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Emotional Marketing is taking the world by storm. It is a lot more than just a strategy for the companies. It is a well researched approach to attract the right emotions by targeting your thought process. By targeting your brain's right hemisphere, the locus of your creativity and emotions.
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Contents
From the Editors’ Desk ....................................................................................... 1
An Insight into the mind of an Emotional Marketeer ........................................... 2
The things that money can’t buy ......................................................................... 4
Sinus Milieus- A Way Ahead ................................................................................ 6
Building Personal Identification with Brands ....................................................... 8
The ‘E’- Connect ................................................................................................ 10
Mark-e-feed: Discovering the Dark knight in YOU ............................................. 11
Mark-e-feed: From dusk of Mass Marketing to dawn of Digital Marketing ........ 13
Mark-toon ........................................................................................................ 15
Mark Roadies 5.0 .............................................................................................. 16
WOW- Words On Wall....................................................................................... 17
From The Editors’ Desk Creating an emotion has now become a thing of the past. In to-
day’s whirlwind of consumerism and branding, firms realise this
concept. They have come to acknowledge it, appreciate it and now
draw from it. This is what has led us at Club MarkUp to delve into
this aspect of Marketing, of identifying with the consumer at such
an intense personal level this August. We believe, in the current
context, the aspirations of the customer, if seized will provide any
organization an unparalleled edge. That is where Emotional Mar-
keting comes in.
Emotional Marketing we believe is an extremely challenging aspect
of Marketing. It displays the perfect balance of the human brain or
more so the need for it. A highly evolved sense of emotional con-
nect coupled with an equally precise logical aspect is what Emo-
tional Marketing demands.
We believed interesting opinions would be supplied, and indeed
they were. For this, we at Club MarkUp are grateful. We also hope
that the first edition by the newly inducted 2012-2014 MarkUp
team is well received.
Sincerely,
Ankit Gupta
Credits
Co-editor: Raunak Sancheti, Divyanshu Sethi
Design Team: Raunak Narang, Dhruv Chopra
Content: Aadish Kohli, Ramya Vasudevan, Shubham Gupta
Write to us at [email protected]
Follow us on :
MARKEZINE August 2012
Ankit Gupta
2nd year,
PGDM (Marketing)
IMT, Ghaziabad
An insight into the mind of an Emotional Marketeer
Gauging the nuisances of customer behaviour
has always been an intriguing exercise. The
patterns of complexity that determine any cus-
tomer behaviour are as challenging to predict as
interesting to note. As a further subset of the
same, a target segment identified and catered by
the marketer requires even a deeper analysis and
an intelligent mapping of psyche with brand sen-
sibility. Through a brand, a consumer makes
sense of his world.
More often than not, the success attained in the
above exercise is a function of accuracy in pre-
dicting and leveraging upon the understanding of
the target segment’s psyche. When a brand
weaves an emotional story around an offering
(read: product or service), it tries to capture one
or more aspirations like fears, personality traits,
hopes, desires and thoughts into the brand com-
munication. With a plethora of competing brands
and exponentially increased customer knowledge
(awareness is passé), technical and functional util-
ity have become more of a sufficient rather than
necessary conditions.
In the landscape of emotional aspects and utility,
a multifold scenario can be identified. One, there
is an inherent weaving of emotions into the sensi-
bility and hence the communication of the brand.
Majorly in the sphere of product features and
marketing attributes, it is a holistic approach. Val-
ue capture is important here. Capturing aspira-
tions or ‘I am or I want to’ into the crafting of a
luxury car brand’s sensibility or weaving Thumbs
up’s branding around bravery and adventure with
product attributes like an unconventional not so
sweet taste in sync with the same) can be exam-
ples of this. So much so, that a thumbs up drinker
has been stereotyped with a particular rough and
tough personality.
MARKEZINE August 2012
4 2
Astha Gupta
PGDM
IIM, Kozhikode
Another scenario among others includes the
marketing aspects of the product and the experi-
ential aspects only. This may include colours
used, the look and feel of point of purchase, ser-
vice elements in the delivery of products or pro-
vision of services. Designing the interiors of a
maternity ward in the shades of pink, a premium
lounge in purple or the escalating budgets of vis-
ual merchandising are illustrations of the same.
