There goes my "Baby"...New Product Launch and Accidents

So, I was stuck outside on the ledge, for 3 hours, at least; I couldn't see into the palpitating depths; the panicking eyes; the whole world staring at you; an animal stuck in a cage,cowering. I was on the verge of a breakdown, but was shit scared to try and break the glass.What happened was very simple;

Anybody seen The Darwin Awards, a satirical movie on the MISadventures of forensic detective "MICHAEL BURROWS",superbly portrayed by Joseph Finnes, about the funny ways in which a man can get into trouble( A LOT OF IT ).

Straight away getting into the happenings of the day in a chronological order:

Got into my room; locked the door from inside; slipped out of the sliding windows, perched myself on the ledge to try and call my friend( signal's low inside the room, so getting a full network requires stepping out into the open), and the window pane slid shut. These sliding windows have a characteristic of opening only from inside. Hence, I was trapped on the ledge- for 3 hours. The reason being, nobody seemed to have the key to the inside room. All the hustle bustle, frantic cries for help aggravated the issue further. With a motley bunch of friends, as my saviours, I had no choice but to try something on my own. And try I did. While futile efforts at sliding the window's from outside failed, mustering all my courage, I did manage to break the glass. Not before, slitting my wrist against broken glass.

Being a marketer, I always associate any incidence with the learnings and insights into the ever competitive world of branding.

Lesson One:
Its not easy to give up control:

From Kevin Roberts to Seth Godin, everybody has his opinion on this. We talk about one to one marketing, but giving up control of your 4Ps (7Cs) or whatever you may call it to the customer, requires selfless overtures in accepting that there are more intelligent people around you and value is CO-CREATED, neither PRO-CREATED nor RE-CREATED(PRO as in proactive or reactive).

Lesson Two:
Don't expect too much out of your product or yourself.

When launching a new product, a brand/product manager faces a similar dilemma in which I found myself. The whole world staring at you, waiting for a miracle to happen. A pointer to all those, who have anticipations regarding their "baby";beware of the fallacy that your product will change the world, some brands are "late bloomers", case in point- Apple introduced Newton Message Pad a PDA phone in 1993, but the product failed to take off because of the non acceptance of business phone at that time. Hence, be passionate about your product, but don't lose sight of your motives.

Lesson Three:

Nothing tests your managerial skills more than in times of distress.

In the upturn, everything seems to work right; products sell, there is no supply shortage, all the good people abound the organisations, paycheques become fatter than the wallet, and everyone sings songs about the corporate philosophy.
Its only the downturns which produce exceptional leaders like "Newton Jack" or Jack Welch(GE) and Lou Gerstner(IBM).

Lesson Four:
It is the disasters which create unequivocal relationships among adversaries.

In other words,rivalry is only among the respectable i.e. who compete in an ethical environment;

Here is a recent news I picked up-
"Rough time etches out rivalry, is proved when Vodafone, a mobile service provider, rescued its archrival Airtel, as a major fire destroyed some of the latter's crucial telecom switches in Mumbai. "Welcome to the Vodafone Mumbai Network. Happy to help" is the message that greeted Airtel users in Mumbai, as Airtel dealt the blazing setback, caused by a short circuit in the power cables."(Courtesy- Silicon India)

Lesson Five:
Become the "Fall Guy", don't have a habit of "Passing the Buck".

If the product fails to capture hearts and emotions, don't feel low or booze away to oblivion and don't(READ IN CAPS) ever blame anybody. To taken ownership for your decisions is not just exemplary but also self motivating. The top management appreciates your honesty and integrity, although that might not be always visible.

The worse that can happen is that you are fired, but you would definitely have a story to share and inspire your counterparts in other organisations. All influential people have grown as individuals by traversing the same path of misfortunes and failures.

Lesson Six:
Don't listen to a guy who gets stuck in a mess and then goes on to write pages on his stupid experience.

Sense Brands in the Interactive world

With due respects to Dr. Martin Lindstrom(below is the excerpt on the website promoting his book Brand Sense)
"Did you know that currently 83% of all commercial communication appeals only to one sense – our eyes. That leaves a paltry 17% to cater for the other four senses. This is extraordinary given that 75% of our day-to-day emotions are influenced by what we smell, and the fact that there’s a 65% chance of a mood change when exposed to a positive sound. This is a long way of saying that the importance of our senses has been completely overlooked in the brand-building business… until now. "

Here is my take on the five senses:

Sight:
Eyes are your doors to consciousness and let you explore the most provocative, most insanely pretty picture of the bland world around you and what better way for the inquisitive mind to search websites for something so visually appealing that would make you shed tears of joy/pity.......... you choice.

