The power of ‘No Parking’

A ‘No Parking’ sign means you can't park, but you can drop off or pick up passengers or goods without leaving your vehicle. As parking at the wrong spot, can create lot of inconvenience to people.

These sign boards are now quite common, due to increase in number of vehicles and also acts as a helping tool to our security guard , so he can authoritatively say “No parking, board nahi dekha kya?”

We as marketers keep a look out for various ‘customer touch points’, especially, struggle to identify a sustainable marketing tool at a local level. Various other touch points such as hoardings, pole branding, leaflets, mobile Vans, promoters have a high cost element linked to it and works best for a limited period of time.

So here our friend ‘No Parking’ can come to our rescue, example you have a restaurant in the vicinity and have identified societies wherein potential business can come from. Along with leaflet distribution, ‘No Parking’ sign board can act as a reminder to your potential customer.

Ok, we have so many ‘No Parking’ signs all around us, it has only one purpose to tell the motorist not to park the vehicle, "How can it create awareness, no one will notice it?"

We can overcome the above challenge, if we make ‘No Parking’ sign more engaging. This is a difficult part but not impossible.

With a hint of ‘humour’ our restaurateur can showcase his offering, here being the food along with ‘No parking message’. In the end, insert his restaurant number.

This would help in accomplishing the following:

•  Sustainable marketing element (no one will remove it)
• Acts a reminder message (Always seen)
• Call to action, number or website (Locally targeted, more orders)
• Cost effective, replace it twice a year (depending on the offering and boredom set in of the message)
•  Larger local market footprint
•  Lastly, engages with our prospective customer (with a dash of humour)

Here are few examples, how we created engagement with ‘No Parking’ sign boards with a dash of humour. We were able to merge our entertainment offering (Cinema) with ‘No Parking’ board. This not acted as a reminder to our prospective customers but also put a smile on their face.

 

“I work here but I go there”

Brand ownership is it missing?

We as marketers are trained to watch ‘consumer’ and ‘competition’ closely. As they may alter the course of our marketing activity. But sometimes we don’t have enough budgets or bandwidth, so we take a call, here it means ‘Gut’ feeling. I feel there is nothing wrong in taking a call with your intuition, as we are humans and not an A.I.

To add value to our gut feeling, it’s important that we marketers ourselves experience our brand ‘product’ or its ‘service’ at various intervals. Let’s say you are a brand person selling Shampoo or Tea or a restaurant, it’s important to experience the offerings. This would help us in understand how are product/service feels, looks, taste, smells, its packaging, its pricing, its perceived value and its convenience to name a few.

“Pay for it”, go on a blind date with your product/service. As the saying goes “put yourself in his(customer) shoes”. If you don’t fit the bill because of the product unique offerings, please get your friends or family members to try it ongoing basis and again “pay for it”.

This experience would be enriching, would help you understand the gaps & benefits of your product offerings. That doesn’t mean that you should stop using your competition product/service. This exercise would help in bringing ‘Brand ownership’, resulting in defining sharper benefits facing your customers.

If you don’t relate to the brand you are selling, it might become difficult to sustain it.

So do stop and buy your brand today.

Pssst and competition too…..

 

Financial institutes and Kids

Have you ever noticed bank advertisements be it a home loan, car loan or an insurance. One factor is always constant the ‘Kids’.

So why does a bank uses kids in its communication so often?

Financial products tend to rational in nature, looks complex to a common man. As they see it as boring, filled with numbers, uncertain, educative, secretive to name a few.

Whereas, kids represents fun, love, innocence, the future, credibility, openness and youthfulness. All this leading to set of emotions which are way powerful than regular run of the mill advertisement.

But when we have a cute looking kid’s face with a boring set of information, it becomes pleasant and approachable. Needless to say financial institutes also tend to focus its offerings towards youth. As they are its future prospective customers.

May be kids are its true brand ambassadors.

 

Note: It’s a personal observation and should be taken with a pinch of salt.

Order food online on Zomato

Why Zomato is doing leaflet inserts?

Ok, no one likes leaflets  pouring out of its newspaper, that’s the first thing we tend to do is remove them.

So why is Zomato inserting leaflets in our newspapers?

Being a leading restaurant aggregator App and having access to all digital promotional tools, it still advertises consistently in our local area with help of a ‘mere leaflet’. 

