niche special edition

NICHE MAGAZINE | MAVERICK CLUB IBS

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This page is dedicated to our beloved

Senior Mavericks


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Dear Readers,

It gives me great pleasure to inform the esteemed readers that ‘Maverick’, part of Student Activities of IBS Hyderabad is launching the second issue of their magazine, ‘Niche’.

This magazine will cover all the relevant and contemporary topics useful for management students across the country which shall enlighten and broaden the scope of collaborative exchange of brilliant ideas and concepts of the generation next.

I wish all the members associated with this venture at IBS Hyderabad and esteemed readers to collaborate continuously for mutual value creation.

With best wishes,

G.K Srikanth

mentor’s message

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Woke up to realise it was the perfect moment to write something that interests and engulfs the whole nation. That is exactly what a marketer is supposed to do, isn’t it?

I will not spoil the fun for the readers. The previous edition, our premier edi-tion set a benchmark. Well this time we took it to the whole new level. With various con-cepts and their not-so-common application we have devised something extraordinary.Enough of the gibber-jabber. I hope you like this one as much as you loved the previous one.

Maverick Ankit Bansal

Creditseditorial Heads Ankit Bansal : Anita Singh | editorial team Ankia Sharma : Ekta Lohia : Himalaya Kachhawaha : Khushboo Chandak : Manat Bajaj : Mayuri Verma : Mohd. Ehsan : Mriganka Naren :

Prashakha Pandey : Prashanth Iyer : Utkarsha Atrey | President Nitin Chauhan | Vice President Shubham Srivastava | Creative Head Keval Shah


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The heaviness of being successful is replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again. After the successful launch of Niche, we started off afresh with the home-work on the second one. In the cover story, we are viewing the current moot point in the Indian political scenario through the lens of a marketer. With changes in the economic con-ditions, marketing environment and consumer behaviour have evolved. These evolving trends have been highlighted in this edition. So go ahead and enjoy the read!

editor’s desk

Maverick Anita Singh

Creditseditorial Heads Ankit Bansal : Anita Singh | editorial team Ankia Sharma : Ekta Lohia : Himalaya Kachhawaha : Khushboo Chandak : Manat Bajaj : Mayuri Verma : Mohd. Ehsan : Mriganka Naren :

Prashakha Pandey : Prashanth Iyer : Utkarsha Atrey | President Nitin Chauhan | Vice President Shubham Srivastava | Creative Head Keval Shah

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8 Maverick CSR

9 Sacred Cows Beware !!! Integrated Marketing Requires change

11 New Age Marketing Prescription

12 Cover Story - Political Warfare

16 Maverick Events

18 Is Price actually for Marketers or Economist Think Again

19 Reverse Auction

21 Marketing Lingos

22 Marketing Addictions

24 Crowd Sourcing

26 Corporate Story - Jaipur Rugs

29 GURU-Mantras

30 Logogram

ContentsPURE

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where the mind is without fear and the head is held high, where words come out from the depth of truth. Should we let the weak standalone against the mighty as freedom is not a wish that is granted it is a right.

Their acceptance in our environ-ment and respect for their lives. Do we have the right to take away from them what is as much theirs as ours?

whenever you are angered by cor-ruption, reflect inside and ask your-self if you were ever a part of the same? As corruption is rarely a one man deed.

Forgivable offence?

It seeps in through the weakest links in the society, as a citizen isn’t it our duty to join hands and work on the weakest rungs oppressed by misery, so that no soul is ever moti-vated to tread the dark path?


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Integrated marketing is as much an organizational approach as it is a marketing strategy. From the CMO on down, truly embracing integrated marketing will affect nearly everyone in marketing — from how they do their job to how performance is measured.

Moving from managing single campaigns and chan-nels to managing the entire conversation can’t be done without foundational changes. And without these changes, you won’t be able to reap the full benefits of integrated marketing.There are three main areas of change that one needs to address: people and processes, technology, and performance measurement. We’ll go through each in a bit more detail:

Change #1: Rethink Roles and Processes from within the Marketing Or-ganization

Marketing has evolved into tiny fiefdoms operating in a siloed manner — the web teams, SEO strategy, email marketing, social media strategy, ad-vertising, creative, PR, and others. Roles and responsi-

bilities and processes are typically defined by channel or a narrow focus area, with no one group owning the entire customer experience. Often this structure creates redundancy and ineffi-ciency as multiple groups reinvent the wheel. Each team may measure performance in a different way, with none of them measuring the level of customer

engagement across channels. Worse yet, the pros-pect or customer doesn’t perceive a seamless, con-sistent experience across all channels.

To move towards integrated marketing, you need to rethink functional and departmental lines and begin organizing around the prospect and customer expe-rience. Eliminate silos and artificial departmental lines to unify functions and processes across channels. To do this likely means tackling some sacred cows in-cluding budgets and authority, as well as resistance to change.

Ultimately, however, aligning roles, responsibilities, and processes with the customer experience can set the stage for achieving far greater results than can be achieved with a traditionally organized marketing department.

Change #2: Eliminate Technology Silos

As the marketing department evolved into siloed functions, technology choices were also typical-ly made along departmental/functional lines. Email marketing tools, media monitoring tools, web analy-sis tools, and more ended up being scattered around the organization, used in isolation by certain individ-uals and groups. Siloed, non-in-tegrated appli-cations don’t provide the cross-channel au-tomation and vis-ibility you need for integrated marketing. Can you track cus-tomer engage-ment with your

GUEST ARTICLE

Sacred Cows Beware !!!Integrated Marketing Requires

cH@nGe

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current technology? Can you automate interactions across your various channels? Can your tools share and update centralized prospect and customer infor-mation to maintain the context of the conversation across channels?

