Author

Kanupriya Sindhu

Recession and Consumer Spending Behavior

December 12, 2008

A lot is discussed now-a-days about India being geared up for economic downturn and consumer spending not observing any major shift as compared to its earlier pattern. Well, to some extent it’s true and being a marketer myself I understand that one needs to be optimistic about the market and consumer purchasing power but when I think of myself as a consumer I do feel that my spending behavior has undergone some major changes in last 3-4 months. Call it the effect of this phrase “onset of downturn” or the effect of phrase “save cash for those bad times” I have definitely changed my behavior towards lots of purchase decision which were not thought through earlier by me or my husband. In fact some of these were never so called purchase decisions rather they used to be just one of those impromptu expenses. But now we do think before spending on such things and I can observe a similar pattern amongst my peer circle as well. As a salaried class consumer, here is a list of my top five curtailed expenses which used to be regular affair earlier:

  • Dine Outs: Oh I really don’t have a count of the earlier frequency of our dine outs and most of such expenses being absolutely unplanned and ad lib. But now with our saving belt on suddenly we found ourselves questioning, do we really need to eat out? Shall we really spend this X amount of money for a casual meal for two? Not only these occasional questioning is helping us keeping a check on our wallet rather its having the same effect on our weighing scale too J. Frequency has gone down to absolutely a countable figure now.
  • Movie / Entertainment: Considering the kind of movie buff we both are, all weekends used to be movie outings for us in some or other multiplex. It didn’t matter which movie and what star-cast, we had to see some movie in multiplexes. But then we started wondering, do we really need to see Yuvraaj in theater by spending X amount of money…nah not worth it. Let it get released on DVD. Now not every weekend is spent at multiplexes 🙂, some of it is at home with DVDs and books.
  • Accessories / Apparel: Since, I am the only woman consumer in my household and hence this one is more applicable to me and not my husband. I used to go for this sudden splurge on accessories like bags, shoes etc. but now this has come down to a large extent, thanks to my “save cash” mission.
  • Air Travel: Yeah this one has really-really come down – ours and our families’ personal trips through flights. Now either it’s low cost flights or if it’s not much of a distance then trains!
  • Household: Oh yes, now we do look at those newspaper inserts announcing sale on monthly groceries or those freebies at A,B,C retail stores!

Hmmm, so at least we have become conscious of our expenses because of the economic environmental effect. I think we have definitely managed to come down by 10-15% in our regular expenses. How about you as a consumer? Do you think your spending behavior has undergone some change and if yes, which are the key ones? Any experience / suggestion as a consumer to save cash is more than welcome on this space 🙂.

“Let’s pool in”: Car pooling campaign in Bangalore

December 3, 2008

I was aware of Commute Easy since long but thanks to Radio One campaign that this came back to my mind again. I have sort of become a very regular listener of Radio One because of it being the only Bollywood fm channel in Bangalore as of now and of late I have been hearing this “Let’s pool in’ campaign quite a lot on this channel. It’s a public service initiative launched by Radio One in association with Commute Easy and Bangalore Traffic Police to address the traffic woes of the city. www.commuteeasy.com is a car pooling website wherein one can register and search for people travelling to same destinations / route. You can search and register for pool depending upon the start and end destination as well as time of your commuting. One has the option to go by his own vehicle or any other vehicle in case you don’t possess one of your own. Apart from the site being very user friendly, it has got an interesting etiquette section as well, which chalks out the Dos and Donts neatly and helps to answer some questions regarding fee share etc which you might have in mind esp. when car pool concept is not so common in India.

I must say it’s a very nice initiative by Radio One and Bangalore Traffic Police. Traffic situation currently in Bangalore is nothing less than a nightmare and in fact it is getting worse day by day. As per statistics revealed by Praveen Sood, additional commissioner of police (traffic & security) – Bangalore has 32 lakh vehicles vis-a-vis a 60-lakh population as against Mumbai with 18 lakh vehicles in a population of 1.2 crore (Source: Times of India dated 28th Nov’08). Oh no wonder our traffic congestion is sooo bad and deadlier than any other metropolitan city in India. We always crib about traffic and all that, now at least here is an opportunity for us to do our bit to solve the traffic issues to some extent. I have personally tried this service last year for travelling from my home to work and for few days and I did find some good car pooling options that time. I had informed about Commute Easy to some people as well but then with passing time I had almost forgotten about this website. Good to be reminded about this service again through this campaign of Radio One! And not only Radio One is spreading the awareness rather they are giving some extra benefits like free movie tickets, invitation to some hip parties, song requests etc to all commute easy users. Well those are definitely some cool incentives to motivate people for using this service. I am personally all for this campaign and I will encourage all Bangaloreans out there to definitely go and check out www.commuteeasy.com once.

