Marquess magazine

BUSINESS CULTURE SEGMENT POSITION TOMORROW QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS BUSINESS CULTURE REPOSITION AMBUSH MONEY TOMORROW QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

MARQUESS MAGAZINE MARKETING CLUB IIM RANCHI

PLUSRecent

happenings in the market

Positioning of matchsticks in the niche

sector

Crosswords and fun trivia

Major events

Photo gallery

Club Initiatives

CORPORATE

OBSERVANCE

GREAT ARTICLE Multi channel business by Manoj N

STUDY

AD ANALYSISBrand analysis for KBC by Saurav

INTERVIEWPrakash Iyer speaks about marketing

STRATEGY

SHORT ARTICLEProduct promotion through movies

Kimberley Clark’s MD Prakash Iyer speaks...Don’t go for small stuff, go for the prize at the end of it all

REPOSITIONING?Yebhi.com’s transformation from yet another brand to one of the biggest e-commerce players

Pharmaceutical,alumni’s take on the industryA sneak peek into the industry’s worklife

Apple bumps Co-ca-Cola to become world’s top brand

The iPhone maker be-comes the first company to knock Coca-Cola from atop Interbrand’s study of the value of cor-porate brands. Google claims second place, as IBM and Intel slip.

Parle re-enters fizzy drinks market with Café Cuba

20 years after selling Thums Up, Parle has re-entered the market with a first-of-its kind bever-age that is combination of roasted coffee beans and carbonated fizz.Apple recruits

Burberry’s Angela Ahrendts for retail and online stores

Apple has announced that Burberry CEO, Angela Ahrendts will join the company in Spring as a senior vice president with respon-sibility for ‘the strate-gic direction, expan-sion and operation’.

Microsoft to ac-quire Nokia’s de-vices & services business, license Nokia’s patents and mapping services

It gives us immense pleasure in announc-ing the release of yet another issue of Mar-

quess, the marketing magazine of IIM Ranchi.

At Marquess, we have always strived to provide a plat-form for the students of IIM Ranchi where they can exhibit their potential. We are a dedicated team of few who are constantly in search of new ideas to help incul-cate in our fellow students the nuances of marketing.

In this issue of the magazine , you will find the wisdom words of Industry veterans, the experi-ences of alumni, the initiatives of IIM Ranchi students, major marketing related news, a few chosen articles by fellow students and a pletho-ra of content that is relevant to today’s market.

With these words we would like to wish the Maga-zine and everybody who has been involved in its publication the very best and here’s hoping that we as a team go for strength to strength in serving the students of IIM Ranchi and leaving a trail behind.

Thanks YouThe Editorial Team

Sprite topples Thums Up from numero uno position after three decadesThums Up, which ruled India’s fizzy drinks mar-ket for three decades, has been toppled from its perch by Sprite — both of them bever-ages from Coca-Cola India’s portfolio.

Colgate takes HUL to court, ad stays for now

Colgate-Palmolive (In-dia) has dragged Hin-dustan Unilever (HUL) to court in response to the comparative ad-vertisement that the PepsodentGermicheck marketer launched.

Issue: 2

Published by: Marquess, the marketing club IIM Ranchi

Contact:Email: [email protected]

Facebook:http://www.facebook.com/Marquess.IIMRanchi

Twitter :https : / / twitter.com/TheMarquessClub

Address;The Marketing Club, Indian Institute of Management Ranchi, Suchna Bhavan 5th Floor, Audrey house Campus, Meur’s Road, Ranchi-834008

Editorial Board:Bhuvan SharmaDiptesh MallickRenali BansalSanjana B.PattanshettiSaurav MukhopadhyayShashank GoyalVarun Yadav

Designer:Renali Bansal

Review Team:Media and PR CellIIM Ranchi

Special thanks:Abhishek SrivastavVivek Bhagat

:

FROM THE EDITORS MAGAZINE

jOT TINGS MAjOR NEWS

54 M A R Q U E S S I II I M R a n c h i

M a r k e t i n g M a g a z i n e | I I M R a n c h i M a r k e t i n g M a g a z i n e | I I M R a n c h i

» p.18Dear Students,

I am glad that the marketing club of IIM Ranchi has chosen ‘Branding’ as theme for this edition of the magazine. In the highly competitive marketplace that exists today, the importance of branding is gaining increasing significance.

Since the market is increasing in size and complexity, consumers are being offered a huge number of choices. This leaves organizations with no choice but to create a strong brand value for their prod-ucts, which will help consumers choose them over other competitors. These days everything, be it an organization, an institute, a product or, for that matter, even certain people have a brand value.

As the marketplace has evolved from a seller’s market to a buyer’s market, there is increased empha-sis on understanding the customer and branding is one of the tools to impact consumer behaviour. It is especially critical in economies like India, where both the consumers and the market are chang-ing at a rapid pace.

Organizations use various strategies to improve the branding of their products and services, and brand management has grown to be one of the most challenging and exciting functions of marketing.

I am happy that Branding is chosen as the theme for this edition and I hope this edition of the magazine will benefit all its readers. I wish the club the very best and hope to see it grow in the times to come.

I am happy that Branding is chosen as the theme for this edition and I hope this edition of the magazine will benefit all its readers.

