The Marksman - October 2014

The

MARKSMAN

K J SOMAIYA INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT STUDIES & RESEARCH

VOL. V | ISSUE V | OCT ’14

BRAND MARKIVE:

>> pg 06

COVER STORY:

Sula Wines SPECIAL STORY:

>> pg 12

Flipkart’s Big Debacle FAUX PAS:

>> pg 16 Bridging the gap in Toilet-to-tap PIONEER:

>> pg 20

Cristiano Ronaldo

‘Exclusive Interview with Dr Rangaswamy’

The MARKSMAN

wishes you

EDITOR’S NOTE Dear Readers, We hope you had a great Diwali! As we continue the festive spirit looking forward to unraveling the new year, this month we decided to take a good look at an emerging and unconventional marketing practice that has a strong counterintuitive appeal.

This issue's cover story revolves around long tail marketing -- at its core, the idea of discovering niche markets. But put to application in today's unique context of information super growth, there are various interesting insights waiting to be found out here -- for instance, between someone who searches for "bikes" and someone who searches for "Pulsar 180 DTSi price in Mumbai", it's evident as to which of them is more likely to be the prospective buyer. And yet, these lessons are waiting to be unpacked and applied fully, because much of the focus has been on keywords reflecting the most popular and most sought after G&S, thereby ignoring the power of specificity.

The special story takes a deep look into the talk of the town: Flipkart's Big Billion Day debacle, which will long be remembered in the history of marketing in India. The Brand Markive of this issue takes a close look at Sula, a brand that has made Nashik India's answer to the Napa Valley.

This time we have on exclusive record a most special authority in the field of marketing and analytics for the Tête-à-Tête -- Dr. Arvind Rangaswamy, Professor of Marketing, Penn State University. He co-founded the field of Marketing Engineering with Gary Lilien and has played a key role in the emergence of analytics worldwide.

Also, we are glad to have got such a good response for our articles for this month, and after evaluating we have featured Adwitiya Tiwari’s article who is from XLRI, Jamshedpur. And for all those entries which haven’t been featured this month, we thank you all for your response and encourage you to keep writing to us with the same fervor.

Happy Reading!

Team Marksman The Interface -- the Marketing Club of SIMSR @marksmansimsr

OCTOBER 2014

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TWEETS

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IT’S ALL ABOUT AD-ITUDE

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BRAND MARKIVE COVER STORY LONG TAIL MARKETING SPECIAL STORY Flipkart’s BIG Billion Day Debacle REWIND SIMSR Global Marketing Conference 10th

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MARKETING FAUX PAS

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Hall-MARK CAMPAIGN

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PIONEER

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Tete – a - tete

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BOOKWORM

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BUZZ

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THE MARKSMAN

# TWEETS #ISPCA1 - Animal Selfies Required To celebrate the World Animal Week started October 4th, the non - profit organization Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ISPCA) launched a social media campaign called – ‘Love your Pets’. This campaign could be supported and followed on Twitter using WorldAnimalWeek alongwith the hashtag #ISPCA1. Followers were requested to share the photos of their pets to support the campaign. Consequently, they were encouraged to donate towards the work of this not for profit organization. Heartfelt stories of rehoused pets and requests for giving shelter to the abandoned ones were spread through this campaign.

Every dog has its day, especially for ISPCA!

OCTOBER 2014

Save WE archives

#SaveWedgwoodCollection After being ruled to sell the towns Wedgwood Museum’s assets in England, The Sentinel launched a twitter campaign in order to save these important industrial archives.

To be a part of this campaign, readers were asked to tweet and post selfies with their favorite Wedgwood pieces. These tweets were to be followed by #savewedgwood hashtags. The campaign became an historic event as it raised around £15.75 mn with about 7500 individuals donating quite enough to save these archives.

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TWEETS Har Har Modi, Ghar Ghar Modi!

#100DaysOfModiSarkar

#bendgate This tweet by Kitkat has even surpassed the famous Dunk in the Dark tweet put up by Oreo during the Superbowl blackout. Nestle in an attempt to capitalize on Apple iPhone 6’s – Bending flaw, came up with a tweet – “we don’t bend, we #break.” Within no time the tweet went viral with as much as 1000 retweets in an hour. Over the next 48 hours, it was retweeted some 23000 times and had around 10,000 favourites.

However, it did not just stop there as Nestle furthered the campaign with another tweet the immediate next day – “So what else bends or #breaks?” The #bendgate tweet started by Kitkat, thus, has got a huge response as compared to Oreo’s Dunk in the Dark which had around 15000 retweets and 6000 favourites.

To commemorate Modi Sarkar’s 100 days of coming into power, Times Now launched a special micro site – www.100daysofmodisarkar.com.

Taking help of various social media platforms, this site spoke of the much glorified 100 days of Modi reign wherein it displayed tweets using #100DaysOfModiSarkar. It thus, displayed a series of emotions and tracked what the citizens of India felt on the completion of the 100 days of Modi Sarkar.

Have a break. Bend a kitkat.

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THE MARKSMAN

IT’S ALL ABOUT AD-ITUDE PRINT AD Band-Aid 100% Waterproof!

A picture is worth a thousand words. Band- Aids new minimalistic take on waterproof adhesive antiseptic tapes (adjoining) shows just that. A rudimentary idea portrayed in an impactful manner.