Surf Excel’s ‘Daag Achhe Hain’ also plays on the
feeling of freedom and hassle free life. These
tactics are dynamic and mostly temporary. Con-
stant innovation is prerequisite to sustainable
advantage.
All in all, the interaction of rational and emotion-
al factors synthesizes the essentials of successful
emotional marketing. Until the point where the
brand perception in the minds of customers be-
comes synonymous with its emotional message,
the potential still remains untapped.
As an extension of my attempt towards a better
understanding of the concept of emotional mar-
keting, I will share my experience of making and
building ‘Titli’. It is a brand that aims to bring to-
gether the obscure craftsmen and their skills
through distinct product lines like handmade ac-
cessories and apparel items. Having started very
recently, the store is located within a cafe in the
campus where I am currently studying, IIM Ko-
zhikode. As a part of Brand Elements, the name
symbolizes freedom and a boundless spirit. Addi-
tionally, the use of Hindi font gives it an earthy,
Indian feel. The target segment is the women
who have struggled and grown in their lives, the
women who are proud of who they are, those
who love to adorn themselves with handmade
products and are motivated to make a difference
in this world. The logo constitutes a lotus with a
butterfly that is ready to fly. The logo signifies
the Brand essence which is about having faith in
oneself during the times of struggle, drawing
from the famous butterfly story of struggle and
the property of cause and effect associated with
the Lotus (A new lotus blooms where its seeds
fall). The colours of the Logo are red, blue and
yellow that are Buddhism colours of victory,
peace and glory respectively. In the shop, con-
structive use of dysfunctional items like broken
fence and trashed iron basket has been made.
The shop has been given a ‘rural’ touch with the
final touches of ‘Warli’ designs. To emotionally
unite the customers in spirit, the brand has been
concocted as a story of humility, faith and jour-
ney to oneself.
Well! I call it Emotional connect!
MARKEZINE August 2012
5 3
The Things that Money can’t buy
What is it about the daal-chaawal cooked by
your mother that makes it more desirable to
you than even the scrumptious seven course
meal served at the most expensive restaurant
around? Is it simply the taste, colour, smell and
texture? Or is it something that transcends the
boundaries of the tangible- easy to realize, but
difficult to verbalize?
We humans are social animals. We cannot sus-
tain in isolation. We think about and feel for
others and expect others to think about and
feel for us. This interplay of thinking and feel-
ing leads us to enduring inter-personal rela-
tionships which we value. These beget specific
behavioral tendencies and responses. We call
them emotions.
Can we form such relationships with entities
that are inanimate or abstract? The answer is a
resounding yes! How else would you explain
the warmth you experience within the confines
of your home? How else would you explain pat-
riotism- why masses across the length and
breadth of our country laid their lives to realize
the dream of independence?
The demand of a market offering is a function
of its perceived value which is the difference
between the perceived benefits and the per-
ceived costs associated with it. Benefits and
costs could be physical or psychological. When
markets saturate and differentiation plummets,
this has significant implications for managers:
one- people value relationships; and two- the
psychological value that people derive out of
their relationships with other entities can far
outweigh the physical one. Emotional Market-
ing could be seen as an approach to marketing
that seeks to explore and exploit these insights
in line with the organization’s marketing objec-
tives.
A very potent tool of Emotional Marketing is
the idea of branding. Branding is what branding
does- it infuses heart, mind and soul into a life-
less, inanimate entity. Branding is to a market
offering what upbringing is to a child- it is long
term and involves instilling values, developing
attitudes and grooming the personality.
MARKEZINE August 2012
6 4
Sanket Shah
PGDM,
Welingkar Institute of
Management Develop-
ment and Research
(WE School), Mumbai
Over time, a brand represents a specific set of
personality traits, values and attitudes- as such
it becomes a ‘thinking-feeling’ individual in its
own right. It connects emotionally and enters
into relationships with many ‘others’- consum-
ers, suppliers, employees, owners, the society
etc. Depending upon compatibility and inherent
motivation,
these relation-
ships could be
transient or
enduring. The
more enduring
they are, the
more value
they represent
- to the brand
and to such
‘others’.
