Consumer is still the king!

For all the advertising, brand promises and marketing budgets, if the marketers don't get their fundamentals right, their beloved brands are bound to get screwed in the long run. What marketers fail to understand is that just by spending zillions of dollars on advertising won't get them near to their targets. All the marketing efforts go in vain if the end consumer is not satisfied.

Few days back, I saw Aegon Religare Pension Plan's latest TV commercial. For all the clutter and undifferentiated offerings in the category, the brand actually took a very fresh and innovative approach. I immediately SMSed the customer care to get in touch with me, so impactful was the communication. Fifteen days down, nobody called me. The bubble got burst and I decided not to engage with the brand anymore.

A marketers' interaction with the consumer can be divided into three stages: Pre-Sale, Sale, Post-Sale. Unfortunately, the entire marketing thrust is on Pre-Sale and Sale and the Post -sale period is completely or partially ignored. Probably, the concept of Customer Lifetime value is not an exciting proposition for them. Just a lil bit of 'Hi-Hello' with the consumer after receiving the cheque from him could go a long way. After all, the cost of acquiring a new customer is much higher than the cost of a new customer acquired through referral by an existing customer.

Advertising Pfaff

A planner's point of view on advertising....

Freakout Virgins :)

Just saw this new Burger king campaign - Whoppervirgins (www.whoppervirgins.com) ...Simply mindblowing. Before this, Burger King had done another viral campaign- Whopperfreakouts (www.whopperfreakout.com) which was a huge hit within few days of its launch. Have a look.

Enjoy!

Adultdost vs Gajodhar

In this post, I have tried to analyse two virals that I came across this month. TataSky, in order to promote its Active Darshan pack, launched a viral microsite called as http://www.adultdost.com/.

Interesting...isn't it!! The reason why I found this interesting was due to two reasons:
1) For a company as traditional and conservative as Tata, associating itself with something which suggests a pornographic gateway was a bit (in fact a lot) risky.
2) Promoting the Active darshan pack by making use of a completely contrasting way from a content of view.

The moment I saw this viral, I immediately showed it to my colleagues and they passed it on further. Such impactful was the viral. Suddenly, the marketer inside me began to analyse the numbers involved with the viral. The making of the viral including the development and creative would have cost 20k at max. From the ROI perspective, I would rate this viral as one of the best that I have seen in recent times. Brilliant!

Another viral that I saw was Gajodhar (to promote http://www.oktatabyebye.com/) which was nothing but a spoof on Aamir Khan starrer 'Ghajini'. To be honest, the first few frames put me off completely and the reason - Webchutney. The moment I got to know that this was a Webchutney creation, I told to myself, 'Not again' :(

However, I continued watching the viral till I realized that I had once again wasted my precious 5 minutes on a stupid Webchutney viral.

There are tons of reasons for not liking this viral:
1) I have seen similar brainless, stupid virals before
2) Taking advantage of opportunity is fine but creative banckruptcy is not
3) I didn't bother to viral it!!!

Creating a viral just for the heck of it I believe is nothing but fooling around with clients money. Virals from a marketers point of view give a better ROI, however, in the long run, brand can't be sacrificed for ROI.

CEO talk!

Today morning, all of us at Tribal DDB got this mail from Tribal DDB Worldwide's CEO Paul Gunning. A must read...

This week I’m sending you a slightly different version of my weekly letter. I won’t focus on office openings or creative awards…I will return to that next week.

This week I want us to ask ourselves questions. How much do we really know about our clients’ customers? And what are we doing to learn more? Technorati just issued their “State of the Blogosphere 2008” report and cited the existence of 133 million blogs. They also noted that 90% of them write at least once a month about a Brand, Book, Music or Product. That is over 100 million postings, many of them about our clients. Are we listening? More importantly, are we listening and bringing that knowledge into our messages and experiences?

Google released their earnings last week and again, we saw explosive growth in search. Consumers, for the most part, are screaming their interest when they type in search queries. They are often indicating serious intent to buy. Do we know the top search terms that drive our clients’ businesses? Should we use those terms as copy points in our advertising? What can that search behavior tell us about the consumer and their relationship with our brands? What does it tell us about our clients’ competitors?

Often clients hand us their target profiles. Sometimes it comes with deep rooted research and segmentation data, but have we matched that up with who visits their web sites? Is it the same person, or someone a little different? Have we developed Personas that reflect the face(s) of the site visitors? Have we examined site behavior to see which piece of what our consumers tell us is the most valuable content (by visits and time spent) and which is not important at all (exit pages)? Have we looked at site side search queries to see if we are missing something substantial? Is there a consumer site path analysis that would challenge the current wisdom of which products are supported the most and which are left to fend for themselves? Do we impart that knowledge to our clients? I am optimistic with the changes that Google Analytics has made to their tool set. It may not be perfect but their attention to the product indicates they too believe site side analysis can reveal many hidden insights.

Finally, do we know where most of the linked and unlinked traffic comes from? Is there a particular social network that is becoming a rising driver to our site? And do we know why it is that way? Hitwise, Compete and other intelligence gathering tools can show us these facts. And from them, we can garner more knowledge about the consumer, what they care about and what they are thinking about as they interact with our clients’ brands.

There are hundreds of tools and resources we use to be the experts on the digital behavior. Ask yourselves if you are using the right ones. But most importantly, ask yourselves if you are using them to better our product in service to our clients. I guess the shortest question is; Are we listening?

Have a safe week. More office and awards celebrations next week…and a few surprises in store!

PG

'Jo bola wohi Sikandar'

In India where about 2.4 million people are suffering from AIDS, the awareness about the preventive measures is dismally low.

This is a subject which makes even the dudest of the dude blush in public, parents hate to talk about it and teachers try to ignore this topic. Overall, talking about this issue is still an uphill task.

In the first ever, BBC World Services launched 'Condom Condom' ringtone to increase the awareness about AIDS. The idea was simple; to create an interesting, engaging and yet unoffending way of communication. The campaign 'Jo bola wohi Sikandar' was launched with the 'condom, condom' ringtone at the core. The website http://www.condomcondom.org/ , where the ringtone can be heard, has till now received more than 2.5 million hits and the ringtone has attracted 270 thousand downloads in just 2 months.

Last year Tribal DDB India had launched a campaign on World AIDS Day called as 'Protected Entry'. Before entering into the website, the visitor was asked to choose a condom to protect the cursor before entering into the website. The idea was simple, 'no protection, no entry'.

We already have 270 thousand 'Sikandar' ready to fight against AIDS. Come, join the battle.

Hunt for the most Extreme Man U fan in India..

This one's for the ultimate, most fanatical, the craziest of crazy fans of the Manchester United football team. No, it's not one of those run-of-the-mill contests. It's what guarantees the devout fan, a trip to the Mecca of football fanaticism, Old Trafford!!

The contest invites the most ardent fans to participate by filling in a form and sending 1-5 photographs to showcase their fan skills. This is perhaps because at Nike Football and Manchester United they believe that a story needn't be worded at all times. Sometimes it's just the expressions or the unexpressed!

The contest invites one of the biggest fan fights of all times. The fight for sure goes with the very spirit of the game!

In case you are one of those football maniacs who swear by the Manchester United team, then this is your one chance. Go, make that dream, of watching your favouritest players battle it out in the middle, come true!!

Logon to http://extrememanufan.nikefootball.in for further details.

This post is written by Neha Srivastava, Account Executive, Tribal DDB India