The citizens of Madras, over the past few days, have been witness to David taking on Goliath. Times of India (never mind it’s a Goliath elsewhere) has been trying to take The Hindu head on with a series of ads that has a sleeping man in everyday situations of Madras with a screaming line: Is the morning news putting you to sleep? Wake up to the Times of India.
Is the campaign working? Has the ad woken up the citizens of Madras to the perils of sleeping with The Hindu and moving to the Times of India instead?
We would know once the next round of INS data comes in.
But The Hindu certainly seemed to have woken up! Readers of The Hindu – the venerable Maha Vishnu of Mount Road – have been waking up to a change. A change in the kind of news one gets to read in The Hindu.
No, The Hindu’s impeccable language and unimpeachable use of the English language haven’t changed. Not definitely the absolute trustworthiness of its news reporting. Nor its unbelievable depth of coverage. These and other hallmarks of world class journalism that one could find only in The Hindu, hasn’t changed one iota.
But the kind of news The Hindu has added to its repertoire certainly has. ‘Why this Kolaveridi’ song (that everyone is raving about) was analyzed threadbare in The Hindu. And guess where? On prime real estate…..the front page! Never in my life have I, or for that matter millions of loyal Hindu readers, seen anything remotely similar in the first page of our morning master.
A few days back there was a complete postmortem of the decline of Kingfisher airlines……front page piece again.
There have been more changes too. The kind of headlines The Hindu now uses. The kind of news from Page 2 through the last. You could see and smell change - albeit some of them minor. The Hindu is racier now, so to speak. Funnier now, so to add. The Hindu is seeing change, to say the least!
So, coming back to the question, yes, advertising does work. Though quite not in the way TOI might have expected to! It has woken up a sleeping giant and probably getting ready to get crushed!
It’s time for Times of India to wake up……to a marauding Hindu!
Friday, November 25, 2011
Friday, November 11, 2011
11.11.11
Marketers are excellent exploiters of sentiments, we know. But there are times when they exceed themselves and go to ridiculous extents. The latest is this brouhaha happening across the Indian marketing landscape today. I am talking about the 11.11.11 syndrome.
Agreed it’s a unique date and all that. But it’s just the eleventh such unique date this decade. Every Tom, Dick, Harry and his marketing uncle are onto this bandwagon. Take today’s newspaper. It’s awash with advertisements extolling the virtues of this date and giving 11.11.11 offers.
A bank says its opening 111 branches today. Which one? I don’t remember.
Some vacation package company is offering some 11 days stay with 11 day something else thrown with another 11 something into the package. What exactly is the package? And which vacation company? No idea.
And there is this premium hotel charging some 11.11.11 rate for those who stay in their rooms today. What offer and which hotel? It went over my head and had gone past my senses and I don’t remember.
Another something brand is offering another 11 something with another 11 and one more 11 to boot. Which one and what is the offer? Don’t even bother asking. I have the foggiest.
See, this is the problem. The problem of plenty. The pitfalls of a dozen brands offering something similar. So, which brand is offering which? No one knows. And even worse, no customer seems to care.
It’s like spotting a fully-tonsured friend of yours in Tirupathi. Well neigh impossible since everyone looks the same. It’s like looking at Chinese faces. Everyone looks similar!
And so is every brand today - across every category - offering something spectacularly similar. I couldn’t find one brand which stands out today nor could I spot one offer that claimed attention. It was just a plain wallpaper effect!
I have a small piece of advice to all these brands that tried riding this 11.11.11 thing. Analyze the offer performance vis-à-vis campaign objectives. Do an honest post-launch evaluation. Check if your brand achieved even a semblance of salience and a modicum of success. The findings will help you 13 months from now.
When 12.12.12 dawns on us!
Agreed it’s a unique date and all that. But it’s just the eleventh such unique date this decade. Every Tom, Dick, Harry and his marketing uncle are onto this bandwagon. Take today’s newspaper. It’s awash with advertisements extolling the virtues of this date and giving 11.11.11 offers.
A bank says its opening 111 branches today. Which one? I don’t remember.
Some vacation package company is offering some 11 days stay with 11 day something else thrown with another 11 something into the package. What exactly is the package? And which vacation company? No idea.
And there is this premium hotel charging some 11.11.11 rate for those who stay in their rooms today. What offer and which hotel? It went over my head and had gone past my senses and I don’t remember.
Another something brand is offering another 11 something with another 11 and one more 11 to boot. Which one and what is the offer? Don’t even bother asking. I have the foggiest.