Integrated marketing requires an integrated system — a customer engagement platform — that lets you design, monitor, and measure customer engagement across channels. This platform or system needs to track and coordinate conversations across channels, while enabling you to automate your response based on all the data the system collects about context.Without an engagement platform, you can’t measure and optimize customer engagement, which is anoth-er important change you need to make.

Change #3: Start Measuring Engagement, Not Just Clicks

Most marketing organizations measure effectiveness of campaigns, not overall customer engagement. And each channel is often measured differently and independently of other channels. While open rates, number of clicks, volume of website traffic, and oth-er channel-specific metrics can be helpful, they don’t shed enough insight into the impact on the pros-pect’s entire experience.

The beauty of integrated marketing is that we can start to correlate the effectiveness and value of our marketing efforts across all platforms, gaining insight into the interplay between touch points and channels to optimize the experience.

You can start by tracking and measuring engagement value. To do this, you must identify all the possible interactions throughout the customer lifecycle. Once you have these touch points defined, you assign a value or points to each interaction. These interactions are your conversion goals and should be indicative or predictive of a business goal, such as revenue gener-ation. The value corresponds to the level of engage-ment a prospect or customer shows by completing the interaction. Now you have the ability to measure engagement at the individual and audience-segment level.

By tracking engagement value, you can begin to see trends that you might not see if you’re only looking at volume statistics and trends. With engagement value, you can understand how channels are affecting engagement and which interactions are performing better than others — giving you better insight into the value of your marketing spend

WORDS BY rahul Kumar shao


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NEW AGEMarketing Prescription

Going by traditional marketing, an effective strategy calls for one to think through the 4 P’s, carry out an STP analysis, optimize the operational functions, and reap the benefits. Is that all? In today’s dynamic mar-keting landscape, with a more informed and involved customer, we need sophisticated tools in order to capture the customer behavior accurately. With this thought in mind, we went to look for the answers to the experts in various marketing professionals from online, branding, and consulting fields. What we will mention here forth are the fundamentals advised by these professionals for the budding managers.

With the evolving digital world, people knowingly or unknowingly create enormous information on vari-ous web platforms. This information if organized by the marketers could be a treasure chest or Pandora’s Box, whose fate will be decided by the way the data is used to arrive at decisions. This kind of exponen-tial data in terms of volume, variety and variability is called Big Data. One may argue the existence of data in the market even in the past, but what makes the dif-ference here is the complexity of the digital data. The traditional: point of sale transaction data, responses to surveys and campaigns, coupon redemption etc. vis- a- vis social media interaction, online browsing behaviour, click through rates, keyword analysis, mo-bile usage pattern, geographic location etc, and to say this would just be the beginning!

Effective usage of the data would lead to increase in customer engagement, retention and loyalty. It can also serve as a major tool for optimizing marketing expenses and operations through testing, measure-ment and analysis. However there are challenges faced by the data scientists such as, knowing the right data to be gathered, appropriate analytical tools to be applied, and deriving impactful insights from raw data. The key to success in big data analysis is to be clear in objective, follow a step by step framework and remember to bite as much as one can chew.New age marketing demands marketers to think through the lens of community. For a strong sense

of belonging, human beings are driven towards building communities, which rejoices the kindered spirits of those who would otherwise feel left out. This makes the marketer’s job easier to grow customer loyalty, maintain authentici-ty and drive innovations by a continu-ous flow of ideas from the grass roots. Along with this community marketing helps connect to the prospects through existing customer by WOM. Harley as a company has capitalized on this con-cept through the Harley Owners Group (HOG).

With increasing advertisement clutter in the market, consumers have become adept in shutting off the traditional mar-keting channels, be it TV ads, magazine ads or online pop up ads. To cater to the smart consumers today, marketers need to pave a way for effective communica-tion. Enter Content marketing!

Content marketing is the art of befriend-ing one’s customers instead of pushing the product for sale, by delivering valu-able information to the customers and making them more intelligent. In return, they reward by giving business and loy-alty.

As prescribed by the veterans of the marketing world, Big Data, content and community marketing will define the path ahead. This progression is one of the first droplets into the ocean of marketing intelligence, which would create massive waves that if one does not choose to surf on now might be left struggling on the shores.

WORDS BY Anita singh

“Content

marketing is a

marketing tech-

nique of creating

and distributing

relevant and

valuable con-

tent to attract,

acquire, and

engage a clearly

defined and un-

derstood target

audience – with

the objective of

driving profitable

customer action.” - Contentmarketingin-

stitute.com

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WORDS BY AnitA singH & AnKit BAnsAl


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It has become absolutely impossible not to incorpo-rate the marketing techniques and orientations while in an office, running an industry or running a country for that matter. Politics, as per the current scenario, has become increasingly influenced by marketing techniques. Like all the marketers do, industries con-stantly engage in value creation by anticipating the needs of the customers and constantly innovating products to keep the customers satisfied. Politics is no different.

Pushing & Pulling

Once the foundation of the campaign platform has been set, the products (two parties) need different in-formation channels for promotion. One of the chan-nels have been labelled as the push marketing and the other is the pull marketing.

