Himanshu - IIM ShillongArchita Singh & Himanshu Chugh | IIM Shillong Anthony Abraham SIBM PUNE...

demonetization of Indian currency by the Prime Minister, Mr Narendra Modi. We also congratu-late Solanki Gunjan Devendrabhai & Abhishek Singh from IIFT, Kolkata for their entry Trump: The Marketing Genius which has been selected for this month’s Perspective section.

In the Vartalaap section, we had the privilege of interviewing Mr. Saurabh Doshi, Media Part-nerships, Facebook India who takes us through the journey of Facebook, of how it was born, to how and why it has certain associations. How talent is intrinsic to the culture of the organiza-tion is very well evident from the fact that Mr Doshi is a CA and post completion of MBA in Fi-nance, he worked as an Investment Banker.

And how can the magazine ever end without a bit of fun! This month’s Fun Corner on logos will surely leave you puzzled. Lastly, we proudly wel-come new members to our club, and we hope to reach newer heights together.

They will buzz your feed with newer and newer marketing events and concepts every month. Thank you for being a part of Markathon and we hope you will continue to enjoy our magazine. Happy reading!!

Cheers,Team Markathon

This November, Meghalaya became the first state in India to celebrate the widely popular Japanese Cherry Blossom festival, displaying the passion and the pride that this part of In-dia holds for its culture and natural beauty. This was in the recent past supported by yet another event, the Spanish festival, La Tomatina, for which Shillong, became the host in May, and in-troduced the much-revelled festivities, which are associated to this festival, to the Indian popula-tion. Amidst all this celebration, we bring for our readers a fresh issue of Markathon to keep them abreast of the latest market happenings.

This month’s cover story highlights the contro-versial yet widely used technique of Newsjack-ing and how it impacts the customers. It also talks about how the sensitivity of a news leads to its careful scrutiny and how it can backfire, as a strong lesson for the marketers. We are also elated to share a few munches of our annual marketing extravaganza, Godsellers that con-cluded this month along with our monthly sec-tion

November, 2016, will be marked in the calendars of many for two major historic events, one where USA got its new President, Donald Trump, and to commemorate the same we have our section Jab they failed which focusses on how Hilary suffered a Marketing failure and the other, the

Himanshu

Of The MonthDaksh Bhagat

“

“

AND HIS TEAM..!!

Raghav Archita Aditya

Himanshu Suman Ravitej

EDITOR

Arnav

The Silent

Marketer

Markathon november 2016

IIM ShillongMARKATHON

Andar Ki Baat

Cover Story

9NewsJacking Arnav Khanna

| IIM Shillong

Perspective

01 Trump: The Marketing Genius

05Art of persuasion in communicationSagorika Mozumder | MICA,Ahmedabad

15VartalaapMr Saurabh Doshi

Head- Media Partnerships

18 Can the discount sales by E-tailers result in long term customer reten-

Eye 2 Eye

Interviewed By: Archita Singh & Himanshu Chugh | IIM Shillong

Anthony AbrahamSIBM PUNE

DeekshaAgarwal

GIM, Goa

Andar Ki Baat

Markathon november 2016

Andar Ki BaatSpeciaLs

19LogoisticVolkswagen LogoArnav Khanna| IIM Shillong

20AD-dictedCatch & Miss advertisements of the monthSuman Saurav & Ravitej Vadlamani | IIM Shillong

24Clinton for America Raghav Dhanuka |

IIM Shillong

Jab They Failed

Let’s look at our social media marketing

Digi - Tally

26

21Fun CornerTo get the brain ticklingAditya Kumar Gaur |IIM Shillong

24Updatesfrom the Marketing WorldSuman Saurav | IIM Shillong


Marketing Gyan

IIM Shillong1MARKATHON

The question that many of us are still pondering upon is how Donald Trump managed to trump all the pre-poll predictions and become the 43rd President of United States of America. We won-der, how the sane people of America (No sarcasm intended here) voted for a man who in his campaign made no qualms about admitting that he was there to build walls between communi-ties; was termed as a homophobe and a misogynist by most and was made fun of by the previous President himself publicly.The reason in a single word can be attributed to “Marketing”. Trump marketed himself better than Hilary in more than one ways such as follows:

BySolanki Gunjan Devendrabhai

& Abhishek SinghCampus: IIFT Kolkata

november 2016

Trump:The Marketing

Genius!

What separates the winners from the losers is how a person reacts to each new twist of fate.-Donald Trump


november 2016perspective

I. Like any successful product, he stressed on building his brand

II. Trump’s election KSPs (key selling propo-sitions) were tangible and had clarity. People knew what they could expect from their Presi-dent. Similar to when they buy any product, they seek clear value propositions

III. His campaign motto, “Let’s make America Great again!” was clear and seeked co-creation from the voters

IV. He connected with feminine audience with the help of wife Melania, daughter Ivanca and his campaign manager Kellyanne Conway. These ladies increased the target group of Trump

V. Targeted the perfect customers for brand trump, i.e. the US Working class

VI. Leveraged the power of Digital media with the help of his son-in-law Jared KushnerLet us now delve into details of each factor one by one.

