Handle with Care When it comes to Marketing

Marketing is like fire when smartly handled, it can destroy your enemies, but when not it can burn you. – Anonymous

When the British ruled India, many Indians accepted to work under their policy, and they did not try to rebel against the British for their presence in Indian lands; They recognized the benefits of British rule. What was the factor that made Indians accept the British government? The perception about British-policies (about trading, pay-scale and positioning in the military) had been done through various marketing channels in such a way that it brainwashed people of the nation and many were ready to accept the British. So the Marketing is like fire when smartly handled, it can destroy your enemies, but when not it can burn you.

Marketing is to design and develop a pathway from product or service to the customer through a promotional strategy. Marketing depends on a variety of parameters which can be classified broadly boiling down to vital three. These are ‘What type of customer are marketing team is focusing on (based on gender, age, location, customer-class) (W1)’, ‘What are Product Specification or Applications you need to bring in front of customer (W2)’, ‘What is your Product Promotion flow path (W3)’, ‘How much time it takes to convey product information to customer (H1)’. These criteria are what I call ‘3W1H’ forms. These basics need to be taken care while developing a marketing strategy for the upcoming product. However, are they sufficient? No. There is one more parameter called the Feedback mechanism (FM). Generally, machines use the feedback mechanism to check output generated is as per input is given or not and if it is not, the input is corrected to get the required output. When it comes to human beings, he/she is surrounded by multiple products on a daily basis through social media, TV advertising and so forth. Slight uncertainties on either side in observation can make a positive or negative impact about the product on the consumer’s mind. In the feedback mechanism, the marketing team needs to answer only one question “What kind of product image built in the customer mind through promotional activities?” If product image not built as per expectation, then management has to review and work on 3W1H as per discussed earlier. So let’s elaborate how 3W1H approach works along with feedback mechanism.

After deciding the customer range, you can work on other activities. Since the customer is conscious about purchasing the product and when the product promoted, the first thing the customer will check is its usefulness and if his/her answer is ‘Yes,’ then the customer will start comparing with similar alternative products in the market. Therefore one should present the product along with some unique thought and express the product in such a way that its image imprinted into the consumer mind. For example, the polio campaign in India. The government had taken the initiative to make India polio-free by spreading awareness through all types of social communication mediums, in which Television played a vital role. Legendary cinema actor ‘Amitabh Bachchan’ was selected as an ambassador for this campaign. Initially, the advertisement published in which Amitabh pleaded people for vaccinating the children within a fixed schedule. The advertisement circulated throughout the nation, and no stone was kept unturned by the government to make this campaign successful. However, much to the surprise, advertising failed miserably to attract a deprived community in polio booth. This promotion failure was because of non-consideration of the customer (W1) and how advertise impacted its application on the customer (W2)? So after analyzing failure,experts recommended changes in their marketing campaign like, to focus on major customer (Here mainly village woman who generally spend their time in home by watching TV), type of impact on people (People who watched TV during that era, had an image of Amitabh as ‘Angry young man’). So the campaign improved their advertising by bringing out the same angry Amitabh instead of his soft-image which used in the earlier campaign. So in a very next polio campaign number of people in polio booth suddenly increased and when feedback taken from people about such a sudden change, they replied that we don’t want to watch ‘Amitabh sir’ getting angry because of us. ⁽¹⁾

In W3, we have to focus on what kind of path we use to attract the customer. Currently, there are a lot of platforms available by which you can market your product. The main agenda you should keep in mind is that how effectively you can engage customer through marketing, at very first, if you make an impact on customer then only he can show interest in your product. For example, changes in launching trailer of the upcoming films. Till 20^th century Television and newspaper were crucial factors, but now along with television, marketing team take help of internet resources like Youtube, Facebook, introducing an article on the pre-trailer phenomenon. Increasing the range of promotional devices, broadcast formats and publishing platforms provide a broad range to promote the film and choosing right platform may lead to a massive hit in the box-office.

For the last factor (H1) time, the obvious question that comes to mind is that ‘Is time for advertising matters?’, While watching the TV when an advertisement appears, many times we change the channel instead of watching the whole advertisement or ignore it altogether. You do have an option of ‘Skip ad’ when you watch anything online, so one must decide how much time is required to deliver product information during its promotion? Providing product information in less time, creating the possibility that the customer will be willing to watch it and may result in attracting the customer. However, as one must have guessed it, this will not work at all the time. Other factors like the cost of the product, application range, type of customer can also affect the H1. For example, the customer would be more conscious while watching higher priced product broadcast compare to the lower priced one. So it would take more time for the marketing team to convince the customer to buy the costly good than the lower priced one.