The products have been very active and have han-dled the push strategy vigorously. It is in the best of interest of the products that they have enough audi-ence to influence and get the first place in ToM recall. It was evident when RaGa wanted to get Chhattis-garh back after the riots before NaMo could make his move on the state. In the outdoor campaigns the great success lands on the farm of the great commu-nicator. The themes are juxtaposed of both the prod-ucts but the delivery would be the differentiating fac-tor. This could mean the parties could be benefitted or could cannibalize its product.

One of the products have been highly disregarded because of its incessant and unremitting mention of the sacrifices of his pedigree. This is a clear case to improve the image of the Brand UPA-II and its lead-ers who belong to the same bloodline of great Gand-hi of the past. This is a positive reinforcement of the Brand but it has somehow hit them back. It is like in the 1980’s during the US Presidential Elections, Car-ter’s personal attacks on Reagan damaged Carter’s own image and he wound up manufacturing an im-age as mean-spirited.

With that thought encircling the step by step strat-egy of the challenger, they have been pro-active in their defensive strategies. With the reinforcement of

the product the NaMo brand launched back to back campaigns to woo the long lost customers. The ide-alism of Hindu Secular leader was reinforced, in a non-destructive scenario, to the women through Me-handi Campaigns. Not to mention the gathering on Muslims during the festival of Rakhi where the chal-lenger urged the Muslim Women to tie Rakhi to him. Commendable campaign one would say.

Winning over the customers with emotion has been on the agenda of the politicians since a long time. In the Indian Subcontinent, we have more intellect than anywhere in the world but when it comes to emo-tions, we give in. When we move from pushing the product to pulling the customers we find the kind of investment done in that foray.

The factor behind a successful pull campaign is to target the right customers. One would be surprised at the challenger’s sudden moral epiphany when the product became the emissary of peace. They did not stay behind in giving him the status of Lord Shiva. This out of the blue became a non-intentional de-mar-keting campaign which was quickly taken care of by the company. From the image of being a destroyer to emersion as Lord Krishna in many posters was a metamorphosis. A complete repositioning strategy was launched when the iron was hot.

Some months back, when the Land Acquisition Bill and the Food Acquisition Bill were passed, the ad-vertisement hit all channels and radio stations with a bang. The clear cut segmented ads were up for grabs for the targeted customers. The product clearly want-ed to add pro-farmer and pro-poor to its credentials. They spent approximately 100 crores and bagged Kailash Kher and other big names for its TVCs. The rise in the exchange rates has clearly proved to be beneficial at this current scenario for both the prod-ucts. With the ads running on all channels, UPA has devised a slogan, “Reforms to Reality” which has been sold heavily based on the assumption that it would not be another Indian Shining.

segmentation and targeting

Politics is very complicated like any other business.

PoLITICAL WARfARE“The supreme art of war is to subdue the

enemy without fighting”-Sun Tzu, The Art of War

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Market segmentation and targeting are used to rec-ognize and categorise those groups of customers who the marketer would direct the promotional campaign and products towards. Once the targeted audience is set, the next big step is to find the right message to appeal to the segment.

These two big stalwarts of the marketing mix would be stranded if the right message is not delivered at the right time using the right medium. The products need to realize that the capitalization on the one time opportunity is to not only target the audience but the past flaws of the competitor. A full frontal attack would be done by the challenger and the market leader would reciprocate in kind. That is a known fact.

Both the products would diligently look for any incor-rect statement made or wrong deeds done, hyperboli-cally or hypothetical, by the competitor and would not hold back in bringing them to the lime light. It is diffi-cult to discuss the mishap in Gujarat during the reign of NaMo without feeling sad for the deceased and their families, or condescending the numb government then. A perfect foundation for the competitor to the hit the iron hard; calling upon that section of the society by positioning them as a friend to a friend in need.

The products strive for the greatest market share. Now-a-days many commercial institutions have start-ed focusing on the BoP, they constitute approximately 60% of the Indian population and have become the largest revenue generator for the companies. Our two products strive to do exactly the same. The leader is crossing all bounds to gain their confidence. Any re-forms passed recently is another attempt to personify the perfect government. It could also be termed as an image building exercise but played very tactfully. The implication of Pareto Principle is evident. Even if the conversion rate is less, the converted is cent percent in favour.

Providing a holistic approach to the segmentation of the audience, both the products have enough emo-tional statements in their quiver. With every implica-tion of a push strategy, both the products are bound to appeal to all who could be emotionally moved by them, hence making them their target customers.

Candidate positioning

Every product needs to sell. The point of differentiation is the set alone factor which would lead to preference of the brand over the other. That PoD is what gives the product a competitive advantage. Once the multi-ple voter audience has been identified, the candidates need to position themselves in the market place. A lot

of accessing goes into that process. The candidates need to know his own as well as his opponent’s strengths and weaknesses.

RaGa has come out to be the driver of change that is what the leader is trying to sell here. The Gener-ation Next hates stability. They believe that things need tomove on, from strength to strength and al-ways for the betterment. It is youth driven genera-tion and RaGa has been the portrayed as the brand ambassador since a long time now.

