, political marketing clearly has a cause and effect relationship with its targeted voters. As Kotler points out “Conscious marketing only promises to maximize the candidate’s potential”. Applying standard marketing techniques to political campaigning will at least ensure that the campaign planned is systematic, efficient and voter oriented. Marketing can promote the most effective use of scarce resources, generate valuable information for both the candidates and the voters, and promote greater responsiveness in the political process.
Here are some statistical figures that justify the success of political parties on the effective use of new age media – Mr. Narendra Modi has already gained the status of the most followed politician on twitter with a huge fan base of more than 1.3 million and on Facebook with a following of around 1.4 million. This lead is followed by Rahul Gandhi with a fan following of around 238,899 and our Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh is not far behind with 374,641 fans.
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August-September 2013
Various Principles of Political Marketing
“Marketing is neither moral nor immoral, it is amoral!” - our marketing professor would often remark. The blend of politics and marketing brings out an interesting viewpoint with respect to the above quote
Arijeet Banerjee PGDM, Loyola Institute of Business Administration (LIBA), Chennai
Politics has, consciously or unconsciously, adopted and applied many significant marketing concepts – ranging from market position analysis (which requires determining how the voters perceive the party and their members in different electoral battlegrounds) to political branding like “Hindutva” adopted by BJP or Congress’ clichéd slogan “Congress ka haath, Aam Aadmi ke saath”. The political parties have always utilized the concepts of segmentation and targeting of voters from various groups during their electoral process. For example, caste system in India is used as a major trump card to rope in votes by Mayawati’s BSP (Bahujan Samaj Party) in Uttar Pradesh and Lalu’s RJD (Rashtriya Janata Dal) in Bihar. The classical 4 P’s of marketing have also been used successfully in politics. Product, includes the basic themes, issues or ideas that the candidate may stand for. For example, “law and order”, “ending corruption”, “full employment”, “active foreign policies”, etc. Promotion can be seen in political campaigning where the parties ensure a right mix of mass media, expanding outreach through special media attention, canvassing and political rallies like the Bharat Yatra by BJP lead-
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ers. Apart from the fixed monetary cost of a political campaign, an analogy can also be drawn between Price and the attractiveness of a particular candidate competing in the elections. Place is where the promotion of the electoral candidate and his party is held at a given point of time. Some parties have their stronghold regions where they are mostly expected to win. A prime difference between the consumers in a market and voters is that, the consumers can select and consume as many products as they wish, according to their utility. However, in the case of voters, they can cast a single vote only. The political market can be thought of as a monopolistically competitive one, where all the parties sell, more or less, similar ideologies on development and prosperity, but are distinguished slightly in their target groups. If a political party is successful while pitching to the people, it can establish a brand loyalty among the masses, which may influence voters to repeatedly vote for that party.
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For example, my family members always voted for the Communist Party of India (Marxist) in West Bengal, even though they were aware of the mismanagement by that party recently. Brand loyalty in politics tends to institutionalize voters and set their minds to the party ideology so effectively, that they find it difficult to vote for others. Political parties who study the voter behavior and the voting patterns often do well, just like a marketer would study the consumer behavior to place his product better than his competitor. Concepts of social sciences such as selective processes, opinion leadership, cognitive processes, group dynamism, role theory and imagery are also used in politics. In conclusion, political marketing has emerged as a big tool used by the political parties to influence
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and target the electoral system. Marketing strategies are adopted in politics with the sole purpose of winning votes, similar to marketing where the notion is only to create profits. However, marketing today has changed completely and has oriented more towards the customer’s perspective rather than just pushing products into the market. Although the world of political marketing is just evolving, the focus has always been to influence more and more votes in the party’s favor. This thinking may not work for the political groups in the longer run, since people will slowly realize that they are being duped for votes. A paradigm shift in terms of thought and perspective is necessary to revamp the marketing strategies and ideologies of the political parties, if they are to be successful.