I. Brand Trump:The former reality TV show star and realty ty-coon Trump created an unapologetic, fearless, pan-focussed and engaging persona of enthusi-asm and strength,.Word-of-mouth is one of the most power-ful marketing tools. Trump used to give five speeches a day. Trump’s determination and stamina created an enthusiasm among people for brand Trump. In the world of social media where referral power rules, outspending on TVC was not sufficient for Hillary.It always remains a dilemma for a brand that when a customer has a bad experience whether it should apologise and make another attempt at servicing or just make the refund and move on. The problem is many a times, the unhappy complaining customers are not the type of cus-tomers that a brand seeks. It is not advisable for an SUV brand like Hummer to start apologising to environmentalists, because they are not the right kind of customer for their brand. Trump did apologise when the tape of him saying de-rogatory statement against women leaked. He did not apologise for everything or anything else and that brought him out as a strong per-sonality.In the quest of targeting a fixed group, candi-

dates generally use a combination of words and topics to address the right demographic segment. That leads to sounding too much segment specif-

ic and it results into losing authenticity. Trump’s speech was always unrehearsed and crude; he spoke his guts.

II. Clear KSP MessageTrump’s agendas were clear unlike Clinton’s, he wanted to bring jobs in America, eliminate prob-lems due to illegal migrants, uplift the working class and subdue Chinese supremacy.While Clinton was equivocating with her agen-das, Trump was confident of poaching jobs from emerging economies back to US. He played tradi-tional politics of giving what the majority seeks. Although mainstream media criticized his stand against Mexico and Canada, the middle class was inspired by his goal.



saying “grab them by the pussy”. In a way she made Trump’s campaign acceptable to women by giving it a feminine face. The women’s vot-ing statistics was 40:60 for Trump, godknows what could have been the state if these ladies were not with Trump!

V. Targeting US Working classOne thing about the working class Americans who work in factories is that they detest smug-ness and they hate phonies. When they listened to Hillary’s dorky arrogance and smugness of being an elite, they hated her.Do not mistake working class with poor, they aren’t those who work at the McDonald’s or care about minimum wage. They have solid blue collar jobs and don’t have college degree. They care more about the trade balance and jobs at home. Trump promised to bring back jobs from Mexico, China, India and other emerging economies and they voted for Trump.The voter rejected Clinton’s idea of together-ness in favour of a solid job.

When Trump said that he will build a wall be-tween US and Mexico, it really resonated with the working class. When he was talking about deporting Muslim population, there was a huge chunk of population which subconsciously want-ed it. They may not say it in the fear of being con-sidered as a xenophobic, but they believed that it would be beneficial to them.Trump was very firm on his stand against China. He said that China is raping USA and he will im-pose heavy tariff against Chinese goods. These may sound very negative globally but for work-ers in Detroit or any other factory in USA, it’s a golden wish.

III. “Let’s make America great again”Products like mystarbucks.com, “Threadless” T-shirts or Nestle’s “meri Maggi” are result of successful co-creation. Engaging the customer to co-create is the biggest victory of any marketer. It results into both emotional connect and loyalty towards the brand.Trump’s campaign of “Let’s make America great again”, imitated from the Ronald Reagan’s fa-mous speech, called for co-creation, seeking sup-port and effort of the Americans to help him make America great again. It brings a sense of nostalgia, of great Reagan era, when you ask someone to recreate past glory. It targeted the hearts of Amer-icans who believed in its greatness.Clinton’s “Staying together” failed to ring the bells of Americans and the rest is history.

IV. Fair SexTrump did create problems for himself while talk-ing about menstruation of TV host Kelly Megyn and when the controversial tape about his derog-atory remarks on women was revealed. Yet he got his team of three very important ladies, his cam-paign manager Kellyanne Conway, his daughter Ivanca and wife Melania to swing the diaspora in his favour again.While Melenia and Ivanca were more about ad-dressing people, it was the mastermind of Kel-lyanne, also known as “Trump Whisper” that changed the perception of a certain segment of women towards Trump.Conway has three decades of experience on advis-ing Republicans on how to appeal to women. She runs her polling company, which advises firms on consumer trend and behaviour amongst women. In a nutshell her speciality is convincing women that socially conservative male can be good. She even convinced Trump to publicly apologise re-garding the leak of tape in which Trump found



VI. Digital MediaHere enters the son-in-law, Jared Kushner, real-estate scion and media mogul, one of the most trusted advisor of Trump.“Is that what it felt like when people first realized Hitler could actually take power?” tweeted Zynga co-founder Mark Pincus. Al-though Hillary had a clear plan for tech industry, she never embraced the power of digital media.Mainstream media and cable was always against Trump; one thing that Jared always told is that if New York Times and Cable mat-tered, he would be at 1% in the polls. Jared found that their support should be well organized on the web. Growing digitally would al-low them to take their mes-sage directly to the people who mattered.Jared built an elite team of experts in digital operations including Brad Parscale and Stephen Bannon. They made a team of 100 people and launched an online mission named “Project Alamo” spending $70 million a month to make people lean towards Trump and converted them into fans. Total mention of Trump was 1.7 mil-lion times compared to Clinton’s 1.3 million.Trump’s campaigners had collected around 14 million e-mail addresses and 2.5 million credit card information which laid the foundation of a possible Trump TV. It is clear that being offen-

sive and politically incorrect is now not a hin-drance in politics. Richard Huntington, Chief Strategy Officer, Saatchi & Saatchi.It can be clearly seen that in marketing a lot de-

pends on appealing to the emotions of the target group and not just being rationally and politically correct. Hillary Clinton spent a lot more on paid ad-vertising than Trump and yet Trump some-how managed to grab the eyeballs of the me-dia and the common people alike with his antics as well as blunt remarks and clear-cut promises in his cam-paigns. Trump tried to build a “coalition” of different types of vot-ers. “Great marketers know that you need a lot of people buying a little of your product to achieve commercial success,” says Hun-tington. “All political success and ultimately most commercial suc-cess involves bringing

together a broad church of people behind your point of view or your brand.” Trump may have been one of the most divisive of candidates yet nothing could stop him fromcapturing the chair of probably the most power-ful person of the world.As it is rightly said, No publicity is bad publicity in today’s world of marketing!