Different personality traits are crafted diplomatical-ly and laid emphasis on, also by stressing on var-ious issues, so that they are starkly visible from a distance. RaGa has always shown to be the leader of today and with the youth, though his absentee-ism from the youth movement of Anna Haraze is a complete oxymoron. He is a leader of the future as projected by the market leader who can public-ly criticize its own company. This could be one of the biggest marketing gimmick of this year. The new product deliberately cannibalizing the existing product is a clear signal that the existing product has hit maturity and is in the decline stage. The new product needs to be launched.

The strategy is clear. The new product is positioned in front of the existing market: product expan-sion, probably the ex-i s t i n g p r o d -u c t c o u l d go out of pro-duction p o s t t h e launch of the n e w p r o d -u c t . T h e n e w product needs to amalgam-ate all the basic fea-tures, try get-ting the com-petitive point of parity and make a


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perfect show in terms of packaging. The new product doing all and better.

But the challenger has a different opinion of the “Shehzada” (Prince) who is still in the cocoon and is been spoon fed. The positioning of the new product by the market leader has been faced by severe criti-cism from the challenger who stands by the ‘Progres-sive India’. The challenger brings into the market the PoD of expertise which the new product is far from attaining. It is a simple formula of integration that the challenger has applied, if Gujarat then why not India.

The product expansion strategy of the market leader stands face to face with diversification of the chal-lenger. The candidate is positioned by emphasizing on various personality traits of the candidate as well as stressing on various issues. The challenger has been looked up to as the driver of changes not to mention the facts that back the statement up. The challenger has been test marketed in smaller regions and done well. A new product is never launched on mere anticipation. The market leader will take up the risk but to what extent?

image management

Knowledge about a brand is often

in f luenced by its aware-ness and the imagery as perceived by the audience formed over a due course of time. Each component of the mar-keting mix is handled with great p r e c i s i o n that in turn leads to value addi-tion for the p r o d u c t . The prefer-ence of the product is increased. Given the p r o m o -tional cam-

paigns of the products, the holistic view suggests that all the effort put is basically to improve the im-age of the product.

Image answers the question of how a leader should be. Image management is used in politics by par-ties to manufacture ‘new and improved’ images that more accurately align the product with the changing constituencies. The whole process is the labelling of the product as per the usage and preference of the target audience. That is starkly visible how a political icon is on the way to the helm of Indian Democracy. The once accused has been acquitted with the tag of Prime Ministerial Candidature. This could be the Great Transformation of the 21st Century.

His supposedly involvement in the dreads of the past has been wittily covered with the park of sec-ularism portraying him as a preacher of all religion. The company which has failed in the past due to its unattractive attributes wants to reunite India through “Rakhi Campaigns”. The recall of the prod-uct is pretty good. The company has done a good job by going for a frontal attack to the minds of the people. The portrayal of the name of the product as a part of a holy chant “OM ‘NaMo’ SHIYAVA“was completely out of the box thinking. Kudos.

The image of RaGa has been transforming with ev-ery campaign; maybe as fickle as banana republic. The parent company has been nit-picky in showing the product as a rebel, or sometimes bold enough to tarnish his own image through Muzaffarnagar comment and sometimes the emotional Indian who cares about his family and wants to bestow the same affection and consideration upon the target audience as his predecessors used to.

RaGa has always been seen as the leader of the youth, the leader of tomorrow, the device of change. Surprisingly all the characteristics portrayed stand aligned with the image that RaGa is trying to build for himself. Not to mention all the corruption cas-es which could have been the deal breaker but the company is too shrewd to let this one pass. Within a nick of time JWT was hired for a whopping 550 crores to manage the image of the company. Well played. It’s about time when we stopped pondering about what is going on. All is clear. It is just a matter of connecting the dots, linking the past to the present leading to a sort of predictable future. All cards will be laid down, ‘it’s all in’ as in Poker, and the ultimate deciding factor would be the cumulative effect of all the choices made in the past. In the end it all about THE BALANCED SCORE CARD, isn’t it?

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Bond

Sharp Instincts play an important role in a marketer’s life. Based on this thought Brand Of New Detectives was organized, wherein the con-testants instincts were put to test through various games. One of the games was on the lines of game theory where participants had to guess the oppo-nents strategy while making their own. Going by the theme the participants had to decipher several codes to reach successive levels of the game. The contestants ability of brand recall and recognition were also scrutinized, they had to listen to a pictori-al story and recognize the related brand. The Event was marketed by Mavericks by performing a dramatic surprise act at a crowded street on the campus.

WeBurn An online event held for three days, was marketed through the number of page visits each day. The games were based on the brand equity of products, where contes-tants had to play on brand association and awareness.

gAmerAte

A strategic game, in one of the rounds the players moved

forward in the game through benchmarking their strengths. The game also included a marketing strategy game based on poker, where the player’s strategy and luck helped them to get ahead of others. The 4 high-est value cards were called as the 4 marketing strategies- market challenger, leader, follower and niche, the cards were colour coded into 4 colours with respective strategies. The teams had to arrive at the royal flush, straight flush, four of a kind or three of a kind at the earliest in order to win. The players had to place the cards in the 5X5 matrix, so as to make more than one combinations at a time, horizontally, vertically or diagonally.

soumiK gAnguly

A guest lecture by Mr. Soumik Ganguly (Vice President Inzane labs. pvt.ltd.- pagalguy.com) on Marketing 2.0. He spoke about the growing importance of business analytics, dash-boards, social graphs and community marketing.

