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K J SOMAIYA INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT STUDIES & RESEARCH VOL. V | ISSUE V | OCT ’14
MARKSMAN The
‘Exclusive
Interview with
Dr Rangaswamy’
>> pg 06
>> pg 12
>> pg 16
>> pg 20
Cristiano Ronaldo
PIONEER:
FAUX PAS:
Sula Wines
Bridging the gap in
Toilet-to-tap
Flipkart’s Big Debacle
BRAND MARKIVE:
SPECIAL STORY:
COVER STORY:
The
MARKSMAN wishes you
Dear Readers,
We hope you had a great Diwali! As we continue the festive spirit looking forward to
unraveling the new year, this month we decided to take a good look at an emerging and
unconventional marketing practice that has a strong counterintuitive appeal.
This issue's cover story revolves around long tail marketing -- at its core, the idea of
discovering niche markets. But put to application in today's unique context of
information super growth, there are various interesting insights waiting to be found out
here -- for instance, between someone who searches for "bikes" and someone who
searches for "Pulsar 180 DTSi price in Mumbai", it's evident as to which of them is
more likely to be the prospective buyer. And yet, these lessons are waiting to be
unpacked and applied fully, because much of the focus has been on keywords reflecting
the most popular and most sought after G&S, thereby ignoring the power of specificity.
The special story takes a deep look into the talk of the town: Flipkart's Big Billion Day
debacle, which will long be remembered in the history of marketing in India. The Brand
Markive of this issue takes a close look at Sula, a brand that has made Nashik India's
answer to the Napa Valley.
This time we have on exclusive record a most special authority in the field of
marketing and analytics for the Tête-à-Tête -- Dr. Arvind Rangaswamy, Professor of
Marketing, Penn State University. He co-founded the field of Marketing Engineering with
Gary Lilien and has played a key role in the emergence of analytics worldwide.
Also, we are glad to have got such a good response for our articles for this month, and
after evaluating we have featured Adwitiya Tiwari’s article who is from XLRI,
Jamshedpur. And for all those entries which haven’t been featured this month, we
thank you all for your response and encourage you to keep writing to us with the same
fervor.
Happy Reading!
Team Marksman
The Interface -- the Marketing Club of SIMSR
@marksmansimsr
EDITOR’S NOTE
OCTOBER 2014 01
02 THE MARKSMAN
TWEETS
IT’S ALL ABOUT
AD-ITUDE
BRAND MARKIVE
COVER STORY
LONG TAIL
MARKETING
SPECIAL STORY
Flipkart’s BIG Billion
Day Debacle
REWIND
10th SIMSR Global
Marketing Conference
MARKETING FAUX PAS
Hall-MARK CAMPAIGN
PIONEER
Tete – a - tete
BOOKWORM
BUZZ
20
18
16
12
08
06
05
03
22
25
14
32
# TWEETS
#SaveWedgwoodCollection
After being ruled to sell the towns
Wedgwood Museum’s assets in
England, The Sentinel launched a
twitter campaign in order to save
these important industrial archives.
To be a part of this campaign,
readers were asked to tweet and
post selfies with their favorite
Wedgwood pieces. These tweets
were to be followed by
#savewedgwood hashtags. The
campaign became an historic event
as it raised around £15.75 mn with
about 7500 individuals donating
quite enough to save these archives.
#ISPCA1 - Animal Selfies
Required
To celebrate the World Animal Week started
October 4th, the non - profit organization Irish
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
(ISPCA) launched a social media campaign called
– ‘Love your Pets’. This campaign could be
supported and followed on Twitter using
WorldAnimalWeek alongwith the hashtag
#ISPCA1. Followers were requested to share
the photos of their pets to support the
campaign. Consequently, they were encouraged
to donate towards the work of this not for
profit organization. Heartfelt stories of
rehoused pets and requests for giving shelter to
the abandoned ones were spread through this
campaign.
Save WE archives
Every dog has its day,
especially for ISPCA!
OCTOBER 2014 03
#bendgate
This tweet by Kitkat has even surpassed
the famous Dunk in the Dark tweet put
up by Oreo during the Superbowl
blackout. Nestle in an attempt to
capitalize on Apple iPhone 6’s – Bending
flaw, came up with a tweet – “we don’t
bend, we #break.” Within no time the
tweet went viral with as much as 1000
retweets in an hour. Over the next 48
hours, it was retweeted some 23000
times and had around 10,000 favourites.
However, it did not just stop there as
Nestle furthered the campaign with
another tweet the immediate next day
– “So what else bends or #breaks?” The
#bendgate tweet started by Kitkat, thus,
has got a huge response as compared to
Oreo’s Dunk in the Dark which had
around 15000 retweets and 6000
favourites.
TWEETS
#100DaysOfModiSarkar
To commemorate Modi Sarkar’s 100 days
of coming into power, Times Now
launched a special micro site –
www.100daysofmodisarkar.com. Taking
help of various social media platforms, this
site spoke of the much glorified 100 days
of Modi reign wherein it displayed tweets
using #100DaysOfModiSarkar. It thus,
displayed a series of emotions and tracked
what the citizens of India felt on the
completion of the 100 days of Modi Sarkar.
04 THE MARKSMAN
Have a break. Bend a kitkat.
Har Har Modi, Ghar Ghar Modi!
OCTOBER 2014 05
IT’S ALL ABOUT AD-ITUDE
The newest BMW Television commercial builds on the most common dilemma that every
man faces at one point or the other; when should he just start enjoying the drive called life.
