Showing posts with label advertising. Show all posts
Showing posts with label advertising. Show all posts

Link: Believable Fantasy

10:27 PM

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"Of audiences and Colors and Mills & Boon" - This is a brilliant little post and I just had to share it.

Star Plus and many other GECs started the Saas-Bahu saagas a few years back. In the beginning the combination of extravagant settings and everyday family issues worked well to capture the aspirations and fascination of many a Indian housewife. However over a period of time the focus of the script writers and producers seemed to have tilted more towards the extravagance factor and less on building real issues. This is where they went wrong, they pushed the envelope beyond a point where it was just simply unbelievable and in the process forgot about the backbone that every story needs - an interesting, relevant and captivating plot. And Colors called on this brilliantly. 

Well these are just thoughts that to came to my mind after reading the post, Anant Rangaswamy, the author, has nailed it perfectly, please read!

Probably also a lesson for all of us in designing our advertising and communication - create fantasy, but "believable fantasy". 

Amit Budhiraja

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IPL in South Africa - Comments from Media Professionals

9:50 PM

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I asked a question in a previous post a few days back on what is going to be the effect of the IPL being moved to an international location this year on viewer behavior and what impact, if any, will this have on media revenues during the season.

Well apart from the expert comments I received from two of our "panel" experts - Abhishek and Ajit, I also came across this article on exchange4media.com where some eminent media professionals of the country have shared their thoughts and I quote below:

Nandan Srinath, COO - Radio Mirchi:
“Cricket always has had healthy revenues. Now, even though the matches won’t be played in India, the viewerships would not be affected”. He added, “So, basically other than the venue change, everything else pretty much remains the same.” He further said that the ad campaigns for IPL would go on air at the FM station in the coming week.

Anant Chakravarty, Sr. VP - Big FM:
“Although we have not finalised a fixed revenue figure, we have already started working towards the campaigns and various advertising packages. With the change of venue now, the only difference in terms of advertisements is the variation in the content that we are going to create. There is a little ambiguity regarding the dates, but once that is cleared, we will be out with our ad campaigns.”

Neeraj Chaturvedi, Delhi Station Head, Fever FM:
“According to me, all the three media – print, television and radio – will miss out on some revenue with the tournament being played outside India. Personally, I would have never wanted the venue to be shifted.”

(a bit of trivia - did you know Fever FM is Virgin Radio's India venture? I didn't!)

So there doesn't seem to be a clear verdict yet on how media will be affected. Personally I think while agencies which handle on-ground promos and activities will definitely miss out on the revenus and brands the opportunity to make a solid connect with the consumers on the ground, traditional media like television and radio will only gain viewership from last year.

Amit Budhiraja

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IPL Not on Indian Soil This Year - So what?

11:40 PM

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This is a question I'd really like to ask all my cricket loving fans, ethusiasts, fanatics - tous ces gens - if the IPL is not going to be held on Indian soil, how much difference is it going to make to you? Would you enjoy it as much as you enjoyed take-one? Or is it going to make a difference in the sense that you would feel less connected with the competition and it would be more like watching any other T-20 tournament?

I'd love to understand your thoughts as would most marketers in India who have probably already invested significantly in air time during the IPL broadcast.

Are we going to see the same number of eyeballs tuned to the IPL as last year ?

Amit Budhiraja

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Advertising on Airport Baggage Trolleys

2:48 AM

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Advertising on baggage trolleys at Delhi Airport costs about 100 bucks per day per trolley, so says this recent article from afaqs!. Let's do some quick back of the envelope calculations here -
  1. Let's say we hired 500 trolleys for 30 days, our total advertising spend would have been a cool 15 lakhs. i am not even counting costs of printing, service tax and everything else.
  2. Now, assuming the airport functions 18 hrs a day, 30 days a month and the average replenishment time for a trolley is 30 mins (the time in which a traveller picks it up, uses it, leaves it and then some airport liaison drops it back at the trolley pool, now ready for its next use). i know, 30 mins is an extremely ambitious target but let's study the best case scenario first.
  3. So basically we are saying each trolley can do about 36 rotations or rather can touch 36 passengers in a day. Thats 36 passengers times 500 trolleys times 30 days, or 5.40 lakh passengers in a month.
  4. That gives us 15 lakhs spent to reach 5.4 lakh passengers, giving an effective Cost per Thousand contacts at roughly 3000 bucks !!

Seems to me like a very expensive proposition, especially for a medium which has limited capabilities in terms of the content it can deliver. Most of the examples I can recall are of Banks just putting their names on the trolleys - 'State Bank of India'. That's 15 lakhs spent very poorly if you ask me. 15 lakhs will get you at least a couple of hoardings in a prime area in any metro which will definitely give you much higher reach and you could convey so much more about your brand\services etc.

Having said that there is one area where I feel this can have some utility - instances where you can or would like to ellicit an immediate action from the viewer. For example:

1. You are a Cafe Coffee Day at the airport. Put a picture of a delicious sandwich and a coffee and pose the question - 'hungry? head to CCD'. tickle the consumers senses and get immediate response.

