Marketing Morals.

Two women were shopping.

While shopping, two women began talking about their home lives.

"Seems like all John and I do anymore is fight," said the first woman. "I've been so upset; I've lost twenty pounds because of it."

"Why don't you just leave him then?" asked her friend.

"Oh! Not yet." the first replied. "I'd like to lose at least another fifteen pounds first."

Marketing Moral of the story- you've got to have a goal.

Independence Day Special

'Saare Jahaan Se Achcha', the Anthem of the people of Hindustan somewhat loses its significance infront of the National Anthem and the National Song of India. That's another thing that as the Independence Day arrives, from the innumerable campaigns we get to know that today we have left all these melodies of our freedom and the incomparable struggles by our brave Countrymen to achieve freedom, behind us.

Today, on the completion of 68 years of Our Independence, we, the youth should take a pledge to respect the struggles and sacrifices made for us by all the Freedom fighters and to remember them, what we can do the best is, respect Our National Anthem, National Song and The Anthem of India.

So, stand tall, salute and sing aloud with pride.

The Vodafone Zoozoos respect the Anthem, why can't we??;)

A very Happy Independence Day to All!

What A Solution ;)

A retailer was dismayed when a competitor selling the same type of product opened next-door to him, displaying a large sign proclaiming "Best Deals." Not long after that, he was horrified to find yet another competitor move in next door, on the other side of his store. It's large sign was even more disturbing- "Lowest Prices."

After his initial panic, and concern that he would be driven out of business, he looked for a way to turn the situation to his marketing advantage. 

Finally, he got an idea. 

Next day, he proudly unveiled a new and huge sign over his front door. It read "Main Entrance".

Kingfisher Airlines- what went wrong?

When the word Positioning is used in context with marketing, it means promoting a product, service or business within a particular sector of a market, or the fulfillment of that sector's specific requirements. It relates to strategy, in the specific or tactical development phases of carrying out an objective to achieve a business' or organization's goals.

Positioning is the part of a larger process which also included Segmenting, Targeting and Differentiation but in this article, we will be specifically talking about Positioning as a concept, which will also be explained with a few examples. Lastly, this article will also have an example explaining how Positioning can go wrong and affect the company in a major way.

On its launch, Kingfisher was classified as one of India’s most luxurious commercial airlines, along with the likes of Jet Airways. These airlines had tickets starting at ₹ 6,000. Of course, six thousand was the bare minimum.

Apart from this set of high-price airlines, there was another set of airlines- the low prices carriers. This set included Air Deccan, Spice Jet, Go Air, etc.

Kingfisher Airlines had it all and why wouldn’t it, with an owner like Vijay Mallya?

To describe that man in one word would have been easy; extravagant. The reason behind using this word to describe him would be the kind of lifestyle choices he made, one of the top ones being the choice to gift his son an Airline for his birthday. Yes, Kingfisher Airlines was a gift from him to his son, Siddhartha Mallya on his eighteenth birthday.

So Kingfisher Airlines used to offer the best services to the flyers; the food, the interiors of the plane, the on-flight-entertainment, the goodies that came along with the purchase of our ticket (remember the pouch, anyone?). Taking into consideration all of this, it was only natural for the airline to charge sky-high fares, which people even paid willingly. A large number of people, at that.

Now, let’s look at the other part of this article; Air Deccan.

A newly introduced airline, Air Deccan was an instant hit, the reason being the ridiculously low air fare. They initially even had tickets starting at Re. 1, excluding taxes of course. After considering the taxes and the added expenses, the fare totaled up to ₹ 900 – ₹ 1000.

As it happened, Kingfisher acquired Air Deccan and re-named the airlines Kingfisher Red; this was a low cost class which operated on domestic routes. After the acquisition, nothing about Kingfisher Red or as it was previously known, Air Deccan, remained low-cost. It was the most luxurious airline amongst all of the low cost carriers. Tickets which initially used to cost somewhere around ₹900 - ₹1,000 had started costing approximately ₹5,000.

Here’s the catch- the services of Kingfisher Airlines and Kingfisher Red were almost similar, or maybe fully similar. You’d never know. Their services were so similar that people started migrating to Kingfisher Red from Kingfisher Airlines. After making this move, they received the same services that they used to earlier, except, this cost half the price.

The passengers that earlier used to pay somewhere around ₹10,000 had started paying approximately ₹5,000 for the same services. Good for the flyers, I’d say. For the airlines? Not so much.

Also, all those people who used to travel by Air Deccan didn’t see the point in paying nearly ₹4,000 extra to travel in Kingfisher Red, which is why they migrated to the next low-cost carrier.

Kingfisher’s revenue came down faster than a free-falling object, all of which caused them to get into heavy losses. Kingfisher’s market position in the top Indian airlines had slipped from #2 to last because of the financial losses faced by them.

In a way, Kingfisher Airlines caused its own end. Somewhere between the hopes of earning more and building another airline similar to their maiden venture into the industry, Kingfisher lost out.

They should’ve considered the changes more carefully before initiating them (or not?), eh?

This is a pretty simple thought process, to be honest, but then again, they didn’t think it through.

Better luck next time, Kingfisher.

If you agree with our view on the downfall of Kingfisher Airlines, do like us on Facebook and share this article with your friends on Facebook, Twitter and your own Blog.

Term of the week: BOUNCE RATE

Term of the week is Bounce Rate.

Bounce Rate is an Internet Marketing term used in web traffic analysis. It represents the percentage of visitors who enter the site and "bounce" (leave the site) rather than continue viewing other pages within the same site.

It is a measure of the effectiveness of a website in encouraging visitors to continue with their visit. It is expressed as a percentage and represents the proportion of visits that end on the first page of the website that the visitor sees.