The Ad, with the background score of a racing car, opens with a new born baby who goes
through adulthood and old age in a matter of seconds. This simple yet beautifully executed
commercial signifies how we deny ourselves the joy and seldom enjoy the life. BMW urges
to take that step to make our metaphorical road more pleasurable, enjoyable and joyful by
getting our own BMW. The film ends by simply suggesting, “Why postpone joy?” On the flip
side BMW is also trying to eliminate the cognitive and cultural reservations, which people
still harbor about luxury cars. The simplest of ideas portrayed through the least amount of
words and with maximum impact is how this Commercial can be described.
TELEVISION AD
Client: BMW India
Agency: Ogilvy & Mather (Gurgaon)
BMW – Don’t Postpone Joy
A picture is worth a thousand words. Band- Aids new minimalistic take on waterproof
adhesive antiseptic tapes (adjoining) shows just that. A rudimentary idea portrayed in an
impactful manner.
PRINT AD
Band-Aid 100% Waterproof!
To enjoy this ad simply click on the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_HdndRWNK8
BRAND MARKive Sula: The Wine from the Warmer Regions
Apart from being well known as one of the
places where the Kumbh Mela is organised
every 12 years, Nashik has attained
popularity for being the wine capital of India
during the last decade. With more than 35
wineries established in the region, Nashik
has turned into the Napa Valley of India. The
forerunner that started the trend of these
mushrooming wineries in the region was
none other than Sula wines.
Sula winery has grown from a small
establishment to the market leader of the
Indian wine industry. With more than 25
brands of wines offered under its flagship,
including Sauvignon Blanc, Chenin Blanc,
Caberet Shiraz, Zinfandel, etc., it has
managed to capture the premium as well the
affordable wine market to a large extent.
Sula’s premium wines have won many
awards, accolades and wine tasting events,
which have helped it to establish its
presence globally.
Sula wines have been listed in many of
the top-notch restaurants around the
world. Who would have thought that
Indian wines could compete with those
of the French and California? But
somebody did, and that somebody was
none other than Rajeev Samant the
visionary behind Sula wines.
Rajeev Samant and the Californian
winemaker Kerry Damskey had ventured
into a partnership and started Nashik
Vintners Pvt. Ltd. (parent company of
Sula) in 1997. It took them over two
years to complete the licensing process,
and the first wine grapes were harvested
and crushed in 1999 and the first bottle
was sold a year after. In the year 2008-09
when the industry of the premium wines
had been hit hard by recession, Rajeev
Samant came up with the affordable
wines that now have a major stake in
their market share.
06 THE MARKSMAN
Sula has grown leaps and bounds within
the short span of time it has been established.
The Indian wine industry is still very new and
immature and has not reached its full potential.
The growth rate is expected to be high and a
major player in the category is bound to be
Sula: the wine from the warmer region.
Trivia:
Sula was named after Rajeev Samant’s
mother Sulabha.
Rajeev Samant is a Stanford graduate who
left his lucrative job in Oracle to pursue
winemaking.
It was the only winery to be given a
license in the 15 years in which it was
established.
In India, Sula was the only wine that
printed the region of origin.
The sun was used as a logo to indicate
that it was a wine from the warmer
region.
Desert wines (sweet wines) were
introduced to the Indian market by Sula.
Sula also produces Grapeseed Oil, which
is a healthy alternative to vegetable oil. It
also moisturizes the skin and is very good
for hair as well.
Vinoteca, a wine bar, has been opened by
Sula in Mumbai.
BRAND MARKive
2008 also saw the commencement of
the highly popular “Sulafest.” Originally a
one day event has now turned into a
two-day affair with more than 10,000
guests participating. It is held during the
first weekend of February, and is also
one of the main reasons of the
popularity of the brand. The festival is all
about wine tasting, food, music, concerts,
dance, etc. Other than the festival, Sula
is well-equipped with a wine tasting
room, a first of its kind in India, and a
resort that is open to all throughout the
year.
OCTOBER 2014 07
COVER STORY LONG TAIL MARKETING
While browsing through a swanky new
retail store, we often see the products that
are the most popular, the trendsetters, the
stars, the ones that guarantee that the store
is a winner, to be promoted in a very
prominent fashion. Examples of such
products could be Harry Potter and the
Deathly Hallows in ‘Crossword’ or a Pink
Floyd album in ‘PlanetM’. These products are
always vigorously promoted and often
become the key ingredient that leads to the
success of a store.
Meanwhile, there are some products that
aren’t so popular, but continue to sell, with
barely any attention being paid to their
special promotion. However, in some stores,
since the variety of inventory of these less
popular items is very large, they may make
up a significant chunk of the total sales. If we
were to plot the sales of these individual
products, we would see a long distribution
curve, with a dominant head (the star) and a
long tail (the less popular).
“Long tail marketing focuses on the less
popular products, developing a business
sales model based upon products in the
long tail." The term ‘Long Tail Marketing’
was first coined by Chris Anderson in an
article featuring in the October 2004 issue
of ‘Wired’ magazine, to describe the
business strategies of e-Tailers like
Amazon.com; how they sell high volumes of
their popular products, as well as their
niche or unique items. The first area where this strategy can be
used is traditional retail stores. The focus is
on bringing customer diversity into the
picture. Each of these long tails is made up of
more than one customer segment, which
means that higher the number of customer
segments, longer will be the tail and hence
higher the diversity. It allows businesses to
reach more niche customers whose
interests are not very mainstream. For brick
and mortar stores, the biggest challenge
when it comes to long tail marketing is
devising an intelligent strategy to manage
this inventory of less popular products, while
making sure that the sales of the popular
products does not take a serious hit. Since
we do not replace the popular items with
the less popular ones, but instead
supplement the inventory, cost of storing
inventory plays a pivotal role in this respect.