commuteeasy

Pappu Vote Nahi Karta: Delhi Elections 2008

November 26, 2008

While surfing some news channel yesterday, got a glimpse of the ad, “Pappu Vote Nahi Karta”. It’s a film by Elections Commission to attract voters for its Delhi Election on 29th November’08. Somehow it caught my attention as it was sort of different from the normal government or political campaigns. Instead of being preachy it was bit youthful, instead of being drab it was bit catchy and instead of looking like those same old social awareness government ads it looked bit new. Maybe it was that very famous song “Pappu can’t dance” or the animation or those vibrant color schemes or that last sentence – Delhi’s latest fashion statement, which made it look so. And the ad was clearly targeted towards youth. Well, looks like all the political advertisements this year are targeted towards the younger crowd and first time voters.

Low voter count has been a big problem in most of the elections and it’s mostly the current generation youngsters who don’t bother about voting and such elections at all. In fact, as per a recent statistics, voter count has seen a steep declining curve in last few years – in 1993, approx 66 per cent of the electorate voted for the state’s first assembly in Delhi. In 1998, the percentage went down drastically to only 49!!!  And in 2003, it declined further with only 47 per cent voting in the third assembly election. Let’s see what’s the count in 2008? With campaigns like “Pappu”, which is not only being shown in television rather at important public places in delhi, Election Commission hopes to get a higher voter turnout on 29th Nov’08. It’s good to see youth targeted and newer kinda messages from Electoral Officer and hope to see some increased % of voters this time in Delhi. Those who have not seen this film can check it out here:

[youtube=http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=crnJw938TFo]

Youtube link in case the film is not opening here: http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=crnJw938TFo

SMS Marketing or Bombarding?

November 25, 2008

Yesterday I attended a session on “Mobile Marketing and its immense concealed potential in India”. While I agree to some of the points and as a marketer I am absolutely aware of the potential and different channels of mobile marketing in India but when it comes to execution I can’t help myself from heaving a frustrated sigh on this term known as “Mobile Marketing”. I will not go into deeper details of why and what, I will just cite few examples of my recent experiences with one of the most basic tools of Mobile Marketing which is SMS based promotions:

  • Date: 23rd Nov’08. Sender: Orange Holidays. Text of the SMS:
    • FREE LCD on booking today to Bangkok / S’Pore / Malaysia / Dubai @ 2500 including Airfare, Stay, B’fst, S’seeing. Taxes Extra. FREQUENCY of this SMS: Got the same message 4 times in 45 minutes! Well, it’s from Orange and it had to be this loud I guess.

 

  • Date: 24th Nov’08. Sender: 12900. Text of the SMS:
    • Searching for a Friend?? Call 12900 & say MUJHSE DOSTI KAROGE to make New Friends. FREQUENCY of this SMS: 2 every day for almost 1 week now! Wish there could have been a short code to reply and I would have replied: NO NO NO! Mujhe kisi se dosti nahi karna hai!!! Huh, what a wrong targeting, age as well as profile wise!

 

  • Date: 24th Nov’08. Sender: Some unknown number. Text of the SMS:
    • Kerala Holiday packages, House Boats, Tree House, MUNNAR, Backwater / Beach resorts/ Taxis.CNT-elaecoland.com. FREQUENCY of this SMS: 7, yes 7 in 1.5 hours!!!

 

  • Date: X, Y, Z…1,2,3 (list is so huge that I’ve lost the count). Sender: Airtel. Text of the SMS:
    • Are you aware of your Mobile rates on Roaming? On your rateplan, roaming & local calls cost the same! Receive / make calls while roaming across India at Re 1/min. FREQUENCY of the SMS: Phew!!! Infinite I guess… including 2 reaching me at 2 and 2:30 am in the morning! Now how am I supposed to react??? I just wanna tell Airtel guys that not only I am aware rather by now I have remembered this SMS by heart, thanks to the non-stop bombardment from your side!