After implementing marketing strategy as per 3W1H, we need to work on a feedback mechanism in which organization has to collect information about product image generated in customer’s mind through dealers and using feedback-form. Not using the feedback mechanism may lead to failure in achieving ‘product sales target’ and can make the situation even worse. Take the example of ‘THE TATA Nano-MAKING OF WORLD’S CHEAPEST CAR’ which was mind-blowing one-of-a-kind project in Indian automobile industry. From the first phase of a marketing campaign, TATA Nano was on so much continuous limelight that this project was pleased by former American president Barack Obama. ⁽²⁾ The curiosity about the product was so high that the sale of then-leading car model Maruti-800 was dropped by 20% immediately after unveiling the Nano. ⁽³⁾ However, while marketing the product, an organization built “Affordable, Garibo Ki Car” image in customer’s mind, which made customer conscious about what will be their status-quo in society after buying Nano? Thus, they started giving preference to two-wheeler’s over Nano, During the same time; some instances of Nanos catching fire came into focus which worsened the situation. This case even exacerbates when the team did not work on the feedback mechanism and hence, was not able to change customer perception about Nano. Later, when Nano fire problem was technically sorted out but even then the marketing team did not make any impactful effort to market the improved safety of the car. Therefore, customer’s negative perception remained stuck and the organization did not even come close to achieving selling figures of Nano. If the organization had used feedback mechanism, it would have been an entirely different story.

So 3W1H can be an essential factor while developing a marketing strategy for the product along with a reversible FM method. This method can help us to monitor Product marketing throughout the phases and can help the marketing team to change strategy whenever it goes into the wrong path.

 

 

 

 

References-

(1) https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Delhi/when-amitabhs-voice-did-the-trick-to-make-india-polio-free/article6257123.ece

(2) https://www.businesstoday.in/obamas-india-visit/nano-catches-worlds-most-powerful-mans-eyes/story/10144.html

(3) https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/nanomania-overwhelms-indian-car-market

 

Go Nike or Not? : by Prachi Patel

What do you think when you buy a product? Do you just think of the product’s price, quality, specifications etc.? Would you like to purchase a product of the company which takes stand on a controversial issue? Does the company’s stand affect your buying decision? From a general point of view, the answer is yes. So it is not much about whether you like the product or not. It’s more about whether your view aligns with a corporation’s stance on a social-political issues or not.

Nike is no stranger to controversy. As the brand’s Just Do It campaign turned 30, Nike launched their new advertising campaign with Colin Kaepernick as the face of their decisive campaign. Colin Kaepernick was one of the first players of NFL to kneel during USA’s National anthem to highlight social and racial injustice in the united states. This led to an altercation with Donald trump who said in response that any player who knelt during the anthem was a “son of bitch” and should be fired. This sparked a movement a year ago. A year-old controversy helped Nike’s stock price to reach an all-time high.  Public maintained a mixed view about the campaign with some opposing it by burning Nike gear and some showing support by their likelihood of buying Nike products.

Nike’s logic did not only help to balance public interest with financial returns but it also maintained the issue of racism injustice alive by creating a hype from both protesters and supporters. Nike tried to back the players who were voiceless to protest but are now able to protest peacefully against social inequality.  A controversy it may be but what Nike did bring up the issues that certain section of society faced and are still facing in a developed country like USA. And for Nike this was one of many controversies they have embraced and faced. As they say it’s only crazy until you do it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

What Marketing is not – by Kashish Saini

Many have the gist of marketing being related to promoting and selling products to customers through advertising on various media channels. Well, it is correct. To have a more logically sound understanding of marketing, we explore the negative aspects and filter out everything that is not marketing.

First, it is not customer service. Although both of them have correlation as clients expectation might help marketers to chalk out plans and strategies to attract clients. Second, it is not sales. Marketing focuses on attracting appropriate clients and encourage them into buying the product by providing supporting materials. Third, it is not graphic art. It revolves around devising plans and strategies to cater to broader needs of the business. It does not develop the logo and related collateral for advertising. Fourth, it is not senior management’s personal publicity machine. Senior management’s role is to create and support the corporate by leading them and focus on publicizing more executives than a single one. Fifth, it is not human resources. Marketing’s ability to promote the company to prospective employees and coordinate with HR for advertising is an important element. Last but the most critical point- it is not crisis management. Effective crisis management decisions need to span over different levels and departments in the business like legal, senior management and so on and today’s concept of putting it under real time PR might not yield results.

While marketing handles and drives sales, it is usually another person’s or department’s job to close the deal. Marketing is about developing the strategies and tactics that help in achieving an organization’s goals by building relationships with various prospective customers.