Here is our initiative towards creating a greener earth. We are looking at planting 5000 trees of hope for 5000 citizens of world. Join us on this.
2010 Greetings. 1 Click 1 Tree. Our initiative for planet earth - 141Sercon
Showing posts with label 141 sercon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 141 sercon. Show all posts
Saturday, December 26, 2009
1 Click 1 Tree. Our initiative for planet earth.
Here is our initiative towards creating a greener earth. We are looking at planting 5000 trees of hope for 5000 citizens of world. Join us on this.
2010 Greetings. 1 Click 1 Tree. Our initiative for planet earth - 141Sercon
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
SHOP FLOOR; THE NEW PRIME TIME. Trend No 4
4. SHOPPER CROSSOVER;
For a number of years we have profiled the shoppers, into various categories, e.g. value shoppers, lifestyle shopper, convenience shoppers, family shopper, etc. After this classification, we have decided on how to approach a shopper based on this profile and what is the nature of message which the shopper responds to.
This “shopper type” has meant that we could decide which type would want discounts vs. which type would buy lifestyle vs. which type would want convenience.
This “typification” meant that we could target relevant brand messages to these specific segments of customers and the expectation has been that once a value shopper always a value shopper.
However, new research indicates that the same shopper shops in discount stores, while he also shops in departmental stores and specialty stores… but he/she shops differently.
Consumers are less loyal to any single channel / type of retailer than they were in the past.
Different needs = Different stores.
What this really means is that a brand needs to increasingly target the shopper close to the moment of purchase and hence at the store level and dependent on the store format.
Consider a shopper at a “cash and carry” store – he or she is there to buy in bulk and is seeking out value for money. So if a cola brand has to be relevant to the shopper, it has to offer a bulk deal or maybe a value pack based offer of 2 free bottles with 10 bottles or it might want to push its mega sized bottles at a discount.
Now consider the same shopper hops into the gas station convenience store for a drink while he tops up his fuel tank. For the same brand of cola to be in the consideration set in this format – it has to be in a very handy size, in an easy to grab location, ready for immediate consumption and maybe bundled with a short-eat.
The fact that the same shopper will respond to very different stimulus at the two locations is because his purpose of shopping is different – value vs convenience.
While the brand would have the uniform overall image, however, its last mile messaging, is what gets the brand into the shopper’s basket.
The brands consumer touch-points need to be relevant to where is it placed and which need state does that format address.
One singular overall “awareness” focussed message / campaign does not work on ensuring conversion in the last mile.
This “shopper type” has meant that we could decide which type would want discounts vs. which type would buy lifestyle vs. which type would want convenience.
This “typification” meant that we could target relevant brand messages to these specific segments of customers and the expectation has been that once a value shopper always a value shopper.
However, new research indicates that the same shopper shops in discount stores, while he also shops in departmental stores and specialty stores… but he/she shops differently.
Consumers are less loyal to any single channel / type of retailer than they were in the past.
Different needs = Different stores.
What this really means is that a brand needs to increasingly target the shopper close to the moment of purchase and hence at the store level and dependent on the store format.
Consider a shopper at a “cash and carry” store – he or she is there to buy in bulk and is seeking out value for money. So if a cola brand has to be relevant to the shopper, it has to offer a bulk deal or maybe a value pack based offer of 2 free bottles with 10 bottles or it might want to push its mega sized bottles at a discount.
Now consider the same shopper hops into the gas station convenience store for a drink while he tops up his fuel tank. For the same brand of cola to be in the consideration set in this format – it has to be in a very handy size, in an easy to grab location, ready for immediate consumption and maybe bundled with a short-eat.
The fact that the same shopper will respond to very different stimulus at the two locations is because his purpose of shopping is different – value vs convenience.
While the brand would have the uniform overall image, however, its last mile messaging, is what gets the brand into the shopper’s basket.
The brands consumer touch-points need to be relevant to where is it placed and which need state does that format address.