TELEVISION AD BMW – Don’t Postpone Joy Client: BMW India Agency: Ogilvy & Mather (Gurgaon) To enjoy this ad simply click on the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_HdndRWNK8

The newest BMW Television commercial builds on the most common dilemma that every man faces at one point or the other; when should he just start enjoying the drive called life.

The Ad, with the background score of a racing car, opens with a new born baby who goes through adulthood and old age in a matter of seconds. This simple yet beautifully executed commercial signifies how we deny ourselves the joy and seldom enjoy the life. BMW urges to take that step to make our metaphorical road more pleasurable, enjoyable and joyful by getting our own BMW. The film ends by simply suggesting, “Why postpone joy?” On the flip side BMW is also trying to eliminate the cognitive and cultural reservations, which people still harbor about luxury cars. The simplest of ideas portrayed through the least amount of words and with maximum impact is how this Commercial can be described.

OCTOBER 2014

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BRAND MARKive Sula:The Wine from the Warmer Regions

Apart from being well known as one of the places where the Kumbh Mela is organised every 12 years, Nashik has attained popularity for being the wine capital of India during the last decade. With more than 35 wineries established in the region, Nashik has turned into the Napa Valley of India. The forerunner that started the trend of these mushrooming wineries in the region was none other than Sula wines.

Sula winery has grown from a small establishment to the market leader of the Indian wine industry. With more than 25 brands of wines offered under its flagship, including Sauvignon Blanc, Chenin Blanc, Caberet Shiraz, Zinfandel, etc., it has managed to capture the premium as well the affordable wine market to a large extent.

Sula’s premium wines have won many awards, accolades and wine tasting events, which have helped it to establish its presence globally.

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Sula wines have been listed in many of the top-notch restaurants around the world. Who would have thought that Indian wines could compete with those of the French and California? But somebody did, and that somebody was none other than Rajeev Samant the visionary behind Sula wines.

Rajeev Samant and the Californian winemaker Kerry Damskey had ventured into a partnership and started Nashik Vintners Pvt. Ltd. (parent company of Sula) in 1997. It took them over two years to complete the licensing process, and the first wine grapes were harvested and crushed in 1999 and the first bottle was sold a year after. In the year 2008-09 when the industry of the premium wines had been hit hard by recession, Rajeev Samant came up with the affordable wines that now have a major stake in their market share.

THE MARKSMAN

BRAND MARKive Sula has grown leaps and bounds within the short span of time it has been established.

The Indian wine industry is still very new and immature and has not reached its full potential.

The growth rate is expected to be high and a major player in the category is bound to be Sula: the wine from the warmer region.

2008 also saw the commencement of the highly popular “Sulafest.” Originally a one day event has now turned into a two-day affair with more than 10,000 guests participating. It is held during the first weekend of February, and is also one of the main reasons of the popularity of the brand. The festival is all about wine tasting, food, music, concerts, dance, etc. Other than the festival, Sula is well-equipped with a wine tasting room, a first of its kind in India, and a resort that is open to all throughout the year.

Trivia:  

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OCTOBER 2014

Sula was named after Rajeev Samant’s mother Sulabha.

Rajeev Samant is a Stanford graduate who left his lucrative job in Oracle to pursue winemaking.

It was the only winery to be given a license in the 15 years in which it was established.

In India, Sula was the only wine that printed the region of origin.

The sun was used as a logo to indicate that it was a wine from the warmer region.

Desert wines (sweet wines) were introduced to the Indian market by Sula.

Sula also produces Grapeseed Oil, which is a healthy alternative to vegetable oil. It also moisturizes the skin and is very good for hair as well.

Vinoteca, a wine bar, has been opened by Sula in Mumbai.

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COVER STORY LONG TAIL MARKETING While browsing through a swanky new retail store, we often see the products that are the most popular, the trendsetters, the stars, the ones that guarantee that the store is a winner, to be promoted in a very prominent fashion. Examples of such products could be Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in ‘Crossword’ or a Pink Floyd album in ‘PlanetM’. These products are always vigorously promoted and often become the key ingredient that leads to the success of a store.

Meanwhile, there are some products that aren’t so popular, but continue to sell, with barely any attention being paid to their special promotion. However, in some stores, since the variety of inventory of these less popular items is very large, they may make up a significant chunk of the total sales. If we were to plot the sales of these individual products, we would see a long distribution curve, with a dominant head (the star) and a long tail (the less popular).

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“Long tail marketing focuses on the less popular products, developing a business sales model based upon products in the long tail." The term ‘Long Tail Marketing’ was first coined by Chris Anderson in an article featuring in the October 2004 issue of ‘Wired’ magazine, to describe the business strategies of e-Tailers like Amazon.com; how they sell high volumes of their popular products, as well as their niche or unique items.

The first area where this strategy can be used is traditional retail stores. The focus is on bringing customer diversity into the picture. Each of these long tails is made up of more than one customer segment, which means that higher the number of customer segments, longer will be the tail and hence higher the diversity. It allows businesses to reach more niche customers whose interests are not very mainstream. For brick and mortar stores, the biggest challenge when it comes to long tail marketing is devising an intelligent strategy to manage this inventory of less popular products, while making sure that the sales of the popular products does not take a serious hit. Since we do not replace the popular items with the less popular ones, but instead supplement the inventory, cost of storing inventory plays a pivotal role in this respect.