» p.7

» p.11 » p.12

» p.11

7 COVER STORYRepositioning in the marketing world, main article ‘Founding Yebhi!’ by Diptesh Mallick

20 SEEKHNA BAND...TOH jEETNA BAND

A comprehensive brand analysis for Kaun Banega Crorepati by Sony Entertainment Telivision

10 LOCAL STARLETSArticles written by first year students as a part of their assignment week. The topics include Brand promotion through movies and Placing matchsticks in the niche segment

15 CORPORATE’S WORDAn exclusive interview with Mr Prakash Iyer, the Managing Director of Kimberley Clark Lever

20 MULTI CHANNEL BUSINESSAn observer’s take on the growing craze for multi channel business

14 CANNES LIONS 2013India bags 11 Lions in 2013, including 4 Gold, 2 Silver and 5 bronze in different categories

22 ALUMNI SPEAKSAn insight into the pharmaceutical sector through the eyes of our alumni 9 FUN TRIVIA

Quotes by famous marketing personalities and experts

SNEAK PEEK MAGAZINE

DIRECTOR’S ADDRESS WISDOM WORDS



The Marquess Club sprang into action in the new academic year with a flurry of innovative and chal-lenging activities. The first event that Marquess came up with was the intra-college “Mint” case study event. The case study invited deliverables for the challenges faced by a tissue and hygiene manufac-turer in the Indian market .Deliverables included a strategy for expanding the company’s portfolio in B2B and B2C market of India and a strategy to introduce their already existing B2B products into B2C market. The shortlisted entries were judged by Mr Prakash Iyer, the MD of Kimberley Clark lever. An alumnus of Indian Institute Of Management, Ahmedabad and an author himself, praised the enthusiasm and the ideas shown by the students of IIM, Ranchi.

Marquess took the initiative to aware students through social media and it chose Facebook as its plat-form. It launched a unique weekly informative channel through Facebook posts about companies/ brand which have changed the way we see our markets. Company chosen and informed about so far included Micromax, Life’s Good and Flipkart. Companies were analysed basing on other market strategies, changes in them, their approach to the customer and their success and failures in hitting the bull’s eye. Nothing like anything Advertisements are integral to the branding, positioning, target-ing, communication strategy of products for the companies that launch them. Bearing this in mind, these companies were studied based on marketing strategy and ad analysis.

Marquess also came up with a fortnightly newsletter covering all the recent happenings in the market world. It includes interview excerpts from the industry experts, happenings from Media/Marketing/Advertisements and a special section “Competition corner” dedicated towards creating awareness about the upcoming marketing events organised by various top level B-schools across the country.

The second issue of “The Marquess Quarterly” includes the articles submitted by the first year stu-dents in their assignment week. The quality of articles shows the brilliance in understanding and articulation we have in our fresher batch. The articles encompassed various marketing-related topics like- Positing match sticks in the niche segment, Road ahead for TATA Nano, TATA Trucks in inter-national market, Smokeless cigarette in smokeless zone, Repositioning hatchbacks as a premium cat-egory of vehicles, Promotion through movies like Fevicol se in Dabangg. The other articles include original views from students on contemporary issues related to the field of marketing.

Marquess aspires to organize and conduct various other events in the days to come to engage stu-dents in marketing-related activities and ignite their passion for it. These events and competitions will encourage students to expand their horizons in marketing, think out of the box and be able to apply theoretical concepts of the subject to practical use. We will continue to launch competitions and events to promote students’ interests in the field of marketing and aim to keep them abreast with the exciting and dynamic world of marketing. Watch this space for more updates on the same.

THE CLUB ACTIVITIES INITIATIVES

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By Diptesh Mallick

Yebhi.com is an Indian e-com-merce portal for home, fashion and lifestyle e-tailing. It was founded in the year 2009 and since then it has been one of the fastest growing company in the lifestyle category in the country.

It all started with bigshoebazar.com, which was mainly an online cash and carry shoe aggregator. Their portfolio was initially com-prised of a hybrid online and offline wholesale cash and carry business which was then expanded into an ecommerce website, yebhi.com as well. According to the found-ers of yebhi.com - Man Mohan Agrawal, Nitin Agarwal, Rajul jain and Danish Ahmed, yebhi.com was founded driven by the enormous success of the parent company in the footwear category and their eventual expansion need into other categories like apparels, accesso-ries, jewelry, mobiles, etc.

Yebhi.com is a good example of an e-commerce company, which has reaped the benefits of the internet bubble in India. It is also a good example of a company which has been facing many challenges

throughout its operational period and thus it gives us a good under-standing of the impact of the differ-ent strategies that are being used by the company.

During the early years of its oper-ations – the growth period, the company faced many issues – financial, infrastructure, sourc-ing, logistics, etc. among others. It had the benefit of a market in which only few players were inter-ested and thus had little compe-tition, though the competition is on rise since then. Also, with good customer satisfaction levels for its entire customer base, it had the benefit of selling a diverse portfo-lio of products. What started as a shoe selling business soon had the opportunity of entering into dif-ferent product segments. With the rapid expansion, few operational challenges also had to be tackled by the company. In the early days of its operations, it was successful in raising funds as well. It had raised Rs.100 cr in series C funding from Fidelity Growth Partners India and Qualcomm Incorporated and exist-ing investors like Nexus Venture Partners and Catamaran Ventures. It had also raised Rs.40 cr in series B funding from Catamaran

It all started with bigshoebazar.com, which was mainly

an online cash and carry shoe aggregator.

Their portfolio was initially comprised of a hybrid on-line and offline wholesale cash and carry business which was then expanded into an ecommerce website, yebhi.com as well.

FOUNDING YEBHI! COVER STORY



Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did some-thing, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experi-ences they’ve had and synthe-size new things.

Steve jobs

The distance between number one and number two is always a constant. If you want to improve the organization, you have to improve yourself and the organization gets pulled up with you. That is a big lesson. I cannot just expect the organization to improve if I don’t improve myself and lift the organization, because that distance is a constant.

Indra Nooyi

If it doesn’t sell, it isn’t creative.

David Ogilvy

Affiliate marketing has made businesses mil-lions and ordinary people millionaires.

Bo Bennett

Whether people like it or not, my marketing thought is if you keep something in front of people for too long, they get used to it.

Shahrukh KhanS IGH VIEW AM high neat half toay blushes visitor end company old prevent chapter.