ABHirAmA KrisHnA

Mr. Abhirama Krishna interacted with the students on “Demystifying the sales career”. He spoke about what a salesperson should not do, and how sales is a challenging and exciting part of business. He also discussed qualities and flaws of salespeople with the audience.

Maverick events


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sridHAr rAmAnujAm

Mr. Sridhar Ramanujam, CEO, Brandcomm, spoke on “Consumer in-sights”. He highlighted the delicate facets of consumer’s temperament

through videos and ad stories, and how an advertiser needs to capitalize on these emotions of the consumer through his creations.

mAVeriCK Blog

Prof. G K Shrikanth (Maverick’s Mentor), launched Maver-ick’s blog on 22nd August 2013. The blog is a platform for students and alumni to share and discuss their mar-keting and strategy knowledge, opinion and experienc-es. The blog is available at http://www.maverick-ibs.com/

CArniVAl

Maverick’s flagship event- Carnival was held on Christmas Eve this year. The festive mood was set in through a lot of fun filled games including a bowl

al- ley, live angry birds, Limbo, circuit game and a game based on combination of cricket and golf. These

games were based on marketing strategies such as seg-mentation, targeting, positioning and product life cycle.

The event was quite a hit on a holiday eve!

Maverick events

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?Perrier water sells at 26 cents a glass when tap water is available free. Why is Coke able to sell millions of cans a day across the globe at a price which is way more than what it actually costs to make coke? And people actually demand more of coke even as price in-creases. Same is the case with a pack of Lays. Why do Apple and Samsung witness incre-mental sales even as the price of each s u c c e s s i v e model is higher than the previ-ous one?You must be w o n d e r i n g , “Does this not contradict the law of de-mand? Is the demand not supposed to go down when price goes up?” The answer is, “Yes, it does”. But then as Marketers are we not always at war with the economists?

As Marketers we need to learn that Economists harp on price. Our job is to be able to create demand by creating value. Price is what you pay, value is what you get. This value does not have to be in terms of a low price only. It may come not from the functional benefit but also from the emotional benefit. If only

functional benefit was to drive demand, then coke is just 10 spoons sugar mixed in flavored soda water for which one would never pay Rs 30 a can. It is the per-ceived benefit of coke that makes consumers pay Rs

30 a can. Simi-larly the Apples of the world thrive on per-ceived benefit to sustain in the long run.

This is the value equation which should always be more than 1. As consumers, we always want more. More than what we pay for. And the brands that lead the world today work on one principal – More for less. Coke stands for “happiness and ce lebrat ion” . This perceived benefit is what drives demand for coke. Inno-

vation, status symbol, class are what drive demand for Apple.Thus even if the product is priced high, if we as mar-keters can position it right (differentiated and rele-vant) and create value in the minds of customers by providing a sum total of benefits (functional or emo-tional) greater than that price, the brand will be a star performer.

WORDS BY mayuri Verma

Is Pr$ce actually for

Marketers or econoMIst think again

Consumer value = perCeived benefit/ priCe


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Auctions are events that inspire very different images for people. There are the elite posh auctions in So-theby’s where Renaissance paintings are sold for mil-lions, and then there smaller ones like Russell’s Auc-tion in Kolkata where pre-owned cutlery is sold for 50 rupees for a dozen. Essentially, class and purchasing power aside, auctions are events where a single seller looks at prospective offerings from multiple buyers, each buyer raising the stakes as high as he can afford and the seller finally choosing the highest bid.

A reciprocal process is also very much in practice, and is called a Reverse Auction. Very simply put, it is a process where there is a single buyer and there are multiple sellers, and each seller looks at undercutting the other as far as they can afford, while the buyer fi-nally chooses the lowest bid. This process is probably not as evocative as the standard auction for a lot of reasons: these are less publicized, these have been featured in fewer films, these tend to happen more behind closed doors.

Reverse Auctions are most commonly observed in contracts handed out by government author-ities in India to independent contractors for civ-ic infrastructure projects. There is thus a single product – the infrastructural property in ques-tion, there is one buyer of services – the gov-ernment authority, and there are multiple sell-ers of services. And the state of infrastructure in India is well, a self told story: montages of potholes, collapsing bridges, leaking dams and rickety government residential quarters come quite easily to mind. Undercutting – as is appar-ent from the language itself – is about reducing costs further – ultimately to a point where the notion of quality is thrown out the window.This is still a better image: recently discovered oil in Sub Saharan Africa has led to the creation of a host of ill equipped contractors for transporta-tion / refining / providing value added services along the value chain. Oil, which would have

normally been a godsend to an economy, has actu-ally been blamed for greater income disparity and widened spheres of poverty, and these contractors are in no small measure responsible in catalysing the process (a similar story was seen earlier in Africa too, when economic activity clustered around diamonds). In China and India, covert reverse auctions between mining corporations and governments has led to a severe degradation of the environment as well as to human habitations in mined areas because the eas-iest compromise made in order to cut costs is with safety and healthcare measures. Ultimately, costs can be cut to a point where business activities come at loggerheads to the cultural fabric of the ecosystem.

(Please read about the effects of oil exploration in Nigeria, the illegal sale of land to POSCO in Orissa and the murder of Tapasi Mallick, and the civil unrest in Northern China to find out more about unfair ex-ploitation of natural resources in this context.)