When the ostentatiously blonde American trade mogul, blatantly said in an interview, held sometime in 2012, “That’s one of the nice things. I mean, part of the beauty of me is that I’m very rich. So if I need $600 million, I can

put $600 million myself. That’s a huge advan-tage. I must tell you, that’s a huge advantage over the other candidates.”, the world failed to fathom his probability of winning the elec-tions. Little did he know that, four years later, in spite of his fusillade of outrageous logical fallacies, he would become the 45th president of the United States.

By Sagorika Mozumder

MICA,Ahmedabad


So, what made him successful? Other than the fact that Forbes 2016 declares his net worth as 3.7 billion USD, if we try to de-construct his messages and appeals, they appear a pile of hyperboles, untrustworthy and incoherent arguments, loud rhetoric and demeaning theatrics. But how did that help him? As I sat through my classes of consumer behavior in MICA, I understood that as a marketer, I had to credit Trump more than what I actually did. Trump aced in the delicate yet extremely significant act of ‘Persuasion’. While I was being taught the ‘Elaborative Likelihood Model’, I real-ized that Trump’s candidacy is an embodi-ment of peripheral route of persuasion. His persuasion did not make an average Ameri-can think, but it certainly made them feel! According to Klucharev, who is a Faculty of Psychology, in National Research Univer-sity Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia, “solutions to the overabundance of choices in the world—which advertisers do realize–are developed with surprising proficiency by bypassing logic and reason

Persuasion..Indispensable for communication!


november 2016 perspective

completely. This range of thinking is usually driven completely by the prefrontal cortex. Our brains will go to extensive measure-ments to evade the tireless task of rational analysis of the world around us and encour-age us to make decisions using emotion.” This was precisely the fact that Trump lever-aged, making others believe that he is right and others wrong. He never talked sense or logic, like a puppeteer he pulled the strings of his puppets through emotions where a ‘rationale’ couldn’t simply work.

The Elaborative Likelihood Model is still the most frequently used model of persuasion. It goes back to around 1986, when Richard E. Petty and John T. Cacioppo came up with this model of communication and persua-sion. But till date this model stays relevant, of course it has evolved from those times to adapt to the changes of the digital world. The model talks about two routes of persua-sion namely, central and peripheral routes of persuasion. According to the model, the route chosen for persuasion would depend on an independent variable called ‘Involve-ment’. The involvement could be in context of products, brands, politics etc.

For a high involvement category generally a central route of persuasion is preferred since they require a high elaboration, which implies that the contents of communication will be closely examined since the consum-er might not want to suffer from cognitive dissonance after the transaction, purchase, etc. The high elaboration encompasses cognitive processes such as evaluation, re-call, critical judgment, and inferential judg-ment. For this route of persuasion, the ra-tionale behind the communication should be very strong,if it does not appeal the logic of the consumers it might not work with the masses. For instance, take the case of Gerber Graduates Puffs by Nestle, which is a major child’s’ food brand, needless to say, it is a very high involvement category since parents are very particular to know the nu-tritional value of the food given to their children. Unfortunately, Nestle was sued in 2015 for allegedly falsely advertising the nu-tritional ingredients on one of its child food brands. On the other hand, the low involvement category could use the peripheral route for persuasion, since the elaboration here is low. For instance, this is where celebrity en-dorsements are used for product category like soaps, deodorants, etc. They could be hyperbolic ads, for instance in case of de-



odorants, how using their brand turn them into chick magnets. In case of Trump, the proven fact that Americans have low involve-ment for the country politics made Trumps’ p e r i p h e r a l route was a very wise move. The way the model works can be summed up in the following way:

This mode of persuasion has been used in reviving many brands which were on the brink of death. One such exam-ple is Maggi. It was a quintessential come-back for a brand where in both the modes of persuasion were used in its advertise-ment. For instance, the worried mothers, who became skeptical of the brand after its reputation got tarnished because of pres-ence of more-than-permissible lead/MSG content, were the brands first target after Maggi hit the shelves again. Hence it came up the campaign # LetYourMomKnow was aired.

This was the central route of persuasion that the brand used. In which they tried to logi-cally explain the rationale behind the brand’s come back and that the NABL (National Ac-creditation Board for Testing and Calibration Laboratories) accredited labs cleared 100%

samples of Maggi Noodles (both previous stocks and newly manufactured stocks), so

that your child can go back to his/her b e l o v e d s n a c k s . This was the cen-tral route of persua-sion. Right after the 2minutes n o o d l e s w e r e b a n n e d , the so-cial media was taken by storm as Maggi fans hav-ing un-

conditional love for the brand from all over the world starting expressing how much they missed having it.

Their love for Maggi defied every logic and for such people Maggi came up with #WeMissYouToo, which is an inclination to-wards the peripheral route of persuasion.

MARKATHON

IIM Shillong


IIM ShillongMARKATHON 8

One such brand which is in dire needs of a revamp is the Malaysian airlines, after two devastating accidents in a spa of six months, its image is terribly blemished. It has to ac-complish the mammoth task of persuading the people that its safe for a ride again.