For smaller retailers, long tail marketing can
be the point of differentiation that they seek
from larger chain stores.
08 THE MARKSMAN
COVER STORY COVER STORY
“Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement. “
- Samuel Johnson.
The idea of owning something customized is
always much more appealing than something
off the shelf. This perception might increase
the footfalls in such small retail stores, which
may further convert into successful sales.
Stocking less number of items also helps to
increase curiosity and generate interest in
these products. The main drawback of
implementing this strategy is that suppliers
cannot offer large discounts since the
products are so varied.
The second area where this strategy has
been implemented extensively is that of e-
Tailing. Since online retail stores have an
unlimited virtual shelf space, competing for
limited shelf space is obviously not an issue.
Famous sites like Amazon and Netflix, stock
their inventory in centralized warehouses,
while displaying their collection online. Even
though web-page maintenance has its costs,
stocking and maintaining inventory in a
warehouse is much more expensive.
Moreover, digital products like iTunes and
Amazon’s Kindle books don’t even require
warehouse space, and are even more
pocket-friendly. An important aspect that
needs to be worked upon is the conversion
of this increased inventory into sales. For a
customer, finding and tracking the product
of his/her choice will be the factor that
decides whether the product will be
bought. A catalogue or search system that
lets customers browse through products is
of utmost importance. Links like ‘those who
viewed this product also viewed’ are helpful
in increasing the visibility of the ‘long tail’
items.
Another important area of implementation
is microfinance. Sanctioning of small loans
for customers who do not have an
established credit history, and are ignored
by the traditional banks but, who now form
a significant niche market in several
developing countries in Africa and Asia is an
example of the multitude of applications of
this strategy.
OCTOBER 2014 09
COVER STORY COVER STORY
A company that relies heavily on the long
tail for its revenue is Google. Chris
Anderson called Google the ‘Long Tail
Advertisers’. Google realizes that
advertising is not just for the stars but
also for the niche market. Google’s
AdSense and AdWords being
performance based tools, allows niche
marketers and niche content providers to
fully take advantage of this facility. For
example, if a business depends on people
finding its website on Google, a strategy
which can be used is of creating multiple
webpages, for the multitude of services
provided in the niche area of business.
The result will be a lot less competition
in comparison to regular keyword search
and an increase in the visibility of the
business as well. For Google, it is a win-
win situation. They make money from the
most popular ads of the ‘head’ straight
down to the tip of the ‘long tail’.
For any business though, the added
challenge is to understand and implement
the optimal number of keywords to
associate itself with. A study shows that
Google’s average number of keywords in
a search has now become three, which
shifts the focus from keywords to key
phrases. Understanding the long tail
online is a challenge for marketers. When
it comes to keywords and searching
online, an analogy can be picked up from
the famous quote: “Little drops of water
make the mighty ocean”.
This means that to fully utilize the long tail
online, there must be lots of key phrases
individually making up very little traffic by
themselves but collectively accounting for a
huge amount of traffic, which in turn means
a considerable level of visibility online.
For long tail products, the allure is its
uniqueness. Hence, businesses must target
category based key phrases instead of
brand based key phrases. For example,
competing with a bookstore will be much
more difficult when the popular books sold
there have similar key phrases as your new
business. Streamlining your key phrases in
order to assure the customer that the
niche product that they’re looking for is
what you specialize in will be instrumental
in your success. Therefore, adapting an
effective search engine optimization
technique is of utmost importance for new
businesses. This practice enables new
businesses to use limited funds in order to
attract new customers.
10 THE MARKSMAN
COVER STORY COVER STORY
Effective long tail marketing is a challenging
alternative in relation to traditional
marketing. It merges the ability of
businesses to display a more varied basket
of products, with the added task of
optimizing costs in order to make sure that
the sales of the popular products does not
take a hit. Like any other marketing strategy,
understanding the customer better
becomes the factor that makes or breaks
this strategy.
A challenge that the implementation of this
practice faces is the threat of converting
the long tail key words into the main or
‘head’ keywords. This may prove to be a
self-defeating activity in practice.
So the simplest advice to target the long tail
is to invest in a myriad of niche areas,
increase the web footprint, implement better
search engine optimization techniques,
optimize the costs incurred in implementing
this strategy, and most importantly,
remember that in the end, it all boils down
to how well one understood their
customers.
OCTOBER 2014 11
SPECIAL STORY
Flipkart’s BIG Billion Day Debacle
The sale started with words of promises and
grand offers like flash sales, deals of the hour,
every hour lucky draw and surprise discount
offers for around 70 item categories. The
company employed its 10,000 dedicated field
staff for timely delivery of orders. With the
Big Billion Day Sale, one of India’s largest e-
commerce website, Flipkart, was out to
eclipse all other festive multi-day sales over
just one single day with an expected sale of a
billion!
A shocking 1.5 billion customers came
running for the big day sale. The actual
demand exceeded the expected one, and the
company was not prepared to handle it. This
resulted in out of stock issues for many
popular products. There were price changes
of several products to non-discounted rates
for few hours and this was not the end of
the story. Because of simultaneous orders,
customers confronted abrupt cancellations
of their purchase orders. Adding to the woes
of the day was the website unavailability
error. The massive marketing campaign was
not supplemented technically to handle the
traffic. It was pretty evident by the end of
the day, that no preparations and calculations
were done to estimate server load.
On its Big sale day, company suffered a big
hit as cyber space was abuzz with angry
customer feedbacks and jokes about the
sale, mocking it as flopkart.com. The Big
Billion Day sale turned into a fiasco and
dented the trustworthy image of the
company. The whole user experience
turned out to be a disappointed one. An
apology mail from Flipkart founders, Sachin
and Binny Bansal, the next day was the
proof of the failure and their awareness
about the same. The main learning that
comes their way is that in e-commerce
specially, customer’s experience holds a
second place to customer’s trust, which
needs to be valued the most.