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Ventures, an investment company of N R Narayana Murthy

An inefficient supply chain – lack of warehouses, lower levels of automation, stringent delivery times and high customer expecta-tions was a major problem for the company. Also the financial crunch due to the global slowdown and low investments, forced the company to adopt lean and efficient methods of operations, which in a way helped the company to reduce wastage but on the other hand demotivated the company to enter into aggressive promotional/ marketing strategies.

Challenges in positioning yebhi.com in the e-commerce space

Defining and targeting its custom-ers in the initial phase was critical. It was one of the biggest challenges that the company was bound to face. Also, the brand was very new

and the concept of e-commerce was still not widely accepted as a safe and secure proposition. So, creating the brand pull, brand value, etc. was another hurdle that the company had to face. The company also ventured into many tactical strat-egies and partnerships with third party companies to generate leads and their eventual conversion into sales. The company already had an existing customer base which had a substantially good customer loyalty and customer satisfaction levels. They used it as leverage and then went on to bring more customers onboard.

Partnering with IRCTC – yebhi growth!

IRCTC has planned to offer online retailing to its enormous customer base in India. The state owned organization has decided to partner with Shop Online, a subsidiary of yebhi.com to venture into the

online retail space. According to the CEO of bigshoebazaar.com, the company expects sales of around Rs. 200 cr in the first year itself. It is also believed that this partner-ship with IRCTC will boost the retail sector in the country and the e-commerce ecosystem on the whole. Due to rising costs and high inflation in the recent times, many e-commerce websites have been struggling to increase their foot-print and this partnership might be one of the biggest achievements for yebhi.com. The company can now target small-towns and tier-2 cities in an effective way for its business and the revenue - share model will help IRCTC to hedge against estab-lishment expenses.

IRCTC, which was mainly a ticket booking portal of the Indian rail-ways, had expanded its platform to offer flight, hotel and cab bookings in the past years.

The portal will include 16 catego-ries and yebhi.com will develop and manage the e-commerce plat-form. The end-to-end transaction process –website page design till final delivery of the product - will be the responsibility yebhi.com. This will also help the company to increase their target customer base and with good customer experi-ence, the company can lock their horns more aggressively with the likes of flipkart.com, jabong.com and junglee.com among many prominent others.

Never write an advertise-ment which you wouldn’t want your family to read. You wouldn’t tell lies to your own wife. Don’t tell them to mine.

David Ogilvy

Design is a funny word. Some people

think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it's really how it works.

Steve jobs

Targeting customers/ audience - yebhistrategy!

FUN TRIVIA QUOTES WE LISTEN TO

Transforming a brand into a socially responsible leader doesn't happen over-night by simply writing new marketing and advertising strategies. It takes effort to identify a vision that your customers will find credi-ble and aligned with their values.

Simon Mainwaring



Movies in India can be one of the most powerful tools for product promotion. Recent trends suggest that item numbers are the best way to do this. We can hardly find anyone who has not seen Kareena Kapoor dancing to the tune of “Fevicol Se”, or Malaika Arora Khan breaking into a jig in the song “Main Zandu Balm hui”! We might not remember the storyline of the film, but the lines of these songs have been etched into our minds. The companies are leveraging this love for item songs to promote their products. The reason is obvious. Bollywood is the second largest film industry in the world after Hollywood. Approximately 800 films are produced and dis-tributed each year, and are shown to 11,000,000 people every day in 13,000 cinemas across India. This makes it the biggest film industry in the world in terms of box office numbers. This technique of product place-ment is called ‘Covert advertis-ing’, because advertising is done secretly through a movie. This product placement is the inclu-sion of a product, brand name or the name of the firm in a movie so that it strikes the person with relevant notes and prompts him/her to go hunting for it. It is an

advertising technique in which the companies pay a fee or provide service in exchange for a prominent display of their product. Product placement occurs with the inclu-sion of a brand’s logo in shot, or a favourable mention or appearance of a product in shot.

The earliest reference of brand pro-motion comes in the 1940 movie “Chalti ka naam Gadi” with Mobil Brake Fluid. Some other examples of product promotions through movies include usage of Coca Cola bottle in “Taal” and usage of “Paas-Paas” in “Yaadein”. Yet another example is about how “Tanishq” made use of this technique in order to connect with the audience through the Amol Palekar directed movie ‘Paheli’. The joint promotion activity led to a 10% increase in the favourability of the brand. A major concern in brand advertis-ing through film media is about the range of target customers. Every

movie is built to cater to a partic-ular set of audiences and thus it becomes imperative for the firm to explore possibilities of being asso-ciated with a movie only if the vibes it generates is in sync with the prod-uct’s qualities. This calls for varied domain knowledge to be possessed by the managers so that they can understand the main motive of the film and how the product can be placed tactfully so as not to leave a bad taste.Care should be taken not to indulge in ‘negative placement’, for example – “Maruti Omni” which has been the predominant choice for thugs and kidnappers in Bollywood. Advantages include cost-efficiency when compared to independent advertising campaigns. Product placement can also overcome the passive audience that are used to watching TV ads. There are down-sides in terms of possible nega-tive character association, lack of control and difficulty in pricing product placements.In short, a lot of research and brain-storming ought to go into product placement in movies because it is the mouthpiece for a large cross-section of audience, the impression of which can either make or break the future of the product.

LOCAL STARLETS SELECTED ARTICLES

01Product placement in Cinema, by Abhishek

Tripathy

02Positioning match-sticks in the niche seg-

ment, by NandKishore Bagde

There is no denying the fact that lighters, especially in the niche segment of the society, have replaced matchsticks. Both men as well as women, in this segment, have moved on to lighters for their day to day usage.

