AaramShop - digital marketing solution for CPG.

Rapid change in technologies and way the consumer interacts with and consumes media using various technologies has had a profound impact on the way brands use communication & marketing tools. However, this is just the start. 

Brands will need to re-think their current strategies and would need to augment their current brand marketing strategies with web, social networks, mobile & whatever else comes along the way. 

Delivering a seamless and an integrated experience across all consumer touch points represents a tremendous change, challenge and opportunity. 

Brands will need to adopt their marketing to being relevant locally. They will have to think more broadly in terms of opportunities for a given brand or store format and more narrowly in terms of consumer needs in different communities or groups of consumers. 

The biggest challenge is for brand thinking to become channel agnostic. The transformation of where shoppers are touching your brand – from how they research you, how they buy the brand, whether it is brick and mortar, mobile based commerce, web based commerce, social network commerce – means you need to have the capacity to ship your product from anywhere to anywhere as a true multi channel retailer. 

That’s where AaramShop intents to offer a solution rather than advice – as a hybrid retail platform, it will enable FMCG / CPG brands to be present across the consumers path-to-purchase and encourage an effortless purchase at any of the touch-points.

This seamless inter-operatability between channels is what will allow shoppers to purchase brands irrespective of where they are.

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Wikiwisdom.

I am smart because of wikipedia and wikipedia is smart because of me (and people like me) - welcome to the smart world of collective wisdom. 

Re-read the Cluetrain Manifesto after ages and realized that it has been bang-on over all these years and now more relevant to marketeers and brand owners than ever before as the networks have got much better organized over time.

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Commercializing a disaster - the Youtube & CBS way.

The earthquake and the tsunami in Japan have thrown up heart retching images and videos of folks caught in the disaster suffering, loosing property, life and hope. 

The coverage of the disaster re-enforced two things;

1. Traditional news media is dead. The traditional field reporters are now completely replaced by the common men and women who are the real eyes and ears. In fact almost all the feed that runs on networks like CNN and BBC is from the social networks. And the newsprint – they are really of no use – they are just a dying habit. 

2. Commercial interests seems to have taken over the new media as much as the old media owners. It is an unfortunate though everyday practice to have the TV coverage of a disaster like the above  interrupted by TVCs. I always found the positioning of these TVCs strange from a “brand positioning” perspective (I have just seen someone’s home being washed away, now let me view a shampoo TVC). While I had come to expect this from the traditional media vehicles, I am very surprised that the new media owners, who otherwise follow all the virtues of social media, are unfortunately following the same strategy.

High on that list is Youtube (read Google) CBS Channel, which is putting up adverts at the start of all uploaded videos – making the viewing experience quite pathetic. 

And the viewer reaction has to be noted and of course respected.  Following were some of the reactions and you would notice that the highest rated comments are NEGATIVE;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hj58NpanX3g&feature=related

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The modern trade vs The brands - the saga continues.

I read with a lot of interest the series of recent articles carried in Economic Times on the ongoing and perpetual battle between the brands at one end and the modern retailers on the other. It started a few days back with the news that Reckitt was keen on reduction of margins for the modern retail outlets (by about 2% or so).

It followed today with the news that Future Group is "cleaning out" Reckitt from it's outlets. 

What made it particularly interesting for me was that about 2 years back (thats when modern trade was really modern in India), I had a longish meeting with the then brand custodian of one of the Reckitt brands who was spending majority of her marketing funds on "creating"a category for her product at the modern trade. We discussed issues around eventual private labeling, shrinking margins, cost charged towards display,  lack of traditional trade focus etc. however, perceived higher and better quality of consumer engagement ensured that she stuck to her decision of pouring very serious monies in modern trade to create a category - irony was that the largest amount was on the Future Group. 

While modern trade currently represents only 5% of the FMCG trade in India, the writing on the wall is very clear - the FMCG brands will need to take a good hard look at their own shopper marketing strategies and step back to embrace the traditional grocer / kirana store.

If the brands don't - they will be constantly on the receiving end - today Reckitt got taken off the shelves, yesterday it was Frito-Lay and Kellogg's. Tomorrow who knows. 

Another example of AR

AR is the "engagement" which has long been missing in the digital marketing space, though, I am still to get conversion data to back the use.