“Strike the iron when it is hot!”
12 THE MARKSMAN
SPECIAL STORY
The result of this debacle turned in the
favour of Flipkart’s rivals, as many
disappointed customers ran to Amazon,
Snapdeal & Big Bazaar for their purchases.
These companies were waiting for the
disappointed customers with open arms and
of course with better sales and effective
service. They churned out lot of money and
promotion by associating their own promos
with Flipkart’s campaign. Amazon and
Snapdeal answered Flipkart in an interesting
way through loud posters and promotions
undermining its event, which closely
reminded everyone of the infamous cola
wars. All the three e-commerce giants forked
out more than 100 crores in total for their
respective sales.
Snapdeal quoted a cheeky tagline: “For
others, it’s a big day. For us, today is no
different.” Amazon pulled out its own sale
“Mission to Mars weekend” concurrently
and came out as the winner of the Big
Billion debacle of Flipkart. This gives one
ultimate message in the market ‘Never
underestimate the power of your
competitors.’ The way in which Flipkart’s
failure and rickety execution was reaped by
its competitors is a subtle but alarming
lesson that’s being floated everywhere now.
The final question after the analysis comes
as—‘Will Flipkart be able to regain its
position as a trustworthy website?’ It is sad
to note that a company who had an
acclaimed position in the market, one that
had almost redefined all rules of retailing in
the country, had to see a day like this.
According to market experts, very soon
this incident will become a small chapter of
forgone historical events—accounting to
the nationwide acclaimed and grounded
popularity of Flipakart over the decade.
Soon Flipkart shall restore its lost
credibility among its customers. What one
shall remember is how smartly and quickly
competitors can take advantage of any
situation against the company. Henceforth,
to survive in this era of bottleneck
competition, the key to success is still
derived in those two simple words—
‘Preparation’ and ‘Execution.’
OCTOBER 2014 13
10th SIMSR Global Marketing
Conference
Marketing Analytics for Developing
Effective Marketing Strategies
Today, Marketing has evolved from a creative
process into a highly data driven process.
Organizations use analytics to determine the
outcomes of their product campaigns and to
plan investments and consumer targeting.
SIMSR conducted a workshop on this evolving
subject, “Marketing Analytics for Developing
Effective Marketing Strategies” as a part of its
10th SIMSR Global Marketing Conference.
The workshop conducted on 18th and 19th
Sept, was facilitated by Prof Dr .Arvind
Rangaswamy. He is currently the Anchel
Professor of Marketing at ‘The Smeal
College at Penn State’. He graduated
from IIT Chennai, completed his MBA from
IIM Calcutta and further pursued PhD in
Marketing at Northwestern University. He is
the co-founder of Decision Pro Inc. and has
consulted for various companies like Du Pont,
IBM Global Services and AT&T Wireless. The
workshop had a 2 day intensive agenda and
was attended by various corporate delegates
and professors from reputed Universities.
REWIND
14 THE MARKSMAN
The session started with the point that
‘Seat-of-the-pants’ decision making (a
process which considers only few
parameters) is not enough anymore and
now marketing analytics is increasingly
important for all types of businesses.
It generates results and insights for
action. It quantifies the judgement based
on the results that will improve the
quality of marketing decisions. The
speaker stressed on the fact that STP
(Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning)
can be done effectively based on the
data.
In the second half of the session on day
1, several case studies were discussed.
One of them was marketing a specific
brand of Beer. The data analytics
suggested the preferred brand that has
to be targeted at different geographies.
Prof Arvind illustrated the same using
the software developed by Decision Pro
Inc.
It was a classic display of how the
software can interpret statistical data
and provide one with guidelines. People
also got the look and feel of the
software that modified its output when
the factor variables were changed. He
also spoke about Digital Marketing
which is the need of the hour.
Day 2 started with the subject Conjoint
Analysis that is used in Market research.
It was again illustrated with the
software and engaged people to
provide value for different features of
the product. The software’s final result
provided vital information for
marketing the same. Throughout the
session the primary focus was about
enhancing efficacy through improved
use of analytics and marketing decision
making.
The day ended with a sumptuous lunch
followed by a jamming session.
Participants slowly got into the groove
and it turned out to be a memorable
event. The participants were also
felicitated with certificates by Prof.
Arvind Rangaswamy himself.
Team Interface which managed the
whole event once again proved that...
“We repeatedly achieve what we are….
THE BEST”.
OCTOBER 2014 15
REWIND
MARKETING FAUX PAS
This section is usually about marketing
failures or errors that cost dearly. Although
most well-known examples are errors of
commission (advertising goof-ups, say), there
are also errors of omission which are not
easy on any stakeholder’s pockets. All
because of (the lack of) marketing.
Water scarcity is a real problem. As Rose
George points out in her The Big Necessity:
The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and
Why it Matters (2008), this is a problem not
only in the so-called developing countries
but also in many parts of the West.
Orange County in drought-ridden California
is facing a peculiar problem. The technology
to generate recycled waste water has long
existed, and it has been used pervasively for
non-potable needs like agriculture and
landscaping. But when it comes to drinking it,
indirect potable reuse (IPR) is nothing but
disgusting for most Californians. Surveys
show that an overwhelming majority let the
“yuck” factor get in the way.
They know the ocean is a source of potable
water. But desalinated water costs anywhere
from 150–400% of what it would cost to
obtain recycled water.
