Marketing to the Right Audience

I've always found visits to the supermarket utterly engaging. Whether it is observing a single man's auto-pilot mode when it comes to grocery shopping or finding out about that product that seems to have hit the sweet-spot-need-state that the category leader has failed to tap - there's always something new to learn during a visit to the supermarket.

On a recent visit to the supermarket, I managed to take this picture without getting thrown out of yet another supermarket.

This is a picture of 2 Korean Nationals buying not 1 or 2, but 54 bars of Himalaya Moisturizing Almond soap. They were initially looking for Medimix soaps but since the retailer had only one Medimix soap bar, the retailer convinced them to pick up Himalaya Moisturizing Almond soaps instead.

Why did they buy 54 of these?
Apparently, because they don't get these products back in Korea. They weren't specifically looking for Himalaya soaps but for any "ethnic" soap with "natural" ingredients. It's not just Koreans... The other day I spoke to an American woman picking up a Chandrika soap who gave me the same reasoning. Well, not the same - she was taking the soap back to the States not Korea.

I remember in the '90s, perhaps even in the '80s, NRIs used to bring Yardley perfumes and talcum powders for their families in India. Seems like, with enough proliferation of foreign nationals in India - the reverse is happening.

The home-grown products and brands that we tend to take for granted in India - some of which are considered "down-market" by some Indian consumers - are the very products that foreign nationals find attractive. The neglected "ethnic" brands would do well to ask themselves the question:
Are we marketing to the right audience?
A change in distribution strategy might not only increase sales, but might also pull-up the imagery of the brands in question.

This effect of an Indian Marketer's products appealing to a foreign audience isn't necessarily restricted to beauty products and "ethnic" brands per se. Food and apparel could well be other categories where this effect could be evident.

So, are you marketing to the right audience?

Western COOL and Indian COOL: Shaleen Sharma, JWT Planning, Delhi

SKETCHING THE MYTHS, MEANINGS AND METAPHORS OF COOL

The Super Brands UK, Cool Council defines that all cool brands have a consistent presence of certain values:

Cool is forever distinctive and is aspirational.
Cool generally goes against the grain (not necessarily rebellious).
Cool is itself - it doesn’t try too hard.
Cool is authentic, it doesn’t try too hard.
The subscribers of Cool behave like a tribe.
While these characteristics form the core of cool, the ramifications and manifestations of this cool differs across cultures. Cool is not culture-agnostic, instead it is culture-driven.

Western Cool - It is all about doing your own thing. It firmly anchors itself in individuality as the primary instrument of human exploration and creative fulfillment. An individuality that has to be unrestrained and unchecked and must press forward at all costs, even to the exclusion of the larger community.

Indian Cool, on the other hand is all about Me and my community. The Indian way of life has its roots in the ancient Vedic tradition and so holds true with Indian cool as well. It seems that in India if you are outside the ambit of the society, then unlike the West, you aren’t cool- you are an outcast! And nobody wants to be an outcast in a deeply collectivist society like India.

Western cool is all about rebellion, even without a cause
Indian cool is not about rebellion at all. Be a rebel, for a greater cause, when all else fails.
Western cool traditionally springs from bottom up.
Indian cool is mandated and not self-bred! Indian cool often comes from top down.
Western cool is about Expression, Indian cool is about Aspiration.

Emerging themes of Cool
One of the key emerging themes of cool will be the emergence of local movements and expressions, that shall seek to reinforce, re-interpret and re-vitalize local cultural and historical symbols. It could be either through pure play or through fusion.
The new cool will be about coming to terms with these developments and keeping your identity intact.
Human technology interactions will probably be the biggest dynamic that cool will play out on.
Cool will be about evangelism, philanthropy and filial affiliation. This theme will be more visible in developed economies.

For the complete article please visit http://www.coffeeanddonuts.co.in/

Any Male In Sight? 2

Men and Sports: Fatal Attraction

"Sports is one of the few things on Planet Earth that just makes sense. Men don’t want to accept confusion. We want things simple. Sports allow us to do that."
-A Basketball Fanatic


Whether its a platform for male bonding, opportunities to show off cool facts and give “expert” advice and dazzle fellow fans with their superior knowledge, or evoking national pride, sports has been a perennial male passion. Captured yet again in the new Vodafone ad, which shows a tense man outside a maternity ward, equally awaiting close-finish cricket alerts! But what’s a new twist in the tale, is the woman in the Canara Bank “Square Slice” commercial who decides to get into cricket for his sake.