The ELM model has evolved so subtly in the digital world that; you might not even real-ize how you as a consumer were persuaded. For instance, take the case of the numerous Ecommerce platforms like Amazon, Flipkart and the likes. For the customers who have a high involvement on such online platform sites, implying they are regular online shoppers, it becomes highly significant for a particular site to persuade the customer to shop on their site and NOT others. For such involved customers in this case the central route of persuasion would mean making product information easy for users to access by including multiple options for searching and sorting, offering detailed product de-scriptions, and providing in-depth product reviews written by fellow shoppers.

On the other hand, for people who are not familiar with the online shopping platforms a subtle peripheral route of persuasion would help in generating a lead and later converting it. In this case the use of visual hierarchy would be essential, which is akin to the concept of visual merchandising of the retail outlets. The cynosure of the page would be a nice large photo of the product, this could at once catch the attention of the viewer, persuading him/her to stay on the site further. The photos could be from vari-ous angles, hence giving a vivid imagery of the product. The numerous filtering options allow potential customers to choose from a broad range of categories that can serve as a shortcut to selecting a product they have

little interest in researching in-depth (e.g. price, rating, age of product).


cover story november 2016

By Arnav Khanna

NEWSJACKING

MARKETINGBUDGET

Introduction

“Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possi-ble exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws” - Douglas Adams

With the advent of internet and other digital channels news stories have found their way into anyone and everyone’s computer screens. The world is more connected now and it is due to this fact that news stories spread fast and die faster. But what do we as marketers have to do with it, news sto-ries are like random lightning flashes which have a tremen-dous reach and result in mass acknowledgement. The words ‘reach’ and ‘acknowledgment’ do ring a bell, don’t they? Companies spend millions of dollars to get air time for at-tention of their target audience, out of which only a fraction actually end up buying their product. But now things are not the same, disruption is another name for innovation. Compa-nies are breaking conventions and coming up with new and different strategies to gain competitive advantage. One such internet marketing techniques is Newsjacking, where com-panies and brands use famous news stories to draw attention to their own product. What is Newsjacking?

Newsjacking may be defined as the art of using news events or stories for marketing and advertising purposes, wherein the principles are to use news stories for gaining visibility, media coverage and other benefits. The term was coined by David Meerman Scott in 2011. Rather than being a core mar-keting strategy, it is more of a PR tool used by professionals to connect with their audiences. Newsjacking has been used by companies around the world where they have leveraged

Cover Story

NEWSJACKING

Cover Story

on news stories to push in their products. Fa-mous brands such as Oreo and Amul have taken advantage of news in their agendas to advertise successfully.

Let’s have a look at a few examples:

Oreo - During the blackout of Superbowl 2013, Oreo came up with this tweet which got really popular.

During the 2014 Soccer world cup, Luis Suarez bit an Italian player. This news became very popular across different media channels. Dif-ferent brands came up with their ads to benefit from this controversy.

Amul has been unknowingly following news-jacking since a long time, by constantly releasing ads on relevant topics and using clever one lin-ers it has been able to draw the reference to its butter.

Does it work?

1.Shared Limelight: Your content merges with the news, since your ad is relevant for those searching for news, it significantly pushes your brand up in the search results. This in-creases your audience, thereby bringing your brand at the centre of the most relevant dis-cussions happening in the media

2.You’ll be open to new audience: you’ll be perceived as related to the news and therefore can be contacted by those unaware of your brand. After your ad, there should be a link to your website or your blog so as to educate the potential consumer. Otherwise, your ad might be perceived as misleading

3.It relates your product to real life examples: When you promote yourself using a real event there are chances that your brand might have a deeper effect on the audience. Your brand will get acknowledged as something much more than what just comes in ads. This gives a real life perspective to your brand

4.Builds a brand’s character: When you con-vey an opinion through your brand regarding a real life event, this gives a very strong idea about your brand. It shows that you’re not just there for selling, you know what’s going on around and are connected with it as much as your audience is.



Before we delve deeper into Newsjacking, here are some basics of Inbound Marketing.

Inbound Marketing

It follows a pull strategy of marketing. Inbound marketing focusses on creating quality content that attracts the customers, it aligns its own in-terests with that of customers so that the cus-tomer approaches the brand naturally. The com-pany, instead of locating its customers, makes itself visible on a wider platform. It is a non-tra-ditional method and is known to be more effec-tive than outbound marketing. Communication is usually done via mediums where the custom-er has given you permission. Some of the im-portant tools to attract customers to your web-site is by SEO, Blogging, Webpages and Social Publishing. News jacking is a form of inbound marketing strategy, where they are pulled to-wards your product through their searches for relevant news stories

Essentials for Newsjacking

Companies follow certain procedures to News-jack. These procedures are necessary to be car-ried out in order to have a successful news-jacked campaign.

Monitor the Internet: It is extremely important for the companies to be up to date. They have to always be on a look-out for a news or a story that can be leveraged. Major news sources are always monitored. An-other major source of news for the companies is Social media portals such as Twitter, the latest trends can be found on twitter. Further, as we saw most of the companies have also used twit-ter to push their newsjacked campaign.

Optimise the content: The content has to be prepared around the news but we need to check the search volume for the keywords. These keywords will help us to get closer to the real news search results. The con-tent for the news jacked story is prepared only with those keywords which have maximum probability of being found.