 

  • Date: 24th Nov’08. Sender: WIN. Text of the SMS:
    • WIN WIN WIN! Answer this simple question & take home 1 kg of gold and a brand new FORD IKON car! SMS A or B to this blah blah blah number. FREQUENCY of this SMS: Infinite, trust me infinite times on my Tata Indicom number. Oh, how I wish winning 1 kg of gold would have been so simple as these crap SMSes show. Gawdddd I see a WIN as first word and immediately press DELETE! I DO NOT want to get the same moron question everyday and neither I wanna win a ford ikon or 1 kg of gold at all!!!

Well, these are just few of the SMSes which I received in last two days, not to mention that while I was attending this session on mobile marketing, I received not 1 or 2 rather 11 promo SMSes. I as a customer am so distressed with such SMS barrage that most of the time my only reflex reaction with these SMSes is DELETE! I had earlier also written about Fate of SMS Marketing and with increasing instances of such forced SMS nuisances I can’t stop myself from expressing my distress yet again. I really doubt on the so called potential of this mobile marketing in India. Isn’t this marketing channel getting over-abused the same way as email marketing in India?  Don’t you think that not only content of such promotion lacks innovation but execution needs some serious attention as well? We are anyways listed as one of the top email spammers in the world, I’m wondering when we are going to top the list of SMS spams as well!

 

Aaj Ka Arjun: Sulekha.com

November 19, 2008

[youtube=http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=h-UPtfEkl_o]

I got this link from one of my professional acquaintances. The mail said it’s a new viral campaign from Sulekha.com. Hmmm, new viral and I immediately clicked the link. First reaction – I liked it! Looked interesting and easy to understand at the first glance itself. Presentation also was different, very unlike from the normal illustrations, cartoons and caricatures used in most of the virals these days. And the message gets communicated quite clearly. They have used a form of art to present the characters. This film titled “Aaj Ka Arjun” is showing today’s generation Arjun who is hassled but manages to get everything done at one click of arrow. Till end they don’t show the source where his arrows are targeted and from where he is managing to get everything done. The film ends with Arjun and his whole family targeting the same source and the source is Sulkeha. Quite a catchy way of showing everything happening at a click J.

But then came the surprise when I got to read it in one of the official releases that this is not a viral rather it’s a television commercial for Sulekha which will be aired soon on channels. They have released the commercial in digital medium first to see the reaction of users before airing it fully on television. Well, I’m not sure if the same creative can work for television medium as well. I have seen a 2 min version of this viral film which by any standard is a long duration for television commercial and I’m not sure if they are going to air the full or edited version of the same. If they are going to edit the film and show it in parts then I don’t think the impact will be same. To me this looks more like a digital film than a television commercial but then you never know what can work in Indian market considering the diversity of taste and preferences of Indian consumers. I for sure would be keen to observe how this film takes its course further. Overall the film surely grabbed my attention and I forwarded it to some of my friends too J

Political Advertising: Advaniji on web!

November 11, 2008

Just last week itself, I wrote about Political Advertising in India for 2009 elections and here comes another surprise of the same. Now after celebrities it’s the turn of Politicians looking up to the mighty web world. Joining the league is none other than L.K. Advani whose website http://www.lkadvani.in/ got launched on his 81st birthday on 8th Nov’08. BJP launched this website for their Prime Minister candidate Advani with an objective to reach out to the young and first time voters in India. As per BJP, this is the first website of its kind by an Indian Political party and is yet another step towards reinforcing the forward looking and futuristic attitude of their party.

The site opens up with an intro note and welcome message by L.K. Advani and is available in two different languages – Hindi and English. It’s an interactive website with loads of photos, videos, speeches and forums wherein visitors can participate and post their comment / suggestion / grievances. Overall the site looks neat and very 2.0 types except for the first landing page after home page. I think it’s too boxy, maybe they could have used some tabs and made it less cluttered. But content wise I liked the site. In fact to be honest I never expected it to be this deep esp. their “issues” blog section…quite nice and interesting posts there, though I think there should have been a section for users’ comments on each of these posts in order to make it truly interactive. I’m sure they have not allowed comments to avoid nuances and mud-slinging by opposition parties but then if you want it be interactive you need to provide the facility of comments and expressions, see some cool examples of Bollywood celebs like Big B or Aamir Khan. The forums allow posting and comments but as of today I don’t see much participation from external people over there. The home page content is definitely getting updated as I can see a difference between yesterday’s and today’s content, have a look at the scrn-shot:

lkadvani

Overall a neat website and considering the fact that most of the first time and young voters are digital natives it’s definitely a good step and modern approach towards reaching out to Indian youth. It’s good to know that Indian Prime Minister candidates are going high-tech, but wondering is it their own thought or is it Obama effect 🙂?