For smaller retailers, long tail marketing can be the point of differentiation that they seek from larger chain stores.

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COVER STORY

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The idea of owning something customized is always much more appealing than something off the shelf. This perception might increase the footfalls in such small retail stores, which may further convert successful “Promise, largeinto promise, is the sales. soul number of an advertisement.

Stocking less of items also“ helps to - Samuel increase curiosity and Johnson. generate interest in these products. The main drawback of implementing this strategy is that suppliers cannot offer large discounts since the products are so varied.

The second area where this strategy has been implemented extensively is that of eTailing. Since online retail stores have an unlimited virtual shelf space, competing for limited shelf space is obviously not an issue.

Famous sites like Amazon and Netflix, stock their inventory in centralized warehouses, while displaying their collection online. Even though web-page maintenance has its costs, stocking and maintaining inventory in a warehouse is much more expensive.

OCTOBER 2014

Moreover, digital products like iTunes and Amazon’s Kindle books don’t even require warehouse space, and are even more pocket-friendly. An important aspect that needs to be worked upon is the conversion of this increased inventory into sales. For a customer, finding and tracking the product of his/her choice will be the factor that decides whether the product will be bought. A catalogue or search system that lets customers browse through products is of utmost importance. Links like ‘those who viewed this product also viewed’ are helpful in increasing the visibility of the ‘long tail’ items.

Another important area of implementation is microfinance. Sanctioning of small loans for customers who do not have an established credit history, and are ignored by the traditional banks but, who now form a significant niche market in several developing countries in Africa and Asia is an example of the multitude of applications of this strategy.

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COVER STORY

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A company that relies heavily on the long tail for its revenue is Google. Chris Anderson called Google the ‘Long Tail Advertisers’. Google realizes that advertising is not just for the stars but also for the niche market. Google’s AdSense and AdWords being performance based tools, allows niche marketers and niche content providers to fully take advantage of this facility. For example, if a business depends on people finding its website on Google, a strategy which can be used is of creating multiple webpages, for the multitude of services provided in the niche area of business.

The result will be a lot less competition in comparison to regular keyword search and an increase in the visibility of the business as well. For Google, it is a winwin situation. They make money from the most popular ads of the ‘head’ straight down to the tip of the ‘long tail’.

For any business though, the added challenge is to understand and implement the optimal number of keywords to associate itself with. A study shows that Google’s average number of keywords in a search has now become three, which shifts the focus from keywords to key phrases. Understanding the long tail online is a challenge for marketers. When it comes to keywords and searching online, an analogy can be picked up from the famous quote: “Little drops of water make the mighty ocean”.

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This means that to fully utilize the long tail online, there must be lots of key phrases individually making up very little traffic by themselves but collectively accounting for a huge amount of traffic, which in turn means a considerable level of visibility online.

For long tail products, the allure is its uniqueness. Hence, businesses must target category based key phrases instead of brand based key phrases. For example, competing with a bookstore will be much more difficult when the popular books sold there have similar key phrases as your new business. Streamlining your key phrases in order to assure the customer that the niche product that they’re looking for is what you specialize in will be instrumental in your success. Therefore, adapting an effective search engine optimization technique is of utmost importance for new businesses. This practice enables new businesses to use limited funds in order to attract new customers.

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COVER STORY

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A challenge that the implementation of this practice faces is the threat of converting the long tail key words into the main or ‘head’ keywords. This may prove to be a self-defeating activity in practice.

So the simplest advice to target the long tail is to invest in a myriad of niche areas, increase the web footprint, implement better search engine optimization techniques, optimize the costs incurred in implementing this strategy, and most importantly, remember that in the end, it all boils down to how well one understood their customers.

Effective long tail marketing is a challenging alternative in relation to traditional marketing. It merges the ability of businesses to display a more varied basket of products, with the added task of optimizing costs in order to make sure that the sales of the popular products does not take a hit. Like any other marketing strategy, understanding the customer better becomes the factor that makes or breaks this strategy.

OCTOBER 2014

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SPECIAL STORY Flipkart’s BIG Billion Day Debacle The sale started with words of promises and grand offers like flash sales, deals of the hour, every hour lucky draw and surprise discount offers for around 70 item categories. The company employed its 10,000 dedicated field staff for timely delivery of orders. With the Big Billion Day Sale, one of India’s largest ecommerce website, Flipkart, was out to eclipse all other festive multi-day sales over just one single day with an expected sale of a billion!

A shocking 1.5 billion customers came running for the big day sale. The actual demand exceeded the expected one, and the company was not prepared to handle it. This resulted in out of stock issues for many popular products. There were price changes of several products to non-discounted rates for few hours and this was not the end of the story. Because of simultaneous orders, customers confronted abrupt cancellations of their purchase orders. Adding to the woes of the day was the website unavailability error. The massive marketing campaign was not supplemented technically to handle the traffic. It was pretty evident by the end of the day, that no preparations and calculations were done to estimate server load.

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On its Big sale day, company suffered a big hit as cyber space was abuzz with angry customer feedbacks and jokes about the sale, mocking it as flopkart.com. The Big Billion Day sale turned into a fiasco and dented the trustworthy image of the company. The whole user experience turned out to be a disappointed one. An apology mail from Flipkart founders, Sachin and Binny Bansal, the next day was the proof of the failure and their awareness about the same. The main learning that comes their way is that in e-commerce specially, customer’s experience holds a second place to customer’s trust, which needs to be valued the most.

