Are you just producing Product or "Brand"?

"People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel"                                                               -- Maya Angelou

Brand

Cococola, Adidas, Pepsi, Puma, Sony, Apple, Cadburry, India...what you think they are mere words or more? Yes they are not just words, they are "Brands". So what you think Brand is? As per American Marketing Association "Brand is a  "name, term, sign, symbol, or design, or a combination, intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of competition.” But is it so only differentiating element make some word to Brand? Brand is much more than that. In simple words Brand is something which acquires unique space in consumers mind and which makes selling price of 1$ product to 10$ or more.

Consistent, strategic branding leads to a strong brand equity, which means the added value brought to your company's products or services that allows you to charge more for your brand than what identical, unbranded products command. The most obvious example of this is Coke vs. a generic soda. Because Coca-Cola has built a powerful brand equity, it can charge more for its product--and customers will pay that higher price.

What is Branding?

In simpllified lanuguage Branding means process of converting "word"(Coco cola) into Brand (). Branding is entire process involved in creating a unique name and image for a product (good or service) in the consumers' mind, through advertising campaigns with a consistent theme. Branding aims to establish a significant and differentiated presence in the market that attracts and retains loyal customers.

Why Branding is necessary?

1) To familiarize target customers with the symbol or logo, the brand's concept and making them knowledgeable enough to expect a certain set of benefits.

2) A rational claim of superiority isn’t possible. So the brand positioning is the primary differentiator.

3) By positioning, marketers try to occupy a portion of the mindspace of customer and create the brand image and brand personality in the long run

4) Brand Communication(BC) aids in achieving “intangible” positioning. The BC and the style of BC both contribute to articulating and embodying these differences

5) Consumers are becoming increasingly fickle and savvy. For organizations this implies placing more emphasis on consumer needs and expectations as well as heavily investing in advertising.

6) Volatile markets and increasing product parity.

Some Branding Examples.

1) "Amul - Taste of India" having Single theme for 42 years, More than 3 generations, Highest brand recall ever, Recognized and appreciated for consistency , wits and innovation, Always focus on “Common man”, Consistent through its advertisement on all contemporary issues like sports, society, politics, entertainment.

2)Cadbury in India - Some initivatives/Campaigns for Branding are "Snacking ka meetha funda", Real Taste of Life' campaign, shifting the focus from `just for kids' to the `kid in all of us','Khanewalon Ko Khane Ka Bahana Chahiye' campaign', Celebratory occasions- “Pappu Pass Ho Gaya” from all Cadbury India establish itself as a Brand.

3) Is there any another company in the world that works harder to build genuine relationships with their customers than the Harley-Davidson Motor Company? Harley-Davidson is an outstanding example of a company that has created loyalty through a pattern of steadfast interactions with its customers. How easy is it for your customers to interact with you? Could you reinvent the customer experience in ways that would strengthen the sense of affiliation that the customer has with the products and services of your company? The sponsorship of a "Harley Owners' Group" has been one of the most creative and innovative strategies that has helped create the experience of this product.(Source: Case study: Harley Davidson by Josef Schinwald)

4) There are many Good Branding examples like Apple, Dell, Incredible India, Cococola, Sony, Tata, Airtel, Vodafone.........

So What you want your company be simply word or Brand?.

Viral Marketing - Marketing Gimmick or Strategy?

"Viral" Word itself so Communicable that it must create a buzz. In marketing we called it "Buzz" marketing or "Viral Marketing" or "Word of mouth Marketing".

What is Viral Marketing?

Viral marketing or viral advertising refer to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives (such as product sales) through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of pathological and computer viruses. Other way some define it as "any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message's exposure and influence. "

The goal behind creating successful viral marketing programs is to identify individuals with high Social Networking Potential (SNP) and create Viral Messages that appeal to this segment of the population and have a high probability of being taken by another competitor.

Why Viral Marketing?

1) Ease of executing the marketing campaign, relative low-cost (compared to direct mail), good targeting, 

2) Viral marketing is a technique that avoids the annoyance of spam mail; it encourages users of a specific         product or service to tell a friend. 

3) The high and rapid response rate. The main strength of viral marketing is its ability to obtain a large number of interested people at a low cost.

Few Types of Viral Marketing:

1) Pass-along: A message which encourages the user to send the message to others. The crudest form of this is chain letters where a message at the bottom of the e-mail prompts the reader to forward the message

2) Incentivised viral: A reward is offered for either passing a message along or providing someone else's address. This can dramatically increase referrals. However, this is most effective when the offer requires another person to take action.

3) Undercover: A viral message presented as a cool or unusual page, activity, or piece of news, without obvious incitements to link or pass along. In Undercover Marketing, it is not immediately apparent that anything is being marketed

4)"Edgy Gossip/Buzz marketing" ads or messages that create controversy by challenging the borders of taste or appropriateness. Discussion of the resulting controversy can be considered to generate buzz and word of mouth advertising. Prior to releasing a movie, some Hollywood movie stars get married, get divorced, or get arrested, or become involved in some controversy that directs conversational attention to them.

5) User-managed database: Users create and manage their own lists of contacts using a database provided by an online service provider. By inviting other members to participate in their community, users create a viral, self-propagating chain of contacts that naturally grows and encourages others to sign up as well.