Hence the possible way match-sticks can re-enter this niche segment is through the following: 1) Social Responsibility2) Enhancement of the existing matchstick followed by an aggres-sive marketing strategy3) Packaging in a way to appeal the niche segment and disassoci-ating from current perception

The matchstick industry is a cottage industry run mostly by differ-ently able people (Vision/ Hearing impaired) and women. The indus-try also happens to be one of the very few sources of income/employment for the visually chal-lenged and women from the self-help groups. The primary idea therefore is to associate the match-sticks to the impact it has on the society. One possible way could be to highlight the impact on the lives of the underprivileged.

A few other ways to convey this idea could be by organizing campaigns in association with various NGOs and relating an ignited matchstick to the removal of darkness from the lives of the underprivileged. However, one cannot compromise on the quality of the product and just focus on the special appeal while entering an

almost non-existent market. There should be a few differenti-ating factors that would make it stand apart from the rest. One of the enhancements to the existing matchsticks would be an additional protective coating at the end of the matchstick. This coating would avoid the matchstick from burning till the end thereby ensuring the safety of the user.

Another enhancement to the match-sticks would be to emit fragrance instead of the repugnant smell that is released while burning a regular matchstick. There can be multiple variants of the match sticks with dif-ferent aroma. These variants could also be segmented as spa products targeting the niche markets.

It is often said, “First impression is the best impression”. Therefore it is high time to do away with the regular rectangular box packaging of the match sticks. The packag-ing should be aesthetically appeal-ing and sophisticated so as to please the niche segment. An example of such packaging would be using envelope shaped packages instead of the regular boxes. Such packag-ing would also help in disassociat-ing the current image of the match-stick and creating a fresh image in the minds of consumer.

However, all the above efforts would go in vain if the product is not strategically placed in the market. It should associate itself with high end bars, restaurants, hotels and spas and could be dis-tributed as complimentary items in such places to create awareness. Similarly, strategically placing the ads to highlight the enhance-ments as well as the social aspects of the product would provide the right platform to enter this niche segment of the market.

03Promotion through movies, by Sandeep

Kumar

Without promotion something terrible happens... Nothing! -P.T .Barnum

Goals and Objectives:This write up explores out the dif-ferent avenues for Brand/Product Promotion via movies. We will try to gain a brief understanding about the inherent process for the same. We will analyze both the positive and negative effects of attempting a brand repositioning through this medium and the legal aspects of the same.

The Ways:The Brand partnership or promo-tion through movies can be a very profitable investment if done well. It starts with the marketing team measuring the pros and cons of choosing this route. The campaign can be in built in the film script, can focus on the main character as a brand ambassador or can be incorporated in the movie songs. We can take instances of



Across

4. Hans Wilsdorf founded which iconic brand?

5. Andrew Mason created this ‘deal-of-the-day’ Website

7. ‘We Open Governments’ is the slogan of which organization?

11. The year 2003 marked the end of something, whose name originates from the word that means ‘agreement’ or ‘harmony’. What is it?

12. Automobile brand is famous for the’ winged B-hood’?

14. The Agnelli family controls which automaker?

15. GAZER LENS- unscramble this for the name of a hoary old sports brand.

16. NFLX is the NASDAQ symbol of which company?

FUN TRIVIA CROSS WORD

Down

1.This ‘Italian-American plumber’ became known to the world in1981, courtesy designer Shigeru Miyamoto

2.This big internet brand name features in a book by Enid Blyton

3.The American Dialect Society voted this words over such as Facebook, water-boarding andGoogleganger as the 2007 word of the year

6.“Once you pop, you can’t stop”, this is for the brand?

8.Arbed, Aceralia and Usinor merged to form what?

9._______ advertising is a form of advertising which is used to promote banned products like cigarettes and alcohol

10.Gulf Oil is an arm of the _______ group

13.This fashion brand’s name is derived from the name of the company’s founder Sotino Voulgaris

Created :Saurav Mukhopadhyay

Answers:Facebook:http://www.facebook.com/Marquess.IIMRanchi

Many movies having advertise-ment of a product find it difficult to release it in certain territories. In this scenario the company loses money as well as reputation.

Going Forward:

Product placement is now a comple-mentary source of notoriety for the brands. It is an element of the mar-keting mix and it could create a huge impact. Fashion brands and mass appeal brands can benefit greatly by promotion through acclaimed/ order

Innovation is the cue. Today, over 500 billion matchsticks are used every year. Matchstick manufac-turers need to realize the need for innovation in this apparently sat-urated market in to grow and dif-ferentiate themselves from existing players.

Another aspect that is crucial to niche marketing is distribution. A company needs to find the apt dis-tribution channels for each segment that it wants to target for ensur-ing effective product penetListed below are some interesting ideas and innovations to market match-sticks in different niche categories being practised outside India:

1. Waterproof matchsticks: Useful for trekkers, campers, sailors and other people who are likely to be out in wet conditions. If a good amount of research is put into making them water resistant and efficient at the same time, such matchsticks can find a good con-sumer base to build on.

2. Safety matchsticks: Long match-sticks with a non-combustible end to hold to ensure safety of the user. Keeping in mind the number of accidents that take place due to improper use of matchsticks, these can be promoted heavily during festive seasons (Diwali, World Cup, IPL). Longer than a regular matchstick, it can be projected as an ideal choice for lighting candles, oil lamps or firecrackers.

Kids could also be a potential target market for this kind of matchsticks by highlighting the safety aspects through advertising.

Omega with Sky Fall or Fevicol with Dabangg 2.

The Current Scenario: All big brands look for tie ups with blockbusters and acclaimed movies like Inception, The Dark Knight and Man of Steel. Some movies have a huge amount of mass appeal or have a great star cast which helps the brands establish visibility. Most of the times it is a paid association, but there have been some excep-tions like a scene showing an Apple product in the movie - Mission Impossible – The Ghost Protocol.

