Workshop on Marketing & Branding: Creating the Differential

 

Marketing and Branding

 

As part of the e-conference  "TiE Women - A Bootcamp for Women Entrepreneurs" organised by TiE - Delhi NCR on 29thAugust 2020, here are some of the insights on the session on “Marketing and Branding” presented by Mr. Vikas Gupta.

 

Speaker’s Profile:

Mr. Vikas Gupta

Founder & Director, 9.9 Group

 

The session was hosted by:

Ms. Upasna Sharma  and Mr. Nitin Agarwal from the Team of TiE. 

Mr. Vikas Gupta started his session asking his audience these brainstorming questions:

Which is the world’s best marketed product and which is the best market?

So, in a very interesting manner he explained that God is the best marketed product in this world and he markets: Religion

Reasons:

1.       There is Brand Promise: HOPE

2.       Brands have Logo / Symbols

3.       Consumer Research

4.       Brands have colors

5.       Advertising (Television helps in this)

6.       Brand Ambassadors (Eg – Baba Ramdev)

7.       Brand Jingles (Bhajans)

8.       Promotions / Big Sale Days (Festivals are Big Promotional Days)

9.       Merchandising / Packaging Portfolio

10.   Channels (Eg – Gurudwara)

11.   Sales Team

12.   Pricing Strategy (Donating Cash, Donating Service, Donating Hair)

13.   Rituals –

Explaining this, the speaker said that there are rituals associated with every brand.

a)      How do you eat a Kitkat ?

We strip off it’s wrapper vertically and have a vertical piece of kitkat.

 

b)      How do you consume a Champagne?

We first shake the bottle before opening it.

 

c)       How do you have a Pizza?

Go to the Pizza Hut and have it.

 

So, with all these examples, the speaker explained us the importance of Rituals with respect to a Brand that the Rituals bond us closer to the brand.

 

14.   Brand Stories – The stories associated with a brand adds you close to the brand.

 Eg. A) The Brand story of Amul  - that how 1000s and lakhs of women get together in the         morning got the milk and how they led to the White Revolution started by Mr. Verghese   Kurien, founder of Amul, in the small town of Anand, Gujarat.

B) The story of Jamshed Ji Tata, the owner of TATA STEELS, how in his early days, he used to travel on cycle selling his products in Jamshedpur city. who founded the Tata Group, India's biggest conglomerate company. He founded what would later become the Tata Group of companies. Tata is regarded as the legendary "Father of Indian Industry"

 

So, these Brand Stories help the consumers to come close to the brand.

 

15.   Brand Loyalty

 

Marketing Case Studies

Mr. Gupta further shared a few marketing case studies with us in the form of learning from his career path.

1.       Case Study : Ariel

The speaker shared his story that during 90s, he was part of the Marketing Team of Ariel.

 Competitors: Nirma and Surf Excel

 Concept: To make clothes whiter

 Mechanism: Stain removal was tried and tested by Ariel Fibre Scientists                                       using Stain Modelling in order to guarantee the removal of up to 100 stains.

  Challenges:

1.     Ariel was expensive. So, it was the task of the Marketing Team to convince it’s customers to purchase Ariel.

When Ariel was kept in the stores, in the shelves along with other detergents. It looked expensive and small on the shelf.

 

Strategy they used –

So, for the next 3 months, they went to people’s houses and spent time there watching women washing clothes.

So, it was the time of early 90s, and they watched women that they took a bucket full of water and detergent powder, they washed the clothes and after taking the clothes out, they rubbed the clothes with the detergent bar to remove the tough stains.

Observation –

So, the observation was that in a family of 4 and a half size,

In 1 month,

                 Consumption – 1 detergent powder packet + 3 bars of detergent

                 This price was in total equal to the price of Ariel.

                 So, they got the solution to their problem.

                 Since, now the mathematical equation was set. So, they would convince their customers.

 

2.   Washing is the most difficult task in the household chores. Women while washing tough stains, get hurt on their hands.

So, for this problem, they reached their customers with an "Advertising Template" stating that using Ariel, the half or one hour they spent would now be free. They had to put less effort using Ariel and getting stains removed.

