What shines that sells!

Over the years speeding power of the common man has improved and I guess it might still… so this opened lots f avenues to manufactures to come up with various products. Though there are loads of potential consumers in the market but likewise there are many players who offer similar product.

And this will be the case always, so how a consumer could be led to a product/brand? According to me making a product know to the consumer and later prompting him to make the purchase is a challenging task! Yes retaining the consumer is another tat solely depends on how did the product perfume and the consumer’s preference.

Now lets take the first aspect, advertising is the “key” thing here and also the word of mouth places a role. Today a product can be advertised in many mediums that’s good but the bad is viewer is exposed to too many of them in all these mediums, its natural for a human to ignore when he gets used to see something regularly, so this way how can the manufacture be assured that his product ad go noticed? Well I guess it purely depends on how good the advertisement was and how sensibly it was placed..

I will write about this aspect in detail later. this has too much to write about.

So lets come o the “store” level where the consumer wants to make the purchase, many times the consumer ends up buying stuffs which he had not planned or thought about until he happened to notice it in the store.

Here it all matters on how well the product is packed, obviously it has to look good and bright so that it can attract the attention and gets noticed, one of the best packing which I can think of is the “apple” products . The packing is so good that the entire box is retained by many!

So considering that we are in a big retail store, most of the products get a good chance to showoff and the most attractive looking will surely win the consumer. Yes it does the trick for meJ

But what about the good old small conservative store? Which is small and has no order and most importantly the store keeper plays the vital role as the sale happens through and very unlikely the consumer gets a chance to explore th products himself…again I guess this needs a separate write up.

Before I end this, attracting is 1 aspect but very importantly making sure that the supply / distribution is at its best as many times have noticed the product which gets aggressively advertised is not available in many small stores this leads off a prospective consumer away! And most likely he/she might not make the purchase.

So I guess “what shines that sells”!

Mosquito, mosquito I know u will always be there!

I cant think of a place in India where we don’t have mosquitoes and I don’t expect it either, and as thes creatures can get some big trouble, keeping them away is the need of the day…

Humans are good at adapting or improving as the challenges gets tougher, a couple of decades back “tortoise” coils where the only savior and it had its own down side but as the time passed we got better repellents which were more user friendly ..

After the matts then came the “liquidators”, I must say these don’t bother me and for some extent they keep the mosquitoes at bay, though the efficiency cant be measured but since the usage process is much simpler then the “coils” this product wins!

Now there are many players in this area , thanks to the mosquitoes which has made this product a must at every household .

Let me talk about the few brands which I have tried, Good Knight “Active” this seems to be a promising product but it runs out pretty fast ,

"All out " well the life is better but am not very happy with its performance, I see mosquitoes hardly bothered when its on!! ,

Mortien i was stuck with this brand for a while until I dint find it in stores and I hardly see this? Not sure if they have stopped it?? If the production is still on then I guess the company needs to relook at their distribution and sales chain esp in small towns! 

btw  "spray" works much better then the liquidator, ofcourse its expensive and not that healthy. here i always stick to Mortien!

Finally would like to end saying that both the pricing and the performance mattes for me, so I will by the brand who can get both of it right!

Brand ambassador, do they really work?

John Abraham for Yamaha and Sharukh khan for Hyundai i10 and many others, considering that these celeb aren’t cheap and he companies who intend to have them as their BA need to shell out a big chunk, so do they get back their investment or is it a gamble?

For products which wont cost much I guess these celebs might improve the recall rate of the customer and might help in prompting the customer to buy those products…but incase of the expensive products like vehicles do they really work?

We are talking about mature audience here and big money and also lot to do with the preference. So this way I guess the company goes in a wrong direction adding jazz which might do very little and in some case spoil the brand name for example “Hrithik” doing stunts with Karizma which looked childish and unreal this lead to many shying away which includes me!

Though John has not done that bad as he true hobby is bikes nd not that he has taken up bikes to showoff which many other actors have done to just showoff!

But I feel instead of spending on these costly ambassadors the company need to invest in putting together ideas on how they can win the customer and am sure there are plenty!

Just came across the “i10” ad today which says in the end that get a “cricket ball signed by the khan” himself! Now tell me what can one make out of it? Khan and cricket?? I don’t see him involved in thi again other then he owning a team in IPL…this strategy is completely absurd! Hyundai to woo the crow think of some other gift this looks too funny!

So my request to all the automotive companies is to stop spending on the BA’s instead give a discount, am sure it would give better numbers!

Stupid as it gets, Polo Ad

Audiences today have got real smart and mature and they do watch the “quality” of the content and I can vouch that there is very small % of people who may accept bad “quality”!

And am sure “VW” knows the importance of advertisement considering “Polo” is their first hatch which was introduced in Indian market and with stiff competition it makes sense to make use of this medium to the fullest!

What made the advertisers (agency) to choose wildlife and forest terrain for the series of ads on Polo, c’mon lets be particle and bit sensible, is this vehicle supposed to do what an SUV does? Cause many terrains shown in the ad a person who is sane wont go in an hatch! So the messaging part is complete mess!

One of the ad they have shown about “ground clearance” as the car could go over the “ostrich egg” without touching it! So they want to say that if you come across a “ostrich egg” on the road you can confidently go over it?? Ground clearance could have told in many other ways which the viewer could relate to, they might have to bring in some humor but this was childish! Again mess…

Overall using wildlife/forest or animals to put through a message was an bad idea, to some extent insensitive too. There is no dearth of people who act like morons when they have to deal with the animals or when they are in a wildlife sanctuary such irresponsible ads will only encourage such people, one of the examples is the dude in the ad honking!!!

Offlate have not been seeing this ad in any of the channels and I am happy about it! Hope to see a sensible and good ad from a company like VW!! In the near future…

The brand i continue to trust … Dettol

Over the years consumers have grown, though there is a good percentage of them who make purchases randomly but the % of the people who think before they buy is growing! And most of the times if the consumer sticks to the brand its only because he trusts it and the trust comes with the brand/product performing as he intends to…

Like any other thoughtful consumer even I have kind of stuck to a brand and that is “Dettol” antiseptic liquid. For about 30+ years Dettol always finds its place in the shopping list and I guess it will continue to.

The reason I still choose Dettol over other brand is I guess it does what is required without  fuss and the assurance factor is something I like about it.

Hope it stays the same and I continue to be its loyal customerJ

Customer is still the king?

I guess you might have got what this blog might contain, yea, this i intend to write about anything and everything a brand/product might have to deal with, it might be advertising, or just about the product or the design/usability...