“Strike the iron when it is hot!”

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SPECIAL STORY The result of this debacle turned in the favour of Flipkart’s rivals, as many disappointed customers ran to Amazon, Snapdeal & Big Bazaar for their purchases.

These companies were waiting for the disappointed customers with open arms and of course with better sales and effective service. They churned out lot of money and promotion by associating their own promos with Flipkart’s campaign. Amazon and Snapdeal answered Flipkart in an interesting way through loud posters and promotions undermining its event, which closely reminded everyone of the infamous cola wars. All the three e-commerce giants forked out more than 100 crores in total for their respective sales.

OCTOBER 2014

Snapdeal quoted a cheeky tagline: “For others, it’s a big day. For us, today is no different.” Amazon pulled out its own sale “Mission to Mars weekend” concurrently and came out as the winner of the Big Billion debacle of Flipkart. This gives one ultimate message in the market ‘Never underestimate the power of your competitors.’ The way in which Flipkart’s failure and rickety execution was reaped by its competitors is a subtle but alarming lesson that’s being floated everywhere now.

The final question after the analysis comes as—‘Will Flipkart be able to regain its position as a trustworthy website?’ It is sad to note that a company who had an acclaimed position in the market, one that had almost redefined all rules of retailing in the country, had to see a day like this.

According to market experts, very soon this incident will become a small chapter of forgone historical events—accounting to the nationwide acclaimed and grounded popularity of Flipakart over the decade.

Soon Flipkart shall restore its lost credibility among its customers. What one shall remember is how smartly and quickly competitors can take advantage of any situation against the company. Henceforth, to survive in this era of bottleneck competition, the key to success is still derived in those two simple words— ‘Preparation’ and ‘Execution.’

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REWIND 10th SIMSR Global Marketing Conference Marketing Analytics for Developing Effective Marketing Strategies Today, Marketing has evolved from a creative process into a highly data driven process.

Organizations use analytics to determine the outcomes of their product campaigns and to plan investments and consumer targeting.

SIMSR conducted a workshop on this evolving subject, “Marketing Analytics for Developing Effective Marketing Strategies” as a part of its 10th SIMSR Global Marketing Conference.

The workshop conducted on 18th and 19th Sept, was facilitated by Prof Dr .Arvind Rangaswamy. He is currently the Anchel Professor of Marketing at ‘The Smeal College at Penn State’. He graduated from IIT Chennai, completed his MBA from IIM Calcutta and further pursued PhD in Marketing at Northwestern University. He is the co-founder of Decision Pro Inc. and has consulted for various companies like Du Pont, IBM Global Services and AT&T Wireless. The workshop had a 2 day intensive agenda and was attended by various corporate delegates and professors from reputed Universities.

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The session started with the point that ‘Seat-of-the-pants’ decision making (a process which considers only few parameters) is not enough anymore and now marketing analytics is increasingly important for all types of businesses.

It generates results and insights for action. It quantifies the judgement based on the results that will improve the quality of marketing decisions. The speaker stressed on the fact that STP (Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning) can be done effectively based on the data.

In the second half of the session on day 1, several case studies were discussed.

One of them was marketing a specific brand of Beer. The data analytics suggested the preferred brand that has to be targeted at different geographies.

Prof Arvind illustrated the same using the software developed by Decision Pro Inc.

THE MARKSMAN

REWIND It was a classic display of how the software can interpret statistical data and provide one with guidelines. People also got the look and feel of the software that modified its output when the factor variables were changed. He also spoke about Digital Marketing which is the need of the hour.

Day 2 started with the subject Conjoint Analysis that is used in Market research.

It was again illustrated with the software and engaged people to provide value for different features of the product. The software’s final result provided vital information for marketing the same. Throughout the session the primary focus was about enhancing efficacy through improved use of analytics and marketing decision making.

The day ended with a sumptuous lunch followed by a jamming session.

Participants slowly got into the groove and it turned out to be a memorable event. The participants were also felicitated with certificates by Prof.

Arvind Rangaswamy himself.

Team Interface which managed the whole event once again proved that...

“We repeatedly achieve what we are….

THE BEST”.

OCTOBER 2014

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MARKETING FAUX PAS Bridging the Gap in Toilet-to-Tap This section is usually about marketing failures or errors that cost dearly. Although most well-known examples are errors of commission (advertising goof-ups, say), there are also errors of omission which are not easy on any stakeholder’s pockets. All because of (the lack of) marketing.

Water scarcity is a real problem. As Rose George points out in her The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why it Matters (2008), this is a problem not only in the so-called developing countries but also in many parts of the West.

Orange County in drought-ridden California is facing a peculiar problem. The technology to generate recycled waste water has long existed, and it has been used pervasively for non-potable needs like agriculture and landscaping. But when it comes to drinking it, indirect potable reuse (IPR) is nothing but disgusting for most Californians. Surveys show that an overwhelming majority let the “yuck” factor get in the way.

Sceptics of recycled water call it toilet-totap, thereby suggesting that one is being asked to drink, in effect, water from the toilet. It is this kind of imagery that is largely playing mischief in the minds of most consumers. Paul Slovic, psychology professor at University of Oregon, says “image and assumption are very important motivators of behaviour.