One singular overall “awareness” focussed message / campaign does not work on ensuring conversion in the last mile.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Shop Floor; The New Prime Time.
Prime Time ; A boon for brand marketing folks worldwide… it was a time when consumers would sit-back, glued to their TV sets taking in one soap or the other, or a game, or news or a movie and along with it absorbing a healthy dose of creative commercial messages which wet their appetite for the brands.
Logic had it that more the amount of noise created, the more liberal the usage of sexy celebrities, the more dazzling the production quality of the TVC - the higher the resultant brand recall. It therefore, surmised (almost) that the consumer would walk-up to the store, seek out and purchase the brand which had the highest recall in his mind.
As a result this thought process; the brand marketing folks have chased that prime time spot to stay “relevant” in the consumers consideration set. This chase is now a habit – almost a compulsion and an obsession – consider the fact that most of the industry dialogues seem to be completely focussed around the world of that 30 sec TVC.
Getting the consumer to be “aware” of the brand is something which everyone has focussed on for a while, albeit the dependence of mass-media for the same has been the chosen route. Thus it has been the one-way, single message for all, top-down communication which has dominated the thinking process.
However, for a consumer to progress in his mind and actions through his “path to purchase”, he has to undertake a process of 1st changing from a consumer to a shopper into the category and then from a shopper to a buyer of the brand and while awareness creation in the mind of the consumer is a critical 1st step, it is perhaps only the starting point.
The much discussed “path-to-purchase” model (figure 1.1) does a great job of explaining the consumers’ progressive levels of engagement with the brand and defines the path to purchase that a consumer moves through. It also explains the typical media vehicles or other experiential tools which can be used to influence behaviour. The funnel also represents the attrition / reduction of number / volume of consumers’ at every stage of the “path to purchase”.
Interestingly, while this model does not necessarily attempt to comment on the way brands needs to prioritize their overall marketing spends, brands have, over the years mirrored their marketing spends as per the funnel, with the maximum spends going into creating awareness (at the top of the funnel) and minimal amounts in the last mile (at the bottom of the funnel) to ensure conversion and sales.
There was a time, many years ago, when this logic made sense in terms of ensuring a wider reach, effectively informing customers, creating desire, etc. In those days the business logic of marketing would be simple; create a product, create an exciting story around it (read ad), make people aware of the product/brand and ensure it is made available in the shops – consumer will queue up and buy. The more noise you make – the more people will buy!
Today that hypothesis does not hold true. There is a massive shift in the way a brand should allocate its funds across the path of purchase. A brand now has to not merely tweak its allocation of funds towards the path of purchase; it has to completely re-invent its allocation logic.
Time is ripe to reverse the allocation. A brand should and needs to spend the largest share of its budgets in the last mile (lower stages of the funnel) as against on creating “awareness and recall” of the brand.
Let me share some of the current and evolving consumer behavioural trends I have observed, from around the world, which make the need of this change real and urgent, please visit the blog and view the 10 specific trends as I see them;
Logic had it that more the amount of noise created, the more liberal the usage of sexy celebrities, the more dazzling the production quality of the TVC - the higher the resultant brand recall. It therefore, surmised (almost) that the consumer would walk-up to the store, seek out and purchase the brand which had the highest recall in his mind.
As a result this thought process; the brand marketing folks have chased that prime time spot to stay “relevant” in the consumers consideration set. This chase is now a habit – almost a compulsion and an obsession – consider the fact that most of the industry dialogues seem to be completely focussed around the world of that 30 sec TVC.
Getting the consumer to be “aware” of the brand is something which everyone has focussed on for a while, albeit the dependence of mass-media for the same has been the chosen route. Thus it has been the one-way, single message for all, top-down communication which has dominated the thinking process.
However, for a consumer to progress in his mind and actions through his “path to purchase”, he has to undertake a process of 1st changing from a consumer to a shopper into the category and then from a shopper to a buyer of the brand and while awareness creation in the mind of the consumer is a critical 1st step, it is perhaps only the starting point.