Some of them could be:

·      Many of its prospective customers are still not active online, so missing on Zomato advts

·      Seasonality, many people would prefer ordering food at home due to the rain

·      It needs to support local restaurants and maintain business relationship

·      It’s a cost effective medium, if managed right cost can come down to 50 paisa/insert

·      Conversion rate of 2-3%, especially for home delivery orders

·      Here not only Zomato talks about its new App in detail,  it educates the reader and may be converts them with its exciting online order offer ‘Get 50% off on your first 5 orders’

So basically, now the leaflet reader, would know in their area which are the best delicacies, they could order online at a discounted rate. Also Zomato is trying to create a ‘habit change’, as the user might end up placing online order ‘5 times’ from its App. This might lead to making the user comfortable with the online food App, like now days we say “Ola kar le”.

Do note, ‘Habit Change’ is one of most difficult task a marketer faces, as humans, we are inherently lazy and don’t like to move out of our comfort zone. As rightly said by Art Markman “Don’t Persuade Customers — Just Change Their Behaviour” https://tiny.cc/i9x3uy

I do believe leaflet is still a far more powerful marketing tool than a full page ‘Times of India’ advertisement. As the same funds can be effectively utilised for customized local store restaurant marketing, wherein, they need constant support.

Looks like, our 'mere leaflet’ friend, is the best ally Zomato and restaurateur could have.

Differently abled people needs more ‘SUPPORT’ & ‘LOVE’ from the brand

The World Bank estimates that 15% of the world’s population is affected by one disability or another. According to the 2011 Census, the number of disabled in India stands at 2.68 crore, or 2.21% of the population. Next survey is still due….

So, why are we talking about differently abled people? As they are integral part of our society and need our constant ‘LOVE’ and ‘SUPPORT’. The best “SUPPORT” a brand can give is employment and some of brands are doing an admirable job.

Some of them worth mentioning are Echoes, Lemon Tree, Capgemini, Nukkad Teafe, Costa Coffee, KFC, Mirchi and Mime, Café Coffee Day, Accenture, IBM, Wipro. To read more click https://tiny.cc/4dj2uy

As we can see a mix of Food Hospitality and IT service have actively shown its ‘SUPPORT’. I am sure other brands are doing their bit too.

But what about ‘LOVE’?

Ok, to clarify my stand, when I say ‘LOVE’ it means, how we ‘The Brand’ treat them. The best case scenario of ‘LOVE’ I have experienced is ‘parking slot’ and ‘toilet’ for differently abled. Ok, they are necessity and hygiene and I do believe a brand still has a lot of ‘LOVE’ to give.

Why should we pay heed to this? As 2.21% people in India are disabled, simply put 2 out 100 people are in this category. Yes, it’s a small number but would make a large difference to a brand trying to give back to the society.

It’s how they are getting treated when they enter a restaurant, mall, store. It’s how a Flipkart, Amazon, Paytm treats them when they are sitting at home placing the order on the App and when the delivery boy comes to deliver.

Therefore, it becomes paramount for a company to train its people and Apps to become enabler.

We as ‘brand custodians’ need to be trained on how to treat them well, make them feel comfortable and ultimately give them a memorable experience. That’s a difficult task as sometimes we are not equipped or trained to do so. We are trained to be nice to our regular customers but what about differently abled? How we look at them and communicate with them?

While working for Bombay Blue restaurant, I got an opportunity to serve them by launching Mumbai’s first Audio & ‘Braille menus’. An initiative by Radio Mirchi, in association with the Xavier's Resource Centre for the Visually Challenged (XRCVC) and Chanakya Mudrak Pvt Ltd.

This was an attempt to provide comfort and independence to visually impaired and other print-disabled persons, and to ensure that they can order from our menu without any assistance. 

The menu featured food items and prices in a large font and in Braille. Each item had a corresponding audio sticker with the same information and an additional description that could be accessed by an audio labeller pen.

Supporting this noble cause, Bollywood actor and celebrities Neha Dhupia, Aditi Sharma and Divyendu Sharma were present at the launch event at the Bombay Blue, Bandra. This lead to lot online PR coverage. To check click https://tiny.cc/63j2uy

With ongoing radio support, it lead to new addition of differently abled customers coming to our restaurant and trying Bombay Blue delicacies. Per week, we would be get around ten differently abled customers coming to our restaurant. With ongoing training, we sensitised our staff, so here, we were not only able to serve them better but also ‘LOVE’ them more.

Now, they were not shy from ordering Bombay Blue delicious ‘Chole Bhature’!!

Is Sugar still a commodity?

Or ‘Sugar Free’ the brand !

Recently my consumption of coffee has increased, no.. no.. I am yet not an addict. So here I am sitting at Starbucks and sipping on my favourite cappuccino.