[They] overpower the logical analysis of things […] People have this idea that some manufacturer in the sky generates new, pure water coming down from the stream as opposed to the fact that we are reusing the same molecules over and over.” Slovic says education about the benefits of such projects will help people get over perceived risks.

Now obviously, there is immense demand for water, on the part of both individuals and industries. There also exists a technology that is more efficient and more cost-effective than the current one—which means there is a way to reduce the gap between supply and demand, if not completely abolish it. Then what in the good wide world is the problem, you ask?

They know the ocean is a source of potable water. But desalinated water costs anywhere from 150–400% of what it would cost to obtain recycled water.

It is also not environment friendly—it uses more energy, kills tiny marine organisms and Advertising prides itself as the agent of gives off brine by-products. Moreover, communication (rather than, say, several experts agree that the recycled manipulation). water is often less dangerous than the desalinated one.

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THE MARKSMAN

MARKETING FAUX PAS The need for this communication arises in part because consumers do not always know where/how to find what they want (some may say that they may often not even know what it is they want).

Although Californians have largely taken the issue in their hands—they managed to shut down a $55 million plant in the making in Los Angeles—and confused each other, and the same exact technology was introduced and applied with success in a tiny island city-state across the other pond, all thanks to astute marketing. In Singapore, the Public Utilities Board has turned purified sewage into a popular branded bottled product called NEWhether (as Einstein said in 1931) imagination is more important than knowledge, it is, by all accounts, far more persuasive than knowledge.

Not what it seems to be at first flush.

Water. Ads showed the President cheerily sipping the water, for instance. This water has been seamlessly running through Singaporean faucets ever since and has solved many of the country's pressing problems.

No such thing as purely pure water.

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Hall-MARK CAMPAIGN #BangBangDare

Today’s day and age, wherein a film’s shelf life has reduced considerably from good old silver jubilee weeks to meagre highest grossing opening weekends, call for dynamic and innovative measures to grab the audience’s equally diminishing attention span. The latest festive release, Bang Bang did just that by coming up with a viral marketing campaign to gain visibility.

First of all, it kept away from the tried & tested formula of promotions via celebrity appearances on reality & prime time television shows. Going a step further and taking cue from the online rage #ALSIceBucketChallenge, the film’s main protagonist Hrithik Roshan utilized his twitter to give out dares like ‘No Honking or Smoking for 3 days straight’ for all his followers in order to generate buzz for his movie in an unconventional way. It gradually moved on to his contemporaries and leading Bollywood celebrities.

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#BangBangDare instantly started trending on the social media and garnering the most number of views was the dare given to Ranveer Singh, wherein the Bandra boy was asked to get out of his car and pose on the middle of any main street of Mumbai for his fans. Being the adrenaline junkie he is, the zany actor took to Bandra’s busy lane decked up as superhero Krrish and danced to ‘Main Aisa Kyun Hu’, both of which were essayed by Hrithik himself.

This was followed by ‘Mantal Bwoy’ Farhan Akhtar riding his bicycle sporting a skydiving suit. Another dare was accomplished by the reigning king Shah Rukh Khan by disclosing his rock hard 8 pack abs workout, consequently promoting the superstar’s upcoming film Happy New Year as well.

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HALL-MARK CAMPAIGN

Priyanka ‘Mary Kom’ Chopra punched right back in the true spirit of ‘why should boys have all the fun’ by doing handstand pushups. Damsels Nargis Fakhri and Shraddha Kapoor followed suit by singing a freestyle rap and a haunting rendition of Nancy Sinatra’s ‘Bang Bang’ + ‘Aao Na’ from Haider respectively.

OCTOBER 2014

What came as a surprise was Shahid Kapoor’s willingness to do a dare and join the rampant promotions while his own film Haider was releasing alongside the biggie Bang Bang. To this Hrithik politely replied that each of the actors had to watch each other’s film first day itself. Not quite a dare the last one but the efforts surely paid off since the film grossed a billion rupees over the opening weekend itself. This again goes on to prove that marketing isn’t confined to any limits. There, There Dare, Dare.

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PIONEER CRISTIANO RONALDO CR7

Viva Ronaldo, Viva Ronaldo!

Running down the wing hearing united sing viva Ronaldo!

We all remember this chant sung by the Manchester United Football Club fans.

Possibly quite many red devils’ fans who are reading this article would be cherishing those moments as well, taking them back to the Theatre of Dreams. In this edition of the Pioneer, let’s talk about the larger than life character, an obsession with the fans, Cristiano Ronaldo, popularly known as CR7.

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Is Ronaldo or Lionel Messi, the greatest player? It’s a debatable topic.

Both of them have amazing skills, pace and grace and most importantly, it gives us sheer pleasure to watch their game. But when it comes to Marketability, no other footballer in this world matches with CR7. He is not just a living football legend instead he is a Brand whose earnings were $73 million after tax in the year 2013.

A major chunk of it came from his endorsements and Forbes ranked him first in their world’s highest paid players list. Ronaldo’s rise from a poor suburb on Madeira, in Portugal to the cover star of Vogue has happened not by chance but through clever Marketing.

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PIONEER For any Brand to become successful it should have a unique selling point and it has to be launched in the market at the opportune time.

