With summer setting in, cola giants have really turned the heat on each other. First, coca-cola’s  Sprite spoofing Pepsi’s YOUNGISTAN campaign(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_N-FVryV1I). Following the suit was Pepsi, taking on Thums Up commercial(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJxTQvdTsIY). I really enjoyed watching Pepsi’s answer to Thums Up. Must say, it’s a good job by ad agency. But there is flip side to it also. It is the first time when Pepsi as a Mother Brand has taken on any such spoof.  Coke, as a main brand, has never deviated from the brand vision. They let the other brands( Thums Up, Sprite) to take care of all such campaigns. Pepsi should have avoided this direct confrontation. The spoof(Sprite) could have been easily taken care of by any of their non-cola brand like Mountain Dew. 
But what I am sure is that both the brands will add to each others GRP’s. But who takes the cake is still remain to be seen. Let just sit and enjoy the summer while both the brands are sipping each other.

I was just browsing on internet that I came across Idea Rocks India digital campaign. Just out of curiosity, I clicked the banner. I really liked the thought of FIRST ONLINE SINGING CONTEST, per se. But the execution of campaign has killed the essence of the concept. An idea is as good as its execution. IDEA forgot this. According to me, there are several implementational flaws in the campaign which flout both Digital & Branding Rules.

IRI is a big property that can be leveraged for a long time in taking this brand forward. Not having its own website, is the first basic fundamental mistake. Second, putting your brand as a microsite on MSN(or any other site) is the second mistake. Idea must have saved money and effort in doing this, but they have done a wrong thing to the brand. Redirecting users to this temporary site would mean losing out on an opportunity to engage the pre-qualified users in better way on the brand site(IRI), which is missing in this case. In an era where brands are trying hard to create communities/be part of communities, IDEA so far has kept users apart from making one such community. All thanks to the digital strategy.

What would happen to the site once the campaign is over? The digital agency is more at fault than the brand. Digital Specialists are not supposed to do these stupid mistakes. MSN does not provide any number on Impressions burnt etc. So measuring the performance in its entirety might be a big problem.

Wat saddened me the most was to see Microsoft promoting their “SILVERLIGHT” product at the expense of brand’s money.

Digital can give brand the leverage which no other medium can offer. Digital strategy should be conceived  considering the overall brand strategy. Any communication effort should add to the brand, not take it away from the brand.
How much this campaign would help the brand, I have my own reservations.

But the good news for the brand is that all is not lost yet. They can still retrieve themselves. But would take a lot of strategic thinking which has so far been missing. It would surely take an idea to change IDEA’s life now.

India has always been a price sensitive market. People succumb to price falls. Most of the customer’s are price conscious rather than brand conscious. This is not to say that customers in India are not brand conscious at all but significant portion of India is still price sensitive.
In today’s marketplace, competition is being fought on price grounds. One company reduces price of its brand and others follow the suit. This is how brands are caught in vicious price reduction spiral. This very logic goes against the concept of brands which are known to earn premiums.
So the big question which remains is how to make brands less susceptible to price reduction, if not impervious? I have been thinking over this issue for quiet a while now.
I think marketers have been playing this “price factor” at a very high pitch. They need to play it down. Otherwise customers will get used to it and will expect your brand to bring down its price. Any price decrease may lead to rejection of your brand as your brand is seen as ‘discounted brand’. In such a situation it becomes difficult to bring the brand out of price ceiling and also becomes difficult to maintain its leadership (if your brand is leader).
Therefore marketers should consider creating an “emotional cushion” around your brand. Airtel is the one of the best examples one can give. It enjoys brand leadership in its respective category. Airtel has been least affected by price reductions. None of ads that they air, contains any price element. Ads are aired with an intention of creating “strong brand preference” which in turn will generate sales.
Price reductions are not bad if they are done with a strategic intent. Price reductions can work in short run but in long run brands are bound to loose.