These rates can be used to help determine the effectiveness or performance of an entry page at generating the interest of visitors. An entry page with a low bounce rate means that the page effectively causes visitors to view more pages and continue on deeper into the web site.

High bounce rates typically indicate that the website is not doing a good job of attracting the continued interest of visitors. The lower the bounce rate, the better it is for the website. 

Interpretation of the bounce rate measure should be relevant to a website's business objectives and definitions of conversion, as having a high bounce rate is not always a sign of poor performance. On sites where an objective can be met without viewing more than one page, the bounce rate would not be as meaningful for determining conversion success. In contrast, the bounce rate of an e-commerce site could be interpreted in correlation with the purchase conversion rate, providing the bounces are considered representative of visits where no purchase was made.

A bounce occurs when a web site visitor only views a single page on a website, that is, the visitor leaves a site without visiting any other pages before a specified session-timeout occurs. There is no industry standard minimum or maximum time by which a visitor must leave in order for a bounce to occur. Rather, this is determined by the session timeout of the analytics tracking software.

where

Rb = Bounce rate

Tv = Total number of visitors viewing one page only

Te = Total entries to page

A visitor may bounce by:

1. Clicking on a link to a page on a different web site
2. Closing an open window or tab
3. Typing a new URL
4. Clicking the "Back" button to leave the site
5. Session timeout

Marketing Food for Thought

Here is a rather important question for you to ponder over in this dynamic Marketing World:

Does Marketing with a Social cause give Brands a human face?

Mail us your viewpoints, thoughts on the same to 'marketingclubofasmsoc@gmail.com' latest by 3:00 p.m. on 20th August 2014. We will publish the best answer on our blog with the person's name, in our next update i.e. on next Friday.

What went absolutely 'right' with 'The Fault in Our Stars' to make it this huge success?

Till now most us have been thinking about how the movie ‘The Fault in Our Stars’ had such a big wave of fame. Some of you might be thinking it is because of  the book, the trailer, the actors, and of course the emotional story line. Though partly correct there was a major role played by a marketing firm into making this film a success.

Though the movie was thought of to be self-promotional, it was sparked by this work from Instagram Influencer Marketing Firm, Amplify.

The company makes a technology called 'SharedRank' which is an algorithm that provides strategic analytics and advanced audience targeting.

Working with 20th Century Fox to promote their recent film, The Fault in Our Stars. In advance of the film’s release date, the Amplify selected five key influencers within its entertainment affinity to attend a screening of the film.

The influencers were selected based on their likelihood to have an affinity for the film and, after viewing the film chose told  to organically share their experience.

Though the Amplify won’t share the identities of its influencers — for obvious reasons — it’s clear the overall talk about the film on Instagram is huge. One movie-related hash tag encompassed 1.6 million posts, while another accounted for 20K posts, at the time of publication.

According to Amplify, from the five Instagram influencers, the campaign saw more than 3,50,000 engagements on Instagram, through a combination of likes and comments, ultimately reaching a claimed 16 million people. To-date the film has grossed nearly $170 million at the worldwide box office.

Of the campaign and the technology behind it, Amplify CEO Justin Rezvani said, “As the first and only Instagram marketing firm to use technology to understand key influencers, we were able to conduct extensive analysis in selecting the best influencers to reach the most desired audience of this film. By incorporating data-driven research and a native approach to marketing on Instagram, we were able to make true connections between the film and moviegoers, which in the end moved the needle in box office ticket sales.”

The film was surely a success because of this really innovative strategy. That and the fact the film is an intense emotional roller coaster about young love and loss designed specifically to appeal to the young, movie-going audience. But let’s not let that little bit of obviousness detract from the campaign’s success.

Marketing Guru- David Ogilvy

This post is a small tribute to David Ogilvy, who is considered a wizard in the history of Marketing. The 21st of July, 2014 marked the 15th death anniversary of this Marketing guru. 

David Mackenzie Ogilvy (23 June 1911 – 21 July 1999), was an advertising executive. He was widely hailed as "The Father of Advertising". In 1962, Time Magazine named him as the most sought-after wizard in today's advertising industry.

Having worked as a chef, researcher, and farmer, Ogilvy started his own advertising agency in 1949 with the backing of Mather and Crowther, the London agency being run by his elder brother, Francis.The new agency in New York was called Ogilvy, Benson, and Mather. David Ogilvy had just $6,000 in his account when he started the agency. He admitted in Confessions of an Advertising Man that initially, he struggled to get clients.

Ogilvy & Mather was built on David Ogilvy's principles; in particular, that the function of advertising is to sell and that successful advertising for any product is based on information about its consumer.

His entry into the company of giants started with several iconic advertising campaigns.

"The man in the Hathaway shirt" with his aristocratic eye patch which used George Wrangel as model. 

"The man from Schweppes is here" introduced Commander Edward Whitehead, the elegant bearded Brit, bringing Schweppes (and "Schweppervescence") to the U.S.

A famous headline in the automobile business, "At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock" 

"Pablo Casals is coming home – to Puerto Rico", a campaign which Ogilvy said helped change the image of a country, and was his proudest achievement. 

One of his greatest successes was "Only Dove is one-quarter moisturizing cream". This campaign helped Dove become the top selling soap in the U.S.

Ogilvy believed that the best way to get new clients was to do notable work for his existing clients. Success in his early campaigns helped Ogilvy get big clients such as Rolls-Royce and Shell. New clients followed and Ogilvy's company grew quickly.

Some of his quotes are still chanted by the advertising executives. They are as follows.

"Never stop testing, and your advertising will never stop improving."

"The more informative your advertisement is, the more persuasive it will be."

"The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible."

"The consumer isn't a moron, she is your wife."