Positioning, one of the thumb rules of Marketing, is a vital factor. CR7’s amazing dribbling skills, ability to control the ball with agility and predicting certain plays are his USPs which helped him to join the Manchester United Club in 2003. After proving his mettle in the club, he moved to Real Madrid Football Club in 2009 for a whopping amount of $80 million. Since both these clubs with a great history and fan base are famous in the world, his popularity grew further. This is a perfect example of positioning in the market. Had he joined a lower rung club, he wouldn’t be that successful as he is now. CR7 has won numerous trophies for both the clubs, the latest being Champions League Title for Real Madrid in 2013.

CR7’s segmentation and targeting is Universal. He caters to all audience.

Girls swoon for his good looks, Boys idolize him for his play, and Men shout his name in awe. He excels in Promotion as well; one of the 4Ps of Marketing. He is not only very prominent in the traditional forms of marketing space like billboards and TVs but also in the new age of digital marketing. He has the highest number of Twitter Followers, 26.6 mn and most facebook likes, 83.3 mn.

“Cristiano Ronaldo being at his pinnacle of success has become the most bankable footballer ever and this makes him a Pioneer.”

OCTOBER 2014

Ronaldo endorses various brands like NIKE, ARMANI and has also signed other sponsorships from SAMSUNG, TAGHeuer, HERBALIFE and many more. There are several mobile gaming apps based around the matches played by him as well.

It is a well known fact that a sportsman career is short lived and one should make the best use of it at his prime stage. This relates to our product life cycle concept. To make optimum use of his Growth stage, CR7 has recently opened a museum, ‘Museu CR7’ and launched Premium Inner Wear Brand, ‘CR7‘ which are good sources of revenue. It is a classic example of money rotation.

It is only a matter of time before we see CR7 launching his own fashion label along similar lines of David Beckham and tennis legend Bjorn Borg.

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Tete-a-tete Interview with Dr. Arvind Rangaswamy, Professor of Marketing, Penn State University at K J Somaiya Institute of Management Studies & Research, Mumbai on the 19th of September 2014

Interviewer : Thank you very much for taking time out. You’re a leading authority in the field of analytics and it’s a great pleasure to have you here! My first question is the most obvious. You’re an IIT+IIM alumnus. What made you take up academia when you could have easily become a Fortune 500 CEO by now?

Dr. Arvind : That’s a very personal kind of decision that people have to come to. There are two different kinds of jobs. But even in academia, you have to be an entrepreneur in order to be successful. I could think of an idea that goes into a paper five years from now—it is in some way a CEO type of a job, in that the CEO has to place the company in a favourable way for what happens five years from now. So I don’t see, at least at a conceptual level, what a CEO does and what an academic professor does to be very different. Of course the CEO has a lot more managerial and executional responsibility. As for my own choice, I worked for about a year before going into academia. The only reason I did that is because I met Philip Kotler [while I was at IIM Calcutta]. My interaction with him indicated that this is an area that I could pursue. But even then in the first year of my PhD I wasn’t sure this is what I wanted to do—it all seemed very abstract and theoretical, whereas all my training at IIT and IIM was more concrete.

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THE MARKSMAN

Tete-a-tete But I met another colleague and a professor who’s on the thesis committee, named Andris Zoltners, he had a very applied orientation towards research and that made me feel more comfortable, feel that maybe there are topics that I can work on that had wider implications. He then went on to start a very successful company—one of the leading consulting companies in marketing, called ZS Associates—so I felt that academia and practice are not all that removed from each other—if you make your academic research sort of relevant to business, which is what I do. And the other good thing about academia is that you are pretty much left to yourself to do what you want. If you are passionate about something and you can responsibly manage your own time, it’s a good profession. It doesn’t pay like a CEO job, but on the other hand it gives you a lot more time. So I didn’t make a conscious decision, I evolved into it.

I : What are the three greatest challenges that the field is facing currently—sort of the Holy Grail of marketing?

A : One of the biggest problem, as I see it, is that marketing online and marketing offline are sort of coming together. People haven’t figured out how to make this transition and linkage seamless. So the future CMOs and marketing managers have to figure out a way to make a seamless link between the online world and the offline world, because consumers today are transitioning between these media during their purchase processes.

I think this is a big challenge and presents a lot of opportunities.

The second would be the need for constant innovation. Marketers have not really thought deeply about business model innovations. They’re talking maybe about marketing innovations, specific programs, but to look at business model itself as changing—the innovation today is not only in technology but also in how to put it all together in a way that creates a fundamentally good value proposition. I don’t see too many marketing people thinking like that but I think it’ll become more and more important for them to be focussed more on business model innovation.

The third thing is that today all the markets are global. If you put anything online it’s a globally accessible market. And we haven’t come to terms with all the issues related to globalisation. There’s a lot of friction across borders—physical limitations, language barriers—yet the needs of people are evolving in a similar way. The way people use mobile phones all over the world. I think for the next generation CMOs it’s going to be important to answer—“how to be a globally oriented manager?” I also think that another problem is that marketing organisations are designed for investors markets, and so marketing itself has to undergo a transformation. Today’s managers are going to be caught up in these processes.

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Tete-a-tete I : If you were put in the shoes of a first-year MBA student today, how would you see the world and what would you be eager to do?