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MARKEZINE
August-September 2013
The Importance of Building a BRAND in Politics "If
politics is a dirty business, the marketing of politics is the dirtiest bit of the dirty business” -Steve Henry Marketing is a vital force behind any organization’s success, irrespective of the industry or sector to which it belongs. And if there exists an industry which makes the most extensive use of marketing tools, it is the industry of power – POLITICS. Politics and marketing have complemented each other ever since the idea of striving for power became the norm in countries with democratic or republic government. Political marketing, is the marketing done to influence customers on political issues. Instead of a product or service, a leader or an idea is marketed. The primary objective is to motivate the public to vote for the leader or the concerned idea. Creation and success of Brand “ANNA”: Anna Hazare is a brand whose value proposition is honesty, justice, truth, courage and conviction. Very few political brands in the modern era can make such an argument. Like any new product or concept that is launched, Anna gauged the market response with the help of a small team in a strategic place like Delhi in April, 2011. His strategy paid off and in a short span of time, the entire nation joined him in massive numbers. His brand loyalty was reflected from the fact that even when many of his supporters did not understand the pros and cons of the Lokpal bill they stood by it only because Anna said so. People comprehended that he was here for their good. 9 10
Rahul Biswas PGDM, Xavier Institute Of Management, Bhubaneswar Promotion of the brand was conducted through regular speeches at the place of fast, TV interviews, newspaper articles etc. which, apart from clearing any doubt or misconception, also enhanced the transparency of the system contrary to government functioning. This pumped in more confidence and zeal into the Anna movement. The team also indulged in advertising through the social media. Social networking sites were abuzz with catchy phrases and taglines like ‘I am Anna’, ‘Doosri Azaadi’ and ‘Sab neta chor hain’ became a rage. Merchandise like T-shirts, caps etc. with ‘I am Anna’ written on them were made available everywhere. Companies would splurge millions of rupees over several years to build a brand like ‘Anna’, but the old man with little funds backing him became an icon in a few months. Brand Positioning: Let us analyze two of the biggest brands in Indian politics. Brand Modi Vs Brand Rahul: The Modi brand is primarily built on the ‘Hindu fighter’ image and the more intellectual public find its ‘development platform’ appealing. Hence, it is a complete brand. Therefore, for the rest of India even if its primary image does not work, the sales still increase because of its secondary promise.
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However, brand Rahul is the exact opposite. There is no focused brand positioning hence keeping the consumer confused and unclear as to what it promises to deliver. Moreover, the USP of the brand – the name ‘Gandhi’, has lost relevance over the years. So, in term of positioning or placement, brand Modi is a clear winner. Use of the media: The prejudice and negative campaign coverage by the media is often criticized by the public, who demand a nonmanipulated information. Technically, the media influences what issues voters should care about in elections and on what criteria they should evalu-
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ate the candidates. Sometimes the media helps in setting the political agenda by focusing on certain stories so that both the public and the government are engrossed in them. In a nutshell, one can conclude that the basis of political marketing lies in forming emotional connections and lasting impressions on the voters. Although, political marketing is a treacherous domain, inspiring passionate and strong opinions in most individuals, if a candidate can stay truthful and connect with the masses emotionally and positively, their chances of acing the electoral process improve greatly.
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August-September 2013
Political Marketing: The Creation of a MIRAGE
Max Weber, one of the founding fathers of sociology, divided legal authority into three: RationalLegal, Traditional and Charismatic. With a steady rise in the number of democracies post the Second World War, political candidates increasingly began utilising consumer product related marketing strategies to convince their populace of their stake for rationallegal authority. This phenomenon witnessed a bigger jump with the collapse of the Soviet Union led communist bloc going hand in hand with an exponential rise in Information and Communication Technology (ICT). To showcase the same, this article divides itself into two. The first section, in brief, looks at the theoretical concepts of Political Marketing and the second focuses its attention on the American Presidential race of 1960, between Senator John F. Kennedy (hereafter referred to as JFK) and Senator Richard Nixon as the one that redefined the strategic importance of political marketing for time immemorial. Political marketing while as a phenomenon has existed since the time of Aristotle; as an academic discipline is only in an embryonic stage. Within the scope of enquiry assigned to the field, it has shown the political candidate as the focal point of the campaign due to which the brand of the same 11 12
Shiv Ram Krishna Pande PGDM, FORE School of Management, New Delhi
becomes of capital importance. The realisation of this has seen politics being converted into perception politics where the mannerism of delivery (promotion of the candidate) rather than the deliverable itself (the candidate) becomes the main objective. In such a scenario, the emotion of the populace is the top prize up for grabs. The methodology employed to achieve the same is to substitute rational arguments by emotional ones. Hence, in due course of time a certain visual impression of the candidate, which may very well be different from reality, is first constructed, then improved, later amplified and finally managed (different stages of brand building). Thus, slowly but surely a constructed image is initially registered and then embedded into the cognitive make-up of the populace. It goes without saying that the nature of such a visual impression has to be perceived as ‘good’. The reason attributed to this observation is that human beings have an inherent need to look good and tend to be biased towards those who appear as good. This cognitive concept when mixed with the theoretical aspects of political marketing makes for a highly effective cocktail.