Research on the topic: Thorough research on the topic is necessary to create a successful story. Original story behind the news has to be very clear so as to create a strong impact of the adver-tisement. Half knowledge about the news might result in ads giving a wrong message, which can create bead publicity.

Agility and timing: With the rapid pace of technology and events, news stories have a very short lifetime. Com-panies need to act at the right moment. Once a news story has lost its popularity, Newsjacking would be futile. Right time would be to publish your ad right after the news breaks, and when the journalists are looking for more information to report on the news story.

Differentiated angle: There should be a particular angle to the news story that should be kept in mind. This angle helps the companies to strike the right chord with its customers. Their attention is captured when they are able to connect the brand with the news’ angle. E.g during the Suarez’s bite controversy, Snickers gave the angle of hunger



Lenskart had to issue an apology for their own advertising

India as a country has been growing rapidly, thereby giving way to newer disruptions in the way we do business. However, experiment-ing with marketing strategies should always be done keeping in mind their effectiveness. Using social media channels to push newsjacked ads cannot be very effective in Indian context as the overall reach is not very high. However, by mak-ing use of more conventional mediums such as print media to give ads based on newsjacking can be very successful. This has been proven by Amul which has been newsjacking to give inge-nious advertisements leading to large scale con-sumer entertainment. This has helped the brand develop such a strong position in Indian market

And very recently due to the sudden news of Demonetisation, many companies tried to capi-talise on this to promote their brands, one such example is that of Paytm, online wallet services.



MARKETINGBUDGET

to his action, this was not why he actually bit the player, but giving this angle actually would help brand to sell the nougat bar.

Market your newsjacked story: After creating a successful ad based on a news, companies need to make sure that the ad reach-es their audience. It needs to be publicised at an equal level as the actual news. Again, social me-dia which brought the actual news can be used to spread out our newsjacked story

Are we ready for it?

Newsjacking as a strategy is a High risk high re-turn deal. While Newsjacking brings many ben-efits along with it, it has a few downsides too

Time Sensitive: Time plays a huge role when we talk about the timing of jacking a news, if you jack too early, you end up going unrecognised. On the other hand if you jack too late you don’t get the re-quired attention.

Ola Chennai Floods: During the floods, this started as a random joke that how would people book a cab under such a condition in order to commute. Ola used this as an opportunity and introduced Ola boat service to cater to people stuck in their houses.

Getting Wrong audience: When you as a company end up giving your opinion on a news, you are bound to be attacked by haters. This leads to unsolicited audience and wastes your efforts

It can backfire: When not done with appropriate forethought, Newsjacking can lead to very large scale damage to the brand. One such example is Lenskart which tried to use the Nepal Eathquake news to push its products. This was met with a lot of backlash on twitter as well on social me-dia due to huge loss to people in Nepal. Finally,

vartalaap


vartalaap november 2016

VARTALAAPAn Interview with Mr. Saurabh Doshi

Saurabh Doshi joined facebook in 2014. A CA and MBA by profession,he has 15+ years of experience in the industry. Cur-rently, he is involved in ramping part-nerships teams in India with the core fo-cus on connecting people to content and creators that best inform and entertain them on Facebook, Instagram and FB Mes-senger. He also supports Facebook part-ners in the adoption of new products.

Head-Media Partnerships

Facebook



Markathon: Facebook has a lot of tie ups with key figures and key organi-zations. Has Facebook been able to in-tegrate into the rural areas? What ini-tiatives has Facebook taken to reach the rural segment?

Facebook has a lot of focus on key fig-ures and organizations because users who come to the platform want to in-teract with such figures and consume that content. On the rural side the challenges are very different. There are issues of connectivity in such ar-eas hence facebook on its part tries to do a lot by providing a similar ex-perience to its users on 2G. Facebook Lite is one application that is very light and can be accessed on 2G as well. This is one major initiative but Facebook is constantly innovating to

Markathon: Sir, for marketing a prod-uct social media plays a major role, in view of the same how difficult was it for Facebook to make people aware about the social media?

In the early days, for any new plat-form it is very difficult to make peo-ple aware about the same. In case of Facebook,people could really relate because it was the first platform of its kind where people could really con-nect with their friends and family. So the major focus was on users and pro-viding that connectivity and value. So once the user base is created every-thing else follows, the brands follow and the businesses follow. Hence, it was a win win situation for Facebook as the service that they were provid-ing really clicked with the masses.

It was a win win situation for Facebook as the service that they were providing really

clicked with the masses

“ “

vartalaap

provide more and more such facili-ties to the users in the urban as well as rural areas.

Markathon: You are a CA by profes-sion. How was the journey from CA to Media Partnerships? How flexible should one be in the corporate scenar-io to take advantage of the opportuni-ties available.

Being from a Gujarati family, num-bers and business run in our blood so it comes very naturally. After com-pleting my CA I went on to pursue my MBA in Finance and joined Invest-ment Banking post that. However, the impact was not that much while through media one can impact the lives of people a great deal. I also had some exposure in Media and was fas-cinated by it, So I gradually shifted my career towards Media and have been in the field for quite sometime now. When people chose their careers they do not have much exposure and knowledge regarding other fields. If one does not feel the passion to go to work every day it is definitely time to find your calling. I am a finance person working in a very high tech

company doing creativity and con-tent, which in itself is very rare, but



I am happy with the work that I do and there are numerous examples in the industry where people completely changed their career paths but are still doing very well. It is all about finding what is right for you and then believ-ing in yourself to achieve it.