EvErsE auction

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But one should note that the idea of Reverse Auc-tions is not all bad. It remains one of the fundamental pillars of neo-liberal capitalism, which idolizes com-petition and thus the drive to make more wealth from limited resources. This core idea permeates through the corporate driven economic models of growth: right down to competition benchmarking, product improvement and constructive advertising, customer pen profiling and segment representation.

The idea behind reverse auctioning, and by extension to all of capitalism, was to generate more wealth from the resources that were available. It is one of the most firmly entrenched manifestations of the ultimate cap-italist goal: to bring about technical advancement so that one can extract more from every last drop. There are always two ways in which business costs can be reduced: to enhance the productivity of the means of production, or to lower the quality standards of production. It is tragic that the latter is the preferred over the former, but then again, that was always the easier route to take.

Reverse Auctioning is a process that looks at the ends rather than the means. For the single buyer, it makes economic sense to focus on the single pa-rameter of price when deciding which seller to fol-low through with despite not knowing the kind of quality controls employed by the seller (this is also seen in standard auctions where sellers choose the buyer with the highest bid, without feeling the need to question where the money is coming from). This presents a classical case of information asymmetry where one party knows more than the other, and thus attempts to dupe them. The cost associated with gathering information to avoid cheating is sometimes greater than the loss after being cheat-ed itself, thus discouraging parties from investing in information and reduce the asymmetry.

(Please read the paper on information asymmetry by Joseph Stiglitz to know more about this)

Ultimately, the apparent flaw in Reverse Auctioning lies not in its philosophy, but in how it is executed (isn’t that the case with most things?).

WORDS BY shashvat shukla (miCA)


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SPECIAL

MARkETINGLINGoS

INCREMENTAL INNovATIoN

PIGGyBACk MARkETING

NEWSJACkING

CUSToMER DRIvEN ENGINEERING

SkUNkWoRkS

Product development pro-gram established outside

the normal process and/or premises to expedite it or keep it a secret. E.g. Co-

ca-Cola Formula

Here the company focus on tweaking products for cus-tomers using variations on

core products to stay ahead of the market. E.g. Apple,

Samsung, Microsoft.

Low cost market entry strat-egy in which two or more

firms represent one anoth-er’s complementary (but

non-competing) products in their respective markets. E.g. Indigo and sunfeast cookies.

This is a relatively unknown concept; it was created by an individual called Justin

Kapust, through his organization Headvertise.

Here people are encouraged to rent out their

foreheads to be used as a medium for advertising

products.

It is jumping onto a break-ing news story and using it to help promote your own

brand. E.g. Oscars, someone falls on the stage because their shoe broke, and you make high heeled shoes,

Oreo.

EDGE RANk

EdgeRank is an algorithm developed by Facebook to govern what is displayed—

and how high—on the News Feed. E.g. Facebook

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Print Ads television trAde dress

Company: PArle

Parle came up with a fresh & simple print advertisement during the festive season of “GANESH CHATURTHI” for its product MoNACo toppings. They came up with making of Monaco Biscuits as the idol of Ganesh. They exemplified the theme by comparing Ganesh (as a saviour com-ing in the festive season to take away people’s sorrows) to their biscuits which created a sense of happiness among Cus-tomers while eating. The use of yellow & green colour personified the resem-blance of Ganesh Idol to their biscuits. They have effectively used colour scheme to convey their message.

overall Rating ............................. 4.3

Company: PePsiCo

kurkure adopted a 360-degree marketing strategy for its new campaigns featuring the new family. It used television, print and radio extensively for its promotion. At the time of the launch of the new cre-ative strategy, the kurkure family mem-bers also hosted a radio show. Main aim was to connect customer’s family-centric orientation to kurkure’s Super saver pack. This not only pitched upon an Individual Customer but also had a mass appeal among all generations, as they roped in brand ambassadors from all generations. This led to high Customer interactivity & the way they wanted their flavours to be.

Company: riColA

“Unwrap your voice” was a marketing campaign for Ricola brand cough drops geared towards musicians with sore throats. The packaging done by this Swit-zerland based company had a plethora of choices for musicians, which had an instant connect through its designing. It’s core target was people who practiced music & needed a smoothening effect to their throat while practicing / singing. Each throat lozenge was wrapped up in paper printed with a different styles singers like the rocker, pop star, rapper, punk rocker, and opera singer. This gave Customers a wide variety of options & value added services.

overall Rating ............................. 4.7 overall Rating ............................. 4.5


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oUtdoor soCiAl mediA Ambient

Company: Frito lAYs

frito-Lays to signify its presence in the market simply used its core product/ in-gredient in making the Lays as a platform to attract Customers. They greeted peo-ple of Chicago with an overhead Installa-tion of potatoes breaking through Ceiling tiles. They conveyed a witty message of “our Potatoes are grown closer than you may think”. This depicted that they provided pure & better products through better use of Ingredients. It was a tre-mendous way of attracting all customers who travelled daily or who passed by the terminals as it caught the sight of people at the very first instance.

overall Rating ............................. 4.6

Company: HUl

Lifebuoy used a new method to remind people to wash their hands before having food – the food itself! The Roti considered as a staple item is served with every Indi-an meal and the only way to eat it is with your hands. Lifebuoy decided to create a special heat stamp with the message, ‘Did you wash your hands with Lifebuoy? ” The idea came from the insight that washing hands with soap before eat-ing can prevent transmission of many disease causing germs, but people often ignore or forget to do this simple act. A reminder at the right time can go a long way to ensure this habit is followed.