Sceptics of recycled water call it toilet-to-
tap, thereby suggesting that one is being
asked to drink, in effect, water from the
toilet. It is this kind of imagery that is
largely playing mischief in the minds of
most consumers. Paul Slovic, psychology
professor at University of Oregon, says
“image and assumption are very
important motivators of behaviour.
[They] overpower the logical analysis of
things […] People have this idea that
some manufacturer in the sky generates
new, pure water coming down from the
stream as opposed to the fact that we are
reusing the same molecules over and
over.” Slovic says education about the
benefits of such projects will help people
get over perceived risks.
Now obviously, there is immense
demand for water, on the part of both
individuals and industries. There also
exists a technology that is more efficient
and more cost-effective than the current
one—which means there is a way to
reduce the gap between supply and
demand, if not completely abolish it. Then
what in the good wide world is the
problem, you ask? It is also not environment friendly—it uses
more energy, kills tiny marine organisms and
gives off brine by-products. Moreover,
several experts agree that the recycled
water is often less dangerous than the
desalinated one.
Advertising prides itself as the agent of
communication (rather than, say,
manipulation).
Bridging the Gap in Toilet-to-Tap
16 THE MARKSMAN
OCTOBER 2014 17
Not what it seems to be at first flush.
No such thing as purely pure water.
The need for this communication arises in
part because consumers do not always
know where/how to find what they want
(some may say that they may often not
even know what it is they want).
Although Californians have largely taken
the issue in their hands—they managed to
shut down a $55 million plant in the making
in Los Angeles—and confused each other,
and the same exact technology was
introduced and applied with success in a
tiny island city-state across the other pond,
all thanks to astute marketing. In Singapore,
the Public Utilities Board has turned
purified sewage into a popular branded
bottled product called NEWhether (as
Einstein said in 1931) imagination is more
important than knowledge, it is, by all
accounts, far more persuasive than
knowledge.
Water. Ads showed the President cheerily
sipping the water, for instance. This water
has been seamlessly running through
Singaporean faucets ever since and has
solved many of the country's pressing
problems.
MARKETING FAUX PAS
Hall-MARK CAMPAIGN
18 THE MARKSMAN
Today’s day and age, wherein a film’s shelf
life has reduced considerably from good
old silver jubilee weeks to meagre highest
grossing opening weekends, call for
dynamic and innovative measures to grab
the audience’s equally diminishing
attention span. The latest festive release,
Bang Bang did just that by coming up with
a viral marketing campaign to gain
visibility.
First of all, it kept away from the tried &
tested formula of promotions via celebrity
appearances on reality & prime time
television shows. Going a step further and
taking cue from the online rage
#ALSIceBucketChallenge, the film’s main
protagonist Hrithik Roshan utilized his
twitter to give out dares like ‘No Honking
or Smoking for 3 days straight’ for all his
followers in order to generate buzz for
his movie in an unconventional way. It
gradually moved on to his contemporaries
and leading Bollywood celebrities.
#BangBangDare instantly started trending
on the social media and garnering the most
number of views was the dare given to
Ranveer Singh, wherein the Bandra boy was
asked to get out of his car and pose on the
middle of any main street of Mumbai for his
fans. Being the adrenaline junkie he is, the
zany actor took to Bandra’s busy lane
decked up as superhero Krrish and danced
to ‘Main Aisa Kyun Hu’, both of which were
essayed by Hrithik himself.
This was followed by ‘Mantal Bwoy’ Farhan
Akhtar riding his bicycle sporting a
skydiving suit. Another dare was
accomplished by the reigning king Shah
Rukh Khan by disclosing his rock hard 8
pack abs workout, consequently promoting
the superstar’s upcoming film Happy New
Year as well.
#BangBangDare
OCTOBER 2014 19
Priyanka ‘Mary Kom’ Chopra punched right
back in the true spirit of ‘why should boys
have all the fun’ by doing handstand push-
ups. Damsels Nargis Fakhri and Shraddha
Kapoor followed suit by singing a freestyle
rap and a haunting rendition of Nancy
Sinatra’s ‘Bang Bang’ + ‘Aao Na’ from
Haider respectively.
What came as a surprise was Shahid
Kapoor’s willingness to do a dare
and join the rampant promotions
while his own film Haider was
releasing alongside the biggie Bang
Bang. To this Hrithik politely replied
that each of the actors had to watch
each other’s film first day itself. Not
quite a dare the last one but the
efforts surely paid off since the film
grossed a billion rupees over the
opening weekend itself. This again
goes on to prove that marketing isn’t
confined to any limits. There, There
Dare, Dare.
HALL-MARK CAMPAIGN
PIONEER
20 THE MARKSMAN
Viva Ronaldo, Viva Ronaldo!
Running down the wing hearing united
sing viva Ronaldo!
We all remember this chant sung by
the Manchester United Football Club fans.
Possibly quite many red devils’ fans who are
reading this article would be cherishing
those moments as well, taking them back to
the Theatre of Dreams. In this edition of the
Pioneer, let’s talk about the larger than life
character, an obsession with the fans,
Cristiano Ronaldo, popularly known as CR7.
Is Ronaldo or Lionel Messi, the
greatest player? It’s a debatable topic.
Both of them have amazing skills, pace
and grace and most importantly, it
gives us sheer pleasure to watch their
game. But when it comes to
Marketability, no other footballer in
this world matches with CR7. He is
not just a living football legend instead
he is a Brand whose earnings were
$73 million after tax in the year 2013.
A major chunk of it came from his
endorsements and Forbes ranked him
first in their world’s highest paid
players list. Ronaldo’s rise from a poor
suburb on Madeira, in Portugal to the
cover star of Vogue has happened not
by chance but through clever
Marketing.
