POWER OF COLOUR

There is a lot of thought that goes in every logo, packaging design, product design and other attributes of a brand. While multiple factors do play a role, #colour is definitely one of the most important ones because catching the attention of the consumer even before consumption is crucial, and visual cues like colour can help in that aspect. Here is an infographic from #Ogilvy USA that gives an insight into how most #brands use colour. The rules aren't set in stone and there will be quite a few cases of brands and marketers who have broken the norm, but it is a good indication of the usual approach. Now please have a look at your favourite brands and see if they are following this approach or not. 
I will be happy to discuss examples that you have come across. 

                               Image Credit: Ogilvy USA
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                               #logo #packaging #kunalviews #design

LET THE SONG PLAY!

Have you ever been in a situation where your favourite song starts playing on the car stereo just when you have reached your destination?

I am sure many people have experienced that moment. 

#Spotify USA took this consumer insight and came up with a nice and sweet ad film that shows people from different walks of life, who decide to spend a few minutes longer in their car to enjoy the complete song.

The acting is authentic, the song chosen is apt and the message is perfect! 

Enjoy this film this weekend.hashtag

TRAVEL WITH BOOKS

If you are a book reader, you know that #books make us travel, giving wings to our imagination and perspectives to our thoughts. 

Lectura, a book store in Bolivia wanted to show people the power of reading. So they launched a print #campaign showing passports with visa stamps. The visa stamps did not belong to countries but rather to the titles of different books!

Pay attention to the titles on each passport and notice how smartly the three passports are meant to attract three different reading segment of customers - kids, teens and adults. 

I like the subtlety with which each ad ends - Go travel.

                        #communications #printad #advertising #kunalviews #travel #creativity

RAIN RAIN GO AWAY!

Car brand #Lexus recently launched their rain-sensing automatic windshield wipers in the market of South Africa. Such automatic windshield wipers are not new in the #automotive industry but the company wanted to show its effectiveness to potential car buyers in the markets of South Africa. 

So their ad agency M&C Saatchi came up with a witty print campaign where they put up some very popular rain songs in their ads but removed the word 'rain' from the lyrics of each of these songs to demonstrate the effectiveness of their wipers. 

Very smart and gives out the message clearly.

CADBURY UNITY : CRACKING THE 4Ps of MARKETING

If you are in #India, I am sure you must have seen the new launch from #Mondelez India - Cadbury Unity Bar to celebrate India's 2019 Independence Day.

                              

To me, what was impressive was how #Cadbury was able to crack all the 4Ps of #Marketing in a brilliant way:

Product:

• The product is an interesting blend of milk, dark and white chocolate signifying the diversity of India and the relevance of the product to celebrate the occasion is perfect.
• The brand name chosen is apt for the occasion – Unity. Notice how the last three letters in the word Unity on the pack are the three colours of the three chocolates that have been put together.
• The packaging shows people of different religion, region and gender joining hands and it also looks like the letter ‘U’ of Unity. 

Price:

• The chocolate bar has been priced at an odd price point of INR 73. Why? Simply because it is the 73rd year of India’s independence so such an odd price point is justified.
• At a price point of INR 73 for a 130g bar, the chocolate is priced at INR 561 per kg, which is higher than the average price of chocolates in the country. This means that it gives a healthy margin to Cadbury with every bar that they sell.

Promotion:

•  Cadbury surprised everyone by taking the front page of The Economic Times editions and different cities and putting out the headline in a language that is not spoken in that city. So, the Delhi edition had a Telugu headline and the Bengaluru edition had a Marathi headline.
• For a few seconds the reader thought that the advertiser made a mistake, but if you read further, the ad said ‘The headline above is not a misprint. It is in Telugu (or whichever language the headline was in) and it says – Sweet things happen, when we unite.
• This unique approach led to a social media frenzy and people were talking about the ad, sharing it, commenting on it, thereby generating enough earned media for the launch.

Place:

• Cadbury Unity bars were being sold exclusively on Flipkart as limited editions. I am not surprised because blending three different chocolates in a single bar can be done only on a small scale and hence it is perfect to do Limited Editions.
• By calling out ‘Limited Edition’, Cadbury was driving the scarcity mindset and people who would want to experience this unique chocolate would not wait and rush to place their orders.
• By selling it only through an e-commerce player like Flipkart, Cadbury was able to achieve two things:
•  It did not have to incur the heavy logistics in distributing the chocolates across multiple retail outlets across the country. They could work this easily with a single partner – Flipkart.
• Pushing people to come to Flipkart to place orders was a great way to change purchase behaviour and get more people to become comfortable in buying chocolates online, which has a much lower penetration on e-commerce than other food categories.
• The product was sent out to consumers in a nicely gifted box along with a special letter, taking the consumer experience to the next level.

While the launch on its own isn’t going to shift the needle of the top line for Cadbury, but it surely will drive its brand equity and salience significantly and will have a much bigger impact on the mother brand Cadbury because of all the buzz, the PR and the earned media. I am contributing to that earned media as well by writing this article!

If you are a marketing student, you can easily put this one as a great case study in brands that have used the fundamentals of Marketing to their advantage and leveraged Philip Kotler’s 4Ps to their advantage. 

Oh, by the way, did I mention that I have had a love-hate relationship with Cadbury over the years. I did my summer internship with Cadbury back in 2003 and then when I was doing marketing for chocolates for Nestle, Cadbury was our competitor and arch rival 😊.

Let me know what you think of this analysis in the comments section.

#PictureStory 45 : Heart

Even before he turned three, Alex's mother was telling him stories of different heroes and different personalities from various parts of the world.