Also my fundamental question about Political Advertising in India remains the same – is it worth spending so much money before the elections in communication campaigns when most of the Indians know the realities of Indian Political scenario? It’s good to see such interactive platforms getting launched but is BJP going to take any step to solve the real-time issues or grievances being posted on the website or will these just remain as comment counters to prove that the website was a successful strategy with X number of comments and Y number of hits in Z number of days? Will it actually help in a building a “Strong, Prosperous and Self-Confident India” or will it end in just being yet another marketing gimmick?

 

 

In-film advertising is FASHIONable

November 9, 2008

Watched Madhur Bhandarkar’s Fashion yesterday, I liked the movie…really liked it, though I think the name of the movie should have been “Kimaya’s Fashion” or “Fashion from Kimaya” J. Another interesting case of in-film advertising with not one or two brands rather many. To name a few, which I can remember – Kimaya, Lenovo, Sunsilk, Café Coffee Day, Reebok, LG, Cellucom were the key brands with Kimaya and Lenovo being the most prominent ones. In fact in-film advertisements were so loud and clear that I couldn’t help myself noticing a Godrej carton as well while Priyanka was relocating but guess Godrej’s presence was just by chance and not planned as it was shown hardly for a second or two.

But the good thing about in-film advertising in Fashion was that the brands were chosen carefully and the presentation was perfectly in sync with the scenes and sequences. Nowhere they looked jarring or force-fitted and instead of being just used in background they were properly integrated with the script esp. Kimaya considering the last round of fashion shows in the movie were critical part of the script. Overall good example of in-film advertising otherwise we have seen some horrible examples of in-film advertisement in Bollywood – remember Subhash Ghai’s Yaadein and those numerous brands within the movie…oh God those were very irritating. Good thing is that commercially the movie has made quite some money by these in-film advertisements. Out of total 220 million investments in Fashion, the producer has made 85 million by just these branded advertisements only! Now that’s approx 39% of the overall investment and definitely is some money to make through in-film advertisements.

In-film advertising in Bollywood is getting popular day by day and advertisers are coming out with interesting ways of integration. If done in the right way, it’s definitely an interesting promotional strategy which is mutually beneficial for the brands as well as the movie – brands get the right kind of visibility and registration in the minds of consumers whereas producers get to make some good money to cover up their cost of production. But such in-film advertisements only make sense if they are done in the right way like the recent example of Fashion otherwise in most of the cases they just end up in being logo showcased in background for few seconds.

Political Advertising

November 7, 2008

In this season of advertising and mass media budget cuts, it definitely rings a bell if you suddenly listen about any campaign having a budget as high as 150 crores! Yeah, such budgets are still there and that too in India for advertising campaigns of just 2-3 months duration.

Recently read that Congress has hired Crayons for their communications campaign for 2009 election and as per the industry sources campaign budget is estimated to be Rs. 150 crores. Crayons is the same agency which has worked on lots of other political campaigns including BJP’s 2004 election campaign, 2003 Rajasthan Elections campaign, Delhi Government’s “Badalti Tasveer Dilli Ki Aapke Liye” campaign and Tourism Industry’s Incredible India campaign for the whole of Europe. Following the course of Congress is BJP whose account has been given to an agency called Hive. And interesting thing is even BJP’s overall budget for the communication campaign is estimated to be Rs. 150 crores! Well, BJP’s budget had to be this or more, isn’t it? As per figures quoted, overall spend in forthcoming election campaign by Congress and BJP is going to be over Rs. 300 crores. This is definitely some money, in fact 300 crores is far more than the annual advertising spend of some very known FMCG giants in India. I’m sure for advertising agencies the forthcoming election campaign is going to be an interesting assignment both from commercial as well creative perspective.

