M’Pulse – The Marketing Conclave

Department of Management Studies of NIT Trichy conducted a one day Marketing conclave, M-Pulse 2013. The event comprised of lectures from three prominent personalities from the industry and an event conducted by the marketing club, NISADYA of DoMS.

The occasion was greeted by Dr. VJ Siva Kumar Associate Prof. DoMS NITT. After that our HOD DoMS welcomed the guests and emphasized on the importance of such conclaves in a MBA Curriculum. Dr. S. Sundarajan Director NITT addressed the gathering and highlighted the significance of interaction of students with industry people and their alumni considering the global competition which we are facing every day.

The session started with the keynote address of Mr. Mitul Mehta, Vice president & Global Head-Marketing Accelya Kale Solutions Ltd. Mr. Mehta gave an insight on service marketing to the students. He introduced 7 P’s of service marketing which extended the 4 P’s concept. The three new P’s namely People, Process, and Proof were the key point of discussion of his session. He gave examples and case studies of companies which out grew their capabilities by taking care of these three factors.

The next lecture was given by Mr. Austin PM, CEO, Max Value Univ. His talk was basically focused on Online Marketing and its nuances. He spoke on several methods of online marketing and how small companies are saving their cost and using this medium to advertise themselves. He spoke on how the companies are focusing on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to build their image.

The last session of the day was delivered by Mr. Dorai Thodla, Founder; iMorph Inc. Mr. Thodla exchanged his views on ‘Tools for Marketing for various levels of a Start up’. He shared examples of how different websites have given tools to access one’s online position and how a new company can leverage them to develop their marketing strategy.

Largely the sessions were very informative and helped the students to understand the nuances of marketing industry and its developments in physical as well as virtual space.

DoMS NIT -T scores at Anna University

An International conference on Strategic Trends on Innovations and Creativity in Management Practices was organized at Anna University on 10th and 11th of September, 2012. The conference was attended by several research scholars from different institutions who presented their papers in their respective domains. More than fifty papers were presented on those two days of conference.

Himsagar, a first year student of DoMS NIT-T,  presented a paper on Model Development for Brand Loyalty-A case on Men’s Jeans Wear and bagged the first prize for the best paper award in the marketing session. The paper was authored by  Dr. G.Muruganantham, Professor at DoMS NIT-T ,and co-authored by Mr. Magesh, an alumnus of DoMS. DoMS has a tradition of students participating in paper presentations and conferences and expects more laurels to come its way, through its diligent students.

IIM faculty enlightens students of DoMS NIT Trichy

IIM Kozhikode Faculty Dr. Joffi Thomas visited Department of Management Studies (DoMS) NIT Trichy. This initiative was taken by DoMS faculty Dr. G. Muruganantham for the betterment of 1^st year MBA students. The participants were enlightened on the topic of ‘Essential elements of marketing mix’ through a practical approach with the help of a case study.

The famous case study of Vora and Company prepared by Neil H. Borden of Howard University was discussed and analyzed during the lecture. The case study explained the existing conditions and the practices followed by the company. It dealt with the history of the company and its strategies on competition, packaging, distribution, pricing, sales, cost and advertising. The problem stated was that the company was a loss making industry. Then the participants were asked to apply their knowledge in marketing to solve the problem after which Dr. Thomas gave his valuable inputs to the same.

Dr. Thomas appreciated the level of involvement and enthusiasm amongst the participants. He also cherished innovative ideas given by them followed by the vote of thanks by Shobhita from the guest lecture committee.

FAds

“My dad’s strong” was the ending dialogue by a cute little angel in Complan’s advertisement almost a decade ago. Children have been used in advertisements since time immemorial. Children have been used to aid in more than “just effective communication”, but to have a considerable share in the hearts and minds of the viewers. The power of using children in ads have been exploited by advertisers from time to time as the emotional attachment in the indian value system places more emphasis on the family, which primarily revolves around the child.

If we research the adverts by the different firms over a period of time, it would be clear that there is a trend. Sometimes a success of an ad leads to another me-too kind of ads. The current trend of rising advertisements using children can be very well noticed from the ads used by Reliance Digital to the ads by Ingersoll Rand. Children have been normally used in ads to evoke and attach an emotional value to the ads. Ads are all about emotions, and using children gives an easy approach to get this done.

Quoting my father, whenever he used to get upset of me “Whatever I am doing is for you and whatever I am earning is for you only….” (some words have been censored to keep the author in a better image:) ). Jokes apart, Indian value system revolves largely around the family and especially around the kids. Attaching emotional quotient to advertisements is the prime motive in most of the advertisements. Unless the EQ level is hit with the right impact the advertisements may not yield desirable results. Research has shown that these ads also have a higher brand recall. Product brand recall is very much essential to increase the probability of a prospect researching on the product and increasing the possibility of conversion into a buyer.

This is especially essential in items which are high involvement purchases and in products where there is only little differentiation. Insurance plans are one such product where the possible differentiation is visibly less. The child education plans initially used to have advertisements showing the different features attached to the product. This was in the initial stages of the lifecycle. After the level of differentiation slowly started reducing, they shifted to showcase the parents love for their progeny, and after sometime now the children have become the protagonists. SBI SBI ad, Tata Capital Tata, LIC LIC are some of the names in the financial product category which have been regularly leveraging child-like emotions and children to evoke beneficial responses. The product differentiation is very much reduced in this market. Hence attaching emotional value plays a significant role.