Brand Chakras Study: Mother India

MOTHER INDIA: FROM CHILDREN AS RESPONSIBILITY
TO CHILDREN AS OPPORTUNITY

The Indian Mother-and-Child is now a team with a shared vision, with mothers actively believing they can shape their children’s destiny for mutual benefit, says the latest JWT Brand Chakras™ study.

Close on the heels of The Power and the Glory, which studied the Global Indian, JWT now looks at payoffs that mothers want from their children and vice versa, through Brand Chakras™.

The insight mining exercise was done in eight centers - Chennai, Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkatta, Kanpur, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Trichur, and covered SEC A, B mothers with children between 8 and 16, through group discussions, and depth interviews with pairs of mothers and their children.

Enabling and empowering, coach and companion, event manager and project manager, motherhood has moved beyond protection, nurturance, compassion and selflessness. The child is now a project and a mission, and industriousness, determination, passion and planning are the dominant traits. The children too are taking the roti- kapada-makaan for granted and are looking to the mother to give them the headstart they need in life and ensure that they remain focused.

Other shifts include: from living for the moment to constantly shaping the future; from child’s success to shared glory; and a clear staking of claims on the eligibility for the fruits of success.

Emotional elasticity, reasonable adult-like conversations, retaining locus of control while appearing to be democratic, love that includes toughness and a steeling of the heart, are some of the mother’s strategies.

Children in return are conscious of the contribution that their mothers make in their current lives by donning the roles of organizer, guide, enforcer, and friend. While there may be the usual squabbles over food, outings and social activities, children do indeed look to their mothers to give them courage, inspiration, help them set and achieve their goals and fill them with a will to win. Mother is both cushion and launch pad… giving new meaning to the famous line “mere paas maa hai”! They seem to be defining success in terms of living up to the mother’s expectations. Though, “itna tenson nahin lene ka” is also something they’d like to say to the mothers!

All mothers showed a strong inclination to Power chakra qualities, but three types of mothers emerged:
The Lifeline Seeker: she has given up hopes of the husband improving their lives and is totally dependant on the child to rise to glorious levels and rescue her; looking for insurance and security, she will do everything she can to help them in this journey, but is clearly establishing her rights to the fruits of this labour.
The Coronation Seekers: she is hoping her child’s achievements will bring her out of a life of oblivion and bestow on her a halo for greater social conquest… the child is an opportunity to make an overwhelming statement about herself.
The Independence Seeker: her striving to excel in the mother role is geared to fostering independence and self-reliance in her child, so that she will have the freedom and space for her own pursuits; motherhood enhances her efficiency and gives her exposure that helps her discover unexplored facets of herself.

The implication for brands is that:
*brands need not necessarily choose between mother or child as target but could talk to the duo; *must reflect the new sets of motherhood values and attitudes;
*need to find a role in the shared vision and future that they are chasing;
*salute the mother, Maa thujhe salaam for a new set of reasons;
*connect with the philosophy of effort and determination that she is trying to instill;
*focus on the 15 Chakra payoffs that children chose from the battery of 60 fundamental payoffs; *draw from the mothers’ behaviour codes across the seven chakras that the study has identified.

While the study focused on mothers, it has revealed three types of fathers too – according to the mothers!

The Genuine Partner: who tries to play a synergistic role willingly taking up activities which are beyond the mother’s competence;
The Conveniently Detached: who is taking it easy, capitalizing on the mother’s high involvement and taking up the provider stance to negate criticism of his lack of involvement; and
The Cynically Detached: who disagrees with the approach, perceives the mother as crossing the line and fostering too much dependance, and feels children need a more hands-off approach.

Brand Chakras™ is the first Indian strategic planning tool that applies the 2000 year old chakra system as laid out by Patanjali, to consumers and brands. This original system of understanding human behaviour based on the seven major nerve/energy centers in the human body has never been used in marketing, and is an initiative of Strategic Planning at JWT India. http://www.brandchakras.com/

For further information, write to Mythili.Chandrasekar@jwt.com

When was the last time you Ego Surfed?