Advantage Brand/Products:The protagonist endorsing a product in the movie is less risky than Celebrity Endorsement.; as any damage to the image of the celebrity will not have a nega-tive impact on the brand image (The image of Accenture took a hit because of the image of Tiger Woods). The brands definitely get direct promotion through movies. If we look at the other side of the coin; the revenues from the brand promotion can be used by the movie production houses. Independent directorial ventures can be supported by the income generated.

Legal Issues:One of the major issues faced is to convince the Regulatory body to permit their product to be main-line products in movies. It is sug-gested that paid placement of Tobacco occurs in India frequently. As per The Burning Brain Society in Chandigarh, between 2004 and 2005, out of 110 Hindi movies 89% had tobacco scenes. When promotion of a product happens it needs to be culturally sensitive and should follow the local laws.

04Positioning match-sticks in the niche

segment, by Bhavana Pandey

There was a time when one had to sweat it out with stones and wood to start a fire. However, people now-adays couldn’t possibly imagine a world without matchsticks. A tiny wooden stick with a phosphorus head, which we so often use in our daily lives, is the result of years of modification and up-gradation. But the question presently being asked is: “Can there be scope for more?”

How many of us actually care about the brand of the matchbox when we buy one? Purchasing a matchbox is primarily need-based and anything that can fulfill the need, regard-less of the brand, is bought by the customer. In this scenario can a matchstick manufacturer ensure that a niche segment for match-sticks is created and the company is able to penetrate this particular segment?



Prakash Iyer is the Managing Director of Kimberly Clark

Lever Pvt. Ltd. He is an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, and in a corporate career spanning more than 25 years, he has worked in various reputed organizations like Hindustan Unilever and PepsiCo before joining Kimberly Clark Lever. He has also authored some bestselling books like ‘The Habit of Winning’ and ‘The secret of leadership’. During his visit to IIM Ranchi, he spent some time with the members of the marketing club and spoke on various things. Here are the excerpts of the same.

McCann Worldgroup Mumbai won 2 Gold medals,for its ‘William Shakespeare’, ‘Mark Twain’ and ‘Oscar Wilde’ campaign for Penguin Audio-books.Taproot India’s ‘Farmer Suicide’ campaign for The Times of India won a Gold Lion. Grey Worldwide India, ‘Positive & Negative’ cam-paign for P&G’s Duracell Batteries.

You started your career as a sales representative in

HUL. That is one of the most sought after profiles in b-schools. Can you throw some light on your first job and the beginning of your career?

Mr. Iyer: I believe I learnt a lot while working with HUL. HUL sends you out and makes you exposed to the real world. Well, at first you get confused but later in your career you realize the importance of this exposure. It also shows you what a world-class system looks like and I think that’s important. What happens with many of us is that we are not exposed to this real system and we are tricked into believing that what we are doing is good enough.

But while working for HUL, you become a part of the nature of the business they do, the kind of the organization they have built over all these years, the great people they attract , and it all gives you

3. Wax matchsticks: Wax match sticks are gaining popularity these days mainly because these sticks light up at the first strike, burn steadily and do not spark. Additionally, these matches are also known to work better than the usual matchsticks in damp condi-tions. The collective features can be leveraged to target high-income households by making the product available at high-end retails stores.

4. Aesthetically appealing match-sticks: Apart from the basic use of igniting things, matchsticks are often used in different artworks and the amount of matchsticks used for such purposes cannot be underestimated. Hence it makes perfect sense to launch aesthet-ically appealing, colourful and designer matchsticks with indige-nous handwork on them. It could also become an attractive option for foreigners to buy from India as souvenirs.

As pointed out, manufacturer can either target one or can plan to venture into different niche segments at the same time. Considering, “Close cover before striking”, as the most printed phrase in English language, we can very well estimate a huge unrivaled market open for the manufacturers to explore.

FUN TRIVIA CANNES LIONS 2013

a chance to raise the bar and pushes you to deliver more.

I often think of HUL as my extended college, a medium of learning like my school, my college. I think, first job should be looked at in a similar manner.

Today, as a young kid if you would want to go for a job in, say Singapore or a job that has a high package because all of it seems very attractive, but you know the markets, all the action is in our country only and the future is all about how do you win in India and not about the mature markets like the western world. If you need real learning, you need to take up a job based on learning parameters.

Don’t go for small stuff, go for the prize at the end of it all and set yourself up for success. Get good bosses, get good colleagues and good mentors. And that’s price-less. That’s what will help us all in learning more and becoming better.

Kimberly Clark Lever in India has a limited prod-

uct portfolio in comparison with Kimberly Clark’s portfolio in other countries. Are there any plans of get-ting products from the international market to India?

There are many products that we can come in with, but the ques-tion is whether there’s actually a need to bring new products or there’s opportunity to grow with existing products. 27 million babies are born every year. So it’s a huge opportunity if we can lever-age on it for the diaper business.

Moms of today are educated and want the best for their babies. Still, the market continues to be very small. If we can crack this challenge,we will find that there’s a big opportunity. Other categories also have challenges. Take tissuefor example, India does not like to dispose stuff.

VETER AN’S WORD CORPORATE CORNER



Don’t go for small stuff, go for the prize at the end of it all and set yourself up for success. Get good bosses, get good colleagues and good mentors. And that’s priceless.

FUN TRIVIA

IDENTIFY LOGO

We are constantly testing our prod-ucts versus everything else and you know your share can be a little up and little down sometime but if you’ve got winning products, then in the long run you’ll win.

For instance, you can have a situa-tion where somebody says “I have got a problem, I use a cleaning tissue on my car, at one place the tissue gets jammed.” So we’ll work with that guy, we’ll spend our time, send our engineers there and try understand the real problem and then we’ll work on it. We’ll try to find out the core issue and work on solutions for it.