But children and the child-like emotions, mind it not childish, have been utilised in many famous ads from the Tata Nano to Nivea. Even though the purposes are not just to create an emotional moment of parity, but also to evoke the memories attached with our childhood moments and some other features, to which everybody gets easily hooked. For example, Nivea and Pears use children to evoke a comparative response with the skin of a child. Voltas has been using children to attach an emotional value and simultaneously conveying a message to avoid clutter in the AC category which usually has actress or by just displaying a new technology of air conditioning.

Using children as protagonists in advertisements has become a fad. The recent lavishly spent advertisements by foreign major Ingersoll Rand using the pride of the child in having her dad working for the company as the main theme is a proof for this phenomenon. The advertisers are using children to hit the right spot ringing and to get them converted to suitable responses from the target audience- the parents. The influencers are the emotional attachment with the child and the deciders are the Parents. The advertisers have been using the influencers to take the effectiveness of the ads northwards.

Ingersoll Rand ad:

Ingersoll Rand ad

Can we go M’AD’ ?

Yes… My entire class went mad about ads when Mr.Sashi, Founder & Director – Praanha Advertising, took the students through a complete journey on advertising in Indian media. The entire process right from the creative brief to the actual shooting of the advertisement was discussed in a very interesting fashion.

The class was thrilled to work on a live case encompassing all the stages of ad development – account planning, concept – story board, product choreography, the visual recall devices, brand perception stimulants and we even designed the entire media mix for the product we worked on.
It was indeed both and enriching experience to work on how to communicate our objective effectively within a stimulated budget. We learned the nuances of the advertising in Indian television, how to calculate the division of slots, the effectiveness of the number and position of slots and even the buying pattern of slots in Indian TV.

So I am sure few of my class mates will go M’AD’ after this session..!!

Wanted – created or alive ?

Author : Kausani Dey , MBA -I

For decades, famous personalities have attached themselves to big brands but in some cases brands have created personalities. These non- living personalities have not only marketed the brands admirably but they have become the brand ambassadors themselves. The charm of these ads lies not only in the content but also the creativity of the makers who have kept true to life.  The impressions they left on the viewers have made them larger than life. Here is some of the famous and most creative non-living personalities ever created…..

I’m a Barbie girl……..in the Barbie world !

Barbra Millicent Roberts a.k.a Barbie, the fashion doll is one of the most selling toys of the century. After getting inspired from a German doll called Bild Lilli; Ruth Handler (co-founder of Mattel,Inc) invented Barbie and launched in 1959.To date, over 70 fashion designers have made clothes for Mattel, using over 105 million yards of fabric.For 50 odd years the fashion diva has managed to keep her fan following intact.

http://inventors.about.com/od/bstartinventions/a/The-History-Of-Barbie-Dolls.htmhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbie

Wild wild west – Smokin’ guns !! 

The most influential brand image of the century, the Marlboro Man stands worldwide as the ultimate macho man, helping establish Marlboro as the best-selling cigarette in the world. It transformed a feminine campaign, with the tagline “Mild as May”, into one that was masculine macho one “delivers goods on flavor”, in a very short span of time. The sales went up sky-rocketing.Even those who dislike the tobacco industry will agree that the Marlboro Man has had unparalleled success as a global marketing tool.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marlboro_Man

Tyre-ed !! 

 Bibendum – The Michelin Man, cuddly mummy-like creature is the mascot of Michelin tyres since 1898 . First created by imagination of Michelin brothers and paintbrush of talented poster artist O’gallopin alias MaruiusRossillion, it was an immediately great success.Today, Bibendum is one of the world’s most recognized trademarks, representing Michelin in over 150 countries.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibendum

It’s a bird……it’s an egg…..no it’s zoozoos ! 

During the Indian Premier League Season 2,somethingother than cricket also captured the attention of the audience. The cuddly white creature with ballooned bodies and egg heads called ZooZoos were a hit among the Indian audience. They were used to promote various value added services of Vodafone. The ads were created by RajivRao and PrakashVarma of Ogilvy & Mather, the agency handling Vodafone advertisements.There are more than 200 pages on Zoo Zoos having over 200000 fans, growing daily. Vodafone received the first People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) 2009 Glitterbox Award, for replacing the Pug with more humane alternatives in their ads.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZooZoo

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/the-zoozoo-effect/465365/

Utterly, butterly delicious !!

Her wit,unique style of exploring current affairs and sense of humor has always been a subject of fascination. This chubby Amulbutter girl in polka dotted dress has won everybody’s heart.In 1966, Sylvester daCunha, then M.D of the advertising agency AS  designed an ad campaign as series of hoardings which later earned aGuiness world record for the longest running ad campaign in the world. They needed someone to touch the housewife’s heart and what better way than a cute little girl? And so the Amul moppet was born.

GCMMF became a billion-dollar entity in March 2007 when the naughty turned forty.

http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2007-10-03/news/28403654_1_amul-girl-brand-of-dairy-products-gcmmf

Licence to happiness !! 

Ronald was first introduced by McDonald’s Washington franchisee Oscar Goldstein and a local ad agency in 1963.Ronald McDonald is a clown character used as the primary mascot of the McDonald’s fast-food restaurant chain. He is a popular figure among children.He demonstrates one of the important qualities of a brand icon- He doesn’t sell for McDonald’s, he is McDonald’s.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_McDonald