CRISTIANO RONALDO CR7
PIONEER
OCTOBER 2014 21
For any Brand to become
successful it should have a unique selling
point and it has to be launched in the
market at the opportune time.
Positioning, one of the thumb rules of
Marketing, is a vital factor. CR7’s amazing
dribbling skills, ability to control the ball
with agility and predicting certain plays
are his USPs which helped him to join the
Manchester United Club in 2003. After
proving his mettle in the club, he moved
to Real Madrid Football Club in 2009 for
a whopping amount of $80 million. Since
both these clubs with a great history and
fan base are famous in the world, his
popularity grew further. This is a perfect
example of positioning in the market. Had
he joined a lower rung club, he wouldn’t
be that successful as he is now. CR7 has
won numerous trophies for both the
clubs, the latest being Champions League
Title for Real Madrid in 2013.
CR7’s segmentation and targeting
is Universal. He caters to all audience.
Girls swoon for his good looks, Boys
idolize him for his play, and Men shout his
name in awe. He excels in Promotion as
well; one of the 4Ps of Marketing. He is
not only very prominent in the traditional
forms of marketing space like billboards
and TVs but also in the new age of digital
marketing. He has the highest number of
Twitter Followers, 26.6 mn and most
facebook likes, 83.3 mn.
Ronaldo endorses various brands like NIKE,
ARMANI and has also signed other
sponsorships from SAMSUNG, TAGHeuer,
HERBALIFE and many more. There are several
mobile gaming apps based around the matches
played by him as well.
It is a well known fact that a sportsman career
is short lived and one should make the best
use of it at his prime stage. This relates to our
product life cycle concept. To make optimum
use of his Growth stage, CR7 has recently
opened a museum, ‘Museu CR7’ and launched
Premium Inner Wear Brand, ‘CR7‘ which are
good sources of revenue. It is a classic
example of money rotation.
It is only a matter of time before we see CR7
launching his own fashion label along similar
lines of David Beckham and tennis legend
Bjorn Borg.
“Cristiano Ronaldo being at his pinnacle
of success has become the most
bankable footballer ever and this makes
him a Pioneer.”
Tete-a-tete Interview with Dr. Arvind Rangaswamy, Professor of Marketing, Penn State
University
at K J Somaiya Institute of Management Studies & Research, Mumbai
on the 19th of September 2014
Interviewer : Thank you very much for taking time out. You’re a leading authority in the
field of analytics and it’s a great pleasure to have you here! My first question is the most
obvious. You’re an IIT+IIM alumnus. What made you take up academia when you could
have easily become a Fortune 500 CEO by now?
Dr. Arvind : That’s a very personal kind of decision that people have to come to. There
are two different kinds of jobs. But even in academia, you have to be an entrepreneur in
order to be successful. I could think of an idea that goes into a paper five years from
now—it is in some way a CEO type of a job, in that the CEO has to place the company
in a favourable way for what happens five years from now. So I don’t see, at least at a
conceptual level, what a CEO does and what an academic professor does to be very
different. Of course the CEO has a lot more managerial and executional responsibility. As
for my own choice, I worked for about a year before going into academia. The only
reason I did that is because I met Philip Kotler [while I was at IIM Calcutta]. My
interaction with him indicated that this is an area that I could pursue. But even then in
the first year of my PhD I wasn’t sure this is what I wanted to do—it all seemed very
abstract and theoretical, whereas all my training at IIT and IIM was more concrete.
22 THE MARKSMAN
But I met another colleague and a professor who’s on the thesis committee, named
Andris Zoltners, he had a very applied orientation towards research and that made me
feel more comfortable, feel that maybe there are topics that I can work on that had
wider implications. He then went on to start a very successful company—one of the
leading consulting companies in marketing, called ZS Associates—so I felt that academia
and practice are not all that removed from each other—if you make your academic
research sort of relevant to business, which is what I do. And the other good thing about
academia is that you are pretty much left to yourself to do what you want. If you are
passionate about something and you can responsibly manage your own time, it’s a good
profession. It doesn’t pay like a CEO job, but on the other hand it gives you a lot more
time. So I didn’t make a conscious decision, I evolved into it.
I : What are the three greatest challenges that the field is facing currently—sort of the
Holy Grail of marketing?
A : One of the biggest problem, as I see it, is that marketing online and marketing offline
are sort of coming together. People haven’t figured out how to make this transition and
linkage seamless. So the future CMOs and marketing managers have to figure out a way
to make a seamless link between the online world and the offline world, because
consumers today are transitioning between these media during their purchase processes.
I think this is a big challenge and presents a lot of opportunities.
The second would be the need for constant innovation. Marketers have not really
thought deeply about business model innovations. They’re talking maybe about marketing
innovations, specific programs, but to look at business model itself as changing—the
innovation today is not only in technology but also in how to put it all together in a way
that creates a fundamentally good value proposition. I don’t see too many marketing
people thinking like that but I think it’ll become more and more important for them to
be focussed more on business model innovation.
The third thing is that today all the markets are global. If you put anything online it’s a
globally accessible market. And we haven’t come to terms with all the issues related to
globalisation. There’s a lot of friction across borders—physical limitations, language
barriers—yet the needs of people are evolving in a similar way. The way people use
mobile phones all over the world. I think for the next generation CMOs it’s going to be
important to answer—“how to be a globally oriented manager?” I also think that another
problem is that marketing organisations are designed for investors markets, and so
marketing itself has to undergo a transformation. Today’s managers are going to be caught
up in these processes.
OCTOBER 2014 23
Tete-a-tete
Tete-a-tete
I : If you were put in the shoes of a first-year MBA student today, how would you see the
world and what would you be eager to do?
