Marketing in India

Marketing Lessons from Laptop-shopping visit October 25, 2008

Helped my mother-in-law earlier this week with her laptop purchase. Went to Nehru Place, which is one of Delhi’s biggest IT shopping hubs (I am not aware of any others as big actually). Sony and Apple do not have showrooms there but all other brands have single-brand showrooms there. Some interesting findings:

1. Toshiba showroom: This is a bit funny but as serious as it can be for a marketer. The 2 basic models in the Satellite model lines are being sold without a Windows bundling. (that decision itself could be argued as not quite right but we will avoid that as its not my main point. Basically, pirated Windows can be got in India for 100-200 Rs so the cost conscious segment can be targeted without bundling Windows). So no Windows interface comes on these lapstops if you buy it as it is – right? But does that mean you should display them in your store without Windows? That’s the stupidest thing I have ever seen. The two models were not switched on. So users could not “feel” using the product. And as they are cheaper models they obviously werent great looking on the outside anyway (a point I discuss later in this post). It’s the cost of 2 Windows vista starter edition – 2K Rs. vs. your entire business (rent of at least 60K or so + other costs should put that in perspective). You can just mention next to it “Windows not included”!!! Beats me!

2. Toshiba’s perception on after-sales: Cross-category perceptions do matter. In my earlier job, I had heard a customer complain of Toshiba having the issue of spare parts taking forever to come from Japan. This made me sceptical in laptops as well. When it got confirmed by a couple of IT peripheral re-sellers whom I could trust, I left Toshiba out of our consideration set. If this view is so widespread, doesn’t Toshiba want to do something about it. Perhaps project the view that Toshiba products get spoil so less compared to competition that a customer doesn’t need to care about after-sales. I know it’s naive/basic in approach but you get my direction.

3. Is Compaq as good as HP in product component quality: So many customers (including us, in a big way) were not sure whether to buy Compaq. These customers are just not sure whether Compaq uses the same quality of components and manufacturing process as HP, even though these two brands are now owned by the same company. But the shop sales people did a good job here. Some answers from them (1) (showing the back side of the laptop)  “sir, you can see the sticker clearly states that this Compaq is made in the HP factory” (2) “Sir its very simple, if you want to buy a laptop below Rs. 50K, its Compaq, for higher than that its HP, simple difference”.  We were convinced, as we came back with a Compaq even after my mother-in-law’s bad experience with that brand’s product pre-merger.

4. No one cares for the confused segment: at least that’s what I thought on my visit. My mother in law is far ahead of others her age in India in understanding technology – she can recite back to you when she wants you to do an Internet transaction while she doesn’t have access – but her hardware knowledge is minimal. But everyone just wants to throw back jargon at you – does RAM, 1.8 Ghz, X-speed DVD write, L2 cache, biometric reader mean anything to this segment. It may even matter, but who cares explaining? Diwali season is on, so everyone is after the younger looking males who know this stuff – I believe a decent sales opportunity is being missed here (unless this entire segment always comes with their son-in-laws; even then educating them in a pro-active and non-preachy way may help you own this segment)

5. Cheaper the price, uglier the design: Has none of the computer makers read about disruptive Value curves? I mean the cheaper laptops were so basic and just-block looking that one felt compelled to look away. This should not be the case. A more graceful design can easily be given in cheaper models without any real cost increase. I am not talking funky designs that cannibalize higher-end SKU sales, just one stylish design element.

How should I market my new citizen-initiative web service? October 20, 2008

I have launched a new citizen-initiative web service at http://improvenoida.ning.com/

This is for residents of my township Noida (a suburb of Delhi) to get together, stop cribbing and start providing constructive feedback – which will then be fed back to the authorities.

I have emailed my friends who live in Noida and asked them to come forward, as well as to spread the word. I am gathering suggestions on how to market this service on a 0-money-available but good-enough-time-available

Get your marketing juices flowing and do let me know.

Cheers

Indian Cricket League vs. Indian Premier League October 19, 2008

Indian Cricket League (ICL) season 2 has just started a week back ago amidst a significant amount of fanfare. You would have noticed the TV ads, the print coverage , the radio bits and the Internet coverage as well.

ICL’s main competitor IPL started with a real big bang and except an expected (at least to me) mid-month slowdown, managed to sustain viewership at very high levels.

I was intrigued by ICL’s positioning this time around – “Cricket hai meri life” (Cricket is my life) communicated through various local cricketers who have dreamt of playing Cricket on the big stage since forever.

Let’s dive a little bit into how this positioning could have been developed : (1) ICL realised that it would be difficult to be bigger than IPL on the glamour/entertainment element (rightly, in my opinion – you need Shah Rukh Khan, Preity Zinta, Mukesh Ambani and the country’s current top cricketers for that).  (2) However, they realised marketing investment had to be big to stay in the game, even if not as huge as IPL  (which is backed by the super-rich-and-not-accountable-to-any BCCI.) (3) they had to look for an angle which connected with the Indians – and they probably thought of “emotional connect, simple boy fulfilling his dreams in cricket”.  The stores in the ads are touching for sure, I mean it. But that’s where the problem is – its a 20-20 tournament – your viewers want instant entertainment – they might not get attracted by touching past stories. Further, this approach alienates ladies  (a key constituent IPL apparently managed to get into its groove) because it may seem that this is serious cricket – “cricket hai meri life” is quite serious. This approach may attract fanatics like me, but I am already watching India-Aus with which they clashed their schedule.

