QUALITIES OF A GREAT MARKETER?

In my opinion, great marketers have two qualities: 1. They are #storytellers. This ability of storytelling allows them to build the brand, its positioning and its functional and emotional benefits in the hearts and minds of customers in a language that connects with the customers, while being true to their brand's purpose. 2. They are #analysts. The ability to analyze trends and data allows them to form strong insights, and then turn those insights into opportunities through innovation or communication. 

Great marketers know very well that good storytelling only helps, when not only does it improve the brand health, but also delivers on the financial metrics that matter. So a great marketer looks at his/her P&L to analyze and drive top line, bottom line and market share as much as looking at the advertising spends, video views and digital KPIs. 

Quite often, marketers get enchanted by the creative side only, which can give them a few minutes of fame but cannot sustain them if the numbers do not come. 

So I strongly believe that a combination of storytelling with analysis is the right mix to become a great marketer.

2019: TOP 100 BRANDS

The annual list of the top 100 brands by Interbrand is out. As expected, #technology and electronic companies occupy more than half of the top 10 spots. 

While the usual suspects are all there, there are quite a few surprises this year: 1. #Facebook has dropped out of the Top 10 for the first time, since it first entered the Top 10 ranks!
2. There are three new entrants to the list: LinkedIn, Uber and Dell Technologies 
3. The Walt Disney Company enters the Top 10 for the first time since its 96 year history!
4. When compared to 2001, the year this list was published for the first time, only 31 brands remain in the Top 100!
5. There is only one #FMCG in the Top 10.
6. #Apple at first rank is valued at $ 234 Bn. while Prada at 100th rank is valued at $ 4.8 Bn.

There are some key lessons here: 

1. A success today is no guarantee of success tomorrow, unless you show results consistently. 

2. Persistence pays, as seen for Disney.

3. Entering into this list is the first step to the door of growth and brand equity. Staying there is an annual challenge.

CATEGORY DISRUPTIONS

Quite often, when doing competitive analysis and market share reviews, we are busy analyzing direct competitors whereas there is a different category that is slowly eating into our segment, which has not even come into our radar or attention. 

Sometimes, the realization happens quite late and then either you have to live with that reality or go back to the drawing board and change your business model completely. 

Here is a great example of how the #camera industry thought that it would be impacted by the explosion of digital cameras, but it was the smartphone segment that ate up all their revenues, year after year with constant improvement in its camera technology. 

A clear lesson for all the players across industries. It is not about how your market share is changing but more about where is your consumer going with his or her money. hashtag#Netflix sums it up quite well when it says that is not competing with the other #OTT players, it is competing with sleep!

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.