For brands, a
strong emo-
tional connect
with consum-
ers makes perfect business sense. Stronger the
emotional connect, more is the perceived value
and more is the price inelasticity of demand.
This paves the way for premium pricing. Psy-
chological benefits associated with a strong
emotional connect are very hard to reproduce.
So they provide the firm with a strong, sustain-
able competitive advantage in the market. They
increase switching costs for the customer and
increase the entry barriers of the industry.
They also increase the firm’s bargaining power
while dealing with suppliers and other inter-
mediaries.
So with “Hum mein hai hero”, Hero Motor Corp.
communicates a specific set of values and traits
with the intention of reaching out to markets
which exhibit a compatible set of values and
traits. The idea is to build an enduring relation-
ship based on such compatibility which trans-
lates into a lot of psychological value. When
Maggi asks its users to share their special ‘Meri
Maggi’ mo-
ments, it at-
tempts to rein-
force its emo-
tional connect
with them. A
“Main Anna
hoon” cap is
about personal
identification
with brand
‘Anna Hazare’
which epito-
mizes a firm
resolve to up-
root systemic
corruption.
Emotional marketing is not only about your
brands and consumers. It involves building and
nurturing symbiotic relationships with your
suppliers, partners and dealers. It also involves
sensitizing your employees with the essence of
your brand so that they too identify with its
values and traits. A classic case is that of the
employees of the Taj Mahal Hotel, a TATA ven-
ture, who staked their lives to ensure the safety
of their guests during the 26/11 terror attacks.
Truly, there are things money can’t buy. Emo-
tional marketing enables you to provide these,
to those who matter to you and your business.
7
MARKEZINE August 2012
7 5
Sinus Milieus: A way ahead for emotional marketing
Emotions have capability to stimulate mind 3000
times faster than non-emotional stimuli. It is no more a secret that the most successful marketing strategies are built on emotions. The challenge is to know which emotions to work with, that treat target segments into humans who can be better understood & catered. An amazing way to tick your consumer is a technique called Sinus Mi-lieus.
Sinus Milieus concept is about understanding per-son’s value & attitude towards life to find out what emotions to invoke to get through them. It is developed by the Sinus Institute Heidelberg, Germany. It is a result of three decades of social science research. The steps towards effective marketing by using concept of Sinus Milieus are as follow:
Identify the target group: This segmentation is based on an analysis of everyday life within our society. Basic values as well as attitudes to work, family, leisure, money and consumption all play a part in the analysis. It offers a great way to get familiar with your target group and find out what drives potential customers.
Find out what invokes the target group: Sinus Milieus help in understanding what the target
group thinks, feels and their attitudes to different aspects of life. This information can be used to find out what appeals to them. The right emo-tions could be picked once their social status and basic values are clear to us. Implement your findings: Once the set of con-cepts that appeal target segment is defined, the marketing campaign should be designed, so that it triggers the right emotions. The campaign must be right to get the attention & interest of the tar-get, awaken their desire and prompt them to ac-tion. Effective campaigns may be advertisement, workshop, website, social networking etc based on Sinus Milieus Test your campaign: Even with aggressive re-search there are possibilities of getting it wrong. It is very important to test the marketing campaign to double check if you are on the right track. The test can be done by inviting a sub set of prospec-tive customer to user tests and finding out their opinions on the concept. Once an appealing con-cept is conceptulised, it must be tested at the ear-liest so as to rectify and refine the campaign. Conclusion: Sinus Milieus segment the society based on social status & values. This in turn helps in recognizing emotions that drive the target group. The integrated marketing communication should be based on underlying emotional con-cepts which will help in getting consumer more
MARKEZINE August 2012
8 6
Parul Choudhary
PGDM,
FMS,
Delhi University.