I think it’s a great question and that’s probably the heart of our success, which is to deliver winning solutions to our cus-tomers. Put your customer first, listen to him and try to deliver winning solutions. So basically, you should have products that win. Consumers are intelligent, respect them and believe that they are the starting premise of what we do.

And to get heart winning prod-ucts, they must win in research first and then we can work on the supply chain, promo-tion, customer satisfaction.

I think, one should not take it too seriously, and you know, learn to relax and be happy with, and learn to laugh at one. I think that’s some-thing important. I genuinely enjoy working with people and I never think that I have all the answers. I think that you know there is a better chance that I will get all the answers from people I work with rather than from myself. I also like the idea of being able to leave an impact on people.

Each of us gets our highs out of dif-ferent things. I get mine in being able to impact other people and saying that you know it doesn’t matter if someone remembers you as a guy who in some way helped to kind of make you a better person, I think it’s good feeling.

Mamy Poko pants is a product in the diaper

space with a lot of differentiation. It was launched about 4 years back is doing very well. What is Kimberly Clark doing about it?

What are the kind of pro-motional strategies do

you use? Do you prefer the ‘look and feel’ way or a focused ad campaign?

We have heard lot of posi-tive things about sup-

plier chain of Kimberley Clark. Can you please share with us how it oper-ates in different countries?

How have you been lever-aging the robust supply

chain of HUL after the joint venture with it?

Kimberley Clark has a pres-ence in more than 175

countries, and has a very loyal cus-tomer base. How has the company created such a good brand loyalty and product loyalty for the custom-ers of so many different cultures?

You have had a very success-ful career in the industry

and now you are an author too. How has the journey been? What is it that keeps you going?

Let’s say from the sales and dis-tribution end, we will leverage them very aggressively. We dis-tribute through the HUL distri-bution system. So for a salesman who sells for HUL, Huggies would be just another brand in his port-folio and that allows us to reach out to very large number of people.

We do believe it offers us great strengths even from rural mar-ket’s perspective, like Project Shakti can help us in reaching to rural women far more aggressively than we might have been able to do our selves. But there are a lot of raw material related and manu-facturing supply chain challenges.

We look for potential local vendors for our products but there’s a lot that happens with qual ifying suppliers and getting them to embrace Kimberley Clarke’s stan-dards. It means investing a large amount of money, first in devel-oping the vendor and then getting the vendor to invest in the capacity and that requires us to build part-nerships. So we invest in building partnerships with vendors and try and see how you can make it work. I think we need to leverage technology very aggressively to make our supply chain successful.

Around the world Kimberley Clark and P&G have been fight-ing for leadership in this space.

So, in japan, to counter these com-panies, Momy Poko stated that-putting a diaper can be a chal-lenge. You got to make the baby lie down and babies certainly don’t like to lie down. So they created something which didn’t require it.

I think we will have all of it. We believe it’s going to be a big idea. It’s something that Indian Moms find intuitive.

If you say diaper, they feel they are just certain set of connota-tions to a diaper and if you talk of a diaper pant she says “ Yeh toh Chhaddi Hai!”. So she has related it to a format which she has been using it for a long time. So it’s really an interesting idea.

Good question! It’s interesting they were not the first with it. We actually had our product in the market but it was imported and so was priced higher. We have gone back to consumers to under-stand what moms are looking for and to leverage Kimberley Clark’s innovation pipeline around the world to deliver a solution.

In India, skin care is a huge area of concern and moms are concerned about the effect that diapers on the baby’s skin. So we have launched a diaper pant which is clinically proven to prevent rashes. We found that moms test everything before using it on the baby. For example, when she is putting diaper onto the baby, she feels the diaper first. So we have created a diaper pant which is actually having the softest inside because we know that’s what moms are looking for. The diaper pant is called Huggies Wonder Pant and we are quite excited about it.

All these products are in a sense disposable so they had rather use the towel and wash than use a throw away tissue. So perhaps we have challenges of different kinds. Certainly baby wipes and clean tissue arebig ideas but we are not sure if we want to get in them right now.

I think supply chain tends to depend heavily on co-ordination across regions. We have suppliers who specialize in different products from different parts of the world. We ensure that we bring them in.



What will be the actual impact of this craze to go multi-channel, es-pecially in emerging markets like India?

Another advantage of door to door or online sales is that the cost of shelf space in stores is absent, thereby increasing margins. FMCG companies are also looking at ‘Direct’ selling of their products so that they do not have to pay the middlemen –the retail stores. Retail stores themselves are coming up with exciting offerings for delivery.

What will be the actual impact of this craze to go multi-channel, especially in emerging markets like India? KFC and McDonalds do not have a delivery model in the US, though they do in Asia and Africa. In fact, McDonald’s has started a slogan, ‘If you can’t come to us, we will come to you’ in China. Mr. Tim Fenton, president of the chain’s Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa regions says that growth has been in double digits in all regions where there is home delivery. He reasons that the huge workforce in China prefers asking for a delivery to walking 5 minutes to the nearby store. Majority of McDonald’s deliv-ery orders are phoned in, but the company wants to evolve more towards web ordering because it spares the cost of the call centre. In Egypt, delivery accounts for 30% of McDonald’s sales. People in Egypt consider delivery to be so necessary a feature that people can even call up the Marriott hotel and order a steak. McDonald’s recently intro-duced delivery in India, which was an instant hit.

Why is this model not prevalent in the west?Because two-thirds of KFC’s and McDonald’s sales in the west is derived from drive-through cus-tomers. ‘Drive-in’ is a concept that hasn’t really taken off in Asia and Africa. People prefer to call up restaurants when they log off from office and hope to find food

when they reach home, rather than picking up food on the way back. However, in the west, people prefer to grab some food on the way back. This is true in the case of other pur-chases too. Case in point, Tesco.