.

This is a intelligently done guerrilla ad, which invokes an instant pity for the poor homeless.

And now a feast for your eyes..........Guess who's the boss?



Ads have surpassed the genre, where evocative ads which persuade the viewer with suggestive ads which engage the viewer.

Now, one of the most coolest sites on the net which can get you hooked.

Click on the picture to go to the site


Smell:
With newspapers(Wall Street Journal) using rub on ads which release perfume on being rubbed, to Walmart enhancing customers viewing experience by providing smell-o-vision DVD's, this is another way of establishing a psychological bond with the customer.
Although, I daresay that few companies completely miss the point( Kamasutra provided rub and sniff print ads of condoms in magazines and most of the rubbing and sniffing of banana, strawberry and cherry flavoured condoms was done by kids in junior high. Should I say, thanx for making perverts out of kids. Also, the ads failed the acid test because the potential customers chose Durex over Kamasutra when their time came.
Some brands which have got into the act of smelling their way across to the target consumers:

1. Walmart is ready with its prototype DVD which has an embedded chip which can release a particular smell( like the smell of freshly fired gun) at timed intervals, so giving an unsual experience of home viewing.
2. C-stores gas stations have artificial coffee cups mounted on the walls and emanating the whiff of coffee to lure credit card carrying customers into their mini marts.
3. Builders D.R Horton and Syntex use exhaust fans spreading the aroma of freshly baked apple pies.
Check out the article Gas pumps that smell like coffee.




Taste:
Ever felt that urge to grasp a 1 foot long sub and just dive into that special saucy and delicious, filling that fills up your senses and you hunger for more........................... Here's a tip for you guys: Don't order the barbecue sauce with tuna, that experience cost me my taste buds for 36 hours.
Whatever, orders to your preferences- Here's some delight for the famished souls.
Burger King website gives a categorical list of all the 64 items they serve.




Touch:
That special hug, the special expression of recognition when you win your first sweepstakes at a retailers, or even a simple gesture of calling you up to wish you Happy Birthday. That extra effort which makes you feel important, it touches your heart and you become a hard core loyalist of the Brand. We come in contact with numerous bits of information during our daily grind, only the most unique in their value proposition cherishing the user, are remembered the rest filtered away.

Says George Harrison, Nintendo of America's senior vice president of marketing and corporate communications, "We remain committed to turning video games into an inclusive mass medium that everyone can enjoy. Touch Generations will help novices and newcomers identify the fun and uniquely engaging experiences that are available only on Nintendo DS". The first three new releases in the Touch Generations line-up will be Big Brain Academy, the second title in the brain-training series, Magnetica, a marble-based puzzler, and Sudoku Gridmaster, a Sodoku game with over 400 puzzles.

Visit this site for more details.

Hearing:

I've talked about this in my blog music branding.

To foray into this topic is of utmost interest for further exploration. As is the mystery with sounds - for laymen it is enough to know that a combination of vowels and consonants can play havoc with your psychological makeup and hence create an inductive pull which can propel the most straitjacketed critics of the advertisements to take another look. Dunno, what I'm talking about.BIG or the brand identity group specialises in customising songs to suit a common theme. They have certain vanilla tunes which can be used for any product and these tunes can be used as a background for your websites for casual as well as targetted surfers.

Indian "LOVEMARKS"

According to Kevin Roberts (CEO- Saatchi & Saatchi), lovemarks are enduring brands which have the power to acquire customer loyalty beyond reason. His books, Lovemarks and the Lovemarks effect define the term and gives personal stories of how individuals came in touch with something they loved and how a neat consumer experience with brands like Levis,, Chanel etc. established an enduring relationship with the brand.
The books deal in detail, with identifying your lovemarks and how brands can leverage this concept to benefit the consumer as well as the organization in a mutually satisfying exchange of emotions as well as products/services.

Just one question, Mr Roberts, how do you intend to work out this concept in a country like India, where loyalty is built through price discounts and emotional hankering( companies like Airtel, have so often toyed with the emotional appeal that people like us have lost faith in the credibility of the product or the service)? Well, people won’t complain as long as they get what they want, irrespective of the kind of bond they form with the brand. Then, why waste precious time in your Food Bazaar when you can visit the nearest Food world or Reliance fresh and get your stuff packed in less than 5 min. What, I mean is that with fierce competition, brands are becoming look-alike with more emphasis on standardization (following the best practices) and hardly any differentiation. Again, my argument is restricted to certain industries like Retail for one.