MARKEZINE August 2012
9 7
Sinus Milieus Social Status Values Appeal for Emotions
High Social Status
Sovereigns High Social Sta-tus, Successful, Leadership Posi-tion
Respect both modern & traditional values
Exclusivity, quality, leader-ship, luxury, contentment, reliability
Liberal Progres-sives
High or Middle social status, So-phisticated, Well Educated
Exclusively modern, Con-sumer hedonism, Self determined
Expertise, personal fulfill-ment, success, fairness
Adaptive Achievers
High or Middle social status, Flexible top per-former
Modern Values, Interest in global affairs& new media
Success, performance, tech-nology, ambition, achieve-ment
Main stream Sinus Milieus
Old Guard All social status Traditional values, Be-lieve in proven way of living instead of new or unfamiliar
Routines, honesty, familiari-ty, accuracy security, reliabil-ity
Modern Mid-dle
Middle or low So-cial Status, Ambi-tion to be in high social & profes-sional status
Modern values, Consum-er hedonism, Post mate-rialism, Good at adapting
Possibilities, security, ambi-tion, social advancement, harmony
Mavericks Middle or low So-cial Status, Ambi-tious young core
Consumer hedonism, Post materialism, Flexi-ble, Challenging
Independence, challenge, innovation, quality, security, change
Social Underclass
Materialists Lower Class, social exclusion
Need for social inclusion, anxious about future
Sense of belonging, trends, security, self-confidence, popularity
Disenfran-chised
Modern lower Class, Don’t want to go to higher sta-tus
Modern value, Fun, Re-fuse to take life seriously
Fun, provocation individual-ism, extravagance
References: http://www.sinus-institut.de/en/ http://www.integral.co.at/en/sinus/milieus_int.php
The following table segments the society in various Sinus Milieus based on social status and basic values and consequently to the elements the ‘tick’ the target group:
Emotional Marketing-
Building personal identification with brands
No one has stated it better than Napoleon Hill:
“People buy your personality and ideas long before
they buy your products and services.” The goal of
Emotional Marketing is to elicit an emotional re-
sponse from a customer, not to showcase the
product. Consumers are, nowadays, blogged with
array of similar products. So the consumers have
to decide among products of similar features hav-
ing same functional value. So emotions play a cru-
cial role in the decision making process. Emotional
marketing is messaging that builds one’s ego.
To explain Emotional Marketing let us look at the
commercial by Coca-Cola where it had tried to
show that there were more reasons to be happy
than sad. This jingle showed the positive aspects
and depicted that for every negative there are
multiple positives happening in the world. It ended
with people sharing Coca-Cola which promoted
sharing happiness.
MARKEZINE August 2012
The voice of kids brought innocence and genu-
ineness to the advertisement. This advertise-
ment had a different emotional appeal where
people’s right to be happy was brought forth and
then the brand Coca-Cola was linked with it.
Previously brands followed Commercial Mar-
keting where as today emotional appeal is highly
required specially to make the brand a part of
your customer’s life. Many advertisements which
were previously commercial are now moving to-
wards Emotional Marketing. Let’s analyse the
advertisement of KBC. The KBC 2 advertisement
was more on how to register for KBC via Airtel
and KBC 3 advertisement tried to bring in the
brand value of Shahrukh Khan. The movement
from season 4 jingle of ‘Koi bhi sawaal chotta
nahi hota’ to the season 5 jingle of ‘Koi insaan
chotta nehi hota’ clearly shows the bend to-
wards personal appeal. The season 5 advertise-
ment was clearly targeted to increase the view-
ership base in semi-urban and rural India.
10 8
Bijayini Samal
PGDM,
FMS,
Delhi University.
The season 6, KBC 2012 is seen moving its base
more towards emotions. It now promotes itself
with ‘Gyaan hi aapko aapna hakk dilata hai’ and
every advertisement links itself with a prevailing
issue. Its advertisement of ‘Mubarak ho ladki hui
hai’ indirectly raises a voice against the oppres-
sion of girl child which is still prevailing in some
parts of the world. After showing the problem, it
showed KBC as a platform which can help them
stand against the oppression. Even its advertise-
ment of ‘Bada baap’ was a voice against prevail-
ing corruption and ‘Sach bolna’ was an encour-
agement to tell the truth.
These were some examples which shows the cur-
rent trend towards Emotional Marketing. Even
research shows that Emotional Marketing appeals
customer more than both commercial marketing
and combination of commercial and emotional
marketing. People tend to care about emotions
more as it links them personally with the brand.
