On Air or On Ground - The Marketers Puzzle

Video Advertising obviously have higher reach but should one be very much positive about that return on investment on Video advertising is highest, perhaps no, there are very common reasons to this:

• It’s difficult to evaluate any video campaign accurately as compare to other form of advertisement.
• Money Involve in Video advertising is in no where comparison to other form of advertising. And often the money spent in Video advertising surpasses and result expected.
• When we talk of word of mouth, I am slightly of the opinion that word of mouth for BTL is more effective as user experience in person can not be matched with any other form of advertisement.
• Having known the money involved in Video advertising, the majors have already shifted the base to more BTL, and contrary to previous times when BTL was considered trash, now handsome part of communication budget is allotted to it.
• As the technology is evolving every day, and more and more technology based products are coming in market, so a potential customer would more prefer user experience rather than a video display which is shot miles away from him.
• In my opinion, Video Advertising is to enhance the recall value of brand, where as the brands are made only by what the stuff you are offering as product.
• Seeing the improving importance of BTL, the concept of Media Mix has come up like anything.
• The skying cost of video advertising and shrinking FCT will bring in the era where BTL will be next big thing.

With all this I am not undermining the importance of video advertising, but the proportion of forms of advertising in corporates will see some gradual shift in coming time.

TATA ready to rover the land with Jaguar Image

With NANO at one end and JAGUAR & LAND ROVER at other end, TATA is surely in the business. Realizing the promise of bringing car in range of one lakh and connecting JAGUAR & LAND ROVER to India somewhere addresses the potential of India to this world. Question to be asked is – Are TATA’s capable enough to manage such high profile brands. Specially knowing that they are not experienced enough in dealing such high profile brands, they only have one good going SUV – Safari back home. One more challenge for TATA’s will be to go on with such vast portfolio of brands. It should never be forgotten that to keep Land Rover and Jaguar at the same place where they are will be next big thing TATA’s have to think about. One important thing which somewhere is lost in this extravaganza is that both these brands were not doing so good when they were taken by TATA’s. But TATA’s potential can never be questioned if we were to believe their rapo. With all the three players in the race of going after two brands, staff of Jaguar and Land Rover choose TATA over others. Keeping their beliefs Ratan Tata has announced not to shift manufacturing facility to India. Surely, Ratan Tata has all good guns in the beginning. Both his recent projects are fetching public to brand TATA like never before. If roads leading to Pragati Maidan in Delhi during trade fare were jam packed coz of NANO than other business news fight hard to find space when Land Rover and Jaguar story filled all business editions of newspapers. With this hype at both extreme ends, TATA must have multiply its visibility. Among all this hype at roads, thinkers inside TATA must be working out the projections and combinations they need to frame to get return on investment. The real game is yet to begin as non of the projects are open to public for voting by showing as NANO is yet to come on roads and Jaguar & Land Rover story still need time to justify $2.3 billion. Whatever is done by now is easy part of the full work, the rest is still to come. All the best to TATA for their first part of game - when NANO will come on roads…

Brands Making Sense - Top 100

These are the kings of brands, top one's. They are best in the business, making sense of everything...

They are big!!! Arn't they?

Brand Fight- After cola war...

It all started by Jet Airways....



Continued by Kingfisher...



Ended by Go Airways....

These hoardings are placed at a busy road in Mumbai...
Cola Ad are coming in mind...new joining in the process...

Click for source

Indian Brands Missing Globaly

In the last topic in “Power Brands”, I wrote that no Indian brand is in the list of top brands listed by Interbrand. It takes years in building a brand and in spite of some strong Indian brands in home why could not they make it to that level…we have wipro, Tata, TCS, Infosys but they are only in India. At times it amaze me that despite of being such a strong free market and growing market we still have to go a long way.

Why? Most of the Indian global brands are either B2B or the companies follow the export route through appointed dealers. So it leave the companies with very less to go in other countries and go for a formidable branding campaign. Or they might not be having that resources to build brand.. Moreover if one compare the top brands reveled by Interbrand and the Indian brands than Indian brands are in very nascent stage. So it’s a long way to go before anyone starting comparing Indian brands with those top one’s.

Still there is a brighter side which one should feel good about. Slowly and steadily we are growing in some areas like Tourism, Medical, Education industries in India and producing some good brands. “Incredible India” has drawn global attention. Apollo, Escorts, IIT’s and IIM’s are also heard making news globally. India is not alone in this race and joining India is China, which also have not produced global brands and no brand of china has appeared in list of Interbrand. So have we found another topic of debate between India and China-Both formidable economies of Asia struggling to produce global brands. If one talk of Asia there are two countries-Japan and Korea who have found place for their brands in list of formidable global brands. Honda, Toyota, Nissan, LG, Hyundai, Sony, Panasonic, Samsung are some brands coming out of these two countries. In another aspects also the debate is on-“Are we approaching towards a unipolar world”, see this in the light of the fact the out of the 100 Top brands by Interbrand 62 are of US and among top 10 , eight are from US. But strictly it doesn’t mean that others will loose their grip to the American’s favorite coffee or cola, and India is not an exception. Am I getting more optimistic?, let time answer this.

A Journey: From Hutch to Vodafone

In one of the major transitions in Indian market, Vodafone has replaced Hutch.. In short time from now, you will see Vodafone everywhere at hutch’s place. Just get your eyes ready to see deep red speech mark logo instead of three deep pink stars. Vodafone has acquired Hutch for an enterprise value of $18.8 billion by agreeing to pay$11.1billion for Huthison
Telecommunication Pvt Ltd.

Hutch was a formidable brand in India as of now but now Vodafone will replace it. Just to give you an idea what it takes to build a brand

—Vodafone has booked virtually all the space on star TV on 20th September and it cost them about INR 130 million in all its ads for that day including Sony Tv. Star sells 10 minutes of commercial time per hour. Hutchison-Essar itself has gone through a major brand transition few years ago from its popular orange brand to Hutch which was supported by its popular advertising blitz.

A huge wave of advertising will roll in coming time as a result of this transition on Newspaper, Outdoor media, Internet and Television.

--Vodafone has set budget for this ad campaign to INR 4 Billion and for that Vodafone has booked huge ad space on channels like Zee, Star, Sony on 20th September.

--Vodafone will change Hutch’s “Wherever you go our network follows” catch with a new one “Make the most of now”.

-- The cost for the campaign is slightly more than which require to retain a brand campaign.

-- Most of the cost will go to change the appearance of dealers to suit the changed brand. It will be 50% of total cost.

Already we have seen beautiful ads shown on the first day - 20th September.
This is just starting, all the best to Vodafone.

Thinking of building a brand?? It takes lot more, so Interbrand is far for Indian brands but not inaccessible.

Top Brands of world

Click on the above picture to see it in full size.

Serial number against the Brands represent their rank as given by Interbrand in 2007, the origin of the brand is also given in the list. Where are Indian Brands? Atlease they are not in list of interbrand. Interbrand revels top 100 brands of 2007, to see list of all the hundred brands click Interbrand. With all the boom hovering around india, can Indian brands make it that big? unanswered story!!!!!!

Source: Interbrand.