Markathon: Facebook video chat has a lot of competition from WhatsApp and Hangout. What potential do you see for the Facebook feature?

There will always be competition but the good thing is that one can learn a lot from competition. Facebook was

not the first to introduce the video calling feature but the important thing is that when Facebook in-troduced this feature it received great response from its users. Facebook provides its users with a whole social experience and the users have the connectivity and when any feature is introduced

inside that social experience it is easy for the product to find its foot and

Students want to go to the outside world and gain practical

knowledge but tend to forget the importance of theory.



get acknowledged among its users. Markathon: Every product has its product life cycle where it gets intro-duced, grows, matures and then de-clines. How has the experience been for Facebook? How has it been able to cope up with its lows?

The key is to keep innovating, to come in every day and work hard on the product. Facebook started off as a small page where some university

students connected and now it has come a long way. The major feature with Facebook is the NewsFeed which is the main feed on Facebook, earlier people just had pages and destina-tions that they could go to but now it has the NewsFeed which other social networking sites such as Twitter have also adopted. Constant innovation keeps us going and we really focus on user experience minute by minute. Markathon: How is the structure in-side Facebook? What should a young

graduate joining Facebook expect?

So Facebook is about being open and having empathy. Facebook has an open culture and everyone is allowed to voice their opinions. You can dis-cuss your ideas with your boss and the top management welcomes your suggestions. There is no preferential treatment and even the top managers sit at the same table where the other employees do. I came from a tradi-tional company with separate cabins but when I joined Facebook, it was a very different experience and took some time to get accustomed to but in the end it proves really beneficial for the company and its employees as everyone feels at par.

Markathon: Any tips for the young MBA graduates who will be soon join-ing the industry?

Students today really feel that theo-retical knowledge is not as important as the practical one. Students want to take up internships and projects and learn the practical nitty gritties but for one to be successful, it is extreme-ly important to have the theoretical concepts clear first and then build on that. You all are young now and have the time to learn about the outside world, but what is important now is to utilize the time you have here on campus and make the most of it so that it contributes to your success in the long run.

eye2eye

IIM Shillong

Antony AbrahamSIBM Pune

In the new world of market, the big discounts will provide only a way to penetrate and attain at-

tention in the market for a new entrant. The long term retention really matters depending upon many other factors. E-tailors like Flipkart came with Big Billion day which provided 70-90% discount and forced its competi-tors to provide discounts for a certain number of days. Earlier, only during festive seasons, such huge discounts were provided. However, now cus-tomers expect much lower prices for the products from the e-tailers. Hence, the e-tailers are forced to provide discounts to meet the customer demands and to compete in the market in a healthy man-ner. These huge discounts are compensated by the investments that they get from different sources. However, the investors need profits in the long run and need to reduce the discounts. The best way to increase profit is by reselling the products to current customers rather than finding and selling it to a new customer. In order to do that, retention of customers is attained through many ways and the primary factor should not be such discounts. The effective way that Amazon uses is by providing recommendations to the customers depending upon their purchase behaviour or pat-tern. Other ways are by providing loyalty programs, sending newsletter emails, surprise or delight the customer, best delivery and return service and the most effective of these is by implementing the cor-rect combination of the 7 P’s. Thus, it shows that the big discounts solely cannot result in long term customer relation.


Can the discount sales by E-tailers result in long term customer retention?

Topic for the next issue: Will mobile wallets revolutionalize customer purchasing pattern or is it just a passing wave?” Your opinion (view/counterview) is invited. Word limit is 250-300. Last date of sending entries is 15th December 2016. Include your picture (JPEG format) with the entry. Winners will receive a prize money of Rs. 500 each!

Deeksha Agarwal GIM

Discounts are known to be one of the best strategies to attract the at-tention of customers and increase the market share. Online stores have learnt this strategy from brick & mortar stores and have taken it to the next level. A huge number of e-tailers like Amazon, Flipkart, Jabong, etc. usu-ally keep a certain percentage of their products on discount. They occasionally hold mega sales events like Filpkart’s - Big Billion Day Sale and Amazon’s – Great Indian Festival due to which price has be-come the biggest factor that drives customers to-wards shopping online. Most of the e-tailers are start-ups and offer deep discounts, often pricing their products much lower than their cost. As entry-level players, they not only want to capture the market but also need to build the brand name, customer loyalty and relationship with sellers. This brings about an initial loss but as these stores are backed by venture capitalists and private equity investors they are able to sus-tain with a relatively higher level of security in the market. Once they are established they can cre-ate a more efficient market due to lower overhead costs by continuing to provide goods at discounted prices. Also, economies of scale gives online stores an edge over their offline counterparts and brings about a significant difference in their product pric-es and quality by providing a competitive environ-ment.So long as another bubble does not hit these E-commerce giants, they seem to be doing well to keep customers glued to their online portals for a long time now.

eye2eye november 2016

18

In 2015, when the world got to know that a company like Volkswagen had rigged their cars to pass the emission tests, it had to face a lot of heat, resulting in the CEO’s resigna-tion and a massive retraction of order. Volk-swagen might be grabbing the eye balls now for the wrong reasons, but it has been there to build its credibility for a long time. Over the years the ownership was passed on to dif-ferent countries and the company saw may

changes in their logos. Let’s have a look

In 1937, the company was started, by the Nazi’s German Labour Front as a part of Hit-ler’s vision to create a “People’s car”. A car that could be owned by common people

through their savings. The design was large-ly influenced by Ferdinand Porsche. The logo represents a gear, the wings are given to re-semble the Nazi Swastika.