While before getting my Cuppa, went through the drill of placing the order, making the payment and waiting for it to get ready.

Yuvraj !! My name is being called, jumped to grab my cup of coffee. I asked the server where could I get sugar, he pointed me out to the sugar stack section. Here it has white sugar, Brown sugar. , Wooden stirrer, hmmm.... but I felt like having ‘Sugar Free’ for a change.

Couldn’t find one, so I went back to my server asking for one. He pulled one out from his section and gave me.

Intrigued I asked him why don’t you keep it with the regular sugar stack. He said “ Sir, as customers sometimes tear it and keep it, so to avoid wastage we kept it here” . I was trying to digest this conversation, thinking, “customer might damage other sugar based sachet too?”

It struck me that similar experiences I had at other cafes. Made me think “Is it expensive ? For visibility does a brand need to pay them? Is it unhealthy? “

So, as usual I googled and realised ‘Sugar Free’, the market leader in the sugar substitute category in India with a market share of over 94 percent.

Last year it had launched Sugar Free Green, made from Stevia leaves - a 100 percent natural sugar substitute. A great initiative helping it position itself as a healthy sugar alternative.

Now the challenge here being why is it kept with the sever? Why do I need to ask for it? 

Looking at beverage market in India and how consumers are hanging out more. I felt it’s a golden opportunity for a brand like ‘sugar free’ to push it product more. It needs visibility and consumer experience. Which would lead to recommendation and conversion.

Let’s say if the Cafe is still not comfortable placing it. Can a small board be kept, for ‘sugar free’ ask the sever. When you place an order online via app, can that option be more prominent? As many people who love to eat and drink might be looking for a healthy option like ‘ Sugar Free Green’. We have high diabetic percentage in India they might be looking for one.

Also, I could not think of any branded sugar product in India. So when I typed branded sugar on google it threw ‘Parry’s Sugar’, ‘Madhur Sugar’, felt they still have a long way to go. But when it came to salt brands ‘ Annapurna’ and ‘ Tata Salt’, where easy to recall.

So why sugar is still a commodity and not a brand. Can we have an alternative sugar product which can positioned itself as the best sugar brand we Indians could consume at any occasion.

Or is ‘Sugar Free’ the answer for us and making inroads slowly?

Note: India's 2017-18 sugar production (via sugarcane) likely to touch 30 million tonnes. Or is it cultivating ‘Stevia’ the solution to India’s sweet tooth problem. There is a growing market for the crop. The world is struggling with diabetes: At last count, India had over 7 crore diabetic people, second only to China’s 11 crore. 

Read more at:

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/agriculture/why-indian-farmers-are-struggling-to-ensure-stevia-becomes-a-product-for-the-masses/articleshow/62771916.cms

https://www.business-standard.com/article/markets/sugar-production-in-india-to-cross-record-30-mt-prices-under-pressure-118041701487_1.html

Talking to the right people about your USP

(baby)Elephant in the (board)room

 

Google: An elephant in the room. informal. If you say there is an elephant in the room, you mean that there is an obvious problem or difficult situation that people do not want to talk about. https://tiny.cc/gwpzuy

While I have taken the liberty of adding (baby) and (board) with the phrase ‘Elephant in the room’. As for me the ‘(baby)’ represents ‘Consumer’ and ‘(board)’ refers to ‘decision’ being taken for him, without him being ‘present’ in the (board)room.

To improve our marketing campaign effectiveness, it’s important that first we understand our consumer insights. As its rightly said by Jure Klepic “Research focuses on the numbers, marketing wants to reach new customers, and sales just wants more leads, with little coordination, sharing or understanding.”

So, what is a consumer insight? It’s the ultimate truth about the consumer and creates an ‘Eureka’ movement when s/he sees it.

 

?? ???? ?? ??? ?????

Are we Proactive or Reactive marketer?

“?? ???? ?? ??? ?????” or simply put “We will see” have you ever said this to anyone? It has its power, charm, for a second it makes you feel supreme, that you are on top of this world and in full control.

This is an attitude or conditioning we are bought up with. In true sense it makes us ‘Reactive’. Any marketing activity we plan might have this thought lingering to it, “we will see”.

To put it simply, let’s say we insert our message across various ATL and BTL channels, wherein, large numbers of people have a good chance of seeing it.

Repeating the message again, assuming that it will stick in their memories…..leading to conversion.

Whereas being proactive, we deliver the message where customer is looking for it. In other words, the exact place where the customer is looking at. For example, earlier if we wanted to find a ‘Plumber’ we referred yellow pages but now we check ‘Google’ on our mobile. So are we present on ‘Plumber near me’ or ‘Salon near me’ or ‘Café near me’ or ‘Lawyer near me’.