See, this is the problem. The problem of plenty. The pitfalls of a dozen brands offering something similar. So, which brand is offering which? No one knows. And even worse, no customer seems to care.
It’s like spotting a fully-tonsured friend of yours in Tirupathi. Well neigh impossible since everyone looks the same. It’s like looking at Chinese faces. Everyone looks similar!
And so is every brand today - across every category - offering something spectacularly similar. I couldn’t find one brand which stands out today nor could I spot one offer that claimed attention. It was just a plain wallpaper effect!
I have a small piece of advice to all these brands that tried riding this 11.11.11 thing. Analyze the offer performance vis-à-vis campaign objectives. Do an honest post-launch evaluation. Check if your brand achieved even a semblance of salience and a modicum of success. The findings will help you 13 months from now.
When 12.12.12 dawns on us!
Thursday, November 03, 2011
The best way to fight…..is to run away!
Many a battle has been won fighting the enemy face to face. It might work in warfare. But it seldom does in the marketing world. More so when you are up against an enemy, who is more entrenched than you are, more experienced than you have been and with more arsenal than you could muster.
So, how do we fight such an enemy in the battlefield?
Simple; you just shift the battlefield. Move the ground to another plane; move in against the enemy’s weakness; pitch yourself in an arena which is least contested and, more importantly, launch an attack in that part of the marketplace that is least conceived; and least expected!
Emami realized taking on Fair & Lovely would leave them battered and bruised; not to talk of them ending up dark and diabolical. So, they took the easier way out. They ran away from that battlefield; and shifted the battleground to men’s fairness. And launched Fair & Handsome.
Two things happened: It was a virgin territory that Emami literally created for itself. And two, HUL just couldn’t react. And even when they did, it was too late, too little and too stupid. Fair & Lovely Men’s Active - their reply, was feeble, frivolous and fantastically stupid that the brand’s advertising only heightened the guys’ need to use a male fairness cream – precisely the platform Fair & Handsome had taken earlier and owns now!
Too many brands get this wrong. They think the best way to take the bigger enemy is facing them ‘heads on’. No one wins by fighting harder. You win by fighting smarter. By running away from the competitor’s strength and moving him away from his area of strength.
The old clichéd question holds well all the time: How do you play Vishwanathan Anand? By playing a game other than chess!
The moral of the story: Next time you have to fight a big competitor, just run away…….and shift the battleground. Force your stronger competitor to lose his strength by taking him on in a new arena; a neutral territory. Where you are as strong. Even Stevens!
Here, is another wonderful exhibition of a brand fighting the leader by moving the battlefield. Watch this video. Enjoy and get enlightened on the art of running away from a battlefield…….only to win it!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9zcs1dg8qo
P.S: Thank you Ms. Aarthi for sending me this link from Germany and providing me with the necessary grist for this edition of my blog mill.
So, how do we fight such an enemy in the battlefield?
Simple; you just shift the battlefield. Move the ground to another plane; move in against the enemy’s weakness; pitch yourself in an arena which is least contested and, more importantly, launch an attack in that part of the marketplace that is least conceived; and least expected!
Emami realized taking on Fair & Lovely would leave them battered and bruised; not to talk of them ending up dark and diabolical. So, they took the easier way out. They ran away from that battlefield; and shifted the battleground to men’s fairness. And launched Fair & Handsome.
Two things happened: It was a virgin territory that Emami literally created for itself. And two, HUL just couldn’t react. And even when they did, it was too late, too little and too stupid. Fair & Lovely Men’s Active - their reply, was feeble, frivolous and fantastically stupid that the brand’s advertising only heightened the guys’ need to use a male fairness cream – precisely the platform Fair & Handsome had taken earlier and owns now!
Too many brands get this wrong. They think the best way to take the bigger enemy is facing them ‘heads on’. No one wins by fighting harder. You win by fighting smarter. By running away from the competitor’s strength and moving him away from his area of strength.
The old clichéd question holds well all the time: How do you play Vishwanathan Anand? By playing a game other than chess!
The moral of the story: Next time you have to fight a big competitor, just run away…….and shift the battleground. Force your stronger competitor to lose his strength by taking him on in a new arena; a neutral territory. Where you are as strong. Even Stevens!
Here, is another wonderful exhibition of a brand fighting the leader by moving the battlefield. Watch this video. Enjoy and get enlightened on the art of running away from a battlefield…….only to win it!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9zcs1dg8qo
P.S: Thank you Ms. Aarthi for sending me this link from Germany and providing me with the necessary grist for this edition of my blog mill.
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