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There is no, arguably, better case to showcase the same than the presidential race in the United States of 1960. JFK was thrust into electoral politics by his father, Ambassador Joseph ‘Joe’ Kennedy Sr. in the wake of the death of his elder brother and father’s heir apparent, Joseph Kennedy Jr. in the II World War. With the patriarch, Joe Sr. bankrolling an electoral campaign managed by younger brother Robert F. Kennedy, JFK was presented as a young, energetic, handsome war hero and a thorough family man. These touted qualities were however diametrically opposite from the real state of affairs JFK had a history of always being sick, was a chain cigar smoker and often engaged in adultery. The key component in propagating a particular heroic image of JFK required extensive use of visual media. With presidential elections closing in and Kennedy behind Nixon in the approval ratings, the campaign needed much more than just extensive use of the visual media
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to win. They needed a secret all powerful weapon, or as per Hindu mythology, a Brahmastra. They found theirs in the idea of challenging Nixon to face the eloquent Kennedy in a series of live, nationally televised debates. While backing out from the same would showcase Nixon as being timid, the consequent acceptance of the same saw the Kennedy camp inflict a double whammy on Nixon. The live debates amplified the above mentioned, propagated qualities of JFK while showcasing Nixon as old, nonsmiling, arrogant, balding and thus an undesirable presidential candidate. In essence, perception had gained and achieved preponderance over content. As each debate closed, JFK’s approval ratings also rose. The rest as they say is history with presidential debates, now viewed by an international audience, becoming one of the defining features of any American presidential election race.
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August-September 2013
Political Marketing coming of 'E-age'
“Rahul Gandhi to take social media classes for Congress workers”, “Congress deploys Shashi Tharoor as tweeter-in-chief to take on Narendra Modi”, “Narendra Modi stays most mentioned on social media”. All these news few years back would have held least significance in the context of Indian politics. But the growing use of internet, the power of social media, the involvement of youth and the ever changing technologies have forced political parties change their strategy. Voter dynamics are changing with their changing socio-economic parameters. What does political marketing mean? Simply putpolitical marketing is the process by which political candidates and ideas are directed at the voters in order to satisfy their political needs and thus, gain their support for the candidate and ideas in question. Marketing has been used in Indian politics more for communication and targeting the potential electorates through the manifestos and agendas. But off late political parties have given a serious thought of using social media marketing as a strategy to target their potential voters. Political marketing and product marketing are by far the same and involves the same set of rules. The voters in this case are the potential consumers, who go through a process similar to a customer purchasing a product while selecting the party. The buying/selection process, starting from problem/opportunity recognition leading to infor-
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Vineet Shreshtha PGDM, Goa Institute of Management, Goa
mation collection and evaluation which results in a purchase and its post purchase evaluation, more or less remains to be the same. And so does the selling process as there lies significant similarity between that of a company selling its product and a political party trying to win the elections. Campaigning in Indian elections comes of e-age Twitter has been the online battle ground for both parties with the General Elections-2014 coming closer. Social media has pushed the boundaries for political parties in terms of its capability to send messages and reach out to supporters. Communication for political parties is no longer about maintaining the party website or handing out press releases to journalists. There are other media (like Facebook, blogs, YouTube) which have intensified the battle for the General Elections-2014 One of the ways by which the parties have started to market and promote themselves in the techsavvy states is through the Bluetooth Pushers. If a person walks into a shopping mall in Mumbai, Delhi or Bangalore with his Bluetooth reception turned on, there’s a high chance that he’ll receive a request to download a message from the political party.