Here is an example of ‘Café near me’ https://tiny.cc/d9oyuy. I would ideally check the distance, rating, what they offer and might go for it. Leading to higher strike rate/conversion.

This makes proactive advertising a powerful marketing tool, also this is tip of the iceberg, why monies are shifting from traditional marketing to digital world.

Time has come to change our attitude from “We will see” to “Let’s make it work”.

 

https://www.blizzardinternet.com/news/marketing/reactive-vs-proactive-marketing/

Brand New Mantra

Celebrate more occasions, Retain more customer!

As a marketer we tend to challenge ourselves on two fronts, ‘Footfall’ and ‘Retention’. A great offer might get us a new customer but retention? Hmmm that has been a challenge.

When you search on Google it throws various solutions like offer customer service ‘surprises’, set customer expectations., build trust through relationships, use automation to re-engage customers, Improve KPIs around customer service, leverage customer feedback surveys, develop a frequent communication calendar, overdeliver on your promise and so on….

Where all this is leading to? The universal truth of ‘Happiness’, every brand experience should directly or indirectly make the ‘customer happy’.

That is a difficult exercise to keep each and every customer happy. Some might become ‘promoters’, other ‘Detractors’ and may be major chunk are ‘Passive’. Our challenge here becomes to push ‘Detractors’ to ‘Passives’ and ‘Passives’ to ‘Promoters’. This requires time, money and energy to understand the concept and activating it with support and guidance of senior management. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_Promoter

Can we take a route which would help us in expediting the process, Yes we can, with the new mantra, ‘Celebrate more occasions, Retain more customers’.

What do I mean by occasions? For me the one that takes the cake is ‘Birthday’ followed by ‘Anniversary’. But this is not the end of ‘Occasions’, as it would include celebration of a festivals, getting engaged/married, Promotion, retirement to name a few.

Each and every occasion has its unique celebration style, for simplicity sake let’s take ‘Birthday’. We love celebrating our ‘birthday’, we become childlike and look forward to spending time with our friends and family. So, can a brand take a leaf out of it? Absolutely it can, if it makes the customer feel special on his/her birthday.

But many brands are doing it? They share offers, discounts, bonus points so how is it different? Yes, it’s different as most of brands tend to ‘SHARE’ but not ‘ENGAGE’.

To engage is the key, if you have a database, it’s important that you call the customer, wish him and invite. Maybe you would need to call 50 customer every day, imagine if only 6% gets converted you have 3 customer walking in your store each day, leading to 90 birthday celebration/month.

Once they are in, we acknowledge them, ‘TREAT’ them. A slice of cake wouldn’t hurt much right? As per my experience not only these 3 customers would become instant ‘promoters’ for your brand but also engage with you. May be leading to upselling and getting new customers.

One of the restaurant brand whom I really admire is ‘Barbeque Nation’, anytime you walk in and you have a celebration going on. It does not matter if you have not informed them about your birthday, if they get to know, they all come together and celebrate. I am sure it’s ‘promoter’ score would be quite high in the industry. https://tinyurl.com/yco54kyh

We need to take a step back and start celebrating more occasions with our guest, Occasions are personal, emotional and I am sure they will connect with your brand at a deeper level.

So, are we ready to celebrate more occasions and engage with our customer.

As the saying goes ‘the more the merrier’, Cheers!!

Oh! My Poor little ‘Tent Card’, Make me Rich

I personally feel a ‘Tent Card’ is one of the most powerful tool a marketer could use to create high level of brand awareness and conversion.

To keep it simple, here are a few observations, that could multifold increase ‘Tent Card’ ROI.

·      What are we talking about? Marketing tool ‘Tent Card’ & ‘Tilt Talker’ (A5, A4 size)

·      Why we are talking about them? To unleash its true potential. As they might be underutilized and lacking engagement

·      Where they are kept? Mainly on restaurant table, Cashier desk & various Concession counters

·      To do what? To create awareness about a brand’s offers and benefits

·      Focusing? Mainly towards internal audience

·      Leading to? Upselling (Value) or Conversion (Volume). ‘Upselling’, here means making more money per customer and ‘Conversion’ more customers are trying out the offer)

·      Are they sustainable? Yes and No, they perform best in limited time period. As they are at the mercy of customer and unit team member. Mainly get damaged due to mishandling

·      Cost effective? Yes, they don’t burn a hole in units marketing budget. Just try selling a beverage with help of a mere tend card and it would recover the cost on its first order

So then why we are talking about tend cards, if they are doing such good job?