A : A lot of the same concerns would come to me—if I want to be in marketing, I have to now do more things than just marketing—marketing has become an activity for the entire organisation. It now depends on how the entire organisation interfaces with consumers. So I should forget about a functional view of marketing and think about how marketing as a concept can be deployed and how I can be a more effective marketer at an organisational level rather than functional level. The second thing is technology—I’d be immersing myself in it. I went to the Digital Marketing Exposition in Cologne last week before I came here, out of 30,000 delegates, I’d say less than 10% there were marketing people. Most of the people running all the digital campaigns are the ones who are designing your website; they’re also the people creating the marketplaces of tomorrow.

So marketers have to be worried if they’re not techno savvy. On the other hand, there’s a strong role still for branding and brand management. So you can be somebody interested more in either the branding component and building values or towards the technologically enabled marketing space—everything in between is a fuzzy thing—I don’t know how many great options lie in the middle.

I : What do you think is the precise role of quantitative techniques in marketing? How would you emphasise or de-emphasise it?

A : In all of marketing or any business discipline, [things] are taking place increasingly in a very information-rich environment. Any quantification is simply a consequence of that environment—when something can be measured, you’ll measure it, because it can be used to make decisions. But the problem is you could be measuring the easy things and not the real issues. You know you can measure page ranks and how many visitors came, but what I really want to measure is how is my website affecting my brand, or am I creating more loyalty; this is where the modelling and analytics come in. So what’s happening today is at least some quantification is going on, and the need for that is obvious. People at Google and Amazon have raised the stakes. But what you have to be careful about is not to get sidetracked by what is easy to measure and think hard about what the underlying factors and structures. That’s why a deep sense of quantification and modelling is needed. I don’t think most marketing students are going to do that; it requires a skill base that many marketing students don’t have. And maybe marketing people are coming into the softer side. But I think there’ll be a growing component of marketing that’ll be quantified—whether by marketing people, statisticians or computer scientists—whoever it is, eventually it’s going to get quantified and model based.

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BOOK WORM The Anatomy of Buzz Revisited

By Emanuel Rosen Wondering what is this buzz all about?

Can’t get enough of hearing about this new trend in town? Did you pick one thing over another just because your friend recommended so? Or are you amazed at how a “sleeper” turned into a box-office hit overnight? If you wish to weave a similar magic for your own company, then keep your eyes peeled! This edition is packed with a plethora of fresh and interesting instances on the mechanics of buzz, which might as well strike you by a unique word-of-mouth campaign idea to catapult your product on the path of success!

A lot has changed since Rosen wrote the first edition. We are living today in a virtual world where the consumer is loaded with choices and information. Tools like search engines, social media and discussion forums, each have their own opportunity to spread word-of-mouth marketing like wild forest fire.

OCTOBER 2014

In this revised edition-drawn from interviews of more than 150 marketing leaders and researchers, backed by their success stories of building buzz for major brands, be it B&J’s free cone day campaign or his personal experience with EndNote.

One realizes that creating the right buzz for a product ignites the consumers’ excitement and gets him talking about it. In this wild-goose chase, that’s what can make for the winning sprint and in the end all the difference!

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FEATURED ARTICLES Make in India: Global Implications

Adwitiya Tiwari - XLRI, Jamshedpur From the top of Red Fort, Narendra Modi roared “Let’s resolve to steer the country to one destination. We have it in us to move in that direction.” Such was his confidence; he said “the world is looking at Asia. I don’t have to waste time to invite. I need to give address.”

And 42 days later, he launched the MAKE IN INDIA campaign and made the country proud.

Social Media: The Facebook page crossed one million likes in one month.

The twitter handle was soon up with over 30K followers. Vox, BBC, Guardian and Washington Times, every corner of the world was soon buzzing with the rise of the Indian industrial revolution.

Here is an insider’s perspective towards the model Modi is following. As someone who has lived in this country for more than two decades, I find the following challenges to it: Stringent laws! High tax rates! Lack of trained man power! Tough land acquisition rules!

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And India wants to foster innovation, attract foreign capital and protect and develop intellectual property. How do they do that?

Modi defined how he is going to make the business in India easy. He spoke of a dedicated portal for business queries, ease of policies and labour laws, an invest India facilitation cell as a reference point for guiding foreign investors and assistance from their entry till departure and faster security clearances for all projects.

#oneDirection

#incredibleIndia

#MakeInIndia

It seems that the sleeping tiger has finally woken up and has roared at the dragon. Holding the industry investors meet the same day as China was sure a bold step. From oil and gas to infrastructure, from IT to tourism, from renewable energy to electronic systems: this initiative has the ability to become India’s greatest story ever told.

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FEATURED ARTICLES An MBA student always speaks of frameworks to define any situation. I won’t be an exception here. Here is my view of the larger implications of this move. a) Foreign investments have always found the labour laws pegging their businesses.

ILO ratifications, labour unions on the prowl, but labour amendments like increasing the number of workers from 20 to 40 in case of a non-power manufacturing process and 10 to 20 in case of power, companies will find their work lot easier. The overtime hours have increased from 50/quarter to 100/quarter and relaxation time during the working hours for women. Talk about flexibility! b) In the bigger macro-economic picture: the Indian market has become bigger. The PM calls FDI as “first develop India,” and with 100% FDI in single-brand retail, telecom, 49% in defence sector will surely create some power balance in the economic blocs of ASEAN. While Philippines is offering tax incentives to investors in telecom and is seeing 24% rise in FDI, and China’s FDI falling to 2.9% over the past two years, it will be interesting to see the counter measures launched by our Asian neighbours.

c) Rise in economy only means clashes in power equations. The power bloc struggle becomes tighter between India and China.

