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“Task is to find pos­si­ble inter­sec­tion points of the brand with the consumer’s day” — Yahoo! India News

WHY SOLUTIONS?

Why do we need to under­stand ‘solu­tions’ if more than 85% of the money con­tin­ues to be spent on print and TV?

Increas­ing Competition

Indian GDP hit a tril­lion USD in 2007 and, while the fi rst tril­lion took 62 years, we are expected to hit the next tril­lion by 2015, in just eight years! This kind of dis­con­tin­u­ous growth means that the com­pet­i­tive sce­nario can only get worse (for the mar­ket­ing man­ager). Num­ber of com­peti­tors in a cat­e­gory has more than dou­bled in the last fi ve years. In the auto cat­e­gory, more cars were launched in Q1 2008 than those exist­ing a decade ago!

Brand Mar­keters are now fac­ing stiff com­pe­ti­tion from related cat­e­gories, e.g., colas ver­sus non-aerated drinks, fruit juices, golas, sug­ar­cane juice, ice-creams, kulfi, falooda, nim­bu­pani or even bot­tled water! Mar­ket­ing tie-ups and the expand­ing grey mar­ket make ‘for­eign’ brands more eas­ily avail­able to the con­sumer, e.g., Hair-care—Keune, Schwarzkopf, Tony & Guy, Tigi, Body Shop, Paul Mitchell, VO5, Lush, Neu­tro­gena, Wella.

Increas­ingly Exposed Consumers

The Indian con­sumer has wit­nessed a steady rise in dis­pos­able incomes with more spenders, sav­ing less! The aver­age Indian urban house­hold was sav­ing 4% in 2005, com­pared to 12% in 1999. By 2010, India will have almost 150,000 house­holds that qual­ify for “super-rich” sta­tus with annual income greater than INR 10 mn or $230,000. The mall and mul­ti­plex phe­nom­e­non sweep­ing even the small towns ensures that the con­sumer is out of the house and in the store! Indian retail chains are offer­ing a venue for the inter­ac­tion of the con­sumer with mul­ti­ple brands, both Indian and for­eign, with a visit to the near­est mall-multiplex turn­ing into a fam­ily out­ing, or a hang­out place for the youth.

There is also a height­ened expo­sure to the way peo­ple in other coun­tries and cul­tures think and live. The con­sumer is truly a global cit­i­zen, with a sig­nifi cant rise in peo­ple trav­el­ing abroad on work and leisure. Inter­na­tional expo­sure is also hap­pen­ing through media like BBC, CNN, Star Movies, MTV, VH1, Dis­cov­ery, Dis­cov­ery Travel & Liv­ing, Vogue, Maxim, Cosmo, Wall Street Jour­nal in Mint, etc.

Seg­mented Approach

With brand pro­lif­er­a­tion and a bit­ter share bat­tle being fought in the mar­ket­place, the trick lies in being rel­e­vant to the con­sumer, and in being able to deliver a value propo­si­tion that can’t be replaced. Dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion, prac­tis­ing the art of niche mar­ket­ing, nar­row­cast­ing or con­sumer seg­men­ta­tion is, there­fore, the key. Mar­ket­ing man­agers are mov­ing from an ‘all things to all peo­ple’ strat­egy to an ‘all things to some peo­ple’ or a ‘some things to some peo­ple’ strat­egy. From mass brands like Lux and Lifebuoy, we now have a mois­tur­iz­ing soap for the older woman, a fair­ness soap, an anti-acne soap, an anti-bacterial soap, and even soap-free face washes. Even a herbal soap like Med­imix is now avail­able in four vari­ants. Port­fo­lio man­age­ment is now about using dif­fer­ent ‘some things to some peo­ple’ prod­ucts to be ‘all things to all peo­ple’. Cad­bury has moved beyond Dairy Milk, Gems, Eclairs & Five Star to adding on.….…

Perk—Young, light, fun, female

Milky Bar—Milk, kids, nutri­tious, mothers

Bytes—Sweet snack, young, any time

Halls—Throat, candy, menthol

Cadbury’s Lite—Sugar-free, healthy, diet, diabetics

Temptations—Chocoholics, up-market, connoisseurs

Celebrations—Festive, gift­ing, mithai

Bubbaloo—Gum, kids, soft cen­tre, liq­uid, fruit

Niche Media Proliferation

The increas­ing need for seg­men­ta­tion and a focused approach to defi ning tar­get audi­ences has also spawned huge growth in focused and niche media. TV has not only seen many more gen­res com­ing into play, but also an increase in the num­ber of play­ers in each genre. From a mass chan­nel dom­i­na­tion of Door­dar­shan, Star Plus and Zee, we now have Fash­ion, Travel, Lifestyle, Sports, Movies, Music, Reli­gion, Regional, etc. The mag­a­zine space is also crowded with a host of niche and seg­mented titles. The Liv­ing Media group is an inter­est­ing study—from the mass reach English-language India Today, to India Today in Hindi, Gujarati, Tamil and other regional lan­guages, Busi­ness Today, Money Today, Cosmo, Good House­keep­ing, Time, HBR, Sci­en­tifi c Amer­i­can India, Reader’s Digest, India Today Travel Plus, Men’s Health, Pre­ven­tion, Golf Digest, Design Today, and Spice!

Mul­ti­ple Touch-points

There has been an explo­sion in media choices for the con­sumer across media. How­ever, this has not lead to any increase in the time spent on the con­ven­tional media. The same or lesser time is now being split across more choices lead­ing to a frag­mented and dis­tracted audi­ence. A tra­di­tional high reach deliv­ery medium like TV is seen to be pas­sive and not as effec­tive in deliv­er­ing engaged eyeballs.

The con­sumer is much more mobile, and is exposed to a large num­ber of uncon­ven­tional media vehi­cles. Both the agency and the client are, there­fore, look­ing at a more 360° approach to the com­mu­ni­ca­tion plan, with mul­ti­ple touch-points for the changed con­sumer. The task is to find pos­si­ble inter­sec­tion points of the brand with the consumer’s day.

“The mul­ti­tude of media options is both a chal­lenge and an oppor­tu­nity. It gives us sev­eral more streams to con­nect with our con­sumers. That’s the oppor­tu­nity view. Given the choices that con­sumers make, it calls for greater creativity—in ideas as well as exe­cu­tion. So, the old approach is surely not enough any­more. And that is the pri­mary rea­son behind our focus on 360° com­mu­ni­ca­tion. It is cer­tainly more engag­ing and effec­tive.” Rahul Welde, GM-Media Ser­vices, Hin­dus­tan Lever.

Richer Brand Experience

With so much choice, a brand needs to be well dif­fer­en­ti­ated and rel­e­vant to the con­sumer. Con­ven­tional adver­tis­ing may be too pas­sive, and there­fore, mar­ket­ing man­agers are going beyond con­ven­tional brand com­mu­ni­ca­tion and pro­vid­ing the con­sumer a richer brand expe­ri­ence in a com­pet­i­tive mar­ket. While inno­va­tions are being looked at to break­through the sheer com­pet­i­tive clut­ter, the focus is on media options that allow for the con­sumer to be atten­tive and engaged. Inter­ac­tive, cus­tomized brand com­mu­ni­ca­tion makes for a ‘touch-and-feel’ expe­ri­ence that deliv­ers a richer brand expe­ri­ence for the con­sumer besides deliv­er­ing a more engaged audi­ence. In addi­tion, it allows for a check on the response to the brand and com­mu­ni­ca­tion, unlike con­ven­tional media.

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