Today’s Web Discovery : 17th November 2009

Today was a lazy day overall. That gave me much time to browse and discover new knowledge.

India the Jugaad Country: This blog post written by Mohanjit Jolly gives a delightful insight into the resilience of Indians. In A Wednesday, Naseeruddin Shah comments, “we are resilient by force, not by choice”. But that is the paradox, jugaad happens only when there are constraints.

The concept called Jugaad. For many Indians, especially from the north, this is a commonly-used term. Jugaad is the summation of what makes India tick – enterprising, resourceful, and making things work to address what needs to be done within the constrained resources.

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In a developing country, one simply “does” because “not doing it or waiting” is simply not an option. That’s probably why the “ho jaiga (it will be done)” attitude is so prevalent in India, because one knows that whatever the issue, one will figure out a way to address it, although the exact mechanism and timeline may be very unorthodox and unpredictable.

Jugaad is survival.

Torture Songs: In military parlance, they are called Long Range Acoustic Devices. Like rocket launchers, these LRADs are used to propel anything from heavy metal to girl power pop on the Al-Qaeda. Off the list, this one seemed the most interesting

Barney The Dinosaur’s I Love You : The Guardian newspaper in London called this sugary lump of fear inducing madness the most “overused” song in the U.S. interrogator’s arsenal. Interrogators at Guantanamo Bay, however, used the sappy kids’ show theme song as “futility music” to convince detainees of the futility of maintaining their silence. One United Kingdom human rights group protested President George W. Bush’s visit to England by blasting the song in his general direction. Now that’s a second strike.

Futility music, I dare say. I wonder what Bruce Springsteen and AC/DC must be wondering.

Phrases from the sea: Feeling “Under the weather”? Or are you in “the doldrums”? Try “chewing some fat”. “By and large” you will be okay. The seas connect the world and how can language be immune to its influence. After sailors have contributed to the growth of trade and culture by taking stuff from one part of the world to the other. And so to with language.

Periodic Table for Marketers: (Blinds.com) This is probably the best discovery of the day. What is brilliant is the simplicity of representation and easy assimilation possibilities. It also gives the marketer a range of tools to build his marketing strategy. Thus building confidence.

Uber-cool Shillong: DNA reports an annual rock concert celebrating music icons like Elvis and The Beatles in Shillong. Local bands and artists take the stage in the rock capital of the country.

Nazi Witch Hunt: (NYT ) The Nazi witch hunt continues with octogenarians and nonagenarians on the dock for massacres and murders during the Holocaust.

Paper Art: (myinterestingfiles.com) Peter Callesen, a Dane, makes these beautiful sculptures with A4 plain paper.

Paper art by Peter Callesen, myinterestingfiles.com

Paying for online content: (Readwriteweb.com) With print editions of newspapers folding up, this is just adding to the bad news. Forrester reports that over 80% of internet users in the US and Canada will not pay to access newspaper and magazine websites. Essentially there is no market.

Google Wave demo, Pulp Fiction style: Great to end the day

Marketing Codewords – By Unny

My friend Unny seems to have realised the hollowness of those seemingly deep terms in marketing.

Not surprising, given that most of the people who have come up with these terms have probably never encountered the real force behind marketing – “customers“.

It would be a while before “marketing analysts” replace “customer id” with a human face and refer to customers as human beings and not raw data records.

Today’s 4Ps of Marketing

One of the first things that one learns in any B-School is the Kotler 4Ps – Product, Price, Promotion and Place. While broadly, this still stands for a lot of businesses, I do feel one needs to tweak the same given the heightened consumer activism and competition. To me the 4Ps of marketing as it stands today are

1. Profile
2. Profit
3. Personalisation
4. Permission

Profile: Heterogeneity amongst consumers has led to companies developing multiple variants of their products. Product offerings can vary at the simple feature level e.g. Standard accessories available when buying a car or at the complex platform level e.g. Petrol engines versus diesel engines. In the heady days of the product marketing, Henry Ford spoke about people buying cars in their favourite colours as long as it was black. Unfortunately, the same confidence would probably not work today given that consumers have over 50 makes of cars to choose from, not counting the multiple variants with each make. So if you don’t have a product offering for a particular consumer segment, you can wave that segment goodbye forever.