Company: vodAFone

vodafone known for its image of a “Zoo-Zoo “went ahead of all by introducing vodafone ear-muff , at khumbh-Mela Allahabad. Earmuffs had a twin core strat-egy of attracting people.1. It provided protection against cold to people visiting Allahabad (4 degree) at minimum prices.2. It also had Regional & Devotional songs playing constantly at the back-ground giving a positive feeling of divini-ty to all cadres of people.Best example of Corporate Social Responsibility advertise-ment, vodafone reached masses with its purity it had in its product.

overall Rating ............................. 4.8 overall Rating ............................. 4.9

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Lays is inviting people to create the newest pota-to-chip flavour, Bacardi wants your suggestion on what can start a party, Club Mahindra is looking for a few innovative and good excuses for a vacation, and PepsiCo’s salty snack label Kurkure had invited you to design Diwali gift packs.

Welcome to the world of crowdsourced marketing - or let me say, relying on communities to contribute ideas that add value to a company’s communication and creation.Do you remember the initiative taken by Indian Gov-ernment where in order to give Rupee a p r o p e r symbol it announced a contest to create a sign for the Indian Rupee? Well, the results were announced in July 2010 and today you can see the s y m b o l in cur-r e n c y n o t e s a n d

coins. This is a simple ex-ample of the rising power of “crowdsourcing”.

Let me first define the term “Crowdsourcing” for you. Crowdsourcing is using collective intelligence gathered from the public and using that information to complete business-related tasks. This process of sourcing the work to the crowd can occur both online and offline.

Since the inception of this term in 2006 by Jeff Howe and Mark Robinson, crowdsourcing has become more than a buzzword today and has come a way ahead to become an effective tool in the hands of marketers. From brand positioning to new product development to packaging design to communication messages, crowdsourcing is getting involved in al-

most all the major aspects of marketing.

Once considered as just a shiny new toy in the mar-keting arsenal of companies, crowdsourcing today has become an integral part of the marketing mix of brand owners who want consumers to either design the next product, or shoot the next ad or viral vid-eo, or compose signature tunes and the list goes on endlessly. In a world where relevance and time-to-market make the difference, more and more brands are realizing that the secret to reach the hearts of the consumers lies in having a stronger connection with

consumers and an accelerated pace of innovation.

In this ever evolving and dynamic world of challenges, marketers

are constantly turning their heads around in

all directions for new ideas. With

tight market-ing budgets in this era of glob-al slow-d o w n , their con-c e r n s become all the m o r e g r a v e .

The future p r e s e n t s

markete rs with two distinct options: The costly option of hiring armies of employees and agencies to try to keep pace, or figure

out cost-effective ways to collaborate with consumers in a much deeper way throughout the marketing process. For companies that wish to stay out of the red, the choice is obvious: The need of the hour is to partner more closely with consumers who can gener-ate new ideas for the brands and also inform, ideate, and influence others on behalf of the brand. And this is exactly where crowdsourcing comes to their aid. When resources are scarce, creativity must be both boundless and borderless.


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Amidst so much of product messaging and noise everywhere, if marketers want their brands to re-main relevant to customers they need to continu-ously rethink, innovate, test, and create more and more by engaging meaningfully with consumers. “Crowdsourcing” ensures this continuous engage-ment. Whether you’re developing a new product or a new service, crowdsourcing can help fuel your in-ternal creative process. By using the crowd for the idea-generation process, you gain access to fresh perspectives on product ideas. The traditional prod-uct development approach is taken to a new level by the crowd where consumers and idea creators help you create products consumers want to buy.

Crowdsourcing takes you to the minds of your cus-tomers. By “cracking the code” of consumer moti-vation using the crowd, it becomes easier to market the products or services for maximum impact in the market.

For instance, when Coca-Cola’s ad agencies ran out of ideas for a marketing brief, the company decid-ed to turn to an online community to crowdsource some ideas. Crowdsourcing helped Coca-Cola gen-erate thousands of new ideas from a global commu-nity of creative individuals, giving it a huge amount of content to inspire future marketing activities.

Crowdsourcing gives firms access to a potentially huge amount of labour outside of the firm which can complete necessary tasks often in a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the cost than if the same activities were conducted in-house.

Despite a few challenges being faced in the form of variations in the quality of crowdsourced work, crowdsourcing still tends to be a tempting market-ing tool for many entrepreneurs, and small and big companies because of the variety of advantages it offers.

Ten years from now, the face of marketing would be different from what it is today, and the ultimate winners will be those who invested in and bet on their consumers.

“In the ocean of cut-throat competition, if market-ers have to turn the tides in their favour, they need to tap their most valuable resources: their brand crowds and crowdsourcing is just the right weapon for that.”

WORDS BY swati singh

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Corporate Story


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In 600 villages across India, with every dawn young girls braid their hair with red ribbons. The ringing of bicycle bells and chatter of voices full of hope and dreams fills the air as children make their way to school. In these 600 villages of India children dream of a bright future because their mothers are assured of income everyday weaving carpets for JAIPUR Rugs Company.

The Beginning

In 1978, a young man in Rajasthan’s Churu village with big dreams decided to do something differ-ent- something that touched his heart. Nand Kishore Chaudhary borrowed Rs. 5000 from his father to start work as a carpet contractor. This 5000 Rupees af-forded him one bicycle, some wool and cotton, two looms and 9 weavers on roll.