So, with this mindset that now both the challenges they have found solutions to, they called women to show them this advertising and to their utter surprise,

Response they got,

“I will never buy this product”.

 

But why ?

When it’s giving much better cleaning, then why this product is rejected by these women.

Women Responded – “I believe in everything that it’s giving good cleaning and price is also sorted. But I can’t buy a product that says (saves effort) in its advertising. I am a homemaker and being a housewife, it is expected that we do all the household chores and if I buy this product, then people will think that I am lazy."

Conclusion –

The Ariel Marketing Team understood that the Detergent is not just about cleaning but also about other things. Peoples’ emotions are attached.

 

So, this was a case study of 30 years ago.

Learning –

1.      Competition was not always linear.

Here, they solved the problem, and they gave competition to the bars as well as the powder.

 

2.      Needs are both emotional and functional.

So, they were missing the emotional angle.

So, you need to see how you are marketing from the emotional angle as well.

 

3.       It’s about Value, not just Price.

 

 

2. Case Study :  Coca Cola Pricing

So, the speaker explained by giving an example of two pictures:

1.     Coca Cola Bottles (2L @ $ 0.99) - Big sized bottles sold inside the stores.

2.   Coca Cola Cans (330 mL @ $ 1.50) – Chilled small sized cans sold at the vending machines.

They observed that 90% of the profit comes from here, despite it being 10 times more expensive.

 

Your pricing is not based on the manufacturer’s pricing, it’s based on the value associated with it.

 

He explained further with an example giving us the reference of this poster –

 

 

Source - https://www.slideshare.net/SwaritYadav/rural-marketing-fmcg-pepsi-coca-cola

 

 

He also referred to this Advertisement-

Video source - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZfmd8NSZoI

 

With these examples, Mr. Gupta tried to explain that, this video source was a very powerful piece of marketing. They laid stress that the Coke was for Rs. 5 only

 

But this Business Tool eventually turned out to be a financial disaster.

For the promotion of Coca Cola @Rs. 5, everyone in the country had got down their margins that they would drive their volume so much.

But 6 months later, sugar prices in the country went down.

So, now they had to change the price to Rs. 6

 

And earlier they had laid so much stress on the Rs .5 Promotions of Coke and now they suddenly changed the price to Rs. 6 .So, it created a big confusion in the market.

 

Coke had spent millions of dollars on it’s Promotional Business.

Learning –

1.       Pricing is definitely an important aspect.

2.   But in their promotions, there was no talking about the Consumer Experience, but they were only talking about the Rs. 5 price.

3.     So, we need to understand that we should market our Product and not it’s price.

He explained it giving an example of the Loreal Advertisement where they focused on the benefits of the product and not it’s price.

 

                    Conclusion – You have to sell to your customer the benefits of your product. Pricing can’t                           alone  and should not be your product’s USP.

 

 

3. Case Study : (Digit.in) Magazine

It was a magazine about the Tech Gadgets.

Now the question was how to grow it?

The question in front of the marketing team was that how to really grow their brand competing with all other brands already present in the market like BGR, Gadgets360 who were big brands and well established in the market.

 

Strategy –

The strategy they found was they asked this question –

How many Internet Users are there in India ?

So, the answer to this question is that there are around 4-5 million users of Internet in India.

This number is more than the Internet users of North America or the Europe as a whole. India will definitely cross China in a several years.

Observation -

Why this is so ?

In the speaker’s words, this is because of the Mobile Explosion. They never had this exposure before.

Touch Screen Smartphones have come and we get them at a price of less than Rs. 4000 and you get more than 4000 options for this.

 

Concept – Massification of Regional Data

Mechanism –

So, they launched it in Vernacular Regional Languages. That’s how their problem was solved. They increased their market.

 

Learning – Target audience is constantly evolving.

 

4. Case Study : Coke vs Kvass

The speaker shared his personal experience that while he was working, a few years back in Coke, one day he got a call from one of his colleagues in Kazakhastan. Kazakhasthan was a new country developed at that time. Earlier it was  part of the USSR and then got separated from it.