The benefit that a brand derives out of it is a long
term relationship.
MARKEZINE August 2012
11 9
A 11, Meerut Road Industrial Area
Ghaziabad - 201003
Ph: +91-120-271-4511 / 09 / 10
+91-98180-39344 Fax: +91-120-271-4529
Helpline: +91-99104-88828Service: +91-120-275-7102
Email: [email protected]
UTTAM TOYOTA
THE ‘E’- CONNECT: Your Brand just can’t afford missing this !!!
“Today a product is not only a product; it has got
to be a part of you.”
The world is becoming automatic and tech-savvy,
boundaries are disappearing; the world is getting
smaller and smaller squeezing its individuals into
a homogenous mass. The word “Emotions” is
getting pushed deeper and deeper into the cor-
ners of human heart. In this emotionless world,
it’s the products through which a human being
tries to associate itself with, which represents him
and helps him maintain his individuality and ex-
press his deepest emotions. The product or ser-
vice can no more be considered a non-living com-
modity; it has to have an animate aspect to it. It
has to be given a human touch, a sense of feel.
This is what has to be the target of Emotional
Marketing.
You just manufacture a product, you cannot sell it
anymore. You need to connect it with your target
customer, which is the most difficult task. Just like
adding an outside person to your family and ac-
cepting him as a member.
The entire
premise of Emotional Marketing is based on HOW
WELL YOU CONNECT. The same product can have
varied levels of connectivity with different con-
sumers. The more customized you make a prod-
uct, the better is the “connect” with the target
market. This is the reason why the same product
comes in different SKUs.
In today’s market, a Brand is no more a name
which represents its product; rather it’s the name
that stands for its consumers. The consumer’s
brain has voids (emotional, psychological) for
needs. The product has to sense that void and fill
it. For a completely new product, that void has to
be created and then filled. These complex human
aspects make today’s marketing all the more chal-
lenging, because Man himself is a tangled, com-
plex living thing. Even the surveys and reviews
given by them cannot be completely trusted be-
cause most of the times they do not know why
and how to react. They themselves might not be
aware of what is going on in their sub conscious
minds.
Nurturing and nourishing the untold, exploring
and exploiting the desires and aspirations is the
biggest challenge. It’s all about the game of un-
certainty and how close you can get to certainty
and capture the emotional quotient of the con-
sumer and tag them with your brand. Thus Mar-
keting Strategies of the near future are going to
be fascinating and beyond imagination.
MARKEZINE August 2012
12 10
Gayatri Aradhana
PGDM,
Welingkar Institute of
Management Develop-
ment and Research
(WE School), Mumbai
13 13
MARKEZINE August 2012
11
“It’s not who we are underneath, but what we
do that defines us” says Rachel Dawes in the opening film of the just concluded Dark Knight franchise. Was this line directed at just Bruce Wayne in the movie? Such dialogues formed a critical part in Nolan’s greater scheme of things which he had in mind for his Batman re-boot franchise (arguably one of the greatest re-boots of all times). Essentially Bat-man happens to “a superhero without being a superhero”, in the sense, he doesn’t possess any superpowers. The fact that anyone can be Bat-man (you, me or anyone reading this) gives a sort of instant connect to the character. Slowly, as the movie progresses, you begin to see yourself un-derneath that mask, rising in all splendour above a corrupt and crime-ridden society, and before you know it, the caped crusader inside you is awoken.
Traditional marketing is dead. One needs to come up with new and innovative ways to attract the consumer’s dynamic mind. One such marketing that has caught up in recent times is the “Guerrilla Marketing” – a low cost unconventional creative strategy that is generally used to create a buzz around a product/theme whilst also engag-ing the consumer by turning viral. In case of Dark Knight franchise, Pasadena based 42 Entertain-ment was in-charge of creating and executing the grand scale viral marketing campaign. No! This was not going to be one of those campaigns which reveals almost the entire movie in the name of promotional teasers and trailers, gener-ate huge hype and then die down as soon as the movie releases and bringing with it, the demise of the movie as well, due to the hyper-expectation it generated. Imagine seeing the above poster on a wall in your neighbourhood – you don’t have to be a follower of the movie series, nor an admirer of the comic strip. The poster is just intriguing enough to catch the attention of the casual by-stander whilst at the same time subtle enough not to expose any crucial element of the movie plot. Catching the attention is one thing, but retaining the attention, arousing the interest, creating a desire and motivating the audience into action is an altogether different ballgame. A website “WhySoSerious.com” was launched where, for every email sent by the fans, one pixel was re-moved ultimately revealing the first official poster
Mark-e-feed: Discovering the Dark Knight in YOU
Dinesh S
PGDM,
IMT, Ghaziabad.