Some examples of Viral Marketing:

1) Cadbury's Dairy Milk 2007 Gorilla advertising campaign was heavily popularised on YouTube and Facebook.

2) In 2007, Portuguese football club Sporting Portugal integrated a viral feature in their campaign for season seats. In their website, a video required the user to input his name and phone number before playback started, which then featured the coach Paulo Bento and the players waiting at the locker room while he makes a phone call to the user telling him that they just can't start the season until the user buys his season ticket. Flawless video and phone call synchronization and the fact that it was a totally new experience for the user led to nearly 200,000 pageviews phone calls in less than 24 hours.

Viral expansion loop

A viral expansion loop is similar to viral marketing with one notable difference: viral marketing can't be replicated indefinitely, while a viral expansion loop must be in order for it to exist. When properly conceived and implemented, a viral loop almost guarantees self-replicating growth. Companies that have attempted to utilize viral loops to their advantage include social networking engine Ning, and viral loops power many Web 2.0 icons, including Twitter, 4chan ,Orkut, PayPal, YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Digg and Flickr.

Green Marketing : Fashion, need or Compulsion?

Today everybody going towards green why it is need, compulsion or fashion(Trend)?

Product, advertisements, manufacturing processes are going green - more nature friendly, it all due to need or some places we can say compulsion to move toward more nature friendly products. Remain with the flow or for long time sustainance of company and its products.

According to the American Marketing Association (AMA), green marketing is the marketing of products that are presumed to be environmentally safe. Thus green marketing incorporates a broad range of activities, including product modification, changes to the production process, packaging changes, as well as modifying advertising. As per Mr. J. Polonsky, Green marketing can be defined as, "All activities designed to generate and facilitate any exchange intended to satisfy human needs or wants such that satisfying of these needs and wants occur with minimal detrimental input on the national environment". Yet defining green marketing is not a simple task where several meanings intersect and contradict each other; an example of this will be the existence of varying social, environmental and retail definitions attached to this term. Other similar terms used are Environmental Marketing and Ecological Marketing.

Why Green Marketing?

Due to limited resources and unlimited human wants, it is unavoidable for marketers to use more efficient, more nature friendly processes, raw materials to produce products which keep balance of nature & resources also. So green marketing is inevitable now a days.

Also other reason is growing interest among the consumers all over the world regarding protection of environment. Worldwide evidence indicates people are concerned about the environment and are changing their behavior. As a result of this, green marketing has emerged which speaks for growing market for sustainable and socially responsible products and services.

Challenges in front of Green Marketers:

• Green products require renewable and recyclable material, which is costly
• Green products requires a high end technology, which requires huge investment in R and D
• Consumer aware about green products but not willing to pay extra bucks.
• In some cases we can not made product 100% nature friendly. 

Case Study:

1)McDonald's restaurant's napkins, bags are made of recycled paper.

2)Coca-Cola pumped syrup directly from tank instead of plastic which saved 68 million pound/year.

3) Introduction of CNG in New Delhi, capital of India, was being polluted at a very fast pace until Supreme Court of India forced a change to alternative fuels. In 2002, a directive was issued to completely adopt CNG in all public transport systems to curb pollution.

Cold calling: More strategic way!

Cold calling typically refers to the first telephone call made to a prospective customer. More unusually these days, cold calling can also refer to calling face-to-face for the first time without an appointment at commercial premises or households. Cold calling is also known as canvassing, telephone canvassing, prospecting, telephone prospecting, and more traditionally in the case of consumer door-to-door selling as 'door-knocking'.

Good cold calling - performed properly and not as merely an indiscriminate 'numbers game' - is a fundamental and highly transferable capability, whose basic principles are found in the behaviours and techniques of all great entrepreneurs and leaders.

In essence cold calling is the art of approaching someone, professionally, openly and meaningfully, with a sensible proposition.

Cold calling therefore enables success, chiefly because cold calling is strongly focused on initiative and action.

Viewed positively and creatively , cold-calling is empowering and potent.

Cold calling actually enables the sales person to follwing:

• Supersede existing suppliers
• Pre-empt the competition
• Identify and create huge new business possibilities
• Become indispensable as someone who can make things happen and create new business
• Build (your) personal reputation beyond job title and grade
• Establish relationships and a respect (for you) beyond normal sales responsibilities
• And be an entrepreneur.

So, do you want to be the human equivalent of junk-mail, or do you want to achieve entrepreneurial reputation and success that will take you anywhere you want to go?

Steps in Cold calling:

1.Preparation - self, environment, knowledge, and who you represent

2.Introduction - key phrases explaining and positioning yourself and your purpose

3.Questioning - help, facilitate and enable rather than assume, sell and push

4.Objectivity - the mark of an advisor - do not sell

5.Listen and interpret - do not sell

6.Inform and educate - do not sell

7.Involve and coordinate - do not sell

8.Keep in touch - keep notes and keep informed - keep ultimate ownership (by now you will probably be selling)

In next few blogs we will discuss one by one it's steps in more details.......So till keep calling.

                                                                                               (Source: Mr.Alan Chapman BusinessBalls)