Marketing, as we know, is all about waging war against competitive forces to win market share. For this purpose, marketers create warriors which win the perceptual battle for them, and these warriors are called BRANDS. Brands have proved their worth by earning premiums, decimating competitions and even beating time factors (as many brands are still leader as they were a century ago). Owing to this, marketers have stepped up their efforts to build their brands. They are building their marketing programs around their brands.
Today, marketplace is replete with competition. Opening up of economy has led to the entry of foreign brands into the marketplace. These brands are also adding to the chorus. Advertising has always been seen as main weapon to build brands by the brand managers. Excessive reliance on this form of communication has resulted in “over communication”. Ad clutter has been increasing gradually and the future shows no sign of relief. Not only has this, advertising also lost its credibility if we compare it to what it used to be decade back. Reasons are many: More knowledgeable customer, comparative advertising, internet etc.
Therefore, marketers are exploring new ways of supporting their brand. One such method is called Brand Activation. Brand activation can be defined as marketing process of bringing a brand to life through creating brand experience.
Next question now is what to activate? Generally, the core features or brand values of a brand are used for activation. That’s what every brand manager strives to achieve i.e. communicating their brand values to their target customers. But a word of caution here: select only one or two features or brand values to activate. Don’t try to communicate each and every detail of your brand. One has to appreciate the fact that branding is based on the concept of singularity.
This concept assumes a greater significance in case of services which are intangible in nature. Let me take example for both products and services to explain brand activation.
B.A. In Products:
Consider a hypothetical shaver brand “X”. Further assume that there are six other brands in this category. All brands are touting themselves as provider of smooth shave in their respective ads. But you are the smoothest one but how do you make your T.A believe of the same. B.A comes handy in case scenario.
Create such a platform, where you can meet your T.A and give them free shave so that the can feel the “smoothness”. Allow them to interact with your brands as much as possible. You can do so with the help of road shows and exhibitions etc. Once you have done that, customers will be able to validate your claim. Also, they will relate to your ads.
B.A in Services:
It’s the people in services which actually activate your brand. Consider the case of insurance company which claims to be most caring company. But the problem is that every company is saying that. The company (lets say) which reaches the place of accident, will be considered as most caring.
Benefits of Brand Activation:
1. You can convey your positioning using brand activation.
2. It supports your ad claim if used carefully.
3. Distortion is minimum in this case.
4. It increases your brand salience.
5. Helps in revitalizing a brand. Horlicks is doing it through its campaign which is trying to change its image from fuddy-duddy to an exciting brand among children. Their Wiz-Kid competition across the country is the perfect example of brand activation.
6. Brand activation can elicit customer insights as people interact with the brand.
Limitations of Brand Activation:
1. Lack of initiative on part of brand managers is the major concern.
2. Lack of measurement matrices or indices is the limiting factor.
At the end, I would like to say that brand activation should not be confused with the below the line activities. Brand Activation is seen as a tool to build brands through interaction with its target people whereas below the line activities, most of the times, are sales oriented.

A week ago, I came across an interesting article on Mobile Search. It prompted me to explore this topic a little further and put it up on my blog for further discussion. Mobile search probably is the next significant value creation opportunities for mobile operators around the world. According to Mobile Marketing Association, nearly 2 billion global mobile devices users are poised to use it as a primary means of accessing information. Now let’s look at how Mobile Search differs from Internet (read PC) Search

• Mobile devices are always on and always available.
• Call completion can directly connect you with marketers.
• Mobile search is coupled with immediate purchase intention.
• PCs come with big screen which can show multiple search results with lot more detailed information as compared to small screen of a Mobile.
• PCs have large and much comfortable pointing tools like mouse, touchpad as compared to a mobile device which usually has a compact keypad.

 Internet search will always cover broad category searches than mobile. I think mobile search will be useful in finding out VAS services like wallpapers, ring tones etc and Mobile search will be very handy when it comes to local search e.g. finding information about local addresses, and local restaurants etc while traveling will be a huge plus for mobile search.  But mobile has a solid advantage over internet which is that mobile search are joined to individuals and are representative of owner’s personality. Now what does this result into? This means more relevant results pertaining to their user’s demographics, behaviour patterns and personal interests. Am sure this would more opportunities for operators to make money. I don’t know how exactly they would leverage this. Another thing that I wanted to explore is the difference in the role of Mobile Search and Internet (PC) Search in Purchase Cycle. Though there is no quantifiable proof to it, but I still feel that mobile search is more likely to result in immediate action (enquiry/sale) than internet search. Probability of users searching for brand related keywords might be higher than generic ones. Also, we might see some new metrics in case of Mobile Search in addition to PPC. Mobile Search might see performance driven metric. Mobile search is still very new especially in India. But with more no of people using mobile internet than pc in India, it presents various opportunities to marketers, operators and surely for mobile users.

