Myopic principles which marketers still follow – Mr. D Shivakumar, President AIMA & Sr. Vice President – IMEA, Nokia

Mr. D Shivakumar, President AIMA & Sr. Vice President – IMEA, Nokia

Principally while defining your business you have to take into consideration the needs of your business. That’s the fundamental point of Marketing Myopia. I believe marketing has changed fundamentally.

Here are some changes:

1. It is not the era of product brands anymore; it is the era of experience. Consumers now want a certain aura of experience now.
2. The concept of place has changed, place today is any site which a consumer can access to know about your product, it could be internet or a physical store.
3. We have moved significantly from price to value.  It is not about just promotion, we have classically run brand on the basis of promotion in our country. Advertising affect attitude to change the consumer behavior.
4. When you are doing promotion like 20% off & 30% free, you are changing behavior. By offering this promotion we are changing the consumer behavior and we are hoping that their attitude will change.  We are planning to educate the consumer today rather than just promoting our product.

Advertising has changed dramatically, In 1980s for adverstising we had just two programmes in our mind: Hindi feature films & Chitrahar, with these two we could cover 80% of our target consumers in any category. Today it is a difficult task. The fragmentation of media now is dramatic.

Here is a list of 10 myopic thoughts that marketers are still practicing in businesses:

1. A lot of companies think they are unbeatable. There’s nothing like this in today’s world. It is not the big which beats the small, which used to happen in 60s & 70s. Today, it is the fast who beats the slow so get your responsiveness & speed up! The true value of a brand is not in our minds but in the mind of the consumers. So anyone is beatable today and the reasons for this are that technology & finance is freely available to all.
2. Most companies think that they know their consumers. But the pace of change in consumer behavior is dramatic today and we need to meet the consumers every month to understand them better. You have to renew the license to meet consumers every month. As a result of the income jump, today we have a new breed of consumers and the old rules don’t apply.
3. Price is the answer to everything. You should only compete with price if you are producing the product at the lowest price. Cheap & cheerful is not a long term solution. People have moved from a sachet mind set, which is all about price to a sensory mind set. That’s why we see the multiplicity of color and size these days in all products. So, price is not the answer, differentiation and value is.
4. When in trouble let’s do a TV spot. TV is still the largest media but not the only medium to reach the consumers.
5. Celebrity advertising is an amazing way to promote a product. In Japan, 60% of advertising is done through celebrities, 20-30% by pets and 10% by just products. The bulk of the celebrities in Japan are Hollywood celebrities.  In India there’s a list of celebrities associated to a particular category. If you don’t use the celebrity well, a celebrity can be a curse on the brand. Celebrities like Amitabh Bacchan come once in century. In 2004 Amitabh Bacchan endorsed 63 brands and all brands grew that year. It has never happened with anyone else. But one Amaitabh Bacchan can’t give us the license that celebrity advertising is the answer to all marketing problems.
6. Digital Marketing is niche. Digital is growing at 20 – 30% every year. Digital is the main medium, in fact television is niche as fabric of society in past 10 years has changed totally. 600 million people in India have mobile phones which mean 50% of Indian population has a mobile phone in their hands.
7. Analysis is for Maths/Phd. Everybody wants to qualitatively discuss things. Nobody wants to discuss the hard facts. Analyzing and framing the future plans accordingly is what is lacking. Analysis will sharpen your attack and will save you a lot of money.
8. Quarterly review is the solution for better result. According to me we need to review the work more on short term basis and we need to sync in our long term plans with our short term plans.
9. Sponsorship gives instant promotion. True value of sponsorship comes over time. So, if you truly want to sponsor anything, come up with a long term plan. Changing sponsors is like changing shirts, it hurts the value of your brand.
10. Everybody wants their brands to be youthful. Youth is a state of mind; it does not mean that you want to advertise to a 15 year old or an 18 year old. The way you do things has to be youthful.

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