Have you ever wondered what might come up when you Google your name, your blog or website? Or, how many times your blog has been searched for or looked up ?

EgoSurf.org loves egos and believes they need nurturing! “Egosurf helps massage the web publishers ego, and there by maintain the cool equilibrium of the net itself”, they say!
The ego ranking, they say, is arrived at by using “A highly secretive and complex algorithm developed over months of work, utilizing the best mathematics brains in Weston-super-Mare, to calculate the cubic volume (in cm3) of ego contained in your search engine experience.”




Take a look and enjoy this ego soothing, boosting or crushing experience as the case maybe!





http://www.egosurf.org/

The Prepared Mind

Monica’s super clean obsession hilariously brings out the hidden “control freak” side of the other wise normal individual. A refreshing idea for a cleaning product waiting to be taken?



And the effect our “ super-cleaner “ has on people living with her!

Any Male In Sight ?




We start a new stream of thought here, looking at men from all angles! Over the next few months we will look at Men and the Seven Deadly Sins, What Men Chase, Male Bonding, Conflicts in Men, and more.

To start with, we bring you the latest wave maker in JWT: from JWT Paris, the feelings of a man looking at the woman welcoming the new member in their family, a portrayal of age-old father-son rivalry for... guess which category?

The Prepared Mind

In continuation of our series, The Prepared Mind.

Two wonderful insights and two readymade ads. This time from FRIENDS.

1) Girls fantasize about their wedding dress long before they actually get married!



2) There are times in our lives when we bolt the door on a relationship, locking away our emotions– and sometimes we let them back in! What a wonderful way to look at locks.




If there are any FRIENDS fanatics out there, do write about your favourite scenes... anything that made you think "Hey, I must put that in an ad one day!".

The Prepared Mind: Insights are everywhere, are we looking?

INSIGHTS! Easily the most used, misused, abused word in advertising! Perhaps the one question most often asked is, "achcha, you have any insights on...?"! But where on earth do you find them? The question really is, Are you looking? All the time?

"In the Field of Observation, Chance Favours the Prepared Mind" said Loius Pasteur. It really is no different in the field of advertising!

We start a series here, The Prepared Mind, jotting down stuff we see today, for use some day.

To start off, a couple of scenes from Seinfeld: a delightful moment while buying something expensive, and some post-purchase satisfaction.

Why is a good insight like a refrigerator?/ An all time favourite piece by JWT creative legend Jeremy Bullmore

Here is an Insight: "Product satisfaction arises less from inherent construction and performance than from consumers' internalised perceptions of personal utility."

You may have found it faintly familiar; and - when you finally worked out what it meant - more than faintly obvious. What you won't have found it to be is exhilarating, inspiring, memorable, actionable, evocative. You will not have been tempted to repeat it to colleagues or include it in your next internal newsletter. Certainly, it contains a truth - and an important truth at that; but it just sits there.

Between 40 and 50 years ago, Professor Theodore Levitt famously told his Harvard Business School students: "People don't want quarter-inch drills. They want quarterinch holes." It's been quoted a million times ever since and enlightened generations of marketing people. But what if Professor Levitt had chosen to say this: "Product satisfaction arises less from inherent construction and performance than from consumers' internalised perceptions of personal utility." (Doesn't improve with repetition, does it?)

Whether from their research companies or their communications agencies, marketing companies today are unanimous in demanding insights. There seems to be no universal agreement on what an insight is but a reasonable definition would seem to be something like this: "A new understanding, probably of human behaviour or attitude, as a result of which action may be taken and an enterprise more efficiently conducted."

The call for insights is natural. To return to Levitt's dictum, marketing companies don't want research; they want enlightenment. Conventional market research, professionally conducted, can paint an invaluable picture of the immediate past; but companies also need help in forging their futures. That's what lies behind the demand for insights - but not all insights are equal. They come in two very different styles and with very different values. There are low-potency insights and there are high-potency insights. "Product satisfaction arises less from inherent construction and performance than from consumers' internalised perceptions of personal utility" is a low-potency insight. "People don't want quarter-inch drills. They want quarter-inch holes" is a high-potency insight.

Read the full article here, and find out why an insight is like a refrigerator, http://www.wpp.com/WPP/Marketing/Articles/whyisagoodinsightlikearefrigerator.htm