She was keen to inculcate the values of equality, respect, tolerance and acceptance within him as she knew that the world didn't take long to bring its shroud of racism, bigotry, colour, caste, religion and many other filters just to keep differentiating one human being from another.

Quite often, the stories had characters from the figment of Alex's mother's imagination as her objective from every story was to make Alex a better human than the day before. Even when Alex started going to school, his mother's stories protected him from getting corrupted by the worldly views.

At the age of 14, when Alex discovered that he has feelings for other boys, he confided this to his mother. She showed complete support to Alex, and told him that there is only one thing that matters in this world, and that is love.

'It doesn't matter who you love, as long as you keep loving without judging the other person and are willing to open the window of your soul to that person without inhibition. Pure connections happen when two souls connect, the physical form outside is not important as it is just a haven for the soul." said Alex's mother, reassuring him.

Today, Alex felt that among all the heroes that his mother had told him about, she forgot to tell him the story of one hero - herself.

Pic details: Clicked on the streets of Basel, Switzerland in Aug 2019

BACARDI - BEAT MACHINE

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Advertising on a social media platform is one thing, but leveraging its hidden features to engage with your consumers is a completely different thing. 

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#Bacardi USA smartly used YouTube and its keyboard shortcuts to create a Beat Machine for the song 'Make it Hot', where users could play with the sound, remix it as per their own liking and create their own customized version with different effects. 

It is a great example of experiential marketing where consumers are engaging and interacting with the brand, feeling like musicians and sound artists through the hackvertising approach that Bacardi has taken. 

Check out the video to see what can be done through this hack.

Video Credit: Bacardi USA

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#brand hashtag#marketing hashtag#experiential hashtag#kunalviews hashtag#communications hashtag#music hashtag#socialmediamarketing

KITKAT - AN ORIGAMI BREAK!

#KITKAT has announced plans to replace its plastic wrappers with recyclable paper wrappers in Japan, which can then also be turned into #origami creations.

Having worked on this iconic #brand for six years, I can say that this is a great initiative for a number of reasons:

 By replacing plastic with paper, #Nestle is staying true to its #sustainability commitment in tackling a world-wide problem.

 Through origami, KITKAT is becoming an even more integral part of the Japanese culture, which is the biggest market for the brand. KITKAT sounds similar to the Japanese words Kitto Katto, which translates to ‘You will surely win’ - the reason the brand has become so close to Japanese hearts.

 This launch is yet another extension of the brand and its #purpose of doing good for the planet and for individuals and families.

 It allows the brand to stay true to its positioning of ‘Have A Break, Have a KITKAT’ because now, consumers can have a break while eating a KITKAT and even after that once the #chocolate has been consumed.

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/kitkat-japan-nestle-plastic-packaging-paper-wrapper-origami-cranes-waste-a9057356.html

#FMCG #CPG #innovation #packaging #kunalviews #recyle #sustainable #marketing 

INDEPENDENCE DAY - LIBERTY

This year, India celebrated its 73rd year of Independence on 15th August with the hope and promises of the nation progressing further and taking another step in becoming a super #economy. This means change for the better. A nation only changes when its people change and their mindset evolves. These can be small or big changes, verbal or non-verbal changes, behavioural or attitudinal changes. Here is a powerful ad by Liberty on this Independence Day that makes you pause and reflect. The voiceover by Piyush Mishra does justice to what is being said. I also like the wordplay and the use of the brand name to talk about Azadi - Liberty. The video will surely get buzz, eyeballs and earned media. It is already being shared on #socialmedia. Not sure how much of that would translate into #sales, but sometimes brands need #salience to come back into the consideration set.

#advertising #communications #kunalviews #brands #momentmarketing #contentmarketing #earnedmedia

NIKE - SUBSCRIPTION BUSINESS MODEL

#Nike has launched a subscription model for children between the ages of two to 10, where kids can get anywhere between four pairs to 12 pairs of sneakers every year, depending on the subscription model that the parents take.

I think this is a brilliant #marketing strategy and business model because I see the following benefits:

1. Nike makes lives easier for parents as they don't have to go to shop for sneakers regularly for their growing kids. 

2. Once subscribed for a year, kids stay only with Nike, thereby blocking the entry of any other brand in their lives.

3. By giving exposure and experience to kids with Nike at a young age, they are trying to convert them into #brand loyalists at a young age so that even when they grow up, they only think of Nike as their brand of choice.

4. Parents who are not wearing Nike today may convert or shift to Nike when they see their kids comfortable and happy in their sneakers.

5. Once Nike tests and learns from this #business model, it can easily replicate it across other age groups - teenagers, adults and scale it up across geographies. This will open a new business frontier for Nike.

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2019/08/12/business/nike-sneaker-subscription/index.html?__twitter_impression=true

Nespresso Capsules : Second Life

Sometimes you do not need a voice-over or text to tell a story. The visuals do the job quite well!hashtag

#Nespresso brought in a coffee revolution when it introduced coffee capsules in the late 80s and early 90s. These capsules were made of aluminium, and, with the growing awareness of environment conservation and hashtag#sustainability, consumers started asking questions on the recycling of the discarded capsules. As a result, Nespresso introduced #recycling programmes in many different countries and launched a sustainability programme - 'The Positive Cup'. It then went a step further when it partnered with the stationery brand Caran d'Ache and launched a limited edition pen collection made from recycled aluminium coffee capsules. These pens were designed to remind consumers of the infinite durability of aluminium which can be re-melted and reused again and again. This is a perfect example of giving a product a second life.

                                                             Video credit: Caran d'ache

hashtag#marketing #environment #reuse #recyle #reduce #kunalviews #sustainable #innovation #nestle #idea #solutions