A : A lot of the same concerns would come to me—if I want to be in marketing, I have to
now do more things than just marketing—marketing has become an activity for the
entire organisation. It now depends on how the entire organisation interfaces with
consumers. So I should forget about a functional view of marketing and think about how
marketing as a concept can be deployed and how I can be a more effective marketer at
an organisational level rather than functional level. The second thing is technology—I’d be
immersing myself in it. I went to the Digital Marketing Exposition in Cologne last week
before I came here, out of 30,000 delegates, I’d say less than 10% there were marketing
people. Most of the people running all the digital campaigns are the ones who are
designing your website; they’re also the people creating the marketplaces of tomorrow.
So marketers have to be worried if they’re not techno savvy. On the other hand, there’s a
strong role still for branding and brand management. So you can be somebody interested
more in either the branding component and building values or towards the
technologically enabled marketing space—everything in between is a fuzzy thing—I don’t
know how many great options lie in the middle.
I : What do you think is the precise role of quantitative techniques in marketing? How
would you emphasise or de-emphasise it?
A : In all of marketing or any business discipline, [things] are taking place increasingly in a
very information-rich environment. Any quantification is simply a consequence of that
environment—when something can be measured, you’ll measure it, because it can be
used to make decisions. But the problem is you could be measuring the easy things and
not the real issues. You know you can measure page ranks and how many visitors came,
but what I really want to measure is how is my website affecting my brand, or am I
creating more loyalty; this is where the modelling and analytics come in. So what’s
happening today is at least some quantification is going on, and the need for that is
obvious. People at Google and Amazon have raised the stakes. But what you have to be
careful about is not to get sidetracked by what is easy to measure and think hard about
what the underlying factors and structures. That’s why a deep sense of quantification and
modelling is needed. I don’t think most marketing students are going to do that; it
requires a skill base that many marketing students don’t have. And maybe marketing
people are coming into the softer side. But I think there’ll be a growing component of
marketing that’ll be quantified—whether by marketing people, statisticians or computer
scientists—whoever it is, eventually it’s going to get quantified and model based.
24 THE MARKSMAN
BOOK WORM
Wondering what is this buzz all about?
Can’t get enough of hearing about this new
trend in town? Did you pick one thing over
another just because your friend
recommended so? Or are you amazed at
how a “sleeper” turned into a box-office
hit overnight? If you wish to weave a
similar magic for your own company, then
keep your eyes peeled! This edition is
packed with a plethora of fresh and
interesting instances on the mechanics of
buzz, which might as well strike you by a
unique word-of-mouth campaign idea to
catapult your product on the path of
success!
A lot has changed since Rosen wrote the
first edition. We are living today in a virtual
world where the consumer is loaded with
choices and information. Tools like search
engines, social media and discussion
forums, each have their own opportunity
to spread word-of-mouth marketing like
wild forest fire.
The Anatomy of Buzz Revisited
By Emanuel Rosen
In this revised edition-drawn from
interviews of more than 150 marketing
leaders and researchers, backed by their
success stories of building buzz for major
brands, be it B&J’s free cone day campaign
or his personal experience with EndNote.
One realizes that creating the right buzz
for a product ignites the consumers’
excitement and gets him talking about it. In
this wild-goose chase, that’s what can make
for the winning sprint and in the end all
the difference!
OCTOBER 2014 25
From the top of Red Fort, Narendra
Modi roared “Let’s resolve to steer the
country to one destination. We have it in
us to move in that direction.” Such was
his confidence; he said “the world is
looking at Asia. I don’t have to waste
time to invite. I need to give address.”
And 42 days later, he launched the
MAKE IN INDIA campaign and made
the country proud.
Social Media: The Facebook page
crossed one million likes in one month.
The twitter handle was soon up with
over 30K followers. Vox, BBC, Guardian
and Washington Times, every corner of
the world was soon buzzing with the
rise of the Indian industrial revolution.
Here is an insider’s perspective towards
the model Modi is following. As
someone who has lived in this country
for more than two decades, I find the
following challenges to it:
Stringent laws! High tax rates! Lack of
trained man power! Tough land
acquisition rules!
Make in India: Global Implications
FEATURED ARTICLES
And India wants to foster innovation,
attract foreign capital and protect and
develop intellectual property. How do
they do that?
Modi defined how he is going to make
the business in India easy. He spoke of
a dedicated portal for business queries,
ease of policies and labour laws, an
invest India facilitation cell as a
reference point for guiding foreign
investors and assistance from their
entry till departure and faster security
clearances for all projects.
#oneDirection #incredibleIndia
#MakeInIndia
It seems that the sleeping tiger has
finally woken up and has roared at the
dragon. Holding the industry investors
meet the same day as China was sure a
bold step. From oil and gas to
infrastructure, from IT to tourism, from
renewable energy to electronic
systems: this initiative has the ability to
become India’s greatest story ever told.
Adwitiya Tiwari
- XLRI, Jamshedpur
26 THE MARKSMAN
FEATURED ARTICLES
An MBA student always speaks of
frameworks to define any situation. I
won’t be an exception here. Here is my
view of the larger implications of this
move.
a) Foreign investments have always found
the labour laws pegging their businesses.
ILO ratifications, labour unions on the
prowl, but labour amendments like
increasing the number of workers from
20 to 40 in case of a non-power
manufacturing process and 10 to 20 in
case of power, companies will find their
work lot easier. The overtime hours have
increased from 50/quarter to 100/quarter
and relaxation time during the working
hours for women. Talk about flexibility!
b) In the bigger macro-economic picture:
the Indian market has become bigger. The
PM calls FDI as “first develop India,” and
with 100% FDI in single-brand retail,
telecom, 49% in defence sector will surely
create some power balance in the
economic blocs of ASEAN. While
Philippines is offering tax incentives to
investors in telecom and is seeing 24%
rise in FDI, and China’s FDI falling to 2.9%
over the past two years, it will be
interesting to see the counter measures
launched by our Asian neighbours.
