Fastrack - Edgy hoardings

In its latest hoardings, Fastrack announces a 20% off sale showing a girl whose vital parts are covered by a yellow Sale tape.   It definitely is a showstopper but has Titan gone too far in being edgy?  The visual has nothing to do with the textual message and seems designed to titilliate rather than anything else.   Brand managers need to be careful when they push the envelope on what is culturallly acceptable.  Fastrack has always and will always be an irreverent brand, but is this going too far?

Parachute - Brand extension par excellence

Coconut oil has been traditionally used as a therapeutic daily treatment for healthy scalps and luxuriant hair. Marico, one of India's leading native FMCGs, is known for its leading Parachute brand of coconut hair oil and the pioneer in branding a commodity product to great success. But one of the problems with coconut oil was that it was sticky, smelly and oily, and therefore could be used only as an overnight, pre-wash treatment and the style conscious were apt not to use it. In what can only be described as brilliant strategy, Marico launched products that addressed this shortcoming. Parachute Advansed as a fast acting, one hour prior to wash product; Parachute Jasmine as a post-wash, non-sticky, fragrant alternative; Parachute Therapie as a 45 day hair fall treatment product; Parachute After Shower cream as a non-sticky, non-oily alternative; and Parachute Styling Gel for the style conscious. Making usage possible post-wash increased the addressible market. Making it non-sticky, non-oily and odor free made the young accept the traditional treatment. All the while Marico kept the core coconut oil proposition intact. A brand line extension that was par excellence and effectively leveraged a strong, leadership brand.

A visit to the barber

It was like any other visit to the barber yesterday, except this time I was in the chair thinking of what I should be writing today. It started uneventfully with me giving him the standard instructions of what I wanted. As he was snipping away at what little resides on my head, he asked whether I would like to have a shave. Giving into laziness, I said yes. A few more snips and he said an oil massage would rejuvenate my hair, stop hair fall and relax me...would I like one? Anything to stop my receding hairline I said yes. As he was shaving he said a face massage would clear away the dead cells, firm my face and relax me further. Basking in the relaxed state that the oil massage had put me into, I said yes. He then went onto give me two options the standard face scrub or the organic, all natural one. Of course, I was going for the natural one. My hair neatly trimmed and washed, my head and face massaged, my facial stub a distant memory, I got out of the chair feeling good and ready for the day. I paid him, stepped out, and stopped short...I had been cross-sold and upsold by a master. I had spent 5 times more than I had planned for and felt good at the end of it! Notice how he drip-sold me, never all at the same time, one by one when I would be most receptive.

At the very least I got a blog post out of it :) How many times have you gone in for a plain haircut and come out with more done or clutching a bottle of miracle conditioner? The next time you are at the salon, just remind yourself you are in the hands of a master marketer.

Marketing and Sales: Never shall the twain meet?

I was recently taking a class on sales management, and the inevitable questions of sales vs. marketing, what is the difference between the two, and where is the handoff from one to another came up. It is interesting that among practictioners in organizations there is an almost religious belief that the two are by nature adversorial and the two 'camps' engage in more finger pointing than any other closely related departments, especially in B2B scenarios.

There are some real differences. For example, the perspectives differ in terms of time range and distance from the sale transaction. Marketing tends to be medium and long term gazing into future sustainability while sales is about present survival. Marketing is about markets defined by some delineating parameters while sales is about the current opportunity that can be addressed by current products and services. Marketing is strategic in terms of the universe of opportunities, all competition, market and technology trends while sales is tactical about specific opportunities, strategies to close the deal on the table, and contextual competition. Marketing's job is to help the company consistently be among the top buying choices while sales is about making it the only choice. Marketers tend to be analytical, company biased, creative trend-spotters and value oriented while salespeople tend to be emotionally intelligent, situationally creative, prospect biased and revenue oreinted. And one can go on...

The trick is to be able to align the two in their objectives and identify the areas of cooperation in the buying funnel. There should be no clear handoff point but like in a relay a stretch where both are running and the baton is exchanged at the most optimal point. Kotler et al have dealt with this alignment in a HBR article "End the war between sales and marketing" well. they provide both a diagonstic to determine where your sales and marketing alignment is and in what circumstances should you try to move to a higher level of alignment among four defined levels - undefined, defined, aligned and integrated.

In my experience, the lack of alignment in any organization is directly proportional to the CEO's or top management's perception of value in the two functions, and unfortunately you find more of them giving short shrift to marketing than they do to sales. As a marketer, this misalignment usually leads to a disproportionate time being spent on downstream (tactical) marketing activities which is a losing proposition over time if the upstream (strategic) is not given its due.

Time Pass - a need or a brand?

If you have ever lived in Bombay (Mumbai), you would have travelled in the crowded trains bracing yourself for the one hour or more journey to the station nearest to your home. Other than the real regulars who corner the best seats to play cards or have formed a group of common interest - be it talking about the share market ups and downs of the day, for others it is one of patient waiting. Suddenly, you will hear a vendor shouting 'time pass, time pass, {product that he is selling, e.g. peanuts}, time pass'. The product could almost be anything - a puzzle, something to eat or do. But the real marketing insight that this group of vendors had was that they took a colloquial term for doing nothing of substance and used it to label the boring hour that you had to spend - literally pass time until you reached your destination. They named your need and offered something to fill it. Brilliant! I really don't know what to label it as - a need category or a genericised brand (ala 'fridge' or 'kleenex') except here you could substitute almost anything. If you really want to learn marketing and marvel at business acumen, look around you and they will be aplenty, like the ones on the downtown restauranteurs or the youngster with the scissors and glue that I wrote about earlier. They all executed flawlessly on the marketing process - observing their customers, intuiting what they need and then filling the need. If you are aspiring to be a marketer par excellence, that's what you need to do.