So, that colleague requested to reduce the price of Coke in Kazakhasthan because here people drink the Kvass drink more than Coke.

So, the speaker responded that there is no point getting a pricing war with the local competitors.

Strategy –

 Let’s do more research and get to know the things better.

Observation –

Kvass – One of the world’s most foul smelling drinks and it was not good at taste also.

When this was the scenario then why did  the people  their not drink Coke?

So, they observed that in Kazakasthan the older generation was remembering USSR when they lived their and they used to drink Kvass. Coke was not available there in USSR.

 

Mechanism – So, the marketing team decided to shift their focus from the older generation to the younger generation. They thought it’s ok to lose the battle here because for the older generation, drinking Coke was like reliving their memories.

Conclusion – Your time is limited. So, focus on specific things and don’t get lost in a big ocean.

Learning – The problem can be different from what it appears to be.

 

 

So, with all these case studies as the reference, we get an understanding of a lot of concepts and Mr. Vikas Gupta further took forward his discussion with the following key points:

 

What is a Brand ?

In the speaker’s words,

Brand is a promise of a bundle of benefits that creates value for both consumer and the organization it belongs to.

Value means there should be consistency and good product and predictable  among the customers that they can rely on it as a Brand on its quality.

Quality Confusion should not be the issue in any case.

 

 

Mr. Gupta further referred to another Brand “Promise” which was a toothpaste and had Clove Oil and it went very well in the market because people knew the importance of Clove Oil and they purchased it for their healthy teeth.

All the other brands, which were already present before Promise was launched, they already had Clove Oil in them, but Promise was the first to claim it.

So, we need to see the ROI coming.

Source - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPInaIy8A8M

Return on Investment (ROI) is a performance measure used to evaluate the efficiency of an investment or compare the efficiency of a number of different investments. ROI tries to directly measure the amount of return on a particular investment, relative to the investment's cost. Marketing ROI is used to justify marketing spend and budget allocation for ongoing and future campaigns and initiatives.

 

 

Further talking about the Pricing, the speaker said that

Pricing has 2 elements:

1.       Manufacturer’s price + overhead charges

2.       What is the value you are creating out of your product?

Eg- You make a component  and give it to the company that is making some Medical Instruments  that are being used by some hospital. If the hospital charges them Rs. 50 and your price is just Rs. 2, you can play around with the prices and make money.

 

You need to know -

What is the value you are creating for your customer ?

What are your competitors pricing?

He explained this giving an eg of the Johnson and Johnson Powder that is especially for the kids. Any mother would pay 3 times more for it because they consider it to be safe.

 

These things we understand with Dialogue and Research.

The principles are same for both the B to C (Eg. Digit) and B to B markets (where the CIO, sell to Microsoft or Amazon)

 

Source-

https://www.walkersands.com/marketing-to-cios-practical-advice-for-b2b-tech-marketers/

https://searchcio.techtarget.com/definition/B2B

 

 

Mr. Vikas Gupta gave an example of Bollywood movies saying that most of them show Love Marriages. But in reality, 90 % of the marriages in India are arranged marriages.

So, they play with the mind of people. They show Aspirations.

 

Talking about the Coke example, had a huge financial disaster and it had to wait for one complete year till the memory faded away in the minds of the people.

He said that make sure you relate with the problem of the customer and then keep on refining it.

 

There is nothing called as “Zero Cost”.

If you don’t value your own time, then there’s no point.

 

In the current times, newspapers are dead as a marketing source. Everybody needs to go Digital for marketing purposes, to reach out to people. Newspapers are used only in the case when you have to reach to a specific target audience. Eg. The promotion of a Rolex watch, so need to advertise it in Times of India because it’s worn by a class of high people. So, that is your specific target audience in the particular case.

 

 

Mr. Vikas Gupta concluded his session giving us the highlights:

In the past, we had barriers that how will they distribute their product but today companies like Amazon and Flipkart have solved this problem of Marketing and Distribution.

 

Also, there are two levels of need:

1.       You have to consider that – which problem of your customer are you solving?

2.       Your customer can have further his customers. So, what problem are you solving of theirs?

 So, you need to make them see the benefits of what more you offer.