Focus shifting to Brasil 2014

Like any other vital occasions, football 2014 also saw the focus of entire world shifting to Brazil. When such an event with an estimated viewership of nearly 70 million is watching the game on a daily basis for a month, every possible brand would like to explore the opportunity at the best available cost. The effect of this fever was quite visible from the fact that the India England test match played at Trent bridge last week was almost like a secret match as there was hardly any following or discussion on the century by Murali Vijay or the result of the match. Along with the regular traditional mediums such as TV and Radio, the growing new generation mediums also played an important role in expanding the reach of this high spirited game among the fans and followers. It is expected that more than a million tweets are generated on the final night from India along. Riding on the football mania, social media spend increased to 4% of the total digital media budget for many brands in 2014. In order to catch the attention of the viewers and listeners, the brands adapted their campaigns, creatives and punchlines to the theme of Football. After telecasting IPL and now by telecasting the complete tournament for the time, Sony Six placed themselves as a strong competitor among ESPN & STAR SPORTS. They were aiming for a 200 crore ad revenue at the starting of the tournament and the ad spot for final match was quoting between 2-3 lakh for every 10 second. Surely they must have gained much more than the estimates in real terms. 

Global brands going Local

In today's competitive world, its all about sustainability. For the survival you need to change or modify your strategies, approach and some time even your products . Over these years we have seen brands who never believed in advertising were forced to assign millions of dollars in various advertising platforms to gain the customer loyalty. Established brands such as Apple, were forced to come up with buy back offer in India to gain the market share. Change some time even happen in the product offering. You need to localize your products so that it suites the country and the taste of the people. Brands such as McDonald & Pizza Hut already mastered in this and adds a new product variant according to the country they are in. As a part of the same strategy Pepsico introduced Nimbuzz, the lemon flavor soft drink to target the niche. Localisation also goes to the product name, you need to make sure the name you selected doesn't have a wrong meaning in any other language. An example of this was the situation Oreo faced in Russia were in Russian language it had a negative meaning. Studies have shown that 60% of consumers prefer to see the product information in local languages which shows how important it is to localize make your products and its communication. So eventually the coming ages will of Glocalisation were brands need to give preferences to the local tastes and cant have a uniform product for all markets. 

Good Communication in Ads

Like any other marketing mix, effective communication also plays a vital role in the success of a product. Having a good product may not be enough if the marketers doesn't know how well to communicate it to the target consumers. Marketer should answer the what, why & when along with deciding the content of the ads. Every ad should be able to catch the attention of the viewers in the first stage before creating the interest among them. It should evoke a desire to the viewers or targets to try the product. The communication should not be of any false claim or statement & towards the end all the above efforts should result in an action of purchase. Communications should not hurt any kind of sentiments and while making ads in regional language the makers should certainly double check on the translations. When & How to communicate also plays an important role in the success of an ad. Ads during local festivals with special offers and schemes are always attractive to the buyers. Selection of the right medium is another channel that will decide on the effectiveness. Right medium will go like an arrow shot from the bow, mostly right on target.

Note: Image shown is just for example with good intentions.

Targeting the Right Segment

From e-commerce to net banking, everything around us is migrating to Online. Everything is just a scroll or click away. Marketing is concentrating more on the comfort and user friendly features of online products & services. Identifying a new market segment or a niche target is much necessary now. One such segment is Women. Over these years many brands tried to knock the emotional quotient with them. Now the established brands makes the move to explore the segment with wise advertisements and right positioning. Latest among the brands are Windows & Google. Windows latest ad on PC with windows 8 are asking women to explore their world and expand them online. Google through its new campaign is starting to spread the importance of being online and the benefits women's could derive from it. By creating a standalone URL and association with well known brands from various sectors, this campaign is surely aiming to reach out to its targets in a big way. It is estimated that in India 40 percent out of 150 million internet users are women and roughly 24 million log in daily. These are big figures and through this campaign google is planning to add another 50 million by 2014. 

Return of the King : Parle Agro

Its been 15 years since Parle Agro withdraw themselves from the carbonated beverage business after selling out the line of business to Coca cola. The Rs.15000 crore soft drink industry since then is ruled by coca cola & Pepsi. Even then Parle Agro made a segment for themselves with products such as Frooti & Appy fizz. The former enjoying 85 percent of the mango based drink market certainly is the oldest and largest. The non competition agreement expired in 2003 with Coca Cola and now the big player is coming back to the oldest play ground with an intention to create a new product segment with a different target group in mind. Cafe Cuba will be a coffee based carbonated drink and the main targets will be youth. Aiming at a 7% market share we have to wait & see whether Parle will be able to beat the competition and taste created by international brands among the youth in all these years with Cafe Cuba. All the best for this Indian Brand to sustain the competition. 

Responsible Advertising

Brands always try different ad mix to catch the attention of the public. They comes out with mixture of humor, sentiments, relations etc. We will be able to recollect many ads falling under these categories which are local as well as global. One such category is "thoughtful ads" or "serious ads" which for a second will make you think and feel about the scenario or message given in the punch line. This type of ads are different from the other categories as they should have the boldness to project an issue which are known but are less discussed or excepted. It could be either political, may be about competing brand from the same sector, a hot social issue under debate etc. The ad might be able to create a vibe in the society depend on the issue. One such initiative recently done was by "The Hindu". These ads some times will cover the brand in terms of impact and the ultimate viewer will go with the message but not able to recollect the brand. The Hindu came out with some thought provoking messages and flashed it across various mediums. These ads covered political issue, direct attack on competitor, page 3 and went up to addressing the social issues. Even though the ultimate objective was to pass on the message to the viewers that they are serious about the on going issues in the country and will report it with at most sincerity. A good job by Taproot. Some times such an initiative could make a difference in the viewers. 

Goddess under attack - The Hindu campaign against social issues

How realistic discounts are;

We are always inclined towards shopping, thus we some how look for reasons to buy or replace our existing mobile, TV, Car or any other consumer durable with us. Once again a festival season begins and all major brands are pilled up with their inventories and freebies to influence your thought process and make you walk in to their outlets. This year not like previous years, all major brands are spending extensively on advertisements. Many brands which till now believed in driving sales just through their product quality and customer supports are now started pushing their ads weeks before the festival days. Slashed price, EMI schemes, freebies etc are largely used as sales tools. 

One such brand is Sony which always stand out for its product and its quality are forced to come out with a full page ad on TOI along with Mobile store for promoting their mobile phone segment. Many of the recently launched variants are shown with a slashed price. This makes us to think twice how realistic the rates quoted always are when with in weeks of its launch almost 2000 Rs/- were reduced for certain products. Discounts are always attractive for buyers. But the fact is, the rates are hidden some were and are not visible to us and comes in light particularly during festival season or at the time when company want to get rid of the stocks. We could even get a piece of these discounts in an off season if we are able to make a good bargain with the dealer. 

The myth that i couldn't broke is how to understand the right price of a product.