The much discussed “path-to-purchase” model (figure 1.1) does a great job of explaining the consumers’ progressive levels of engagement with the brand and defines the path to purchase that a consumer moves through. It also explains the typical media vehicles or other experiential tools which can be used to influence behaviour. The funnel also represents the attrition / reduction of number / volume of consumers’ at every stage of the “path to purchase”.
Interestingly, while this model does not necessarily attempt to comment on the way brands needs to prioritize their overall marketing spends, brands have, over the years mirrored their marketing spends as per the funnel, with the maximum spends going into creating awareness (at the top of the funnel) and minimal amounts in the last mile (at the bottom of the funnel) to ensure conversion and sales.
There was a time, many years ago, when this logic made sense in terms of ensuring a wider reach, effectively informing customers, creating desire, etc. In those days the business logic of marketing would be simple; create a product, create an exciting story around it (read ad), make people aware of the product/brand and ensure it is made available in the shops – consumer will queue up and buy. The more noise you make – the more people will buy!
Today that hypothesis does not hold true. There is a massive shift in the way a brand should allocate its funds across the path of purchase. A brand now has to not merely tweak its allocation of funds towards the path of purchase; it has to completely re-invent its allocation logic.
Time is ripe to reverse the allocation. A brand should and needs to spend the largest share of its budgets in the last mile (lower stages of the funnel) as against on creating “awareness and recall” of the brand.
Let me share some of the current and evolving consumer behavioural trends I have observed, from around the world, which make the need of this change real and urgent, please visit the blog and view the 10 specific trends as I see them;
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Shop Floor - The New PRIME TIME.
I started documenting the changes in the way shoppers behave when taking a decision on the brand purchases sometime back and have collated the top 10 trends, as I see them, in this white paper.
The trends strongly reiterate the urgency and the need for brands to focus on the “shop floor” in the same manner as they have traditionally focused on the prime time on TV to advertise and promote themselves and their products.
This whitepaper on the changing shopper behavior and its reasons is now available for a free download from here. You will however, need to register on the site and then log into it to download the whitepaper.
The trends strongly reiterate the urgency and the need for brands to focus on the “shop floor” in the same manner as they have traditionally focused on the prime time on TV to advertise and promote themselves and their products.
This whitepaper on the changing shopper behavior and its reasons is now available for a free download from here. You will however, need to register on the site and then log into it to download the whitepaper.
There is a lot more information on each of the trends; do email me if you wish to know more – I will be happy to share the same with you. You will also find some of the additional information on each of the trends on this blog over the next few weeks – so do subscribe to either the RSS fee or by way of email for regular updates.Happy reading! And look forward to your views.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Tools to measure ROI of the marketing dollar.
PULSE SUITE is one of it’s kind collection of marketing services tools which should be used by marketers to improve productivity, enhance brand coverage, better understand the brand presence in the last mile and have a comprehensive control on the marketing dollars being spend by any brand.
These are tools which allow a better “feel of the pulse” of their respective area of focus, and are a combination of brand diagnostic tools and process improvement tools.
Last mile - which is also the place when any customer make the key brand specific decision, is indeed very complex for all brands across categories. We have ensured that all our tools are able to report this complexity by way of easy to understand and interpret intelligence. Additionally these tools are “live”, thus ensuring that the clients have access to simple to understand dashboards which transmit real time intelligence from the “street up”.
Last mile - which is also the place when any customer make the key brand specific decision, is indeed very complex for all brands across categories. We have ensured that all our tools are able to report this complexity by way of easy to understand and interpret intelligence. Additionally these tools are “live”, thus ensuring that the clients have access to simple to understand dashboards which transmit real time intelligence from the “street up”.
Market Pulse, Shopper Pulse and Event Pulse are the first in a series of Pulse tools which will be available to the discerning marketer across Asia. For more information and demos on the tools, please log in to www.pulsesuite.com
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