2. One good thing about this medium is that the passenger is going to spend some time with this media. You could put important information for the passenger to note down, say "Call 13402804 to book a free test ride of the new Fiat Linea'', "Done with your tax planning for the year? Call 12301980 to find out more about our tax saving products". So you get the idea right?

So my take is only advertising which is meant to encourage an immediate viewer action is suitable for this medium. Generic Brand advertising would only de-optimize your advertising budget.

Amit Budhiraja

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Inside Scoop On Focus Groups!

3:50 AM

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Just how many times have you decided to go with the results of a Focus Group Discussion (FGD) over your own intuition as a marketer? Just how many times has your packaging or advertising strategy been based on that one singular insight that emerged from these FGDs? Well, as a marketing professional, I know this happens far too often.

And it’s not wrong to do so either, because all said and done the participants of the FGD are supposed to mirror consumers of your exact target group – demographically , sociographically et al. And so naturally it follows that their opinion is king, and nothing else matters.
If you agree with me, here’s an eye-opener by Will Leitch, well known writer and blogger for the NY Times. He says he has participated in several FGDs as

ü A hardy adventurer who has back-packed through Mongolia
ü A person with a severe sweating disorder (for a discussion on Deodorants of course!)
ü A person of Italian descent
ü A long term asthma Patient
ü A resident of Southern New Jersey

just to name a few. Please do make a note however that Will Leitch is NONE of these things.

He has found his own way to play the agencies and their recruiters who carry out these FGDs and says it isn’t too hard for anyone to do. He just says what he knows they want to hear, see this excerpt -

“Recruiters usually call on weekends to determine suitability for a survey. If they ask you whether you’ve done one in the past six months, just say no. They never check. If they ask you something off-the-wall, like “Have you purchased a treadmill in the past year?,” say yes; they wouldn’t ask if that weren’t the answer they wanted. If they ask you what brands you purchase most often, always name big ones: Sprint, Budweiser, Marlboro. They’re representing either one of those companies or a smaller one trying to figure out how to steal you away. And, most important, let the recruiters lead you. Before you answer a question you’re not sure about, pause for a couple of seconds. They’ll tip their hand every time.”

This throws up a major caveat for any marketer who wants to base his/her strategy on results from such FGDs. Not only is it possible that your participants are actually not from your TG, they may in fact further mislead you by stating opinions on issues which they possibly have no clue about.

So there, don’t say you weren’t warned. Take your results with a pinch salt and as far as possible play an active role in talking to the shortlisted participants before the FGD begins. Make sure they are the people you are seeking. Good luck!

Amit Budhiraja

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Idea Cellular Needs a New Idea

5:45 AM

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Base your advertising strategy on the stage of the product life-cycle. A very important lesson I learnt in my b-school days.

In a nutshell what it says is – If your product or service is relatively new in the market, you advertise its generic benefits and increase adoption. As the product progresses on its life-cycle and competition increases, your advertising should aim to differentiate your brand from the rest.  So when the world’s first camera was launched, the manufacturers would have said, ‘’hey folks, this little thingy is called a ‘camera’. It allows you to quickly take pictures of you and your family and just about anything you want. Isn’t that swell?!”. Today, when there are a number of such manufacturers, one says “hey we give you 10 megapixels with multiple face recognition technology”, another says “hey we have Bluetooth connectivity and an image stabilizer for countering camera shakes” and so on. So that’s how product life cycle affects the overall advertising strategy. Of course the need to strike that special emotional connect remains an imperative throughout this life cycle.

So what baffles me is the creative strategy Idea Cellular continues to adopt year after year. Each campaign continues to highlight the generic benefits of mobile telephony. The campaign with the under-privileged children being able to learn through wireless communication, the campaign with the Minister taking a quick public poll on an important issue through SMS, a damsel (apparently) in distress taking quick poll of her friends through SMS – all of this only manages to show what mobile technology is capable of and how it could be used in our day to day lives. Just where is this campaign doing that little bit called ‘differentiation’? You know differentiation, where you tell your consumers this is how you are different and better than the competition.



Even more amazing is that they continue with their generic advertising while competitors like Airtel and Vodafone are churning out nothing less than advertising gold. Their campaigns represent a brilliant mix of thematic and tactical advertising. So while they build the emotional connect through many of their endearing thematical ads, they also pepper their campaigns with advertisements that create the final reason to buy. 10 paise SMS, friendly customer care service, bill payment portals and so on. This is where Idea is missing out – they need more tactical ads in their campaigns to support the overall theme to complete the package and to create that one final reason to induce purchase by consumers. 

Amit Budhiraja

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Link : Interesting piece on afaqs!

5:31 AM

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Interesting article by afaqs! on 'The Business of Repeat Economics on Indian Television'. lot of cool insights in there, for example did you know that on an average creating 30 mins of original programming costs these channels anything between Rs. 8 - Rs. 12 lakhs (roughly $20k)?

Amit Budhiraja

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