Border clashes, Brahmaputra water issues and India’s improving relation with Washington will only make the North Eastern Frontier of the home country a territory of caution. With MIA, the November 2014 Summit of World Economic Forum [WEF] and CII is bound to define new stakeholder opportunities for the new government. After all, NDA has been propagandising about Public Private Partnership in its manifesto. d) They promised improvement in standards of living for all. A per capita of 74,920 Rs and 111th Rank on World Happiness Index are not happy figures.

Jobs for 10 million people, and 100 smart cities promised by Arun Jaitley—well, nobody said the path of MIA is easy. e) President Mukherjee’s recent visit to Finland was more than diplomatic. India plans to engage with the Nordic nation and learn its knowledge-based economy and clean technology. One of the five Centres of Innovation by Finland, FinCode run in India. Finish companies’ like Nokia–Siemens, Kone elevators, Wartsila are planning to set office here means innovation and technology growth.

#oneDirection #incredibleIndia #MakeInIndia

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FEATURED ARTICLES f) India’s soft power is set to unleash. Walt Disney, Bloomberg have been investing here and co-production agreements have been signed with Italy, Germany, Brazil, UK, France, New Zealand, Poland, Spain and Canada to carry on the Indian movies and shows. 30 world heritage sites, 25 bio-geographic zones, eco and religious tourism and 6.97 million visitors, the world is noticing India’s culture and diversity. Investment in these sectors by Cox and Kings, Thomas Cook, etc., is going to make it one of the most popular tourist destinations.

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3rd Largest TV market, 5th in World food processing industry, 4th largest automotive market—this can’t just get any better. The following tweet from MIA’s twitter handle aptly concludes this amazing scenario.

“India's transformation into a global manufacturing powerhouse has begun. Stay up to speed. Follow the Lion!” #oneDirection #MakeInIndia

#incredibleIndia

THE MARKSMAN

SquAreheaD

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BUZZ PUZZLE

CLUES

ACROSS 1. What is the name of the character played by Hussain Dalal in the recent Nescafe Stammering Stand-up comedian act?

2. The Chairman & Managing Director of The Country Club,India is Mr. Yeragudi ______. (6,5) 4. Concentrating all marketing efforts on a small but specific and well defined segment of the population is generally termed as _____ marketing 7. Complete the link with a brand's name.

Grasim Industries,Louis Phillip,Pantaloons Fashion & Retail,___________.(5,7) 9. The India-born billionaire related to Blackberry and its funds.(4,5) DOWN

3. “High Performance. Delivered.�

5. Which watch company does Shah Rukh Khan endorse?(3,5) 6. The name (fondly) given to the online giant,Flipkart, after its Bumper sale,Big billion day, was being criticised all over the place.

8. Which is the official beverage and snack partner of ICC? Answers: Across: 1.Rishi 2.Rajeev Reddy 4.Niche 7.Peter England 9.Prem Watsa Down: 3.Accenture 5.Tag Heuer 6.Flopkart 8.Pepsico

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Call for ARTICLES CALL FOR ARTICLES NOVEMBER 2014 Articles can be sent on any one of the following topics*: 1. ISL: Opening new avenues for sports marketers 2. Snapchat: Revolutionizing the way events are marketed 3. The War off the maps: E-commerce battle

*Please ensure that there is no plagiarism and all references are clearly mentioned.

1. One article can have only one author.

2. Your article should be approximately 800-850 words and MUST be replete with relevant pictures that can be used to enhance the article.

3. Font Type: Gill Sans MT 4. Font Size: 14.

5. Send your article in .doc/.docx format to marksman.simsr@somaiya.edu 6. Subtitle line: Your name_Institute Name_Course Year 7. Kindly name your file as : Your name_Topic The best adjudged article will be given a Winner’s Certificate.

Deadline for the submission of article will be : 20th November, 2014

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The TEAM THE TEAM TWEETS by Minoli Sheth

It’s all about AD-itude by Dhruv Maheshwari

Brand MARKive by Palak Thakkar

COVER STORY by Sukanya Remesh

SPECIAL STORY by Vasundhara Tewari REWIND by Dilip Anatharaman

To subscribe to "The Marksman", Follow the link:http://interfacesimsr.weebly.com/ the-marksman.html OR drop in a mail/contact us at : interface.newsletter@gmail.com Subject line: Subscribe:Your Name_Institute Name_Course Year

FAUX PAS by Akshay Peshave

HALLMARK CAMPAIGN by Sankalp Thakur

PIONEER by Dilip Anatharaman Tete-a-Tete by Akshay Peshave BOOKWORM by Kavya Dubey

SquAreheaD by Vasundhara Tewari

BUZZ by Abhijit Sharma

PROOF READ by Minoli Sheth Abhijit Sharma

DESIGNING by Kavya Dubey Rahul Vangani Sukanya Remesh

PROMOTIONS by Dilip Anatharaman Sankalp Thakur

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Website: http://interfacesimsr.weebly.com/t he-marksman.html The MARKSMAN is the newsletter of INTERFACE, the Marketing Club at K.J. Somaiya Institute of Management Studies and Research, Mumbai.

Images used in THE MARKSMAN are subject to copyright. THE MARKSMAN does not take any responsibility of any kind of plagiarism in the articles received from students of other colleges.

THE MARKSMAN