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Nothing official about it A fierce battle has been in the form of #Feku vs #Pappu between the two major political parties. Both parties have targeted the main rival leader through the websites or blogs. Although, no one openly comes out as the owner of these websites, it’s not really tough guessing who’s running what!!
home advertising database, to monitor the outdoor campaign activities of the Congress Party in Delhi. POP will keep an eye on 6,000 out-of-home media sites, including billboards, bus shelters, bridge panels and other such platforms, to see what the rival party is communicating thus helping their clients come out with a different and a stronger message to attract the voters.
A Step Ahead As a part of their strategies to have an impact on the outcome of the elections, parties have started to take help of the professionals to keep an eye on their rivals. Recently BJP hired Proof of Performance Data Services (POP), a specialist in out-of-
Conclusion Although the 4 P’s of marketing can be tweaked to incorporate the strategies of the candidates, the parties must ensure that they don't stretch the limits of marketing by overdoing this.
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August-September 2013
Mark-e-feed: BRANDING INNOVATIONS
The etymology of the word “brand” goes right back to the times when animals were branded or trademarked to indicate ownership. The concept of brand is ever evolving and marketers agree that branding has moved on from a commoditybased model to a value-based model. This has helped consumers to use the identification system as an instrument to find their way through vast offerings of common products. This enables them not only to distinguish the best products, but also to purchase favorable products again. As branding has extended from fast moving consumer goods to services and corporate brands, there has been an increasing realization that branding is much more than a public face of an organization. It is an expression of an organization’s behavior, beliefs and culture. The rapid changes happening in today’s market scenario has laid emphasis on the fact that it is essential for a company to establish a brand that is relevant to its target audience. In order to do so, it is important for the companies to understand consumers’ tastes & preferences, the emergence of new technology or new competitors or any new development taking place in the market environment. A brand can be dynamic and can prove to be a relevant asset only if brand innovation takes place. Brand innovation directs a brand
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Priyanka Patil PGDM, Welingkar Institute of Management Development and Research (WE School), Mumbai
with a purpose and creativity, which aids a brand to reach a position of preference in the market. It demands a new approach and commitment on the part of the management to seek a tangible and positive change. The brand which evolves through this kind of transformation is the brand that will thrive today as it is contemporary and related, and will grow tomorrow because it anticipates and adapts to the future. The brand will be able to build value with the customers through meaningful dialogue, active participation and creative connection. Brand innovation can accomplish numerous aspects, often in combination with one another. It helps the customers to overcome constraints in the market, it allows the customers to do more with the product, and leverages brand experience into customer experience. A brand also increases the customers’ proactive powers and creates a community that supports the customers.
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Collaboration and Co-creation for Brand Innovation
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oday, customers are more outspoken with respect to what they feel about a brand and how a brand can add value to them. As a result, companies are opening up to collaborations and cocreating solutions so that they can offer better value to their customers. Companies such as Nike, Hallmark, P&G and Dell have been successful by adopting the concept of co-creation. ‘My Strabucks Idea’ and Dell’s ‘IdeaStorm’ are some examples that have been excellent sources of innovation.
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Ipod is another example of brand innovation which, along with iTunes, forms a new brand that allows customers to take delight in music and express themselves through music by having a personal control over it. Also, Harley Davidson popularly known as “bad boy” machines developed into a brand by customizing bikes. Brand innovation is therefore an important aspect as it transforms a brand into a valuable asset and helps the brand to sustain in a competitive and dynamic market environment. It is only through innovation that a company can make its products and services a big hit amongst its target audience.
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August-September 2013
Mark-e-feed: Role of Sentiment Analysis in Social Media (A Customer Centric Strategy)
Sentiment analysis in social media is a technique
Saurabh Jain
to gauge the emotional aspect of the socially relevant data. It captures the essence of what people have to say about your company, services or products. Every post and tweet by consumers contains valuable information for the brand which is talked about and can give useful insights into the experience of the consumers. When consumers interact with the company about their products or services, they voice their opinions through social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare etc. Sentiment analysis helps capture customers’ views in this manner and do a client research to calculate whether an opinion expressed is positive or negative.