During the war, the factories produced mili-tary vehicle for German forces and the logo was changed slightly,but still relevant. Dur-ing the war, the factory was heavily bombed

after that it was handed over to the British, headed by British Army Officer Major Ivan Hirst manufac-turing was resumed and the production was major-ly for military vehicles for the British armyVolkswa-gen was transferred back

logoistic november 2016

to Germany. Its cars exported to United States. During this phase the company went into major ex-pansion. With differ-ent brands acquired in its portfolio, such as Seat, Skoda till 1991. T h i s

logo was the coloured version of the 1945 logo. The V was brought clos-er to the W and the outer ring became thinner. In 2012, Volkwagen in-troduced the logo, with the silver letter-ing appearing to have a shine, as well

as the reflection from the 2000 logo rein-stated. The current logo was unveiled on Sept. 4 2012 with the world premiere of the 2013 Volkswagen Golf Mk7 in Berlin.

CATCHRMISS

AD-dicted december 2013


By Suman SauravIIM SHILLONG

PRODUCT: Pan Bahar

POSITIONING: Placing Pan Bahar as Class and em-phasizing that class never goes out of style

Created By: DDB Mudra

YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NYBzCoGaFY CONCEPT: The commercial for Pan

Bahar, the pan masala brand of mouth freshener from DJ Group, has all the trappings of a Bonds film. Pierce Brosnan in lead role, a fast car, beauti-ful women, incredulous stunts and a weapon of mass destruction—a can of pan masala. It surely meant to highlight the style that bond films have..

VERDICT: Miss

The advertisement of Pan Bahar was supposed to appeal to the people of urban class mainly, but it failed on many fronts. First of all the surprise of see-ing actor Pierce Brosnan appear for a pan masala brand and Presumably neither the company, nor their ad agency realised that Brosnan’s first wife and daughter had both died of cancer, and that he him-self actively works for cancer-related causes. This is a classic double-edged killing machine. On one side, the sheer audacity of getting in Pierce Brosnan is in-credible. Brilliant coup this one. On the other hand, what a disappointment! While the Bond genes are almost lost under his beard, you almost expect Bond calibre action. But the execution is a downer. Sadly the advertisement doesn’t go anywhere near that.

By Ravitej VadlamaniIIM Shillong

PRODUCT: Hero Moto Corp

POSITIONING: Hero Salutes the real Heroes of India. #Hero-Salutes

CREATIVE AGENCY: L&K Saatchi & Saatchi

YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3u0McB2-NGM

CONCEPT: A man in army uniform runs to catch a bus, which is just leaving the stop. A motorcycle rider passing him notices this, and gets ahead of the moving bus and asks the driver to stop. The soldier thanks the rider before he gets on, and is surprised to be greeted by the rider on a Hero bike with a salute. Nodding his acknowledgement, he gets into the bus, only to be saluted by everyone in the bus. In other instances, members of the Navy and the Airforce get the same respectful greeting from the public. The film ends with the message: ‘Hero salutes the real heroes’.

VERDICT: Catch

With a combination of great positioning, timing and content, the advertisement managed not only to cap-ture the mood of the nation, but also establish Hero Moto Corp as a brand which stands for the real In-dian who salutes the armed forces of the country. In the aftermath of the deadly Uri attack and the need-less politics played around the event, it served as a timely reminder to the nation to respect the armed forces and is a great example of social marketing.

AD-dicted november 2016


fun corner november 2016

Clinton for America


jab they failed november 2016

Jab They Failed

Political campaigns have increasingly become an im-portant sphere for understanding consumer(voter) in-sights. We shall try to analyze the marketing perspective of the Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign and what went wrong in the entire communica-tion and its significance in the era of social media, during one of the most publicized battles for the White House.

1.Why Political Campaigns should target a broader seg-ment

#NotMyAbuela: A post on Clinton’s campaign website that tried to target Hispanic voters by employing half a dozen Spanish words, speaking of 7 ways in which Hillary was similar to their grandmother (Abuela) enraged millions of Hispanics. Twitter was flooded with the posts that talked of the hardships endured by the Hispanic grandmothers which Clinton would never understand. Trying to target different segments with different slogans, she ended up having as many as 84 slogans, which left her with no core message. Whereas Trump’s “Lets Make America Great Again” was ambitious and about the nation and the voter himself, Clinton’s “I’m with her” was more about the can-didate.

2.Simplicity is the key to successful political ads

The Democrats’ campaign on Trump’s “Immigration Ink Blot”, which depicted a Rorschach association of Trump along with animation and typography was too arty and psychoanalytical. Apart from those weird sound bites and art, the message itself is hardly persuasive. It accuses Trump of building a deportation force and a great wall. Well, there are millions who believe in the idea of Trump, who is an embodiment of the harsh-and-rough pop cul-ture of America and the American ego; and so in effect this lofty campaign with an ubiquitously patronizing tone polishes all those followers of Trump who believe in his idea of deportation, as crazy, citing disdain for all of them. This was one of the biggest drawbacks of her campaign, as Trump never scorned her followers as a “basket of de-plorables” for believing in her idea of America.