The blazing point which I’m trying to make is that consumer is no more rational but opportunistic and brand loyalty can be developed only through doing something unconventional. So, rather than showing advertisements which promote the difference between competiting brands (Pepsi- Coca Cola, Vodaphone-Airtel, Surf-Ariel-Tide, Scorpio-Safari), differentiation should be evident in every aspect of product development, communication, sales and post sales. To ensure, that the product lifecycle never reaches a decline stage, involve and engage the customer. Make convenience and affordability the table stakes. Let the customer decide what he/she wants. Bring about a radical change to the institutional marketing. One example could be that Laptop manufacturers, dress designers can follow the servicing style of McDonalds, where they provide a customized service to their customers. That is, these products can very well be ready to make(Principles of JIT might come in handy) .Websites, which give an interactive experience, where you can choose everything from your hard drive configuraion to the casing colour and in the end check you total spending, should be made accessible to their customers. This requires a well targetted marketing campaign. Simple thing, make customer the decision maker at strategic, tactical and operational level. I hope, Lenovo, Dell and all the other high end designers like Louis Vuitton and Tommy Hilfiger who are foraying into India are listening.

Enough from me; lets listen to Kevin Roberts on his view of developing lovemarks.

What you can learn from the CEO's

Recently while going through a list of the Top 20 brand makers of 2007, I was fascinated by the fact that the companies employing them had in fact adopted the values and principles of the individual. It was as if the CEOs were the manifestation of the culture and values of the organization. Then it got me thinking; about these people who were so pervasive that the whole organization swayed to their tunes and for their competitors, the CEO is the company and there is no distinguishing them.

The CEO is a brand in its own right and this realization led me to search for something arcane – Self Branding. Why is it essential for you?

For one, you might actually become the CEO some day.
Also, every individual goes through a series of needs and wants in his life as explained by Maslow in his hierarchy of needs. This philosophy completely negates the facts established by Maslow (and god knows most of us would be elated by the mere thought of disproving a psychologist).

Self branding is technically, completely at loggerheads with the theory of self development. While, self development is more about analyzing yourself from the self point of view, Self branding is improving yourself from your customer (the people you most appeal to, those who know you and are influenced by your decisions) view point. Remember those days in college when there were guys who were the cynosure of all eyes; those stars whom everybody knew. And remember yourself wondering what he’s got that you haven’t. Well, if only you would’ve approached your friends with this question, “What are my weaknesses?” you’d have had a head start by now. Self development fails most of the times because you tend to give a myopic view to your existence and your analysis of your personality is biased.

This is where Self Branding starts. To becoming a successful Self Brand, let us learn from the leaders.

Rupert Murdoch (News Corp.):


You are important as long as you have important friends. So try and be as close to the power centers as possible.

Rupert’s trusted friends/loyalists include Ex British Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, Australian Labour Party leader Gough Whitlam, American president Ronald Regan and George Bush.

Steve Jobs (Apple Inc.):


Having an unbridled passion for the things you believe in.

He named Apple Inc’s first prototype PC, Lisa after his first born. He was so involved with the launch of Apple Macintosh that he used to sleep at the headquarters and his small crew of developers couldn’t sleep at all as Steve had the habit of waking up at odd hours to check on the crew and any employee napping would be fired on the spot.

Sergey Brin and Larry Page (Google Inc.):


Don’t look for things you know, but try searching answers for things you don’t know.

Google started off as a research project by the Larry and Sergey at Stanford University. These two had a penchant for searching patterns in huge piles of data. This is how they came across the PageRank system used by google for classifying pages.Google Inc. was incorporated on September 7, 1998 at a friend's garage in Menlo Park, California.

Stephen Schwarzman and Pete Peterson (Blackstone Group):


Having an insatiable appetite for thinking big.

Blackstone Group has nearly $98 billion in assets under management, and owns or jointly controls companies in just about every sector of the economy: real estate (Equity Office Properties), media (The Hollywood Reporter), theme parks (Six Flags, Universal Orlando), technology (SunGard), retail (Michaels hobby stores), food and beverage (United Biscuits, Orangina), health care (Southern Cross), the Internet (Orbitz).

Warren Buffet (Berkshire Hathway):


A thorough understanding of the business you are in.

Warren Buffet obtained a Master's degree in economics in 1951 at Columbia Business School, studying under Benjamin Graham. He was the only student to ever get an A+ in his security analysis class. He was of the belief that as long as the market undervalued them relative to their intrinsic value he was making a solid investment. He reasoned that the market will eventually realize it has undervalued the company and will correct its course regardless of what type of business the company was in.