What I also fail to understand is – why do they always have ICL’s main seasons clashing with one of India’s international series. Last time it was India-Pak I think and this time India-Aus. The only logic I can fathom is that people are generally interested in watching cricket around an international series and with ICL in the evening as quick cricket, it may be preferred to boring, long test matches. I believe this theory has major holes  – not least of which is that India-Aus test cricket is almost never boring.

Milking Diwali October 19, 2008

Apologies for not having written for a while. This aberration should hopefully not happen again.

As I have now left the consumer durables industry, I can comment on the season’s marketing employed by the industry – specifically Whirlpool, which I find quite interesting.

Context: With bonuses and an auspicious time to buy from the consumer’s viewpoint, Diwali is the highpoint for consumer durable players in India – a good Diwali can help you recover from bad year-to-date performance. Thus, offers/schemes/freebies get rolled out one-bigger-than-the-other by the players.
(Of course, the bonuses bit can be a big big big dampener to sales right now)

Whirlpool has come up the “Is Diwali April Fool Bano Ya Whirlpool Chuno” campaign (This Diwali, be fooled like on April Fool’s day or choose Whirlpool). It is an interesting tactic – to attack the traditional stance of the industry in providing some-variation-of-scratch-cards to have a chance of winning big prizes. (diya scratch card variant, musical hooter scratch card variant etc etc).

The funny thing is – Whirlpool would have had to decide this without knowing what the others in the industry will do (of course, they would have directional-indications but thats beside the point). What if all /most of your competitors do not give scratch card variants this time around.  Don’t you run the big risk of being mocked if your assured gifts/offers are not even as good as competitors. (As an example, LG has assured gifts of a DVD Player + 50 movie DVDs for Diwali with any LCD purchase. Now, Whirlpool doesn’t compete in consumer electronics but I am sure LG or Samsung could have similar offers on their Ref/Washing Machines as well. Maybe with LG you pay a bit more than pre-season but get lot more valuable gifts, and Whirlpool is assuring that prices will also be same on-shop-floor plus offers – but was that aggression of communicatio/campaign over done)

Even if they are targeting consumers who have been misled in previous years by competitor firms, shopper understanding suggests that most of these consumers will still have that previous brand in their consideration set

The insight is simple and relevant – consumers don’t like and believe in the scratch cards method of offers. But I wonder if the expression/positioning of attacking the rest is.

A Wednesday – a celebration of the “Product” P in marketing September 13, 2008

One of the new movies hitting the Bollywood screen recently is titled “A Wednesday”.

1. Why it deserves a mention on a marketing blog is it proves that a well-thought out, great product can still be the primary/only thing needed for a success in this extremely promotion-driven industry.

(a) This movie has a gripping story with impactful dialogues and tight editing.

(b) Further, it got together 2 actors considered by many to be amongst India’s best – Naseeruddin Shah and Anupam Kher.They are working together after more than 10 years and in general too they haven’t worked much together.

(c) Unfortunately, they are not the “heroes” of the industry, but on the flip side – they won’t have charged as much – thus making the investment lesser for the producer.

(d) The trend of shorter movies has been nicely continued  (something I have raised from 3 years ago as a certain thing) ; I thank God that the producer/director didn’t feel the need to have a song out of nowehere!

2. In other aspects:

(a) Word of mouth retains its huge role, and especially for such non-masala movies.

(b) On a slight tangent, I have realized movies are a good way to explain segmentation to anyone. My sister and I are the same SEC, age-bracket, income levels, geographical region. She doesn’t like serious movies like Sarkar Raj and A Wednesday.  She prefers complete light-hearted movies. Me, on the other hand, I like any movie if its a good movie – as long as storyline and screenplay is good. So demographically (except gender of course), we are very similar and even attitude-wise we might be quite similar but our product usage liking/behavior is quite different.

A great example of Activation from Ganpati September 9, 2008

Agency Faqs covers a real good discussion on Mudra helping Cycle Agarbatti break through the clutter this time dueing Ganpati.

What I like about setting up bus shelters as Ganpati pandals is the following:

1. Following religious and regional sensibilities – keeping the activity subtle and low decible: Getting hyped about every activation is not thr right way every time.

2. The beautification of the shelter is pleasing to all stakeholders (the government and the consumers) – playing of the aarti and buring the agarbatti therefore becomes an important part of the process.

3. The bluetooth angle makes the brand appeal to the youth more than it would normally do, which is important for a product category like agarbatti. But at the same time,  proper care for opt-in processes has been taken so as not to piss off the knowledgable-youth.

Such examples make everyone thing – Marketing is no rocket science – such a nice brand connect with the activation – but in such simplicity lies the genius of good marketing.