References http://ecommercecrux.mavenstore.com/ecommerce-
today/how-can-a-company-go-from-mass-marketing-to-
mass-customization-by-taking-advantage-of-e-
commerce-2
http://www.web-books.com/eLibrary/NC/B0/
B64/033MB64.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_in_India
http://iamai.in/rsh_pay.aspx?rid=C4kbdd8VUJo=
MARKEZINE August 2012
H
e
of “The Joker”. A similar campaign was launched
for Dark Knight Rises when the twitter handle
“#TheFireRises” was made viral and for every
comment on twitter that featured this hash-tag,
one pixel was removed from the Dark Knight web
page to reveal the first image of “Bane”. This pic-
ture was taken at Sathyam Cinemas, Chennai dur-
ing the premiere of the Dark Knight Rises. Similar
bat signals were shot into the sky in New York
City and Chicago, where attentive followers of the
bat signal were led to special free screening of
the movie three days before its actual release.
Such activities, called “Alternate Reality Game
[ARG]”, are able to sustain the interest levels of
the audience for more than a year by not just in-
volving them, but also empowering them, which
magnifies their passion towards the product and
translates into tangible action and extreme loyal-
ty for the brand. They became citizens of Gotham
city, took its subway, tuned into Gotham TV and
radio stations, not just involving them, but also
empowering them, which magnifies their passion
towards the product and translates into tangible
action and extreme loyalty for the brand. They
became citizens of Gotham city, took its subway,
tuned into Gotham TV and radio stations, read a
copy of Gotham Times daily, went on wild Joker
chases, “I Believe in Harvey Dent” political rallies,
live recruitment drives for Joker’s gang through
cellphones hidden in cakes, the list is just endless.
And today’s age of social networking ensures that
the message gets conveyed not just to the intend-
ed recipient, but to his entire social circle.
To conclude, “advertainment” is the order of the
day. Though relatively new, this concept has tak-
en to increasing popularity and is slowly becom-
ing an established form of marketing. Its principle
advantage is that it is comparatively inexpensive;
more than the money, it is time and effort which
is needed in larger quantities here. Thus, it is be-
ing endorsed by SMEs and entrepreneurs as it
snugly fits their budget constraints, while achiev-
ing similar, if not better, results compared to tra-
ditional marketing techniques.
12
Mark-e-feed: From the dusk of Mass Marketing to the dawn of Digital Marketing
Mark-e-feed: From the dusk of Mass Marketing to the dawn of Digital Marketing
In today’s era, the generic “one size fits all” mar-
keting strategy is losing its relevance. No longer
can businesses afford to blindly send large vol-
ume of the same message to unqualified persons.
Nor can they afford to treat customers the same
way. Products within a category are getting less
and less differentiated and brands are getting
closer and closer. As consumers demand more
from their brands and have more available choic-
es, they segregate themselves into smaller and
smaller niches in the society. Such competitive
markets have forced the brands to find newer
ways to stand out and connect with consumers .It
has become imperative for the companies to tar-
get these niche sections to deliver the right prod-
ucts to the right people through the right chan-
nels—all at the right time, in order to stay com-
petitive, keep marketing costs under control and
increase their revenues.
Mass marketing is no longer the “long-term”
strategy. The trend today is changing towards
more precise, targeted marketing which ensures
that the companies are actually hitting the right
customers. A shift of the trend from one-way,
company-driven sales mentality to a two-way re-
lationship with consumers is assisted with core
changes in the way marketers do business. The
marketers are now finding new ways to reach
their customers and understand their needs and
preferences. Digital marketing offers great ad-
vantage to reach consumers in a timely, relevant,
personal and cost-effective manner.