Stephen Spielberg (Dreamworks):


Never forget your past, but remember and learn from it.

Stephen’s parents divorced when he was seventeen and he had an unhappy childhood. But this didn’t deter him from becoming the highest grossing filmmaker of all time making nearly $8 billion. He used his past experiences to frame his themes and his most critically acclaimed movies Munich, Minority Report, Jurassic Park, Jaws and Schindler’s List have a common underlying theme of tension between parent-child relationships.

Bernard Arnault (LVMH):


Be hard nosed and control obsessed in achieving your objectives.

In 1989 Bernard Arnault won a fierce battle for control of family-run Louis Vuitton. With a mixture of clever marketing, innovative design and tight control over how and where the products are sold, Arnault turned Vuitton and Dior into highly profitable global businesses. In the economic downturn, Arnault opted for consolidation rather than acquisition.

Bill Gates (Microsoft Corp.):


Always be on the lookout for opportunities.

In January 1975, after reading an issue of Popular Electronics that demonstrated the Altair 8800, Bill Gates contacted MITS (Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems), the creators of the new microcomputer, to inform them that he and others were working on a BASIC interpreter for the platform. In reality, Gates and Allen did not have an Altair and had not written code for it; they merely wanted to test the interest of MITS in their offering. MITS president Ed Roberts agreed to meet them for a demo, and over the course of a few weeks they developed an Altair emulator that ran on a minicomputer, and then the BASIC interpreter.

H. Lee Scott (Wal-Mart):


Always appreciate your customers and they will appreciate you back.

H.Lee Scott following Wal-Marts EDLP strategy understood that his customer base consisted of middle class customers. Hence, he backed away from his plans to lure upscale consumers and, instead, slashed prices on 13,000 items. Needless to say, Wal-Mart suffered losses and are presently planning to buy back $15 billion of its own shares.

Oprah Winfery (Harpo Productions):


Last but not the least, benefit the society to which you belong.

Philanthropy has been central in Oprah’s life.This year she donated $58.3 million, most of which went to her Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy Foundation. She also opened her second new school for poor South African youth, the $1.6 million Seven Fountains Primary School, in KwaZulu-Natal Province. And Harpo's first prime-time TV series, Oprah's Big Give, in which contestants compete by devising creative ways to do good for others, will debut early next year.

If Music is the food for Soul, Play ON........

Music in itself is an expression so pure and emotional that it can connect a common theme identifiable across cross cultural borders (Itunes, Napster, mp3.com were instrumental in sustaining this movement). For some, it is a feeling of pure joy while for others it’s the extreme form of obsession. Advertisers and Brand Managers recognized its potential long back, and ever since have developed visuals with a background scores which can lend a personal touch to the advertisements(in Advertising lingo, background music is known as jingles).

A new trend which is called Synchronization had caught the media frenzy a few years back. This is done using original, popular songs and customizing them according to the theme of the marketing campaign. Britain's Dirty Vegas became overnight stars when Mitsubishi used their edgy music in American commercials. Audi, the German car manufacturers also banked on the tune by an unknown British singer, Dog. Despite the $90,000-plus cost to license a pop song (compared with $15,000 for a customised jingle), advertisers, especially those aiming at younger consumers, think it money well spent.

This trend forebodes an important strategy for tobacco and alcohol products in promoting their brands in countries like India where stringent norms in advertising exist(Case study on Surrogate Advertising here). The advertisers have to use other techniques like Surrogate/surreptitious advertisements to spread the message. In this context, identifying and establishing Music as a communication medium, these companies can establish an emotional bond with the target audience and hence increase brand loyalty and awareness.

Although implementation of a successful marketing campaign revolving around a musical theme would require a substantial investment in understanding the customer segments and the changing trends in music industry. Rather than following a conventional technique for segmentation based on (demographics or psychographics) one should go for Lifestyle segmentation as prophesized by Joseph T. Plummer(But, that’s for discussion in the next blog)Here are advertisements from two countries which are diametrically opposite, culturally.

While surfing using Google, I came across a site URBANRUSH, which has an amazing CGI and belongs to US based Urbanrush_productions. They are into branding through music. Urbanrush offers relationships with DJ’s, record labels, designers and producers to create exclusive music compilation CDs. They manage and track projects in their entirety, including licensing. Their clientele includes the MYHOTELS, MyHotels Chain.