But one thing keeps pinging my mind – from where do all these money come for just building brand image of these political parties? Isn’t 300 crores huge sum of money to be wasted in communications during election campaign esp. when we all know the realities of Indian Political parties be it Congress of BJP or any XYZ? Whole year they don’t do anything and when the time of election comes then they think of communicating their message! Wish they could have spent such money in genuine developments and upliftment work then maybe they need not spend such money in building their brand. Doing any communication campaign is perfectly alright but just communicating false promises with no end result is rubbish and sheer waste of money.

Britney 2.0!

October 20, 2008

Celebrities using web 2.0 platforms is no new phenomenon now…we have seen lots of examples of Bollywood as well as Hollywood ones. From having their own websites, to blogging, to official presence on networking sites like Facebook and Orkut, celebs are doing it all to reach their audience and establish a direct connect with them. And as if these were not enough, now they are having their fan following on twitter as well. Yeah, celebs are actually on twitter now! And following this trend is none other than Britney Spears who has re-launched her website as well as an official page on twitter. Her official website www.britneyspears.com is having a video which says something like this:

“Hello everybody, welcome to the new Britneyspears.com. I want to thank all of you for all your support, it really means a lot to me. I’m going to take you where no paparazzi lens ever could”.

 

Well, looks like the lady who has always been in news of late for wrong reasons and who is trying to make a comeback with her album “Womanizer” has taken up her image building exercise quite seriously now. One can see Britney all over internet, she is trying to make her presence felt across different platforms – be it Britney TV Channel on Youtube or her revamped official website or her blog or her updates on Twitter. Have a look on these vibrant scrnshots 🙂

 

 

As I write this, her Twitter page http://twitter.com/therealbritney is already having 2901 followers (and still counting) and 22 updates! Great going lady! Hope social media helps her in revamping her image and she gets covered for the right reasons now. Just one thought – In this age of direct interaction and open communication, isn’t it bit weird that her blogs as well as updates are written by someone from her team and not herself? I didn’t find any post or interaction from her apart from that welcome video. Well, not every celebrity writes blogs himself / herself but at least they project to do so and direct contact via posts, comments or replies definitely gives a feeling of personalized interaction to the fans. Well, I think it would have been better if Britney would have written at least some posts herself (if not all), if not then maybe the language used could have been first person instead of third person. But overall, Britney’s presence on social media is receiving an overwhelming response from her fans and the figures of hits and views of her latest video are already making news in media.

 

Update: When I took the screenshot of Britney’s twitter page, her followers count was 2835, it took me approx 20 minutes to write and post this, that time the follower count was 2901. Now when I’m trying to edit this post a bit, her follower count is 3237! 402 followers in less than 45 minutes! Whoa…that’s some count I must say 🙂

 

MySpace advances with Indian Entertainment Content

October 18, 2008

Joining the league of hosting official online communities for Indian movies / reality shows is now MySpace India. Social networking site MySpace will be hosting the official community of Star Plus dance reality Show, Nach Baliye – 4. MySpace is aggressively promoting this program so much so that most of the home page estate of Myspace has been allocated to Nach Baliye promos and content. The “Nach Baliye online community” is offering official content like photos, vidoes, inside stories, behind the scene scoop, wallpapers etc. Apart from these, viewers can vote for jodis (couples) as well as read the official blog giving all updates about the show. It’s also expected to have an online game based on Nach Baliye jodis but as of now I don’t see this feature up on the page.

 

 

Well, this trend of having an official community has picked up pretty fast in India. Now every other Bollywood release is having an official community on popular networking sites like Orkut or Facebook, to add to that there are these budding websites who have grabbed some interesting opportunities of being the official online community partner for entertainment properties. We saw some successful examples like Rock On community on Bigadda or Bigg Boss – season 2 community on In.com and not so successful examples like recent release Karzzzz community again on Bigadda. Social media is definitely a great medium to reach the larger mass in a very cost effective way and has been beneficial for some of the movies / entertainment programs. But if the site hosting such communities is a new one or one with lesser traffic then it’s more beneficial for that site as most of these programs are heavily promoted on television as well as online medium with repeated mention of the site thereby leading to more eyeballs and increased traffic. If news of increased traffic and pageviews of Bigadda has to be believed then this strategy of hosting official community has definitely worked for Bigadda, now let’s see if it works for other players like In or MySpace as well who are entering / have entered the same arena.