There is hardly any marketer who does not talk about need to leverage Social Media for their brand. So much so that some have added another ‘P’ (Participation) in already existing 4 P’s. It sounds really nice to hear clients speaking about social media. But when it comes to implementing the campaigns, they are back to square one. Most of the clients are doing online campaigns either because their competitors are doing it or because internet is probably the most measurable medium. Most of the times strategic thought is missing. Clients still create fire on not been able to see their ad on sites. When we broach the Social Media topic, clients by default assume it’s also as measurable as their banner campaign which unfortunately is not the case. Conversations can only be felt. They cant be measured. But clients are still number driven thanks to traditional media. Despite my efforts in explaining them that it’s not a number game, they agree to all points but at the end still ask for numbers. My client believes in making a community for every campaign they do. The campaign duration is usually one month. What makes it worse is when client doubts if anything is happening on social media coz the client is not able to see anything. It does not end here. No one from MARCOM/Brand team joined the community to drive the community. Campaign is over, so is the community. Client is of the opinion that if a community does not have atleast 800+ in a month, the campaign is a flop. All conversations in the community were discounted. Is this what is social media known for? This is the case with one of World’s best brand in India.

It’s clearly a case of clients failing to appreciate the strengths of respective mediums. Using any media for the sake of using it will not benefit the brand in anyway. My advice, trust the agency if as a client you are not sure about Social Media. Work with the agency and learn. Agencies know as much as clients do, if not more.

Brands and blogging don’t enjoy a marriage made in heaven. Blogs have the power to change behaviour. If your brand is going to blog you need to understand what you want to change about it. This is uncomfortable because brands usually like changing consumer behaviour not the other way round. There are no ‘old’ or ‘new’ media – there are communications media and social media. Communications media are the natural habitat of brands. Their use of social media is problematic. Social media demand that you trade control for influence. Unless brands are happy with this they should stay out of social media.  Just use it to listen to the conversation. Social media is all about conversation. Brands only have a role if they can make the conversation more interesting. Media is only interesting as content distribution vehicle. And increasingly it will be free to use. Measureability of social media is an issue for brands. So far, social media can’t be measured so lets stop trying. We have to get comfortable with managing the immeasurable.

When advertisers evaluate media spending, their main concern is return on investment. Online advertising is particularly measurable in this regard because immediate responses to an ad can be measured directly from the click to the purchase. Online advertising is also responsible for driving additional ROI by branding effect created by online ads which are not clicked by the user. Many advertisers do not track this effect which, if measured properly, can help in evaluating properly the performance of this medium.
Advertisers or agencies have stuck to CTR (which I guess is a DR metric).  For e.g. CTR of 4% is  considered to be good. But what about rest of 96%. Why is it not being accounted for? 96%  users have not clicked the ad but it does not mean that all of them have not seen the ad at all. This ad must have created some branding effect (awareness, recall, strengthens loyalty etc).  And users from this 96% may be buying your product/service after watching your ad but they are not being accounted for. For a campaign whose purpose is branding only, view through becomes important and cant be ignored.

At the same time, when we are touting the advantages of view through, issues pertaining to measurement of View Through should be answered before we go onto implement the same. One such issue is how do we separate users who directly visit our website regardless of if they have seen our ad or not.  For example, assume you are advertising a campaign online. Within the same duration, many regular users, who anyways visit your site, would also visit irrespective of ad exposure. How do we make that distinction? Answering such issues can help advertisers/agencies in evaluating their media spending.

How do we calculate View Through is another issue which we need to look at. In the end. we know that View Through effect does exist but how much does it add to the 
bottom-line, still remains elusive.

Word of Mouth is the act of consumer providing information to other consumers.
Word of Mouth Marketing means giving people a reason to talk about your product or brand and forward it to others. WOM acknowledges the importance of customers endorsing their products or brands. WOM is the most honest form of marketing. By its very nature, viral marketing campaign is unlike which has been done before which means there is no formula,no stats and no guarantee in advance. Results can only be proven retrospectively by which it can be too late for those results to have any more meaning than the knowledge that viral marketing works in priciple. Even the successful campaigns of past wont be able to replicate same kind of success if used by competitors. It’s very high risk and high gain means of marketing. Also the cost is not measured in financial terms but in the way customers perceive the brand. For this to happen, viral campaign must be able to stimulate emotional resposne from the prospects.

The campaign should not be fake otherwise same campaign can backfire. I am not sure if there is any empirical evidence which proves if it really makes difference to the bottomline. Much like television advertising, it is not always clear wheather people have purchased a product due to TV commercial or due to varios brand promotions across various platforms. All I can say is it works.