#oneDirection #incredibleIndia
#MakeInIndia
c) Rise in economy only means clashes in
power equations. The power bloc struggle
becomes tighter between India and China.
Border clashes, Brahmaputra water issues
and India’s improving relation with
Washington will only make the North
Eastern Frontier of the home country a
territory of caution. With MIA, the
November 2014 Summit of World
Economic Forum [WEF] and CII is bound
to define new stakeholder opportunities
for the new government. After all, NDA
has been propagandising about Public
Private Partnership in its manifesto.
d) They promised improvement in
standards of living for all. A per capita of
74,920 Rs and 111th Rank on World
Happiness Index are not happy figures.
Jobs for 10 million people, and 100 smart
cities promised by Arun Jaitley—well,
nobody said the path of MIA is easy.
e) President Mukherjee’s recent visit to
Finland was more than diplomatic. India
plans to engage with the Nordic nation
and learn its knowledge-based economy
and clean technology. One of the five
Centres of Innovation by Finland,
FinCode run in India. Finish companies’
like Nokia–Siemens, Kone elevators,
Wartsila are planning to set office here
means innovation and technology growth.
OCTOBER 2014 27
3rd Largest TV market, 5th in World food
processing industry, 4th largest
automotive market—this can’t just get
any better. The following tweet from
MIA’s twitter handle aptly concludes this
amazing scenario.
“India's transformation into a
global manufacturing powerhouse
has begun. Stay up to speed. Follow
the Lion!”
#oneDirection #incredibleIndia
#MakeInIndia
f) India’s soft power is set to unleash. Walt
Disney, Bloomberg have been investing here
and co-production agreements have been
signed with Italy, Germany, Brazil, UK, France,
New Zealand, Poland, Spain and Canada to
carry on the Indian movies and shows. 30
world heritage sites, 25 bio-geographic
zones, eco and religious tourism and 6.97
million visitors, the world is noticing India’s
culture and diversity. Investment in these
sectors by Cox and Kings, Thomas Cook,
etc., is going to make it one of the most
popular tourist destinations.
FEATURED ARTICLES
28 THE MARKSMAN
SquAreheaD
OCTOBER 2014 29
BUZZ
CLUES
PUZZLE ACROSS
1. What is the name of the character
played by Hussain Dalal in the recent
Nescafe Stammering Stand-up comedian
act?
2. The Chairman & Managing Director of
The Country Club,India is Mr. Yeragudi
______. (6,5)
4. Concentrating all marketing efforts on
a small but specific and well defined
segment of the population is generally
termed as _____ marketing
7. Complete the link with a brand's name.
Grasim Industries,Louis Phillip,Pantaloons
Fashion & Retail,___________.(5,7)
9. The India-born billionaire related to
Blackberry and its funds.(4,5)
DOWN
3. “High Performance. Delivered.”
5. Which watch company does Shah Rukh
Khan endorse?(3,5)
6. The name (fondly) given to the online
giant,Flipkart, after its Bumper sale,Big
billion day, was being criticised all over
the place.
8. Which is the official beverage and
snack partner of ICC?
Answers:
Across:
1.Rishi 2.Rajeev Reddy 4.Niche 7.Peter England 9.Prem Watsa
Down:
3.Accenture 5.Tag Heuer 6.Flopkart 8.Pepsico
30 THE MARKSMAN
Call for ARTICLES
CALL FOR ARTICLES NOVEMBER 2014
Articles can be sent on any one of the following topics*:
*Please ensure that there is no plagiarism and all references are
clearly mentioned.
The best adjudged article will be given a Winner’s Certificate.
Deadline for the submission of article will be : 20th November, 2014
1. One article can have only one author.
2. Your article should be approximately 800-850
words and MUST be replete with relevant
pictures that can be used to enhance the
article.
3. Font Type: Gill Sans MT
4. Font Size: 14.
5. Send your article in .doc/.docx format to
6. Subtitle line: Your name_Institute
Name_Course Year
7. Kindly name your file as : Your name_Topic
OCTOBER 2014 31
1. ISL: Opening new avenues for sports
marketers
2. Snapchat: Revolutionizing the way events
are marketed
3. The War off the maps: E-commerce battle
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THE TEAM TWEETS by Minoli Sheth
It’s all about AD-itude by Dhruv Maheshwari
Brand MARKive by
Palak Thakkar
COVER STORY by Sukanya Remesh
SPECIAL STORY by Vasundhara Tewari
REWIND by
Dilip Anatharaman
FAUX PAS by Akshay Peshave
HALLMARK CAMPAIGN by Sankalp Thakur
PIONEER by
Dilip Anatharaman
Tete-a-Tete by
Akshay Peshave
BOOKWORM by Kavya Dubey
SquAreheaD by Vasundhara Tewari
BUZZ by Abhijit Sharma
PROOF READ by Minoli Sheth
Abhijit Sharma
DESIGNING by Kavya Dubey
Rahul Vangani
Sukanya Remesh
PROMOTIONS by
Dilip Anatharaman
Sankalp Thakur
The MARKSMAN is the
newsletter of INTERFACE, the
Marketing Club at K.J. Somaiya
Institute of Management Studies
and Research, Mumbai.
Images used in THE
MARKSMAN are subject to
copyright. THE MARKSMAN
does not take any responsibility
of any kind of plagiarism in the
articles received from students
of other colleges.
The TEAM
32 THE MARKSMAN