PGDM,
Organizations today are actually interested in this kind of data to improve their market by improving customer service, which influences product updates. The new age analytics of sentiment analysis can help us systematically identify the online exchanges that are most relevant when various tools available in the market are Radian6 (salesforce.com), Cymfony (Visible Technologies), ScoutLabs (Lithium Technologies). Some of the bigger known IT giants like TCS, Infosys and IBM also have their customized tools for doing a client based research and brand wise analysis using Natural Language Processing (NLP) and they have generated huge amounts of revenue through these platforms. Companies like Starbucks and American Cancer Society (ACS) have been using sentiment analysis for reading customers’ feelings online. Did you know that there are 10 tweets every second mentioning Starbucks? The ACS gets about 6,000 17 18
Goa Institute of Management, Goa
mentions a month on Twitter, public Facebook pages, blog posts, and in comments on blogs or articles. The percentage of content in which positive or negative sentiment was identified rose from 15% to more than 95%. The accuracy rate rose from less than 30 % to more than 90 %. Best Buy (BBY), Viacom's (VIA.B) Paramount Pictures, Cisco Systems (CSCO) and Intuit (INTU) are also using sentiment analysis to determine how customers, employees, and investors are feeling. In one of the case studies, Verizon, which was considered a fee happy company with consumers, due to a change in its policies regarding fee charges, faced the consumers’ wrath as they didn’t welcome the news. Crimson Hexagon analysed over 4,000 reactions on Twitter, and while the reaction was (as expected) resoundingly negative at 51%, it’s interesting to identify what specifically those on Twitter were griping about (what’s driving the sentiment). The major challenge faced by Sentiment analysis is capturing the essence of the data when there is a difference between the actual context and the implied context. It is sometimes impossible to know the context in which the opinion has been made, rendering the data as positive when it might be said with a negative tone.
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‘Sarcasm is so cool’ might be considered positive whereas the intention is negative, being able to effectively pull apart sentences and phrases piece by piece to identify the subject, the context and the sentiment, is probably the direction many technology vendors are going to take. Automated sentiment analysis looks good with accuracy levels of between 70% and 80% which compares very favourably with the levels of accuracy we would expect from a human analyst. In a
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time when machine automation is the new industry standard, high-quality and consistently accurate human judgments have become a scarce commodity. It is imperative to provide a system which is better than human analysis and provides an impetus to the organizations to improve upon their decision making models through automation. However, serious changes need to be implemented to improve the efficiency of the systems which will imitate decision makers in future.
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August-September 2013
Mark-e-feed: Tsuna-media
Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has mandated to cap advertisement slots to 12 minutes per hour, out of which 10 minutes can be used for advertisers and 2 minutes for channel programme promotions. Earlier slots extended even to 25-30 minutes in an hour leading to huge discontent among viewers. This mandate will have a huge impact on the entire media and entertainment industry. Let us look at all the major stakeholders to be impacted by this decision: Media Companies: Media Companies are the ones to be severely hit by the latest changes in regulatory norms. Unsurprisingly, citing economic compulsions, top media channels have already hiked or are planning to hike their rates. Colors has already hiked ad rates while Star India and Zee Entertainment have also agreed that business cannot be sustained with the same revenue rates and that hike was on the cards. Media Companies currently charge Rs.75000-80000 for a 10 seconds slot and Rs. 2-3 Lakhs for prime time slots. Huge viewership across General entertainment channels (GECs) makes this price a still cheaper source of promotions (Rs 2 per 1000 viewers approximately). Shortage of Ad inventory (amount of ad space available to sell to an advertiser) is a big issue for broadcasters, leading to a huge supply demand gap and has also led to 20 19
Saurabh Jain PGDM, Narsee Monjee Institute of Management and Science high rates for prime time slots. Media planners will be under a huge amount of pressure to optimize the limited resources at their disposal to churn out the best possible benefits for the company. Innovation in content can actually revolutionise the whole content creation business. So far content has been created to cater to consumers while money is generated by selling the ad space. But there could be a paramount shift in the way content is created. The rate at which ad spaces are sold depends on the prime time slots, which is when viewership is at its peak based on the popularity of the show. Brand Integration with the show will be of paramount importance to retain or acquire advertisers. Coke Studio and Tata Nano Road Trip are few examples which pre-empted the trend but it is still in nascent stage. Integrating brand with the show, as a concept requires a subtle mix of communicating and making sure that the brand is not forcing itself upon the viewers or the show.