We are doing so because they are utilized as a generic marketing tool without any engagement or punk to it. They are sometimes taken for granted and poor guy is expected to do his job without much credit.

Can we help him, in the end, help the brand?

Yes, we can, by asking a simple question “Is my tent card engaging enough?”, as it is one of the only medium kept at the unit level which talks to our customer directly.

It becomes necessary to make it talk, so customer notices it, as the saying goes ‘Joh Dikhta hai woh Bikta hai’.

To explain the same, sharing some of my experience with our little ‘Tent Card/Tilt Talker’

Burger of the year  

Brief: ‘Baahubali 2’ is releasing and we need to do some ‘upselling’ in food

Place: Cinema Concession counter

Product finalized: Burger (Veg and Non-Veg)

Why: “It did really well last time (Baahubali 1), it will sell on its own”

Debate continues:

·      “Can we make it larger than life, like man vs food types?”

o  “No, as it would hit our cost, no time now”

·      “Ok, so can we jumbo size burger at the entrance?”

o  “No, cost will hit the unit”

With these challenges, we looked back at our poor ‘Tilt Talker’ and we knew it’s time for our little man to show some magic.

Thinking out the box: With limited budgets, time and out of ideas, we thought of making a burger cut out. It did not feel right, as we could see more potential. Someone jokily said why don’t we place a burger on ‘Baahubali’ shoulder. And voila we struck gold.

We created an innovative tilt talker, which became viral, offline and online, our patrons were talking about it and engaging.

And yes, Baahubali burger did fly off the shelves!

Cost: Half a burger for each Tilt Taker

Achieved: Burger of the year https://tiny.cc/ni2wuy

The Hottest Sizzler Festival

Brief: Its monsoon and time to bring back Bombay Blue hottest sizzlers

Place: Bombay Blue restaurant

Product finalized: Across the globe sizzlers (Veg and Non-Veg)

Why: Customers love digging into Bombay Blue sizzlers, especially if its monsoon

Challenge: Showcase creativity in limited budget that Bombay Blue sizzlers are the ‘hottest’

Thinking out the box: Keeping the ‘hot’ theme in mind, elements were designed around it. With one thing left in the end, my favorite tent card. I did not want it to be another tent card, it had to be special. So, we thought, if you ate the hottest sizzler you would require drink lot of water.

And that’s what we did, we bought 50 ‘fire brigade toy van’ per unit and placed our sizzler tent card on top of it. It was a pleasant surprise for our customer and kids loved it.

And yes, sizzlers did sell like hot cakes and more than previous year!

Cost: One fourth sizzler for each toy

Achieved: High level of engagement and sales

Psssst, we did lose some toys guess excited customers took them away as trophies. We also created an Easel that blew fire (paper fire) and our team members wearing the fire themed uniform. That’s another story.

Bite like a Dinosaur

Brief: Dinosaur movie is releasing and we need to do some upselling

Place: Cinema Concession counter

Product finalized: Burger (Veg and Non-Veg)

Why: “Time constraints and also last time it did well”

Thinking out the box: Well we understood that selling another burger it needs to be innovative. To showcase how juicy it was, we made sure dinosaur took a bite out of it. But that’s not enough, how can we get patrons attention? We needed the dinosaur to move but that would be a costly affair, instead we made it blink.

Cost: Half a burger for each Tilt Taker

Achieved:  Yes, its eye blinked to get patrons attention and rest is history!

Street Food Festival

Brief: Selling Indian food is a challenge, as you find it in plenty and better value

Place: Cinema Concession counter

Product finalized: Street food festival

Why: Goes well with Indian palate and would lead to higher conversion

Challenge: Tilt Talker, limited budget 

Thinking out the box: The product was quite exciting, creating a new category in food but cinema going patron still prefers popcorn. We took the challenge and got much needed attention from our patrons.

When we thought of street food, we connected with ‘Traffic light’, yes that would fit well. But will it engage? We made it blink again, ‘red, yellow and green.’

Cost: One Indian dish for each Tilt Taker

Achieved: Yes, it grabbed attention and led to conversion

Here are few examples I could think off the cuff and they might be relevant to food industry. But do they engage with the customer that’s the real question we need to keep answering. Here it did.

Also, our team at the ground level works really hard to please the customer, knowing well that the poorest is the serving the richest. These innovative mediums do help in breaking ice with customer and generating higher sales.

In the end our unit level team needs to feel excited and empowered, as they have to sell.

I do hope, have made our ‘poor’ little guy feel ‘rich’ today.