Moreover, another Clinton campaign titled “Role Models”

shows innocent kids watching TV featuring Trump in his nasty, sexist remarks. 8-year-olds hardly watch news (in the absence of their parents) and even if they do, they know that politics is a dirty business. Stressing on his characteristic qualities of upfront bluntness and rudeness, which has long been evident, is futile.In contrast, Trump’s campaign had been more direct and simple. The one titled “Two Americas” compared his vi-sion of America with that of Clintons. Whereas Clinton’s America is replete with huddled refugees walking to a grim tune playing in the background, Trump’s America features happy and content families. It stresses on the threats pos-sessed by the illegal immigrants in Clintonland vs a safe and secure environment in Trumpheaven. The key to the campaign was its conventional simple message portrayed in an easy to decipher detail-free manner.

3.Product and Place: The 2Ps that Clinton forgot

Negative marketing is essential but it comes at a cost when you cross the line. Obama’s campaign was one of the best marketing campaigns, not because it derailed the opponent, but because it stood on its own, the product was Obama himself and not the competitor. Whereas, for Clinton, the focus was too much on the competitor. Trade agreements were minefields for her and her


jab they failed july 2016 november 2016 jab they failed

stance on NAFTA and TPP were always complicated and evolved throughout the tenure of her office as a Senator and during the campaign which led to a diminishing support from the blue collars. Contrast it with Trump’s artless and non-pretentious position on ripping NAFTA and TPP. What made matters worse was that even Sanders opposed these trade deals in the primaries. Place is anoth-er P that matters in marketing, and Clinton faced many upsets in her territories. She took democratic strongholds very lightly and even skipped campaigning in many of those and lost both the primaries and general election in Michigan.

4. Underestimating coin toss for a black swan

Clinton got the demographics and psychographics of the voters completely wrong. First, a lower number of African-American and Latinos turned up for the voting compared with 2012. Of these, de-spite derogatory and racist remarks against black communities by Trump, only 88% African-Americans voted for Clinton compared to 93% for Obama. She also failed among women electorate compared to Obama. Many young voters had sided with Sanders in primaries, and therefore didn’t turn up for voting. Had she thought about the long run, she would have refrained from harsh remarks against Sanders, and instead focused on her own charter and development policies. Also the psychographics of the voter could not be predicted accurately. Trump supporters when interviewed were less likely to vouch for him, because of the (possibly) negative impression that it might bring about and so, what was a coin toss in reality, seemed more like a black swan event.

23

IIM Shillong

It came as a delight when Google announced that India will be one of the few countries where its Pixel smartphone duo will be launched. Google’s Pixel and Pixel XL went up for pre-orders in India via major retailers like Flip-kart, Chroma, Reliance Digital, and others. With Apple’s I-phone 7 launch in India, Google is eyeing to dominate the Indian smartphone market.

Google launches Pixel in India

Google launches YouTube Kids app in India

Google launched You-Tube Kids in India, a spe-cial app of the video por-tal with family-friendly content. Google said it has partnered with sever-al YouTube creators in In-dia for exclusive content for YouTube Kids app. The app is available on both iOS and Android. This app will be competing with several apps that are al-ready present on Google play which produces chil-dren friendly content. The company has roped in top content creators from India to create videos for the new YouTube Kids platform..

By Suman Saurav| IIM Shillong


Bose Launches Newest Systems

Audio equipment special-ist Bose decided to launch its Professional audio sys-tem, the Bose ShowMatch and DeltaQ in India. The idea and execution of event was brought on board to deliver the exclu-sive B2B launch event tar-geted at over 200 sound designers, music profes-sionals, club owners and concert organizers. The audio systems are placed in premium segment and has high sound quality. Bose professional loud-speakers feature the most versatile DeltaQ design,.

The Best of Global digital marketing conference to be held in Banglore and

Best Marketing Interna-tional and Valiant Busi-ness Media in association with Gazelle Business Me-dia is having “The Best of Global Digital Marketing Conference” tour in India. It will include full day con-ference which will cover all areas of internet mar-keting, including email marketing, social media marketing, search and on-line display advertising. The speakers will include Hando Sinisalu, CEO at Best Marketing Interna-tional (Estonia), Anupam Dixit, Head of Global brands at Twitter India.


digi-tally

Our Social Media Pages have been buzz-ing all month. Check out some of our posts here!


digi-tally november 2016



27

digi-tally

IIM Shillong IIM ShillongMARKATHON28


https://in.linkedin.com/in/markathon

http://iims-markathon.blogspot.in/

www.issuu.com/markathon

https://twitter.com/Markathon

https://www.facebook.com/markathon.iims/

Articles Are invited“Best Article”: Solanki Gunjan Devendrabhai

& Abhishek Singh | IIFT Kolkata

They receive a cash prize of Rs.1000 & a letter of appreciation

We are inviting articles from all the B-schools of India. The articles can be absolutely any-thing related to the world of marketing but it should be an original work that is not pub-lished elsewhere. The articles can be specific to the regular sections of Markathon which

includes:

•Perspective: Articles related to development of latest trends in marketing arena.•Productolysis: Analysis of a product from the point of view of marketing.•Strategic Analysis: A complete analysis of marketing strategy of any company or an event.

Apart from above, out of the box views related to marketing are also welcome. The best entry will receive a letter of appreciation and a cash prize of Rs 1000/-. The format of

the file should be MS Word doc/docx.The last date of receiving all entries is 15th December, 2016. Please send your entries

marked as <ARTICLE NAME>_<SENDERS’ NAME(S)>_<INSTITUTE> to [email protected].

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