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Creating Content weaved across the brands is a challenge in itself which requires a blend of writing and understanding the essence of the brand. If created successfully, it could turn out to be the big win-win situation both for advertisers and media companies. Advertising Companies: Advertising Agencies will also feel the heat of current regulations. Reduced Advertisement slots means reduce ad content, eventually leading to a cut in the TV ad business in their portfolio. Keeping the external changes in mind, advertising firms will aggressively explore other mediums (Print, Digital), but TV advertising forms the major source of revenue both for the media and advertising firms and cannot be ignored. The challenge which advertising firms will face is the expectation of the client to convey his idea in a shorter time frame. Agencies successful in doing so will emerge as a leader in an already ultracompetitive advertising industry.
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like HUL, P&G etc. may even sustain the increased cost but it will be smaller players might have to explore other feasible avenues. Banking & Financial Services which is more of an informative category can shift their promotions to print media, but the Auto sector which has more visual appeal cannot afford to lose their ad spaces despite the hike. Changes in regulatory norms will be a huge booster for the social media industry. Companies will have to reformulate their communication strategy and be more aggressive on the social platform. This reduced ad timing can actually prove beneficial for the players sticking with TV, since reduced advertisement time will lead to reduction in channel switch and more consumer attention. With margin squeezing and consumers having more control over what they want to see, Media business is bound to face a major overhaul in its business dynamics.
Advertisers: FMCG MNCs as advertisers are the major contributors of advertisements in TV industry. Big MNCs
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August-September 2013
Mark-e-feed: Retailer AdvocacyHow FMCG companies are going beyond monetary gratification
While the new advertisement of Coke
is focus-
ing on “Open happiness“ campaign for the consumers in India and Pakistan, a bunch of trainers from Coca Cola university are training retailers in Lucknow. Why, a brand so aspirational in its core terms is now focusing on retailers? The answer may lie in the busy lanes of Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities. While Tier 1 consumers are aware of the international brands through TV ads, their counterparts in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities need to be told about it in a different manner. "In urban India, it is a question of reach. But in rural India, it is about reach and preach” says Jagdeep Kapoor, chairman and managing director of Samsika Marketing Consultants, a brand marketing-services firm in Mumbai. Since early 90’s FMCG companies have been giving monetary benefits and festival gifts to retailer but that relationship has always been transactional. Over the last few years Companies have now started to go beyond the monetary gratification and looked to build an emotional relationship with the retailer. A case in point would be the Soft drink giant, Coca Cola. In late 2008, Coca -Cola launched a nationwide training program called Parivartan using 20-seater buses for momand-pop retailers. So far, the program has covered more than 30,000 retailers in cities including Agra, Ludhiana, Chandigarh and Lucknow, with courses on such topics as how to display products and improve inventory management. Ram Yadav, one such retailer in Pehrladpur area near Okhla attended the Parivartan program. He recalls - “The program was divided into multiple
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Shobhit Gupta PGDM, Institute of Management Technology, Ghaziabad
workshops, the first one being in an Air conditioned Bus. The program explained how one can increase the sale of his/her firm’s products and can manage the shop in a better way. It was definitely not a publicity gimmick to fool the retailers. They (Coca Cola) explained me that they are here to help me. They didn’t tell about their product, not even a single word”. This, he says won his trust about the company. The training has helped him increase his sale by 30%, he says. Coca Cola then conducted another workshop in which it explained how Coca Cola can become a partner in retailer’s success. The retailers were then given a certificate of completion which he proudly hangs at his shop. The Parivartan program is not alone in such endeavor. Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL) has successfully run the Shakti program all over India. Shakti was not only a rural distribution program but also aimed at building a relationship through women retailers and leverage their influence on the end consumer. HUL understood the problem in rural India where entrepreneurship was hampered due to lack of funds and training. HUL allowed ‘Shakti Amma’ micro credit opportunities and trained the women to become self-dependent.