In UK, Tesco is synonymous with grocery and general purchase. It currently holds around 30% of the UK market www.Tesco.com, its online store, started opera-tions around a decade ago and is a highly successful website for Tesco. The in-store business took a hit for the first few years before stabiliz-ing, and still amounts to 90% of its sales. The online business there-fore, functions as an able subsid-iary to its in-store business. It is definitely a revenue earner, but is not the backbone of the retail giant. Also, only 50% of the online busi-ness deals with delivery. The rest is a ‘Click & Collect’ model where customers can order grocery, and pick it up from the store at a con-venient time. The UK citizens are more affiliated to in-store purchase, very different to Asians.

In India, though there are multiple retail options for buying grocery, new companies like Bigbasket.com and stor2dor.com, allowing online purchases are being greeted warmly. It is high time Indian retail took online business and home delivery seriously as it has a lot of potential.

Does this mean that every product that offers home delivery in India is going to be a success? Not so. Though the need for comfort is prevalent, there must also be a ‘want’ for home delivery for the product. Coca Cola introduced home delivery 3 months back via their website, coke2home.com.The deal looked good – minimum order of Rs. 300, 12 different products to

choose from and same day delivery (if ordered before 12 pm).

However, it never did take off, nor do I believe it will, simply because Coca Cola is not a stand-alone product. Coca Cola is pur-chased along with food, say Pizza and Pizza stores and restaurants deliver Coca Cola. So, there is no ‘want’ for a delivery model from Coca Cola. Companies, therefore, need to analyze channels like they analyze products. They need to look at needs, wants and demand before launching a new channel of purchase for their business.

For now, Asia and Africa are booming markets for companies that have a robust delivery model and this ‘want’ among Asian customers will sustain.Home Delivery is here to stay.

THE CURIOUS

CR AZE FOR MULTI-

CHANNEL BUSINESS ARTICLE

By Manoj N.

Future Group recently lost its Numero Uno position in the Indian retail marketplace to Reliance. This is attrib-uted to many factors, notably the disintegration of Pantaloons from Future group and the financial muscle of the Reliance group. To counter these adverse times, Big Bazaar is in the process of creating new strategies and business models. The latest of these models is ‘Big Bazaar Direct’, a hybrid of e-commerce and door to door sales and delivery. Franchisees are to be appointed, who will visit customers at their homes, take orders on a tablet. Customers immediately receive an SMS confirming the placing of the order, and then they are required to pay the franchisee. Franchisees make a commission and delivery will be done by Big Bazaar’s special ware-houses set up for this purpose.Years back, Eureka Forbes introduced their line of vacuum cleaners in India via door to door sales. This was a huge success due to the highly trained sales personnel that the company had. Historically, Indians have always accepted purchase of fruits and vegetables from the door to door vegeta-ble seller.The comfort of buying from home appeals to Indian customers and this is why companies are now turning towards online sales to relate better to the customers.



The result? X now realises his folly, and has no option but to lament on his defiance against learning. This is when the am-bassador for KBC, Mr. Amitabh Bachchan comes in and speaks about the importance of learning something new every day. There is no age for knowledge; and no man is beyond knowing new things - is the message he tries to drive home; and thus ends, by linking the main theme of KBC with knowledge - Seekhna bandh toh jeetna Bandh, or, in other words, the one with the most knowledge is the best contender for the 10 million to be awarded as prize money on the TV Show.

By Saurav MukhopadhyayBrand: KBCCompany: Sony Entertainment Television

From simply a show that show-cased its host, Amitabh Bachchan, and the prize money of Rs 10 Million, it evolved into a show that is truly ‘Indian’; a show that posi-tioned itself as an aspiration for the average middle class Indian, and truly related with the ‘Aam Admi’, giving them a chance at their dreams. It was no longer just about the money; it was about which deserving candidate the money went to, and how it was used. Thus, it went from being simply quan-titative to the qualitative use of a jackpot of 10 million.

And now, Leo Burnett has taken it one step further by foraying into important aspect of the show – the growth and dissemination of knowledge. Primarily a quiz show that relies on unique pieces of information to propagate, there can be no better champion than KBC for the importance of knowl-edge; and it does just that. With four similar ads - one of a compla-cent police officer, one of an accom-plished actor, one of a successful lawyer, and the other of a con-niving wedding planner, it shows how people who stopped learn-ing stopped winning in life. and thus, puts across the table the idea that he who has knowledge has the power to bring in 10 million rupees into his life.

Guerrilla Marketing is an advertising strategy that focuses on low-cost uncon-ventional marketing tactics that yield maximum results.

The original term was coined by jay Conrad Levinson in his 1984 book ‘Guerrilla Advertising’. The term guer-rilla marketing was inspired by guerrilla warfare which is a form of irregular warfare and relates to the small tactic strate-gies used by armed civilians.

TThe Campaign: The road to knowledge is perpetual for

those who chose to travel it; and the destination is the road itself. The campaign to propel the latest season of KBC forward builds on that exact sentiment. With about four advertisements in the cam-paign, ad agency Leo Burnett has, once again, come up with a brilliant strategy, and even more so, a bril-liant execution.