When he started in this business NK Chaudhary knew little about rugs. What he did know about was the goodness in people. In the 70s, while “un-touchabil-ity” was barred by law, it was still widely practiced. People who broke this social code were not only looked down upon but ostracised for. Carpet weav-ers have always been of the most marginalised caste and true to form; the weavers who worked with NK Chaudhary were of “backward caste” and “un-touch-able”. To a young man with big dreams harmony is everything, NK Chaudhary could not understand how people could be considered less than others despite their skill and honesty; how the accident of birth could determine how a person is to be treated. De-spite the hostility he faced, NK Chaudhary relied on the support of his weaver family and wife Sulochana and continued doing what felt right.

In just a few months he learnt to weave carpets, en-

joying the company of his newfound family shunning everybody whose hypocrisy he couldn’t understand. He says, “I spent all my time with the weavers, even eating at the loom.” Supporting this unconvention-al choice was NK Chaudhary’s wife Sulochana who would invite weavers to her house to eat the food she cooked.

Despite the odds, the business slowly grew as a re-sult of NK Chaudhary’s attention to detail and with it his love and respect for artisans. In 1990 he moved to a village in Gujarat with his 5 children and wife to train tribal communities in the area in the art of car-pet weaving. During this period he knew of the effort the Government was taking to uplift tribal societies but, he says, “The weavers were just being exploited”. NK Chaudhary took it upon himself to train people of these communities and partnering with them to create rugs for export to the US and UK.

Through employing no middle men and ensuring that they were paid justly, NK Chaudhary began changing the entire carpet industry. In less than 15 years he had grown a network of 15,000 weavers who believed completely in the work they were doing and willing to sell to NK Chaudhary.

Growth of an artisan movement

In the following years NK Chaudhary moved back to Rajasthan making Jaipur his headquarters. Through trial, error, faith and integrity NK Chaudhary faced many challenges and came out to tell the story, growing stronger in his resolve to create a business that created smiles.

In 1999 JAIPUR Rugs was officially set up. Run en-tirely by NK Chaudhary and his children JAIPUR Rugs is today recognised in trade circles as the largest

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manufacturer of hand knotted rugs. It is also known as leader in inno-vation and design within the home decor industry. A wholesale distribution network in the US, lead by NK Chaudhary’s eldest daughter- Asha Chaud-hary is recognised as an important player in the home decor industry.

The soul of JAIPUR Rugs however, remains at its grassroots. Every village part of the JAIPUR net-work is assigned a Qual-ity Supervisors who visits every loom at least twice every week. These grass-roots leaders ensure that a weaver has all the ma-terial required and quality standards are being met. They also ensure that no children are put to work and the weaver community is happy.

In 2004 JAIPUR Rugs Foundation was set up to iden-tify marginalised societies with limited or no work opportunities. JRF works on training un-skilled arti-sans giving them the opportunity to earn a sustain-able livelihood. 80% of these weavers are women from marginalised communities who have found new meaning and self-respect from becoming earning members of their families. Additionally, the founda-tion supports these artisan networks socially through helping them receive textile ministry approved arti-san cards and bank accounts that are also recognised as official identity proof and help them receive ben-efits including financial support and healthcare from the Government.

JAIPUR currently has a network of over 40,000 arti-sans across 600 villages of India connected to Global home owners across 32 countries of the world.

True difference

The journey of JAIPUR Rugs from Rs. 5000 to Rs. 105 Cr. has been long and required personal sacrifices to stay true to integral values. The work mandate at JAIPUR remains the same since NK Chaudhary first began- to create smile at both ends: through high quality, beautifully designed rugs for homeowners

and through sustainable, non- exploitive livelihoods for artisans. JAIPUR does this through engaging peo-ple with multiple skill sets in supporting competen-cies including- marketing, finance, HR, Export etc. Irrespective of the level of education and job role ev-ery member of JAIPUR subscribes to a moral code of Honesty, Transparency, Integrity, Empathy, Commit-ment and Simplicity.

This combined work ethic allows JAIPUR Rugs, un-der NK Chaudhary’s leadership, make a difference through integrating all arms of its operations thus cutting out the middleman and transferring benefit to its 40,000 strong network of rural artisans. Through the tripled income women in these villages now send their children to school and form an important part of their family’s decision making process- things un-heard of in rural India. --note: JAIPUR Rugs’ business model built around the values of Mr NK Chaudhary’s life, is part of man-agement case studies by leading institutes including Harvard. NK Chaudhary is a familiar guest speaker at internationally recognised Management schools in-cluding Wharton, Yale, (the) IIMs, ISB etc. The com-pany’s social business model was featured in CK Prahlad’s fifth edition of “Fortune at the bottom of the pyramid” in addition to being awarded The Times of India Social Impact Award and Ernst & Young En-trepreneur of the Year.


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guru-Mantras

“Truth will not win without communicating it “~ Jack Trout

“Strategy is about stretching limited resources to fit am-bitious aspirations”~ C K Prahlad

“Give them quality, that’s the best kind of advertising”~Milton Hershey

“If you have more money than brains, you should focus on outbound marketing. If you have more brains than

money, you should focus on inbound marketing “~Guy Kawasaki

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logogrAm

Study the picture carefullyThis LOGOGRAM has logos of many companies put

together.Look for all 39 logos.

Guess the name of the companies and send the entries to [email protected]


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