MARKEZINE August 2012
Siddharth Arora
MBA,
NITIE, Mumbai
13
MARKEZINE August 2012
14
The massive Indian market is changing fast. Inter-
net has started penetrating into the lives of the
people. For people with access, it is a major part
of their daily or weekly schedule. Internet access
is mainstreaming among professionals and the
use of mobile is intensifying.
As per a report by Internet and Mobile Associa-
tion of India (IAMAI), India has crossed 100 mil-
lion Internet users in Sep 2011, a growth of 13%
over the last year. With the rapid growth in GSM
subscribers in India touching a figure of 433 mil-
lion and the number of online users touching a
figure of 112 million, online and mobile phones
have now become the important communication
vehicles. Internet is now no more limited to the
urban areas, but also has started penetrating in
the towns and villages as well. A report published
by IAMAI (March 2011) states that about 50% of
the internet users belonged to the small towns
(<10 lakhs population).
Consumers, who used to seek out family and
friends for word-of-mouth product recommenda-
tions now read online reviews, compare features
and prices on Web sites before making a choice.
A Push Digital Marketing would constitute compa-
nies promoting their brands via e-mail, mobile
sms, RSS podcasting while the Pull Digital Mar-
keting encompasses websites, forums, web logs
and streaming media (audio and video). This in-
formation flow not only empowers consumers
but also allows marketing departments to be part
of the conversation consumers have as they ac-
tively learn about product categories and evalu-
ate choices.
Many digital campaigns came out to be fortunate
for the companies. The Cola czars Coke and Pepsi
reported an increase expenditure on the online
campaigns to connect with their consumers.
Pepsi previewed its Shah Rukh Khan
'Sapera' (Snake charmer) campaign online before
taking it to the television while their arch-rival
Coca-Cola launched Coke Zone, a social media
website which offers exclusive content and re-
wards. The huge success of Tamil-English number
“Kolaveri di" even before its official launch has
proved the power of online social networking
platforms.
It is clearly observed that the Digital Channels
offer marketers cost efficient opportunities for a
brand to stay in touch with customers which not
only improves marketing performance but also
customer loyalty. With such lucrative prospects, it
is not surprising that the digital channels have
now become an important part of the marketing
strategy.
MARKEZINE August 2012
15
Mark-toon
The ladder is endless. Think I’ll climb on !!!
Mark Roadies 5.0
MarkUp, the Marketing club of IMT Ghaziabad
organised the first competition of the academic
year. With over 80 teams participating with the
zeal and enthusiasm associated with a new begin-
ning, what a grand success MarkRoadies5.0 was.
The event challenged the minds of the incoming
batch, testing creativity, resourcefulness and
presence of mind.
On the 1st of August the amphitheatre was abuzz
with excited students waiting to get the show on
the road. Thus began Round one, Mark Roadies
5.0. A Treasure Hunt and a time limit made the
participants run all over the 15 acre campus. In-
spired by the Game of Thrones and based on the
4Ps of Marketing the clues were mind boggling
and sweat inducing. And that wasn’t all, Club
MarkUp designed tasks which included creating
an on the spot sales pitch, guessing the prices of
items thus subtly introducing fundamental con-
cepts of Marketing. The crossword puzzle tested
knowledge of brands quite effectively.
Okay so second round and time for serious busi-
ness. The objective was product development
with emphasis on innovation, consumer under-
standing and creativity of the teams. For many of
the participants, the concept was an entirely new
one. But they gave it their best shot. Ideas and
products ranging from Room Cleaning Service to
Shopeaze rocked the competition. Further an in-
depth analysis of product, promotional strategies,
and feedback tested our competencies as young
marketers.
Karan Gandhi, Parth K Mannadiar and Karthik K
and Aastha Malhotra , Varun Mangalik and Ur-
vashi Chugh were adjudged a deserving 1st Place.
The team of Inderjeet Singh, Shreyy Singhal and
Jatinder Sethi bagged the runner up prize.
All in all an interesting and fun event organised by
Club MarkUp, and yet another feather in its cap.
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MARKEZINE August 2012
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MARKEZINE August 2012
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