The Advertisement: The crux of these four advertise-

ments is that there is no age, and there is no level of experience, at which learning becomes redun-dant. Knowledge has infinitely deep bowels; and he who reaches out persistently gains the most out of the endeavour. On the contrary, he who dwells on complacency is met with rejection and redundancy, because, well, knowledge waits for none and keeps evolving to suit the times. And thus comes in the char-acter in one of the four

The analysis: Over the years, KBC has had massive coun-

try-wide appeal. Having started off as a money-making show both for the players and the audience alike, it has, with the passage of time, smartly evolved in its positioning as a game show.

ad campaigns – a famous on screen actor with many hits to his credit. Now we take the liberty to call him Mr X; X is well known and well regarded in the silver screen circles; and has almost unchal-lenged supremacy in every kind of movies. He plays it all and he plays it well – from the lawyer, to the angry young man, to the doctor, to the criminal, to the drug lord, to the policeman, he has played almost every Indian stereotype role. But well, that is where things go wrong. With his insistent, repetitive ways and his uniquely singular methods of acting, he falls in a rut that he created in the first place - that of being a stereotype. But X is suc-cessful; X is propelled by his ego; and thus X believes success limits the need to learn, or, rather, success eliminates the need to learn more. Having believed the buck stopped much before him, X never endeav-ours to learn more; and slowly, his fans become irksome, his viewer-ship dwindles, his popularity falls, his movies start bombing, and before he knows it, all his movies run empty house. In other words, his days of reckoning are now passé.

SEEKHNA BAND. . .

TOH jEETNA BAND BRAND ANALYSIS

FUN TRIVIA SNAPSHOTS



Raghuveer Surupa is an alumni of Indian Institute

of Management,Ranchi. And currently he is an Assistant Manager in Pfizer, based in Mumbai, India, working in Marketing and Advertising domain. Here’s an insight of the pharmaceutical sector through his eyes.

The irony of pharmaceutical industry is that the cus-tomers i.e. the doctors are more intelligent and more aware than the seller. This makes marketing all the

more challenging as it takes a lot of scientific evidence to win their trust.

Marquess:How has your journey after IIM Ranchi been so far? How has the knowledge and experience that you gained at IIM Ranchi been helping you in the work place?

Raghuveer:The journey has been great so far. Being a man-agement trainee you get to work on exciting projects across dif-ferent functions. This gives you a more comprehensive understand-ing of an organization. What’s more important than the studying man-agement theories is to understand their application in real life scenar-ios. I believe the exhaustive case studies are a good opportunity to understand theories on a contex-tual basis. Leveraging our intern-ships will definitely help in align-ing ourselves with our job profiles.

Marquess:It is said that market-ing in the pharmaceutical industry is very different from the rest. Can you please throw some light on this?

Raghuveer:Pharmaceutical as

an industry works under several regulatory constraints. As we can’t directly market the products to the consumers, doctors play a pivotal role in the development of the brand. The irony of pharmaceuti-cal industry is that the customers i.e. the doctors are more intelligent and more aware than the seller. This makes marketing all the more chal-lenging as it takes a lot of scientific evidence to win their trust.

Marquess:What are the market-ing strategies used by a pharmaceu-tical industry, as doctors are said to be your real customers?

Raghuveer:In pharmaceuti-cal like any other industry tar-geting of customers plays a very crucial role. Doctors in this sce-nario can be targeted by classify-ing them into several categories. Affordability, safety and efficacy are some of the factors that they con-sider. In a market like India where there are hundreds of brands for a particular molecule being on Top Of Mind of the doctors can be

quite challenging. Hence one has to constantly innovate to get their attention.

Marquess:How do government policies affect the pharmaceutical industry? How does it make things better/worse for the rest of the world?

Raghuveer:Government poli-cies define the restrictions under which pharmaceutical compa-nies have to operate. Policies on patents and Pricing policies are very crucial. Government is poli-cies are an effort to strike a balance between being in favour of the poor without compromising on the prof-itability of the industry. The lead-ership teams in top companies are very much aware of this fact and manoeuvre the company through a maze of policies to profitability.

Marquess:Are different strat-egies used in the rural and urban markets? If so, can you please elabo-rate on the same?

Raghuveer:Indian pharma-ceutical market is predomi-nantly present in Urban market. Compared to other industries the rural markets are hardly explored in pharmaceutical. This is a big chal-lenge for the industry as it is diffi-cult to be profitable in rural markets considering the dispersed market and infrastructure challenges. But the few examples where pharma-ceutical companies have tried to exploit the potential of rural market are through innovative models like

mobile clinics. But initiatives like the procurement and distribution model for essential medicines by Tamil Nadu government will play an important role in penetrating the rural market.

Marquess:The pharmaceuti-cal industry is said to be recession-proof. What’s your take on this? Have the past few years changed the way your company undertakes its sales and marketing activities?

Raghuveer:Pharmaceutical industry is relatively less exposed to recession when compared to other industries but it is not completely immune. At a macroeconomic level the government healthcare expen-diture, reduced investments will be a hurdle for the industry. It is observed that people shift from expensive branded drugs to the cheaper generic drugs which is a big challenge for the MNCs.

Marquess:What would a phar-maceutical company look for while recruiting an MBA candidate for a sales/marketing role?

Raghuveer:A pharmaceutical sales professional has to excep-tionally high spirited and con-stantly figure innovative ways of selling products. The market is extremely competitive and getting doctors’ attention in this environ-ment is very challenging. Unlike other industries where push and pull strategies work simultaneously, it is predominantly a puch strategy

in pharmaceutical, hence sales play a pivotal role in the organization. Marketing on the other hand has to leverage on the insights about different specialty doctors and provide the necessary materials to assist sales people. The more inno-vative the inputs and selling strat-egy is the more likely the doctor is to prescribe the product.

Marquess:What would your advice for the students of IIM Ranchi be?

Raghuveer:Make the most of Guest Lectures as this is a very good source of understanding the pros and cons of different indus-tries. This will help you under-stand which industry you would want to be in and also help you set your goals accordingly. Then develop yourself by understand-ing the industry, participating in relevant extracurricular events etc. And have fun while you’re at it, you made it till this point and you are bound to do well in future if you work the same way.

Pharmaceutical industry is relatively less exposed to recession when compared to other industries but it is not completely immune. At a macroeconomic level the government healthcare ex-penditure, reduced invest-ments will be a hurdle.

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