Profiling thus becomes relevant where the entire product strategy gets revolved around consumer profiles – from the macro-level segmentation based on demographics to the micro-level segmentation based on attitudinal and behavioural attributes of consumers.

Profit: Moving beyond just pure price and accounting profit, P for Profit refers to the value added to both the organisation and the consumer. This value in turn is based on such seemingly abstract but mathematically derivable concepts like customer life time value, brand switching costs and attrition propensity.

Personalisation: One message for all, that’s the general principle of mass marketing. However, we know very well that different people read and understand messages differently. They perceive value differently and there fore have to be communicated uniquely. That’s Personalisation. So consumers can be evangelised or scared or urged to buying Life Insurance for savings, protection or tax deductions respectively.

Permission: Finally, today, everybody is busy. They don’t have time. So if you want to do business with them, you need your customers to allow you to talk to them at their convenience. The days when one had to trudge to bank branch between 8:30 p.m. and 2 p.m. to withdraw cash have gone. Now, to maintain your customer base, the bank has to go to the customer through ATMs, Mobile phones or the Internet.

So that’s my take on the 4Ps of marketing. Let’s discuss.

Online couponing becoming popular

“A survey released by marketing firm, Prospectiv, in October 2005, found that a whopping 96 percent of respondents clip coupons and at least 62 percent do it on a weekly basis. More importantly, more than 50 percent redeem them!”

This is from an article in Marketingfind.com
Click here for the survey release from Prospectiv

The “couponing” technique has always been a favourite for marketers when doing sampling or executing tactical sales promotions to end a sales period. On the web this technique has had its share of adoption though some fraud related execution issues keep bogging.

Fraud: This is particularly prevalent in an online-offline set-up i.e. where the redemption is conducted offline. E-coupons need to be printed and presented at the counter. There is no control on the number of prints taken of the same coupon. Same tactics include

1. Putting a name: As used in e-ticketing, the name of the customer to whom the coupon has been issued is pasted and at the time of redemption suitable identification proof needs to be provided
2. Putting a code number: An unique code number is generated for each and every coupon issued. At the time of redemption, the retailer inputs the code number into the system and cancels the same. The technique however has its cost implication. A centralized database carrying the code numbers needs to be set up and all the redemption counters have to be connected to it.

All in all, if the objective is to have maximum product offtake, then the issue of fraud is not really important. Of course, retailers can always create exclusivity clauses by linking the e-coupon to their customer loyalty programmes e.g. at the time of redemption, the coupon needs to be presented along with the customer’s loyalty club membership card.

“But before getting the scissors out, it wouldn’t hurt to phone the store or merchant to make sure it’s legit. There are those unsavory types out there who are spitting out bogus coupons.”

Bogus e-couponing is rampant. It is always wise to restrict e-couponing making it an exception rather than the norm. There also needs to be adequate coordination between marketing and the redemption/retail counters so that the genuine e-coupons are recognized and honoured at the stores.

All Marketers Are Liars

Seth Godin’s latest book “All Marketers Are Liars” has spawned his new blog. There are some free excerpts of the book available. The blog has instances of what Godin calls “marketing lies”. However, it seems to have been abandoned now. The last post is dated July 28th 2005.

There’s a lot of use of the term “worldview” in his book. Marketing is about telling a story that would appeal to the prevailing “worldview” of the audience.

Looking up “worldview” in the dictionary, I get the following

1. The overall perspective from which one sees and interprets the world.
2. A collection of beliefs about life and the universe held by an individual or a group.

Source: answers.com

So, in effect, what Seth Godin is implying is that marketers make up stories and arguments that fit to the audience’s worldview and therefore gain acceptance. Which means, if the general worldview is that the organic and herbal stuff are good, then soap manufacturers have no hesitation to add some green colour to their products and market it as “New Herbal whatever”.