MARKEZINE
This has left them indebted to HUL and now they go door to door selling HUL products and other products. The retailer becomes more so important in dark market products such as Tobacco and Liquor where laws are becoming stringent day by day. Companies have thus started to understand the retailer’s problems and provide solution tailored for him. One of the pain points of convenience stores in Delhi was security against theft. ITC has ensured these retailers 50% burden will be shared by them in case of theft. This came as a huge relief for a retailer whose stock inventory can sometimes amount to thou-
August-September 2013
sands of rupee and made him susceptible to huge loss. Another Tobacco company IPM, which sells the famous brand Marlboro in India provided free health insurance and check up for all the retailers. As more and more companies dive into the FMCG markets, it is becoming increasingly difficult for them to differentiate themselves from others. Advancement in technology in multiple media such as Internet, mobile, etc. only adds to the complexity. The retailer thus becomes the most important cog in the wheel of communication to get the message across.
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August-September 2013
Mark Roadies 6.0 Mark Roadies 6.0, an intra college event at IMT, is designed for the first year students to get a feel of the B-school learning and kick start the new academic year. It tests the first year students’ sales pitching skills, observational prowess, marketing abilities and physical stamina all which are the requirements of a sales manager. Mark Roadies 6.0 was held on 23rd July 2013 which saw close to 100 teams battling it out in a treasure hunt with location based clues and spot tasks to test their decision making. The event also gave participants an opportunity to demonstrate their creativity by tasks such as delivering a sales pitch and preparing a short advert on the topic given to them. The day saw a lot of running around and intense competition, but in all each team was high-spirited and made a great day out of the event. Round Two held on 27th July 2013, saw 10 teams shortlisted and were asked to present a business idea to solve any campus based problem of their 2324
choice. The event saw a panorama of great ideas being presented before the judges. The winners were “Team B8” comprising of Shubham Jain, Akanksha Chadha and Vinayak from first year, IMT-G. Their winning idea was to provide a small four-seater car - The Bajaj Re60 for transit between IMT CDL and IMT Main campus. “Team Athena” and “Team Chole Bhature” were tied for the 1st runner up spot. Club Markup takes this opportunity to congratulate the Winners and thank the various participants from IMT for their overwhelming response. We hope that their first B-School event lived up to their expectations. We would also like to thank Dr. Harvinder Singh, Associate Professor and Area Chairperson, Marketing Management for being the judge and for providing his valuable inputs to the participants. Overall, we would say that the Markup-ites are very proud of having pulled off a great event that was useful for all stakeholders.
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August-September 2013
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August-September 2013
Our Industry Initiatives
T
his year Club MarkUp in association with printbindaas.com introduced the 3rd edition of Bindaas Marketeer at IMT, Ghaziabad. As a BM you need to promote the various offerings by Printbindaas at your campus by engaging Printbindaas in most of the college activities and also be a campus manager for India’s first student managed inter B-school magazine – “Bspionage”.
Also Club MarkUp in collaboration with Marcadeo Education conducted a workshop on the launch of the Chartered Sales Force Analyst (CSFA) certification program, where industry experts from ITC and KPMG provided valuable insights into the importance of sales in the marketing industry.
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A note from the horse’s mouth - “In our years of having implemented sales effectiveness solutions at clients in FMCG, B2B and services, we have seen that a large part of the sales effort is focused on matching the numbers on the sales target, though not without a reason. But most customers today are no longer satisfied with simply buying a product or service. Increasingly, they have higher-order needs that involve improving their overall economics in the use of a product. They want to improve operating efficiency, or reduce their risks, or help their own customers grow revenues. As customer needs grow more complex and demanding, sales programs cannot rely on incremental improvements to product
quality, delivery time, and other basic competencies. Successful selling efforts are the result of smart moves on a number of fronts: tailoring the message, product mix, and price to the highest value customer segments; delivering that message with an efficient sales process; developing the right tools for properly trained staff; and aligning incentives to drive value rather than volume.” - Anshuman Mishra Manager, KPMG Advisory India Ltd
MARKEZINE
August-September 2013
MARK-toon
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